“I can imagine. Rio was very tired when he arrived home the other night after packing Joshua all those miles by himself. Without food or drink or medical attention.”

The elder looked at her, his expression as calm as ever. “Touché, my dear.”

She pulled open the vegetable bin, slapping vegetables on the counter. “I’m not your dear. Let’s just get that straight right now. Are you hungry? I haven’t had dinner yet, and Rio wouldn’t want me to let you starve.”

“By all means, I would enjoy sharing a meal with you. You shouldn’t be on your leg. I make a decent soup; why don’t you let me fix it?”

Rachael hesitated, unsure if she should let him have the run of Rio’s home. The elder seemed unshakable even in the face of her distrust.

He took the decision out of her hands by going through the pantry. She retrieved the knife from the chair cushions while his back was turned and replaced it in the sheath. As casually as possible she put the weapons out of sight.

“You don’t think much of me, do you?” he asked as he began chopping vegetables.

She picked up a second knife and helped. “Not much. I can’t see much wisdom in your sentence of banishment. It smacks of hypocrisy if you ask me, which technically you didn’t so I guess I shouldn’t offer my opinion on the subject.” She hacked a tomato into tiny little pieces. The sound of the blade hitting the chopping board beat out a fast tattoo of annoyance.

Delgrotto paused in the act of cutting up wild mushrooms. “You’ve used a knife before,” he observed.

“You’d be surprised what I can do with this baby. Working in a kitchen can be damned boring, and we women just think up things to hurl the cutlery at. In South America, we pride ourselves on target practice.” She gave him a chatty smirk. “Sometimes it was the chef if he was particularly obnoxious.”

“I see.” Delgrotto raised his eyebrow. “What might constitute being obnoxious, just so I don’t make the same mistake.”

“Oh, you may as well be as obnoxious as you like. You’re already in my book of evil and obnoxious people. I think I even underlined your name a couple of times.” She slashed an onion until it was nothing but sauce.

“I’m certainly not evil, my dear. I may have made one or two mistakes in my life, but I don’t think I’ve ever been evil.”

She shrugged. “I suppose passing that sort of judgment is all subjective. It depends on the point of view. You don’t think you’re evil, but someone else may very well think you’re the devil incarnate.”