by Teri Wilson
In a way, she had. In a taste challenge the participants were given a finished creation and expected to duplicate it purely by instinct. The only tools at their disposal were the variety of ingredients presented and the judgment of their respective palates.
Which just so happened to be what Juliet had been doing for days on end with respect to his chocolat chaud.
He shook his head. Marvelous.
One of the judges took over the microphone. “Hello, everyone. My name Dan Weatherton, and I’m happy to present our two finalists with the tie-breaking taste challenge.”
The other two judges wheeled a cart toward Leo and Juliet. It was piled high with every fruit, dairy product and variety of chocolate imaginable. And at the very front sat a platter of truffles. The mystery item, he presumed.
He glanced at Juliet. She looked at him, at the truffles and then back at him.
“You are so going down,” she mouthed.
God, those lips.
A wave of arousal shot through him. Why he was in any way turned on by her dogged determination to bring him to his knees in defeat was a mystery he’d given up trying to figure out. Whatever the reason, he found it undeniably hot.
He averted his gaze and murmured, “Not if I can help it.”
“The contestants will have five minutes to taste the challenge item and peruse the selection of ingredients.” Weatherton eyeballed the two of them. “Then they’ll move to the vineyard kitchen, where they will have a total of ninety minutes to duplicate the item that’s been presented.”
Ninety minutes.
That wasn’t enough time to make a proper truffle even under normal circumstances. Truffles needed a good two hours in the refrigerator to cool. And that didn’t even include the preparation time. He’d have to work at warp speed, then put them in the freezer and pray that they hardened to a respectable consistency.
And of course, that was after he figured out what the hell he was even making.
“Good luck, Leo!” his sister called out.
“He doesn’t need luck. Leo will win. Mark my words,” Uncle Joe said in a voice far louder than necessary.
Unsurprisingly, Juliet’s mother felt prompted to join in the fray. “You may as well go home. Your nephew doesn’t have a chance.”
“Here we go.” Juliet aimed her eyes at the floor, as if waiting for it to open up and swallow her whole.
They were like children. Worse than children. He’d seen better behaved two-year-olds.
“If the crowd will settle down, the five-minute time period will begin for the competitors to taste the challenge item.” Weatherton aimed a pointed glare at the Mezzanotte-Arabella jeering section. “Ready, set, begin.”
Leo and Juliet approached the cart and reached for the truffles at the same time, their fingertips colliding.
He took a step back. “Ladies first, Miss Arabella.”
“Thank you, Mr. Mezzanotte,” she said primly.
Juliet bit right into hers, but Leo took a few minutes to examine his first. He turned it this way and that, inspecting the outer shell for clues. A ribbon of white chocolate ran across the top, but the rest of the shell was obviously a dark chocolate blend. Exactly how dark remained to be seen.
He took a whiff. It had a far sweeter aroma than he expected, given the dark shell. He went ahead and took a bite.
It exploded on his tongue in an intense mixture of sweetness, creaminess and some sort of earthy flavor he couldn’t immediately identify. He frowned and popped the rest in his mouth.
Beside him, Juliet was humming happily and already choosing a few of the offered ingredients. And she’d only eaten one of the truffles. Other than the obvious—white chocolate, dark chocolate and cream—Leo wasn’t at all sure what to select. Some sort of fruit. Definitely. Berries, most likely.
His head began to throb, most of the pain concentrated in the area behind his left eye socket. Great. Just what he needed. Another headache.
He ate a second chocolate, then a third and tried not to take notice of which ingredients Juliet was gathering and piling into one of the small wire baskets they’d been given for such purpose. He didn’t want his instincts to be in any way influenced by hers. But he couldn’t help noticing that she still hadn’t taken any of the fruits on offer.
Big mistake.
He definitely tasted berries. He grabbed a pint of strawberries and added them to his basket. Then he had to squeeze his eyes shut for a moment because the pain behind his left eye had grown markedly more intense. Like someone was inside his head stabbing him with an ice pick.
“Are you okay, Leo?” Juliet’s voice came to him, and he realized she must truly be concerned about him if she was calling him Leo in front of the whole world.
But it was just a little headache. Nothing to worry about.
He opened his eyes. Spots of bright light floated around Juliet’s lovely face. “I’m fine, Miss Arabella. Just fine. And quite ready to beat the pants off of you.”
Her cheeks colored—at his wording, he presumed. “We’ll see about that, won’t we?”
* * *
Before Juliet began to heat the heavy cream for her ganache, she dropped four tea bags in a small saucepan of water and placed it on the stove to boil. That sweet taste that had almost tricked her into selecting berries as an ingredient was, in fact, fruit tea. She was sure of it.
She’d made fruit tea cupcakes once after seeing them on Cupcake Wars, and the flavor had been nearly the same—intensely rich and fruity, but absent any denseness that would have resulted from using the actual fruit. And there was that undefined hint of herbs from the tea, very slight but nonetheless present. Only the barest suggestion of a vineyard, or perhaps a mossy forest floor.
Her plan was to let the tea bags steep in about a half cup of water and then squeeze every drop of flavor from them that she could manage. She hoped to end up with a good syrupy mixture that she could whisk right into the ganache.
She fired up the burner and glanced over at Leo. He was eating another truffle while staring at his collection of ingredients.
“Stumped?” she asked, pouring the cream into a separate saucepan for her ganache.
He picked up a handful of strawberries and laid them out on a cutting board. “Hardly.”
“You sure?” She focused on his face, not trusting herself to look at those woeful strawberries without giving away the fact that she knew he was making a mistake.
“Quite sure.” He winked at her, then aimed a slight frown in the direction of the contest proctor who’d accompanied them to the kitchen.
Juliet wasn’t certain how she felt about the fact that they had a chaperone. She’d been disappointed at first, thinking that it would be fun to cook with Leo again. Just the two of them. Upon reassessment, she realized it would have been a dangerous proposition. She couldn’t afford to get distracted at this point. And Leo was nothing if not a distraction.
The cream arrived at its boiling point, and Juliet reached for it while flipping the burner to the off position. She poured the cream over a bowl full of broken bits of dark chocolate and immediately began to stir. As she was blending the ganache, her elbow grazed Leo’s, and she felt a ribbon of longing wind its way down her arm.
Her hand tingled.
Distraction. Most definitely.
Leo poured warm cream over his chocolate, but instead of stirring it right away, he stuck it in the big, walk-in refrigerator. Interesting.
He looked at his watch, then approached the proctor. “Could I trouble you for some ibuprofen, or maybe an aspirin?”
“Certainly. I’ll be right back.”
And then they were alone.
“Aspirin? Are you feeling sick?” Juliet stared into her ganache as if it held the mysteries of the universe, willing herself to concent
rate. She could not screw this up. No matter how good Leo looked in those chef’s whites and no matter how her heart started beating harder and faster with each step that he took in her direction.
“Just a headache.” He walked up behind her and slipped his arms around her, pressing his warmth into her back.
She closed her eyes, so she wouldn’t have to look at those white sleeves, those forearms. But not being able to see only heightened her other senses. He smelled absolutely heavenly, like every kind of chocolate in the world. And with his arms surrounding her, she somehow felt both safe and in the gravest danger imaginable.
She took a shuddering inhale as he bent to rest his chin on her shoulder, wrapped one hand around her waist and the other around her stirring hand, moving the silicone spatula through the chocolate right along with her.
She really needed to put a stop to this.
“I thought you weren’t feeling well. What are you doing?” she heard herself ask in a breathy whisper.
Way to go. You really told him, didn’t you?
“Helping you.” His breath hot on her neck almost made her crumple to the ground.
“Helping me or trying to sabotage me?” she asked, no longer stirring at all but letting the languid movements of his arm and wrist move her wherever they wanted. She hadn’t realized that stirring chocolate could be so...well...stirring. But he moved with a confidence and finesse that was almost mesmerizing.
“You don’t really think I would try to sabotage you, do you?” He kept guiding her arm in smooth, rhythmic circles, and it felt as if they were slow-dancing rather than cooking.
She sighed into him, letting her head fall to the side, welcoming his mouth when it dropped to her neck. The touch of his lips still shocked her eyes open, and she quite accidentally got a glimpse of her ganache.
Did it look runny? Surely not.
She peered into the bowl. “This isn’t a joint project. I think you should get your hands off my chocolate.”
“If you insist.” He released the spatula.
Juliet watched it sink into the ganache, thinking that she should really pick it up. But Leo’s hands slid to cup her bottom, and she decided to hold on to the counter because her knees were growing weaker by the millisecond.
“Leo.” It was a good thing his name was short. She could barely form words.
“Yes?” His caress was slow, leisurely, as if he had all the time in the world.
When, in fact, the proctor could return any minute with Leo’s ibuprofen. And weren’t they supposed to be making truffles? “Don’t you think you should get started on your ganache?”
“I always leave it in the refrigerator for exactly five minutes before blending it with the cream. I’ve still got...” He removed one hand from her backside long enough to take a look at his watch. “An entire minute.”
She could last another sixty seconds without completely falling to pieces and forgetting what she was doing. Right? “One minute. That’s not very long.”
“Long enough for this.” He spun her around, pinning her between the counter and his wall of hard, lean muscles.
Then he pulled her against him and kissed her in a way that made her remember everything that she’d been trying so hard to forget over the course of the past few hours. Not that she’d been all too successful at forgetting.
He groaned into her mouth.
She remembered. Dear God, she remembered every forbidden detail.
“Time’s up,” he said, pulling back and grinning down at her with one hundred percent male satisfaction.
Leo was no dummy. He was well aware of the impact of that kiss. She was on the verge of forgetting all about the competition and begging him to take her right there on Calantha Vineyard’s kitchen counter next to her runny ganache and the tea bags that still needed expressing.
“You’re horrible.” She swatted at his chest, right at the spot where Le Cordon Bleu was embroidered across his impressive pectoral muscle.
“Me? Horrible? You’re equally as guilty. Just your presence is a distraction. And kissing you...” He aimed a smoldering look at her mouth. “Let’s just say there’s more peril in your kiss than twenty swords.”
Well, then. She rather liked that.
“I’m getting back to my truffles now. I suggest you do the same,” she said, reaching for her spatula and waving it between them, like one of those twenty swords he’d mentioned. A bit of chocolate flew off the end and landed on his white coat.
There. At least he looked a little less perfect now.
He removed the drop of ganache with the tip of his finger and licked it clean. “This isn’t over. Not by a long shot.”
She turned her back to him, reaching for her tea bags and grinning secretly to herself as she got back to work.
This isn’t over.
She certainly hoped not.
17
By the time his truffles were finished, Leo was popping Advil like it was candy. He’d managed to ignore the throbbing in his head during his all-too-brief interlude with Juliet. But as the minutes ticked by and he worked frantically to produce something remotely resembling the challenge item, the pain worsened.
Juliet’s truffles were already plated, and she was running over them with a last-minute swipe of her pastry bag, drizzling them with streaks of white chocolate. Leo had no idea what they tasted like, but on the outside they were certainly identical to the challenge truffles.
His didn’t look half-bad, either. They could have been neater, but halfway through the allotted time period, his hands had begun to shake. Typically, he could pipe a line of chocolate drizzle finer and more delicate than spun sugar. Not so today. He wasn’t sure if it was the Advil or the pain in his head, concentrated mostly on the left side of his face, that had given him the shakes. Either way, he could have done without the added handicap.
He took a bite of one of the sample truffles, chewed, swallowed and then tasted one of his creations. His headache made it impossible to tell whether he was on the right track or not. The chocolate tasted like metal on his tongue. A wave of nausea hit him, no doubt due to the fact that he had nothing but chocolate and pills swimming around in his stomach. None of it mattered, anyway. It was far too late to change anything.
The proctor clapped his hands, and the noise resounded through Leo’s head like a thunderstorm. “Are you two ready?”
“Yes.” Juliet bounced on her toes.
Leo would have loved to gaze appreciatively at that bounce if only it hadn’t made him the slightest bit dizzy to look at it.
“Ready,” he said.
“All right, then. Shall we?” Their chaperone waved a hand toward the door.
As they headed back toward the barrel room, Leo wondered how many of the spectators had bothered to stick around for the final results. He suspected a fair number of them were long gone by now. An hour and a half was a long time to wait just to watch the judges eat a couple of truffles and declare a winner.
He couldn’t have been more wrong. If anything, the audience had doubled in size. There were enough people packed in the barrel room to make him think the chocolate fair was in flagrant violation of the fire code.
A round of applause erupted as he and Juliet approached the banquet table with their plated chocolates. Leo closed his eyes in an effort to shut out all the noise and the light coming from the candelabras and torches, which seemed far brighter than they had before.
“Welcome back, Miss Arabella and Mr. Mezzanotte!” The announcer’s voice echoed off the wine barrels, hitting Leo from all sides.
More clapping.
More shouting.
More pounding inside Leo’s head.
He clenched his teeth. Couldn’t everyone just pipe down for a minute?
“Will the judges step forward,
please?” The announcer approached the table and was joined by Ms. Baker, Mr. Collins and Mr. Weatherton. “First, our esteemed judges will taste the challenge item. Then they will sample each of our competitors’ attempts to duplicate it. Once they’ve made their decision, I will provide you all with a detailed description of the mystery truffle. And finally, our winner will be crowned.”
Leo flinched at the mention of a crown. That had better have been a metaphor, because he didn’t relish the thought of anyone or anything touching his head.
He watched as Weatherton and his cohorts tasted the sample truffle with looks of intense concentration. If Leo had been psychic or capable of mind control, he would have willed them to taste berries. Lots and lots of berries.
Juliet hadn’t so much as waved a berry over her ganache. Instead, she’d done something with tea. He’d thought she’d made a fatal error until he got a whiff of her finished ganache as she’d scooped her truffles into small rounds using a melon-baller. The smell of her chocolate definitely carried fruity undertones. Concord grape, if he’d had to venture a guess. But with his head about to split in two, he couldn’t be sure. The only thing he knew for certain was that one, or possibly even both, of them had missed the mark.
He cast a fleeting look at Juliet. She looked back at him, an almost-smile tipping her lips. He almost-smiled back.
Their family members still sat on the edges of their seats, also still in frighteningly close proximity to one another. It was a flat-out miracle that a fistfight hadn’t broken out. What had they done for the ninety minutes when he and Juliet had been sequestered in the vineyard kitchen? He supposed he was better off not knowing.
He averted his gaze from the audience, Uncle Joe in particular. If there was one thing that was sure to exacerbate a headache, it was his uncle.
“And now the judges will test Miss Arabella’s chocolates,” the announcer boomed into his microphone.
So Juliet was first up? Leo wasn’t sure whether that was good or bad news. At the moment, he didn’t particularly care. He was more than ready to get this whole ordeal over with. It seemed as though the noise, the lights and, last but not least, the crazy feud, were all working together to render him incapacitated. His stomach churned. Bile made its way up his throat, and he felt as though he could no longer breathe.
