Chapter Fifteen
The lunch rush had been manageable, which meant Raj was relaxed enough to hum under his breath while he chopped coriander.
Ben leaned against the stainless-steel prep counter, pretending to check a delivery docket but mostly watching Raj work.
The man moved like a conductor, every knife stroke precise, every pot stir perfectly timed.
The kitchen was basically his orchestra pit.
Ben had been there nearly eight weeks now, and Raj was still something of an enigma. Stern, sometimes abrupt, but the staff clearly adored him. Even Franco—whose default mode with authority figures seemed to be playful provocation—lowered his volume by at least one notch when Raj was around.
“So,” Raj said without looking up, “how’s the inventory spreadsheet coming along?”
Ben blinked. “Fine. Just fine.”
“Mm-hm. That’s something you say when you haven’t touched it since yesterday.”
Ben narrowed his eyes. “Do you have cameras in my flat?”
Raj smirked but didn’t answer, sliding chopped coriander into a small ramekin .
A comfortable silence stretched between them, and then Ben noticed something. Under Raj’s cutting board was a scrap of lined notebook paper, the corner peeking out as if it was trying to escape.
“You’re hiding something,” Ben said, nodding toward it.
Raj’s shoulders went stiff. “It’s nothing.”
“‘Nothing’ is exactly what people say before it turns out to be something.”
Raj sighed, clearly debating whether to ignore him. Then, with the air of a man accepting inevitable defeat, he slid the paper free and held it out to Ben.
It was a drawing—a very, very bad drawing, a child’s attempt at a three-layer cake, complete with crooked candles. In spidery block letters beneath it was written Happy Birthday Uncle Raj!
“Arun’s great niece,” Raj said quickly. “She’s six. She insists I learn how to make a proper cake before her next birthday. Apparently, my last attempt was ‘structurally unsound.’”
Ben bit back a laugh. “She said that?”
Raj snorted. “Said it? She gave me notes. She’s a precocious tyrant.” There was unmistakable fondness in his voice, however. “And she also has no idea what she’s asking for. I can do a banquet for fifty people without breaking a sweat, but baking? I may as well be trying to land a plane.”
Ben chuckled. Okay, this was new. The man who commanded the kitchen like a general, brought to his knees by sponge cake. “So what’s the plan? Trial runs?”
Raj hesitated. “Arun says I should ask Franco to help. But that would mean admitting defeat, and…” He gestured vaguely with his chef’s knife.
Ben grinned. “We could do it here after hours. No one has to know.”
Raj raised his eyebrows. “You’d help?”
“Sure,” Ben said with a shrug. “But I give you fair warning—I’m more of an eater than a baker.”
Raj’s laugh was short but genuine, and for a moment, Ben caught a glimpse of the man beneath the head chef armour: family-oriented, warm, proud, maybe a little too hard on himself, but fiercely loyal to the people he loved.
The oven timer dinged somewhere behind them. Raj turned back to his station, the moment neatly filed away, but Ben carried it with him for the rest of the day.
It’s the one culinary skill that utterly defeats him, but because the request came from someone he loves, he’s determined to fix it.
The restaurant had been closed for two hours, when it became obvious the weather had put off a lot of potential customers. The front blinds were down, and the kitchen unusually quiet: only Raj and Ben were left, and Franco was upstairs on his laptop, claiming to be busy doing… something.
Exactly what occupied him was a mystery Ben was dying to solve, but right then he faced a more important task. He rolled up his sleeves, surveyed the counter full of flour, sugar, and eggs, and wondered if he’d made a mistake agreeing to this.
Raj stood beside him, his arms crossed, his expression somewhere between focus and mild dread. “We follow the recipe exactly,” he declared. “No improvising. No substitutions.”
Ben smirked. “You’re talking as if I’m the wildcard here.”
“You are,” Raj replied without missing a beat, and handed him a whisk.
They started well enough: flour measured, sugar poured, eggs cracked with only minimal shell casualties. But somewhere between “cream the butter” and “fold in gently,” things went sideways.
The batter looked suspiciously lumpy.
“Is it supposed to look like that?” Ben asked.
Raj peered into the bowl, frowning. “No. This looks like—” He broke off, muttering something in a foreign language that Ben suspected wasn’t complimentary.
Ben couldn’t help grinning. “Well, maybe it’s rustic.”
“It’s not rustic. It’s wrong.” Raj ran a hand over his face, sighing. “ This is why I hate baking. Cooking, you taste and adjust. Baking is like committing to a relationship before the second date.”
That hit Ben harder than he expected, but he hid it by pouring the batter into a prepared tin. “Maybe you just need more practice.”
They slid it into the oven, then leaned against the counter while it baked, the kitchen slowly filling with a sweet scent.
Well, it smells okay.
Making chocolate icing proved incident-free, and Ben resisted the urge to dip his finger into the dark, glossy mixture.
When the timer finally pinged, they pulled out the tin to reveal… something. A sunken, slightly scorched lump of something.
Raj stared at it, deadpan. “I can already hear her. She’s going to call it structurally unsound again.”
Ben laughed, the sound echoing in the empty kitchen. “Maybe we get Franco to make the next one. You can ‘supervise.’”
Raj gave him a sideways look. “Oh yes, I’m sure he’d love that. And I’m sure he’d keep the teasing to a minimum.” He pulled his phone from his pocket.
“What are you looking for?”
Raj held his phone up, and Ben read aloud 10 boxed cake mix hacks to make cake mix taste better. He let out a gasp. “You’re going to cheat ?”
Raj’s eyes gleamed. “What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.”
Ben caught the sound of footsteps on the stairs, then the door creaked open, and as if they’d summoned him, Franco’s voice floated in. “What’s going on in here?” There was a messenger bag slung over one shoulder.
Raj groaned. “Perfect timing.”
Franco lowered the bag to the floor, then leaned on the counter, his gaze flicking between the sad cake and Ben’s flour-dusted shirt. “Ohhh,” he said slowly, his lips curling into a gleeful smile. “This is… domestic. I like it.”
Raj unfastened his apron, tossed it into the basket along with the towels and other aprons, and grabbed his hoodie from its hook next to the back door. “Okay, I’m done. You can deal with him.”
“But you don’t have a cake,” Ben observed. “Well, you do, but it’s—”
Raj picked up the burnt offering and tossed it into the trash. He rolled his eyes. “Then I’ll buy one.” And with that, he covered his head and stepped out into the wet night.
Leaving Ben to endure the inevitable barrage of Franco’s smirking commentary.
The kitchen felt smaller with just the two of them. The rain outside battered the windows, the sound competing with the hum of the fridge. Franco leaned against the counter as though he owned it, his elbow propped, chin in hand, his gaze fixed on Ben with infuriating laziness.
“You know,” he drawled, his eyes glinting, “if you were trying to impress me, this is one hell of a way to go about it.”
Ben folded his arms, trying for stern and landing somewhere closer to flustered. “This isn’t about impressing anyone. It was more a case of… team bonding.”
“Mm-hm.” Franco’s gaze dropped to the streak of batter on Ben’s forearm. His mouth curved into a smirk. “Funny. Looks more like foreplay.”
Ben’s pulse skipped. “It’s cake batter.”
“I know.” Franco winked, then pushed himself off the counter, slow and deliberate, until Ben could smell him, espresso and aftershave, warm skin under it all.
His eyes trailed down Ben’s rolled sleeves, the streak of flour at his collarbone, the haphazard cake in the trash, the bowl of icing.
His grin sharpened. “Still hot, though. You—here—making something from scratch? I gotta say, that’s really doing it for me. ”
Before Ben could retort, Franco dipped a finger into the bowl of icing and held it up between them, coated and glistening. “Taste test?”
Ben had every intention of brushing him off, but then Franco sucked the icing off his own finger with a smirk, and Ben’s temperature went from cool to raging inferno.
“Goddamn it,” he muttered, and pulled him in.
Franco’s laugh caught in his throat as Ben kissed him hard and hungry, tasting sugar and chocolate and something darker underneath. Franco melted into it in a heartbeat, pressing close, one hand curling into Ben’s shirt, the other fumbling blindly until the mixing spoon clattered to the floor.
They broke apart, breathless, only for Franco to swipe another fingerful of icing, this time smearing it along Ben’s jaw. “Messy,” he teased, before licking it off with obscene slowness.
Ben groaned. “You’re impossible.”
And hot. Don’t forget hot.
“And you like it,” Franco shot back, his voice rough now, need lacing through his playful words.
He slid his hand under Ben’s shirt, flour-dusted fingers skating over his stomach as Ben shoved him back against the counter.
The cake bowl wobbled dangerously, forgotten, as Franco’s laugh turned into a gasp.
Whatever batter had been left in there streaked the counter, and a handprint bloomed on Ben’s shoulder. Franco licked sugar from his skin as if he’d been waiting years to do it, reckless and insistent, while Ben gripped Franco’s hips hard enough to bruise them.
Neither of them was joking. Both were past pretending.
The bowl of chocolate icing didn’t stand a chance.