Page 110 of Perfect Pairing
And who was I to argue with that?
“How do you feelabout a family dinner?”
I stilled at the stove in my bakery kitchen, where I was slowly stirring a cinnamon roll glaze, waiting for the moment it started to bubble before I removed it from the heat. The rolls themselves were nearly ready to come out of the oven, and the entire kitchen smelled of cinnamon and sugar.
It was two weeks into the new year, and Ezra and I were at the bakery, where he was helping me with my online shop orders by measuring out dry ingredients for the scone and muffin kits I needed to mail out by the end of the week. He may not have been the more talented pastry chef of us two, but I trusted him to at least correctly measure ingredients.
Even if he’d once told me he “measures with the heart.”
“I have dinner with my family every week,” I reminded him.
“Okay, fair. What I mean is, like…both of our families. A special dinner. A…coming out of sorts.”
“A coming out with what?”
“Our relationship?”
“Oh!” I said, smacking myself on the forehead. “You want to do a fancy dinner for that?”
Ezra shrugged, feigning nonchalance, but I could tell myquestion and confusion bugged him. “I just thought it might be a good idea to get everyone together and tell them all at once.”
I moved around the island so I could wrap my arms around his waist and pull our bodies together. I relished the fact that I could do this now—that I could touch him freely and without consequence.
“Will you be cooking?”
Ezra rolled his eyes. “Duh.”
“What’re you thinking of making?” I asked, tilting my head to press a kiss to the underside of his jaw. A grumble emanated from his chest.
“Pizza,” he rasped, lowering his face to my neck and inhaling deeply, then licking my skin like I was an ice cream cone. “God, your scent drives me insane. How do you always smell so sweet?”
I pushed away from him before we could get carried away, having far too much work to get done for what would happen if I remained tangled in his embrace.
“I come by it naturally,” I said cheekily as I returned to my glaze.
Ezra snorted. “Right.”
“Hey!” I protested, spinning and throwing an errant piece of dough across the room at him. “I’ll have you know, I’m very sweet. Everyone says so.”
“That’s because they’ve never heard the filthy shit you say in bed.”
My cheeks heated, still not entirely used to the seductress persona I adopted behind closed doors, though I grinned widely at Ezra anyway. I loved the side he brought out of me when we were pressed skin-to-skin. I may have spent all day, every day dealingwith customers, surrounded by baked goods, and showing the world I was as sweet as my treats, but I was anything but at night, when Ezra played with my body. My thoughts were sinful, scorching enough to set the sheets on fire.
But to the rest of the world, I was simply reserved, demure Baker Brie.
That was fine by me. I wanted to keep Ezra and our explosive connection all to myself.
“I think a family dinner is a wonderful idea,” I said at last. “Especially if you’re making pizza. You know how much I love your Margherita.”
“Not as much as you love my meatballs,” he said with a wink, and a laugh burst free from me.
God, being with him was soeasy.
Admittedly, we were still very much in the honeymoon phase, but even when we hadn’t been as serious about our connection, when we were just trading orgasms and swapping stories over the phone, I’d still never fallen so effortlessly into a relationship with someone. It was why I hardly dated—I often found it difficult to connect with people when my whole life revolved around food, my family, and this small town I called home.
But Ezra understood me better than anyone, because those things were all things he deeply valued as well. He was my equal in so many ways but different enough that we never ran out of things to discuss or discover about each other.
I hoped we never grew out of it.
