“Sifter, please,” he shouted, and an intern ran over and found him one. He started sifting, then banged the metal on the pan pretending to get the last bits off. “Bullshit.”

Fresh sweat broke out across her forehead, making the errant strands stick to her skin. “If you don’t start stirring, it will lump up.”

Too late. The whole darned thing was a lump. “Add a little more water and work it loose.” The cameras zoomed in as he furiously worked the gunky mixture. “Who would have thought my training would come in so handy in a kitchen?” he said to the cameras, arm muscles cramping.

The moment they backed off, he looked at her again, slamming the spoon against the edge of the mixing bowl some more. Hopefully, there wasn’t a foul for being too noisy. “Then you shouldn’t have said churros. You should have lied like you’re lying now.” More slamming of the spoon.

“That looks good,” she said, her color high, even as she kept her face calm. “Turn on the handblender, that should work.”

As soon as he started the blender up again she stepped closer to it. “And you shouldn’t have written churros down,” she whispered. “Or broken your promise to keep our past out of this.”

Technically, he hadn’t promised. “Acquiescing to your demands is not the same as making a promise.” He beat the mixture so hard that the clumping water and flour had no choice but to smooth into dough.

“Add the eggs. That should make it easier.”

Right, if only. He added the eggs, glad to run the blender again. “What are you hiding this time, Ashna? You’re not eighteen anymore. When does the hiding stop?”

He turned off the blender but the silence between them felt louder.

Hand shaking, she dabbed her upper lip with the napkin and spoke behind it. “Can we focus on the churros? Please.” There was so much pain in her eyes, and shame, and helplessness. It was the helplessness that was killing her.

And it killed him too. “What next?”

She seemed to swallow a sob and squared her shoulders. “That dough needs to go into a pastry bag and get piped into the fryer. We have ten minutes. You still have doce de leite to make.”

He called for a pastry bag and popped open the can of condensed milk. The old instinct to backtrack with her kicked in, to give her what she wanted, to ease her. He couldn’t bear to see her hurting like this, and that was the truth. Damn it.

“The fryer is hot. Can you fill the pastry bag?” There was relief in her tone, and blind trust that he would do exactly as she asked.

Fortunately, filling the pastry bag wasn’t half as simple as it looked. Piping the churros in long straight lines took far more skill than one might imagine, and focus.