Baking Lessons

by Katie Allen

  That struck Leah as extraordinarily sad. She couldn’t imagine that his parents had called their son by his last name, which meant that he believed his parents didn’t like him, unless something had happened to them. Maybe they’d died when he was young, like Leah’s parents had, so they couldn’t call him Anthony and put love and fondness into his name. “No one?”

  He shrugged. “Is it eight grams or twelve of vanilla?”

  She was perfectly aware that he was trying to throw her off the subject, to end the painful discussion of how no one who loved him called him by his first name. Sometimes, though, she knew the topic needed to be changed. After her parents’ deaths, she had become very familiar with awkward conversations. Therefore, she didn’t bring up the fact that he’d never had to ask for help with any of the recipes, and that she was beginning to suspect he had a photographic memory. “Twelve.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome, Ham-on-rye.”

  His hand holding the small bottle of flavoring paused in mid-air. “Am I going to regret giving you permission to leave off the mister?”

  “Most definitely, Ham-hock.”

  “Wonderful.” His tone was very, very dry.

  “You get cupcakes and multiple nicknames.” She whipped the icing a few more turns, admired the light yellow shade, and then she set it aside. “Bonus.”

  “Bonus? Are you sure you want to use that term?”

  “Positive.” Reaching out, she used the measure in the bin to scoop up some powdered sugar. It squeaked painfully, and she grimaced. “There it is. Painful.”

  “Karma.”

  His one-word retort was barely audible, but she heard him loud and clear. Dipping her finger in the green icing, she dabbed it on the tip of his nose before he could cringe back. With that small dot of green, he looked even more adorable than usual. What would it take to make Anthony Fitzgerald Hamilton III unappealing? He swiped at his nose, examined the frosting, and then licked it off before going, once again, to wash his hands.

  Leah studied his back for a moment before she followed him to the sink. Sometime in the past three hours, between his willingness to do anything for cupcakes and his adoration of the metric system, Hamilton had elbowed his way into her heart. She had to admit it—she was becoming completely and dangerously smitten with her uptight landlord.

  Chapter Three

  “Be careful,” Leah said, eyeing the butterfly cookie Hamilton was decorating. It looked as if it would lift off the table at any second and fly around the kitchen, but in the most wonderful, cartoon-butterfly way.

  “What?” He finished the line of frosting before looking up, concern written on his features. “Did I do something wrong?”

  “No.” She leaned in to see a close-up of the butterfly cookie. “You need to be careful that I don’t steal you away from your life of slumlord-ing and actuary-ing so you can work for me full-time. You’re amazing at this.”

  “That would cost you quite a few cupcakes.” Selecting the bottle of dark purple frosting, he bent over his cookie again.

  “It might be worth it. You’re really good.”

  He just grunted his “you’re welcome,” but she took it in stride. Somehow, she wasn’t surprised to learn that Hamilton couldn’t take a compliment.

  “Did you go to art school?” she asked as she drew frosting glasses on the happy-face cookie she was currently decorating.

  “No.” The word came out in a huff, as if he thought the idea of art school was flat-out ridiculous. “Of course not.”

  “Why not?” Finishing the cookie, she set it carefully on the rack for the frosting to set. She did a quick count and found they’d finished seventy-three cookies. A glance at the clock showed that they had forty minutes to complete the order, and her muscles relaxed for the first time since she’d realized she’d read the order wrong. Barring a catastrophe, they were going to make it.

  He gave her a glance from beneath his eyebrows that made Leah want to smack him and laugh—and perhaps kiss him. It was a look that called her a crazy person but was also the closest he’d come to really, truly smiling. Even if his amusement was at her expense, she couldn’t resist a budding Hamilton smile. “Are you making fun of me?”

  “What? No. Of course not.” Confused, she paused, a lavender base-coated puppy cookie in her hand, hovering right above the table in front of her as she stared at Hamilton. “Why would you think that? It was a compliment. You are seriously good at decorating these. The only person I’ve seen do a better job had gone to art school.”

  He looked at her, his eyes narrowed, as if he was using his superpowers to read her mind, to rake through all of her thoughts and pull out the mocking ones. She held his gaze until he gave a slight nod and turned back to his cookie. Leah did the same. “Then, no. There was no art school.”

  The incredulous way he said the words, as if instead of “art school,” she’d said “fairy playground” or “goblin college,” made Leah almost painfully curious. “Too bad. If you can wrangle frosting and make it look this good, I bet you would be awesome at painting.”

  “I’ve never tried.” He topped the frosting antennae with silver candy beads, gave the cookie a final critical look, and then added it to the rack with the others. He’d completed five in the time it had taken Leah to finish close to seventy, but each one of his were tiny works of art. Leah’s were good, if she did say so herself, but they weren’t nearly as precise and intricate as the designs on Hamilton’s were. It was a shame that they would be eaten and not framed.

  Grabbing the squeeze bottle with the pink frosting, Leah added a tongue to her puppy-shaped cookie. “You are welcome any time you want to work here, by the way. Unlimited cupcakes could be yours.”

  “I’ll consider it.” He chose a flower cookie next. “It’s much more exacting than I expected.”

  “Yes.” She chose blue for the puppy’s collar. “With cooking, you can be more flexible. If you toss in some of this and some of that and make a few substitutions because you don’t have some of the ingredients on hand, it’ll probably still turn out tasting good.” She outlined the ears and front paws with purple frosting. “Baking, on the other hand, is a fussy bastard.”

  Immediately after she said it, Leah looked up a bit guiltily. Hamilton seemed so uptight that swearing in front of him felt a bit like swearing in front of her grandma—well, if her grandma had been much taller and muscle-y and infinitely sexier and not her grandma at all. He didn’t looked fazed, though. In fact, the corner of his mouth tucked in, as if he might be considering the possibility of smiling. Leah reminded herself that he’d been in the army. There had to have been oodles of swearing there.

  Still, she was flustered enough that she continued to talk as she finished the puppy cookie and moved on to a sun. “When baking, everything has to be exactly right, or bad things happen. You can’t just estimate amounts. I don’t even like using measuring cups. I’m all about weighing the ingredients.”

  “I like that part of it,” Hamilton said. Glancing at him, Leah got caught up in watching how he was using the frosting to actually shade the petals, giving them depth. She had to pry her attention away from his flower cookie and focus on her own work. As beautiful as Hamilton’s cookies were, he wasn’t a speed demon. It was up to her to finish the majority of the cookies for the order. “When I would visit you before, everything seemed...chaotic.” He flicked out his fingers of his free hand as if mimicking an explosion.

  “I’ll have you know this is a perfectly functioning, well-oiled machine.” Although she pretended to be affronted, laughter bubbled up, trying to escape. “It’s like a clock that tells perfect time, or a robot that does just what it’s supposed to and never, ever tries to kill you.”

  “Things were so messy.” His lips turned down even as he continued focusing on his cookie-decorating. It made it harder for Leah not to let her l
aughter escape. “There was always flour everywhere—on your apron and hair and sometimes you had a smear of something on your face...”

  That did it. Leah couldn’t hold it back any longer. Her laughter rang out, filling the kitchen. “I know. You should’ve seen me when I accidentally dumped a fifty-pound bucket of honey down my front. My jeans adhered to my legs. It was like getting a free waxing when I took them off.”

  His expression was appalled, and it made her laugh all the harder. “I’m very glad I wasn’t here for that.”

  Reaching out, Leah patted his arm with a frosting-stained hand. “Sorry. I shouldn’t try to push all of your buttons. You’ve been very helpful today, and I appreciate it. I’ll be better.”

  “Push my buttons?”

  “Never mind.” If he hadn’t realized yet that she did her best to get his eyelid to start twitching, she wasn’t about to enlighten him—especially now that he’d turned out to be the best cookie decorator in the universe.

  The timer beeped, and Leah jumped up, happy to have the interruption. While the base coating of icing on the cookies had dried, they’d mixed up a batch of the gluten-free brownies. She pulled it out and checked the temperature.

  “Have you tried these?” she asked. Satisfied that the brownies were done, she set them on a rack to cool and returned to her spot at the decorating table.

  “The brownies? No.” He was drawing veins in the flower’s leaf. Who knew there was a frustrated artist in his buttoned-up actuary self? “Gluten doesn’t affect me negatively.”

  “Me either, thank God.” She counted the cookies again before starting on another happy face. “Can you imagine the hell of not eating wheat products?” She gave an exaggerated shudder before using the squeeze bottle of black frosting to draw a pair of eyes with long eyelashes. “The gluten-free brownies are excellent, though. Very fudgy.”

  “Good to know.” He meticulously edged the petals with sparkling sugar in a way that turned the cookie into a fairy flower.

  “I’m beginning to think I need to charge more for the ones you decorated,” she said, once again pulling her gaze away from his surprisingly fascinating decorating technique. “That is just gorgeous.”

  Shrugging off the compliment, he began to line the center with silver candy beads. Leah focused on her own decorating and finished ten cookies quickly. “That’s enough for the order.” Glancing at the clock, she saw that they had fifteen minutes before the customer was supposed to pick them up. “Good job, team!” She raised her hand above the table and waited for Hamilton to give her a high five.

  He gave her a look, then his gaze slid up her arm to the hand that was hovering in midair. After a moment, he dropped his eyes to Leah.

  “Don’t leave me hanging, cookie teammate!” She wanted to laugh again at his baffled expression. “C’mon. Up top!”

  Reluctantly, he placed his latest cookie creation on the rack and then raised his hand. Instead of slapping her palm, though, he pressed them together, linking his fingers with hers. The unexpected contact sent a zing of heat all the way down her arm, and she stared at him, startled by the hand-holding and her reaction to it. He squeezed her hand and then pulled away, his gaze still locked with hers.

  “So...good job.” Her words came out with a bit of a wheeze, so she swallowed and tried again. “Thank you for your help today.”

  He looked at the remaining dozen or so cookies that were still naked except for their base-coating. “What about those?”

  “We’ll decorate them while the frosting on the order sets. They’ll go up front for sale.” Leah fiddled with the frosting bottles, feeling strangely flustered by the high five that went sideways. “You’re welcome to stick around and help finish these, but you don’t have to. I imagine you had plans for today before I conscripted you.”

  “It was more bribery than conscription.” Hamilton eyed the unfinished cookies with a look very close to his I-really-want-a-cupcake expression. “I can stay for a while.”

  “Great!” she said, knowing that she was being too enthusiastic but not able to contain herself. “I’m going to run up front and let Q know that the order is done, just in case the customer comes in a little early. Did you want some coffee?”

  “Yes.” He was already reaching for a blank sun cookie. “Please.”

  As she reached the swinging door to the front, she snuck a quick glance back at him. Hamilton was bent over the cookie, a bottle of orange frosting dwarfed in his huge hand. Leah marveled at the sight of her uptight landlord, as immersed in cookie decorating as a five-year-old in a macaroni craft project. He looked up, catching her staring, and she hurried through the door to the front.

  The teenage crowd had disappeared, replaced by families with young kids and a couple of elderly couples. She waved to some familiar faces before moving to the register, ringing up the sales and then donning gloves to serve pastries as Q manned the cappuccino machine. Between the two of them, the line shrank rapidly. When all the customers had been helped, Leah glanced over the racks of bread and pastries, making a mental note of what had already disappeared and what wasn’t moving as well.

  “So,” Q said in a quiet voice as he wiped down the cappuccino machine. “Have you guys started making out yet?”

  “What?” It came out too loudly, and a couple of the customers glanced over curiously. Leah felt her face heat as she lowered her voice to a whisper. “Of course not. He’s Mr. Starches-His-Undies, remember? Not to mention that he thinks I’m the slobbiest slob who’s ever slobbed. You should’ve heard him go off about how I’m always covered in flour and other things. Nope. There wasn’t and never will be any making out.”

  The sound Q made was much too close to a “pish” to come out of a not-quite-seventeen-year-old’s mouth, and Leah made a mental note to mock him about it later, when she wasn’t in full-on make-out-denial mode. “The two of you were this close to kissing when you were up here last time, and that was in front of everyone.”

  “One, I would never make out with someone in my bakery, especially in the kitchen.” She held up a finger to emphasize her point. “The kitchen is for food. It is not for kissing or touching or groping or anything else along those lines.” Lord help her, her face got even warmer when she said things like “kiss” and “touch” and “grope” while talking about Hamilton. She was in so much trouble. “Two, he’s my landlord. It would be beyond stupid to get involved with the guy who decides whether I can keep my bakery here or not. Three...well, he thinks I’m kind of gross.” For some reason, the last point made her sad.

  “One.” Q held up his finger in full mocking mode, and Leah gave serious consideration to firing him for about one second before reason kicked back in. After all, he was the only one who could handle the cappuccino machine. Plus, she adored him. “I agree with the kitchen thing. Even in their own homes, people should keep their private, naked parts away from surfaces used for food prep.”

  “Amen.”

  “Two, stupid doesn’t matter when you want someone. In fact, if it’s stupid, the guy is even more appealing. It’s a rule.”

  “A rule?”

  “A rule. Attraction increases exponentially by a factor of stupid.”

  Leah considered that, along with the fact that she loved Q to bits. “Agreed. There is also a multiplier of muscles.”

  “And musical talent. If he’s in a band, he’s hotter.”

  “Or any artistic skill,” Leah added, thinking about the mind-bogglingly beautiful cookies Hamilton was currently creating. When Q looked at her with his head tilted slightly and a knowing look on his face, she hurried to cover. “Like...well, dancing. Everyone loves a guy who can move.”

  “Uh-huh.” Q didn’t sound convinced by her attempt to turn her comment away from gorgeous cookie decorators.

  “Whatever.” If she couldn’t subtly change the subject, she was going to just do it in an obvious way
. “The reason I came up here was to tell you that the order is done.” Dropping her lofty tone, she leaned in closer to him. “Wait until you see the cookies Hamilton decorated.”

  Q winced, looking sympathetic. “That bad?”

  “No, the opposite. They’re amazing. He’s like the Michelangelo of cookie decoration.”

  “Now I want to see.” Q pushed away from the counter. “Do you mind watching the front for me?”

  “No, Q.” She rolled her eyes at him. “I can’t watch the front so you can finally have a break after dealing with the Saturday morning rush by yourself.”

  When he just looked at her, she flapped her hands toward the kitchen. “Yes, go! See the beauty for yourself.”

  “Beauty? Are you talking about the cookies or their maker?” His eyebrows lifted and dropped several times, making him look so comical that Leah had to laugh.

  “The cookies, of course.” Her righteous indignation didn’t hold up under his knowing look. “Go, before I change my mind and handcuff you to the register.”

  As he headed for the swinging door, he called over his shoulder, “Artistic. Now I get it.”

  She grabbed the closest thing at hand—a Post-It note pad—and threw it at his head. He dodged through the door, laughing, and the pad hit the door frame with a useless thud. Still smiling, she turned around and jumped—Jude was standing right on the other side of the counter, staring at her.

  “Oh, Jude. Hi.” She put her hand over her still-racing heart. “I hope you weren’t waiting long. Q and I were just being silly, as usual.”

  There was a slight pause before he spoke, and Leah had to avoid the urge to step back. Mentally, she chided herself for being so paranoid. They were in a busy bakery on a bright Saturday morning. Jude seemed a bit odd and too eager to be near her, but he’d never done anything to make her think he could be dangerous.

  “I didn’t mind the wait,” he said, making her wonder how long he’d been standing there and how much of her and Q’s conversation he’d overheard.