Page 45 of Tempting Mr. Knightly

“Well?” She stepped back and addressed the table. “Thoughts on the design? This is a three-tier with cascading roses. We’ll do live flowers between the tiers, nothing heavy, just greenery and a few of the wildflowers Tessa picked.”

“It’s beautiful,” Tessa said.

“It’s a draft. I’ll refine the piping for the real one.”

“Lucy, it’s beautiful.”

“The proportion between the second and third tiers needs adjusting. The base is a quarter inch too wide for the stand I want to use, and the color should be half a shade warmer.”

“Half a shade.”

“Ivory reads cold under incandescent lighting. Your venue has incandescent. I need to push the tone toward cream.”

Tessa turned to Knox. “You’re keeping notes on this?”

“I stopped keeping notes ten minutes ago,” Knox said. “I’m now keeping a record of how many invisible flaws she can identify in an object the rest of us consider perfect.”

“It’s not perfect,” Lucy said. “It’s close. Close is where the work happens.”

Gabriel leaned toward Knox. “Is she always like this?”

“Yes.” Knox didn’t elaborate. He’d learned that Lucy’s perfectionism wasn’t anxiety or insecurity but craft. She refined because she could see what the cake should be before it arrived there, and the gap between the current version and the finished one was a space she inhabited with a restless focus that he found both captivating and exhausting.

They tasted the final combination, lemon elderflower with a Swiss meringue frosting and a thin layer of raspberry preserves between the layers.

Knox ate his slice in silence. The lemon was bright without being aggressive. The elderflower added a floral note that arrived second and stayed. The preserves gave the cake depth, a tartness that kept the sweetness from going flat. It was a perfect ratio of flavor, texture, and structure, and he was not going to call it acceptable because the last time he’d used that word about her food she’d threatened him with a rolling pin, and he’d deserved it.

He set his fork down. Lucy caught his expression across the table, and whatever she found there made her chin dip a fraction, which was her version of pride.

“Well?” she asked.

“No notes.”

Her eyebrows lifted. “From the person who refused to gush about my lemon bars?”

“That was a different man.” He paused. “This cake is the best thing I’ve eaten in my adult life, and I’m including the lamb at Enzo’s, which is saying something.”

“You complimented me.”

“I’m aware.”

“Voluntarily. Without being threatened.”

“Growth.”

“Runaway growth.”

The word sat between them, carrying more freight than a cake tasting warranted. Lucy turned to Tessa. Knox turned to his coffee.

“Lemon elderflower,” Tessa said. “Final answer. Gabriel?”

“I agree with everything my future wife says, now and forever.”

“That’s romantic.”

“It’s practical. I’ve seen what happens when I disagree.”

Gabriel and Tessa left at three. They had a florist appointment and a venue walk-through and the momentum of two people whose wedding was a week away and who had discovered that the final stretch of planning was less romantic and more logistical than any movie made it look.