Page 60 of Whisking It All

“What do you need?” he asked as he made his way over to the sink and began washing his hands.

“What are you doing?” she asked over her shoulder as she took her unwrapped tray of donuts over to the fry station.

“Put me to work.”

She shook her head. “I’ve got it.”

He sighed and grabbed a side towel to dry his hands. “Your entire staff is needed in front of house, and you have a prep list longer than you can possibly handle on your own. Put me to work.”

“You don’t know the recipes,” she protested as she checked the temperature on the fryer.

The oil had cooled—that was going to set her back. She glanced at her list and tried to mentally reorganize. She couldn’t take the cupcakes out for another five minutes, but she could start poaching the pears.

“Then tell me what to do,” he said. “I’ll be your sous.”

“My what?” she asked, not sure she’d heard him correctly. She grabbed a stock pot and set it on the stove, dumping in a bottle of port wine.

“Your line cook. Your prep. Whatever you want to call it. Tessa,” he barked her name, causing her to stop throwing vanilla bean pods and cinnamon sticks into the wine and look at him. “Let me help.”

Something unexpected twisted behind her ribcage, a flutter that threatened to turn her vision misty. Instead, she tilted her head towards the basket of pears on the counter. “Can you peel the pears?”

He nodded once and strode across the kitchen, retrieving a paring knife from the knife bar. “Yes, Chef.”

She moved back to the fryer, dropping in the balls of dough while Jamie made quick work of the pears. By the time the poaching liquid was ready, he dropped the fruit in without needing to be asked, crossing them off the list on the board and moving on to the mascarpone whipped cream while she filled and glazed the donuts.

They worked in silence, aside from the occasional call of “behind” or “corner,” and before she knew it, he was arranging the last strawberry (cut in a perfect rose as she’d requested) and placing the last few pieces of brunoise-cut mango on the sangria cupcakes. By the time she returned from refilling the case in the front of the shop and pushed back through the doors into the kitchen, he had taken to scrubbing down the counters.

Tessa stood for a moment and watched him work, the hypnotic bunching of his arm muscles as he cleaned the counters with precise, circular movements. Completely in control. He was always completely in control. And he’d wandered into her kitchen and somehow, without ever once taking over, still kept everything under control. He was sixteen years her senior with a culinary degree from one of the best schools in the country, an accomplished executive chef, and yet he’d whipped cream and dusted pastries with powdered sugar with no ego. Even more than the way the muscles of his back shifted beneath his shirt as he bent over at the workstation, the way he had made order from her chaos without pulling rank made her heart flutter. He glanced up at her, catching her watching him, and a smile tilted up the corner of his lips.

“What?” he asked, laughter in his voice.

“Nothing. You don’t have to do that,” she said, gesturing lamely to where he continued to wash the counters as her cheeks heated.

“I know.”

It was too much. She’d barely survived him spending the last who-knows-how-long chiffonading mint and chopping fruit and responding to her every request with a quiet “yes, Chef,” but having him clean her countertops was more than she could take.

She reached for the towel. “No, really.”

He pulled the towel away from her, challenge flashing in his eyes as he held it just out of her reach. “Really. I don’t mind.” His eyes flickered to her lips, just for a moment. “Chef.”

She was on fire. This man was standing in her own kitchen and burning her alive. Who the hell had given him permission to smolder at her?

“Thank you,” she said, her voice shaky. “Chef.”

Again, his eyes traced her mouth, and for a moment she thought he might kiss her. But that would be a terrible idea, the worst idea, because the last time she’d kissed him, she’d left humiliated and feeling so goddamn alone that it almost wasn’t worth kissing him in the first place. Almost.

He grunted and pushed past her, moving to clean off another counter on the opposite side of the workstation, placing a giant metal table between them. If that wasn’t an indication that she was reading far too much into his eye movements, then she didn’t know what was. She pulled her hair out of its tangled bun and began finger-combing out the knots just to have something to do with her hands that wasn’t embarrassing herself by throwing herself at a man who had just bailed her out and was definitely not flirting with her.

Jesus Christ, stop thinking with your pussy.

“Successful opening,” he said, glancing up from the already-clean spot he was wiping.

“Yeah.” She glanced over her shoulder at the doors to the bakery, where the crowd had finally started to die down, six hours after opening. “Apparently everyone in Aster Bay had a burning need for baked goods this morning.”

He laughed a sort of snort laugh that shouldn’t have been noteworthy but was somehow adorable. Where did he get off being adorable?

“What?”

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