Chapter Six #3
How had Evan ever thought he was cold and unfriendly?
The man could melt chocolate at a hundred paces.
Evan wanted to believe it had something to do with their unspoken attraction, but he knew better.
It didn’t have anything to do with him. Not really.
It was all about who was going to be in control, and Miles just wanted it that bad.
Badly enough to bother charming Evan, when, if Miles had been paying attention at all, Evan had been charmed—despite his best intentions—from day one. From the first moment he’d watched a Pastry by Miles episode, if he was being painfully honest.
“Well, what does your recipe say?” It was stupid to flirt back, but Miles’ charm made it too easy.
“Soft,” Miles murmured, easing closer, and god, yes, that was his finger, brushing casually yet purposefully against Evan’s arm. He was probably touching more flour than skin, but even that teasing touch was enough to shoot lightning up his nerves.
It nearly killed him, but Evan took a step away, disguising his need to put some breathing room in between him and the gorgeous man next to him by grabbing a thin flexible spatula from the pile of equipment Miles had set out earlier.
“Just plop it in?” Evan asked and even he was impressed by how cool he sounded when the reality was so much different.
Miles still smiled though, like he knew the truth, and Evan hiding it only added an extra edge of anticipation. “Yep, right in the bowl. And then we get to the fun part.”
Evan was almost afraid to ask what the fun part was. But he did because he needed to have some kind of plan of how to resist Miles going forward. “What’s that?”
“You mix it up.” Miles eyed the spatula in Evan’s hand. “And not with that.”
“With my hands?” Evan squeaked. “Isn’t that unsanitary?”
“Not if you wash them first,” Miles said.
Evan did, spending a lot of time unnecessarily scrubbing, like a dose of water and soap could extinguish the fire that Miles kept trying to start.
“You’re trying to clean them, not take the skin off,” Miles pointed out, leaning over near the sink, eyes bright with amusement. Evan kept telling himself that Miles couldn’t read his mind or understand why he was doing anything, but it was getting tougher to believe it.
“Just want to make sure they’re clean of laptop cooties before I shove them in the bowl,” Evan retorted, reaching for the paper towels next to the sink.
“But laptop cooties are my favorite,” Miles said, his lips forming a crooked, lopsided smile and his eyes crinkling.
This was the most blatant lie Miles had told him yet, and it had the opposite effect than he’d probably anticipated. Instead of enchanted, Evan felt cold and clammy, like he’d just sobered up.
No matter how much he liked Miles—and desperately wanted Miles to like him back—the truth was Miles was only trying to charm him so he could have the upper hand. Miles thought the stuff Evan did with his laptop was pointless and a waste of time.
“How should I mix this?” This time it was easy for Evan to drag his attention back to the task. He should have been happier, but he wasn’t.
Miles’ expression was perplexed. “Mix . . . it?”
“Never mind,” Evan huffed. “I’ll figure it out.” He stuck his hands in and started swirling the ingredients together. Way too quickly his fingers were caked with the sticky flour mixture.
“Wait,” Miles said and Evan hesitated, still fingers-deep in the gluey mass. “I think . . . I think maybe we need to approach this differently.”
Evan hoped the glare he shot the other man said pointedly that he had tried to ask ahead of time, and Miles hadn’t understood.
“I know, I know,” Miles murmured as he approached Evan, a little like he was trying to calm an upset dog, “it’ll be fine. We’ll figure it out.”
“I don’t think so,” Evan retorted. “I think we’re pretty fucked.
” His voice wobbled on the last word as Miles reached in and plucked out one of Evan’s hands.
Whenever Miles was in the kitchen, his own hands were always quick and efficient—certain.
Now, he took his time, carefully and thoroughly cleaning off the caked-on mass of sticky flour off each finger.
It couldn’t be impersonal, because there was so much touching—way too much touching for Evan’s peace of mind—but it felt even more intimate with Miles bent over his fingers, so meticulously making sure every bit of the “dough” was off, his lashes dark against his cheeks as he concentrated on the task.
“I’m sure . . . I’m sure I could manage,” Evan stuttered helplessly. He was caught. Literally. Metaphorically.
“Almost done,” Miles said, his soft voice still roughly hypnotic, pinning Evan in place even further. He could have moved. He could have protested—he should have protested. But the truth was he didn’t want to stop touching Miles, even if it didn’t mean what he wanted it to.
“Why don’t we start over?” Evan asked. “We’ve got lots of ingredients.”
“Because I was slow and you were too fast? There’s no reason to.
We can salvage this.” Miles glanced up, his gray eyes almost green in the light, and it was like he could see right through Evan and all his token protests.
Like he meant something else by his words.
Like maybe he was admitting he’d been too slow out of the gate and was just now catching up.
“There,” he finally said, releasing the second hand. The sticky mass was mostly gone, but Evan knew he needed to wash them off still. And then they needed to do whatever Miles came up with to salvage the half-mixed ingredients.
But he didn’t move, and neither did Miles, even though their hips had somehow aligned.
If they took a step closer, more than just their fingers would touch.
Evan had a sudden flash of memory: Miles crowding him close against the wall when they’d argued only a few days ago.
Then, he’d been hot with anger and the indignity of having Miles push him around.
Now, the anger had faded and all that remained was an indelible memory of Miles’ body against his.
And the memory was filled with a whole different kind of heat.
It was annoying that even when Miles was an ass, Evan somehow found him irresistible. Evan figured that must be a commentary on his poor taste in men. Nice men didn’t register; it was only when someone went out of their way to be a dick that he paid attention.
“I didn’t mean it,” Miles murmured, and that was the worst of all, because that was his doughy fingers brushing his cheek, and if he leaned in another few inches, they might be kissing.
The very last thing on earth that Evan wanted to discuss was the email, and he definitely didn’t want it to be used against him, especially not when it was only fair and equitable that Evan get to use it against Miles.
After all, it hadn’t been Evan who’d up and run away and then gotten drunk and written a nearly incoherent email filled with vague insults and even vaguer compliments.
The good news was it was the push Evan needed to pull away and put some space between them. He turned towards the sink and told himself that he imagined Miles’ disappointed face. “Tell me,” Evan said briskly, scrubbing with more cold water, “how do we fix it?”
“I don’t know, I’m trying,” Miles said, and there was too much raw honesty in his voice.
Evan looked up and his own was sharp in response. “I meant the dough.”
“Oh. The dough. Right.”
Evan ignored how sulky Miles sounded. Was that all he thought he needed to do to fix things between them? Some charming lines and some vague flirting? And a few moments where he considered kissing Evan again?
Yeah, no.
Miles had made Evan’s life hell since he’d showed up at Five Points, and then he’d gone out of his way to insult him.
Finishing up with his hands, Evan wet a paper towel and scrubbed at his face, sure that Miles’ fingers had left some traces of flour even though they’d only brushed his skin for a split second. It had been long enough.
When Evan returned to the workspace, Miles was staring into the bowl like it held all the mysteries of the universe. “I think if we mix with a spatula to get the mixture into a rough dough then we can knead it by hand.”
Evan picked up the spatula and gently, carefully mixed the dough until it came together into a ball. He wasn’t taking any more chances for Miles to ingratiate himself. Mistakes were an opportunity for Miles, and Evan wasn’t giving him any additional openings.
“That’s good,” Miles said. The murmured intimacy in his voice had lessened somewhat, and Evan was glad. It was exhausting to fight the attraction all the time. Sometimes he just wanted to get some stuff done without all the distraction.
Shoving his hands back into the dough, Evan copied Miles’ demonstrated kneading techniques until Miles pronounced it ready, and got another bowl out, to set the dough into. It went into the freezer to chill.
“What now?” Evan asked.
“Have you ever eaten a croissant?” Miles asked.
“Of course I have.” Evan tapped a foot impatiently. It felt like they’d wasted hours, even though it had only barely been one, if the clock on the far side of the kitchen wasn’t lying to him.
“Then you know about the flaky layers it has. We need to create that, and to do that, we use a sheet of cold butter, folded in between layers of dough. When the croissants bake, the butter evaporates and creates pockets of air in the dough.”
“Which makes it flaky.” This baking thing, Evan thought, was a lot more complicated than he’d realized. He re-thought what Miles had said. “A sheet of butter?”
Miles shrugged at Evan’s astonishment and pulled over a single sheet of waxed paper, on which was spread a thick even layer of butter. “I came in early and made this, and chilled it,” he said. “It needs to be very cold, or else it’ll all just melt into the dough. It’s like pie dough.”
When Evan continued to look at him blankly, Miles continued. “You know, like the pies you bake on Thanksgiving? You need cold fat mixed into the dough to prevent it from being tough.”
Evan knew what Miles was getting at, and while he had no intention of sharing just how far his Thanksgivings had been from family pie-making, he couldn’t exactly pretend like he knew what Miles was talking about.
“We always had store-bought,” Evan said, which was only partially a lie. He remembered years when he’d been fortunate and lucky to get a piece of store-bought pie. Homemade pie was a figment of his imagination, a dream that he’d never gotten to share.
“It’s the same concept,” Miles said. “The water in the butter or the lard evaporates in the heat of the oven, leaving the dough pocketed and airy. Here,” he handed a rolling pin to Evan, “let’s roll out the butter a little while the dough finishes chilling.”
Evan felt like he did a really good job getting the butter perfectly flat and even, as Miles grabbed the dough. Finally, his A-plus personality and perfectionist instincts were coming in handy in the kitchen.
The dough was far trickier to roll out. Miles kept tossing flour on the marble and insisting Evan flour his hands and the pin so many times that he was sure that flour had made it past the apron to his clothes beneath. Good thing he didn’t have any other meetings scheduled for today.
When Miles felt like he had the dough flattened enough, they worked together to carefully transport the butter from the wax paper to the dough rectangle. This time, Miles didn’t offer to lick the residual butter off his fingers, and Evan shouldn’t have been disappointed, but he was a little.
He certainly thought about offering to return the favor as Miles lifted one of his hands to his mouth for a surreptitious lick. But that would be insane and Evan prided himself on his sanity.
“Now, fold the sides of the dough over the butter, like a Christmas present.” Evan held his breath and waited for Miles to try the same thing he had with the Thanksgiving pies, but he didn’t. Which meant nobody else in the office had blabbed and Miles didn’t know yet. A small blessing.
“We’re done?” Evan asked hopefully after the folding was complete.
Miles shot him an incredulous look. “Not even close. The dough needs to be re-chilled, and then we’ll re-fold to make more layers. And then rinse and repeat.”
Jaw dropping, Evan stared incredulously at the man next to him. “How many rinse and repeats?”
“Four? We’ll see how it looks at four,” Miles said, piling up bowls together and walking over to the sink. “Pastry isn’t a race to see how fast you can get something on a plate.”
“Or in my stomach,” Evan grumbled. “Am I allowed to work at non-baking tasks in between layers?”
Miles waved a hand as he started running hot water in the dishes. “Whatever you want.”
Checking email usually didn’t fill Evan with quite so much excitement or anticipation, but he was so ready to get back to the familiar, he nearly forgot to take off his flour-dusted apron before venturing back to his cubicle to retrieve his laptop and his notes.
He could only imagine what the reactions would have been if he hadn’t detoured to quickly shed the ugly apron and brush off his clothes. He left the bow tie lying on the counter next to his notepad, and considered it a worthy sacrifice for a little bit of Miles’ trust.
The problem was that Miles wasn’t just after trust. That much was becoming very obvious, and even though it was difficult to imagine a world in which Evan could resist him forever, he still had to make a decision about giving in.
What would it mean? What would it look like? How could he make sure he maintained the upper hand while giving in?
Since he’d turned eighteen, Evan had been professionally ambitious and personally careful.
It was a combination that served him well until now, and he saw no reason to throw caution to the wind.
If he was going to let Miles—and himself, if he was being very honest—have their way, he needed to at least do it on his own terms, in his own way.
Laptop in hand, Evan swung by the restroom and when he was washing up, gave his face only the most perfunctory look over. Even with the briefest glance, his flushed cheeks and bright eyes gave away the story.
Miles evoked all sorts of emotions in him—frustration and annoyance and impatience, but also something warmer and more indefinable. Something he’d always avoided because he wasn’t sure he could control it, and until this moment, that had felt like the scariest risk he could have taken.
This time it felt scarier not to take it, like he didn’t know what he was missing out on if he let it pass him by.