Page 80 of Fire and Icing

“He’s also a man.”

I shake my head. “Let’s grab dinner and get to bed. I’m exhausted.”

Dinner is delicious and I’m ravenous. We eat with a few other contestants in the main dining area—a couple from Texas and another from Connecticut. After dinner, Dustin and I walk back to our room together.

“Do you want to get ready first?” he asks me.

“Sure.” I pull out a pajama set and my personal care kit from the top drawer and walk to the bathroom. Thoughts of our shared bed crowd my mind, but I’m so exhausted I could sleep standing up in the industrial refrigerator on set. I’m not going to accidentally cuddle anything or anyone tonight.

Dustin gets ready after me, coming out of the bathroom wearing a thin white T-shirt and plaid pajama bottoms. His feet are bare. My eyes don’t know where to land. I’m trying not to notice his arms in that T-shirt, so I look at his toes. But that feels weird, so I lift my eyes to his hands. Weirder. His thighs? Nope. Not that. Finally, my gaze darts up to his face where I catch his amused grin.

“Don’t say a thing right now,” I insist.

“About?”

“Anything.”

“I was just going to tell you about when I was a kid,” he says with a wink. “Before I grew into all of this.” He makes a show of flexing both arms low like a bodybuilder. Then he tips his chinup, flexes his left arm down and his right arm up while gazing off into the distance.

He turns toward me and cracks up.

“I’m just messing with you, Firecracker.”

I smile at the nickname. I don’t hate it, especially when he looks at me like that.

Dustin walks over to the chair in the sitting area next to his side of the bed. He plops down into the chair, extending his long legs out in front of himself. I envy the way he’s always so comfortable in his own skin.

He looks over at me, stretching his arms and propping them behind his head. I can barely look at him. Does he even know what he looks like? He jokes about it. But I’m starting to think he has no idea how naturally magnetic he is. It’s not just his buoyant personality and the way he rolls with any situation. It’s his eyes, his jawline, his body which is obviously the result of hours and hours of hard work. I bury my face in my pillow.

Dustin starts to speak, “I tried to bake a few times …” His voice drifts off. “Are you okay?”

“I’m okay,” I say into my pillow.

I can’t look at him right now. Every thought I just had will be painted on my face like neon graffiti on a cinder block wall.

“That’s what I thought,” he says. “Because when I’m okay, I burrow my head into my pillow.”

The smile on my face is instantaneous—it’s the one he never fails to draw out.

I lift my head. “Tired,” I say. “I’m just tired.”

“You worked hard today,” his face is soft and compassionate.

He needs to stop all of that, the whole thing … MisterI’m sexy and don’t even know it, andI’m a playful puppy dog, but I’m also the nicest guy you’d ever want to meet… andI can save you from a fire or protect you in a dark alley and then make you double over with laughter. A girl only has so much resolvebefore she’ll crack and break every rule and code she carefully laid in place.

And then what?

He’s staring at me, but with an ease that’s so him.

“You were saying?” I ask him.

“Hmmm … what was I saying?” He runs a hand through his hair and looks at the ceiling, eyes half-lidded with sleep. “Oh yeah. I was telling you about my intricate experience as a world-class baker.”

“As evidenced by your blindfolded frosting skills,” I say.

I roll over onto my side so I’m facing him, curling into the mattress and exhaling a long breath.

We made it through round one. Dustin might think I made it through without his help, but I saw plenty of people struggling to get their partners to cooperate or learn under pressure. He did amazingly well.

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