Judge Me, Abby Knox [i love reading txt] 📗

beautiful for me. How in the world did I make it this far on this esteemed competition of skill? He’s going to know I’m a fraud immediately, and then I will have lost my chance. He’ll be disappointed, and I can’t handle that.

The still-small voice inside my head, however, reminds me of who I am.

You are Chloe Williams. You belong here just as much as anyone else. And that man is your future husband. So let’s make some damn cookies.

All six of us wait at our stations in the ballroom, checking and double-checking our ingredients. I run my hands over my pink polka-dotted apron, examining the clothes I wore underneath. Is it sexy enough to get Phillip’s attention? Too sexy? Does it clash with my skin? Am I showing too much skin?

As if the clouds part and the heavens open up, he finally appears next to his fellow judge, Georgianne. The sight of Phillip makes my insides tumble with joy and my lady bits hum with longing.

Was it a terrible idea to have saved my virginity for a celebrity? Probably. I’m so damn horny; I know there’s no way I’ll be able to focus on the biscuit recipe.

“Bakers,” he grumbles. “Welcome to Warwickshire. For the sake of our American contest this week, we’ve changed some of the terminologies to avoid confusion. Cookies, instead of biscuits, for one thing. Some of the things we haven’t changed, however. And that’s the way we measure ingredients. If you’re not used to the metric system, fear not.”

Great. I almost had a panic attack when he said “metric system.” I’m such an idiot that I completely forgot about that.

I think for a second that he’s going to tell us the recipes have been converted. But that’s not what’s happening here.

“Each of you at your station has a food scale, and a conversion chart. You’re welcome. And good luck.”

We all stare wide-eyed at Phillip until he growls, “Get on with it, then.”

This jolts me out of my stupor, and I immediately begin converting the measurements for the recipe, which is in American English. Already, I start to sweat.

The extra work takes up at least fifteen minutes that I don’t have to spare, but finally, I get the cookie dough mixed to my satisfaction.

As I’m spooning the dough onto my prepared cookie sheets, I have a strange feeling as though I’ve forgotten something.

Suddenly, a masculine scent tickles my senses. The fine hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

Keep working, Chloe, I tell myself.

“Are you forgetting something?”

The man’s voice startles me out of my shoes.

Shrieking, I whirl around and see Phillip standing right in front of me. Shaking, I slip my sandals back onto my feet; the man instinctively reaches out to keep me steady as I do so.

“I don’t know. Did I forget something?”

Phillip stares at me. That wolffish, unreadable gaze that features heavily on every episode—and also in my dreams. Of course, he’s not going to tell me.

I don’t want to look away from his lovely face, but I have to get the cookies into the oven. I turn around, pick up one sheet, open the oven door…and realize what I’ve forgotten.

“Oh shit! I forgot to turn on the oven!”

Two of the nearby contestants make sympathetic noises. I fiddle with the unfamiliar dials. “What? These numbers don’t make any sense.”

“It’s a convection oven, love.”

I spin around again, and I see the slightest whisper of a smile in his eyes as he walks away. The devilish crow’s feet grow sexier by the year.

He called me “love.” Again. That’s the third or fourth time.

I don’t know, nor do I care, if that’s a common thing to call people you don’t necessarily love or even know well. I’m going to float on it for the rest of the week.

It’s enough to give me the confidence to figure out the temperature and get my mini-crisis under control. The timing is slightly off now—I’ve just placed cookies in an oven not all the way pre-heated. But at least they’ll be done on time. I think.

Chapter Six

Phillip

Who is she?

Apart from the silly girl I found asleep in the rose garden, of course. And apart from the hot mess in her audition video.

With her pink apron, sunny disposition, and warm, friendly eyes, she’s the antithesis of me.

I have scoured the internet for anything and everything about her, and I’ve come up woefully short. She’s an enigma.

Chloe flits around her workstation, making messes of flour and sugar. Measuring—with her little tongue poking out—as if that helps to concentrate. Then re-measuring because she’s not sure she converted everything correctly.

She hums while she works, talks to herself, scratches her head, tosses out two entire batches of biscuit dough, and still, she maintains that ineffable smile on her face. How? How does she do it?

The more she handles her pots and pans, the way she holds a mixer, the more I’m convinced she has no idea what she’s doing. What is she doing here? Why did she audition for a baking competition in the first place if she doesn’t even think to research the kinds of ovens we use on the show? She’s not only going to lose but she’ll also be humiliated. Her biscuits are going to come out terrible.

And whose fault is that, Phillip? You insisted on browsing all of the candidates, and she was the one who made your dick hard. You ensured that she would embarrass herself on television.

I have to remove her from the show. I can’t let her make a fool of herself.

I’d thought it might be fun to bring that charming American girl over the pond and make her submit to my will, but she’s winning me over with her sparkling personality. I love her, and I hate it.

Bloody hell, who taught this woman how to bake? And why is she topping those half-baked monstrosities with vivid blue icing?

Georgianne asks Chloe that very question when judgment time rolls around: “Why did you