The Holiday Swap(41)
“Wait— Why does Sharon Marston want our sourdough recipe?” Charlie asked.
“I think she wants to expand her dog biscuit line,” Jake replied.
“I didn’t realize that.” What Charlie meant was that she didn’t realize Sharon made dog biscuits, but she figured Cass probably would. And it suddenly clicked why Sharon was asking her about starter when she’d called the bakery—she was trying to get the Woodburn family recipe to use as her own. Charlie wasn’t sure if she should be flattered or irritated.
“I might need to get you to sign a nondisclosure agreement.” Charlie gave Jake a pointed glance.
“No need. Your secrets are safe with me,” Jake replied, putting a hand to his chest.
She tried not to think about all the secrets she could tell him as she took the family’s sourdough starter down from its shelf. She lifted the cheesecloth and took a sniff. “Ah. Perfect. Bubbling away and ready to bake. It’s the one thing I haven’t messed up yet—” She caught herself. “Uh, over the past few busy days. Okay, so for the bread we make every day I use up nearly all of this starter.”
“But then what? You’ll have nothing left for the next day.”
“That’s the cool thing. We feed it and it replenishes itself. Like a little daily miracle.”
“What do you feed it?”
“A slurry of flour and water, nothing special.” She dumped all but a cup of the starter into the industrial stand-mixer’s bowl. “Why don’t you go ahead and feed it? To replace what we’ve just used, about four cups of flour and a cup and a half of water should do it.” Charlie handed Jake a set of measuring cups.
While he fed the starter, she added water into the stand-mixer’s bowl, along with several fat pinches of table salt, explaining what she was doing. “And now we add the flour, form it into a dough, and leave it to rise. I’ll shape it into loaves in the morning.”
“That’s it? Here I thought you were going to let me in on some incredible alchemy, but it’s just flour . . . and water . . . and a little salt.”
“Don’t you think that’s magic in and of itself?” she said, reaching for a whisk and handing it to him. “That something so simple can yield something so great?” Charlie poured the measured flour into the bowl. Though she no longer made the family’s sourdough regularly, her hands knew precisely what to do. How much of each ingredient to use, which she measured out of habit, though she didn’t need to. Nothing on set was like this—the desserts and confections she made required such precision. But this was something she had done for most of her life, and she felt nostalgic being back at it.
“It does seem magical,” Jake said, and she got the feeling he wasn’t talking about bread anymore.
“Okay, start mixing,” she said. “If it’s too sticky add more flour, and if it’s too dry, add more water.”
“I have a confession,” Jake said, as he whisked the starter.
“Oh yeah?” Charlie checked the starter’s consistency.
“I used to spend time here, in Starlight Peak, during the summers. And coming to the bakery was always one of the first things I wanted to do when I arrived. I’d beg Gran and she’d be, like, think I can stop the car first?” Jake laughed at the memory. “I’m sure neither of you would remember me, though. I was shy, and pretty dorky and scrawny back then.”
“You? Dorky and scrawny? I find that hard to believe.”
“I had laser eye surgery a few years ago, but when I was a kid I wore these awful pop-bottle glasses. It was depressing.” Jake grimaced and Charlie laughed. She couldn’t imagine Jake as anything other than the gorgeous, tall, fit guy he was now.
“The first time I came in, Charlie was working behind the counter with your mom, and you and your dad were decorating cookies. You were the first identical twins I’d ever seen, and I thought you were the coolest, prettiest girls in the world. I only knew who was who because of the names on your aprons.”
In a flash, Charlie pictured it: a quiet redhead with glasses, shyly ordering a treat at the counter. “Eclairs!” she exclaimed. “That was your favorite, right? You always ordered an eclair.”
“Yup. That was me.”
“I remember you,” Charlie said breathlessly. It was the most wonderful thing to have discovered this shared experience from their past. Jake wasn’t a complete stranger after all.
They were facing each other now, only a foot or so apart. And before she considered what might happen next, Jake closed the space between them. He put his hands on either side of her face and stared into her eyes for just a moment before their lips met—gentle and tentative at first, but then Charlie pressed closer to him. As the kiss deepened, Charlie’s senses were flooded. She closed her eyes, light-headed with the feel of him . . . the taste of him. She could taste Jake: dark berries from the wine; a richness from the black truffles in the pasta sauce. She could smell him, too: the hint of a spicy aftershave and the lingering smell of campfire, which she’d noticed the day before. All of it was a revelation. And it was almost too much for her to take in.
Charlie pulled away and breathed in deeply, trying to stop the spinning in her head. Jake pressed his lips to her forehead. They stayed like that, both of them slightly out of breath, and then Charlie tilted her chin up and found Jake’s lips again. I could do this all night long . . .