She makes a face that insinuates my lack of cookies is proof I’m a liar.
An idea springs to mind, something that will keep her here for at least another hour. I’m not going to dwell on why I’m so eager for her to stay. “Do you make cookies?” I ask.
She snorts. “Not if I can help it. That’s what bakeries are for.”
So my bake-off idea is a bust, but I’m good at thinking on my feet. “Okay, then I’ll teach you how.”
Her brows lift. “You’re going to teach me how to make cookies?”
“Not just any cookies—the best chocolate chip cookies in the world. It was my mother’s recipe.”
“You really make cookies?” she asks in disbelief. “I thought you were fucking with me.”
“I don’t know why you keep making it sound like I found the cure for cancer. They’re cookies, for God’s sake. It’s not rocket science.”
“You need to make up your mind,” she says. “Are you curing cancer or building rockets?”
I laugh and get to my feet. “Poke fun all you want, but I’m going to teach you how to make chocolate chip cookies.” I give her a serious look. “But fair warning: if you try selling my mother’s super-secret recipe to Keebler or Oreo, I’ll be forced to sue.”
She bursts out laughing. “Somehow I think Oreo is doing just fine without your mother’s recipe.”
I press my lips together. “You never know.”
She lifts her hands in surrender. “Fine. I swear not to sell it to Keebler or Oreo, but the rest…” She shrugs. “Everywhere else is fair game.”
“I suppose that will have to do.”
We clean up the plates and load them into the dishwasher, then I pull out the ingredients for the cookies. She seems surprised to learn that one of the secret ingredients is browned butter. “Ooh, fancy,” are her exact words. While I prepare it on the stove, I have her measure out the dry ingredients, and after I remove the butter from the burner to cool, I pull out the handheld mixer and ask her to add the eggs and beat the mixture.
She looks victorious when she gets the beaters locked in, but she immediately sticks them into the bowl and turns it on full power.
Flour and sugar fly everywhere, covering both of us, as well as the counters and the floor.
Holly shrieks, “Fuck,” and drops the mixer into the bowl, sending more of the contents flying. Flour gets into my eyes, and I blink to see, reaching out to find the handle so I can turn it off. Instead, I find the power cord and yank it.
The mixer jumps out of the bowl onto the counter right before it turns off, and my eyes clear. Everything in the kitchen is covered in white powder, including Holly’s hair, face, and clothes.
Her eyes are wide, and we stare at each other for a second before her mouth twists to the side. “There’s a reason I don’t bake.”
Laughing, I reach for her, as though it’s the most natural thing in the world.
She backs up and presses her butt into the counter. “Since the cookies are a bust, what are we going to do for dessert now?”
I close the distance between us, bracing my hands on the counter on either side of her. “I’m sure we can think of something.”
Her brow lifts as her eyes sparkle. “Is this what you planned all along? Get me to fling flour and sugar everywhere so you could get me to strip off my clothes again?”
I press my body against the length of her, my face inches from hers. “Nah, but I’m just good at thinking on the fly. All those years of being up to no good in high school paid off. You have no idea how many times I didn’t get caught doing things because I could think fast.”
“I believe it,” she says in a whisper.
I hold her gaze. “What are you going to do to make up for this?” I ask in mock seriousness.
“Clean up?” she asks with a smirk, but she’s breathless, and there’s an undercurrent of excitement running beneath her words.
“That too,” I say, my voice dropping an octave. “But I had something else in mind first.” I kiss her, soft and exploring, and her tongue joins mine as she wraps her arms around my neck. She tastes like sugar and flour, and something deeper I can’t name.
Her core presses against my growing erection, and a surge of heat rushes through me. It takes everything in me not to rip off her dress and fuck her right there, in the middle of all the spilled flour and sugar.
