Instead, he just shakes his head and continues his retreat, the door swinging shut behind him with a definitive click.
I’m left alone in my kitchen, surrounded by the lingering smell of smoke, burnt sugar, and buttery bread. I glance at the sink, where my failed donuts sit like sad, charred hockey pucks.
“Well,” I tell them, “at least something good came out of this disaster.”
Because now I know two important things: Thorne likes my bread, and somewhere under all that grump is a man who can be tempted by food.
I turn back to my counter, rolling up my sleeves. The leche flan donuts were a bust, but I’ve got four hours before opening, a kitchen full of ingredients, and the satisfaction of watching a grumpy Minotaur enjoy my baking.
Not a bad morning after all.
I reach for my flour, only to pause as a thought hits me. Maybe Thorne would prefer something less caramel-adjacent for my next attempt. Something with cinnamon, perhaps? Everyone loves cinnamon. Even brooding landlords with magnificent horns and permanent scowls.
I pull out my recipe book, flipping to a dog-eared page. Cinnamon churro muffins. Perfect.
“Don’t worry,” I tell my oven, patting it gently. “We’ll get it right this time.”
The oven makes another suspicious click.
I narrow my eyes at it. “Don’t you dare. We’re in this together.”
Somewhere upstairs, I can imagine Thorne pacing in his apartment, wondering if the fire department should be on standby. The thought makes me smile.
Let him worry. The next thing he tastes is going to knock his horns off.
I turn the dial on the oven, ready for round two. This bakery might be called Moist, but I’m determined to make sure that, at least for today, nothing else in it catches fire.
CHAPTER 2
thorne
DOUGH OR DIE
This woman is going to kill me.
Not in the normal ways people die—sword through the gut, a battle lost, the slow decay of age.
No. Lena Reyes is going to set my damn building on fire, give me an aneurysm, or worse.
Make me like her.
I can still taste the pandesal she shoved at me. Warm. Buttery. Soft as a damn cloud. And now, the scent of her bakery is stuck in my skull—fresh bread, melted sugar, and a whisper of something floral beneath it all. Something her.
I scowl at my own thoughts, dragging a rough hand down my face as I stomp back into my workshop. The scent of wood shavings and sawdust does its best to ground me, but it’s too late.
My kitchen smells like her damn bread.
I groan and yank open my fridge, looking for anything to erase the lingering taste of indulgence. I grab the nearest bottle of protein shake—unflavored, no sugar, pure suffering—and down it in three gulps, willing the richness of her baking off my tongue.
It doesn’t work. Because I can still hear her voice.
“See? I make good things too. Not just smoke hazards.”
I grit my teeth and flex my fingers, fighting the phantom sensation of that stupid, perfect pandesal in my hand. Small, warm, the edges brushing my fingertips as she shoved it at me like an offering.
I shouldn’t have taken it. I should have walked away.
Instead, I bit into the softest, most insultingly perfect piece of bread I’ve ever had in my life. And I must have reacted, because I saw the glint in her eyes.
