Making Whoopie (Hot Cakes Book 3)

by Erin Nicholas

  She’d felt so good—at least in regard to her surgery—they’d come back that morning instead of waiting until tomorrow as planned. She’d seen the surgeon that morning, and he’d declared she was doing wonderfully and could slowly return to her normal activities as she felt able. She had to watch how much she lifted, but that wasn’t really a problem in her normal day-to-day activities, so she was optimistic about keeping it all from Zoe. And her family and other friends for that matter.

  She’d had to tuck her gorgeous wedding ring into her jewelry box at home and leave it there, of course. Which made her sad. She loved it and had already gotten used to wearing it. But it was silly to wear a wedding ring when the marriage wasn’t really real. And yeah, when they were trying to keep the whole thing a secret.

  Paige came around the island and pulled her into a hug. “Thank goodness!” She let Josie go and immediately untied her apron, lifting it over her long blond hair and handing it to Josie.

  “You’re leaving?” Josie asked.

  Paige turned, grabbed a zucchini, and tucked it against her chest, and nodded. “I’m taking my unappreciated vegetables and going home.”

  Josie fought a smile. “Thanks for filling in. I love you.”

  “I love you too.”

  “I love you too, Paige,” Zoe said with a grin.

  Paige looked over and gave Zoe an eye roll. “Yeah, yeah, I love you too. But your cupcakes make my stomach hurt.”

  “But they have butter and cream cheese and all kinds of great stuff in them,” Zoe teased.

  “And gluten. Evil, horrible, gut-wrenching gluten,” Paige said dramatically.

  “It pairs nicely with the white sugar,” Zoe said, unapologetically.

  Paige sighed. “Well, when you decide to have healthy food that doesn’t twist my insides up into painful knots, you let me know and I’ll stop by.”

  Zoe laughed. “And when you stop teaching classes that don’t twist my outsides up into painful knots, you let me know and I’ll stop by.”

  Paige grinned. “I have a new beginner’s class. You kind of just lie on the mats and stretch and play with kittens.”

  “I’m in,” Zoe said.

  “Tuesday night. And I will have gluten-free, sugar-free pumpkin spice muffins for you to try.”

  Zoe mimed gagging, but nodded. “Can’t wait.”

  Paige laughed, gave them both a wave, and swept out the door.

  Josie watched her graceful, gorgeous sister leave then turned back to Zoe. “So how’d it go?”

  Zoe laughed. “Fine.”

  “Other than the zucchini muffins.”

  Zoe waved that away. “Renee complained, but Janice Conner didn’t even notice that the banana nut ones Paige made were sugar-free and made with almond flour.”

  Josie hung her purse up on the hook inside the door and donned the apron her sister had handed off. “I guess almond flour would kind of go with the nutty flavor.”

  Zoe nodded. “And I had to pay Paige ten bucks on Saturday. She bet me that Wilson Thomas wouldn’t know that she’d snuck spinach in the double chocolate muffins.”

  “She did not!” Josie said, pausing in tying the apron.

  “She totally did. And she used dark chocolate chips because they’re healthier. I caught her at it just as she was slipping them into the oven.”

  “And you let her?” Josie couldn’t believe Zoe would let that go.

  “I told her that Wilson Thomas has been buying our double chocolate muffins for ten years and that if he said one word about them tasting funny she owed me ten bucks and had to remake the batch out of her own pocket.”

  “And he didn’t say anything?”

  “Nope. Said they were delicious. Of course, your sister is also part fairy or something. She probably put a spell on him.”

  Josie snorted as she rounded the island and took a quick inventory of the ingredients laid out. Looked like Paige had been about to start on the lemon poppy seed after all. “I don’t know about that.”

  “She gets people to do the weirdest stuff,” Zoe said.

  “Like what?”

  “I went to hot yoga last night.”

  “You did not!” Josie stared at Zoe.

  “I did. Jane did too.”

  “What?”

  “Yep. We almost died. Our bodies are not supposed to do some of that. And when she says hot she means hot.”

  “How did she talk you into that?”

  “A spell. I’m telling you. Maybe she’s a witch.” Zoe nodded. “Probably a witch. Or drugs. She brought us smoothies. They were delicious. Totally full of vitamins and stuff. But she could have snuck something else in there. We had so much energy all day. And that’s when she pounced. When we were all revved up and feeling great and she said, ‘Come by the studio tonight! It will be so fun!’ and we said, ‘Oh sure, great!’” Zoe gave Josie a look. “It was not great. Aiden had to literally help me get out of bed this morning.”

  Josie laughed. “She’s not a witch and it’s not drugs. It’s the cats.”

  Zoe nodded. “You’re probably right. While you’re there and twisted into these unnatural positions, you barely notice it because you’re watching kittens play, and you’ve got a big old tabby lying next to you purring.”

  Josie grinned and started measuring ingredients. By heart. She’d made these muffins so many times she could do it in her sleep. She did notice that her sister had some golden flax seed off to the side, no doubt that she’d planned to slip into the muffins. Josie shook her head. Paige was braver than Josie in dealing with Zoe. Then again, Zoe couldn’t really fire Paige. She was a fill-in who was friends with Zoe but only because of Josie really. Paige was a lot younger and had her own friends. Whereas Josie couldn’t lose Zoe. She wouldn’t survive without Zoe in her life, and she certainly wasn’t willing to have a falling out over muffins.

  But as she zested the lemons, she wondered what she was actually afraid of. Zoe wouldn’t let their friendship fall apart over muffins either. And Zoe needed Josie. She couldn’t decorate like Josie. Not even close. She could probably hire someone else, but she’d never find someone with the skill and the relationships in town that Josie had. She knew their customers as well as Zoe did. People came to the bakery as much because of knowing and liking Zoe and Josie as they did for the baked goods they created. It was the whole package, and she was definitely a part of that.

  Why had she not really thought about her value before? About the fact that, while she loved and needed and wanted this job, this job needed her too?

  “Okay, I’m here, spill.” Jane came bursting through the back door of the bakery, making Josie jump.

  “Finally!” Zoe said, from where she’d just pulled blueberry muffins from the oven. “I’ve been dying waiting for you.”

  “You’ve been waiting for Jane?” Josie asked.

  “To find out all about your weekend with Grant?” Zoe asked. “Um, yes.”

  “I would have killed her if she’d found anything out before me,” Jane said. She set a bottle of wine on the island beside Josie’s mixing bowl, then grabbed an apron from the hooks by the door and put it on. “I’m here to help with muffins, but I was thrilled to hear that you were back early!” She gave Josie a big grin. “So we’re going to combine wine night and morning muffin making.”

  Josie glanced at the clock. She’d come in just after closing, knowing that it would be the best time to catch Zoe without any interruption from customers. Their busy time was definitely morning, but they had people stopping in throughout the day, and there was always a little rush just before they closed from people who needed dessert for the evening or wanted something for the morning without needing to get up early to come to the bakery.

  “How did you know I was back?” Josie asked.

  “Zoe texted me,” Jane said.

  “You did?”

  “Of course,” Zoe said. “And we’ve told Aiden and Dax that they have to take Grant out for a beer or something so we get his side of
it too.”

  “Like this is high school?” Josie asked. She really wanted to know what Grant said to two of his best friends about her though. Just like high school.

  “God, no,” Zoe said. “You’d better have had way more—and better—sex than you did in high school.”

  “I didn’t have sex in high school,” Josie said. “Well, graduation night isn’t really high school, right?”

  Jane laughed. “Yeah, well, Grant Lorre is the type of guy to give you better sex just with a hot look than you had on graduation night.”

  Josie couldn’t argue with that. Grant made her feel things just walking into a damned room than she’d felt for the first three guys she’d had sex with. Which either meant she’d been way too easy for those guys… or Grant was special.

  She was pretty sure she knew the answer.

  Jane moved in next to her and peered at the recipe for apple cinnamon muffins, reading over the ingredient list and directions.

  Josie stirred the poppy seeds into the batter in front of her and pushed the bowl to Jane. “Here. Put this in the muffin pans.”

  Jane blew out a breath. “Thank you.”

  But instead of reaching for the muffin tins, Jane grabbed the wine bottle and twisted off the top.

  Zoe laughed. “We have a corkscrew.”

  “In a bakery?” Jane asked. “I couldn’t risk it.”

  “We do.” Zoe frowned. “Though I’m not sure why.”

  It was on the tip of Josie’s tongue to tell Zoe that she had come down one Sunday evening and experimented with some wine-infused cupcakes for a bridal shower. The maid of honor had found the recipes online but wondered if Josie would do them for her. They’d turned out amazing. Josie had felt guilty the entire time she’d been in the bakery, but she’d had to make such a big number of cupcakes at once, and her oven at home hadn’t been big enough.

  They should add those cupcakes to their off-menu menu. With the pussy cupcakes.

  In the end, she just pressed her lips together and started on the apple cinnamon muffins.

  Jane poured wine into coffee cups from the front of the bakery and handed them out.

  The girls sipped and made muffins for about two minutes. Then Jane said, “Oh my God, Josie! What happened with Grant in Chicago?”

  “Oh!” She’d been lost in thought. About margarita cupcakes with actual tequila in them and how they could add healthy muffins with zucchini in them to the menu. She looked at her two best friends. “Um, it was great.”

  “I’m going to need an adjective other than great,” Jane said, leaning to refill her cup from the bottle.

  Zoe nodded. “This is really uncool. You always wanted details about Aiden and Dax.”

  The thing was, she would almost rather talk to Zoe about her ideas for the bakery. She had lots of those suddenly. Or maybe it wasn’t sudden. But they’d started to gel recently. Whereas, she had no idea what to say about Grant. He gave her butterflies and made her sad at the same time.

  They’d decided not to tell anyone they’d gotten married, so she couldn’t tell the girls about that.

  What was the point of saying anything? The surgery was over, so no one needed to know about that. Her recovery was coming along great. In fact, she’d felt so good, that they’d come back to Appleby on Tuesday rather than Wednesday. They were just waiting to make sure all the bills went through and the insurance company covered everything and to see what the final outstanding balance was.

  Then they could get divorced.

  At least, that’s what she was waiting for. She assumed that’s what Grant was waiting for as well. Considering he was less interested in the whole marriage thing overall than she was.

  But they had to have some kind of story about their romantic trip and extended stay in Chicago. Josie tapped into her feelings about those first few days. The flight on the private plane, the fancy hotel, the amazing dinner, the rock-her-world-ruin-her-for-all-other-men sex.

  She had to focus on those things. Those were the things that made her stomach swoop and her body heat and her heart pound. But in an exciting, sexy, I have a big, hot, protective boyfriend way.

  It was easier and more fun to think about those things instead of the last couple of days at Grant’s apartment. The days since her surgery had been bittersweet.

  Grant had been amazing. He’d taken great care of her. He’d cooked—cooked, not ordered in. He’d run her baths. He’d brought her medication when she needed it. He'd checked on her almost too often. He'd also sat with her on the couch, took her for walks through downtown, rubbed her shoulders and feet, and cuddled her at night.

  He’d been the ultimate caretaker. Sweet and attentive and a little worried, but also just comforting and nice. Nice seemed like such a blah, weak word, but he really had been.

  They hadn’t talked any further about their outlooks on marriage and relationships and if girls were or were not brainwashed into thinking that marriage and family should be their destiny or if that was just a natural inclination for many. They didn’t talk about their very different families. They didn’t talk about their own marriage for that matter.

  They also didn’t have sex.

  The whole post-op thing had something to do with that. She knew that Grant wouldn’t touch her until he was positive she wasn’t going to break and he wasn’t going to be positive about that until the doctor cleared her.

  But it was a great excuse for her to practice a little distancing—physical and emotional—too. Things were weird between them. They’d gotten married for practical reasons but it hadn’t felt practical. It had felt like there were real feelings there. Until they actually talked about how they both viewed marriage.

  She didn’t think Grant regretted getting married. It wasn’t that. But she did think he was a little worried about her turning this into more. She had to show him that she was a grown-up and could handle this being exactly what it was and nothing more.

  But to do that, she had to pull back a little. It was far, far too easy to want to be close to Grant, in every way, and if she didn’t watch it, she was going to not just get her heart broken, but she was going to end up embarrassing herself.

  Not having sex with him was very helpful in not becoming even more attached to him. The sex was awesome, and not that it was a huge surprise, but it made it hard for her to separate her heart from her head.

  “Wow.”

  Josie tuned back into her friends, realizing she’d been quiet and lost in thought for too long. She’d stirred the hell out of the apple cinnamon muffin batter.

  “You don’t even have words for it?” Zoe asked. She was leaning on the island watching Josie carefully.

  “I think that’s a fair assessment,” Josie agreed.

  “You’re so quiet,” Jane said. “You’re never this quiet about romance and relationships.”

  That was true. But the romance and relationships were almost never hers. She’d had a thing going with Dallas Ryan, a local farmer, for a little while. Dallas was hot. And sweet. And sexy. And she’d thought maybe something could come of that. She’d been feeling butterflies in the stomach about Dallas and had gushed a little to Jane and Zoe about him.

  But it had fizzled after a while. They’d only had sex once and it had been great. But it hadn’t been Grant great. Now she and Dallas were good friends. He’d flirt with her when he came into the bakery, but he never asked her out and she never expected him to.

  He just wasn’t her one.

  Grant isn’t your one either, she told herself firmly.

  She just really wished that he felt less like he could maybe, possibly, be her one. If he felt completely differently about things like marriage and family and relationships in general.

  “I think I’m just tired,” Josie hedged. She had, after all, just had surgery. Not that Zoe and Jane knew that—or would know that. Ever if Josie could help it.

  “So is he staying with you right now?” Jane asked.

  “How did you know that?”
Josie asked. They had just gotten back into town a couple of hours ago.

  “Dax mentioned it when I said they should go out for beers,” Jane said. “He said it was a lot more fun when everyone was crashing in Appleby and didn’t have to worry about driving home.”

  “Yeah, but Cam is crashing at our place,” Zoe said.

  “Oh, poor baby, you have to be quiet having sex instead of doing it on the kitchen table and yelling about it,” Jane teased.

  “Look who’s talking,” Zoe said. “I know about the Ping-Pong table in the Hot Cakes break room.”

  Jane froze and looked up at her. “What? Who told you about that?”

  Zoe laughed. “No one. But I assumed you had done it on that table at some point and you just confirmed it.”

  Jane narrowed her eyes but nodded. “Well done.”

  Josie swallowed. She shouldn’t be jealous of her friends. For one thing, she was so, so happy for them. She was thrilled they both had men they loved who loved them fiercely.

  But she wanted that with Grant. She wanted to know he’d be there at the end of the day, whatever time that finally ended up being, because he wanted to be there, rather than because they were, essentially, pulling off a con. Conning their friends into thinking they were having a hot affair. Conning an insurance company into thinking they were married. Except they were married. And they were having a hot affair.

  She supposed they were only conning themselves. Conning themselves into thinking that this wasn’t a big deal. When it was feeling like a really big, messy, complicated, she-never-wanted-it-to-end deal.

  “So Grant’s staying with you,” Jane said. “And you had a great time in Chicago.”

  “Yeah.” Josie shrugged.

  Jane and Zoe exchanged a look, and then Jane shook her head and set her wineglass down to cross her arms. “Nope. What’s going on?”

  “What do you mean?” But Josie could feel that she was on the verge of telling them everything. She wasn’t a secretive person. She loved having friends and family that were involved in her life. She was already keeping the side-baking away from Zoe and that made her feel bad enough. She’d also recently realized that she was keeping her feelings about the bakery and wanting to be more involved from her friend. She did not want to have another secret.