Page 42 of Frosted Fakes

"My shoulders are relaxed."

"Your shoulders are up around your ears."

Julia huffed but made a visible effort to drop them. Her next push was marginally less aggressive.

"Better." Elliott reached over without thinking, adjusting Julia's grip on the dough. Their hands touched.

Julia went still.

So did Elliott.

It was nothing. Just fingers brushing. Flour-dusted skin against flour-dusted skin. The kind of incidental contact that happened constantly in kitchens. Elliott had touched hundreds of hands over hundreds of lessons with Milly.

None of them had made her feel like this.

Julia's hands were soft. Warm. Her fingers were slim and delicate. Her hands were soft and smooth and nothing at all like Elliott’s callused fingers.

Different. They were so different.

"Elliott?" Julia's voice was quiet.

Elliott realized she'd been standing there, frozen, her hand still covering Julia's. She could feel Julia's pulse beating against her palm, quick and light. She could feel her own breath coming harder, faster, could feel warmth welling up inside her. And… she didn’t want it to stop.

"The dough," Elliott said, her voice coming out rougher than intended. "You need to feel when it's ready. When it becomes smooth. Elastic."

She guided Julia's hands through the motion, trying to focus on the teaching and not on the warmth spreading up her arm. Push. Fold. Push. Fold. The rhythm was meditative, familiar, and yet nothing about this felt familiar at all.

"I think I'm getting it," Julia said softly.

"Maybe." Elliott should step back. She should absolutely step back. Instead, she stayed where she was, her front brushing Julia's back, watching Julia's hands work the dough with increasing confidence.

Julia turned her head slightly. They were close. Too close. Elliott could see the individual freckles scattered across Julia's nose, could count them if she wanted to. There were seven visible ones, plus two more that disappeared into her hairline.

Not that she was counting.

"You're good at this," Julia said. "Teaching, I mean. Patient."

"I'm not patient. I'm resigned."

Julia laughed, and Elliott felt it more than heard it, a vibration that seemed to travel through both of them. "That's very you."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Just that you pretend to be grumpy but you keep helping me anyway." Julia's smile was soft in the dim light. "You didn't have to do this. Any of it."

"We have a deal."

A deal that was infinitely more attractive with Julia’s warm spine pressed up against her. Elliott was finding it harder and harder to breathe.

Then Julia shifted her weight, her elbow catching the edge of the counter, and Elliott saw what was going to happen a split second before it did.

The stand mixer, Elliott's stand mixer, the one she'd saved for months to buy, the one she'd brought down because the bakery ones were just too big, wobbled, tipped, and crashed to the floor with a sickening crunch of metal and broken parts.

Silence.

Julia's hands flew to her mouth. "Oh God. Oh no. Elliott, I'm so sorry, I didn't even—"

Elliott stared at the mixer. The bowl had cracked clean in half. The beater attachment was bent at an angle that would never work again. The motor housing had a dent in it that suggested internal damage.