Page 1 of Twins with Daddy’s Bestie

1

Olivia

I would never admit it in a court of law, but sometimes bribery is the best way.

Maybe not for everything, but trying to get someone to hire you based on your cooking skills requires a little more than words on a page.

That's how I ended up hunched over the stove in my tiny apartment’s kitchen all day.

In culinary school, I learned to always keep the basics on hand: flour, eggs, milk, butter, and sugar. Those few ingredients can make just about anything you can imagine.

We’re obviously not making a surf-and-turf with those, but I can make plenty of my very best muffins and bagels. I figure working for some hoity-toity big shot in L.A., I’ll need to prove I can master the basics.

If I get the job.

“Damn it!” I shout at the steaming tray of muffins I yank from the oven. Smoke rises from the tops, and I can barely see through it, but I can see enough to know they’re burned. If I had been trying to make a weapon, I did an amazing job. Unfortunately, I was trying to make food.

You would think four years in culinary school would prevent something like this from happening, but here we are. I'm not letting one batch of burned butterscotch muffins stand between me and my dream of opening a restaurant.

I have to bring them these muffins. They’re my bread and butter—well, no, my bread and butter are my bread and butter, but that’s not the point.

These muffins are the recipe that sparked my love for food.

I still remember the first time my mom sat me on the counter and mixed the ingredients, detailing each step in the process like cooking for the school bake sale was her own Food Network show.

“Now, Livvie, the secret to perfectly browned light-as-air muffins is to cook them fifty degrees hotter for the first three minutes,” she would say as I licked the batter off the spoon.

I used her tip today, just as I have countless times before, but it let me down big time. I rush to throw together another batch, eyeing the clock nervously as the seconds tick away.

I only have eleven hours before the meeting. To most, that's plenty of time. But to someone who needs three hours to let their bread dough rise, it’s nothing.

“Rita!” I exclaim as an idea pops into my head. I’ve commandeered my neighbor’s kitchen before so I’m sure she won’t mind if I do it again.

After tossing a new tray of muffins into the oven, I slip on my shoes, grab two bagel pans filled with my signature dough, and run outside.

I rush across our lawns and knock on the door, struggling with my arms full.

The door opens a few moments later, and the dough nearly falls to the ground. I was expecting my tall, blonde bombshell neighbor, but what I got was much more to my liking.

“I take it you’re not the pizza guy?” the man says, leaning against the doorframe and smirking.

My eyes are glued to his bare chest, and my ears heat up while they fall to the towel hanging just loose enough around his waist that if the wind blew, he’d get slapped with a public indecency charge.

Not that I’d complain.

In the twenty-three years I've been alive, I've only dated one guy. He was fine, and I was attracted to him, but he was not built like this.

I didn't think people could even be as chiseled as towel-man in real life. He even has the perfect “V” near his navel I thought were only computer-generated on the Magic Mike cast.

“I am so sorry,” I force out, tearing my eyes from his chest to look into his eyes. Every thought in my brain melts like butter in puff pastry dough.

His lips turn up in a smile, and his caramel-colored eyes light up as he takes in how flustered I am.

By the way he runs his fingers through his short, wavy, brown hair, I can tell he’s used to making women feel this way.

“I don't want to bother you. Looks like you're very busy. She’s probably busy, too. Otherwise, why would you be here, like this?”

I point to his almost naked body, and the little voice in the back of my head immediately chastises me for making this the most uncomfortable moment of both of our lives.