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After making their way through the rest of the evening at the bar and closing down at two, she’d helped him and Joy clean. Maddie seemed almost resigned to her chore, not voicing a single complaint, which made him worry that he was in for it.
Boy was he right. He thought maybe they could go upstairs to his place and nap on the couch until Simon showed up, but the minute they locked up at Woody’s, she’d started tugging him down the block to the bakery. She insisted that if she had to work at the bar, he had to work at the bakery. She was probably regretting that right now, since everything he did was wrong.
Emmett looked down at the pile of dough in front of him and shook his head. He was wearing a pink ruffled apron, a hairnet, and food service gloves. Maddie had put a large bowl of cookie dough in front of him and told him to roll it into balls on a cookie sheet while she mixed up something in the stand mixer beside him. Looking over at his handiwork, he could see why she was upset. There were a sad dozen balls of dough on the sheet, all varying in shape and size. Some of them couldn’t really even qualify as balls. “I really have no idea,” he admitted.
With a sigh, she turned off the mixer and used her free hand to dip an ice-cream scooper into the dough. She dispensed it into her left hand and rolled it into a neat ball before placing it on the tray. “See? Use the scoop to get even sizes. They should be about as big as walnuts and perfectly round so they bake evenly.”
“That’s all well and good, except that job takes two hands and I’ve only got one. Every time I get started, you tug me over to the oven.”
“It’s the simplest task I have for you to do,” she said, using her free hand to brush her hair out of her face in exasperation. “This isn’t as easy as pouring drinks and doling out salty snacks.”
It was just like her to belittle everything he did. She might think running a bar was a ridiculous way to live, but he enjoyed it and felt good about his job. His customers were happy and he saw to it that they got home safe each night. That was more than he could say about his last job, where the bottom line was more important than the people. “You think running a bar is easy?”
She shrugged and detached the bowl from the mixer. “I don’t know a thing about running a place like that, but it certainly doesn’t require two years of study in Paris.”
There she went with that superiority thing again. “You know, Fancy Pants, that’s your problem.”
Her eyes widened as he used his new favorite nickname for her. He didn’t know why it would offend her. She was a fancy pants, through and through. She should wear that badge with as much pride as she wore that silly pink apron. “I don’t have a problem.”
“Yes, you do. You think you’re so much better than everyone else, but you’re not. So what? You studied in Paris. Estelle was a self-taught baker using her grandmother’s recipes, and you know what? Her chocolate chip cookies were better than yours.”
Maddie gasped. “My chocolate chip cookies are made with vanilla beans from Madagascar and chopped milk and dark chocolate from Switzerland!”
Somehow that was supposed to explain everything. “It’s a cookie, not a piece of art that needs provenance to display in a gallery. Some people just want what’s familiar. Nobody’s grandma used vanilla beans from Madagascar. They used the bottled brown stuff from the grocery store with a bag of Toll House chocolate chips. Importing all that fancy stuff might make you feel special, and the cookies might be tasty enough, but it doesn’t make you better because you went to all that trouble. Frankly, I think it would hurt your bottom line.”
“What do you know about my bottom line?”
“Please,” Emmett snorted. He knew more about financial management than she ever would. “You think you’re going to pay back your daddy for this place while you blow money on embossed pink pastry boxes and imported chocolate? This isn’t a patisserie on the Champs-Élysées, Fancy Pants. It’s a bakery in Nowhere, Alabama. You might think it sets you apart to use all that stuff, but to be successful, you need to know your customer. People around here don’t care where Madagascar is, much less if that’s where your vanilla comes from.”
“People want high-quality products, and that’s what I’m going to give them. My clientele is a little more sophisticated than yours. I suppose you’re well versed in your customers and what they want, right? Beer and football.”
“Damn right, and that’s what I give them.” Emmett turned to face her and leaned down so she heard every word he said. “They want a place to relax and unwind. They want some drinks. They want to watch sports and listen to music. And if they want to hear live music, I’ll give it to them. You might think that I started bringing those bands in just to keep you up at night, but you’re giving yourself a little too much real estate in my brain, Fancy. It doesn’t have any
thing to do with you. It has to do with my business and my livelihood. You’re just an unwelcome distraction.”
Maddie looked up at him, her full bottom lip trembling slightly as he railed at her. Was she upset that she wasn’t more important to him? He couldn’t imagine she would be. He was nothing to her—an insolent peasant.
“Earlier you said I was beautiful—a sadist—but beautiful. Am I distracting because I drive you crazy or because I’m beautiful?” she asked in a breathy voice that made his chest and his pants tighten at the same time.
Those pouty lips made him want to run the pad of his thumb across them and kiss away her frown. It was a ridiculously unhelpful thought, but like he’d said, she was a distraction in a variety of ways. He wished she wasn’t so attractive because that just crossed the wires in his brain. He’d much prefer her outsides matched her annoying insides, then it would be easy to ignore her. Over the last few weeks of their war, he probably spent more time lying in bed thinking about her than he had lying there listening to her latest sleep sabotage.
She had the shiniest hair he’d ever seen. It was always up in a ponytail or a bun, which was a shame because it was like shimmering chestnut silk. He wanted to know what it would look like if it fell free around her shoulders. He wondered how it’d feel to run his fingers through it. Her skin was like porcelain and her eyes like the shells of a robin’s egg. Maddie’s every feature was delicate and feminine, rousing a protective nature in him he wasn’t used to.
And then she opened her mouth and ruined everything.
Even now, handcuffed to her, he wondered what she’d do if he kissed her. Maybe this was his chance. It wasn’t like she could get away. It’d almost be worth it to see the look on her face. And maybe once he kissed her, he’d realize there wasn’t anything special about her and he could focus on something else.
“Both,” he said, inching closer to her. He expected her to pull away, at least as far as she was able, but she stayed in place. His left hand reached out for her cheek and he stroked her skin.
Maddie stiffened initially at his touch, then her eyes closed and she leaned into him. He hadn’t expected that reaction at all. Emboldened by her response, he leaned forward and pressed his lips to hers. He wasn’t sure what kissing her would be like, but the reality was far, far better than he ever could’ve anticipated. For someone so uptight and critical, her lips were soft and inviting. She molded to him without an ounce of tension in her body. She seemed to welcome his touch, even groaning softly as his free hand stroked the long line of her neck.
It was the sound that jerked him back to reality. What was he doing? She might be beautiful, but she was a total pain in the ass. She was the kind of high-maintenance woman who expected a kiss to lead to something more official and that was not at all what he was interested in. He just wanted to blow off some of their aggression in a more pleasurable fashion.
He abruptly pulled back. When their lips parted, they stayed still and close, the heat of their bodies together making the air warm around them. He could smell the scent of her skin when they were this close. It wasn’t a harsh perfume, but something soft, almost like lavender-scented soap or lotion. He imagined she had a very intensive nightly ritual with expensive French skin creams. Her skin was so soft and supple, he could almost imagine what it would be like to massage a scented cream into it.
“What was that?” she asked softly.
“A kiss.”
