Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
EMMA
Emma blew a sweaty strand of hair off her forehead. She had only been in the kitchen for an hour, but already a creeping sense of panic had set in.
These were by far the highest stakes she had ever faced.
And she was in an unfamiliar kitchen that ran on Celsius, trying to impress a woman who had offered her no insight.
While the castle chef had kindly given her a tour, the implication was clear that the kitchen needed to be spotless before staff arrived to prepare breakfast in the morning.
But it was only for ten days. She could do this. Her apartment in the gatehouse was unexpectedly charming and had a small oven. She could bake small batches of things throughout the day. After she got some freakin’ sleep.
“You’re sure you’re all right, sweetheart?” her mom called through the speakerphone.
“I’m fine, I just have a lot of balls in the air.”
The head injury she sustained from gawking at the hot maintenance guy hadn’t helped anything.
She rolled her shoulders back and took stock of her progress.
The kitchen was a mess of dough. Some rising, some chilling in the industrial-sized refrigerator.
The dreamy scent of vanilla emanated from the closest oven, which was hopefully not burning her famous sponge cake.
Choux pastry rounded out the preparations.
It was barely controlled chaos, but it was the environment she thrived in.
“So the princess herself gave you a tour?” Lisa asked.
“She did. She’s honestly so lovely and funny. I didn’t expect a princess to be just a regular teenage girl. She’s actually going to be attending NYU next fall, so maybe I’ll be able to introduce you someday.”
“How exciting.”
A yawn racked Emma’s body.
“You sound tired,” her mother said. “Did you get any rest?”
The past twenty-four hours hadn’t been restful by any sense of the word.
She was running on two hours of sleep and was only allowed to use the baking facilities at night.
Maya had disappeared—undoubtedly on a quest to make herself the next queen of this country—and shifted the entire burden of this project onto her.
And when she had ventured into the impossibly beautiful village looking for some inspiration, Cooper had peed on an innocent—and very handsome—maintenance worker.
She would never be allowed in Lynoria again.
“I’ll be fine. Have you taken all your medication today?” Emma asked.
“Yes, mother,” her mom mocked.
“Good. How’s the hip?”
“It’s fine, sweetheart. The doctor checked it at my appointment today.”
The timer on the oven dinged. That was the choux.
“Good. I better go. Please be safe.”
“You too, sweetheart. Give Coop a big hug from Gigi.”
“Will do. Love you.”
Emma hung up and pulled the choux out of the oven. She breathed a sigh of relief. They seemed normal, so the Fahrenheit to Celsius conversion must have worked. It was hard enough to bake with minimal ingredients without having to convert everything.
She eyed the tarts. They were cool enough to top.
She had rescued a bag of apples and a few quarts of raspberries from the refrigerator with the chef’s permission.
These tarts wouldn’t be nearly as spectacular as she usually aimed for, but hopefully it would be enough to give the queen an idea.
And then maybe she would provide some concrete direction.
Over the next forty-five minutes, she piped vanilla crème and intricately arranged each tart.
Not her best work, but they were still beautiful in their own slapdash way.
She dusted the raspberry tarts with powdered sugar and added edible gold leaf she had found in the pantry.
Painstakingly assembled apple rosettes donned the other tarts.
She turned her attention to the next task, the caramel sauce for the croquembouche, but her bladder screamed at her. She definitely needed to pee before starting that task because caramel waited for no one.
After five solid minutes of doing a pee dance down the hallway, she finally found a powder room.
She barely recognized the person staring back at her in the elaborate gilded mirror.
There was flour on her cheek, and her eyes were hollow from lack of sleep.
She splashed some water on her face and took a deep, cleansing breath.
Everything was going to be fine. She was a damn good pastry artist, and she was going to show this kingdom what a Brooklyn girl could do.
When she stepped back into the kitchen, panic flared in her chest. A man stood next to the oven. One of her raspberry tarts was in his hand, and there was a dusting of powdered sugar on his cheek.
He turned to look at her, warm brown eyes regarding her over the tart. He inhaled sharply—in surprise maybe?—and his eyes widened.
“Oh, hi,” she said.
Hang on a second. Was that the mega hot maintenance guy Cooper had peed on this morning? It couldn’t be.
His face was growing red, and his eyes were bugging out. The tart tumbled to the floor.
“Oh my god. Are you okay?” she asked.
His hand flew to his throat. His eyes were wide in alarm.
Holy shit. He was choking.
She leapt into action, crossing the kitchen in three quick strides. Her mind ran a mile a minute. She had no idea what the local emergency number was. The staff was gone for the night. She was the only thing standing between him and death.
Her training took over. She stood behind him and draped an arm over his chest. She guided him down to a bent posture, then administered five back blows between his shoulder blades.
Her hand stung, and adrenaline surged through her body.
The stranger nearly collapsed, but she used every ounce of her strength to keep him up.
There were no breaths. The pastry was still lodged in his throat.
She pressed herself to his back and wound her arms around him. Her heart pounded fast and hard in her chest. His life was in her hands. If this didn’t work, she needed to run screaming into the castle until someone came to help.
She found his belly button and rolled her fist up.
“It’s going to be okay,” she said to him, but her voice was shaking.
She thrusted her fist into his abdomen, inward and upward as hard as she could. She had never given the Heimlich maneuver to someone so tall.
Five thrusts as hard as she could manage. Nothing. Her hands shook as she returned to back blows. One. Two. Three—oh, thank god.
A glob of pastry shot out of the stranger’s mouth and onto the tile floor. They both collapsed to their knees in front of the oven.
She scooted in front of him, anxiously peering into his face. His color was returning to normal, but his breath was coming in ragged gasps.
“Are you okay? Here, take a deep breath. Slow.” She instinctively took his hand and planted it on her chest.
Raspy breaths ripped between his lips, and she held his hand with her trembling one until they evened out.
“I’m so sorry for scaring you.”
Peeing on and then choking a maintenance man all in the same day? She was definitely going to get kicked out of the country at this rate.
“Scaring me?” he asked.
Oh, that accent. Her toes curled in her shoes.
“You saved my life,” he added.
“After almost killing you,” she clarified.
“Where did you learn to do that?” He gestured toward his stomach.
Now that the danger had passed, she couldn’t help but stare.
He was even more handsome than he had appeared in the park.
His eyes were the color of a cocoa ganache behind black-framed glasses.
Brilliantly white teeth were framed by rosy, generous lips.
His dark brown hair was mussed—as one would expect from a near-death encounter—and blended with the edges of a trimmed beard.
Her heart staggered a little. Did the province hire only panty-dropping maintenance workers? How did anyone get anything done?
Oh, shit. He had asked her a question. Focus, idiot.
“The Heimlich? My mom chokes a lot, so I get a weird amount of practice.”
He turned the full force of his brown eyes on her. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“It’s not my favorite family pastime.” She jumped to her feet and offered her hand. He took it, and she pulled him up. A thrill ran through her body at the contact. His hands were calloused and strong.
He dusted some powdered sugar off his T-shirt. “This might be an insane question. Do you have a Bernese mountain dog?”
Shit. She was right. It was him.
“You mean Cooper, who peed on you earlier today? Yes, I do.”
“So that was you.” His look of post-near-death-experience malaise had been replaced by one of interest. “How’s your head?”
Warmth rushed into her cheeks. Of course he remembered her making an idiot of herself.
“Oh, it’s fine. There’s supposed to be two of you, right?”
He smiled and laughed, looking almost startled by the joke. He glanced at the tarts on the counter and shifted his attention back to her. “You must be the American baker.”
She bit her lip. “Oh boy, I already have a reputation?”
“No,” he said quickly. “We were just expecting you.”
She adjusted her apron strings. “It’s not every day the royal family of a country you’ve never heard of hits up your bakery and asks you to fly overseas and perform a borderline-impossible task.”
He smiled again, and her heart stuttered.
“I don’t know about impossible. The tart that almost killed me was incredible.”
Was steam rising beneath her collar? The kitchen was suddenly stifling. Maybe she should open a window.
“I’m glad you liked it. Hopefully it will be good enough for the royal family. The queen gave us basically no direction, so I’m more or less grasping at straws. Do you work here too?” she asked.
He hesitated. “I do.”
Oh. Perhaps she would run into him around the castle.
“Maybe I’ll see you around, then. You’ll probably want to get checked out in the morning, by the way. I broke one of my mom’s ribs once, giving her the Heimlich.”
His expression clouded. “That’s awful. Is she…disabled?”
Emma’s shoulders tensed up. The story never got any easier, no matter how many times she told it.
“She had a stroke. A bad one.”
His eyes softened. “I’m so sorry to hear that.”
“Yeah, it sucked.” The rest of the story was on the tip of her tongue, but she bit it back. She didn’t need to spew a bunch of overly personal stories to a maintenance worker she’d probably never see again.
“I’m Emma, by the way.” She extended her hand.
“Leo.” A strange sense of peace set in at his touch.
They looked into each other’s eyes for a long moment, hands still connected. Her heart was thumping again, but at least this time it wasn’t because anyone was in mortal peril.
She glanced down at his other hand. No rings. But maybe people didn’t wear wedding rings in Lynoria.
What was she thinking? She was only here for a week and a half. She didn’t need to get involved with some hammer-wielding stud. Her whole future was hanging in the balance. She needed to focus up.
As if it agreed, the timer on the oven chimed.
“Oh, that’s my star bread.” She dropped his hand and bustled over to the oven. She pulled the rack out and withdrew an imperfect pastry. Not her best work, but at least it wasn’t actively on fire.
“Well, Leo,” she said. The name felt like candy on her tongue. “I’m sorry for almost killing you with my baked goods.”
“It was worth it,” he said with another slow smile.
Another thrill ran through her. What did that mean?
“Where’s your dog?” he asked, glancing around the kitchen.
“We’re staying in the gatehouse,” she said. “I figured it was best to not add dog hair to the croquembouche.”
He smiled. “I suppose you’re right.”
Another massive yawn racked her whole body. Exhaustion hung from her like a winter cloak, but at this rate, she’d be up all night.
His expression changed to one of concern. “I’m distracting you. Is there anything I can do to help?”
She hesitated. Leo was intriguing, handsome, and completely unexpected.
And those calloused hands certainly looked like they were capable of washing a dish or two.
If it were any other place or any other time, she would have chalked this meeting up to fate.
But this project demanded her full attention.
Nothing and no one was more important than changing her and her mom’s circumstances for good.
“Thank you, but I’m fine.”
Leo eyed the dirty pile of dishes in the sink, but when his gaze shifted back to her, something softened.
“I assure you I’m quite capable of washing dishes.”
She bit her lip. “I’m sure you are. But I have a lot to do, and sometimes I get irrationally angry if someone’s standing in front of the drawer I need to open.”
He nodded. “If you’re sure. I’ll leave you to it.”
“Have a good night,” she called at his retreating back.
He shot another glance over his shoulder before disappearing.
The silence was almost deafening in his absence.
Holy shit. In another lifetime, she would have obsessed about this encounter for weeks and dissected every moment with Lola.
But she wasn’t the carefree and optimistic girl she once was.
There was so much at stake, and she did not need any distractions.
Especially ones that came in the form of hunky maintenance men named Leo who lived five thousand miles away.