“It’s a good thing I chopped extra with the knife skills you taught me.” Ava pointed toward a bowl of onions ready for the skillet. He tossed them in the pan before setting it on the burner.
Zach’s gaze lingered on Ava as she chopped carrots, the rhythmic motion mesmerizing. A sharp sting jolted him back—heat seared his palm. Shoot. He yanked his hand away, barely catching the pan before it clattered to the ground. When had he let his hand drift so close to the burner? With Ava in the kitchen, it was hard to focus—the swish of her high ponytail, her deft fingers chopping the vegetables, and her humming were all competing for attention. He kept making rookie mistakes.
Right. Get back on track. After setting the onions aside to cool, he checked his recipe card. “Time to work on the dough.” Mixing up a rough pastry dough wouldn’t take too much concentration. He could practically do it in his sleep. Some days on the job he almost had.
“I’ll just move these things out of the way.” Ava cleared a spot on the workspace that faced the aisle. Just beyond the white folding table, the crowd milled about, watching the contestants as they worked.
The judges had come past earlier too. Paul Hawkeye and Anne Green were joined by Martha Kelley for this round of the competition. Was it his imagination, or had Paul been cooler toward him than he had in the past? His smile had definitely been more coldly polite than the warmth he’d shown earlier. He must have made that call to Chef Louie after all.
Fine. He still could win over Anne Green. She’d liked his appetizer yesterday. She’d probably appreciate the Michigan staple they were making today.
If he could land a job in her kitchen, he could get out from under Chef Louie’s thumb and finally have the freedom to do some real cooking. Maybe he could even convince Ava to move to the West Coast. But being so far from his family would be difficult now that they were finding their way back to each other.
No time for those problems now.
Zach grabbed flour, salt, lard, and butter, then moved up next to Ava. She was jotting some things down in a notebook but put it aside as he joined her.
“What do you want me to do?” Ava looked at the task list.
“If you could start the roux for the sauce, I’ll get this dough working.”
“The roux—are you sure?” Ava’s eyes clouded. “I only just learned how to do that. I don’t know?—”
He put his hand on her arm. “You’ll be fine. I watched you demonstrate it several times in class to our students. I’m confident you can do it.”
She put on a smile, but it wavered. “Okay.”
“Seriously, you’ll be fine. Here.” He scooped out the amount of flour she would need for the roux and dumped it into a clean bowl. “Remember, it’s one part butter to one part flour.”
She frowned and turned away. Her whispered words floated to him. “One part to one part.”
His mouth turned up on one side. Pretty soon her humming started up again, and he began to hum along. His shoulders relaxed. The day was smoothing out like the dough he was mixing.
“Sweet Caroline,” Ava belted out.
“Bah, bah, bah,” he sang along. He was locked in now. Back in the sync they had discovered during the cooking class.
Ava sang the next line in the popular song.
He glanced behind him. Ava was swaying to the music as she whisked the roux.
Someone in the crowd sang out the next part of the song.
Twenty or thirty people formed a half circle around their space. A singsong murmur rippled through the crowd as they picked up the next lyrics. Suddenly his parents were in front of him among the crowd.
“Hands, touching hands…” Those weren’t the next lyrics, but okay.
“Reaching out…” He tapped his foot in time, keeping his eyes on the dough he was kneading in time to the music, not daring to look at his mom and dad. From this viewpoint, however, a small glance upward revealed his parents holding hands.
What?
Maybe it was just in response to the song. That must be it. Not an indication of anything else. A quick glance to either side showed many people holding hands and swaying.
Shoot, he’d lost track of how many turns he’d given the bread dough. Between his attraction to Ava and now his parents’ complicated relationship…
The crowd shouted the nonsense line.
“So good! So good!” His dad sang out.
