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It’s fucking delicious. As good as her baking.
“Stop staring at me,” she says. “And before you ask, I didn’t get anything. I got the drawer open, the one that’s always locked, but it was empty.”
She frowns as she says this.
“It isn’t normally empty?”
“I don’t think they’d keep an empty drawer locked.” She opens the oven and pulls out a tray and then slides in another tray of little unbaked cakes.
“You’ve seen them put things in it, haven’t you?”
She gives me the side-eye filled with resentment as she sets the cakes from the oven onto a cooling rack, one she must have bought because I have exactly three pots in the cabinets and nothing else. “Does it matter?”
“It might.”
She wipes her hand on the apron she has on, a pretty purple one with flowers on it. It should be an instant boner killer, but it isn’t. There’s something that’s so her, the disparity between the innocent flowers and the siren on the warpath vibes she gives off.
“I know you were there today,” she says. “I heard you.”
“Your uncle wanted to see me.”
Her gaze flicks to me again, softer this time. “If you’re going to stand there, try this.”
She hands me a cake that’s cooling on a second rack.
“Trying to make me fat?”
For some weird reason, I feel good. Relaxed.
“I bake to soothe myself,” she mutters, her cheeks turning pink. “Eat it or don’t. I don’t care.”
But I think she does care. And I’m feeling generous, so I try it and fuck, it’s better than the one yesterday. There’s a faint hint of cinnamon in the chocolate cupcake that gives it a lift.
“Pretty good. So what’s your endgame with the baking? You going to open your own bakery?”
“You sound like my friend, Lacey. I’d love to but… it’s a lot of work.”
“And you’re rich and don’t like hard work.”
She gives me a withering look. “I have no problems with hard work.”
“You don’t want to fail.” I say this almost to myself and her mouth twists.
My little siren with the tastiest cunt I’ve had the privilege of tasting doesn’t seem like a baker, but then again, I like the measured work of restoring watches, which is so unlike me that it’s totally me. We have hobbies.
But hers is more than that. Deeper.
It’s therapy.
She sighs and doesn’t look at me as she says, “I’m not trained.”
“So?”
“I don’t want to fail. You’re right. Happy?”
I am, but not in the way she means. I like learning about her. Because it helps me manipulate. Although I don’t really know how her insecurity about not being good enough to be a professional baker will help me, I lock it down as a tool for future use.
I watch her work and then point at the ganache and buttercream. “Do me a favor and keep that.”
