Page 70 of The Serendipity

“I forget things all the time. I have to keep lists. Then, I share them with Bellamy so he can remind me in case the list isn’t enough.” He lifts a shoulder in a half shrug. “My ‘big, Ivy League-educated brain’ isn’t much help.”

“So, you’renota suit-wearing robot. Good to know.” His face pinches a little at my words, and I wonder if I hit a nerve somehow. I don’t have time to delve into it. “Well, it’s been fun catching up, but I’ve got to make more icing.”

“Do you need help?”

The only person I’ve ever legitimately let help me prepare an order—and only in desperation—was Sophie. She turned out to be less useful in baking than I am in gardening. I had to remake an entire batch of cookies after she somehow mistakenly used salt instead of sugar.

“But how?” I remember shouting at her. We were lucky a cookie broke and Sophie took a bite. They didn’t look like they were made with salt instead of sugar. I can’t imagine what would have happened if I had iced and then delivered them. “How?!”

“I don’t know!” Sophie shouted back. “I do flowers, not flour!”

That still didn’t explain it. I mean, sure—table salt and sugar are both small white crystals. But I had them in labeled glass containers with lids. It feels like an impossible mistake to make.

So, I’m not exactly eager to let anyone else help. Besides, baking cookies is something most people—besides Sophie, obviously—can do, as long as they follow a recipe. The problem is that I’m at the decorating stage. Learning how to pipe, flood, and then decorate with royal icing isn’t something a person can just learn and do.

Judith’s words from our session earlier in the week return:Could you be partners?

“You can help keep me awake.” Yawning again drives the point home.

“Okay,” Archer says. “How?”

I point to a stool Sophie often inhabits if she’s down here when I’m working. “Sit,” I order. “Talk to me.”

I like bossing him around. It’s the best kind of turning of the tables, even if I’m sure it doesn’t elicit the same kind of reaction in him as it does in me.

But he does obey, fussing with the stool a little—probably trying to get it up to what I suspect are impossibly high stool standards—before he sits.

“Here—wear this.” I snag the same pink frilly apron off the counter. Tonight, I was too stressed to even put one on. It’s too late for me now.

“Is this really necessary?” Archer asks.

I smile. “No. But do it anyway.”

“Do I get to call you boss now?”

“Do you want to call me boss?” I ask. This is the weirdest flirting I’ve ever done, but it also has more impact on me than anything I can remember.

Archer’s blue-gray eyes stay fixed on mine, only disappearing as he drops the apron over his head. “I think I prefer calling you Willa the Person.”

So do I.

“What else can I do?” He’s already managed to tie the apron strings in back, probably faster than I would have. It’s hard to remember how to tie a bow when you’re standing close to a man who fills out a suit like Archer does.

He looks surprisingly eager for instructions, given that it’s after one in the morning and we’re in a commercial kitchen. I decide to push him a little, emboldened by middle-of-the-night magic.

“Put your right arm in,” I tell him.

He looks down at the apron. “Put my right arm in what?”

“In,” I snap, holding my arm straight out in front of me to demonstrate.

Archer mirrors my movement, slowly holding out his arm as he raises a brow. “Okay, and?”

I am barely keeping in what I know will be an avalanche of laughter once it releases. “Put your right arm out.”

Before he can ask what out means, I throw my arm straight behind me.

After a moment of hesitation, Archer does the same.

---