Page 70 of Never Let You Go

Air whooshes out of my lungs. “Um… well, I’m not sure it was such a good idea. Seeing how you now barely get any sleep.”

“It was a fucking awesome idea.”

“Emma said—”

“Emma doesn’t know shit about me. Except my numbers. And last time I checked, I’m not a profit and loss statement. ’Cept maybe for Emma,” he says.

“Right,” I say on an exhale.

He takes a long sip of his coffee, his eyes on me. “Thanks for the coffee.”

“Anytime.”

“Careful. Might take you up on that.”

“Huh?”

“Making me coffee anytime. I kinda like it.” A smile dances in his eyes.

Oh my. “Might be the price I need to pay for talking you into a show you now think you need to prepare for when, really, you could walk in there tomorrow and win.”

His smile now spreads to his whole face. “But where would the fun be in that, when I could have you in the middle of the night right here with me,” he says.

His heated words hit my nether regions in very pleasant ways.

“Making me coffee,” he adds.

He’s not fooling me.

He looks at me pointedly. I do clearly remember what he told me the morning after The Big Shameful Evening When Alex Got Drunk, that nothing I’d said to him he didn’t like.

That he just needed me to say these words sober.

Right.

There’s a reason they call it liquid courage. He knows and I know I meant every word. At the time. Drunk. Now, sober me is struggling to get out of her shell and express the same things to him.

“Gotta take risks,” he says.

What?

“Gotta take risks in life or it gets boring.” He tips his coffee mug to me. “I got you to thank for that. I’m having fun, taking a calculated risk, at the same time finding the passion again. So thank you.”

“Okay,” I whisper.

“Come here,” he says, sending a flash of fire down my middle.

I round the prep table. When I’m close to him, he grabs the folded apron and slides it above my head, the warmth of his body sending chills down my spine as his arms graze mine. His scent pervades me—I’d recognize it anywhere. He crosses the belt behind my back, the heat of his fingers singeing through to my belly. My knees get wobbly, as they tend to when I’m close to him.

While he knots the strands of the belt in front of me, he talks, his voice caressing my insides. “Recent techniques make it so that bakers don’t have to get up at two in the morning to ensure people have their bread ready by six or seven. Now, we have mechanical kneading and slow, overnight proofing. Although this allows bakers to have a good work-life balance, it’s keeping us from having intimacy with the dough, from the real, ancestral experience of making a product come to life with our own hands from beginning to end. That’s why it’s a good idea to come back to these fundamentals, time and time again.” He tightens my belt and lets both his hands rest on my hips while his eyes dive deep into mine. “You can do your video stuff in a little bit. Right now, since you’re here, you’ll be kneading bread by hand. It can get physical.”

Oh boy. “You got up in the middle of the night to practice—”

“I got up in the middle of the night to reconnect with the essence of baking. Teaching it is even more effective. Consider yourself my muse.” His hands, still on my body, give my hips a squeeze before leaving.

He steps a safe distance away and quizzes me on the theory. I fire back the answers, my memory not failing me yet. “Not bad,” he says. “What is the water proportion for a classic baguette.”

“Sixty-five percent?”

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