was rested, she expected to see that he honestly was just a guy like any other guy. That he wasn’t anything special. And then she would be cured of whatever she’d been infected by.
She was convinced of it.
Feeling more equipped to see him again, Kit set about getting ready.
She’d borrowed a pair of shorts from Kira but decided that her legs should be covered completely before she encountered Ad again. The less skin that showed, the better. So she slipped out of them and into a pair of jeans.
The chef’s coat she’d brought with her provided coverage of the red T-shirt, and she put it on over both jeans and shirt, telling herself that it was good that she looked boxy and sexless in it.
She left her hair trussed up on the crown of her head in the rubber band she’d taken from Kira, but she did give in to the inclination to refresh her blush and mascara—telling herself it was harmless.
Once she’d done that, she took the shopping bag containing her bakeware, utensils and some ingredients, and went back down the steps.
He’s just a guy like any other guy, she repeated to herself along the way. He’s not anything special. He’s just a regular guy.
A regular guy who would probably run screaming into the night if he knew her track record.
With her hand on the alley door to the kitchen, Kit braced herself, determined that she would take being with Ad in stride.
And that was exactly what she intended.
But intentions aside, the minute she opened that door and went in, she couldn’t help eagerly scanning the place for him.
Anymore than she could help the wave of instant disappointment when she discovered that the kitchen was empty.
Or the utter elation when, a moment later, he came through the swinging doors that connected the dining room to the kitchen.
“There you are,” he greeted when he spotted her. “I was beginning to wonder if you’d forgotten about me.”
I wish I could…. “I wanted to make sure your customers were all gone and your staff had finished up for the night before I barged in,” she lied, rather than let him know eight o’clock had come and gone while she’d been trying to get herself in the right frame of mind to see him again.
One look at him shot a hole through the theory that he was just a regular guy, though. The man was staggeringly handsome and that fact struck Kit all over again.
He had on a simple pair of jeans and a hunter-green polo shirt with the restaurant’s name embroidered above the breast pocket. But both the jeans and the shirt fit him to perfection, accentuating broad shoulders and chest, narrow waist and hips and thick thighs.
Plus he appeared to have taken the time to shave very recently and he smelled terrific, too—a clean, sea-breeze scent that was tantalizing and seductive and…
And she needed to get her head out of the clouds!
“How about a glass of iced tea or lemonade while we work?” Ad offered.
“Lemonade sounds good,” Kit accepted, wondering if she should just pour the cold liquid over her head.
While Ad filled two glasses she forced herself to get busy so she wasn’t just standing there gawking at him.
She went to the stainless steel work table in the center of the room and began to unload her things from the giant-sized shopping bag.
“I brought my own sugar, flour, vanilla and liqueur because they aren’t the everyday varieties. I also had Kira get the grocery store here to order in the European butter I use, but she said you’d told her I could steal the eggs from you,” Kit chattered to conceal her reaction to him.
“Yeah, I think I can spare a few eggs,” he confirmed. “And anything else you might need.”
“I shouldn’t need anything else. Except raspberries and cream later. But I can pick up those when the time comes. Oh, and chocolate,” Kit added when she reached it at the bottom of the bag. “I also brought my own chocolate—white and bittersweet. They have to be a certain kind, too.”
Ad brought the glasses of lemonade to the worktable and handed one of them to Kit. “Raspberries and chocolate? I take it you aren’t doing a run-of-the-mill cake.”
Kit sipped her drink, peering over the rim of the glass at the oh-so-yummy man with the aquamarine eyes. “I’m making a dark chocolate cake that I’ll brush with a raspberry liqueur called framboise,” she explained. “Then, on each cake, there will be a layer of chocolate ganache, then a layer of thickened fresh raspberry puree. I’ll cover all that in a thin frosting of the chocolate ganache, then do a second frosting and the decorations in white-chocolate butter cream.”
“Holy cow. Better make a big cake, people around Northbridge don’t see anything as fancy as that. I can guarantee they’ll go back for seconds.”
“I’m making four graduated tiers with five satellite cakes around the bottom tier. Kira wants to be sure there’s plenty.”
Ad counted the variously sized round cake pans Kit had stacked on the table.
“Yep, nine pans. Looks like we have our work cut out for us.” He held his arms wide. “Use me as you will.”
Kit laughed and tried not to think of better uses for him than buttering and flouring pans.
But that was the task she gave him—along with cutting rounds of parchment paper for the bottoms of each one.
While Ad did that Kit began beating egg whites and putting the cake batter together.
With the electric mixer running the noise level was too high for them to talk much. Mostly Kit gave instructions and Ad did as he was told. It might have been better if they had been able to keep up a conversation because maybe then it wouldn’t have been so difficult for Kit to keep from sneaking peeks at him, from noticing how adept his hands were, how agile his long, thick fingers could be. It might not have been so difficult to keep from studying the furrows his brow creased into as he concentrated on what he was doing. It might not have been so difficult to keep from glancing in the direction of his derriere when he dropped the scissors and bent over to retrieve them.
When the cakes were in the ovens, Kit and Ad worked together on the cleanup. Once that was accomplished they were left with nothing to do but wait.
“Let’s sit out where it’s cooler,” Ad suggested, nodding toward the front half of the restaurant.
They left the swinging doors open so Kit could hear the timer on the ovens, taking refills of lemonade with them.
Chairs were up on the tables in the seating area but Ad took two down for them to sit. Without thinking about it, Kit did what she would have done at any other time after finishing her baking—she took off her chef’s coat.
Only after she had did she recall that she’d been using it not only as protection from splatters, but also as camouflage for the tight red T-shirt she’d put on that morning with Ad in mind.
But it was too
