He watched her stir the spaghetti, a fetching frown of concentration on her face, her elbow up and the T-shirt shimmying with the movement. She pulled a strand from the water. "You know this?" and tossed it up against the wall, where it stuck. "That's the test, you know. It's al dente when it sticks to the wall." She turned the flame up under the bacon fat.

He watched her take the large pot of boiling water and pasta and pour some of the water into a huge glass bowl, then dump the remainder of the pot into the colander in the sink. He watched her lift the bowl filled with heated water and pour it off over the spaghetti in the colander. And then-so quickly he couldn't believe it wasn't burning her hands-she poured the drained spaghetti back into the heated bowl.

All of it was fluid, with no wasted motion. But fast. She crunched the bacon over the spaghetti. He sat entranced, and as she turned back to the stove, she stopped for just a second, grabbing the bacon pan, to smile at him. "Twenty more seconds," she said. "You're going to love it."

Next he watched her crack two raw eggs over the spaghetti in the large bowl, then pour all the hot bacon grease over it. Now finally using pot holders, she picked up the bowl and brought it over to the table where Hunt had his front row seat. She held a wooden fork in one hand, a wooden spoon in the other, and she began to toss the eggs and bacon and fat into the pasta until it was well mixed. Grabbing up the wedge of Parmesan, she grated furiously, again with that frown of deep concentration, until the cheese covered the spaghetti like a fresh dusting of snow.

He watched her now turn the pepper mill a dozen times over the dish. She brushed a rogue hair away from her forehead. She had the wooden fork and spoon in her hands again now and tossed the pasta one last time before lifting a perfect serving and placing it in the center of Hunt's plain white bowl. Then she did the same with her own and sat down across from him. "More Parmesan and pepper is okay. You can't have too much," she said. "How is it?"

Hunt was nearly swooning from the smells coming off the dish as well as from the simple and stunning beauty of the ballet he'd just witnessed. Twirling a few strands onto his fork with the spoon up under it to catch the strays, he brought the bite to his mouth. "It's the best thing I've ever eaten," he said.

They were in the middle of eating. "Okay, now what about you?" Parisi asked.

"Not much," Hunt said. "What don't you know?"

"Well, I know you weren't a cop before you became a private eye, and that's pretty unusual. You worked with kids, right?"

"Correct. CPS. But actually I was a cop first."

"How can that be, if Amy doesn't know about it?"

"I know. It can be our secret. I guess I don't talk about it too much. It wasn't in the city."

"You're going to make me guess, aren't you?"

He laughed, feeling good. "No. Here's the exciting story. I was CID during the first Gulf War. But when they sent me back stateside, I had another year or so on my hitch, and I got involved dealing with abusive home situations with service families. By the time I got out and came up here to the city, I'd had enough of the army and the police, both. But the kid thing…I don't know. That seemed to matter." He smiled at her. "And we've only got time for a few more questions."

"All right. Where did you grow up?"

"I'm a Peninsula guy. San Mateo."

"Really? I had you as a city boy all the way. I mean, how you know your way around. I've been here six years now, and take me outside of downtown or west of Van Ness, and I'm lost. I just figured somebody who knew the place like you do must have been born here."

"Nope. Moved here at twenty-five."

"Same as me."

"Except with me," Hunt said, "it wasn't six years ago. It was fifteen."

She furrowed her brow. "That math doesn't work."

Bowing, acknowledging the compliment. "You're too kind, but, yes, it does."

"All right, I'll believe you. But one more question?"

"One."

"How'd you get to be buddies with a homicide cop?"

"Actually," Hunt said, "it was pretty cool the way we reconnected. Dev and I used to be best friends. We played high school baseball. Then college, you know, and the army for me. Anyway, I hadn't seen him in something like ten years, then…" He gave her a truncated version of his reunion with Juhle-the Holly Park projects, Keeshiana tied up to her kitchen chair.

When he finished, Parisi was sitting forward, turned to him, one foot on the floor and the other tucked under her. "But that's an incredible story, Wyatt," she said. "Is that the kind of thing you did all the time?"

"No. Sometimes. Not all the time. Thank God. Anyway, after that," Hunt said, "Dev and I just kind of picked up where we'd left off in high school, except, of course, for the small details like him being married and the three kids."

"And what about you?"

"What about me?"

"Have you ever been married?"

"No."

"Kids?"

"Never married, no kids." He didn't want to lie to Andrea and this, technically, was the truth. Never married, no kids. Engaged, yeah, and only six weeks from a wedding. Sophie had been twenty-six years old, two months pregnant, in otherwise perfect health, when the aneurysm had struck her down.

He must have struck the right carefree tone. Andrea kept on. "Do you wish you had? I mean, all your years of working with children…"

He lifted his shoulders, came out with the response he'd perfected long ago: "I guess I've seen too much of the way a lot of families turn out."

"But not all."

"No, not all. That's true."

Parisi's expression had turned inward.

"What?" Hunt asked.

"I was just thinking about all I've been doing for all this time, with Spencer and…other guys before him and the relentless pursuit of this career and…" She let out a long breath. "Suddenly it all seems a little empty."

"All that food you put inside you, you can't be empty now."

He sensed that she understood what he was trying to do, which was to let her give all of her demons a little rest for a while. Her last twenty-four hours had been painful, humiliating, trying enough. She shouldn't beat herself up anymore. Not today.

She met his gaze, then stood up and walked over to stand in front of him. She put her hands behind his head and pulled it against her belly, holding him there. After a minute, she released him, and he stood up, cupped her face in his hands and brought his lips down to hers.

She pulled away enough to say, "I've got to take these clothes off to give them back to you, anyway."

Hunt would have stayed in her bed all afternoon, maybe all week, but she told him that she really needed to go and put in a few hours of work. But she would like to see him again that night. "Someplace nice for dinner, your choice, my treat?"

"What could beat what we just had?"

"Nothing," she said. "Although some people eat more than once a day, you know."

"I'll consider it," Hunt said. "But at the risk of bringing up a touchy subject, what about the Donolan gig?"

She shook her head. "The courtroom's dark today. I'll find out where that stands tomorrow, and probably go on until the damn trial is over."

"Okay, then." Hunt was holding the clothes of his that she'd worn. He stood at the open and rarely used front door. "If you're still up for it when you're through with your work. But if you would rather just go back to sleep, I get it."

"You're such a good guy," she said. "I mean it." Again, he read gratitude in her eyes. "How about we leave it open," she asked, "and I'll call you one way or the other. Say, by seven?"