12. Kane #2
It’s like she can forget about the rest of the world while she bakes.
Or at least, that’s what I thought.
But her next question shows that the little baker might not be as lost in the magic as I thought she was.
“What do you actually want from me?” she asks without turning around, hands still occupied.
I’m not ready to answer. So I just say, “You’ll know when I want it.”
“Hm. Yeah. Uh-huh. Totally.” She flips a round of dough. “You know, most people, when they say something completely batshit out loud, they get embarrassed about it afterward and start explaining.”
“I’m not most people.”
“That’s the truest thing you’ve said all night.”
The oil starts to sizzle, so she drops in the first few rounds of sliced brioche. The aroma fills the back of the shop quickly. Sweet, sweet like her.
“Smells good,” I comment.
“It’s about three bucks’ worth of ingredients,” she says with a snort.
“I paid nine hundred dollars for dinner the night before last, and I’d still come running here before I ever ate at that place again.”
She pretends to scoff again, but I can see the tiny blush of pride in her cheeks. “In my experience, that kind of money usually just gets you some pathetically small chunk of fish in a bizarre foam, and a man with a shitty mustache explaining to you why it’s God’s gift to taste buds.”
I pretend to frown. “Have you been spying on me?”
She laughs, then grabs a slotted spoon and starts to fish the fried doughnuts out of the oil. Each one gets dropped into the bowl of sugar, rolled over a few times until it’s well coated, then set on a pan.
She doesn’t mind a mess. Flour coats her fingers and forearms, and when she wipes her forehead with the back of one hand, it leaves a white streak of the stuff just below her hairline.
But it suits her.
There are a million women in this city who look good when dolled up and dressed to the nines. Give them access to Spanx, a Sephora, and some TikTok tutorials, and they can all pass for a Kardashian.
But there are much, much fewer who look good like this.
In their element.
Working.
Un-self-conscious.
She sets another sugared round on the pan and counts what’s left in the bowl.
“That’s, what, a dozen?” she says. “Fourteen? I suck at math, but it’s definitely a lot for just the two of us.
You’re a big guy, but… I mean, not that I need these.
Big shocker, a woman who looks like me eating a doughnut at mid—”
“Stop.”
She freezes. The bubbling oil is the last sound in the room.
“I was joking,” she says meekly.
“I know what you were doing. Don’t do it again.”
“Okay, wow. It’s a doughnut, not a—”
“It isn’t about the fucking doughnut.” I stride around the cart into the good light so she has to look at me. “That’s the second time tonight you’ve made a joke like that. I won’t tolerate a third.”
She sets the spoon down on the rag carefully, eyes cast low.
“It’s a habit,” she mumbles. “It’s how I— People relax when I say it first.”
“Say what?” I ask. A note of menace has snuck into my voice.
Delilah hesitates, then sweeps a hand up and down her body. “The obvious. Just look at me.”
I grab her wrist and settle it back down by her side. Then, my fingers dusted with the flour from her skin, I touch under her chin and force her eyes to meet mine.
“I haven’t stopped looking all night,” I rasp. “I see you. I know what and who you are. You’re the one who seems blind to the ‘obvious.’“
She’s squirming, obviously uncomfortable, but the light pressure of my two fingers under her jaw is enough to pin her in place.
“So don’t make that joke again,” I finish. “Not in front of me.”
“You can’t just decide what comes out of my mouth,” she snaps.
“Watch me. In front of me, you don’t talk about yourself like that.”
Her squirming eases. Her eyes are curious now, liquid honey. But that self-hating crease in her forehead has vanished. For the time being, at least.
“You’ve known me for three hours,” she says.
“And in that whole time, I’ve never once thought what you’re afraid I’m thinking.”
She breathes out. Then she reaches into the bowl, picks up a doughnut, and takes a bite standing right where she is, sugar on her mouth, watching me the whole time like she’s daring me to comment.
I don’t.
I just reach out and take one, too.
The first bite ruins me forever.
It’s hot enough to burn the roof of my mouth, but I couldn’t care less, because I could never taste anything again for the rest of my life and this one bite would still be enough to sustain me.
Sugar cracks. Then the inside gives, soft, warm, and buttery. The texture is perfect. It’s like chewing a cloud.
I have eaten in Paris and Tokyo and Moscow. I have paid the world’s finest chefs to describe food to me while I chewed it.
None of it was this.
Not. Even. Fucking. Close.
There’s only one thing better than enjoying the fruits—or rather, the sweets—of Delilah’s labor.
And that’s watching her enjoy it.
She lets out the tiniest, squeakiest little whimper. Her eyes flutter closed and she licks the sugar-frosted tip of her finger. Her lips open and close, her cheeks ripple with the motion of chewing, and she exhales through her nose.
That aura of ease steals over her again.
A happy woman, with sweetness on her lips.
Fuck, what I wouldn’t give to taste her.
When she swallows, she cracks her eyes open again and squints at me warily.
“Well?” she says.
“It’s good.”
“Wow. Somebody call the newspapers. We’ve got a food critic on our hands.”