Wedding Willies. Victoria Pade
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elderly woman named Betty to help Kit and Kira make little bundles of nuts and candy for each place setting at the reception tables.
Betty had been Cutty’s housekeeper and nanny before Kira’s appearance in his life, and had initially been a source of trouble for Kira. But now that Kira and Cutty were marrying, Betty only helped out with the twins and the house on a part-time basis, and she and Kira had become friends.
With so many people around and so much to do, Kit never found a minute to tell her friend that she was having problems keeping Ad Walker off her mind.
And then the day was over and on the drive back to the restaurant Kira outlined what needed to be done the next day, not giving Kit the chance to tell her anything before dropping her off in the alley at the foot of the steps that led up to the apartments.
So Kit was on her own.
And facing an evening of baking cakes in Ad’s restaurant kitchen…with the delectable Ad.
She went upstairs to the studio apartment, slipping inside without seeing the man who, even throughout the well-occupied day, had haunted her.
But maybe, she began to think as she closed the door behind her, she’d just built this out of proportion in her mind. She hadn’t spent a whole lot of time with him, she reasoned. And she’d been traveling and was tired. Really tired. Everything might have combined to skew her image of Ad Walker. To make him seem better than he really was.
And then maybe her imagination had just kept it going. Expanded on it. And maybe the end result was that Ad Walker had seemed more fantastic than he actually was.
Although he had looked good when she’d seen him for those few minutes this morning….
But now that she 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