8. Nolan
8
NOLAN
“ O kay, don’t kill me, but which one’s the tablespoon again?”
Aiden’s voice, lilting and panicked, cut through the hubbub of the baking tent on Monday, and I suppressed a sigh. This was the tenth time in the past twenty minutes that he’d asked me a question during the challenge episode.
The way things were going, I would be lucky to get my pie in the oven at all. But he was determined to play up our supposed relationship, which apparently involved asking me questions every five seconds. And I, idiot that I was, had agreed to it.
I made sure I was smiling before I looked up and saw him holding a ring of measuring spoons, confusion painting his face. Jesus. How had this kid thought he could make it on a baking show? Why had he even wanted to audition?
It wasn’t like I was a champion baker or anything, but I’d actually practiced before coming down to Summersea. Aiden didn’t appear to know the difference between a knife and a fork, let alone different sizes of spoons.
“It’s the biggest one,” I told him. “That’s why it’s always written with a capital T.”
“Mmm, I do like ‘em big,” Aiden said, frowning down at the paper where he’d written his recipe. “But are you sure that’s how it’s written?”
“Well, when it’s abbreviated. Are you sure you wrote it right?” I set the dough for my crust down, praying it wouldn’t soften too much in the interim. “Here, let me see.”
I walked around to his workbench and stared in incomprehension at the sheet containing his recipe. It looked like a chicken trying to recreate hieroglyphics. Like a drunk five-year-old playing tic-tac-toe. I stared at Aiden in horror.
“You can read this?”
He flushed. “Just help me, please ? Without lecturing?”
His eyes flicked over my shoulder, and I realized there must be a camera on us. I sighed.
“Lecturing’s half the fun. What do I get out of it if I can’t do that?”
“My undying gratitude?” Aiden brushed the inside of my wrist with his fingertips, and my cock twitched, which was completely unfair. “Unless that’s not enough, in which case, I’m sure we can think of something else.”
He grinned at whoever was filming over my shoulder and it was my turn to flush. If this exchange ended up in the final cut, hopefully viewers would just think the heat of the oven was getting to me.
It would have helped if I could have kept my brain on the task at hand, and not continued flashing back to three days ago, when I’d had Aiden naked and panting in front of me. When he’d sunk to his knees and begged to—
Fuck. No, I was not going to think about that. It was one thing to convince the viewers that we were warming to each other. It was totally different to let my own brain run away with me. Aiden still annoyed the shit out of me, even if he was cute—or, fine, breathtaking—when he was naked. I needed to remember that.
“Okay.” I scanned his recipe again, and then the ingredients laid out on the counter. “Let’s see if we can get this sorted out. If I help you get your dough started, do you think you can do the apple filling on your own?”
Aiden wiggled his eyebrows. “Are you sure you don’t want to do the filling? I’m positive you’d be great at it.”
“Is everything that comes out of your mouth an innuendo?” I asked, measuring out the flour he would need.
“Mostly, yeah. To be honest, I’m better at taking things into my mouth. Though I guess you wouldn’t know that.”
He said that quietly enough that I didn’t think the camera could have caught it, but sweat still broke out across my body. He had no idea what he did to me. And I needed to keep it that way.
I made Aiden repeat the instructions back to me for finishing his dough, then returned to my workstation. It would be just my luck if I helped his bake go successfully, only to fuck up my own. I couldn’t focus on his pie anymore. Or on anything else of his, either.
Easier said than done, when his ass was right in front of me, looking so completely perfect any time I flicked my eyes up. Why couldn’t I keep it together around him? I’d been practically celibate for the last year, but I couldn’t spend more than five minutes alone with him before my body betrayed me.
Eventually, though, I lost myself in the flurry of activity in the tent, zoning out so much that it took Vivian saying my name three times before I noticed that she and Tanner were right in front of my workstation, Em standing a few feet away with a camera.
“So, Nolan, you look busy over here. What have you got for us today?” Vivian asked.
I looked up, smiled, and froze.
It was ridiculous. I knew the answer to her question. It wasn’t like she was trying to trip me up or anything. But as soon as I opened my mouth to speak, all the words in my brain evaporated.
“I—um—pie?” I said. I could feel my cheeks turning bright red.
Tanner laughed. “We kinda figured that part out, since we set the challenge. Are there any other details you’d like to share?”
Just tell them , I yelled at myself internally. But I couldn’t seem to make my brain work. How was I supposed to make myself likable when I couldn’t even remember how to talk?
Vivian took pity on me and gestured to a bottle on the counter. “So, I’m seeing apple cider vinegar here. Not a typical pie ingredient, I think most folks would agree. Will you be using that today?”
“Um, yeah, actually. It’s—I’m—that is—I’m making a vinegar pie.”
All I had to do was describe my pie, not recite The Iliad . Why was this so hard?
“Vinegar pie?” Tanner said. “That sounds—I don’t even know what that sounds like. Have you ever heard of that, Viv?”
Vivian nodded. “I have, and it can be quite good. But it’s a tricky recipe to get right. What made you think of that, Nolan?”
“He’s showing off.”
Aiden’s voice cut through the din of the tent. I looked up to see that he’d turned around and was smiling at Tanner and Vivian.
“Nolan was helping me decide what to bake today, and we were going through this list of classic pies, and I saw that one and thought it looked gross. So he decided to prove me wrong.”
“Really?” Tanner sounded intrigued. “Is that what happened, Nolan?”
Not exactly, but I was grateful enough to Aiden for jumping in and saving me that I figured I could go with it. I flashed him a smile that I hoped conveyed my thanks.
“I’m not trying to prove you wrong, I’m trying to expand your horizons.”
Aiden grinned. “Oh, you can expand me any time you want. Stretch me all the way out.”
Tanner’s eyes went wide, and Vivian snorted. I gave Em and the camera a silent plea for help.
“So,” Vivian said to Aiden when she’d recovered, “it sounds like you got a little assistance from a friend this weekend. Does that mean we can expect better results from you this time around?”
Aiden laughed. “Definitely. But it also means that if anything goes wrong, it’s Nolan’s fault, not mine.”
“Hey!” I objected. “No fair. I have to be responsible for two pies, and you don’t have to be responsible for any?”
Aiden shrugged. “Sorry, I don’t make the rules.”
“You sure like to take advantage of them,” I grumbled.
“Aw, Nolan. Do you want to take advantage of something too?”
“That’s not—”
“Because let me offer myself up, if that’s the case. You can take all kinds of advantage of me.”
I looked at Vivian. “Do you think it’s any use, reminding him that this is a family program?”
She laughed. “Probably a lost cause.”
Still, I wasn’t really complaining. I didn’t know what it was about Aiden, but when I was talking to him, I was way less nervous about the cameras all around us. Maybe it was just because he annoyed me so much, there wasn’t room for any other emotion.
Eventually, Vivian and Tanner moved on, and I fell back into my rhythm—until, predictably, Aiden jumped up and began cursing.
“Shit! Shit, shit, fuck!” He ran to his oven, peered inside it, then looked back at me. “Nolan! Nolan, I think I fucked up.”
His hands were clapped to his cheeks, and the cameras weren’t even focused on him. He really was just this dramatic all the time. He’d probably come out of the womb pulling faces and curtsying.
“What happened?” I asked, walking over.
I used my gentle voice, the one I broke out whenever a cook or server was panicking over something at the restaurant. Ninety percent of the time, the problem wasn’t as bad as it seemed, and the other ten percent, panicking certainly wasn’t going to make it any better.
“I fucked up,” Aiden repeated, his eyes full of remorse. “Oh my God, I fucked up, even after all the help you gave me, I’m such a dumbass—”
“Aiden, calm down,” I said, but he ignored me.
“So much time is gone,” he continued, “and I can’t do it again, but there’s no way it’s going to come out right now, and I swear, I didn’t do it on purpose—”
“Hey, it’s okay, just tell me what happened.”
“I really was trying,” he said, shaking his head over and over. “I swear to God, I was listening. I even wrote down what you said, but I’m so fucking stupid, I just forgot, and now it’s too late, and I—”
“Aiden, Aiden.” I grabbed his shoulders to get his attention. “Come on. Get a grip.”
Aiden sucked in a sharp breath at my touch, his lips parting. There were actual tears in his eyes. That made my chest hurt in a way I couldn’t make sense of, but I let go of him just in case.
“If you knew me at all, you’d know I’ve never once had a grip on anything in my entire life,” he said, giving me a wry smile. It was watery, but it was the attempt that counted, right?
“Okay, well, there’s a first time for everything,” I said with a laugh. “Maybe today can be the day you learn. Start by telling me what happened.”
Aiden pointed to the oven. “I forgot to add salt to the dough for the crust.”
“Is that all?”
He nodded. “Yeah. But you made such a big deal about how I had to do everything right, and I—I just got so excited when I finished the filling, and it actually looked like it was supposed to, just like the pictures online, that I put it in and started baking without even checking to make sure I’d done the dough correctly.” He looked up in dismay. “But if I take it out now and try to start fresh, it won’t bake in time, will it? It’ll be all raw and gooey?”
Wow. He really was upset. There was no way he’d pass up a chance to make a joke about how much he liked raw, gooey things in a normal state of mind.
“It’s okay,” I told him.
“Really?”
“Really. Based on how you reacted, I thought you’d chopped your finger off and left it in the center of the pie. This is just a little salt. They probably won’t even notice.”
“But I wanted to do it right ,” Aiden said. “And I fucked up again. Is it definitely too late to fix it?”
I thought for a moment. “How long has it been in the oven?”
“I don’t know. Like, thirty seconds maybe? And then however long this conversation has taken?”
“Okay.” I grabbed a mitt and opened the oven door, pulling the pie out. “Oh, phew. You forgot to put the latticework on top, too.”
“I did?” Aiden sounded like he just might cry after all.
“No, no, that’s a good thing, in this case. It makes it easier. We’ll just pull the filling out and set it in a bowl. Then you just sprinkle some salt on the crust, add the apples back in, add the top, and off you go.”
“And that’ll work?”
“Well, I’m not gonna claim to be a baking expert. And I still think you’re overreacting a bit. But if you’re really committed to getting salt in there, I think it’s your best bet with the time we’ve got left.”
Aiden gave me a small nod. “Okay.”
I frowned as I scooped the apple filling out into a bowl. “What, no snarky comeback? No jokes about tops, or how I’m leaving this pie open and gaping right now?”
“I mean, you’re doing such a good job of it on your own.” He smiled, and it actually looked genuine. “So I’ll just say thank you.”
“Okay, now I know something’s up. First you skip the innuendo, then you say thank you ? Who are you, and what have you done with the real Aiden Hastings?”
“I’m still me.” Aiden’s smile widened. “I guess I’m just trying to lie back and enjoy my first time.”
“Your first time doing what?”
“Getting a grip.” He giggled. “You’re breaking me in. Popping my cherry. Or apple, I guess, in this case. Thank you for being so gentle with me. For lubing me up with understanding.”
“Oh my God.” I ran a hand over my face. “You’re impossible.”
“Yeah, kinda. But it’s cute, right?”
“It’s something.”
I rolled my eyes, but smiled when I noticed Em was filming us again.
It wasn’t as hard as I’d expected, honestly, pretending to like Aiden. Which was weird, but I pushed the thought out of my head. There were more important things to concentrate on. My own pie, for one thing, and making sure Aiden didn’t ruin his for a second time.
I thought I was doing pretty well on both those fronts until I heard a whispered, “Oh no,” from Aiden’s direction forty-five minutes later.
I scanned his workstation, searching for the problem, but I didn’t see anything. His recipe was pinned underneath a couple of mixing bowls, which sat next to a lump of dough that probably should have been in the fridge or freezer, but that wasn’t a disaster. A rolling pin teetered close to the edge of the counter, but that was it. His pie was still in the oven, and nothing smelled burnt, nothing looked like it had fallen on the floor.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
Aiden winced. “Okay, don’t be mad, but I might have forgotten to add the lattice top. Again.”
I started to laugh. I couldn’t help it. He couldn’t have messed up more if he’d tried. It was getting to the point where I was starting to wonder if maybe it was all an act. Maybe Aiden was an amazing baker, and all the fuck-ups were just for show.
Aiden glanced at me suspiciously. “Why aren’t you yelling at me? Not that I don’t appreciate it, but I feel like I broke your brain.”
“Would yelling at you help anything?” I asked, still chuckling.
“It might make you feel better.”
“Point. But it wouldn’t help your pie at all.”
“I think my pie is beyond repair at this point,” Aiden sighed.
“No.” I shook my head. “No, we are not going to let your first successful bake in this tent fall apart over some stupid latticework. I refuse.”
“Is this because I said it would reflect on you and not on me?” Aiden asked, a smile quirking the corner of his lip.
“Maybe. But still. We’re gonna fix this.”
“How, though? If I try to add it on now, it won’t be done when the rest of the pie is. And if we leave it in long enough to fully bake, the rest of the pie would burn, right?”
“That is quite possibly the most coherent thing I’ve ever heard you say about baking,” I told him, walking over to his oven to peek at the pie. It looked surprisingly decent.
Aiden crossed his arms. “I can’t tell if that’s a compliment or an insult.”
“Maybe a little bit of both.” I pointed to the leftover dough on his station. “Luckily, we don’t have to do a true lattice. Your pie is just supposed to have some kind of topping, right? Just take this, roll it out, and cut it into little stars or something with cookie cutters. You can bake those on a separate sheet and leave them in while your pie comes out to cool. You should be able to get them at least mostly baked, and then you can just pop them on top right before Vivian and Tanner call time.”
“Oh my God, that’s actually smart.”
“See, now I can’t tell if that’s a compliment or an insult.” I grinned. “So we’re even. Now come on, get to work. Those stars aren’t going to cut themselves.”
The rest of the time flew by in a rush of sugar and egg wash and the thick, sweet scent of baking fruit. I was surprised the air wasn’t pink and purple, given how lush and pungent everything smelled, and I was thrilled with the way my pie looked once I pulled it out to cool.
The judges called us up one-by-one to bring our pies to the table at the front of the tent. When they called my name, Aiden wolf-whistled. I rolled my eyes, but somehow, knowing he was watching did make me a little less nervous about standing in front of the judges.
Or maybe it just made me nervous about different things. After all, it was hard to worry too much about what Tanner and Vivian were going to say when I was already busy worrying about what would come out of Aiden’s mouth next. But not only did they like the pie, I actually made it through the whole exchange without tripping over my tongue.
“I have to admit, I was skeptical,” Tanner said. “But if we didn’t have to try so many more pies today, I’d have a second mouthful of that.”
“It’s just as well,” Aiden called from the back of the tent. “Nolan’s very stingy about who he allows to take mouthfuls of his…pie.”
They’d edit that out, right?
Even more surprising was that when it was time for Aiden to bring his pie to the front, I discovered I was nervous for him. He was the last contestant to be judged, and I wasn’t sure if it was because I’d helped, or if I was just getting into the whole liking-each-other ruse, but I found myself flashing him an encouraging smile. Stranger still, he returned it, without a single snarky remark.
“So, Aiden,” Vivian said. “Before even tasting anything, I have to say, this is the best-looking bake you’ve produced so far. For once, I’m not afraid of what will happen to me if I eat a bite of this. Well done.”
“It doesn’t look raw or burnt,” Tanner agreed. “For most people, I’d say that should be a baseline expectation, but for you—”
“Kind of impressive, right?” Aiden laughed, and I fought down a sudden desire to punch Tanner in the face.
“It shouldn’t be,” Tanner said. “But yeah, it is. So, to what do you attribute your sudden success?”
“Well, I had a little help,” Aiden said, turning and winking at me. “So I can’t take all the credit.”
I was well aware that Em’s camera was trained on me, so I smiled back at Aiden and tried to ignore my pounding heart.
“Let’s have a taste, shall we?” Vivian said, setting down her wooden spoon in favor of a large knife.
She cut two thin slices of pie, placing one on a plate in front of Tanner and a second in front of herself. Picking up a fork next, she turned her slice on its side and poked at the underside of the crust.
“Hmm. Bottom’s a little moist.” She waited, raising an eyebrow. “What, no joke about that?”
Aiden winced. “Too nervous, I guess.”
She nodded. “It does appear to be cooked, though. I think what we’re seeing is the result of seepage, rather than raw dough. Fruit pies can give off quite a bit of liquid as they cook, and you really stuffed a lot into this one.”
She paused again. “Really? Nothing?”
“What can I say,” Aiden laughed. “I’m a reformed man.”
“Somehow I doubt that,” she said. “I’m going to attribute it to Nolan’s influence on you.”
“All the same,” Tanner added after taking a small bite, “I have to say, this pie is truly, surprisingly, not terrible.”
“Oh my God, really?” Aiden clapped his hands together.
Vivian nodded after taking a bite of her own. “You were a little heavy-handed on the spices. And the texture’s a bit mealy. Different apples might have helped. You might have overdone it on the cornstarch, too. Really kind of clogs up the mouth. But grading on a curve, considering your prior performance, this is actually quite edible.”
“I’ll take it.” Aiden grinned. “And for the record, I happen to like things that clog up the mouth.”
“There it is,” Vivian said with a laugh.
“I thought you were supposed to be a good influence on him, Nolan,” Tanner called.
“All I did was tell him which spoon was a teaspoon and which was a tablespoon,” I called back. “Don’t blame me.”
“I’m curious,” Tanner said, looking at Aiden. “You mentioned working with Nolan to pick out your recipe. What was it that made you choose an apple pie, of all things?”
“Well, I did consider a cream pie. Obviously.” Aiden giggled. “To be honest, I know it’s kind of simple. But Nolan did more than just teach me about spoons. He really helped me a lot. And I just wanted to pick something that I thought I could do well on. I wanted to—well, to make him proud.”
He looked right at Tanner as he said it, but turned his head ever so slightly in my direction, like he wanted to look at me but couldn’t quite bring himself to. Then he clapped his hands to his cheeks again.
“Oh God, that’s so embarrassing. Please don’t put that in the final cut.”
I had to admit, it was effective. If I hadn’t known better, I might have believed that Aiden was, for once in his life, being sincere.
“Well, well done,” Vivian said. “I won’t say it’s the best pie I’ve ever eaten. It’s not even close to the best we’ve had today. But I don’t regret putting it in my mouth.”
“Thank you so much.” Aiden jumped up and down a couple of times. “I really, really appreciate that. And I also really, really want you to know how much I’m holding back a that’s-what-he-said joke right now.”
“We appreciate that too.” Vivian picked up her wooden spoon and stood up from the table, smiling at all of us. “And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a wrap for today.”
Aiden grabbed his pie and headed back to his workstation, flashing me a nervous grin—one that I returned. We’d done all we could. All I could do now was hope it was enough.