Antonia absently touched her swollen lips before answering. “I can try.” She spoke in a suffocated whisper that she almost didn’t recognize. Were it not for last night’s blackout, Antonia wouldn’t have recognized the surge of sensations in her body either. But she was convinced that she hadn’t felt those sensations with any man. His grin is positively rakish. It sounded like something she had read in her paperback romances, but she couldn’t think of any other way to describe it.

“Right, let’s get some vittles,” he said, getting out of the car. She watched him walk around the front to get to her side. When he opened her door, she couldn’t help but smile.

“You don’t have to do that,” she said.

“I know, but it makes me look like the gentleman I’m pretending to be,” he said with a wink.

Inside Kilian’s Grocers, several shoppers milled around the aisles while a smiling checkout boy greeted them. They took a couple of handbaskets and split up. Antonia needed some space from him. If she believed in the power of auras, then Aiden’s would be the color of the sun, threatening to knock her off orbit with his energy. She stopped in the bread aisle first, picking out a loaf of the brown bread that she’d grown to love.

“So what do you like to eat?” he asked, sidling up to her.

Once she grabbed the bread, she moved toward the snack aisle. “Oh, whatever is easy to prepare. I eat at my desk a lot.”

“Okay, but what do you like to eat on the weekends?”

She shrugged. “Mostly takeout.”

“What do you like to cook?” he pressed. “What’s Antonia’s favorite home-cooked meal?”

She looked up at him with a grin. “Cook?”

He scrunched his nose. “You don’t like to cook?”

“I don’t,” she said, plucking a bag of cookies that seemed the closest approximation to chocolate chip. She dropped them in her basket and moved on to the chips. “I don’t have to cook where I come from.”

“People cook in Chicago,” he said, giving her a quick and chaste kiss on her forehead. “If you’re simply too lazy to cook, don’t lay that at the feet of millions of Chicagoans.”

Antonia was too distracted by his kiss to mind the jab. She liked this outward show of public affection. She liked how easily it came to him. Her face broke into a goofy smile. “I live in a neighborhood on Devon Avenue that’s packed with beautiful Indian and Pakistani restaurants and takeout. My next door neighbor, Mrs. Shah, is a restaurant owner. She regularly feeds me.”

She followed him to the condiments aisle, where he shook his head in disappointment. “So I’m not the only poor fool who’s keeping you alive,” he said. “Here I thought I was special.”

Antonia laughed. “I’m not totally hapless.”

“You don’t even bake?” he asked, selecting a bottle of mustard.

“I especially don’t bake,” she said, standing beside him. She recognized the brand on a jar of pickles and a wave of homesickness washed over her. Everything in the grocery store looked foreign and off-brand. “I didn’t go to school for chemistry, so baking is a bit of a mystery to me.”