Page 34 of The Gingerbread Cafe
He smiled and picked carefully through the box before pulling out his first piece. She instinctively guided his hands to hold the coppery brown glass up to the light.
‘It’s beautiful,’ she agreed. ‘But watch out for those air bubbles. You don’t want too much weakness.’ She pointed to a stronger part of the glass and he took her direction.
She watched as he drew around his templates onto his chosen fragments of glass, looking up at intervals for her encouragement. She enjoyed his sharp intake of breath as she showed him how to score the glass, the high-pitched scrape of the shard weakening beneath his hands unnerving him.
‘Just wait until you have to break it,’ she teased, before passing him her running pliers.
His creased forehead softened as he caught sight of her favourite tool. ‘You stuck googly eyes on. Really?!’
‘Hey, don’t knock it. It makes life easier. Nobody wants to use upside-down pliers.’
He let out a laugh. ‘I’m surprised you haven’t knitted them a reindeer jumper. Well, you’re a natural at putting people at ease. I can see why that lot took to you tonight.’
He could? And had they?
Their hands touched as she showed him where to position the pliers to break the glass, a gentle shock running through her.
It was time to deflect some heat. ‘Erm. So why did you stop baking gingerbread?’
‘You can imagine what my father, the cordon bleu chef, thought of me icinggirlie gingerbread biscuits.’ He sighed. ‘When I went to culinary school the snobbery was much the same. So I changed direction.’
‘And now you cook rotten carrots for a restaurant owner who sounds about as fun as your dad?’ she asked gently, as she helped him to squeeze the pliers. The glass cracked. The break was perfect, and she sensed Lukas’s shoulders untightening.
‘Trust me, my boss could never be that bad. And I have been trying to move things in a more unique direction. The owner appreciates that if we want to be noticed for a Michelin star, we’ve got to stand out.’ He inspected the break and nodded, preparing to try the next edge on his own. ‘My boss does respect my need to do some things my own way. The flavours I’ve been working with in the restaurant are like a French Moroccan fusion, so I’m playing with those warm spices like ginger, cinnamon and nutmeg that were the heart of everything for me. Because what is food without warmth? Or a restaurant, for that matter.’
‘You feel like La Carotte Rôtie is lacking warmth?’
He continued to break glass, with her careful direction. ‘There’s nothing unusually cold about it for a place with that sort of price tag. A high-end restaurant brings in more affluent diners with big expectations, and sometimes a surprisingly low standard of manners. The owner is all about crisp whitetablecloths and serious sommeliers. But surely good food is about connection? It should be shared around a table with warmth and love.’ He inspected his final shapes as though he knew they needed something more. Was he debating his next words? ‘La Carotte Rôtie is lacking in soul and I’m partly responsible.’ His voice was lower now, like his gaze. ‘I bark out orders like a man on the edge, then go home to scoff my sad Pot Noodle for one. The head chef is the centre of everything. If the centre is cold and uninspired … what hope is there?’
He turned to her, his eyes the greyest she’d ever seen them. Keen to reach out but unsure what to say, she passed him her filing stone.
‘But you …’ He moved his hand to take the tool. Another brush of fingers. Another jolt. ‘It seems you did an outstanding job tonight. Mess aside.’ He gave her a fleeting smile. ‘From what I saw, you created more laughter and community in one night than I’ve managed in five years at La Carotte Rôtie. You stood up there bravely and showed people your heart. Nell would have been proud of you. I guess I am too.’
She pinched her lips together and gave a quick nod, turning away so he couldn’t see the tears forming in her eyes. When had she last heard somebody say that? Maybe she’d spent too many years blending into the furniture.
Under the spell of this strange, out-of-hours truce, they worked together to finish Lukas’s piece. Gretel felt her confidence build with every new skill she helped him explore, from the buzz of the glass grinder, to the smoothing of copper foil around the edges of glass, to the heat of the soldering iron. It was touching to see him off balance and looking to her for support. It had been a role reversal she absolutely wasn’t expecting.
When Lukas finished polishing his piece, he held it up to the light, mirroring where he’d started earlier that evening.Gretel felt herself leaning in. When he turned his face towards hers, their noses brushed. They blinked, their faces still almost touching, before they both slowly pulled away. Gretel didn’t know what Lukas was thinking, but she was sure she recognised a flicker of regret at moving backwards. But for her it was too soon to risk another rejection.
She cleared her throat and turned her attention back to his glass creation. ‘You’ve done an impressive job.’
He shrugged. ‘It was mainly you.’ He looked around the café. ‘Like a lot of things. You should have more faith in yourself.’
She now wished she’d had enough faith to kiss him. Would there be another chance?
‘Why did you choose those colours?’ she asked, keen to understand him more. The real Gingerbread Café was a honey-coloured Cotswold stone, the paintwork all reds and greens. Lukas’s version was in shades of copper, ginger and brown, like a gingerbread house. Though she was sure she was scared of looking at things differently, it worked.
‘I don’t know. Maybe the current look is too festive. Or maybe I see it evolving, somehow?’ He shook his head. ‘Not that we’ll be here to …’ He stopped himself.
She was glad he’d left it there. Just for tonight.
As the twinkle of Gretel’s battered plastic Christmas tree caught her eye, it was as though a light had just been switched on in her mind. The poor tree had been around the block, up the stairs and down again; and it showed.
‘Could I … ask you for your help with something?’ The question was out before she’d had the chance to think about it. Yet somehow she knew it was the next step, and she was eager for him to stay a little longer.
Chapter 29
It didn’t take as long as Gretel thought to take the Christmas decorations down. Suddenly, on that intimate evening, it had felt like the right thing to do. After all, she’d just managed to stand up in front of a whole room of strangers and share her precious craft with them, when a few weeks before she would have ducked to avoid a hello. She’d even managed to work with Lukas to create his own stained-glass piece, when she would previously have sworn he was the most difficult man on the planet.
