Sugar Rush

by Donna Kauffman

  “Damn straight I am.” She moved to the next tray, discarding the spent bag for a freshly filled one, then positioning it like an expert sniper lining up his next kill shot. “Hear that, Chef Hot Cakes?” She completed the next three rows with deadly precision. “I ... don’t ... need ... you.” She punctuated each word with another squeeze.

  She straightened. And swore. “Yeah, that’s why I’m standing here at the crack of dawn, shooting raspberry truffle filling like a woman armed with an AK-47.” But, she had to admit, it felt good. Powerful, even.

  Salvation cakes, indeed.

  So, she went with it. Moving to the last tray, she shot another squirt of raspberry, picturing his smiling, handsome face as she did so. “Why are you doing this to me, Bax?” Pow, pow, pow. “Why are you invading my world?” Bap, bap, bap. “My world, my kitchen, my home.” So many questions scrambling her brain. Making it impossible to think straight, impossible to concentrate on anything except—

  “Dammit!” Lani glared at the oozing, overly truffled cupcake like it had committed an unspeakable cupcake crime.

  She blamed Baxter for that, too.

  She might have growled, just a little. It was stupid to be so upset about this. Like Franco said, she was operating from a position of strength here. Who cared why he was coming to town?

  Or what laying eyes on him again might make her feel?

  She’d handled worse things, she reminded herself. Far, far worse things. Losing her mother two years ago. Almost losing her father ten months ago. “I can handle Baxter Dunne,” she muttered.

  But as she stood there with flour powdering her hair, a smear of raspberry truffle across her chin, a spent pastry bag in her hand—happily content in her own element—she thought about it all, and tried to harness her inner Smackdown Baker Barbie ... she really did. But she kept picturing his face, hearing his voice, seeing his hands move so precisely perfect, so beautifully efficient as he worked, making every step look so effortless, so simple ... and wishing he’d put those smart and clever hands on her ... and found herself failing. Miserably.

  The sound of the delivery door slapping shut behind her made her spin abruptly around, the flailing pastry bag sending at least a half dozen freshly filled cupcakes skittering to the floor.

  The sight that met her eyes sent her heart skittering as well. As only Baxter could.

  He was very tall, with long arms and legs that would be gawky and awkward on anyone else, but were graceful and elegant on his lean, muscular frame. He had a wild thatch of wheat blond hair that was forever sticking out in all directions, brown eyes so rich and warm they rivaled even the most decadent melted chocolate, and a ridiculously charming, crooked grin that always made her secretly wonder what trouble he was about to get into ... and wish, desperately, that she could join him.

  “Hello, luv. Happy to see me? My God, you look a fright.”

  And, always—always—too late, she remembered the trouble she was forever getting into ... was him.

  Chapter 2

  Indeed, she did look quite the fright. Her dark brown hair, always neatly tucked into a shiny, sleek twist at her nape, was lighter now, streaked by the sun, he supposed, and hung in loose wisps and straggles about her face, the knotted bun at the back of her crown escaping whatever she’d used to secure it. At Gateau, she’d employed some kind of slim, clever chopstick-like affair, holding it strategically, perfectly in place. All he could see now was something puffy ... and pink. A very bright pink—which seemed even brighter against her skin.

  Gone was the cream and rose complexion he’d remembered. She was tan, which changed everything. What with the loose, wild hair, it lent an almost ... heathenish edge, giving her normally pretty blue gaze a somewhat piercing, laser-like quality. Conversely, though she’d always been a sturdy thing, lithe, but strong and solid, at the moment, she looked ... enveloped by the chef coat she wore, as if it were a size too big, or she’d suddenly grown smaller.

  None of that mattered. Just stepping into the same room with her again settled something inside him. Something vital. Necessary. As he’d hoped it would. In fact, prayed it would. Nothing short of believing that would have driven him to come to this godforsaken, beastly hot, bug-infested place. It was October. Humidity of that sort shouldn’t be possible.

  Standing there now, he couldn’t believe he’d ever been foolish enough to let her go.

  “Why?” she asked, ignoring the cupcake carnage at her feet.

  It was only then he noted the uncharacteristic mutinous set to her raspberry-smeared chin ... and realized she wasn’t so happy to see him. Or at all happy to see him, it appeared. “You might want to mind your step there,” he began, nodding to the floor, but was cut off from offering further assistance when she repeated herself.

  “Why, Baxter?” And, in case he hadn’t understood what she meant, she clarified—through tightly gritted teeth. “Why are you here?”

  Confused, and thinking he was obviously just missing something, he grinned and held out his hands. “Is that any way to greet an old chum?”

  “Chum?” It hadn’t come out as a screech. Exactly.

  He winced all the same, and the confusion grew. “Compatriot, then?”

  “There are a number of terms that come to mind when I think of you—which I don’t—but, if I did ... that one wouldn’t make the list, either.”

  “Oh.” His smile faded. “I see.” Except he didn’t. Not at all. He hadn’t really known what to expect seeing her again, but it hadn’t been this. Her parting from Gateau had been rather abrupt, and though he’d wished her well, and Godspeed to her family, he hadn’t been able to see her off personally before she’d left New York. Was that it? Then she’d made the decision to stay in Georgia with her father, and he’d never seen her, or worked with her, again. He couldn’t help that, could he? Just as he couldn’t have known how that sudden shift in his world would make him feel. He did now.

  “Did you get the flowers?” he asked, treading more carefully. “For your shop opening?”

  “I did. You didn’t have to do that.”

  He lifted his shoulders, tried a bit of a smile. “I wanted to. I know it hasn’t been long, but I hope it’s been a successful launch thus far.” He was nervous, he realized. It wasn’t a state he regularly found himself in. Rarely, if ever, in fact. Her reaction had thrown him badly. “You’re wearing your Gateau jacket, I see.” Striving for some common ground, he was hoping to quickly whisk out the lumps and smooth things between them. “Haven’t gotten your own shop jackets as yet?”

  She looked down, then back at him, and he could have sworn a bit of pink that wasn’t raspberry filling colored her cheeks. Though what on earth she had to be embarrassed about, he hadn’t a clue.

  “I—uh, no, I don’t have—I wear aprons. Out front. With the customers. I’ve always had—I collect them. I have since—” She broke off. “I only wear this back here, when I’m baking, because—” She stopped again, frowned, at herself or him, he wasn’t sure. “It doesn’t matter why. What does matter is why you’re standing in my kitchen, unannounced, at”—she glanced at the wall clock—“six-fifteen in the morning.”

  He was truly flummoxed. She’d never been anything other than absolutely professional with him. Always in a good mood, the calm in the center of every storm. And there had been many. He could depend on her to be consistently cool, competent, and focused. Aside from her rather amazing talent, the way she handled the day-to-day chaos of the kitchen with such smooth aplomb was the thing he’d admired most about her. He’d been convinced that bombs could be going off, and she’d be steadily working away with that quiet smile of hers, truly content, as if she existed inside her own personal sunbeam.

  To him, she’d been the perennial Snow White, kind to one and all, always making life easier for those around her. It was why he hadn’t immediately noticed, hadn’t realized ... well, so many things, actually.

  The difference was she no longer worked for him, and was therefore,
he supposed, no longer required to maintain a professional demeanor in dealing with him.

  Perhaps he should have taken that into consideration.

  “Why are you here, Baxter?” she asked again, her tolerance clearly being tested.

  “You know, I don’t ever recall you being—”

  “Bitchy?”

  His eyebrows climbed slightly. “I was going to say impatient. Or irritated. I’ve never seen you be either of those things.”

  “That’s because you’ve never seen me.”

  He frowned then. He had not a single clue as to what she could mean by that. They’d worked side by side for years. Of course he’d seen her. “You seem put out with me. Quite ... annoyed, actually. I thought we parted on rather good terms, all things considered. I mean, of course I hated to lose you, and so suddenly. Gateau will never be the same without your vision and talent. But I’m not heartless. I understand the importance of family obligations.” He tried not to look around and actually take stock of her fledgling effort, for fear she’d see his utter bewilderment regarding her new direction. She was meant for far, far better than this. “Of course, I was deeply disappointed that you chose not to return, but please understand, Leilani, I’m not angry with you for leaving.”

  “You? Angry with m—” She broke off once again, clearly fighting to hold on to what was left of her swiftly dwindling control if the grip she had on that poor pastry bag was any indication.

  Snow White with a temper? He couldn’t get that to measure up.

  “This isn’t getting us anywhere,” he said, hoping they could begin again.

  “Because, as usual, you’re not listening to me. Or to anything but the voices inside your head, dictating that you stay stubbornly focused on whatever it is that you want.”

  “What are you talking about? Voices in my head? Are you saying I’m mad?”

  “You don’t listen, Baxter. You never listened. If you had, you’d know why I am not happy to have you come onto my island, or invade my town, much less set foot inside my shop. My shop, Baxter. You don’t have any say here.”

  “Of course I don’t.” He wondered how and when he’d fallen down the rabbit hole without noticing the drop. “I don’t want a say.”

  “Good, finally! Now we’re getting somewhere. What do you want?” She’d enunciated that last part as if he was hard of hearing.

  “I honestly don’t understand at all why we’re even arguing. We never had problems communicating before. I could always depend on you to be straightforward, the voice of reason—”

  She barked a laughed, making the loose tendrils of hair dance around her face, and looked a bit mad herself. “Because there was no point in being any other way. It was energy I couldn’t afford to waste. And it would always have been a waste. The reason we communicated well was because you did all the communicating. But not anymore, Baxter. You can be as single-mindedly charismatic and inadvertently obtuse as you want, but it’s not going to do you a bit of good in getting whatever it is you came here to get from me. And don’t bother telling me you just chose some dinky island off the coast of Georgia as a remote set for your show and, lo and behold, what a coincidence I happen to now live on that same island. Obviously you came here on purpose. I just can’t figure out why. You know why I left, why I’m here. Nothing about that has changed. I’m not coming back.”

  “Is that why you think I’m here? To get you to come back to work for me?”

  “What other reason could you possibly have? I can’t even figure that out. Your show is a smash hit, consistently the highest rated food show ever on television, I think I read somewhere. I keep in touch with some of the staff at Gateau, so I know Adjani is doing an amazing job running the kitchen and menu, and you’re doing just fine without me there.”

  “You’re right, I don’t need you on my television show. And Gateau is surviving, yes, and doing as fine as can be expected without you.”

  “Then why—”

  “Because, Leilani.” He walked fully into her kitchen, meaning to stop a few feet from her, simply wanting her to understand how earnest he was, how sincere. Somehow, though, he ended up not stopping until he was right inside her most personal space. It was a place they’d been many times with each other, elbow to elbow. But never face to face. And never for personal reasons.

  “Because?” she repeated, her tone not nearly so strident.

  And her jaw, when he placed his finger beneath it, wasn’t nearly so tightly clenched. In fact, he was certain he felt a slight quiver. Or was that him?

  Her skin was remarkably soft ... how had he refrained from touching it for so long? Up close he could see the light scatter of freckles against her newly golden cheeks, and found himself surprisingly enchanted by them. He wanted to lean in, breathe in her scent, taste her, touch ... fully engage every one of his senses. Wallow, revel, drown. “It’s quite simple, actually, my irrationally irritated former compatriot.” He was forced to employ a rather remarkable level of restraint just to speak at all and not simply take what was, finally, right in his hands. He drew a thumb lightly across those cheeky freckles and smiled into the dearly missed, familiar blue of her eyes. “I’m here because I’m not doing fine without you.”

  He’d sworn he would take it slowly, so she would understand what he was thinking, feeling ... and hopefully find something of the same inside herself. It was critical, crucial, that he give her the time and space to be certain of him, of herself. That plan swiftly deserted him. He did manage to lower his mouth slowly ... but even that was a close call.

  She didn’t stop him. Nor, he realized, when he finally touched his lips to hers ... did she respond to him. At all.

  He lifted his head.

  Her gaze was fixed on his. Her mouth, still tightly shut.

  Bloody hell.

  What a blooming idiot he was, risking what might have been his one best chance. What he regretted even more was that the seconds were stretching out like their own little individual chasms of time ... and every one of them was awkward. They’d never once been awkward with one another.

  “I don’t know what this new game is,” she said finally, her words slow and as precisely measured as a knife across starch. “But please, don’t ... ever ... do that again.”

  “Leilani—”

  “I have work to do.”

  He spent another second or two weighing the relative merits of trying to stand his ground and make her understand everything that was going through his mind, but one look in her eyes had him deciding retreat might be the better part of valor. For today.

  Her continued anger he could have accepted, even if he didn’t understand it, which he didn’t. Hell, even indignant fury, though he’d never had it from her, he could have handled, certain he’d get to the root of it eventually. But the look in her lovely blue eyes wasn’t either of those things. She looked bewildered. And rather ... lost.

  He understood both feelings. Intimately. Specifically as they pertained to her.

  But they were emotions he’d never thought to see on her sweet, enchanting face. Made worse, by the fact that he’d been the cause of them.

  “All right,” he said, and stepped back. It was then he noticed she had a white knuckled grip on the worktable behind her. And he felt like even more of a sodding bastard. What the hell had gotten into him?

  But even more worrisome to him was ... what the hell had happened to her? She was the good one, the sweet one, yes? There was a certain kind of tempered steel inside her that he’d recognized from the start. She wouldn’t have lasted a minute in his professional world if she didn’t have backbone. He’d never witnessed her in any compromising personal situation, or even heard of her being in one. If there had ever been a man—or men—in her life during the time they’d spent working together, she had been very discreet about it. Had she ever been subjected to unwanted personal advances, he wouldn’t have anticipated this as being her response. More likely she’d have fended the perpetrator off with a rolling
pin thrust to his chest, like a lance.

  The very idea of that happening to her was enough to snap him out of his uncustomary daze. The only one to be mad at was himself. The only one to put her in a compromising personal situation ... had been him. Goddammit.

  He made his way back to the rear delivery door, knowing he should just keep walking straight through and out. Removing himself was the very least he could do for her at that moment. But no. He turned back, stupidly thinking he could still, somehow, fix the damage.

  She hadn’t moved so much as a hair.

  “I’ll apologize,” he said, “for the poor timing. And the sorry lack of forethought in not making my interest known. But no’ for kissin’ you, Leilani. Or, more t’ the point, for wantin’ to.” He stopped, hearing the accent of his childhood creeping back into his words.

  He smiled broadly then, to cover how much that little backslide had shaken him, knowing full well he was relying on his infamous rapscallion grin that had, from a very young age, gotten him out of countless scrapes and sticky situations. For a very long time, it had been the only thing he’d had going for him. Leilani would not likely be swayed ... but it was a defense mechanism he couldn’t override at the moment. “It wasn’t exactly how I’d imagined it, but I promise you, I’m nothing if not diligent when trying to perfect something new.”

  She said nothing to that.

  Keeping the smile in place suddenly took quite a bit of work, so he turned and opened the door.

  “You imagined kissing me?”

  He jerked his gaze back to hers, his grin broadening further, without the least bit of calculation this time. “It’s been the centerpiece of some of my very best daydreams.” He wisely left unspoken the far more vivid ones he’d had at night.

  She opened her mouth, then apparently thought better of responding, and shut it again. Her free hand still tightly gripped the table behind her. But, from where he was standing, he didn’t think she looked quite so lost or bewildered any longer.