Bachelor at Her Bidding (Bachelor Auction Book 2)(13)
He actually blushed. It was a faint wash of color, but enough to tell her that he was pleased by the compliment. “Pleasure.”
Taking advantage of the way he seemed to have warmed up, she dared to ask a question that verged on the personal. “So did you always know you wanted to be a chef?”
“Strictly speaking, I’m a pastry chef,” he said. “And I think I always did. My parents took me round Europe when I was about ten. We spent the whole summer there. I remember the macarons and the crepes in Paris, and amazing pasta in Rome, but most of all I remember the cakes in Vienna. Not just the rich chocolate Sachertorte they served with whipped cream, but going to a really old Hofzuckerb?cker where they had a glass wall at the back so you could see into the kitchens. One of the bakers was making this amazing cake shaped like a Lipizzaner horse. I stood on the stairs, just watching him add all these tiny touches and seeing the horse turn from plain white into something that looked almost real, even though it was all made of sugar. I knew then I wanted to do that – to make creations that amazed people as much as they’d amazed me when I was a boy.”
And yet he’d given it all up to work at Grey’s Saloon. Ryan Henderson wasn’t slumming it, exactly, but he was cooking the simpler food his clients enjoyed and obviously suppressing the fancier stuff he’d fallen in love with in Europe and had spent years training to make.
If only there was a way of helping him get the best of both worlds, she thought. Giving him time to spend with Phyllis, and yet also work with food the way he loved it.
*
Rachel Cassidy looked as if she was thinking about his life and trying to fix things. Which was, Ryan guessed, exactly the sort of thing a doctor would do. But he didn’t need any help. Things were fine as they were.
OK, so Gram had put some milk in a pan on the stove on Monday morning while he’d taken a shower, and had forgotten about it; it had boiled over and the kitchen had smelled of burned milk by the time he’d come into the room. The main thing was that Gram hadn’t been hurt, and he’d made her promise never to use the stove again. And, just in case she forgot about that, he’d made sure to switch off the stove at the mains when he wasn’t using it.
He tried heading Rachel off. In his experience, people could always be distracted if you asked them something about themselves. And she’d already asked him the same kind of question, so it wasn’t as if he was being pushy. “Did you always know you wanted to be a doctor?”
“Yes, but I knew it was a bit of a pipe dream because nobody in my family ever went to college. Dad and my brother, Ricky, are both ranch hands, Susie works with horses and Mom’s a cleaner. I was the odd one out in the family, the one who always had her nose in a book, and everyone was expecting me to get some kind of office job in the town,” she explained. “Then Sharla Dickinson sat me down and told me to follow my dreams. She said that I was perfectly capable of studying to be a doctor if that was what I really wanted. And I’m so lucky, because my parents, my brother and my sister supported me all the way.”
“It’s good to have family support,” he agreed, remembering how Phyllis had stood up for him when he’d wanted to do something a little different from the rest of the boys in his school.
“Thank you. Dinner was perfect,” she said when she laid her knife and fork down on her empty plate. “Just perfect.”
“It’s not over yet.” He cleared their plates away, then plated up the desserts: a scoop of rich, decadent coffee ice cream, over which he grated a little dark chocolate; a ramekin of crème br?lée; and a couple of the tiny vanilla and chocolate macarons artfully arranged beside them.
He sprinkled brown sugar over the crème br?lée, then sprinkled a tiny bit of brandy over the sugar. “Are you ready for this?” he asked.
“For what?” Rachel looked confused.
“A little bit of showing off.” This was one of his favorite tricks. He dimmed the lights again and brought out a tiny cook’s blowtorch, then put the trio of puddings in front of Rachel and set light to the brandy. Blue and yellow flames danced on top of the ramekin.
“Oh, my God – that’s so pretty!”
Just as he’d hoped, she was totally wowed by it. He smiled. “When the flames have died down, the sugar will be perfectly caramelized.” It was something he’d done many times before in the restaurant in Bozeman, but Rachel’s delight in it made it seem fresh and new to him.
She tried a taste from each dessert, and he watched her. Would she like this part of the meal – the bit he loved cooking the most?
She was silent. He watched her take another mouthful, and another.
And then she closed her eyes, as if she was letting herself concentrate on the contrasting tastes and textures: the darkness of the coffee and chocolate, the crunch of the sugar topping and the meringues with the softness of the set custard and the ganache.
Rachel Cassidy was definitely a hedonist.
And she liked his food.
He suppressed the memory of the way she’d smeared chocolate over his lower lip. The way she’d kissed him back, matching him hunger for hunger.
No, no and no. He’d drown out the temptations in dessert. Or at least try to.
He damped down the flickers of desire and ate his own dessert. Maybe the sugar hit would be enough to knock his libido out, at least until he was safely away from here.