Chapter 15
Leo
By every measurable standard, it is identical to every other morning.
The air is cool and thick with the nutty, complex scent of resting sourdough starter.
The Hobart mixer stands silent, a sentinel in the pre-dawn gloom.
The only sound is the low hum of the refrigerators and the faint, distant hiss of the city waking up outside.
But it is different.
Not in the way a spreadsheet changes when someone alters one cell and suddenly your projections are lying to you. This is different in the way the world changes after you realize you cannot unknow something.
I cannot unknow the feeling of Tess’s mouth on mine.
The shrill beeping of the signal.
The red light washing her face.
The soft, hesitant pressure of her lips. Perfect and terrifying and so sweet it makes my chest ache to remember.
I arrive at 4:44 a.m. because that is who I am now. A man who shows up one minute early to a bakery as if his life depended on it.
Which, honestly, it might.
My sneakers squeak softly against the tile as I push the back door open.
The air hits me immediately, cooler than outside, cleaner, threaded with yeast and flour and the faint ghost of yesterday’s caramelized sugar.
It is the kind of smell that makes my stomach tighten with hunger and comfort at the same time.
And then I see her.
Tess is already at her steel table, measuring out salt for the first mix.
Her hair is pulled back into that tight bun that makes her look like she is about to go to war with a bag of flour and win.
She is wearing her cleanest apron, the one without the mystery stain that could be raspberry jam or motor oil.
She looks up when the door creaks.
And my breath catches.
Not because she is suddenly prettier than she was yesterday, though she is. She always is. It is because something exists between us now. Something new. Something charged. The bakery is no longer neutral ground. It feels personal, intimate in a way that makes my pulse spike.
Her eyes sweep over me quickly. Sharp. Assessing. Like she is checking for damage.
I am not wearing the ridiculous Armani chef cosplay uniform from my first day.
Today I am in worn jeans, a plain grey T-shirt, and sneakers. Not the designer work boots Amelia insisted on that made me look like the star of a cologne commercial called Bread by Ashford. Just normal.
If normal means six foot two, worth ten figures, and currently one emotional gust of wind away from total collapse.
She holds my gaze for exactly one second too long.
Then she looks back down at the scale.
“You’re early,” she says.
Not warm. Not cold. Controlled.
“One minute,” I reply.
She nods once. “Clock in.”
And just like that, the wall is back.
But I can feel the crack running through it.
My hair is damp, like I showered too fast, or maybe like I ran here, which, embarrassingly, I did. Not because I’m late. Because my brain is a broken record and pacing in a penthouse at 4:10 a.m. doesn’t fix anything.
In my hand is a coffee cup from the 24-hour bodega down the street.
Not mine.
Hers.
Medium. Black. One and a half sugars.
Because she said, once, three weeks ago, when Gwen offered her some artisanal single-origin pour-over, and Tess looked like she wanted to commit a felony, “Bodega coffee is acceptable jet fuel.”
So, I remember.
I hold it out like it’s a peace offering and also like it’s a live grenade.
“Morning,” I say, voice rough. “I, uh… I remembered. From the other day. You said the bodega stuff was… ‘acceptable jet fuel.’”
For a second, her face does something. Something I can’t label fast enough. Surprise, maybe. Softness. Maybe alarm.
Then she takes the cup.
Our fingers brush.
It’s a tiny thing. Barely skin on skin. But it’s electric enough that I almost drop my own brain on the floor.
“You… you didn’t have to do that, Ashford,” she says, trying to sound unimpressed, but her voice is a little off, like she’s working harder than usual to keep the walls standing.
“I know,” I say. And it’s true, I know. “I wanted to.”
We stand there for a moment.
The silence stretches, thick with everything unsaid. The bakery feels too small, too warm, too intimate. Like we’re in a bubble made of flour dust and last night.
I clear my throat, rubbing a hand through my damp hair. “So, uh… about last night…”
Her shoulders tense a fraction.
And then, because Tess Bennett is physically incapable of letting awkwardness fester, she takes a sip of the coffee.
It’s perfect. Of course it is. The bodega man is a wizard.
And she cuts me off.
“It was a good kiss, Ashford. But we can’t do this here.”
My head snaps up.
My eyes go wide because I am, despite being a man who can reverse-engineer a satellite uplink, fundamentally unequipped for this level of blunt honesty at 4:45 in the morning.
Tess notices my reaction and gives me a playful look. “Ok, fine. A very…” She turns toward the mixer, so I can’t see her face fully. “…not-terrible kiss.”
Her cheeks are pink. I can see it even from behind.
“But right now,” she adds, her voice sharpening into that familiar wartime tone that makes me stand straighter on instinct, “you’re on the clock. And you’re on lamination. Those croissants aren’t going to fold themselves. Don’t. Mess. It. Up.”
She risks a glance over her shoulder.
I’m still standing there, frozen, like my brain has blue-screened.
And then something inside me breaks open, bright, stupid, and uncontrollable.
A grin spreads across my face. Not a smug grin. Not my boardroom smile. Not the one that says I’m about to win. This is pure, unfiltered sunshine. A grin that should come with a warning label.
“Yes, boss,” I say, my voice almost cheerful, which is terrifying because I don’t think I’ve sounded cheerful since 2018.
I practically skip to the walk-in to get the butter blocks.
Because if Tess Bennett just called our kiss “not-terrible” and then assigned me croissants, I am ninety percent sure I have died and gone to the one version of heaven that makes sense: hard work, good bread, and her.
Gwen arrives ten minutes later.
She hangs up her bag, takes one look at me happily whistling Mr. Brightside while pounding a cold butter block into a perfect rectangle, and then takes one look at Tess, who is not yelling at me for whistling, and her jaw drops.
“Oh,” Gwen says slowly. “Oh, ok. We’re whistling now. We’re bringing coffee.”
“Shut up, G,” Tess mutters, burying her face in a bin of flour like she’s trying to hide from her own life. “And get the brioche starter.”
Gwen just grins as she ties on her apron. “This is gonna be a great day.”
It is.
It is, to my profound confusion, the best day I have had in the kitchen in recent memory.
The dynamic shifts. Fundamentally. Like someone flips a switch I didn’t know existed.
For weeks, the tension between Tess and me has been a snapped wire: boss and intern, skeptic and himbo, competent and clumsy, fury and shame. Even when things got better, even when I became useful, there was always the wall. Always the awareness of what I brought to her door.
But today, today, the air hums warm instead of sharp.
We are a team.
It’s like the kiss and the sidewalk confessions unlocked something.
I am no longer just trying.
I am anticipating.
“Need the bench scraper,” Tess murmurs, and I’m already handing it to her before she finishes the sentence.
“Timer on the baguettes is in thirty seconds,” she calls, and I’m there, sleeves rolled up, ready with the steam tray like my life depends on it.
There’s still clumsiness, because I am still, at my core, a man who once defeated himself with a bottle of soap. But it’s different now. Less catastrophic. More human.
I knock over an entire rack of cooling trays with a clang that makes Tess jump, and my soul leaves my body.
“Tess, I’m so sorry, I was…” I stammer, face flaming. “I was watching you shape the ficelle, and I wasn’t looking…”
She steadies the rack with one hand, calm and competent like she’s holding the world upright. She doesn’t even look furious. She looks amused. Almost.
“It’s fine,” she says. “Just… watch where you’re going, ok?”
The flush that crawls up my neck at that is worth the clatter.
Because she said it like she knows.
Like she knows I’m watching her.
And she’s not pretending she doesn’t notice.
I am in trouble.
In the best possible way.
Everything else in my life, the deals, the parties, the endless sterile meetings, feels like a black-and-white movie.
This is high-definition. Full-color. Sensory overload.
Heat from ovens. Ache in my shoulders. Flour dust on my forearms. The smell of caramelizing sugar. Gwen’s punk playlist is in the background. The hiss of the espresso machine.
And Tess.
God, Tess.
I am completely, irrevocably sunk.
I have spent my entire adult life being analyzed, managed, and handled. People tell me what I want to hear. People smooth the world for me.
Tess doesn’t.
She holds me to her own ridiculously high standard, and when I meet it, or even get close, the small grudging nod she gives me feels better than closing a nine-figure deal.
I text my friends in stolen moments by the lockers, because I apparently have become a person who texts about pastries.
ZANE: Dude. Saw the pics. “Billionaire Baker” is still trending. You’re a menace. Party in Monaco this weekend, wheels up Friday?
Zane and I have been friends for a long time.
He’s the kind of friend who knows where the bodies are buried and still shows up with coffee.
We met years ago, after my company sponsored his professional ice hockey team.
One of those PR deals that was supposed to last a season and somehow turned into a decade-long friendship.
Zane has been a pro player for as long as I’ve known him.
Not the flashy, look-at-me kind. The disciplined kind.
Early mornings. Brutal practices. Ice packs and tape and a body that’s paid the price for loving the game as hard as he does.