“Oh my God,” she murmured, pausing to lick an errant dribble from the plastic lid. The delicate layer of whipped foam was a perfect partner for the warm comfort of the coffee itself, and Lily took another deep draw with a satisfied moan. “This is amazing.”
“Glad you like it.” The unexpected huskiness in Pete’s voice strummed its way through her belly, and she blinked up at him in surprise.
“Sorry.” Cheeks burning, she lowered the half-empty cup and reached for a napkin. Had she really been licking the cup? No wonder he was staring. “I guess I need caffeine a little more than I thought.” Lily made a move toward the kitchen so they could get started, but Pete stilled her movements with a surprisingly gentle brush of his hand.
“Then by all means, you should finish.” His eyes sparked with something dark and forbidden, and Lily felt it all the way to her traitorous toes.
Whoa.
And then, just as fast as it had appeared, the look on his face was replaced by that familiar, confident smile. “Told you it was the real deal.”
She took another sip, albeit a smaller one than her last few, and shook off the image of Pete’s fleeting expression. Clearly, her happy-happy java endorphins were getting the best of her. “Did you make it?”
“Yeah. The guys in the main kitchen were pretty accommodating about letting me in, but only after I promised to make them each a cup of the best coffee they’d ever had.”
Her jaw dropped, and she placed her cup on the counter with a stare. “You just waltzed right into the resort’s kitchen and used their equipment?”
“I asked first, and then I bribed them with the coffee. Even bad kitchen staff is territorial about their stuff.”
“Are there any rules you find sacred, or are you equal opportunity about breaking them all?” Although she meant the question seriously, Lily couldn’t deny the curl of forbidden curiosity winding through her in anticipation of his answer.
Pete stepped closer, turning her curiosity on its ear. “Are there any rules you’re willing to break, or are you equal opportunity about following them all?”
For a second, they stood there, inches apart, and Lily wanted nothing more than to press up on her toes and kiss him, really kiss him, until they both were breathless.
But the sound of tinny jingling yanked her squarely back to earth.
“Oh, ah, excuse me,” said the cameraman as he reached up to steady the decorative wreath he’d brushed against. “We’re ready whenever you two are.”
Saved by the jingle bells.
“Great.” Pete stepped away, turning toward the cavernous test kitchen with his hallmark confident smile. The cameraman gave them a spiel about acting natural, just doing what they’d normally do, and a whole bunch of other things that were statistically impossible to manage while being captured on film. But this was their only baking session of the day, and Lily would be damned if she’d lose out on practice time by worrying about the cameras. Even if they were currently capturing her every move.
“I was going to play around with some classics today,” Pete said, snaring her attention as he pulled some butter out of the lowboy. “What do you think?”
Lily proceeded with caution, sticking to her completely generic guns on strategy. “Classics are good.” She pulled out some butter of her own. It wouldn’t hurt her to work on some basics. If the first round had shown them anything, it was the importance of having a solid base.
“I know everyone thinks of chocolate chip, or oatmeal raisin, or even good old-fashioned sugar cookies as classics. But me? I’m all about the gingersnaps.”
Surprise popped through her veins, and her words flew out before she could hold them back. “Get out of here! They’re my favorites too.”
“Great minds.” Pete jerked his head toward the pantry, and Lily fell into step beside him. “I kind of go all in with gingersnaps. The bolder, the better.”
She bit back a wry smile. “That seems to suit you.”
Please. He might as well have “go big or go home” tattooed on his forehead. Lily shrugged as she stood on her tiptoes to grab the turbinado sugar, but Pete beat her to the punch.
“I take it you’re more of a traditional girl,” he said, placing the container in her hands with a look as warm and decadent as fresh-baked brownies.
“Oh.” The word escaped as more sigh than declaration, prompting a flush of warmth to parade over her cheeks. “Thank you.”
Her answer amped his expression into a full-on laugh. “You’ve never worked in a professional kitchen, have you?”
The chill that gripped her body spilled over into her words, canceling out all the warm fuzzies she’d just felt. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Not what you think it does. You’re just awfully polite.” He grabbed a container full of candied ginger before making his way back to the test kitchen, the cameraman a subtle yet definite presence in the background.
Lily chose her words with care, but didn’t censor herself, either. “How are good manners a bad thing?”
“They’re not. It’s just that professional kitchens tend to be a lot more . . . volatile than that.”
She lifted a brow at the euphemism. Professional kitchens could be downright cutthroat. She didn’t need a fancy culinary degree or experience in the city to know that. It had been the first thing she’d learned in her community college baking courses.
“I’ve always preferred to work in my own environment. It’s why I’m here, actually.”
Pete paused, turning his attention from the crystallized ginger on his cutting board to her face with obvious curiosity. “Really?”
Lily caged her groan, but barely. The seamless way she and Pete moved around each other in the kitchen had put her so at ease, the words just popped out.
So much for keeping things close to the vest.
“I run The Sweet Life out of my own kitchen, but it’s getting more and more difficult as my client list grows. Between the home business permits and the lack of space, it just makes sense to go the next step and move to a storefront.”
Lily might have to share a little more factual information than she’d intended, but her personal life wasn’t up for grabs. No way was she going to let Pete—not to mention everyone in the blogosphere—in on the fact that starting her own bakery didn’t just make business sense. It would also fulfill a lifelong dream.
One that no one in her family had ever been able to accomplish.
“That’s quite the expensive endeavor.” Pete’s expression was startlingly grin-free as he coaxed a small mountain of flour onto his food scale.
“Yup.” She focused on the tasks in front of her, letting the movements soothe the ragged edges of her nerves. As far as Lily was concerned, anyone who claimed baking was more stress than therapy was full of crap, even if said baking was being done under Big Brother’s watchful camera lens. “What about you? What would you use the money for if you won?”
“I haven’t given it much thought, to be honest.”
The answer, along with the sincerity of Pete’s delivery, nearly knocked the sheet pan out of Lily’s hands. “I’m sorry?”
“I’m not really in it for the money,” he said, reaching for the molasses. “For me, it’s more of a prestige thing so I can land a better job.”
“Better than La Luna?”
A wicked gleam flashed over his eyes. “Ever heard of Conrad Le Clerc?”
Whoa. “Of course. I used to daydream about going to L’Orangerie’s Sunday afternoon tea service as a kid.” Okay, and maybe as an adult, too. Not that she’d admit to Pete why she’d never actually gone. “The place is incredible.”
“Le Clerc is retiring to France,” he said, the implication taking a minute to elbow its way into her brain.
“And you want to take his place.” No wonder Pete wanted this win so badly. With bragging rights like that, he’d vault right to the top of the short list for any job in the city.
“Mmm hmm. Like I said, it’s all abo
ut the prestige.”
They continued to work side by side, punctuating the companionable silence by sharing basic techniques and ideas for their very different takes on the spicy-sweet cookies. Pete’s version yielded a soft, oversized cookie, as bold in flavor as it was in size. But when he pulled them from the oven during the last two minutes of baking to sprinkle them with just a bit of crushed peppermint candy, she couldn’t contain her surprise.
“You can’t pair those flavors. They’re too strong.”
Pete sent a devastating grin over his white-jacketed shoulder from his spot by the oven. “Says who? People put peppermint candies on gingerbread all the time. It’s really just a twist on that.”
Lily’s mind went without pause to the X-rated gingerbread men her friend Abby had gifted her “for luck,” complete with peppermint-stick penises, and it was all she could do not to choke on her tongue.
“Wow, are you okay?” Even the cameraman looked a little concerned as Pete slid his cookie sheet back into the oven and rounded the corner to pat her firmly on the back.
“Never better,” she croaked, finally gaining enough composure to finish her cookies.
When both batches came out of the oven and had been transferred to cooling racks, the cameramen wrapped things up and headed out. Lily tidied her station even though event planners had told her it wasn’t necessary. Washing out mixing bowls wasn’t exactly a party, but it was part of the process, and she loved it all.
“So now that the cameramen are gone, you want to tell me the real reason you want to open your own bakery?” Pete asked, pushing up the sleeves on his chef’s jacket as he grabbed a clean dish towel from the stack over the sink.
Warning bells clanged in her head, but she stood firm. “I did tell you. I’m outgrowing my space, and moving to a storefront is the next logical step.”
“That’s a great story. Except you don’t believe a word of it, do you, Blondie?”
Shock froze Lily to her spot on the kitchen tiles. “How do you know what I believe?”
But rather than match her unease, Pete just nonchalantly took the clean bowl from her hands and started to dry it.
“You get a look on your face when you’re baking, and it definitely isn’t prepackaged like that answer. If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s cool by me, but you’re going to have to sell that next-logical-step thing to someone else.”
Pete was right. She didn’t have to talk about it. In fact, it was perfectly acceptable to just clam right up and stick to her story like she’d planned.
But instead, Lily told him the truth.
Chapter 6
“You don’t know this because you grew up in the city, but I’m the only Callahan who’s ever gone to college. Or even come close, really.”
The words were barely a whisper, yet the emotion attached to them hit Pete with startling gravity. “Wow.”
Rather than carry any trace of bitterness, her words remained soft. “I know it might not seem like a big deal to you, being a classically trained pastry chef from Philadelphia and all, but it’s a huge deal for my family.”
Pete’s gut double-knotted at her assumption, but he said nothing. His past wasn’t a boat that needed rocking, and anyway, he didn’t want Lily to stop talking.
“My parents are great, but they were raised on hard work, both in mining families.” She moved her hands through the suds in the sink as if the movements soothed her, talking as she went. “They got married at eighteen, and I’m the youngest of five kids. There was never a shortage on love, even when we didn’t have a whole lot else.”
“Still sounds like a nice childhood,” he said, and the scrape in his voice wasn’t lost on him.
Thankfully, Lily didn’t catch it. “It was. But as much as I respect my parents, I always yearned for something different than a blue collar life. Not because I didn’t want to be like them or my brothers and sisters, but because I wanted to give something back. So after graduation, I worked nights and weekends waiting tables at the diner in town and paid my way through Riverside Community College one semester at a time.”
Pete pulled back to look at her, surprised. “You worked your way through college by yourself?”
Lily stood a little taller, but didn’t break stride with the dishes. “It was worth it. I got my degree in business and took some baking classes while I was there too, although I taught myself most of what I know in the kitchen.”
Jeez, she was made of some really stern stuff. And now the why of both her work ethic and her serious demeanor made a hell of a lot more sense. “So why do all that just to stay here? With your skills, you could snag a job in the city, no problem.” It seemed like a no-brainer, really. There were worse things than drowning in work, and she’d make more money in Philly, for sure.
But she shook her head, resolute. “Because I love Pine Mountain, and it’ll always be my home. Just because I want a different kind of happiness than the rest of my family doesn’t mean I have to leave here to get it. I mean, it’s not where you are that makes you successful, it’s what you are.”
Pete buckled down over the urge to flinch, forcing away thoughts of both his past and his own career. This wasn’t about him, anyway. “So that’s why you really want to win this contest.”
Lily nodded, a wisp of blond hair falling over her cheek as she dropped her chin toward the bubbles in the sink. “Between here and Riverside, I do pretty good business with custom cakes, but it’s only enough to stay steady. Ten thousand dollars is just enough collateral to qualify for the loan I need to open up a storefront on Main Street. I could expand to more than just cakes and the occasional dessert tray for church socials. It would mean daily customers.”
She opened her mouth to continue, but the pink stain on her cheeks beat her to it. “Sorry. This all probably seems silly to you. I mean, you’ve trained in some of the fanciest restaurants in Philadelphia, and La Luna is just . . . well, a far cry from my tiny kitchen.”
Damn, her blush made him crazy, and his words tumbled out without his brain’s permission.
“You’re a really good baker, Lily. Better than a lot of the yahoos I’ve seen in the city. And your dream doesn’t seem silly to me at all.”
“It doesn’t?”
“No.” He dipped his chin to meet her lowered eyes. For just a second, Pete saw that same heat he’d caught when he first bumped into her outside the resort, and it reached in and grabbed him with palpable force, guiding him forward until they were as close as they could get without actually touching.
Lily was an enigma, all right, with all that austerity banking the fire inside her. And right now, he wanted to unravel her piece by piece.
Her gaze flared, dark and translucent blue, but she didn’t step back. His brain screamed that touching her was a tremendously stupid idea, but his mutinous body sent a hand to tuck that loose strand of hair behind her ear anyway. “It seems honest. Like you.”
“Oh.” The word was nothing more than a honeyed murmur, and all the competition titles on planet earth couldn’t have bribed his hand from its resting place on her shoulder. Her lips parted, and the lush sigh that spilled from them belied her next words.
“We should . . . we should finish these dishes and pack up our cookies,” she said, arching up under his palm. Christ, even the chaste column of her neck burned him with the intensity of a live wire, innocuous to look at but scorching to the touch.
“I know.” His voice paired gravel with a whisper, and the bowl between her fingers slid into the soapy water beneath them in response.
Lily lifted up on her toes and canted her head back gently, fitting her body to his touch. “We should . . . could you . . .”
Pete sifted his hands upward, loosening the silky knot of hair at her nape. “Finish drying the dishes?”
“Kiss me,” she said, closing what little space remained between them in a single rush.
The electric heat he’d found a moment ago with his hands was nothing compared to what met hi
s mouth, and he dived into it on pure instinct. A sudden burst of wicked surprise hit him full-force as she opened her lips without coaxing, but he didn’t try to temper the move by slowing down.
He tunneled his hands through the blond waves now spilling over her shoulders, holding her fast as he explored her mouth with his lips, tongue, and the edge of his teeth. The velvety groan it lifted from her chest only spurred him on, and when she bowed against him in a tight arch, he returned the favor without thinking. Bracing his hands around her back to absorb any potential discomfort from the hard edge of the countertop, Pete notched his body against Lily’s in a thrust that left nothing to the imagination.
And he had a really good imagination.
“Still worried about the dishes?” he asked, dropping a trail of kisses around her ear. She tasted heady and sweet, like every rule he’d ever broken, and he teased her earlobe with the edge of his bottom lip before moving on to the soft hollow where her shoulder met the edge of her chef’s jacket.
“Yes. No. Oh, God that feels good,” Lily whispered, her voice soaked with want. She pushed back against him, the soft heat of her hips making him impossibly hard as she wrapped her hands around his shoulders. “Forget the kitchen. Just don’t stop doing that.”
Her words echoed in his head, pulling a thread he couldn’t ignore. Kitchen. Cookies. Cameras.
Competition.
“Lily.” Pete took a step back, even though every part of him from the neck down gave him some serious what-for. “We can’t . . . I mean, we shouldn’t . . . someone could see us,” he finished lamely, but the damage was done. The warmth in Lily’s expression morphed from passion to chagrin right before his eyes, and she nodded crisply as she put even more distance between them.
“Right. I apologize for getting carried away.” She drew in a deep breath, and hell if the resulting swell didn’t make her standard-issue chef’s jacket look as sexy as racy lingerie. But by the time her words made it around the image jamming his brain, she’d cleared the entire stretch of space to the exit.
The Sugar Cookie Sweetheart Swap Page 29