Exclusive: Love from Scratch by Kaitlyn Hill Excerpt

About Love from Scratch:

This summer, Reese Camden is trading sweet tea and Southern hospitality for cold brew and crisp coastal air. She’s landed her dream marketing internship at Friends of Flavor, a wildly popular cooking channel in Seattle. The only problem? Benny Beneventi, the relentlessly charming, backwards-baseball-cap-wearing culinary intern—and her main competition for the fall job.

Reese’s plan to keep work a No Feelings Zone crumbles like a day-old muffin when she and Benny are thrown together for a video shoot that goes viral, making them the internet’s newest ship. Audiences are hungry for more, and their bosses at Friends of Flavor are happy to deliver. Soon Reese and Benny are in an all-out food war, churning homemade ice cream, twisting soft pretzels, breaking eggs in an omelet showdown—while hundreds of thousands of viewers watch.

Reese can’t deny the chemistry between her and Benny. But the more their rivalry heats up, the harder it is to keep love on the back burner…

Frolic-Exclusive Excerpt:

It’s time for our first complete bites after we mix the gnocchi and sauce together with a sprinkling of parmesan over the top. Spearing one of the little potato pillows with my fork, I drag it through some extra sauce before popping it into my mouth. The flavors explode on my tongue, my taste buds experiencing something akin to euphoria as the fresh tomatoes and garlic and herbs and salt all meld around a light, fluffy center. I fight the urge to moan aloud, because oh. My. Pasta-loving stars. 

I thought I loved pasta before. But then I met this gnocchi, which Benny says isn’t even technically pasta, and all I know is that it tastes like my every good Italian restaurant and home-cooked comfort food memory rolled into one and amplified. I feel like I’m about to melt to the floor, literally light-headed from this rapturous food experience. The dish is savory and hearty and warms me from the inside out. My stomach troll is over the moon. 

“That was the best bite of food I’ve ever had,” I say when I’m able to speak again. If I had more presence of mind, I’d have realized that this would only inflate Benny’s ego, but the words slipped out before I could catch them. 

He laughs, indeed looking extremely pleased with himself. “Really? Well, there’s way more where that came from.” He takes a step closer, his voice going softer. “And imagine what I can do with a little time to make plans.”

I nearly choke on my second bite. Doesn’t he know that there’s a camera still on us? I narrow my eyes at him, though he’s probably beginning to think that’s just how my face looks. He winks at me—freaking winks at me—before we have a few more bites and sign off, then Charlie declares filming complete.