Page 64 of The Pairing

He answers, and gestures to me and says in English, “This is Theo, we were coming to see the shop, but—are you okay? What happened?”

She looks down at the grisly stain on her chest and sighs.

“Raspberry.”

Apolline—whose accent suggests she’s spent a few years in England—has had a clusterfuck of a day. Her entire staff is out with food poisoning from a party the night before, so she’s been running the register and the kitchen by herself since early morning. She barely got half of the day’s bread baked before opening, and she’s sold out of almost everything. She also knocked a five-liter tub of raspberry filling off the top shelf of the walk-in and caught it with her face.

“We open for the afternoon in thirty minutes, and we need the business.” She glances at her watch. “Je ne sais pas quoi faire.”

Kit looks at me. I nod.

“Let us help you,” Kit says to Apolline.

Inside, I clean up the debris of the morning shift while Kit and Apolline strategize in rapid French. When they’re done repeating the wordsfeuilletéandpâte à chouxover and over, Kit sends her home to change clothes, and I meet him in the kitchen.

“Okay.” Kit pushes aside a pile of mixing bowls that appear to have been dumped in a panic. “We’re going to be making eight things at once. Apolline’s on the register, so I need you.”

His eyes shine with the eager determination of Kit on a mission. I forgot how thrilling it is to be on the receiving end of that look. I grin at him, and he grins back, wolfish and ready.

“What’s first?”

He hauls over a tub of dough, its domed surface jiggling.

“I’ve got to roll this out,” he says, turning the dough out onto the workstation, “and cut and assemble—croissants, pains au chocolat, pains aux raisins, all those boys. While those are rising, I’ll make the pâte à choux. Can you handle glazes?”

I shrug. “I can handle most liquids if you give me a recipe.”

“Perfect. I’ll pipe chouquettes and éclairs, and you make the glazes. We’ll do breads in between, and fillings are already prepped.” He’s working the dough now, pressing it out into a large rectangle. “There should be some sheets of butter in the walk-in, can you—?”

I’m already pulling the door open before he can finish. “What shelf?”

“Left side, second from top.”

“Heard.” I bring the butter over, and he unwraps a big, flat piece from its parchment paper. He folds the dough around it, picks up a rolling pin and whacks it so hard that dishes across the room rattle.

“Sorry!” he says to my surprised yelp, pounding away with his rolling pin with a fervor that I find upsettingly hot. “Makes it easier to roll! There’s a recipe binder in the cabinet over that prepstation, can you go to the éclair section and make the chocolate and white chocolate glazes? Pistachios are already prepped in—”

“Dry storage, I see them,” I say, thankful for the distraction. “On it.”

I take the binder down and fly through the instructions, bubbling with adrenaline. Once I’ve translated the phrases I don’t know, I lay out the ingredients the way I do when I make drinks, so I can see everything at once.

“Nice mise en place,” Kit says, glancing over. He tips his head back to shake hair from his eyes.

“Thanks, you good?”

“Yeah, I just—I don’t have anything to tie my hair back.”

I unwind a rubber band from some sleeves for to-go cups and bring it to him. He looks down at his butter-slicked hands and back to me.

“Could you?”

Could I—could I slide my hands into Kit’s thick, soft hair while he’s busy maneuvering dough with the calm agility of a professional?

“Sure,” I say evenly.

I sweep my fingers up from his temples and gather the front pieces of his hair into an untidy knot, tying it off. I could swear he shivers at the touch, almost leans into it. When I give the knot a tug to make sure it’s secure, his hands falter on the rolling pin.Oh.

“You still like that, huh?” I comment, my tone light, uninvested.

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