Chapter Three #3
“Because I thought they might actually be brilliant, and I had to know. I made those strawberry raspberry tarts that everyone loved so much eight times before I was happy with them.” He gave a careless shrug.
Evan realized that Miles really did not care how long something took before he declared it finished. In a terrible premonition, he could see blown budgets, billowing grocery bills, and an intractable chef whose perfectionism somehow eclipsed Evan’s own.
It was not a pretty picture of the future.
Even if Evan had been inclined to let Miles take over and control Pastry by Miles, he couldn’t let it happen because Miles wasn’t just fooling around in his own kitchen.
There was a lot more on the line now, including, Evan thought with a mental shudder, his job.
“How long are they going to bake for?” Evan asked, eyeing the filling cookie sheet with trepidation. If these weren’t outstanding, they were going to have to go through this process as many times as Miles wanted until he was satisfied.
“Ten minutes, give or take,” Miles said.
Evan scribbled that number down, next to the list of ingredients Miles had used. Miles might be lackadaisical about measurements, but the point of this show was to make what he did accessible to the regular viewer. That meant recipes—proven, tested, reliable recipes—that accompanied each video.
“Did you just write that down?”
Evan glanced up at Miles’ incredulous voice. “Of course I wrote it down. You might not be measuring, but we need to provide a recipe for the cookies to everyone who watches the video.”
Miles wiped his hands deliberately on the towel he’d draped across his shoulder.
Evan, in a moment of unbelievably weak hormones, thought it made him look like a romantically temperamental chef.
Delete the romantic part of that, Evan thought to himself morosely, and braced himself for another round of, “I’m a big fancy chef and I know better than you do because I took a class on how to chop an onion. ”
“I didn’t realize we were doing that,” Miles said.
Evan couldn’t help but explode. “Of course we’re doing that,” Evan ground out. “How do you think this site makes the money to pay you? Hits. And you get hits by directing people to the recipe and the site, where we sell ads that pay for all of this.”
Miles rolled his eyes. “I’m not an idiot.”
The problem was Evan had a temper. A temper that he’d spend a lifetime hiding and controlling and stuffing back into its little box, but a temper nonetheless. And Miles was the most tempting target for it that Evan had run across in a long time.
“Then don’t behave like one,” he snapped, all too aware that Miles’ laid-back, infuriating, patronizing personality was breaking him, a little bit at a time.
Evan did not like being broken. He’d learned to assert control over himself because he didn’t always have control over his environment, and Miles, with his annoyingly good looks and bullshit attitude, was taking him right back to a time Evan never wanted to revisit.
Miles didn’t say a word, merely turned back towards the counter and began piling dishes into the sink.
Evan returned to his notebook and scribbled out the line he’d written about compromise.
There was going to be no compromise. He would prove to Miles, one day at a time, that he was the one who was in charge of this show, and it was Miles’ job to develop the recipes in a reasonable timeframe, and then stand in front of the camera and charm the women of the world into attempting his recipes.
It would happen because Evan had never failed in his life and he wasn’t about to start now. If that meant he had to become an asshole to meet Miles’ asshole, and forever ditch the hope that something could have grown between them, so be it.
Miles ran some hot water over the dishes in the sink as the first batch of cookies baked, and then began to re-assemble the ingredients for a new batch.
He hadn’t tasted the first ones yet, because they weren’t out of the oven, but he didn’t need to.
He’d never made a recipe that couldn’t be further perfected.
And Evan could just pry his head out of that exasperatingly cute ass and get with the program.
Ever since marching the two of them into the kitchen, he’d been making noise about compromise, but Miles knew one thing for sure—Evan had never compromised in his life, and he wasn’t about to start now.
The sour-milk look on his face after Miles had confessed to redoing the strawberry raspberry tarts told him everything he needed to know.
There was no way Evan was going to let him be true either to his vision or his training.
And sharing recipes! Miles didn’t feel comfortable with that at all.
The point of Pastry by Miles had never been to make the food accessible to anyone.
It had been to express his point of view.
Having to dumb down his processes so the common person could follow along was not something that Miles was interested in doing.
The alarm on the oven beeped, and Miles sauntered off to take a look.
The cookies were baking nicely, looking fluffy and full in the middles, and just browning around the outside.
He opened the door, pressed on one lightly, and decided it could use another minute.
He wanted a firm, cake-y cookie on the inside, but with crisp outer edges.
Miles didn’t have to look over his shoulder to know that Evan was writing this all down. He could hear his pen scratching across the pages as if he was doing it right next to his ear. He put in another thirty seconds, just to fuck with him.
He fully expected Evan to loudly and emphatically inquire what good thirty seconds of oven time would accomplish (almost nothing) but his section of the kitchen remained quiet. Miles knew it wouldn’t last.
Pulling the cookies out of the oven, he slid them across the counter, and went to grab a spatula and a cooling rack in the equipment pantry. Returning, he saw Evan had moved closer, bending over the pan, finger outstretched, as if he was going to duplicate Miles’ movement from earlier.
“Don’t touch those,” Miles growled. “They’re not cool yet.”
“You touched them,” Evan said, straightening, and looking him right in the eye. Always challenging. Miles wondered if he was even capable of anything else. He had a sudden, blinding idea that sex with him would be fantastic. All that drive and passion and certainness focused on him.
“Yeah, but I knew what I was doing. You don’t.
” Miles acted casual, like he wasn’t reeling from the idea of sex and Evan.
Frankly, he probably would have thought of it before now, if they hadn’t fought from almost the first moment.
Miles knew he was attracted to Evan; it had only been a matter of time before he considered it.
“You’ve made that abundantly clear,” Evan sniffed.
“Then don’t touch if you don’t know,” Miles said, trying to keep his temper and rapidly failing.
Evan threw his hands up. “They’re just cookies,” he said.
“Yeah, and you’ve made it pretty damn obvious that I have a limited number of attempts to get them right. So,” he said, his voice growing hard around the edges, “don’t touch.”
“For the record,” Evan said, returning to his pad and pen, “you’re an ass.”
Miles knew he really wasn’t. Except maybe he was being one now, just a tiny bit. And only because if he didn’t assert firm boundaries now, he was going to lose the thing that mattered most to a professional chef: his reputation.
He shoved the spatula under a cookie and transported it to the cooling rack. He repeated this with the rest of the cookies, and then went back to the mixer. “You’re making a new batch before you even taste these?” Evan asked incredulously.
Miles refused to even look up from what he was doing. Evan was just trying to get under his skin—trying and unfortunately succeeding.
“Actually,” Evan continued, and there was the clear munching sound of a cookie being eaten, “these are actually pretty good.”
Miles turned around, to see Evan’s mouth full of chewed cookie. “I told you not to touch.”
“You did,” Evan said. “I’m terrible at rules. Sorry.” He didn’t sound apologetic at all.
Miles reached over, and grabbed a cookie himself, taking an experimental bite.
“I thought you didn’t like sweets,” he said.
“I don’t,” Evan said. “These don’t exactly make me change my mind, but they’re not bad.”
They were more than “not bad,” in Miles’ expert opinion.
They had good crumb, good texture, a solid amount of peanut butter taste, and the dark chocolate was an interesting juxtaposition with the richness of the batter.
He made a note to add more salt next time, and to change to semi-sweet chocolate.
It had been a decent first try, but he could make better cookies than this.