Foodies Guide to Kitchen Magic

"Enough of the pleasantries. Let's get started." He clapped his hands. "Show me what you can do with your magic thus far."

"All right, but don't blame me if you burst into flame or end up with some sort of food all over you." She scrunched up her nose in concentration, flicking her right wrist, fingers extended. When nothing happened, she narrowed her eyes at a basket of tomatoes, wiggling her fingers in an effort to make them rise into the air.

Nothing happened. The basket remained in quiet repose.

"Might I make a suggestion?"

Annoyed, she glanced up to find him alarmingly close to her. "Okay."

"You are trying too hard."

"That doesn't help me at all." She glared at him. He was too handsome. She didn't trust handsome men. Especially men whose jeans hugged their legs and rear in all the right places. "Not a bit." The skin of his forearms beckoned to her from his rolled up shirt sleeves.

Why couldn't the Institute have sent over a balding, middle-aged hairy man with a paunch? She wished they had because she knew her skills assessor could be a severe distraction.

She glanced again at his toned forearms, the sprinkling of light brown hair over taut muscle and her stomach tightened with unfamiliar longing. It had been a long time since she’d had a man in her life - a very long time, and considering he went stark raving mad at the end of the relationship, she didn't want to get involved in another.

She shivered as her gaze wandered over his chest to his trim waist, then lower still to the jeans that were so tight she could almost imagine his...

Her cheeks burned at the thought. She could definitely make an exception for him.

Matteus sighed. "Watch me." He lifted his right hand into the air. "Use the energy that resides inside you. It's a matter of simple control and designation." With the tiniest movement of his wrist, he coaxed two plum tomatoes from the basket to hover above the cutting board. "And this." He crooked his index finger and the fruit fell to the board with a soft thump. "Now you. Manipulate the knife and cut them in half."

"I can't." She caught her bottom lip between her teeth. She stared at the two red tomatoes. "I've only had this magic - this energy - for two days. I have no idea how to use it."

"Thus the reason I'm here." He moved behind her. "Let me show you. And from now on, you are forbidden to use the word 'can't.' It's irritating."

Excitement skittered down her spine while thoughts of forbidden dark places danced through her mind as his body brushed against her back. "What now?" The question was barely louder than a whisper as he held her hand suspended in the air.

"Become the object you wish to move. Think of nothing other than that object." His words caressed her cheek, stirring a few escaped auburn tendrils of her upswept hair. "Convince the object it has nothing else better to do than your bidding."

Aidan nodded, her throat too dry to utter words.

When he released her hand, she nearly cried out - she felt the loss of his warmth that deeply. She focused her eyes on the chef's knife, she imagined herself filling the cool metal of the blade as she rested herself in the weighted balance of the handle. Swishing her wrist, a smile curled her lips when the knife levitated a few inches over the cutting board, wobbled for a brief second or two, and then inexorably glanced off the side of the first tomato. It landed with a clatter on the cutting board. "Crap."