He leans in and whispers to me. “Help me get your mother off my balls, please.”
“Are you kidding me? Then she’ll notice how ugly and uneven my torcettis are.”
His brows furrow. “They look perfect to me.”
But he isn’t looking at my cookies. He’s looking at me. And all I can do is blush and bask in the warmth of his stare.
As if my mother’s hearing becomes supersonic in the kitchen, she picks up one of my lop-sided creations and deepens her frown. Without a word, she plucks another of my sort-of twisted cookies and places them on the parchment paper-covered scale. “Try to be more precise when you cut the dough, dear. We want them to bake evenly, don’t we?”
“Sorry. Cole was distracting me with his humongous balls,” I say. Usually, I drag my feet kicking and screaming through cookie day like an unruly child because my mother unnecessarily treats the whole thing like we’re presenting our cookies to Paul Hollywood. Today, though, all I feel is giddiness.
It’s exhilarating, letting my walls down and getting to know Cole for real. He’s…kind of dorky? And adorable.
Hah! Cole—the Prince of Blood—adorable. Make it make sense!
A loud motherly sigh strikes fear in my heart. “I’m going to have to make another batch of the chocolate chip dough, and if I want the dough to chill, I’m going to be a whole day behind.” She walks over to the mixer, cracks an egg, and turns the beater on high. “We can keep these monstrosities for the family. No offense, Cole.”
“None taken,” Cole hollers over his shoulder. “Unbelievable throwing your boyfriend under the bus like that. Last time I trust you,” he says under his breath.
“Oh, a little role reversal could be fun,” I quip back.
Slowly, his brow arches. “Is that what you’re into?”
I shrug. “You’ll have to try harder to figure it out.” I clap my hands, and white dust clouds the air before I head to the sink to wash off the flour.
A finger hooks itself into my belt loop and yanks me back towards Cole. I yelp, trying to hide that this simple gesture has caused an electrifying shockwave to wash over me, rippling through my veins, my nerves, everything standing on end just because he touched me. I’m open. Exposed. Vulnerable.
“You wouldn’t happen to actually be flirting with me, would you Natalie?” Cole asks, a smirk on his face. It’s not his usual cocky grin, it’s something softer, kinder…happy.
I am flirting…a lot. More than I ever had the nerve to with Caden. That is both a terrifying and thrilling thought. While my eyes are hyper-focused on Cole’s lips lingering a finger breadth away I reach for something, anything, and find the bowl of powdered sugar next to me.
“Who me?” I bat my eyelashes, distracting him, while I gather sugar on my finger. “Of course, I am. I’m your sugarplum, aren’t it?” I trace my finger over the bridge of his nose, leaving a ski slope of sugar under his thin gold framed glasses. “So I’ve gotta be sweet.”
He snorts. “Yoursweetness,”he says, his voice dripping with sarcasm when he says the second word, “isn’t why you’re my sugarplum.” He dips his finger into the same bowl, and I try to wiggle out of his now tightened grip around my back to no avail. “It’s because you’re always dancing in my head.” He traces a line of powder across my forehead with his sugared finger.
I swipe my finger through the sugar again and drag the bowl behind my back so it’s out of Cole’s reach. “You always say the sweetest things,” I say. “Almost too sweet. I wonder if I should trust these.” I brush a heap of sugar over his lips.
Awareness of myself pressed against him, of this impossibly intimate gesture when my mother is feet away making cookies, forces a heated blush to my cheeks.
He tries to reach the bowl and I play defense, blocking it with my back, but this only encourages Cole to press tighter against me until my butt hits the counter. “I guess I can’t get to the sugar,” he says. “Defense is too good.”
“Impenetrable.”
“I’m pretty sure I have the skills to penetrate it.” Cole’s eyes widen the minute the words leave his mouth.
“You scoundrel!” I put my hand on my heart and feign being scandalized.
“No, I didn’t mean—” Dark red tinges his ears before flooding his cheeks. Splotches of red cover his neck.“Shit.”
It’s impossibly pure and adorable. Exactly who he’s been since I asked him to stop masking the real him. Cole’s dimples have even deepened. They’re my dimples. I’m claiming them.
I step up on my toes, kiss the sugar off his lips, and then press a kiss to his cheek, leaving a print behind. “I like this version of you the best. Thank you for trusting me.”
CHAPTER
NINETEEN
COLE
