Chapter 5: Six O'Clock Bread

At six in the morning the walk-in pantry smelled of yeast, flour and cold stone.

Jesse had pulled the door almost shut behind me, and the only light was one bare bulb over the flour bin.

Through the gap I could hear Beck in the kitchen, turning the pages of a newspaper and stirring his coffee.

"He can hear everything," I whispered.

"He can hear a mouse in the wall," Jesse said cheerfully. "That's what makes it fun."

He stood in front of me with his sleeves shoved up past his elbows and flour on his forearms.

His brown curls stuck out in every direction.

He was the youngest of them, and the one who laughed at his own burned pans.

He was not laughing now.

"You said you'd tell me what to do," I whispered.

"I did say that."

"So?"

"I'm working on it," Jesse said. "I'm bad at being the boss. Give me a second."

He picked up the apron that hung on the hook by the door.

It was my apron, the red-checked one I had worn every summer, and the strings were long and soft from washing.

"Turn around," he said.

I turned.

"Hands behind your back. Wrists together."

I put them there.

He wound the apron strings around my wrists, once, twice, three times, and tied them off in a neat bow that he tugged gently.

"Can you get out?" he asked.

I pulled.

The cotton held.

"No," I said.

"Good." His voice was a little unsteady. "That's what I wanted."

He turned me around by the shoulders and looked at me, tied up in my nightgown and wool socks.

He laughed softly.

"I've dreamed about this exact thing," he said. "I never thought I'd have flour on my hands."

"Jesse."

"Yes, ma'am."

"You're stalling," I said.

"I'm savoring."

He put his floury hand against my cheek and kissed me.

It was a warm, smiling kiss that tasted of coffee and brown sugar.

I leaned into it, because my hands were tied and I had nothing else to lean on.

He kissed down my throat.

He pushed the neck of my nightgown aside with his teeth and bit my collarbone, gently.

I gasped, and in the kitchen a newspaper rustled.

"Shh," Jesse breathed in my ear. "Boss says be quiet. Beck says be quiet. Everybody says be quiet. That's the rule."

"Whose rule?"

"The pantry's," he said.

He knelt in front of me.

He bunched the nightgown up around my hips and tucked it into my apron strings.

I stood bare from the waist down against the cold shelves.

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