waft in a cloud like that. Neither did salt. Marcus had chosen the baking powder.
She waited for him to admit his mistake. He did not.
Instead, he peered skeptically at the teacup, now overflowing with baking powder. His drawn-together brows were frosted with white. The sight might have been humorous, if not for the earnest concentration on the features below them.
Marcus snagged the rim of the earthenware bowl. He dragged it closer. He held the baking powder above it and prepared to empty the teacup.
“Wait!” Molly cried. “I can’t let you do it.”
He gave her a bland, cocksure look. Without taking his gaze from her face, he overturned the cup. Baking powder landed in the bowl with a muffled whump.
Oh, no. This was worse than she’d thought, Molly realized. There would be no reasoning with a man who believed himself capable of everything. She hurried around the table to Marcus’s side.
“That’s baking powder,” she protested, staring aghast into the bowl.
“And…?”
“You don’t need a whole cup of baking powder for this recipe. Unless you’re making biscuits for two hundred people.”
He squinted. “We’ll need a much larger bowl.”
“No, we won’t. We’ll need to start over.”
Marcus gave the bowl an accusing look. “You see? We should have taken that walk I suggested.”
“No, we should have begun at the beginning.” She refused to be swayed. Because Marcus was otherwise so capable, Molly had credited him with too much kitchen competence. But that didn’t mean she intended to give up, or let herself be distracted from her mission. “I can see now that I should have begun with something simpler for you. Something like…”
“Like a walk.”
“Like toasted bread,” she decided.
“I prefer biscuits,” he said stubbornly. “I have biscuits every morning at the Lorndorff Hotel.”
“Every morning?”
He nodded. “Coffee, eggs, an edition of the Pioneer Press, and biscuits.”
“What if you fancy griddle cakes one day?”
“I prefer biscuits,” he said firmly.
Evidently Marcus Copeland was a creature of habit. That masculine trait could work to her advantage, Molly decided, if she handled things correctly between them. She’d simply have to train him properly, and she’d succeed. Magnificently.
“Then it’s biscuits you shall have today,” she acquiesced with a smile. Molly scooped the baking powder from the bowl. She returned it to its sack, then dusted her hands clean. “The eggs and coffee will have to wait for another lesson. But you must agree to do everything I say. To follow my every direction. In this, I’m your instructor. You are my pupil.”
“You are enjoying this far too much.”
“Nonsense.” She hid a smile. “I’m merely doing my part to make our business arrangement work. You’ll find I’m a very determined woman.”
“You’ll find I’m a very poor pupil.” Marcus stared at their baking supplies, hands on hips in a disgruntled pose. “What I’ve learned I’ve learned on my own. I don’t take kindly to being told what to do.”
“Then why did you agree to our arrangement?”
For a moment, Marcus only went on with what he’d been doing—frowning the baking powder into submission. Then he shifted his gaze to her face. He shrugged. “I have my reasons,” he said.
Leaving Molly to wonder, for all the rest of that day, exactly what those “reasons” of his really were.
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