Page 22 of Building Romance
I give her a curious look. “What article?”
She pulls a phone out of the pocket of her apron and passes it to me. I scan an article from about ten years ago. I don’t remember this at all, but then again, I was probably tripping balls on a Caribbean island or fucking two girls at once on the family yacht. I grimace at the memories. The article was mostly interviewing my mother about holiday traditions in the McDowell family. She mentioned eggnog.
“Eggnog?” I ask, memories are falling from the far corners of my mind. It was something we always had at the holidays. We didn’t have many traditions but that was most definitely one of them.
She nods. I bite into a cookie. It definitely has an eggnog taste to it and it also has a cinnamon-flavored frosting with little gold flecks. And fuck, this is a good cookie.
“This is the one,” I state as I finish the cookie and grab another. “How did you get the cookie to mimic the eggnog flavor so well?”
She smirks. “I guess you’ll have to wait and find out.”
Now, it’s me glaring at her. “You know by contract I get the recipes, right?”
She nods. “Yep.”
I feel my jaw clenching. This woman drives me insane.
“Fine,” I say sighing. “I’ll approve these three recipes. But we should come up with a fourth one in case of a bake-off tiebreaker round.”
She nods. “What else do you remember from the holidays?”
“I don’t know. I’m not a holiday type of person,” I admit. I start thinking and truly I don’t remember a lot about holidays. My parents always threw a big holiday party for friends and family. We often went to our beach house in the Caribbean for New Year's. There were always lavish gifts. But not a ton of traditions.
Then a single memory comes to the front of the pack. “Gingerbread,” I state as I look over at her.
Her lips twitch and I can tell she’s fighting a grin, but the smile wins and spreads across her face. I realize I haven’t seen her smile before, not really. She’s breathtaking like this. She should always be smiling.
“I love it. We used to make gingerbread houses at my gan-gan’s house,” she says, her smile widening.
“We used to make them too. Well, my brothers mostly made them and I just sat and ate the candy and gingerbread men,” I admit.
She giggles and now I’m fighting a smile. “Same. My brother is a lot older than me. I think he would get frustrated with my childish antics. I loved eating those little cinnamon candies and the gumdrops.”
“Red or green?” I ask, raising an eyebrow in a challenge.
“Red, of course.”
I laugh. “So there is something we have in common.”
She rolls her eyes. “What? I doubt it, aside from we are both humans, living in the same city, working in the same industry, we’re both youngest siblings, we’re both business people, both love eggnog and red gumdrops, and we both have a penchant for speaking before we think?”
Well, talk about feeling called out. “Fine, I guess we have about eight things in common.”
“Oh my God, did we just become friends?” she asks sarcastically.
“Nope. No worries there, you are still my competitor except when we are working on this competition,” I say, my jaw ticcing as I let her get to me again. I need to play it cool. I cannot let this woman win even one small battle.
“Fine, a truce only during our working hours together,” she says as she holds out her hand.
I shake it. “Works for me. Speaking of working hours. I’m done for the night. I need you to send me a list of supplies. I’ll have our staff stock them for the competition,” I state as I head to the door.
“Anything else, sire?” she asks as she follows me.
“Sire? Really? That’s the best you can do?”
She shrugs. “It’s late. I’m sure I can be more irritating at our next meeting.”
“Please see that you are,” I say as I open the door. She walks up to me with a bag in her hand and I look at it.
