Page 44 of My Irresistible Enemy

It wasn’t like I was a champion baker or anything, but I’d actually practiced before coming down to Summersea. Aiden didn’t appear to know the difference between a knife and a fork, let alone different sizes of spoons.

“It’s the biggest one,” I told him. “That’s why it’s always written with a capital T.”

“Mmm, I do like ‘em big,” Aiden said, frowning down at the paper where he’d written his recipe. “But are you sure that’s how it’s written?”

“Well, when it’s abbreviated. Are you sure you wrote it right?” I set the dough for my crust down, praying it wouldn’t soften too much in the interim. “Here, let me see.”

I walked around to his workbench and stared in incomprehension at the sheet containing his recipe. It looked like a chicken trying to recreate hieroglyphics. Like a drunk five-year-old playing tic-tac-toe. I stared at Aiden in horror.

“You can read this?”

He flushed. “Just help me,please? Without lecturing?”

His eyes flicked over my shoulder, and I realized there must be a camera on us. I sighed.

“Lecturing’s half the fun. What do I get out of it if I can’t do that?”

“My undying gratitude?” Aiden brushed the inside of my wrist with his fingertips, and my cock twitched, which was completely unfair. “Unless that’s not enough, in which case, I’m sure we can think of something else.”

He grinned at whoever was filming over my shoulder and it was myturn to flush. If this exchange ended up in the final cut, hopefully viewers would just think the heat of the oven was getting to me.

It would have helped if I could have kept my brain on the task at hand, and not continued flashing back to three days ago, when I’d had Aiden naked and panting in front of me. When he’d sunk to his knees and begged to—

Fuck. No, I was not going to think about that. It was one thing to convince the viewers that we were warming to each other. It was totally different to let my own brain run away with me. Aiden still annoyed the shit out of me, even if he was cute—or, fine, breathtaking—when he was naked. I needed to remember that.

“Okay.” I scanned his recipe again, and then the ingredients laid out on the counter. “Let’s see if we can get this sorted out. If I help you get your dough started, do you think you can do the apple filling on your own?”

Aiden wiggled his eyebrows. “Are you sureyoudon’t want to do the filling? I’m positive you’d be great at it.”

“Is everything that comes out of your mouth an innuendo?” I asked, measuring out the flour he would need.

“Mostly, yeah. To be honest, I’m better at taking thingsintomy mouth. Though I guess you wouldn’t know that.”

He said that quietly enough that I didn’t think the camera could have caught it, but sweat still broke out across my body. He had no idea what he did to me. And I needed to keep it that way.

I made Aiden repeat the instructions back to me for finishing his dough, then returned to my workstation. It would be just my luck if I helped his bake go successfully, only to fuck up my own. I couldn’t focus on his pie anymore. Or on anything else of his, either.

Easier said than done, when his ass was right in front of me, looking so completely perfect any time I flicked my eyes up. Why couldn’t I keep it together around him? I’d been practically celibate for the last year, but I couldn’t spend more than five minutes alone with him before my body betrayed me.

Eventually, though, I lost myself in the flurry of activity in the tent, zoning out so much that it took Vivian saying my name three times before I noticed that she and Tanner were right in front of my workstation, Em standing a few feet away with a camera.

“So, Nolan, you look busy over here. What have you got for us today?” Vivian asked.

I looked up, smiled, and froze.

It was ridiculous. I knew the answer to her question. It wasn’t like she was trying to trip me up or anything. But as soon as I opened my mouth to speak, all the words in my brain evaporated.

“I—um—pie?” I said. I could feel my cheeks turning bright red.

Tanner laughed. “We kinda figured that part out, since we set the challenge. Are there any other details you’d like to share?”

Just tell them, I yelled at myself internally. But I couldn’t seem to make my brain work. How was I supposed to make myself likable when I couldn’t even remember how to talk?

Vivian took pity on me and gestured to a bottle on the counter. “So, I’m seeing apple cider vinegar here. Not a typical pie ingredient, I think most folks would agree. Will you be using that today?”

“Um, yeah, actually. It’s—I’m—that is—I’m making a vinegar pie.”

All I had to do was describe my pie, not reciteThe Iliad. Why was this so hard?

---