Page 19 of Chef’s Kiss (A Knights Through Time #20)

He looked at her then, really looked at her, and she felt the force of his attention like sunlight breaking through clouds. Those winter-blue eyes seemed to catalog every detail of her face, as if he were trying to memorize her features for some future moment when she wouldn’t be standing so close.

“Is that why you continued writing about food?” he asked quietly. “Even when no one appreciated your skill?”

The question hit closer to home than she’d expected, and she found herself answering with an honesty that surprised them both.

“I kept writing because I hoped that somewhere out there was someone who would understand. Someone who would read my words and think, ‘Yes, this person gets it. This person knows that food is more than fuel, that cooking is more than a chore, that sharing a perfect meal can be like sharing a piece of your soul.’”

“And did you find such a person?”

The way he asked it, soft and careful as if her answer mattered more than he wanted to admit, made her pulse quicken. “I thought I’d given up looking,” she said. “Until I came here.”

The air between them seemed to thicken, charged with possibilities neither of them was quite brave enough to name.

Tristan’s gaze dropped to her lips, and she felt her breath catch as he leaned slightly closer, close enough that she could see the gold flecks in his blue eyes, could smell the scent of herbs and honest sweat that clung to his skin.

“Rachel,” he said, and her name sounded different in his voice—rougher, hungrier, like a prayer and a curse combined.

“Yes?”

But before he could finish whatever he’d been about to say, the moment was shattered by the sound of approaching hoofbeats and Hugo’s booming voice echoing across the courtyard.

“Tristan! Where are you, you brooding fool? We have visitors!”

They sprang apart like guilty children, and Rachel’s cheeks burned with embarrassment and frustrated desire. The spell was broken, whatever confession or declaration had been trembling on the edge of his lips dissolved like morning mist.

“Duty calls,” she said, trying to keep her voice light despite the disappointment crushing her chest.

“Aye,” he agreed, but his voice was hoarse, and she caught the way his hands clenched at his sides as if he were fighting the urge to reach for her. “We should... the sage needs proper drying.”

“Right. Sage. Very important.”

They walked back toward the castle in charged silence, the basket of herbs between them like a fragile peace offering.

By afternoon, the visitors—a merchant seeking shelter and news of the roads ahead—had departed, leaving Greystone to its usual quiet routine.

She found herself once again in the kitchens, this time attempting to master the art of making pastry with ingredients that seemed determined to defeat her at every turn.

“This is impossible,” she muttered, staring at the lumpy mess that was supposed to be dough for meat pies.

“I can make pate brisée blindfolded in my apartment kitchen, but here I’ve got warm hands, room-temp lard, a rolling pin with opinions, and an oven that’s really a moody wall of fire. How did people survive on this stuff?”

“Low expectations,” Tristan said from behind her, his voice warm with amusement that made her spin around, and several of the kitchen boys yelp. He arched a brow, and the boys scurried off to do whatever they did during the day.

“Try ‘no expectations.’” She flung flour off her hands. “If my blog readers could see me now, they’d unfollow in droves.”

He stood in the doorway, wearing a clean shirt, one that didn’t cling quite so distractingly to his torso. Though if she were being honest, Tristan de Valois in a potato sack would probably still make her heart beat faster.

“Very helpful,” she said sarcastically. “Any actual advice, or are you just here to mock my complete inability to work with medieval kitchen technology?”

“I am here,” he said, moving into the kitchen with that predatory grace that always made her breath catch, “to prevent you from poisoning half my household with whatever you’re attempting to create today.”

“It’s meat pies,” she protested, gesturing at her flour-covered workspace. “Basic meat pies. How hard can it be?”

He looked at the lumpy dough, the unevenly chopped vegetables, and the suspicious-looking meat mixture she’d assembled. His expression suggested he was reconsidering her culinary qualifications.

“Perhaps,” he said carefully, “you might benefit from some... guidance.”

“Are you offering to teach me?”

The question hung in the air between them, loaded with implications neither of them was quite ready to examine.

Teaching meant working closely together.

It meant his hands guiding hers, his body close enough that she’d catch his scent with every breath, his voice low in her ear as he explained medieval techniques she’d never master on her own.

It meant tempting fate and her increasingly unreliable self-control.

“If you’re willing to learn,” he said quietly.

“I’m willing.”

The words came out softer than she’d intended, heavy with meanings that had nothing to do with pastry and everything to do with the way he was looking at her—intense and careful and full of longing he was trying very hard to hide.

“Very well.” He moved to stand behind her, close enough that she could feel the heat radiating from his body. “The dough is the foundation of everything. Too much handling and it becomes tough. Too little, and it falls apart.”

His hands covered hers on the rolling pin, and she swore her brain temporarily forgot how to process any information beyond the sensation of his calloused palms warm against her fingers, his chest solid against her back, his breath stirring the hair at her temple.

“Like this,” he murmured, guiding her hands on the rolling pin. “Let the dough tell you what it needs.”

She snorted. “Back home, the dough behaved itself. Here it’s like wrestling an unruly toddler with gluten issues.”

His chuckle vibrated warmly against her ear. “Then perhaps you will teach it manners.”

“What if I don’t speak medieval dough?” She asked, trying to inject some levity into the moment before she did something stupid like melting into a puddle of hormones right there on the kitchen floor.

His chuckle was a low rumble that vibrated through his chest and into her spine.

“Then you learn its language. Feel how it responds to pressure. Watch how it changes texture as you work it.”

Under his guidance, the recalcitrant dough began to behave, rolling out into something that actually resembled pastry rather than a lumpy disaster.

But she was having trouble focusing on the improvement, too aware of every point of contact between them, every shift of his body as he adjusted their positions.

“Better?” he asked, his voice closer to her ear than strictly necessary for cooking instruction.

“Much,” she managed, though she wasn’t entirely sure if she was talking about the dough anymore.

“Now for the filling.” He stepped away, leaving her feeling oddly bereft, and moved to examine her meat mixture with the focused intensity of a general planning battle strategy. “This needs more seasoning. And the vegetables should be smaller.”

“I don’t have a food processor,” she protested, then caught his blank look.

“A machine that chops things in seconds instead of hacking at them with a dull knife that only wishes it were a cleaver. Honestly, I could make this sing in my own kitchen. Here…” She waved at the mess of uneven vegetables.

“Here it just feels like cooking with one hand tied behind my back.”

Tristan’s brows lifted. “Yet still you persist.”

“Because I know what it’s supposed to taste like,” she shot back, wiping sweat from her brow. “I can see it in my head, I can taste the balance, I just can’t get the tools or ingredients to cooperate. It’s like trying to paint the Mona Lisa with finger paints.”

He selected a knife from the collection hanging near the hearth, testing its edge with his thumb.

He kissed the blade along a whetstone in three economical strokes, then set the steel aside. “Tools earn their edge with use.”

He slid the pot farther from the blaze with a peel and nudged a trammel a notch higher, calming the heat like a man settling a skittish horse.

“Here. Let me show you.”

Watching Tristan work with a knife was like watching a master craftsman practice his art.

His movements were precise and economical, each cut perfectly measured, the blade dancing through vegetables with a rhythm that spoke of years of practice.

The onions diced neatly, the carrots in perfect bits, and everything uniform and professional.

“Show off,” Rachel said, but she was smiling as she said it.

“Efficiency,” he corrected, though she caught the pleased note in his voice. “When you understand your tools and trust your skills, the work becomes... meditative. Peaceful.”

“Is that why you cook? For peace?”

The question seemed to catch him off guard, and his knife stilled for a moment before resuming its steady rhythm. “Once, perhaps. Now...”

“Now?”

“Now I find myself cooking for other reasons,” he said quietly, not looking at her as he spoke. “Reasons that are perhaps less wise.”

Before she could ask what he meant, he was moving again, adding the perfectly chopped vegetables to her meat mixture, seasoning with pinches of herbs that released their scent into the warm kitchen air.

Pepper bloomed, sage went green and bright, and a grate of nutmeg, a luxury, rounded the meat’s rough edges.

His movements were sure and practiced, transforming her amateur attempt into something that actually smelled like food rather than an unfortunate accident.

“Taste,” he said, offering her a spoon.

Their fingers brushed as she took it from him, and she saw his jaw tighten at the contact. The meat mixture was perfect—savory and complex, seasoned with herbs that somehow combined to create something greater than the sum of its parts.