Page 74 of Spark
He smiled, starting to walk down the aisle as if he hadn’t just stolen her entire heart.“Good.Now, aboutSense and Sensibility…”
They finished the rest of their grocery shopping in between his best efforts and her laughter, carrying the bags to his Mustang, then heading to her apartment.Tyler ordered a pizza—with extra pepperoni, because it was Esme’s favorite—while Chloe put the eggs in the fridge and lined up the butter and dry ingredients on her kitchen counter.Ten minutes later, Lou had pressed the buzzer to the security door in the lobby, and two minutes after that, a cheery knock sounded off on her door.
“Hey, Lou!”Chloe said, giving herself up to one of his bear hugs.
“Hi, kiddo,” he said, making her laugh.
“You’re going to call me that until I’m a hundred, aren’t you?”
“Don’t be silly.”He pulled a mock frown, looking at Esme as if to say,get a load of this lady.“I’m going to call you that until you’re at least a hundred and five.”
Chloe shook her head but didn’t argue.“Of course you are.”Turning toward Esme, she waved in greeting.“Are you ready to make some cookies?We can probably squeeze in an episode of Bake Off, too.Last week was Cake Week.”
Esme nodded, her dark hair falling over her eyes and making them impossible to read.“Yeah, sure.I guess.”
“Okay.Pizza’s on its way, too.”
Lou smiled, looking from Esme to Chloe.“Well, I’ll get out of your hair.You three have fun, and don’t forget to save a few cookies for me.”
Chloe promised Lou she’d bring Esme home by ten and bearing cookies, giving him one more hug before he said his goodbyes and headed out.
“Hey, Esme,” Tyler said from the kitchen.“Cool shirt.”
Her eyes widened slightly before narrowing.“Youlike Jimmy’s Pants?”
He leaned back against the counter, lifting one shoulder in a shrug.“Chloe played a couple of their songs for me the other day.Little World is pretty good.”
“Velvet Dreams is better,” she said, then added, “but I like Little World, too.”
“Why don’t you pull up a playlist?”Chloe asked, heading to the sink to wash her hands and feeling her shoulders loosen to match her mood.“We can listen while we get the cookie dough prepped.”
After a beat of surprise, Esme said, “Okay.”She scrolled through her phone for a minute and tapped the button for a playlist, adjusting the volume to keep the music low, then setting her phone on the breakfast bar.“So, um, I guess I should have told you guys this earlier, but I’ve never made cookies before.”
“Me either,” Tyler said, making Chloe want to kiss him directly on the mouth.“Total cookie rookie.”
Esme’s laugh was soft, but there.“Really?”
“Yep.I’ve done swift water rescues in forty-degree weather and hung fifteen stories above the city in a harness to save a stranded window washer, but never baked a cookie in my life.”
“Whoa,” Esme said, edging closer to the counter, where Chloe had just taken down two big bowls and plugged in her trusty stand mixer.“I thought you only did fire stuff.”
He shook his head, letting Esme wash her hands before following suit.“That’s a lot of what we do, and it’s what I did first, before I moved to Rescue Squad with Ryan.But now, I get to do all kinds of things.Rope rescue, HazMat calls.Sometimes we even get to back up Remington SWAT if something major happens.”
“Wow.That’s badass.”Esme bit her lip, her stare darting to Chloe’s.“Sorry.”
“That’s okay.It is pretty badass,” she agreed.“But maybe let’s not get in the habit of swearing too much so I can stay on Tom’s good side.”
Esme nodded.Chloe showed her and Tyler the basic steps of making cookie dough—how to cream the butter and sugar together until it was pale and fluffy, scraping down the sides of the mixer bowl with a rubber spatula to make sure it came together evenly, and how to scoop flour into the measuring cups and level it off with a knife rather than dunking the cup right in the container.True to her word, she guided them through the majority of the work, even when Tyler added the flour to the mixer too fast and ended up with a mushroom cloud all over his shirt.Being in the kitchen with both of them made Chloe feel happy and light, and by the time they’d gotten the cookies into the oven and plowed through an entire pizza, she didn’t even care that the place looked like a warzone.
“You two baked, so I’ll clean,” she said, lifting her chin at the living room.“Pro tip: the chair is the best seat in the house.”
“Dibs,” Esme said, making a beeline for the thing, but she stopped short one step away.“Oh, you have a cat.”
Gary usually made himself so scarce around people who weren’t Chloe that she was shocked he’d made himself known, even if it was to send a warning meow out from his lair.
“That is not a cat,” Tyler said with one blond brow raised.“It’s a cranky old man who wants you to get off his lawn, trapped inside a cat’s body.”
Chloe wanted to argue, but it was a fair point.“Yeah, be careful, Esme.Gary’s not very friendly.”
