Page 52 of Twisted Beauty

“Your faith in me is touching.” Liv filled the cups, making leaf designs with the foam. She had a little more practice making heart-shaped swirls, but she was afraid that would send the wrong message.

She handed him a latte and then lifted her cup in a toast. “To being rained in with a chef.”

“And a barista.” Matt touched the lip of his glass to hers.

“Somehow that doesn’t sound nearly as impressive.”

Matt took a sip, closed his eyes and moaned with pleasure. A flood of heat rushed through Liv’s body and settled low in her belly. Holy shit.

When he opened them, Liv was sure she was beet red and maybe even sweating, but Matt didn’t appear to notice. “I think you missed your calling, sweetheart.”

Liv almost choked on her latte. Matt looked practically orgasmic. And he called her sweetheart. Maybe she could…

What? Kiss him again?

She was reading too much into this. It was just coffee.

To distract herself while he licked foam from his lips, she focused on the frittata he’d plated. “Where’s the red goo?”

“You’re right. I forgot the red goo.” He grabbed a ladle, scooped some red liquid from a small pot on the stovetop, and drizzled it around the edges of the plate. “Otherwise known as raspberry puree.”

Liv went to the guest room and grabbed her camera, glad she’d thought to charge the battery through her haze of lust last night. The question was, would she remember how to press the shutter with Matt standing so close?

And just how insane was it to want a little rebound fling with him anyway? She couldn’t get the thought of it out of her head. It was so unlike her. So opposite of her usual MO. That was the beauty of it though. She’d quit her job and run off to Mexico, for god’s sake. She was supposed to be thinking outside the box.

By the time she walked back into the kitchen, Matt had the table wiped down and the new frittata platter in the center. It was probably cold and congealed by now, but fortunately hadn’t lost any of its visual appeal.

She hadn’t tried to photograph food since her grad school days, and the little burst of excitement she felt in her gut helped cool the attraction simmering lower in her belly.

“Do you have any white cardboard or construction paper or anything like that?” she asked. “Something I can bounce light off of?”

Matt looked at the plate and then back at her, like he was trying to figure out what she meant. “I might have something. I’ll go look.”

He came back with a handful of white items. A pillow case, a few sheets of thin cardboard, and a ream of legal paper.

“Thanks.” Liv eyed all the items, and set up a makeshift studio around the table. She used a couple of his lamps and her homemade reflectors to enhance the appeal of his gorgeous platter. Because looking delicious in person didn’t always translate through the lens. That much she remembered from her still-life class in school. Food was tricky.

She organized several other items around the plate—a mug of coffee, a place setting, a vase that unfortunately had no flowers.

While she photographed from various angles, and adjusted the lighting for each, she felt Matt watching her. Finally, he reached into one of her shots for the coffee mug and drank a sip before putting it back in the wrong spot.

“Hey, cut that out.” She looked up and he was grinning like a big kid, and she couldn’t help but smile too. She loved that he’d been such a good sport, considering she’d spent the last half hour photographing a single plate of food.

He swiped a finger beneath the rim of the plate, where a drop of raspberry puree had spilled over. When he brought it to his mouth and licked it off, Liv almost lost her grip on her camera. She set it carefully down on the table.

“Okay, well,” she cleared her throat. “Sorry I took so long. We’re done here.”

“We don’t have to be,” Matt said, still grinning. “And don’t be sorry. I’ve enjoyed watching you work. I was just having a little fun at your expense.”

“I noticed.” Even though his smile was genuine, teasing, Liv suddenly felt silly for getting lost in such a mundane project. “I have more than enough shots of this.”

“Show me.”

“Okay. We can dump the photos on your computer if you’d like. Easier to tell if there are any good ones on a bigger screen.”

They both sat down at the coffee table and Matt pulled out his laptop from the shelf below. Liv removed the SD card from her camera and uploaded the photos onto his hard drive.

Matt flipped through them, pausing on several to take a closer look, finally landing on one he seemed to like best. “This is incredible. I don’t think my food has ever looked so good.”