Page 76 of The Wrong Man

“It looks like you’re being very careful,” Dante observes, startling me back to reality.

“That’s because I am. This is the make or break moment. Literally. If I over-fold, the macarons will spread and crack. If I under-fold, they’ll be lumpy and won’t develop the signature smooth top.”

I can feel him watching me work. His attention is a physical weight, pressing against my skin, making me hyperaware of every movement I make.

This is what I wanted, isn’t it? His attention. His focus. His growing attachment to me.

But I didn’t expect it to feel like this. Didn’t expect the strange tension that builds when he’s near, the way my heart rate picks up for reasons I can’t entirely attribute to fear. Didn’t expect to find myself actually enjoying his company, his quiet presence, the way he asks questions about baking like he genuinely wants to learn.

I didn’t expect to start caring back.

The batter reaches the right consistency, flowing off the spatula in a thick ribbon. I transfer it to a piping bag and begin to pipe small circles onto the parchment-lined baking sheet, trying to keep them uniform in size.

“They need to rest before baking,” I explain. “Anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour, until they develop a skin. You should be able to touch them lightly without any batter sticking to your finger.”

“And then?”

“Then the oven. Which is where everything usually goes wrong for me.” I finish piping and step back to survey my work. The circles are reasonably even, if not perfectly identical. “The temperature has to be exact. Too hot and they crack. Too cool and they don’t develop feet.”

“Feet?”

“The ruffled base. It’s the signature of a proper macaron. Formed by the steam escaping during baking. Very technical. Very finicky. Very French.”

Dante moves closer to examine the tray. He’s near enough now that I can smell his soap, clean and simple, and something underneath that’s just him. Warm and male and disturbingly appealing.

My face is doing that thing again. I can feel the heat creeping up my cheeks.

“They look good,” he says.

“They look like blobs. They won’t look like macarons until they’re baked.” I busy myself with covering the tray loosely with a tea towel. “Assuming they turn out at all. Which they probably won’t. My track record with macarons is abysmal.”

“You’re too hard on yourself.”

The words make me freeze. Too hard on myself. Such a simple observation, but it lands somewhere tender and raw.

“I’m realistic,” I say quietly. “There’s a difference.”

“Is there?”

I look up and find him watching me with that intense, focused expression. Those dark eyes that see too much. That show too much, now I know how to look.

He’s too young to carry such weight in his eyes. Too handsome to be this dangerous. Too gentle, in these quiet moments, to be the same man who runs a torture chamber in his home.

“You never give yourself credit,” Dante continues. “Everything you make is exceptional, but you always find something to criticize. Some way it could have been better.”

“That’s how you improve. By identifying mistakes.”

“There’s a difference between identifying mistakes and refusing to acknowledge success.”

I don’t know what to say to that. Don’t know how to process the fact that my captor is giving me what amounts to a motivational speech about self-worth.

“The macarons might still be terrible,” I manage finally.

“And if they are, we’ll eat them anyway and try again tomorrow.”

We. We’ll eat them. We’ll try again.

Such small words. Such enormous implications.