"Second layer."
Dash lifts it with both hands and sets it down so gently the buttercream beneath doesn't even dimple. His fingers pull back slow. Surgeon's precision from hands that crushed a brass rod forty-eight hours ago.
Third layer. Chocolate buttercream this time. The dark and light alternate. The visual contrast will carry the rustic aesthetic without any decoration.
Fourth layer. Vanilla. His hands lower it. My spatula follows immediately behind, catching the edges, smoothing the overflow.
We don't speak.
We don't need to.
He reads my movements the way he reads a battlefield. Anticipates. When I reach for the next bowl, it's already sliding toward me. When I need a layer lifted, his hands are underneath it before I turn my head. We build the cake in a rhythm that has no business existing between a pastry chef and a mercenary who met two days ago in a bar fight.
Fifth layer. Sixth. The cake climbs. A towering, gorgeous stack of alternating gold and chocolate, the thin smears of buttercream visible between each tier, the raw edges of sponge exposed and golden and perfect.
I step back.
My hands tremble. Adrenaline, heat exhaustion, the fact that I haven't eaten since yesterday. But the cake stands. Six layers. Fourteen inches tall. Rustic and elegant and completely, impossibly beautiful.
"Berries," I breathe. "I need the fresh berries for the top cascade. They should be in the walk-in cooler."
Dash wipes his forearm across his face. Flour streaks through the sweat, white against green, and chocolate buttercream smears across his collarbone where he leaned too close during the fourth layer. His eyes drop to me. I'm no better. Frosting on my neck. Flour in my hair. Sweat plastering my vintage dress to my spine.
He grabs my wrist. His grip is firm and warm and coated in powdered sugar. He walks me backward across the kitchen, past the ruined mixers, past the broadsword propped against the wall, past the pile of chocolate shrapnel, straight to the walk-in cooler door.
He pulls the handle.
Cold air hits my flushed skin like a wall of ice. Goosebumps erupt down my arms, my front, the backs of my knees. The cooler is dim, lit by a single blue bulb. Shelves of produceand dairy and, yes, three perfect flats of fresh raspberries and blackberries gleaming like jewels on the middle rack.
Dash steps in behind me.
The heavy door swings shut.
CHAPTER 12
DASH
The cooler door thumps shut behind me.
Blue light. Cold air. Her.
Magnolia stands between the berry flats and a stack of frozen butter crates, flour dusted across her collarbone, chocolate smeared along the curve of her neck, from three hours of relentless work. Her lips are parted. Her cheeks are flushed crimson beneath all that white powder.
My contract parameters are written on a blood-stained napkin in my vest pocket. Paragraph one, line three:Maintain professional distance at all times unless physical contact is necessary for the illusion.
The napkin can burn.
I close the distance in one stride. My hands find her waist and I lift her straight off the ground, pin her spine against the cold steel wall between the shelving units. A flat of raspberries wobbles.
"Dash." My name comes out of her in a cloud of white breath. The cold makes everything visible. Every exhale. Every gasp.
"Tell me to stop."
Her fingers curl into the buttercream-stained front of my shirt and pull. A button pings off a crate of frozen lemons.
Not stopping, then.
I crush my mouth against hers. She tastes like vanilla frosting and the espresso she drank two hours ago, bitter and sweet at the same time, and her tongue meets mine with the same ferocity she brought to that kitchen. No hesitation. No delicacy. She kisses like she bakes. Precise, aggressive, and completely unwilling to accept anything less than perfection.
