by Sara Whitney
“So it’s a couple of ideas I pulled together on my laptop, just to see what you think,” she was saying. “No big deal. It’s the kind of thing I do for clients all the time. But we need to decide soon so you can get business cards and whatnot.”
He grunted and followed her down the hall to her door.
“If it’s clean, that’s only because of my roommate,” she said as she jiggled the key in the lock. “On my own, I’d be buried in laundry and take-out containers in a week.”
She ushered him into the standard-issue “Chicago apartment with a roommate” setup: kitchen on the right, living room on the left, bedrooms to the back. Unlike his own place, it had enough square footage for some breathing room, even for someone his size. She gestured to the kitchen table, and he took a seat while she fetched her laptop.
“Here we go.” After a flurry of taps, she turned the screen toward him, and he was hit with his own face staring back at him. It was the caricature she’d drawn on the napkin at the bar, but perfected. The strokes were bold and spare, yet it was clearly him. Him on his best day, looking confident and approachable and cartoonishly appealing in logo form. Next to it were the words Have Your Cake in a clean, modern font.
He swallowed. Swallowed again. “That’s…”
She clicked to enlarge it. “The name’s pretty great, right?”
“Yeah. Yes.” His voice sounded hoarse, and for the life of him, Erik couldn’t figure out why a lump had settled in his throat. It was just that… she believed in him. So many people had questioned his plan to devote his life to making beautiful creations, and when he wasn’t in her presence, it was easy to talk himself out of this crazy plan. But her faith in him was like oxygen to a dying fire. This gorgeous chaos agent had looked at him and seen everything. Everything he was scared to want.
“The name’s perfect,” he said roughly. And it was. Clever, memorable, and far better than anything he’d have come up with.
“Thanks.” She grinned before turning all business again. “So I was thinking your website should have a slider that flips through shots of your best cake designs and then a page for different flavors and decoration options. Information about you, of course, and a contact page. We’ll try to answer all the basic questions but still encourage them to reach out personally.”
The website formed in his imagination, simple and informative. He could see it. He wanted it.
“Birthdays,” he said.
Josie nodded, getting the gist. “Good idea. Non-wedding items to bring in more cash. Special-occasions cakes. Anniversaries, graduations, things like that?”
He nodded. “All that.” His heartbeat picked up. Was he doing this? Was he really going to do this?
“Cookies?” she asked, but his answering grimace spoke volumes. “Okay, no cookies.”
“I’ll do it for the catering job, but it’s not my thing.”
“Sure.” She nodded once decisively. “And if you just do cakes, it streamlines the marketing message. So we’ll need you to make some samples to be photographed. The prettiest cakes, the smoothest icing, the plumpest flowers. Nothing but money shots.”
Erik gripped the edge of the table. His poor brain. First there was his bakery dream coming true before his eyes. Then there was this fuck-hot woman, dripping with the kind of breezy confidence that had always left him tongue-tied, shaping her lips around words like “money shot” and “plump.” And she just kept blithely talking.
“Oh! Speaking of cakes, did you want to see Richard and Byron’s color scheme? It might help with your cake ideas for them. Hang on.”
She darted from the kitchen and returned with a wisp of bright blue fabric on a hanger. “Here’s my best-maid dress. They’re doing cerulean as the main color—not blue, mind you, but cerulean—with white and gold accents.”
She dragged a chair around and hooked the hanger over the back, and Erik leaned forward to poke gingerly at the fluffy fabric. There didn’t seem to be very much of it, and now his synapses were firing with questions about just how low that neckline actually went.
“It’s… nice.” He grabbed his phone to snap a shot of the hue for later reference, hoping she wouldn’t notice him wincing over his inane comment. Nice.
“So, like, what do we need to do legally to make you a baker?” She tossed the question over her shoulder as she whisked the dress off the chair and walked back to her room, giving him a chance to pull his mind back up from his groin to answer. Seriously, was that strip of fabric the only thing that was going to cover her tits? He’d short-circuit if he kept thinking about it.
He shifted in his chair and cleared his throat. “I’ve got my food-handling certificate with the state.” Licensing. Certifications. Legalities. They were better than a cold shower. “Now I need to register a cottage food operation with Cook County. Could take a couple of weeks.”
She sauntered back into the kitchen and reclaimed her seat in front of the laptop. “So do you have the cash and the kitchen to get some things baked? The wedding cake and some samples for website photos?” She smiled approvingly at his nod. A born leader. “Cool. Let me know when, and I’ll get a photographer lined up. Next, the bio.” She clarified when he looked at her in confusion. “Your life story. Tell it to me for the website. And yes, this is mandatory.”
Damn. She’d anticipated his objection. Her fingers hovered over her keyboard, and he almost told her not to bother, to let him write it. But he’d never had a way with words, and he trusted this babbling brook to get the job done for him.
With a grimace, he offered up the pertinent details. “From outside Liberty Valley, Iowa. Twenty-eight years old. Attended the Culinary Institute of America. Worked under pastry chef Philippe Bernaert for a year. Moved to Chicago last summer. Good baker.”
The last fact earned him a snort. “Good baker. That’s helpful. The people coming to your page will be relieved to hear that.” Her fingers danced across the keys, and she spoke without looking up. “Iowa, huh?”
“Yeah. Raised by my grandfather on a farm.” Erik had no idea why he was volunteering information that she wasn’t even asking for. The click of her keyboard filled the room, and suddenly he was talking again. “My mom left me with him when I was eleven.”
She looked up with a sympathetic frown, and he said, “No, it was good. Life with Mom was chaos. Fun at first to try a new town every six months, but… eventually the stability of the farm was a relief.”
God. Why was he still talking? He’d caught her mutant strain of chattiness.
She lifted her fingers from the keys, and he forced himself not to squirm while she looked him over. If he saw a trace of pity on her face, he’d dissolve into a puddle of shame.
“A farm boy,” she finally said. “Did you get that body from baling hay?”
His eyebrows met over the bridge of his nose, and she rolled her eyes.
“Oh, come on.” One burgundy-tipped fingernail waved in his direction. “The shoulders? The chest? The thighs? I told you on the train that first night, you’re basically a mythical Viking warrior.”
He felt like prize livestock at a cattle auction being sized up by her assessing eyes. “Dairy cows,” he finally said as blood rushed to his cheeks. “Feeding them, watering them. Yes, baling hay.”
“Milk does a body good apparently.” Her lips twitched as she typed.
“That and a gym membership.”
She paused over the keyboard and cocked her head. “I was scared of you that first day. Just for a second.”
“Sorry.” God, he hated that. Hated that he’d frightened her the first time he touched her. “I would never hurt you or—”
“Oh, I know that now. You make me feel safe.” She held his eyes for a moment before turning abruptly back to her computer. “So. Are you in touch with your mom?”
That was a hell of a subject change, and he was off-kilter enough to answer honestly. “Last I heard, she was in Reno. But that was two years ago, so she could be living on a Peruvian beac
h by now for all I know.”
Josie looked up, and the softness of her eyes kept his words flowing. Looked like he was really doing this.
“All she ever wanted was to be famous. A singer, an actress, a model. Lots of gambles that never paid off.” And nights sleeping on a stranger’s couch or hanging around outside clubs, handing out black-and-white headshots that nobody wanted.
“Your dad?” Her soft voice pulled him back into the present, and her guarded expression told him she already knew the answer.
“Not in the picture. Never met him.” And wasn’t he describing a perfectly fucked-up family scene for her? Then she surprised him.
“Hey, me too! My mom wanted a kid without the complications of a man, and then in the end, she didn’t even want the kid.”
He watched as her Josie Ryan light dimmed right in front of his eyes. Her mouth turned down, and she curled in on herself ever so slightly, as if recalling moments that made her feel small. He clenched his hands into fists to keep from reaching for her hand. His brash new business partner didn’t need him pawing at her.
And it turned out she didn’t need comforting from him anyway. When she looked up from her laptop, her smile was back, if a little more brittle than before. “Lucky you, to have a good grandpa.”
True. Pops had been stern, but he’d also been the bedrock of Erik’s life, and it made him wonder who’d been Josie’s foundation growing up.
“So!” His interviewer was clearly ready to move on to the next topic. “Why wedding cakes?”
Safer ground, thank God. “Grandma was the woman who made the cakes for basically everybody getting married in the Liberty Valley Episcopal Church. She died when I was a baby, but I found her recipes when I was twelve and…” He made a small motion with his hand, hoping she’d get the gist. His attempts to cheer up Pops with his late wife’s desserts had grown into a profession that Pops had never fully embraced. Maybe not such safe ground after all.
“Adorable.” Josie grinned. “Got any happy customers who’d be willing to talk you up? Not happy with the Cake Shoppe, but with you?”
“Maybe.” In truth, he’d rather saw off his own finger than go begging for help, but he got what she was driving at. As a stall, he tugged the band from his wrist and gripped it between his teeth, twisting his hair high up on the back of his head. Josie made a tiny strangled sound, and he dropped his chin to look at her.
“What?”
“Nothing,” she said faintly. “You just… you make that look so easy.”
“Years of practice.” What had started as a dumb stunt in high school to piss off Pops had become part of his routine over the years: up for work, down for social situations, and kept under control by extravagant doses of conditioner that never quite saved it from getting fuzzy at the height of summer humidity. As a bonus, it was available as a distraction technique when he needed it. Like now.
Her eyes followed his hands through their task of wrapping the band twice around his hair. “Nice. Show off those ears.”
It was a normal smart-ass Josie remark, but the tone was off. Breathy. Did he have nice ears? He resisted the urge to touch the lobe closest to her.
“So anyway, about those happy customers?”
He grimaced, prepared to offer his blood type and bank account instead, when the apartment door burst open to admit a man and a woman, laughing and laden with carryout bags.
“Jos! You’re home!” The black-haired woman deposited the bags of food on the kitchen countertop, then paused when she caught sight of Erik. “And you have company.”
Josie was already on her feet. “Oh my God, you brought home Ming’s. Please tell me you ordered too much so I can steal some.” She glanced up from the bag she was investigating to make introductions. “Oh yeah, this is Erik. He’s doing Richard’s wedding cake. Erik, this is my roommate Finn and her boyfriend Tom, even though I saw him first.”
“Not true. I’ve been Finn’s for years,” Tom told Josie before turning his smile on Erik. “Welcome to the madhouse. How’d Josie manage to lure you to her lair?”
Finn smacked Tom’s shoulder. “Knock it off. Obviously Josie doesn’t lure anybody anywhere.”
“And yet that’s how I found you again,” he said, loosening his tie and pressing a kiss to her hair.
Josie walked around them with a roll of her eyes to grab glasses from the cabinet.
He watched the three of them move around the kitchen with smooth efficiency, sharing details of their respective days as they gathered plates and silverware and spread the containers of food across the table. If they thought having the wedding-cake baker in their midst was strange, they didn’t say so. He clearly wasn’t the first stray Josie had brought home.
In fact, it sounded like that’s exactly what had happened with Tom. Tom, who grinned while Erik grimaced and chatted with ease while Erik stayed mute. Were cocky men in business suits Josie’s type? That fit with everything he knew about her, which meant he was fucked.
He lurched to his feet. He wasn’t fucked, he didn’t want to be fucked, and where had that thought even come from? He wasn’t in competition with Tom, and the fact that his brain had wandered in that direction meant it was time for him to get the hell out of there. Just as he was about to force out a goodbye, Finn set a plate on the table in front of him. “I assume you’re staying for dinner?”
“No, I should—”
“He’s staying.” Josie’s command took the air out of his protest. She wanted him to stay, so he’d stay. Just like that. Plus he didn’t relish the thought of going back to his empty apartment; after years of quiet, he was slowly warming to the idea of noise.
“Okay. Thanks.” He sat back down and accepted the container that Tom handed to him.
“No, no, thank you. Finn and I are still raving about the cake that Josie brought home the other day,” he said, looking hopefully around the kitchen. “I don’t suppose you brought any more with you today?”
Josie gave his arm a good poke as she walked to her seat. “He’s not your personal pastry mule. Besides, any baking he does over the next week is either for his first official job or for website pictures. Ideally both.”
His first official job. What a marvelous thought.
“So we need a photographer,” Josie said as she reached for the carton of garlic chicken. “Finnigan, who’s that guy you used for the product brochure you put together last year?”
“He moved back to New York, I think.” Finn paused with an egg roll halfway to her mouth. “You could always call—”
“Absolutely not,” Josie snapped, and for the first time since Erik had met her, she didn’t have a follow-up comment. No jokes, no smart retorts, no random remarks. Only a harsh expression that didn’t sit easily on her usually sunny features.
Finn raised her hands in surrender before picking up her fork again. “It was just a suggestion. You don’t have to do it.”
That brought the fight back into Josie’s face. “As if anybody makes me do anything I don’t want to do. Poor Erik’s just now learning that.”
She jerked her head in his direction, and his answering grimace prompted laughter around the table. He turned his attention back to the plate, uncharacteristically pleased to be part of a group.
Ten
Josie staggered down the sidewalk and tried to count her blessings.
One: early May in Chicago was only a little humid, which meant her hair was only a little frizzy.
Two: Byron was feeling better every day and wanted to participate in wedding prep by hand-embossing the wedding programs that had been sitting in his apartment for a month.
Three: the box she was hauling to the post office could be filled with lead weights instead of the aforementioned wedding programs and embosser, which were only slightly less heavy than actual lead weights would be.
Four: she was in her third-most comfortable high heels for this mad trot to the post office.
Five: her mom still hadn’t called her back.
A blessing. Mostly. And that led her to the final item on her list.
Six: she’d get to see Erik in four days.
It had been close to a week and a half since he’d stayed for dinner and charmed Finn and Tom with his “aww shucks, who, me?” quiet broody guy act. Since then he’d gotten to work on baking and brainstorming items for the website, taking a break to text her work-in-progress photos and wedding-planner suggestions. She… liked it. Liked him. Which was surprising since she usually hung with witty young urbanites who knew all the hot new bars in town and regularly turned a three-minute anecdote into a thirty-minute epic tale.
But the thought of seeing the shy, salty-sweet Erik at Saturday’s grand-opening bash for the new Fielder Shoe store got her blood pumping. Not only could she get some shots of his goodies for the website, but she’d get to see his goodies. If she could convince him to let her slap photos of his strong brow, sharp eyes, and broad shoulders prominently on the website, he’d generate amazing buzz. Just her luck she got stuck with a client who was equal parts hot and humble.
Got stuck with. Ha. Like she hadn’t bullied him every step of the way. Good thing he loved it though. Okay, not love, exactly, but she was starting to think that part of him craved it. He needed somebody to force him to take this opportunity, and she needed someone to build into a towering success. Win, win. Now if she could talk him into taking his hair down for the website photos…
Nope. Hair-down Erik was certainly not appropriate standing-in-line daydream material, particularly not when the air-conditioning in this ancient government building already wasn’t up to the task of cooling down the mass of humanity surrounding her. Her loins would generate a mini-heatwave from which no one in the vicinity would recover if she thought too long about that tousled hair skating along his cheeks to kiss the tops of his shoulders.