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Aria nestled against Hunter’s side—unlike Fang, she was most definitely a snuggler—and rubbed her cheek on his shoulder. He pressed his lips to the top of her head.
As Jumbo pounced gracefully onto her lap, Aria thought that maybe Destiny had been right about a few things. Like the wisdom of cat spirits. No coincidences. And that all events in her life had led Aria right to this moment with Hunter, the place where she was meant to be.
* * *
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WE FOUND LOVE
A Bliss Cove Romance
Excerpt
Kate opened one of the bags of flour she’d special-ordered and breathed in the aromatic, nutty scent of stone-milled heirloom rye. As she began measuring out the ingredients, both her body and mind shifted into the comforting rhythm of baking.
This had always been the place where she was happy, peaceful, safe, and confident. Everything made sense when she was crafting a loaf of bread. The measurements were precise, each ingredient contributing its special essence to the final product. Flour, air, water, salt, yeast. Everything bound together into a mass of earthy dough before tiny air bubbles formed it into a smooth, perfect cushion.
Once upon a time, Trevor had loved watching her bake.
“I could never do it.” He sat on a stool at the kitchen island in their tiny apartment, his dark hair flopping over his forehead and his gaze on her hands as she kneaded the dough on the floured surface. “I wouldn’t want to. I mean, it’s crazy sexy watching you bake bread, but theprecisionwould drive me nuts.”
Kate blew a lock of hair away from her forehead and shot him a smile. “And yet you’ll spent forever figuring out how to best plate your dishes.”
“Plating comes after the cooking.” He bent forward to inhale the yeasty smell of dough. “With cooking, you’re always tasting the food, adding spices, trying something different. You can always mix it up and improvise. But with bread…it’s such a science.”
“Bread is also magic.” Kate stretched and pressed the dough, feeling it turn pliable under her hands. Though she was warm from the exertion of kneading, Trevor was watching her with such intense fascination that a flame sparked in her core. “Remember the class we took about the chemistry of bread? It’s a living organism. If something is off, like if the dough and the baker aren’t in sync, then the whole loaf can fail. The magic aspect is why there are so many myths and superstitions about bread.”
“Like?”
“Don’t sing when the bread is rising or you’ll take the air out of the dough. If you put a baguette upside down on a table, you’ll have bad luck. Burning your bread means you’ll have a fight with your sweetheart.”
She shaped the dough into a round and placed it in a bowl. “And yet for all its mysticism and magic, bread is universal. Through history, literature, cultures, mythology, time…everyone understands bread. Everyone needs it. It’s one of our greatest constants.”
He murmured a noise of appreciation deep in his chest. A shiver rippled through her. Was there anything sexier than a man gazing at you with such sharp focus, as if the rest of the world had distilled into you? As if you were the world?
She set the dough aside to rise and glanced at Trevor, her heart fluttering at the sight of his thick-lashed blue eyes and those well-defined cheekbones slanting down to his beautiful mouth. They’d been together for a year, having met when they were both students at the culinary institute, and he’d had her quickly, both body and soul.
The speed with which they’d fallen in love and moved in together would have shocked Kate if it hadn’t felt soright.
Slipping on an oven mitt, she opened the preheated oven and took out the old, royal-blue Le Creuset Dutch oven that had once belonged to Trevor’s mother and was now his most treasured possession. The lidded pot was one of the few things he had left of her, as she’d died of cancer when Trevor was twelve.
Early in their relationship, he’d entrusted Kate with his childhood memories of being in the kitchen with his mother as they made chili, roasted chicken, or beef stew in her well-seasoned Dutch oven. He’d been the one to suggest that Kate try and bake bread in the Le Creuset, and after some research about how the pot created just the right amount of steam for a perfect loaf, she’d given it a shot.
She set the kneaded dough aside and took another bowl from the counter, where a second batch of dough had been rising. She lifted the dough onto the floured counter and began molding it into a round.
“I love that you use your hands so much.” Trevor leaned his elbows on the counter, his attention on the flexing of her fingers as she shaped the loaf. “It’s like you’re massaging the dough. Spreading. Pinching. Pressing. And the way you use your finger to open that cleft in the top…you’re baking me seriously horny.”
