Page 109 of Under the Mistletoe with You

Perhaps all this planning has the same effect on Nash as working the dough has on Christopher?Nash certainly liked it when they were cooking for everyone a few days – and what feels like a lifetime – ago.He wonders, just for a moment, how this side of Nash shows up in his life in LA, away from Christopher.Being a working actor sounds as if there’s a lot of showing up when someone tells you to, so where does he find the time to take charge and plan something?Or even cook?

There’s so much he doesn’t know about this man.

What he does know are things like his remarkable handiness, the easy ability to charm people, and how he sounds when ...

Spices and sugar crowd the air and Christopher feels for a moment as if he can’t breathe.He shakes his head, and flips the dough round, clapping flour into his hands.He has to move.If he stays too still, the thoughts rush in.

‘Are you okay?’Nash asks, his concentration replaced with concern.

‘Yes.Fine.’

His phone hums with a text, and he’s grateful for the distraction.

Shaz:Tell Nash I sourced the pastry.Also, be proud, I’m helping Ursula wrangle the guests for tomorrow.Personal growth, a Christmas miracle x

‘Err, Shaz says she sourced the pastry?’he says to Nash with confusion.

‘Oh great.Tell her thanks.’

‘You know thisisa bakery.We can just make it from scratch ourselves.’

‘For vegans?This seems to be a very butter-central kind of bakery.’

‘Oh,’ he says, suitably chastened.‘That’s a good point.’

‘Plus, who can be fucked to make pastry?’

‘Me?I’m quite literally a baker.’

‘Oh, don’t worry, none of us have forgotten that,’ Nash says with a smile.

Christopher huffs but can’t keep the grin from his lips.‘Fine, I take your point, I probably don’t have what we need to hand.’

‘Nah, but luckily the vegans insist that pre-made is in fact usually vegan, so I set Shaz a mission to steal as much as she could from people’s freezers.’

‘Excellent thinking.’

‘I’m really not just a pretty face, Calloway.’

His mouth goes dry thinking about kissing that pretty face just last night.

‘Are you almost done?’Nash asks, when Christopher doesn’t respond.

‘Yeah, I think so.I just need to let it rest for a while.’He wraps it in a rather finicky bit of clingfilm and places it in the fridge, in a space Nash had left for it.Gingerbread always rolls out better when it’s chilled, he finds.Plus, he gets a more reliable size of biscuit if the butter isn’t starting out half-melted.

He turns to find Nash, who is fiddling with a bit of clingfilm he’d ripped off.‘Is this Britain’s excuse for plastic wrap?’

‘Yeah, it’s not very good, is it?’

‘Well, it’s a point in your favour of not being a murderer, because you’d never be able to wrap me up in this stuff.The whole premise ofDexterwould have fallen apart.’

‘Always glad to hear you’re still coming round to the idea that I’m not going to murder you.’

‘It’s a work in progress.’

Christopher peers over at the paper Nash was working on, only to see it is actually many, many pages full of timings, diagrams and instructions.It’s meticulous.‘Have youworked out the plan of action?’A slightly redundant question considering the depth of what he’s looking at.

Nash guides Christopher through the timings and his ideas.‘I think so.And I’ve got the recipes to hand for us so, if you’re too busy and you need me to cook anything, I can just follow that.We’re going to have to do more individual dishes rather than batch-cook a couple of big things, as we don’t really haveenoughof any group of ingredients to do that, but I think it’s doable.There’ll be food.’