Chapter 0279
Abby
My hands tremble slightly as I reach the door, my thoughts racing a mile a minute.
The apartment still looks like a hurricane just blew through, the ingredients aren’t prepped, I’m still a
mess myself, and the judges are an hour and a half early. Great. Just great.
I hope that whoever shoved those paper towels and cardboard down my sink are happy with
themselves. And if it was no one, and it was just a freak ident of some sort, I hope that the universe
is having a goodugh over my misfortune.
I take a deep breath, steeling myself for stern faces that I’m about to meet.
But when the door swings open, instead of three judges, I’m met with someone who I never expected.
“K-Karl…?”
He steps inside without a word and holds a bouquet of soaking wet flowers, like they’ve been plucked
straight out of a vase, out to me. No, he doesn’t just hold them out to me. He shoves them into my
hand.
Our fingers brush, sending an uninvited jolt through my already-electrified body. Silence envelopes us
as our eyes meet, and it feels as though times stop.
His eyes are locked with mine, and for an endless second, I’m convinced he’s going to kiss me. But
then he steps back, breaking the spell as he looks over the chaos of my apartment.
“Miss me?” he asks, his gaze meeting mine again.
My voice sounds far away, even to my own ears. “What… What are you doing here?”
He scratches the back of his neck, a small smile ying on his lips. “I got your voicemail.”
My eyes widen slightly. “You did?”
He nods. “Yeah. I’m sorry for thete notice, but… I wanted to be here. I went to the restaurant, but it
was closed, so I figured you’d be here. How did it go?”
I’m still in shock, my voiceing out with a tremor that can’t be denied no matter how I try to hide it.
“It hasn’t happened yet. The restaurant… A pipe burst, and the electricity went out. But I’ll get into that
I gesture to the disaster behind me with my free hand, the flowers still clutched in my hand, and it’s now
that the embarrassment hits me. My apartment is still a disaster, although slightly less so now than it
was before. But it’s still a disaster, the perfect picture of a depressed woman who has gone nothing but
wallow for the past three weeks.
My hand falls back to my side. “This… mess.”
Karlughs, and it sounds more like disbelief than anything else. “Well, lucky for you, I’m here to help.”
Copyright N?v/el/Dra/ma.Org.
Help. That, after everything that’s happened, is thest word I expected to hear uttered from his mouth.
“Help?” I echo, trying to ignore the way my heartbeat quickens. “You really want to help?”
He holds my gaze, steady and sure. “I do.”
I don’t know what to say. After everything, after the way he stormed out when I rejected him, I never
expected him to actuallye back to help me. Or maybe I did, in my own twisted, selfish sort of way.
And here he is, dressed in a tuxedo…
Wait. A tuxedo?
“Why are you dressed like that?” I find myself asking before I can stop myself, blinking in surprise as I
take in his appearance. He looks like he just came from a g, although his tie is loosened, his jacket
is unbuttoned and his hair is a little tousled.
He looks down at himself, as if he’s also just now realizing he’s not in his usual casual wear. “I was… at
an event,” he says simply.
My mind reels with questions, but the most pressing one pushes its way out. “Did you... Did you ditch
an important event just for me?”
Karl smiles, and it’s soft and sweet, but also strangely enigmatic. Like there’s something he isn’t telling
me. “Yes, just for tonight,” he says. “But I’ll be heading back to the pack at the end of the night.”
There’s a beat of silence as I try to make sense of it all. I clutch the flowers a little tighter in my hand as
if they’re a lifeline in a stormy sea, and I shake my head incredulously.
“What?” he asks, cocking his head to the side.
I shake my head again. “I just can’t believe you left an event—an important one from the looks of it—
just toe here. Especially after…” My voice trails off, but I don’t need to finish. We both know the
implications.
“The cook-off never finished, though, did it?” he suddenly says, his voice lighter than I expect. I meet
his brown-eyed gaze and feel my heart skip a beat. “It’s just the final round, now.”
My mouth opens, then closes. I don’t know what to say, but it seems I don’t have to. He’s already
pushing past me, and it’s then that it hits me. The scent of perfume emanating off his tuxedo. Women’s
perfume. And a lot of it.
“You smell like you’ve been hugged by a dozen women,” I blurt out, a wryugh escaping my lips that
belies the niggling sense of jealousy that’s fluttering in my chest.
Karl pauses for a moment, his back turned to me, thenughs as he slowly turns around to meet my
gaze again. “It’s my aunt’s.”
“Your aunt?”
“Yeah,” he says, a smile spreading across his lips. “Onions, or… Whatever you need. You said you
needed a sous chef, right? Well, here I am.”
As he speaks, he gestures to himself in all of his tousled, tuxedo-wearing, loosened-tie glory. And I
can’t help but giggle. My hand floats to cover my mouth, and I blink quickly, trying to hide the tears that
threaten toe. Draмanоvеls
Heughs too, and for a moment we’re locked in a trance together, like two lost ships that just so
happened to find each other in the night.
“Well?” he finally says, meeting my gaze with his own grin on his face. “What do you say? You got a
spare apron for me?”
I pause for a moment, considering. Is this territory that I want to step into? On tonight, of all nights?
I nod, looking down at the flowers in my hand. White tulips—my favorite. My wedding bouquet was
white tulips.
“Yeah,” I finally murmur, slowly lifting my tear-filled gaze to meet his. “I think there’s room in the kitchen
for two.”