by Beth Bolden
Miles rubbed his neck and tried not to look sheepish. “I’m not very good at this part, I should probably default to your expertise.”
It was worth admitting that he wasn’t very good at something to see Evan’s face light up. “Of course,” he chirped happily. “If you’re sure you trust me not to pick something hideous.”
“You picked me, didn’t you?”
Evan’s smile evolved into a self-satisfied smirk. “That’s right, I did. Besides, in case you were worried, I have fantastic taste.”
“What else do you have for me?” Miles asked.
“Do you watch Dream Team?” Evan shot the question over as he typed furiously away at his laptop. Miles knew enough to see he wasn’t working on another email. It was hard to bite back the sudden demand that Evan tell him what he was writing—it wasn’t easy to trust Evan when he’d said all that to Reed—but Miles knew he needed to.
“Dream Team? The cooking show with that baker from LA and Landon Patton? The one where they spent three quarters of the time flirting and not actually cooking?”
“That’s the one.” Evan didn’t look up. “They’re gearing up for rehearsals in the next week, because the next season of their show starts filming.”
“And?”
Evan looked up, and he didn’t look thrilled. “And that means our kitchen time goes way down, because they’re stars and we’re the low men on the totem pole.”
“What?” Miles demanded. How was he supposed to create recipes and test them and make sure he was able to actually teach people if he didn’t have access to the kitchen?
“Believe me, I know. How are you supposed to create recipes if you can’t get in the kitchen?”
Miles stared. “That was fucking eerie. How did you know I was thinking that?”
Evan shrugged. “You’re predictable. Chef, kitchen time—more important than anything else. It’s not hard to connect the dots.”
“So what are we going to do about it?” Miles asked, trying to keep his voice level. Evan might be responsible for some things he didn’t like, but he wasn’t responsible for this. This was, apparently, out of his control. “I’m assuming, since you’re you, you have some sort of plan to deal with this.”
“Yes,” Evan said. “Of course I do. Even though I just found out about this.”
“Just now?”
Evan shot him a challenging look over his laptop screen. “Literally thirty seconds ago.”
“Oh, so that was an email you were typing so angrily,” Miles said.
“No. Well. Yes. Sort of. I was sending a message to Reed. Getting permission for us to work from home. Or rather, permission for us to work from your home. You’ve got a good kitchen. Not fantastic, but it should be good enough for our purposes.” Evan skewered Miles with another incredibly direct look. “After all, you made that Twinkie at home, didn’t you?”
“It was a Ding Dong,” Miles corrected.
“Whatever.” Evan threw up his hands in frustration. “This is my solution. I wish I had something else, but it’s what we’ve got.”
“Would begging help?” Miles asked. “I can be pretty persuasive.”
Evan’s incredulous glance didn’t instantly puncture his ego. Nope. Not at all.
“Okay,” he admitted, “usually I can be pretty persuasive. Better?”
Evan gave a sharp nod. He was still typing like each key he hit was a punch in the face of the people who had demoted their kitchen time to zip, nada, nil.
“No,” Evan finally said, with a sigh, fingers finally drifting off the keyboard, “it wouldn’t help. Dream Team trumps all.”
It wasn’t like he hadn’t heard of Dream Team—Miles didn’t live under a rock. But he hadn’t really paid attention to how popular it was. Or cared, until he was suddenly faced with losing the kitchen time he needed.
“We can work around this, right?” Miles asked, and he didn’t even try to hide the desperate edge to his voice. The part of him that was still terrified and needed any reassurance he could get. He’d never imagined asking for it from Evan, of all people, but maybe that had been his problem when they’d first met.
“Of course we can. Working from your place, and we’ll still get some time in here but it’ll be shorter and it’ll be either early or late.”
The one thing Miles felt confident about was that Evan was definitely as committed as he was to making this show a success. Of course how they got to that success was still up for debate, but he could never doubt Evan’s commitment.
The timer on his phone dinged again, and Miles went to the fridge to pull out the dough. It felt right to be working on something right now, as they tried to muddle through this new hurdle. Whenever he’d struggled with anything cropping up in his life, he’d always gone to the kitchen.
In the kitchen, if you put flour with leavening, you got dough, and if you baked the dough, you got bread and pastries and rolls. There was a logically reassuring certainty about baking—like Miles was asserting control when he didn’t have any.
“How many more rinse and repeats do we have left?” Evan asked, not even looking up from his laptop.
“One more, and then they bake,” Miles said.
“I find it difficult to believe that anything is worth all this,” he said primly.
“Wait and see,” Miles insisted.
“You keep saying that.” Evan rolled his eyes. Miles couldn’t even see his whole face, but he’d begun to discover just what Evan’s voice sounded like when his face did that cute little scrunchy thing that always accompanied an eye roll.
Miles shouldn’t, but he couldn’t help imagining feeding Evan little bites of hot, flaky, buttery pastry dotted with the rich, dark chocolate and him moaning with pleasure as the flavors hit his tongue. He couldn’t help it because he was just a man and Evan was wearing him down with each cute scrunchy face and every snarky retort.
Miles was befuddled because those weren’t supposed to be things that attracted him. They weren’t supposed to be things that attracted anyone. But somehow those things—and a growing list of others—had caught him and now he wasn’t just flirting because he was trying to out-James Bond James Bond. He was flirting because he couldn’t do anything else.
And that was a problem, mostly because Miles had been incredibly dumb and had kissed him like he was trying to eat him alive and then had sent an email that would have turned off the most understanding and forgiving of people.
Evan was definitely not that understanding or forgiving.
“Miles, Miles, Miles.” Evan’s voice hit him suddenly and Miles realized that while he’d been daydreaming, trying to figure out how to get Evan to eat from his fingers and like it and also forget all about that very unforgettable email, he’d been trying to get his attention.
“Sorry,” he said.
Evan threw his hands up in frustration. “Did you hear anything I just said?”
“No?” Miles put on his most charming sheepish expression and hoped that would melt the exasperation on Evan’s face. It didn’t. Not even a dent.
“I said, tomorrow we should get what you need at your apartment to make it baking-friendly.”
“Right, yes, we can do that.” Miles realized after he’d said it that we had to be a misnomer. Because Evan had no clue what he needed at his apartment to make it “baking-friendly,” whatever that meant.
“You’ll put the list together?”
Miles saw an opening and even though this attraction confused the hell out of him, it didn’t confuse him enough to not take advantage of it. “You said, we,” he said, with a faux leer that Xander had once said made him look like a creeper. But that was Xander, and Miles took everything he said with a massive grain of salt.
The look in Evan’s eyes when he glanced up was dismissive. “Like I would know what you need to bake stuff,” he said. “You make the list, and we’ll go get the stuff tomorrow. You—list; me—corporate credit card.”
“Let me guess, you’re also in charg
e of the budget.”
“Yes, and no. Reed just sent me a message and said we could work from your place, and he’d foot anything that didn’t seem excessive.” Evan looked rather self-satisfied at that, and Miles couldn’t blame him. He also couldn’t deny that even though a week ago, that smug look would have made him crazy, today, all it did was make him want to wipe it off. With his mouth.
It wasn’t so much a problem as it was . . . complicated.
The timer on his phone went off again, and this time he dragged Evan off his barstool, ignoring the pulse of electricity under his skin when his fingers closed around Evan’s forearm.
He was slender, but he had muscle tone under all that smooth skin, and that was an image that Miles didn’t need to have when he was trying to explain to Evan how to roll out the dough for the final steps.
“A big rectangle, like this-ish,” Miles said, gesturing with his hands. Evan just stood there, looking at him levelly, his arms crossed across his chest, which might be a way he stood all the time, but right now, only emphasized to Miles that he’d somehow missed that Evan was all lean muscle he desperately wanted to see.
He’d thought this was complicated, but the more he sunk into this new understanding of Evan, the more difficult Miles realized the situation really was. Because he wanted him, much more than he’d ever imagined.
“Maybe you should give me an actual dimension,” Evan retorted frostily.
“We’ll work on that,” Miles coaxed. “It’ll be great, just . . . more flour. Lots of flour. We don’t want the dough to stick to the counter.”
“Not after we’ve spent four hours in this torture chamber,” Evan snarked.
Miles knew it had been frustrating at points, but he thought they’d had a pretty solid morning. He was a little offended that Evan had just referred to the kitchen as a torture chamber. Because that made Miles the head torturer. Yeah, complicated was probably an understatement.
“Just . . . flour the damn counter,” Miles said.
Evan did as instructed, but only after tying the apron back on, which surprised Miles. That had been a silently acknowledged instrument of torture (apparently) and here Evan was, voluntarily putting it back on. Of course, he was probably more worried about the state of his clothes than the stupid apron.
The rolling went pretty well; Evan had good technique; he was slow and careful and even with the pressure. Miles stood a little ways behind him, and made all the right encouraging noises and tried not to check out his ass in those pants.
He remembered a point when he’d made fun of those khakis. Now he just wanted to worship them. Or at least what they contained.
“How’s that?” Evan asked, standing back and eyeing the rectangle of dough critically. Like this was a life-and-death situation. And baking could be tricky, you often had to be extremely precise, but this was the easy part of the whole thing. It was tough to fuck this up, but Evan never let up on himself for a single second. He had the most A-plus personality that Miles had ever encountered.
“It’s fine,” Miles said, and pointed to the knife. “Now trim the edges, and cut into four equal strips.”
Instead of grabbing the knife, Evan turned around and there was fire and brimstone flashing in his eyes. Miles stood there shocked, because even at the worst, even when they’d been trading insults in the break room and even after Miles had sent him the worst email in the history of emails, Evan hadn’t looked at him like that.
“Do you mean to tell me,” Evan said, voice low and frustrated, “that we’re only getting four croissants out of this?”
Miles knew he should have doubled the recipe. But it had seemed easier at the beginning to keep things small and relatively simpler.
“Uh, yes?” He remembered after answering that Evan was easily within reach of both a knife and a rolling pin. Both of which he could use to extract his revenge on Miles.
“Are you insane?” Evan hissed. “Four fucking hours on four croissants?”
“I thought it was more about the experience and the journey. Besides, you said you don’t even like sweets.” Miles was torn between groveling and also throwing up an arm to protect against the inevitable attack with the rolling pin, which Evan was still gripping.
“I don’t.” Evan was still shooting fire from his eyes. It shouldn’t have been sexy; it was. Miles couldn’t explain that or anything else that had happened today, but logic was overrated. Maybe he should just go with it.
“Right, well, let’s continue cutting the dough then. Four even strips.” Miles wanted to power through this, and maybe then they could finally get them in the oven, and he could see his fantasy come to life. Evan, putting his food in his mouth.
“This is ridiculous,” Evan ground out. But he still turned back to the work surface and began to cut the dough.
“Noted,” Miles retorted. But he knew the difference was stark. This time, he sounded amused and not angry. Not like before. He wondered if Evan was paying close enough attention to care. Or if it even mattered.
Evan didn’t say anything else, just absorbed the instructions on how to roll up the chocolate bar in the middle of each dough strip, and then brush with a beaten egg.
“And now, finally, the oven,” Miles said.
“Why do people even do this?” Evan wondered, and Miles thought it was probably a rhetorical question, but he was going to answer it anyway. At least so Evan might absorb some of why baking was so vital to Miles.
“Because once you’ve tasted the real thing, not the chemical-flavored, soggy, sunken artificial croissant, you won’t want anything else.”
“I thought you were going to feed me some sort of bullshit about pride in your work.”
“That was next.” Miles smiled weakly.
“Right, how long in the oven?” Evan asked, picking up the tray and walking it over to the oven. Miles was only a little ashamed, but the sight of him holding a tray of baked goods was undeniably a turn-on.
“Fifteen minutes,” Miles said.
Evan absorbed that, and then immediately ripped off the apron. “I’ll be right back.”
Thirteen minutes later—Miles totally didn’t time Evan on his watch or anything, because that would be creepy—he returned, holding two cups of coffee. From the good coffee place that was a block further than the Starbucks in the first floor of the building.
“I figured if we were having first class pain au chocolat, we might as well indulge in better coffee.” Evan handed Miles his cup with a shrug, like he was trying to downplay his gesture. Maybe he was just trying to downplay that it meant anything deeper.
But Miles already believed it went deeper.
“Thank you,” he said, right as the timer went off.
The pain au chocolat came out of the oven a beautiful burnished golden brown, crisp edges, with the scent of butter and chocolate wafting through the air.
Evan stared at the tray and seemed to be fighting himself. “Don’t you want to have one?” Miles asked innocently. He’d been sure Evan would be on the pan before they even cooled, desperate and eager to prove to Miles that he was wrong. That it wasn’t worth the time and effort to bake a pain au chocolat from scratch.
“Maybe we should wait for them to cool a minute,” Evan said.
“They’re perfect just like this,” Miles argued. Reached over and deposited one in Evan’s palm.
“Hot,” Evan complained, but he still lifted the pastry to his mouth and took a single bite. In Miles’ fantasy he’d been feeding him in tantalizing little bites, waiting until Evan begged him for more. But this was good too.
Evan’s eyes drifted over the first bite, and the expression on his face as he chewed and swallowed was very good. There was undeniable bliss, and Miles knew if he’d been able to hold it back, he would have. It made the success even sweeter.
“Good?” Miles asked innocently.
Setting the pastry on the counter with careful, deliberate movements, Evan turned towards Miles. There was something conflict
ed in his face, like he was doing all of this against his better judgement.
Miles understood that feeling far too well.
“How do you do that?” Evan asked plaintively.
“Do what?”
Evan threw his hands up. “Be so damn good at this. Win me over to your side when I know just how much I want you to be wrong and I know just how stubborn I am.”
Miles took a step closer even though Evan’s expression was telling him he’d better stay right where he was. “You wanted the best,” he said, and his voice was shaky. “Why are you so disappointed you got it?”
“I’m not, I’m not,” Evan tried to protest, but he’d already said enough and the green light was flashing in Miles’ head. Evan might pretend to be aloof and uninterested, and might fight this every inch of the way, but he felt the exact same pull Miles did. And this time, Miles wasn’t going to fuck it up by being angry.
It wasn’t going to go away; in fact, it was only getting stronger. Miles usually acted on instinct, and he did now. There were only three steps between him and Evan, and he crossed them in a blink but he still hesitated when he’d reached his destination.
Evan’s eyes were huge in his face, wide and shocked as Miles slid a hand around the back of his collar. But he didn’t pull away and he didn’t say no. Miles had been sure he’d need to argue his case harder, spend longer trying to erase the memory of their first kiss and then the email.
But instead Evan held his ground and held Miles’ gaze and waited for him to close the distance between them.
Miles kissed him. It took an achingly long moment for Evan to respond, to reciprocate. A heart-stopping moment when Miles thought that maybe he’d judged everything wrong and that hadn’t been the green light he’d secretly been dying for.
Then Evan’s mouth moved against his, sluggish and hesitant at first, and then his tongue was slipping between his lips and he tasted just as he’d expected—like chocolate and coffee and butter—and like nothing he’d ever anticipated—sharp and charged, like the red wine that grew high up in the hills of Mount Veeder at the edge of the valley.