Page 47 of The Princess Trap
“There’s a ton of stuff in here. Do you bake?”
“Ah, no. I can cook, but I don’t really bake. Agathe tries, but she’s kind of terrible at it.”
“Hm.” She had returned to her bowl, but now she was spooning its mixture out into trays full of little paper cases. “You know, you never got around to explaining how the two of you… grew apart?”
“We were separated,” he said. Then he realised that his voice had been too sharp, too hard. “I mean… I just mean, she wouldn’t have left me.”
“No,” Cherry said mildly. “I’m sure she wouldn’t. Separated by whom?”
He sighed, wandering over to stand beside her. She scooped out the mixture with sure, practiced movements, not spilling a drop as she transferred it to the cake cases. Clearly, she did this a lot. “My brother,” he finally said. “My brother cut off all contact with my maternal family, after my parents died.”
It wasn’t something he liked to tell people. It revealed a little too much about the direction his life had taken, once he’d become his brother’s property. Orresponsibility, as Harald would say. But Cherry made no expression, didn’t say a word, didn’t even look up. She just nodded and kept spooning out the cake batter.
“So… so when I was older I asked Hans to find her. Of course, she was where she’s always been. This town.” He wet his lips. His throat felt dry, all of a sudden. “The main house was my father’s. A country getaway sort of thing. It’s where he and my mother met.”
“I see. And this house?”
“Oh, I built this myself. I didn’t want to live in there.”
“Why is that?”
“I don’t like—” he broke off, suddenly realising that he’d said way too much. But the movement of her hands and the softness of her voice were almost hypnotic, and she still wasn’t looking at him, and the words were suddenly desperate to escape. “I don’t like big houses. Feels like a palace.”
Finally, her dark gaze turned on him, and she might as well have pinned him to the wall. “Did you grow up in a palace?”
He swallowed. “Yes.”
She nodded thoughtfully. Then she said, her tone suddenly bright, “Do you want to help me decorate these cakes when they cool down?”
He hesitated. Not because the answer was no, but because he was suddenly afraid. Afraid of the words she pulled from him without even trying, afraid of the way she looked at him as if she read the meaning behind his every breath. The last thing he needed was someoneunderstandinghim.
Anyone who understood him would leave.
But she raised her brows and said, “I told Demi we’d decided to spend time together. So now we have to do it, or she’ll beverydisappointed.”
“Fair enough,” he said, and in spite of his worries, he felt himself smile. “Tell me what to do.”
After a couple of hours in the kitchen with Cherry, Ruben could see why she loved to bake.
It was almost therapeutic, following her murmured instructions, stirring ingredients and setting timers. After he proved less than effective at the cosmetic side of things—his icing arrangements looked more like accidents—Cherry put him to work on a sponge.
Her directions were clear and she smiled when he mucked things up. She made him wash his hands before and after cracking eggs, and swatted his arse with a wooden spoon when he didn’t get out of her way fast enough. And she laughed when he streaked icing sugar down her nose—though, to his disappointment, she didn’t retaliate and start a food fight. He’d been hoping to rub icing into her cleavage in the name of war.
Somehow, she coached him through the recipe for chocolate puddings while she sat at the breakfast bar and messed about with marbled icing. He had no idea what that meant, but it looked damned good.
“You should be a teacher, Cherry.”
“Oh, no,” she scoffed. “Bugger that. I don’t do well with kids, hence why I stay in the tower as much as possible.”
Ruben laughed. “Okay. Fair enough. A lecturer, then.”
She arched a brow. “Really, Ruben? Doesn’t that require three or four or however many degrees?”
“You could do that.”
“In a thousand years, maybe. I’m hardly the brains of the administrative outfit.”
He sighed, the exhalation punctuated by the trill of the timer. His puddings were ready.
