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“What did you mean by someone has been spoiling you for several days?” he asked after he’d sat down in the chair which she’d left free for him to occupy at the little table they were now sharing.

She cleared her throat as her eyes rose to meet his.  “Someone has been leaving me little presents outside my apartment door,” she admitted confidentially in a hoarse whisper as she leaned towards him.

His eyebrows were assaulting the ceiling again.  “Really?”  He squinted at her.  “Who?”

She shrugged.  “I haven’t the foggiest notion.”

“Not a single guess?” he questioned her as his eyes studied hers carefully.

She shook her head.  “There’s no one.”

“No one at all?” he asked in surprise.

Her head slid right then left again.  “Nope.  I’m just not that important to anyone here,” she murmured blithely as she took a bite of her cinnamon roll.

So she missed the dismay that filled his gaze.  “Surely, that’s not true,” he retorted.

Shocked, she lifted her eyes to his.  “No, I can assure you, it is quite true.  Were I to head home tomorrow, no one would miss me.”

He frowned.  “But…how can that be?”

She furrowed her brow.  “What do you mean?”

“I mean that you seem quite delightful.  So why wouldn’t someone shower you with presents?  And how is it that none of your friends cares whether you leave or you stay?”

She heaved a deep sigh before locking eyes with her cinnamon roll.  Right before she took a ginormous bite out of it.  Just so she could avoid indulging in any more of this depressing conversation.

He studied her bent head.  Did she have any idea how adorable she was?

After a full minute of chewing – during which they both remained silent – she ventured a peek up at him.  His brilliant chocolate orbs delved the depths of her blue-green beauties.  Still, he didn’t speak.

Her quiet voice sounded suddenly.  “Why would you think I’m delightful?  You don’t even know me.”  Not even vaguely.

She dropped her gaze.  His stare was too intense.

“I heard the wistfulness in your voice on Christmas,” he murmured.

Her eyes lifted to contact his.  She frowned.  “What?”

“You were missing home, weren’t you?  Christmas with your family, perhaps?”

She just stared at him.  “How could you possibly know that?”

“Because I was missing my own family.  And my eomma’s rice.  Such an ordinary dish.  You wouldn’t think that there could be anything special about the way she makes rice,” his soothing, mellow voice was wrapping around her in waves of comfort. 

His lips twitched upwards in a faint smile as he continued, “But there is.  Nobody’s rice tastes like my eomma’s.  And this year I wasn’t able to get home to see her.  Or to eat her rice.”  Those same lips dipped downward in disappointment momentarily.

She sighed.  “It’s the Christmas cookies I miss the most.  My cousin makes the best butter cookies.  The kind with half a pound of butter in them.  And a dusting of powdered sugar.  They’re different from the usual moist sugar cookies most people make.  Those have a bunch of sugar in them.  It masks the butter.  But you can taste the butter in her cookies.  And when she forgets to take them out of the oven on time, and they get browned, they’re particularly delicious,” she flashed a sudden, brilliant grin at him as she reminisced.

And he felt breathless for a moment in the glory of that smile.