The Substitute Bride's Bargain
The kitchen by candlelight was a different room.
She had not found the candles — he had, from a drawer she had not opened in forty-seven days, a drawer below the island that turned out to contain the specific provisions of someone who had thought about what a penthouse needed in emergencies and had assembled them without drama: candles, a lighter, a small flashlight with batteries that still worked. He had put three candles on the island and two on the counter near the range and had lit them with the lighter and the kitchen had become, in the specific way of kitchens by candlelight, something both more intimate and more functional than it usually was — the flame making the immediate space cl