Page 9 of A Mustang River Christmas

“You almost make it sound erotic,” she said.

“Oh, to me, sugar is erotic,” he said.

“Interested in that,” she said, turning to look at him.

He wanted to kiss her. He had wanted to kiss her. It had been building between them for months. And now here they were, alone, in the kitchen.

“We’ve got a gingerbread house to bake,” he said, knowing that his voice sounded a little rough. A little husky.

“I know,” she said.

“Just a reminder,” he said.

“It really is important to me. I told Addison that I could do this, I told Marlowe that I could do it...”

“Yeah, I was there when all this came up and I believe I tried to make it known then. This is advanced-level shit,” he said. “I’ll tell you what.” He wandered over to the wooden structure that was sitting on the table. It was well done, but she needed some specialty tools she probably didn’t have, and the scale needed to be absolutely precise. “I’ll take this back with me and get it squared up, that way tomorrow we can work on our mockup and getting it all perfectly laid out.”

“Okay. You were a little bit right with what you said before. I know that chefs often think that we can just do what a pastry chef does. Because we work with so many different flavor profiles.”

“And so do we,” he said. “I’m not just a pastry chef, I’m also a chocolatier, and I do baking of all varieties, not just pastry. I do yeast breads and quick breads, cookies, cakes, pies, sweet, savory and everything in between. There are so many different complexities to dessert. So many amazing things that you can do with it.”

“Yes, and it is a science, you’re right.”

“And some of your science was off,” he said, trying not to get into a position where he was waxing a little bit too poetic about all of this. Because he didn’t need to get lost in his passion. That was just too dangerous, at least with her around.

“These adjustments should help. It’s going to take a while, but I’d like to get all the pieces baked and trimmed tonight, and then tomorrow morning I’ll come by and we can assemble.”

“Don’t you have work to do?”

He shrugged. “This is all ranch work. I’m sure that if I let Cody know, he’ll be fine with it.”

“Yeah. Sure.”

“All right. Let’s get going.”

Chapter Three

Laney was still thinking about last night and this morning, when Chloe came in for dinner service. The whole kitchen was bustling, and she needed to get her head in the game.

They hadn’t assembled the entire gingerbread house this morning, but they had gone over a tutorial on different elements, and she was amazed at all the ideas that he had.

His mind was fascinating. She wanted to work with him. She wanted to study under him. Wanted to understand the way that he looked at sugar and flour and butter and created art.

He had changed some of her ideas, which had been rudimentary by comparison, and now they had an even more ambitious project on their hands, which they would be starting tomorrow if everything with the prototype went well tonight.

She had a section of the kitchen devoted to the gingerbread monstrosity that was in situ, and Chloe kept on looking over at it while she was preparing the veg for dinner.

“That’s what my dad’s working on with you?”

“Yes, it is,” she said.

Chloe got a soft, dreamy look on her face.

“He used to make the most incredible gingerbread houses, both at the hotel he worked at and for our place. A lot of our Christmas decorations were sweets. It was like Candy Land.”

Everything he’d said last night about the way that he liked to use dessert to transport people came back to her now. He used it for his own daughter. Loved it for his own daughter.

And she could see how much it meant to Chloe even now. “I really never thought he was going to do this kind of thing ever again.”