Page 13 of Screwed
“If football teams liked macarons. Which I doubt.”
“I play football. I like macarons.”
“Have you ever had one?”
“No.” He grinned, a sexy, dimpled grin. “But your batter tastes damn good. And I like anything sweet.”
“True. Well, you can taste them when we’re done, and you can take some home and serve them to your football buddies.”
Cash still played football on weekends with a bunch of guys. Not the college level he’d played at UT Austin, but still a way for him to have fun with the sport he loved. She pictured him arriving at the football field with a box of fancy little cookies and laughed out loud.
“Yeah, very funny,” he agreed. “As if I’d share.”
She slid the pans into one of the double wall-mounted ovens, closed the doors, turned the temperature down to 325, and set the timer. Then she leaned against the counter. “These only take about ten minutes. But they have to cool before I can sandwich them.”
She surveyed her messy kitchen and the cakes cooling over on the other counter. “I could probably ice those now.”
“Jesus. Are you trying to put yourself in a diabetic coma?”
“Haha.” She pushed away from the counter. “I was experimenting with making sugar flowers yesterday. That was another thing I learned in France. But it’s one of those things where you have more failures than successes at first.”
“Sugar flowers?”
She got to work rolling out fondant icing. “Yes. I’ll show you in a few minutes.”
The timer dinged, and she hurried back to the oven to check her precious macarons. She did a quick exhale. “They look perfect.”
She pulled the trays out and set them aside to cool and returned to her fondant.
Cash started putting bowls and utensils into the sink. “You should sell this stuff, Callie.”
She bit her lip and gave him a quick look through her eyelashes. “Um, I’ve actually been thinking about that.”
“Really?” He ran hot water into the sink and squeezed in detergent.
“It’s a crazy idea.”
“I don’t know. This stuff looks pretty professional.”
She nodded, focusing on her task. She’d spent the last two days either working on the flowers or doing online research into what it took to open a bakery. She’d learned a lot working atDuchessein France, but opening your own business was a whole other story.
The creative part of it was what really drew her in. Building the beautiful flowers was painstaking, and some might think it tedious, but she loved it. All the attention to detail appealed to her, and she’d been practicing making the gum paste really thin and adding color with edible paints to make the flowers look realistic.
When she had the fondant covering both cakes smoothly, she crossed the kitchen to the dining table and carried a big plastic box over to the island. Cash moved closer, drying his hands, eyeing the box curiously. She removed the lid to reveal her flowers carefully nestled in tissue paper. They were peonies in shades of pink, from pale pink to fuchsia, various sizes, with delicate shaded petals.
“Holy crap,” Cash said. “Those look real.”
She nodded eagerly. “They turned out pretty good.” She pointed at one. “That one’s not so great. I used a little too much paint. And this one’s not quite right, either.”
“Hell, they look perfect to me. You can actually eat those?”
“Yes.”
“Wow.” He met her eyes. “That’s really amazing, Callie. You’re an artist.”
She tipped her head and gave him a wry smile. “It just took me a while to figure out what my medium is. All those drawing and painting classes were fun, but I never got really into that stuff. For some reason, I love playing around with sugar.”
He smiled. “There you go.”
