“We could do the small stuff ourselves?” Rey perked up.
“Yup.”
He beamed. “Can we? I know it’s probably like hours and hours of doing the same thing over and over again, but I think I’d like it a lot.”
As much as I hated doing anything tiny with my sausage fingers, I realized I would’ve given him anything.
“Sure. Let’s plan what we’re making.”
“Yay!”
* * * *
Lake didn’t do anything in half measures. When I said we needed an industrial size fridge for the party prep, he rented us one and had it parked it behind the office so it would be close to the house.
Five days before the reopening where Lake would officially appear as the owner of Twin Star for the first time, Rey and I made practice batches of our three savory and two sweet appetizers.
Everyone enjoyed them enough that the next day we started on the job of organizing everything we needed and making a step by step plan to optimize the process.
“I still can’t get over the fact that I’ve been lied to all my life,” Rey said as he did a final, final check.
I chuckled. “What can I say, we should blame the French.”
Ben stepped inside with a stack of pizza boxes just in time to hear me. “Is Rey still upset that it’s not shoe pastry?” He grinned as he took the boxes to the dining tables.
“What even is this C-H-O-U-X thing? Huh?” Rey grumped, but I could see he was smiling.
“Choux pastry.” I smirked when he shot me the finger.
“Pizza’s here!” he yelled loud enough to make me jump. He stuck out his tongue and took the pile of plates to the table.
I grabbed the pitcher of water and glasses, and soon we were stuffing our faces with pizza.
“You know, I hate that the kittens are gone to their new homes, but can you picture having them here while we start working tomorrow?” Rey asked between slices.
“Appetizers with a side of cat hair,” River murmured.
“Paw prints on profiteroles,” Theo added.
“I love it when you alliterate, babe,” Lake cooed, making everyone chuckle.
* * * *
I had a feeling Rey’s work ethic was insane, but I hadn’t counted on having to manually remove him from the kitchen on both nights before the party.
“But I could fill a few more!” he whined as I grabbed him by the waist and moved him toward the stairs.
“Yes, but you also need to sleep tonight so you’re awake enough tomorrow when we need to make more of stuff that we’ll inevitably run out of. Why do you think we made so many profiteroles to begin with?”
He whined but turned to go up the stairs. I resisted the urge of slapping his ass. Barely.
* * * *
During our prepwork and the actual baking and cooking, I’d learned a lot about Rey. He was meticulous and while he was still new enough to cooking that he didn’t have much flexibility and freaked out easily, he had the brain for it.
He enjoyed the process, which was often the thing that started to tire me the most. Some people could chop veggies for over a decade and still not be tired of doing it, but I wasn’t one of those people.
Meanwhile there was Rey who listened to instructions and tried his best to do exactly as I taught him. Hell, he’d even dug out a brand-new notebook to write down every step of every item we made.
