Didn’t everyone? “Sometimes you need something different. Shake things up. I don’t get to play with food this way very often at work, so it’s nice to stretch my wings.”
“Well, I know about shaking things up. Don’t fly all the way across the country at seventy-five because you like to avoid a shake-up.” She winked at him. “Congratulations again.”
And off she went, leaving Tristan... pleased, sure. But he was pretty certain he’d never talked to her before this. It was nice but unexpected.Maybe she was shaking things up.
All in all, though, Tristan felt good. As good as he could imagine feeling on this show.
He’d beaten Henry fucking Isaacson at cake.
He felt prettydamngood.
Henry toweled off his hair, then flopped down onto the bed and grabbed his phone. Nothing interesting on Facebook. He wasn’t allowed to post, anyway. Not until he got back, and he couldn’t mention the show until it had aired, and even then only things that had actually happened so far in the broadcast. That cut Twitter right out of his schedule too. Emails? He never got any that weren’t business related, and those were being handled by Athena while she headed up the shop. He’d already texted Carrie, and if he sent her too many messages in a row, she might get worried about him.
I need company.He could watch TV and it would give him noise, the facsimile of not being alone, but he’d been doing that since he got to the hotel. It hadn’t helped. If anything, it made him miss nights out at clubs and lunches with Carrie that much more. Still, even if he could have gone out and socialized, he couldn’t risk exhaustion or a hangover. He needed to be one hundred percent on his game tomorrow.
Henry stared at the ceiling again. He did that a lot when the internet bored him and he wasn’t taking extra-long showers. It made sense why people had had so many children before entertainment was freely available. Sex had been about the only thing to do. Even if it was with yourself. But Henry didn’t want to do it with himself anymore. Unfortunately, the one person he wanted to entertain himself with was not an option.
Henry hopped up and went to the fridge. He needed to get off the bed or he’d be in for another round of fantasizing, and although his libido might have thought he was teenager, every other part of him knew otherwise. He pulled out the paper plate with the slice of acid-green cake on it.
Tristan’s peppermint cake wasn’t quite as good as decent sex... but it was better than bad drunken sex. Henry didn’t bother with a fork, just picked it up with his hands. The sponge held together well enough that he didn’t get crumbs everywhere. As he bit into it, his mouth cooled, and he relished each tiny shard of leaf studded through the chiffon.
He’s got a better chiffon than I do, the wedding-catering bastard.Lighter and more evenly textured, but still perfectly firm.
I have to get the recipe from him. If he’ll share. Maybe I can trade something.
An inkling of a notion peered out of Henry’s thoughts. A strange half-idea, half-fantasy, with maybe a sprinkling of apology on top. Tristan was down the hall and, if Henry really wanted to, he could see what it would take to pry that chiffon recipe off of him.
The fact that Henry’s idea/fantasy ended in naked-shower-time was irrelevant. That wouldn’t happen—he knew that much.
After finishing the cake, he threw on a shirt and his pajama pants. His plate could stay where it was, but he was sure to grab his key card from next to the TV. At the very least, he hadanexcuse to leave his hotel room. And if the excursion went well and Tristan was as God-awfulboredas him, he could have some stimulating baking conversation too. Maybe they could set enmity aside in the name of them not going stir-crazy.
This is incredibly stupid. Tristan didn’t like him, and Henry had been a dick about the wholegood luckthing not two hours ago. He hadn’t been able to quite apologize for it when they’d been talking after the filming session. But he was making the stupid decision anyway. He walked out of his hotel room, marched down the hallway to Tristan’s door, rapped a few times, and waited.
After about ten seconds, the door swung open on a broad, half-exposed chest.I should have prepared for the visual onslaught.There was another tattoo too, partially hidden. A brightly colored sugar skull visible on his left pec.
Tristan yanked his bathrobe tighter over himself, covering up the ink, the chest, and the beginnings of a dark happy trail that had sent Henry’s mind spiraling. “Okay, why are you at my door at nine o’clock at night?” He pushed his glasses higher up on his nose. “If this is some weird sabotage attempt where you’re going to kill me, I’m pretty sure that’s against the rules.”
The gears of Henry’s mind clunked and ground past the momentary block of all that exposed skin and those hard lines and muscles.I should have thought this out better.Suddenly, a late-night recipe swap seemed not only unlikely, but stupid and alittlebit rude. But he was here and Tristan was staring at him, waiting. Henry cleared his throat a couple of times. “Your chiffon cake. It’s really good.”
“I’m aware, thank you. Chat over?”
Henry shook his head. “Can I trade you for it? Now that cake week’s over, I can’t use it to beat you.” Heat rose in his cheeks, hot and ragged. “Okay, it sounded stupid in my head, and it didn’t get better when I said it out loud.”
“I imagine not.” Tristan yawned wide, showing off straight white teeth and a nice thick tongue and—
Focus, damn it. You’re here for the chiffon recipe, not the sexy pastry chef.
Except he was partly here for the sexy pastry chef.
Tristan finished his yawn and locked eyes on Henry. “I’m not giving up my chiffon. Yours is plenty good, anyway.” He cocked an eyebrow. “That it?”
Okay, so recipe retrieval was a bust. Time for mission number two. “About today, when I smarted off to you before? I’m sorry.”
One corner of Tristan’s mouth quirked upward. “You’ll have to be more specific. You have an ego the size of Texas; you smart off a lot. Especially at me.”
Ouch.But not inaccurate. “Right. I meant when you wished me good luck and I was an ass.”
Tristan nodded. “Oh. Well, apology accepted, then. Anything else?”
