Wrapping my lips around the ceramic edge, I sipped the coffee steaming from my mug, and it reminded me of Liam’s kisses; rich, deep, and smooth… with a hint of nutmeg.
Nutmeg. Damn him.
I narrowed my gaze, scowling playfully. “Don’t think I can’t taste the nutmeg in here.”
“Admit it,” he grinned and the sight caused my heart to lurch in my chest. “It’s good.”
I shook my head. But secretly, ever since our night together at the bakery, the flavor was really growing on me.
Maybe Liam was right after all… it was an acquired taste.
27
Liam
Television was weird. Or rather, the filming of it was. We sat on a soundstage, drinking coffee and pretending it was nine in the morning rather than four in the afternoon. The two hosts seemed nice enough. Big swooping hair that flopped across a Botox-smooth forehead; rouged cheeks and stained, swollen lips… and that was just Bruce. Jill was even more painted and plastic.
All those months watching Neil on the reality show, none of it really sunk in until now as the makeup artist blotted my face with some giant brush and white powder.
I snorted despite myself with a shake of my head. To think I’d actually been jealous of him back at the start of things for being in the spotlight. Stupidest thing ever. I hated the spotlight. It was hot, sweaty, and made my skin itch. Case in point, I couldn’t sit still here in this lounge chair.
But, I got to pretend to be Chloe’s boyfriend. If only for an hour. That made this all worthwhile.
“Did they bring their whole set with them?” I asked no one in particular as I looked around. We were sitting in leather armchairs atop a linoleum roll out floor that was printed to look like hardwood. It was a pretty good knock off, too. I bet no one watching could tell the difference.
“Basically,” the makeup artist said. “We made sure the set was easily replicable for when we’re on location.”
“And we love segments like this.” Bruce grinned at me, holding up a Bruce & Jill coffee mug in his meaty, manicured hand. A square paper napkin was tucked into his shirt and I wasn’t sure if it was to protect the collar from the coffee he drank or from the coat of makeup that spread all the way down his neck.
“You do?” Chloe asked from beside me, wrapping her lips around a straw and taking a sip of iced coffee.
“God, yeah,” Bruce laughed. “A segment that involves baked goods and we can prerecord?”
From beside him, Jill snorted and rolled her eyes. “He’s a happy camper so long as he doesn’t have to wake up at four in the morning.”
Chloe and I shared a smile and she shot me a wink with her lips still wrapped around her straw.
Those fucking lips. If someone had pulled aside sixteen-year-old Liam and told him that someday as an adult he’d get another shot at those lips, I never would have believed them in a million years. There was no way someone as perfect as Chloe would want someone like me.
But she did.
She just couldn’t admit she did for some reason.
“Nervous?” she whispered, her blue eyes radiant and dancing beneath the stage lights.
I reached over and squeezed her hand… because here and now in this situation, I could. “Not even a little.” I meant so much more by that than how I felt about the show, and I desperately tried to convey that with a simple brush of my fingers over her knuckles.
She smiled back at me, and in the blink of an eye, the stage was bustling. Crew members were fixing our chairs, adjusting lights, tearing the napkin off of Bruce’s neck, and before I knew it, the director was yelling action! And we were off.
Thank God for Chloe. I wasn’t good at talking about myself under normal circumstances, let alone when there were three cameras aimed at me.
“Now, Liam,” Jill said. When the cameras were rolling, her voice was sweeter and higher pitched. “Your other business has already been front and center for some time. Tell us about that.”
My throat was suddenly lined with sandpaper and I took a quick sip of my water before answering, my voice more raspy and graveled than I’d ever heard it. Sweat pushed out of my pores. Holy shit, how did anyone ever operate under these lights? It was like trying to do an interview in a sauna. “Beefcakes is the bakery my brother and I own. It used to belong to my mother, but we took over when she was diagnosed with cancer. Some of you may know us from the—”
“That viral video of him and his ex!” Bruce interjected with a staccato laugh.
“Actually,” I corrected. “I was going to say some of you may have know us from the reality show he was on… Bake It or Break It. Where that ex became his girlfriend.”
“So, they’re back together? I’d heard they didn’t make it long past the final episode. In fact…” Jill practically sang the words. Gossip and, more notably, heartbreak was chum in the water for these sharks. “I heard that Neil and Elaina’s breakup was the inspiration for your Dump Truck food truck.”
I inhaled a sharp breath. I didn’t love the direction this was taking. We weren’t here to talk about Neil and Elaina—
Chloe’s hand fell to my knee and squeezed gently, her eyes latching onto mine. I blanketed my hand over hers and gently linked our fingers. She was warm and soft and just the feel of her skin on mine relaxed me.
“Actually,” she said calmly, “it was my breakup that inspired the idea. The night my engagement ended, Liam came over to check on me… and he brought me cupcakes and donuts. It was late. Nothing was open. And I was grateful for the junk food to wallow with.”
“I bet you were just waiting for the right moment to swoop on in, weren’t you? A handsome guy like you and a beauty like her? It’s like you were made for each other!” Jill said, her shrill laugh fading into the background as I kept my eyes firmly on Chloe’s.
“It wasn’t like that,” I answered honestly. “Of course I’ve always had a crush on her. I mean, look at her. How could I not? But I didn’t go over there with some ulterior motive. She was my brother’s girlfriend’s sister… and she needed me.” I swallowed hard, watching as her eyes filled with moisture and she blinked. “I’ll always be there when she needs me. No matter what.” I gave her hand a gentle squeeze to accentuate the point.
We shared a lingering look that was quickly broken by Bruce.
“Well, aren’t you both the sweetest! How long did it take before you two fell in love?”
Our heads whipped around to him. “Love?” Chloe repeated.
“Sure,” Jill said, laughing. “Look at you two. You lovebirds can’t keep your hands off each other, even for a ten-minute segment!”
We glanced down to where our hands were still linked and I held on tighter as I felt Chloe trying to release and pull away.
I swallowed my sigh and then let her. Give her space. Even when we were supposed to be pretending to be together. “Chloe is the strongest person I know. And it’s because she’s so strong, that it’s easy to forget that less than three months ago, she ended a long-term relationship and engagement,” I said. “We care about each other.” I softened my voice and even though I knew I was on camera, I tried my hardest to speak directly to Chloe. “She’s my best friend… and because she’s my best friend, I know we need to take our relationship slowly.”
She blinked, glancing up at me, a small smile upturning the corners of her delicious mouth.
“But haven’t you two been together for months? Pretty much right after her breakup?”
“That’s right, Bruce. We have a clip from a local news report from two months ago—”
A still image of us almost kissing came up on the screen in front of us. It took every bit of faculty I had to not groan.
“Doesn’t look very slow to me,” Bruce said and leaned across his desk to jab me in the ribs with his elbow.
“The truth is, I’m a mess,” Chloe laughed and her casual charm was back in full swing. Unease twisted in my gut. I didn’t like her thinking of herself that way. I’d describe Ch
loe as a lot of things… but never messy. “Liam knows me well enough to know that I’m flighty and all over the place. We fought our feelings for each other for a long time before we allowed ourselves to embrace this relationship.”
Truer words had never been spoken. I fought my feelings for Chloe for ten years, if I was being honest with myself.
“So you’re embracing the relationship now?” Jill asked.
Instead of reaching for her hand, I slid my fingers to the back of her neck, tracing small figure eights. Her body responded with goosebumps lifting beneath my touch. “Absolutely.” I smiled through the lie. We were doing everything and anything but embracing us. She needed time. Time to get over Dan. Time to move on and feel ready and valuable enough for a good relationship.
I could wait.
In fact, I had little choice. My ruined heart was nothing without Chloe.
“I hope Chloe is all of my last firsts,” I continued. “My last first date. My last first kiss. And my last girlfriend.” I said the words clearly, looking directly into her wide blue eyes.
“Well, there you have it!” Bruce said to Jill. They each held up one of our cookies and tapped them together in a mock cheers before taking a bite. They both moaned in satisfaction, chewing and swallowing. “You can grab your own delicious goodies here in the evenings in the small town of Maple Grove, New Hampshire. But if, like us, you’re from out of town, you can order a Dump Truck care package of junk food for yourself or a friend. Just log onto their site to place an order at dumptruckfoodtruck.com.”
What? I didn’t even know we had a website! I jerked a gaze at Chloe who merely looked ahead at Jill and Bruce smiling. She quickly flashed me a wink, then went back to paying attention to the hosts of the show.
“And who knows?” Jill sang. “The Dump Truck may not only heal your cravings after a breakup… but it just might heal your heart, too.”
“Cut!” A director shouted from somewhere in the corner. Once again, the previously silent studio was now filled with noise. Assistants were on their feet, running around. Even Bruce and Jill jumped up and I watched as Jill tossed the rest of her cookie into the trashcan.
“Aw, come on!” Bruce yelled. “I would have eaten yours.”
“Of course you would have.” She sneered as she walked off set. “Do you even know how many calories are in those?”
Bruce patted his stomach and polished off the rest of his cookie. “I swear,” he said, leaning in. “I never belonged on television. Not with this belly and this ginormous chin. It’s a wonder I made it this far.”
Chloe smiled and slid him a sample box of our other baked goods. “Here,” she said with that disarming smile of hers. “These are on us. Enjoy.”
He grinned and it was the first genuine smile I think we saw come out of him all day. “Thanks. Good luck you two. And I don’t just mean with the truck.”
He was gone before we could say thank you in return. Two sound engineers appeared in front of us. “Okay,” the first technician said, snaking her frigid hand up my shirt to remove the microphone. I squealed when her ice-cold fingers came in contact with the skin on my back, but she didn’t seem to notice my discomfort at all. “We’ll be at the town center to meet you and the truck for some b-roll of customers buying your food.” She paused, glaring at us both pointedly as though we were being accused of something. “You will have customers, right?”
“We haven’t had a night that wasn’t sold out in weeks,” Chloe said with a confidence that had waned in me… even when it shouldn’t have. She was right. Business was better than ever and we had nothing to worry about. Why did I still feel like such a fraud?
“Good,” she said. “Bruce and Jill won’t be there. But we will splice the footage into this interview before the episode airs tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” I asked. “That’s fast.”
“It’s a daily show that’s usually live. They love when we pre-record segments because it gives them a breather,” the second sound technician said.
With that, we were dismissed and quickly ushered out the door and away from the makeshift studio that they had brought up from New York and set up at the artist residency center in town.
I threaded my fingers into Chloe’s, relieved that hers weren’t as ice-cold as the other woman’s. She glanced down at our linked hands. “There’s no one around.”
I tilted my chin up to the security camera and she followed the direction of my gaze. “Don’t be so sure. You never know who’s watching.”
She sighed heavily, but then tugged me into her side and we walked down the hall, holding each other. “I wouldn’t put it past them to use security footage.”
“Hey,” I knocked into her hip with a gentle nudge of mine. “Since when do we have a Dump Truck website?” I asked.
She shrugged, but her smile betrayed the casualness of the movement. “I did it after I left you at the hospital. When I’m stressed … or feeling guilty… I work. Besides, what good is national exposure if we don’t have a way of leveraging it?”
I nodded. I had to give it to her… it was smart. “But what if we get more orders than we know what to do with?”
“For now, I put a cap on it… 50 Dumped Delivery boxes can be ordered per day. We can see how that is to manage and always increase how many we allow a day. Plus, selling out online will look good. Create demand.” Her grin was proud and she stood taller as we walked.
“You’re pretty smart, you know that?”
“Oh, I know.” She beamed.
I lowered my mouth to her ear and whispered, “And you’re not a mess. Stop telling yourself that lie.” My lips brushed against the soft skin of her earlobe, sending a spike of arousal curling down my spine.
She stumbled a little over her feet, but I was there to catch her and tightened my grip around her to help steady her. “I am a mess! Case in point—I can’t even walk straight.”
I stopped walking, forcing her halt mid-step as well and turn to face me. Cradling her jaw, I pulled her close, her pupils dilating against the icy blue of her eyes. “You’re not a mess.” I looked directly into the soft depths of her eyes and spoke as seriously as I could. She needed to not just hear me, but really, truly listen. “No more than any of the rest of us. You’re not Tasmanian Chloe. You’re not chaos. You’re smart and free-spirited and you take risks when the rest of us play it safe. You’re kind and loving and fierce. I’m not best friends with messy people. And I definitely don’t fall in love with them.”
A tear slid down the bridge of her nose and before she could object, I captured her lips with an urgent and fevered press of my mouth to hers. A growl vibrated beneath my ribs and sent a buzz through me that landed at my cock. “Liam,” she whispered as I released her mouth.
I pressed my finger to her lips to hush her. “I know, I know. You need time.”
She shook her head, more tears spilling down her cheeks. “I don’t know what I need anymore.”
My heart skipped. Another brick from the wall had broken. Slowly, I was chipping away at her shields and for the first time since the hospital, I felt a kick of hope in my heart.
“Right now? All we need to do is prep the truck.” I released her and offered my hand. She hesitantly took it and we resumed walking.
Baby steps.
28
Chloe
It took me several minutes to realize that the knocking at my front door was not, in fact, me killing it in a drum solo within my dream—where I was a rock star on stage with thousands of adoring fans.
My eyes blinked open, still bleary, and I reached for my phone. 7:53 a.m.
What the fuck. It was my one morning off for the week. The one morning where I could get a full eight hours, or more, of glorious, uninterrupted sleep.
Grumpy, I pushed off the bed and stomped down the stairs.
I swung the door open without looking out the peephole—and immediately, my anger dissipated. Liam stood on my front stoop… and he was covered in buttercream.
“Uh…” I had no words and instead I pressed my lips together to keep from laughing. “What’s going on?”
Liam, however, was decidedly not laughing. If this had been a cartoon, his face would have been an inhuman shade of scarlet and steam would have been coming out his ears. “They kicked me out!” A bit of the buttercream melted under the heat of the morning sun, sliding down the curve of his neck onto his shoulder, saturating his white t-shirt. “They kicked me out of my own fucking bakery.” He didn’t wait for me to invite him inside. Clomping down the hall, a bit of frosting slid off his earlobe and landed with a splat on the floor of my foyer.
“What are you talking abou—” Oh. Right. This was Liam’s first full day off—and Jeremy, the new manager, was doing all of the baking with Finn at Beefcakes today. For the first day ever. I should have known that Liam wouldn’t have been able to relax, but couldn’t help asking, “What were you doing over there on your morning off?”
He yanked a few paper towel squares off from the rack in my kitchen and started wiping down his neck. I watched, hungrily. Frosting… and sugar… on Liam. There were just way too many delicious things about the sight in front of me. Focus, Chloe.
“I thought three sets of hands would be better than two.”
I snorted. “Ever heard the expression ‘too many cooks in the kitchen?’ It exists for a reason.”
“Yes!” he exclaimed. “But I’m the cook! It’s my kitchen.”
I sighed and crossed the kitchen to start the coffee. “So, what’d you do to end up looking like a dessert yourself?” I asked as I filled the coffee pot with water.
“What’d I do? Nothing! I was simply showing him that the frosting does best when it sits on the top shelf in the fridge rather than the bottom. And as I was reaching for it, he knocked me over and the whole damn bowl poured over my head.”
“Uh-huh.” I was pretty sure there was a lot more to that story. “So, Jeremy kicked you out of your own kitchen?”
Sugarlips (Beefcakes Book 2) Page 19