Page 33 of The Orc Chief's Baker
“Brovdir, look here.” His eyes snapped right to her face and held so powerfully she felt a zing of warmth shoot through her entire body. His full attention gave her confidence. “Brovdir, three of my cream buns arenotworth metal working like this. Metal is incredibly valuable these days, and the skill to bend it to your will is so much more difficult than baking.”
His expression shifted, mouth quirked, brows gentled. His posture loosened as his eyes mirrored disbelief.
Her stomach erupted into butterflies all over again.
“Not to me,” he rumbled in such a low, exquisite tone she felt it all the way down in the balls of her feet. It made her want to shift from side to side. “For me, these sweets are worth a lifetime.”
A . . . lifetime?
She didn’t understand his meaning, and she was afraid to ask. Nor could she find her voice. The earnest praise for her baking combined with the heated gaze Brovdir was giving her made her almost giddy.
“W-we should still make itfair, Brovdir,” she said, pointing to the drawing. “Can you tell me what you think this pan would be worth in... let’s say... dried meat?”
He nodded and looked down at the drawing for a moment before his brow screwed up and he rose his hand to look at it in confusion.
“You want . . . seven hand widths?”
She burst into embarrassed laughter. “Oh, no, no! Why didn’t I think of that? I used my own hand as a measurement! I didn’t meananyhand.” She looked down at his massive hands. “Fades, if you built it off yours it wouldn’t even fit in my oven.”
A grin flitted across his face and her stomach flipped over. “H-here. Hold out your hand for me.” He did so, and she sat her own hand flush over his.
Biscuits and jam, his hand washuge.Almost twice the size of her own! Her middle finger barely made it up to his first knuckle.
And his palm was so deliciouslywarm.It was a lighter color than the rest of his dark skin, more of a bright green. There were white calluses and scars all over it.
She traced a particularly awful scar that ran from the top of his index finger to the bottom of his thumb. He was so lucky he hadn’t lost it.
The hand under her shivered, and she was reminded that he was apersonas she jerked away. “Sorry! Very sorry. I don’t know why I keep forgetting myself around you.”
She could barely look him in the eye as she took the parchment back. “Let me change the numbers on this so you can use your own hand to measure.”
“Trinia.”
His voice felt like fire in her veins, and she helplessly looked up into his dark green eyes. “Yes?”
His light smile made her stomach flip-flop. “I like it when you forget yourself.”
She forced herself to focus all her attention back on the diagram even as her heart was hammering and her mind was quailing and her eyes kept flitting to where he stood, tall and strong and focuseddirectlyon her.
Her breath caught. This male was awarrior. He couldn’t possibly be flirting with her.
Could he?
“I’ll just fix these up over... uh...” She pointed to a nearby boulder with a semi flat top and settled down with her charcoal pencil.
She busied herself with the calculations, determined to take a moment to catch her breath and let her mind stop reeling. She moved from one diagram to the next, steadily working through the stack until she was on the final one.
“This one would be almost five of your hand widths long.” Trinia tapped her charcoal pencil on the boulder. Was that going to be too big? He didn’t seem worried about the amount of metal, but?—
A broken hiss of pain yanked her right out of her thoughts, and she straightened up to find that Brovdir was holdingwillow spikeof all things!
“Fades! Uh—” She fished into the pocket of her skirt to find her handkerchief as the orc’s face screwed up with pain. He dropped the deceptively lovely red flowers as his hand swelled up. His dark green skin was mottled with pock marks where the dozens of barbs had dug into his flesh.
He sucked more air between his clenched teeth and went to wipe his hand on his pants.
“Don’t!” She rushed over and grabbed his forearm above the wrist which had started to swell. “Those barbs are so sticky! You’ll get them all over your pants and they’ll be harder to get out than a raspberry jam stain.”
Biscuits, what possessed him to touch a willow spike root? She looked down at the plant in confusion. It was rather pretty. The bright red petals cascaded into yellow at the stem. It carried this gradient pattern all the way down to its barbs, which began at the roots. She used her foot to cover them up with dirt.
