Page 8 of Puck & Make Up

I have great parents.

I don’t need Annie Donovan.

And I?—

Cookies!

And I need to focus on the fucking cookies and stop spending so much time in my head.

These cookies are my specialty.

I can’t make many things—or at least not all that many that are edible—but my chocolate chip cookies are the shit. Ooey, gooey and with just the perfect hint of salt so that the sweet doesn’t overwhelm.

My grandma taught me the recipe.

I just…perfected it.

So, the lean, grumpy goddess trying to take over the one thing I can control right now isn’t all that helpful.

We’re at Bailey and Axel’s ranch house on the edge of River’s Bend, the sprawling cattle farm settled against the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. It’s not far from my apartment closer to town (the one I only have for a couple more weeks), but it may as well be on another planet with its wide porch looking out onto acres and acres of grazing land. The rest of the guys—Axel, Joel, and Ryan—are currently hanging out around a small, landscaped patch, enjoying the warm evening air, playing games with Rosie, Bailey, and Veronica.

Along with Dessie.

Except, now she’s in the kitchen, taking over.

Training camp starts in a couple weeks and with us now on three different teams, I know we won’t have many opportunities to get together like this again any time soon.

I want to make it count.

Only now, I’m stuck in the kitchen with a woman who can’t stand me as she tells me I don’t know how to make chocolate chip cookies.

I smother a grin.

Okay, fine.

There’s never an instance where I don’t like being close to Dessie.

Yeah, she pushes my buttons.

Yeah, sometimes I want to throttle her.

But there hasn’t been a moment from the first time I’ve seen her that I haven’t wanted her.

“You may be in charge,” she says, “but you’re doing it wrong.”

Scowling, I lean close to her, inhaling the soft scent of orange, but shoving down the urge to move even nearer, to inhale again. Instead, I focus on what’s more important.Cookies.“I’m not doing it wrong,” I grumble, peering over her shoulder and glancing into the mixing bowl. There’s butter, sugar, flour, chocolate chips, all the normal things that go into making chocolate chip cookies.

Check. Check. Check.

“Okay, sugar lips,” I drawl, shifting to lean a hip against the counter. “Want to clue me into what exactly I’m doing wrong?”

She huffs out a beleaguered sigh, drops the wooden spoon into the bowl—because if Grandma taught me anything, it’s that mixing by hand is the best—and cuts her gaze to the side.

Which is when I see something I hate.

Something that means she’s right and I’m wrong.

Christ, I’m never going to hear the end of it.

---