Page 28 of Bake You Mine
She snorted as she reached for the glass, bringing it under her nose to inhale the scent. “I’m a VIP? Since when?”
“Since always?” He tried for his best smile.
She sipped the wine. “Aw, your talent is wasted in a kitchen.You could make bank selling used cars. Or motorcycles.” She motioned for him to pour her a full glass.
“Hey, the offer for a ride still stands, you know.”
She held his gaze, her cheeks speckling pink. He turned the conversation toward the food and wine, telling her about the salad. Then he had to get back to the kitchen, mostly because they were slammed by a large group that had just arrived.
Besides, in the kitchen, he could spy on her more easily. She’d stopped sketching, her attention entirely on the salad. Sasha had swung by to keep her company while she ate, her long hair falling over Aubrey’s sketchbook as she thumbed through the pages.
Sasha had less than a year to go before receiving her nursing degree. If she ever decided to drop out, she’d be a good pastry chef, especially with someone like Aubrey as her mentor. Their mother would freak out if Sasha dropped out of nursing school. His mom hadn’t talked to him for months after he’d packed up one night and left for New York to start living the life of his dreams. Part of her motivation for “finding a nice woman to settle down with” was to keep him tied to Port Fortune forever.
He knew she’d hold a similar grudge if he left again, or messed with Sasha’s carefully laid plans.
“Do you work here, or are you going to spy on Aubrey all night?”
Liam brought his gaze to Damon, who was plating their house burger. Liam prided himself on sourcing every part of the burger locally. It’d recently finaled in the Best Burger in Virginia competition. It was damn good, so why did he worry she wouldn’t like it?
If she hated it, he’d stop eyeing her up as if she was on the menu and put her back in the right place in his mind: the annoyance wedged between him and his dreams.
When he reached the table, Sasha had returned to thehostess station to manage the chaos at the front. Aubrey had cleaned her plate and returned to sketching.
“It met your approval?”
She was busy drawing something that looked like a sculpture made from cake. Or he assumed it was cake, anyway. She grunted. “It’s good. What’s next?”
“Only good? Come on. You can compliment me, Aubs.” Christ, why did he care? He set the burger and a new glass of wine—a Malbec—on the table, then put a hand on the back of her chair. “It really won’t kill you.”
She huffed out a bull-like breath. “It kills you that I’m not lining up to suck your dick like everyone else, huh?” Her eyes went as wide as houses, and she stuttered a bit. “I mean that metaphorically, of course.”
Now,thatwas an image. When paired with the filthy dream he’d had about her, that had him backing away from her, maybe because he was a little scared of her or, more importantly, afraid of what the two of them could get up to.
Fuuuck.
He cleared his throat. “I’ll remember that when tasting your food, too.”
“Oh, fine, you win.” She reached for the burger. While she pressed it smaller to fit into her delicate little mouth (doublefuck), Liam worried one hand over the other. Then she let out a little groan (holy fuck).
She set the burger down and wiped her mouth (quadruple fuck). “Okay, I’ll give you that, Linley. That burger is to die for.”
He held a hand to his chest and exhaled. “I’m glad it meets your standards.”
She picked up the burger again. “I hope you’re not going to be peddling out some inferior dessert to cap the evening.”
“Inferior? We don’t create them in-house, but the people who make them for us are the best.”
She shrugged. “I’ll be the judge of that.”
Aware that everyone nearby was watching them, he returned to the kitchen.
The goal was to leave the customers too full for dessert. He had to offer something or miss out on a profit center. He’d had his mother and Sasha help him pick a few desserts from Ruga’s Bakery in Woodbridge. And he may not care for sweets, but Elevation’s desserts were good enough that people often asked for the recipe.
But those people weren’t pastry chefs.
Luckily, the kitchen got slammed, so he didn’t have time to spy on Aubrey.
The next time he looked up, the dining room had thinned out a bit, which wasn’t good. That likely meant they hadn’t turned tables over fast enough to refill them. Liam tried not to think about that as he watched Aubrey, who was one of the two tables left sitting in that section.
