Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 79587 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 398(@200wpm)___ 318(@250wpm)___ 265(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79587 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 398(@200wpm)___ 318(@250wpm)___ 265(@300wpm)
Someone—right. There was no question that it had been Amanda. Mattie shot her a look and saw that her high school bully was just now pulling a tray full of sugar cookies out of her own oven and putting another tray in. No doubt she would have plenty of time for her cookies to cool so she could ice and decorate them. And doubtless she would be secretly gloating about her little act of sabotage the whole time.
To Mattie, the situation looked hopeless. There was just no way to preheat the oven, bake the cookies, and get them all rolled in powdered sugar in time for the judging. If only she’d been paying more attention to the other side of the room instead of guarding the dough!
This is what you get for talking dirty to Grath and letting him talk dirty to you when you know damn well this is all an act, she lectured herself. But for a moment, she’d actually believed that he wanted to do all those sexy things to her. No other man had ever talked to her that way—it had been intoxicating and she’d been getting so hot…while her oven was getting cold.
“Crap!” She sighed in frustration. “Well, I’m afraid this time we’re really done for. There’s just no time to preheat the oven and get these done before the judging!”
“I wouldn’t be too sure about that, little girl,” Grath rumbled and Mattie saw he had a thoughtful look on his face. “You just need heat applied to the raw dough to cook it—right?” he asked her.
“Well…yes.” Mattie began to get an inkling of where he was going. “But…can you do that? Can you produce that much heat?”
“I can produce all the heat you want—I just can’t flame up,” he told her. “Let me know how hot to make it and I can get there.”
“Oh, um…it has to be three hundred and seventy-five degrees Fahrenheit. Hang on…”
TWENTY-ONE
GRATH
Madeline went over to table eight and spoke to Shonda again. After a moment, she motioned him to come over.
“Okay now, Shonda’s oven is set at the temperature we need,” she told Grath. “We’re not allowed to use her oven because of the rules, but she can open the door a minute so you can feel the heat level. Will that help?”
“That’s fucking perfect.” Grath nodded.
“Okay then—just be careful,” Shonda said. She opened the door to her cooking unit and let Grath stick his hand inside.
After a moment, he nodded.
“Got it.”
“Okay, good. Thank you, Shonda!” Madeline gave her a smile and the two of them returned to table nine.
“Now, I know we can’t cook it using the oven, but I think it would be better to heat the cookies inside it anyway—to avoid any chance of fire,” Grath told her.
“But I thought you couldn’t, uh, flame up?” Madeline frowned.
“I can’t but that cloth on the table might catch on fire if we get it hot enough. And the table underneath it is wood,” Grath pointed out. “Besides, with the cookies on the metal rack in the oven, I can reach one hand over them and one hand under the rack and give them even heat.”
“Oh, good point! Okay, here.” Madeline slid the sheet with the cookie balls into the oven on the wire rack and Grath knelt beside the open door.
“Here goes,” he told her. “I’ll do the best I can.”
And he let the heat he always kept inside him, burning like a submerged river of lava, rise to his hands and fingers.
He just hoped this worked—he hated like hell to see Madeline disappointed!
TWENTY-TWO
MATTIE
Mattie watched anxiously as the big Hybrid baked the cookies with his hands. He had his fingers spread wide and was slowly moving them back and forth over the raw balls of dough. She could already feel the heat coming from the open oven—almost as though it was really on. But she knew the warmth was actually coming from Grath’s big hands—they were so hot they were glowing a dull red.
In a surprisingly short amount of time, the cookie balls began to take on a delicate tan color. A few minutes after that, Mattie asked Grath to pull the cookie sheet out for a minute so she could test one of them.
“Oh…they’re perfect!” she exclaimed as the delicate ball parted into two halves under her knife. “I can’t believe how fast you baked them!”
“Just doing my job as your assistant,” Grath rumbled modestly. “Now what, baby?”
“Now we’ll let them cool for just a minute and then we can roll them in powdered sugar and present them to the judges,” Mattie told him. She glanced at the large clock on the wall. “We should have just enough time.”
“Perfect,” Grath growled. “I’m fucking glad—I would have felt terrible if I made you lose the contest because we both got distracted playing our parts.”