Page 21 of Obsessed Fox

"I'll try but I'm a little busy at the moment."

I hung up with a groan and doubled my efforts. For the first time in my life, I regretted my decision to live in combat boots. If I had just been like every other female, I could've slipped on a pair of flip-flops or maybe some sneakers.

Instead I had to take the extra minute to lace up my boots before rushing out the door and then jogging to my shop because I also didn't have a car. Not that driving would've been much faster; Hendrix lived on the street behind the bakery. Two blocksover and one block down was all it took to see my dark sign calling my name.

Out of breath, because I was no runner, I hustled through the back door of the shop and came to a skidding halt. Standing in the middle of my industrial kitchen was Hendrix. But it was the flour bomb covering nearly every surface, including him, that gave me pause.

I looked straight at the industrial-sized mixer and put two and two together.

"You forgot to add the wet ingredients first, didn't you?"

In relatively slow motion, Hendrix turned on his heel.

I quickly covered my mouth to try and hide my smirk, but I was sure my amusement was written all over my face. Especially in my eyes.

"Go ahead and laugh it up."

White powder covered Hendrix's face and hair. The normally dark tendrils and scruff with silver running throughout was now nothing but white. Even his dark eyebrows were covered, giving him the look of a naughty Santa Claus with tattoos covering both arms.

I snickered. "I think it's safe to say the flour won the battle."

"Isn't this"—Hendrix waved at the big mixer bolted to the tile floor—“supposed to make life easier?"

"It does. If used properly." There was no hiding the laughter in my voice. I wasn't even trying anymore.

"I was following the damn recipe," he grumbled, pointing to the now flour-covered recipe book on the stainless steel table. "That bucket has the first few steps being whipped together and I was mixing the next step in this one."

Now it all made sense. Well, I had to give him credit for trying to follow the recipe, even if he was calling my mixer a bucket.

"Those are called mixers, not buckets, and you weren't completely wrong, just not one hundred percent right either."

Hendrix huffed and crossed his arms over his chest. "Clearly."

"Give me a few minutes to get this cleaned up and then I can show you where you went wrong."

I moved straight to the closet to grab the broom but Hendrix was right on my heels grabbing it out of my hand before I could protest. "It's my mess, I'll clean it up."

I didn't bother arguing. Instead I went to the sink and grabbed a towel to wipe down the table. We worked in comfortable silence to get my kitchen cleaned up, and in the grand scheme of things, it wasn't that bad. The flour mixture was dry, so it cleaned up easily. We were done within minutes and I checked on the other mixer to see how Hendrix fared with the wet ingredients.

Slightly overwhipped but we could make do. I slid the lever to the off position and turned back to what I was now considering my student.

"Okay, so this looks good. Bring those two containers over here and I'll show you what it means when it says to mix these three ingredients together."

"The baking powder and soda?"

"Yup."

Hendrix slid both containers over to where I stood with a large stainless steel bowl in front of me.

"Why do you keep the flour in a large plastic bin?" he questioned, referring to the large container on wheels underneath the industrial table in the middle of the kitchen.

"A, it's more sanitary." I scooped cups of flour out of the bin and gradually dropped them into the bowl before moving on to the baking powder and baking soda. "B, it keeps the kitchen clean. Opening and closing the sack would leave a mess."

Hendrix watched me intently and nodded his head. "That makes sense."

Using a large wooden spoon, I slowly mixed everything together. "So what made you decide to come in today and make cookies?"

I'd been trying to figure it out since Janie called. As far as I knew, Hendrix didn't bake. He barely had food in his house to cook and there was certainly nothing to bake with.

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