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“Any food allergies?”
He shakes his head, and I nod over toward the kitchen—the place where I feel most myself.
I grab some ingredients from the pantry and set them out, and he takes a seat on the stool at the counter.
I narrow my eyes at him. “Sitting is not helping.”
He immediately stands. “Yes, ma’am.”
Why do those words falling from his lips as he follows my directions pulse a needy ache solidly between my legs?
Oh, right. Because I want to have sex with him again, and pretty much everything he does is sexy as hell.
I hand him a measuring cup and push a bowl over to him. “I need three cups of flour in this bowl.”
I set to work on the wet ingredients, and I start to make conversation as I methodically pick up each ingredient I need and measure it out before dumping it into the bowl.
“So we’re sticking with the backstory that we’ve known each other for years and just ended up in the right place at the right time?”
“Well, the truth is probably the easiest thing to stick to.” He clears his throat. “I mean…as closely as we can. It’ll come off a lot more genuine if we tell the truth, anyway.”
He dumps the first cup of flour into the bowl after carefully measuring it, and he somehow spills a bunch on the counter on his way. I brush it into my hand and throw it in the sink.
I nod. “Right. And how, exactly, do I handle the media?”
“It might be a good idea to have you sit down with a publicist to discuss some of that, but my own training has taught me that less is more, and maintaining privacy is key.”
“Right. Less is more. The same is not true for cookies.” I sprinkle in some more brown sugar, and he chuckles.
I hand over a teaspoon. “Let’s go with one teaspoon of baking soda and a half teaspoon of salt.”
He nods and adds in those dry ingredients.
“I get the theory behind maintaining privacy, but people are going to want to know who you’re dating, and I’m just a normal pastry chef who likes to bake cookies. We need some sort of story to explain why you’d be with someone like me.”
He looks surprised by my question. “You think you’re just a normal pastry chef?”
I glance over at him after I set my bowl onto the mixing stand. “Well…I am.” I pick up the bowl he added the dry ingredients to.
“You’re a lot more than that.” He reaches over with his thumb to brush away a smudge of flour from my cheek, and his gaze is so tender on me that I think he’s going to lean down to kiss me for a beat. “You’re beautiful, Ava. You’re funny and smart. You’re talented and kind. You’re sexy as fuck without even knowing it.”
He draws in a deep breath before he seems to snap out of whatever thought he’s having.
He clears his throat. “You’re, uh…you’re definitely more than just a pastry chef, but the fact that we share a history is enough of a story to keep the wolves at bay.” His voice is a little robotic at the end, as if he’s saying something he feels he needs to say even if he’s not sure he believes it. Or maybe that’s just me reading too much into things.
He grabs his phone out of his pocket and appears to send a text.
“What was that?” I ask.
“I texted Linc to ask about local publicists. From what I remember, he’s working with someone he really likes. Got him out of a whole heap of trouble with Jolene when they first got together.”
I vaguely recall something of a rivalry between the Nashes and the Baileys, but clearly that’s over if his brother is married to Jolene now. I didn’t know much about the story since it all went down over twenty years ago when I was barely in kindergarten.
But my mom was friends with Mrs. Nash since their boys were so close, and I recall gossipy discussions between my mom and Mrs. Nash about some bar the Nashes and Baileys had invested in together.
His phone dings with a new text, and he scans it before giving me the summary. “He’s working with someone named Ellie Dalton, the wife of former player Luke Dalton. She represents a bunch of players on the team, and he highly recommends her.” He shrugs as he looks at me.
“Can’t hurt to give her a call,” I say. I have no idea who Luke Dalton is, but the name is vaguely familiar. I really should brush up on my football knowledge if I’m supposedly dating a player. “So talk to me like I know nothing about football. You play defense?”
