Page 28 of Perfect Pairing
I scoffed. “My sisters only think I’m quiet because I can never get a word in around them. Ella is the quiet one, not me.”
One side of Ezra’s mouth kicked up. “Noted.”
“What else?”
His eyes met mine, and in a rush, he asked, “How old are you?”
“Twenty-two.”
Ezra’s throat bobbed as he swallowed. Quietly, he said, “You don’t look twenty-two.”
“I–I don’t?” I stammered, unsure how else to respond.
Ezra only shook his head, eyes trained on the ladle of sauce he spread over the pizza dough.
Knowing it was unwise to press the issue, I let the conversation drop and moved around to the other side of the kitchen. The silence in the room was deafening, and I hated the awkwardness. Ezra and I hardly knew each other, so how had we found ourselves in this situationso quickly?
Across the room, Ezra cleared his throat and looked up at me. “So what kind of danishes are you going to make?”
“Cheese and apple,” I said, smiling, grateful for the change in subject.
Food was safe territory. Food would force me to keep my hands—and errant thoughts—to myself.
This recipe was one I’d recently added to my repertoire. I hadn’t yet given it a try, but I had found an apple danish recipe in my grandmother’s old cookbook. My personal favorite was cheese, so I wanted to see if I could marry the two.
“You mean like…two different kinds? Or cheese and apple in one?” Ezra asked, sidling closer.
“Cheese and apple in one,” I clarified as I moved around the kitchen, pulling out ingredients and lining them up on the counter. I could feel Ezra’s eyes on me as I moved.
“You really know your way around this place, don’t you?”
I glanced at him briefly over my shoulder then moved to the fridge. “I’ve been cooking here since I was a kid,” I said as I opened the doors and reached inside for butter and milk. “I’m sure you’ve learned by now that neither of my parents can cook.”
Ezra choked on a laugh. “I let your dad attempt to cook me eggs during that first week I was here. I can assure you, I won’t make that mistake again.”
I chuckled along with him, easily able to imagine my dad turning something as simple as scrambled eggs into charred lumps better suited for use as grill charcoal. “We’ve all accepted that their talents lie elsewhere. But as I got older and grew more interested in making a career out of food, they came to realize that simply supervising me in the kitchen to make sure I didn’tburn the house down wasn’t enough. So, I started spending a lot of time here with Roscoe, your predecessor.”
“Heard great things about the man’s food,” Ezra said solemnly. “Not so much about how he parted ways with the family.”
“He was Dad’s best friend in a lot of ways,” I said, now moving toward the cupboards to pull out bowls and mixing utensils. I even hauled the stand mixer over to the island and plugged it in. On the other side, Ezra had dropped into a chair while the pizza baked, elbow resting on the counter, chin propped on a palm, listening intently to me. “Bringing Roscoe in was the first big hire Dad made after he took over the company, and I know him wanting to leave really messed with him. But I learned so much from that man, and however he left things, I’ll forever be grateful he helped me hone my craft and recognize my calling at such a young age.”
Ezra raised a brow, that sensual mouth hitching up on one side. “Your calling, huh? I think I’ll be the judge of that.”
With a sly grin, I said, “I can’t wait to make you eat your words.”
A full-on grin bloomed across his face, and I returned it before diving into my task.
While I worked, we talked about everything and nothing. How he was settling into Apple Blossom Bay, if he liked working for my parents. How my internship was going and if I felt like I was learning a lot. He told me surface-level stories about his dad and son, and I shared random, inconsequential things, like my favorite color and what songs I had on repeat.
We were scratching the surface, exploring whatever this weird hum of energy between us was, clearly both deciding if it wassomething worth digging deeper into.
I could admit—I was absolutely smitten. I could’ve spent days in that kitchen with him, listening to him talk about the most random things or watching him prepare our meal.
At last, the danishes were done, and when I set them up on a rack to cool, Ezra presented me with a massive pizza, the cheese still bubbling, the crust a crispy brown. He slid it onto a pizza stone and immediately cut it. The stringy cheese clinging to the blade had my mouth watering.
“The trick to making a good pizza,” Ezra started as he pulled up a stool next to me and lifted a piece off the plate, “is both in the crust and the sauce. Toppings are the same no matter what you put them on, but if your dough is too soft, the pizza will fall apart. And if you add too much sauce, it’ll overshadow all the toppings. I’ll let you in on a secret, though.” He leaned closer to me, his breath tickling the side of my face. “I like to put shredded cheese in my crust too.”
“Like stuffed crust?”
