Page 15 of Royal Icing

“Are you okay? Here, take a deep breath. Slow.” She instinctively took his hand and planted it on her chest.

Raspy breaths ripped between his lips, and she held his hand with her trembling one until they evened out.

“I’m so sorry for scaring you.”

Peeing on and then choking a maintenance man all in the same day? She was definitely going to get kicked out of the country at this rate.

“Scaring me?” he asked.

Oh, that accent. Her toes curled in her shoes.

“You saved my life,” he added.

“After almost killing you,” she clarified.

“Where did you learn to do that?” He gestured toward his stomach.

Now that the danger had passed, she couldn’t help but stare. He was even more handsome than he had appeared in the park. His eyes were the color of a cocoa ganache behind black-framed glasses. Brilliantly white teeth were framed by rosy, generous lips. His dark brown hair was mussed—as one would expect from a near-death encounter—and blended with the edges of a trimmed beard.

Her heart staggered a little. Did the province hire only panty-dropping maintenance workers? How did anyone get anything done?

Oh, shit. He had asked her a question. Focus, idiot.

“The Heimlich? My mom chokes a lot, so I get a weird amount of practice.”

He turned the full force of his brown eyes on her. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“It’s not my favorite family pastime.” She jumped to her feet and offered her hand. He took it, and she pulled him up. A thrill ran through her body at the contact. His hands were calloused and strong.

He dusted some powdered sugar off his T-shirt. “This might be an insane question. Do you have a Bernese mountain dog?”

Shit. She was right. It was him.

“You mean Cooper, who peed on you earlier today? Yes, I do.”

“So thatwasyou.” His look of post-near-death-experience malaise had been replaced by one of interest. “How’s your head?”

Warmth rushed into her cheeks. Of course he remembered her making an idiot of herself.

“Oh, it’s fine. There’s supposed to be two of you, right?”

He smiled and laughed, looking almost startled by the joke. He glanced at the tarts on the counter and shifted his attention back to her. “You must be the American baker.”

She bit her lip. “Oh boy, I already have a reputation?”

“No,” he said quickly. “We were just expecting you.”

She adjusted her apron strings. “It’s not every day the royal family of a country you’ve never heard of hits up your bakery and asks you to fly overseas and perform a borderline-impossible task.”

He smiled again, and her heart stuttered.

“I don’t know about impossible. The tart that almost killed me was incredible.”

Was steam rising beneath her collar? The kitchen was suddenly stifling. Maybe she should open a window.

“I’m glad you liked it. Hopefully it will be good enough for the royal family. The queen gave us basically no direction, so I’m more or less grasping at straws. Do you work here too?” she asked.

He hesitated. “I do.”