Page 38 of On the Rocks

I rubbed my eyes, still tired, but when I turned to the nightstand to check the time on my phone, I saw that my alarm was about to go off anyway. I canceled the alarm and dragged myself to the bathroom, hoping a hot shower and lots of coffee would be enough to clear my head of sexy dream-Aiden thoughts before work.

“Dot,” I asked without looking up from the stainless steel workstation that had become like a second home to me. “Where are we with the green tea blend?”

“Javeed thought a blueberry twist was uninspired,” Dot said from her workstation. “So I left that with him.”

“I did not say it was uninspired,” Javeed called out. “I said I wanted to trial passionfruit with it first before we made the call.”

“Same difference.”

“Now do you understand why I always have my headphones on?” Chris said to me in passing.

I smirked. The team had grown on me in the weeks I’d worked with them. What made it even more fun was that I was starting to suspect Javeed and Dot might be harboring a thing for each other.

A hollow knock sounded.

“You called?” a voice said.

I whirled around on my stool. Aiden stood casually in the doorway, suit jacket abandoned, and my thoughts flashed back to my dream this morning. Ugh, no. No. No!Should I pinch myself? Make sure it wasn’t happening again? But then Chris passed by, stumbling and dropping half his ham and cheese sandwich. He swore, bending down to pick it up.Yeah, no. This is definitely reality, not a fantasy.“Technically, I texted,” I said, getting a hold of myself.

“Well, here I am.” He walked through the room, eyeing experiments and notes written on the whiteboard. “You said you had a sample you wanted me to try?”

I nodded. “Two samples. We tweaked the Raspberry Chai Royale and Spearmint Lime Fizz profiles just slightly.”

“Right, you did say those would be ready today.” He reached me, rolling up his sleeves, and I averted my gaze. I was not about to be bested by those damn forearms. “Were you filming?” he asked, gesturing to my camera set up.

Oh, come on!Was this really going to be a play-by-play of my dream? Because I was gonna be kind of annoyed if Aiden knocked all my filming equipment onto the floor. “Uh?—”

“It’s okay that you were,” he said, mistaking my hesitation. “It’s in our contract, after all.” He leaned against the table, his shirt bunching around his biceps. “How’s that going anyway? All the Masked Mixer stuff.”

“My views have definitely increased since I’ve started making my videos here. I think everyone really likes the aesthetic of the lab. Plus, I’ve got a lot more equipment and ingredients to play around with.”

“That’s great.”

My eyes ran over his face. Those blue eyes, creased at the corners as he smiled, that strong jaw, those lips. Why did he have to be so distractingly attractive when I needed to focus on the work? “So the samples,” I said, reaching for the two glasses I’d set aside for him. “Here you go.”

“Which one first?”

I handed him the spearmint lime. “I want to make sure the mint isn’t too overpowering.”

“Wait, let me grab my notebook!” Dot said, rushing over. She’d been keeping extensive notes every time Aiden tested an updated sample.

Aiden lifted the glass to his lips and took a sip, rolling the sample over his tongue, closing his eyes like he was assessing a fine whiskey.

“What do you think?” I asked, a flutter of nerves sweeping through me. Between me and the team, we’d developed dozens of samples in the last week. Aiden had been by to help us narrow down the favorites, so at this point, we were just tweaking the recipes to ensure we captured the flavor profile and the combinations felt balanced. I didn’t know what I was so worried about or why I suddenly felt like impressing Aiden was the most important thing in the world, but I studied every microexpression on his face—every twitch of a muscle, every flicker of his eyelids—trying to gauge his reaction. I pressed my hands together, holding them to my lips like some sort of silent prayer.

“I’m definitely getting the mint,” he said, eyes still closed. “But it’s much more subtle than before. The lime’s coming forward. Itdoesn’t feel overpowered.” His eyes popped open. “Refreshing. I think we have a winner.”

Dot clapped her hands together before scribbling a heart around the sample code in her notebook. Javeed silently fist pumped from his workstation while Chris put a checkmark next to the sample name on the whiteboard.

I picked up the second glass. “Okay, raspberry chai next.”

“Hey, do you want to film this one?” he asked.

“What?”

“You know, for content or whatever.” He gestured to the ring light propped at the back of my workstation. “To use on your channel. Once the line goes live, I don’t mind if you post some behind-the-scenes content on the development process.”

“Uh…”

---