“Actually, I do. I have brides to wrangle. I know you’ll deliver a fabulous cake, like always. Good luck with the handsome paramedic.”
She made her exit with a flourish just as Dante returned with the cart.
“She was interesting,” he said.
“How much of that did you hear?” she asked.
“Enough,” he said, waggling his eyebrows.
“Great. Look, I…” She paused, unsure how to even explain away Amy’s comments. “Never mind. I’ve got nothing. Come on. Let’s go get the cake so we can get this over with.”
She marched outside, confident now that he’d follow. Sure enough, when she got to the van he was right behind her.
“How are you feeling?” he asked. “Headache better? Worse? Dizziness? Nausea? Vision problems?”
She opened the van door. “I’m fine. The same. Now, will you help me with this so I can fix this cake and you can take me to the hospital and go back to your normal life without following the crazy cake lady around everywhere?”
“I don’t mind,” he said as they team-lifted the cake onto the cart.
He said it so casually, just an offhand remark, but something in his tone caught her attention. In the course of the hour or so they’d spent together, she’d sensed some kind of something—attraction?—between them, but she’d also been high on adrenaline, so she could have easily misread everything. But the adrenaline of the accident had worn off and now she ran only on the fumes of stress, so her muddled mind had a hard time grasping nuance.
“Maybe you need your head checked too,” she said.
He chuckled, and they wheeled the cake inside.
While Dante sat nearby and watched, December spent the next half hour repairing the damage done by the accident. By the time she’d finished, it looked good as new.
Amy strode into the kitchen dressed in a lovely peach pastel suit, just as December was finishing up.
“Oh my God, December, that is simply perfect. Cara and Diane will love it. Wait here, I’ll go find them so they can see it,” Amy said.
“You know any other time I’d love to, but I’m exhausted and my head hurts, and I really think I need to go,” December said, removing and rolling up her apron.
Amy came over and hugged her. “Okay, sweetie. You do that. You’ve had a rough day. You deserve to rest.”
“After she’s been seen at the hospital,” Dante added.
“Ugh.” December groaned.
Amy patted December’s cheek. “Listen to the nice man. He knows what he’s talking about.”
He made his way around the counter and placed his hand at her low back—not inappropriately low, but below mid-back—and guided her toward the door in a gesture that made her want to lean back into the implied safety of his touch.
Suddenly, December felt like a deflated balloon, loose, rubbery, and limp.
As they reached the door, Amy called after them. “Take good care of her, handsome.”
The trip to the hospital went by in a blur that she may or may not have slept through. She vaguely recalled him talking to her—something about staying awake.
At the hospital he parked the van at the emergency entrance, assisted her out of her side, and walked her in to the registration desk in the emergency room.
“Thank you, Dante,” she said. “You’ve gone above and beyond.”
He waved her off, but still looked pleased. “Just doing my job.”
“How many paramedics would have schlepped all over Chicago with a wedding cake?”
“Okay, not many,” he said, chuckling.
She leaned in and kissed his cheek. “Well, today you’re my hero. I owe you.”
He actually blushed. It was adorable, and if her legs hadn’t been about to buckle under her from sheer exhaustion, and if she hadn’t been standing in a hospital, she would have flirted with him.
Instead, she extracted a business card from her pocket and handed it to him. It was the closest she could get to flirty with a possible concussion.
Chapter Three
December unlocked the door to her apartment, dragged herself inside, and then slid to the floor with her back against the closed door.
The day had chewed her up and spit her out as a limp, used-up wad, and it was still only mid-afternoon.
Her pocket-sized mutt, Rusty, came scampering out of her sister’s bedroom, yapping his funny little bark, his paws slipping on the slick wood floor. He managed to gallop down the hallway to the foyer, his claws clacking, his tongue lolling out the side of his happy little face, and his calico fur groomed in his usual bed-head style.
Rusty dove into her lap, his whole back end wagging in greeting.
“Hey, buddy,” December said, hugging the warm little body against her neck. “You’re a sight for tired eyes.”
He answered by licking dog-slobbery kisses all over her face.
“Okay, that’s enough.”
He happy-wiggled all around her, waiting for her to get up so he could follow her. But her body didn’t respond. It may as well have weighed five hundred pounds as a hundred-ten. All she wanted to do was curl up where she was and sleep.
But the doctor at the E.R. had told her she could have a mild concussion, so she should stay awake through the afternoon. He’d put a couple of stitches into the side of her head where she’d smacked the window, then bandaged it up. The requisite scans and tests had cleared her of serious head injury. The accident had been shocking and flooded her system with massive doses of adrenaline, but the impact hadn’t been severe. The van had suffered some damage, but the fact that they drove it away attested to the fact the other driver had at least not been speeding through the intersection.
She still had a headache, though, and the doctor had said even if she didn’t have a mild concussion, she’d be sore and tired for a few days.
A hot, relaxing bath sounded wonderful, but it meant she had to haul herself off the floor.
Her stomach growled, too.
Before she did anything else, though, she had to call the girls and tell them she wouldn’t be at practice tonight.
She dug her phone out of her pocket and dialed Darcy Kent, the team captain.
“Hey girl, what’s up?” Darcy said as she answered.
“Darce, I’m not going to be there tonight. I was in an accident today, so I’m just going to crash tonight.”
“Oh my God, are you okay?”
“I will be. I’m just not up to derby tonight.”
“No problem. We’ll see you next time if you’re feeling better.”
“I will be. Thanks.”
Gathering her legs under her, she managed to hand-over-hand up the wall until she stood upright.
“Okay, Rusty, I’m up. Let’s go take a bath.”
Kicking off her shoes, and peeling off the Billy Joel t-shirt, she headed to the single bathroom in the apartment.
As the tub filled with hot water, she stripped out of her jeans, bra, and underwear, until she stood naked, sweaty, and exhausted in front of the mirror.
A pale purple bruise bloomed across her shoulder where the seatbelt had held her in place, and a darker purple bruise and the reddish-brown of the iodine cleanser from the hospital spread out from under the white gauze taped to her temple.
She pulled the scrunchy from her hair and allowed it to topple in a tangled mess around her shoulders.
“December,” she told her reflection. “You look like shit.”
Reaching down, she turned off the water then climbed into the tub. The water was hot enough to sting, just the way she liked it. She hissed and groaned as she lowered herself down, waiting every few inches as her skin adjusted, until she finally sat her ass on the bottom of the tub.
“Aaaaah,” she sighed.
“December?” Her sister June peeked into the bathroom, yawning and rubbing her sleepy eyes. “What’re you doing home early?”
December gasped and her hand flew to her chest. “Jeez, Junie, you scared the crap ou
t of me.”
June sat on the toilet. “Sorry.” Then waking up enough to focus, she said, “What happened to your head?”
December settled back into the tub, slouching until just her face was above water. “I had an accident today while delivering a cake.”
“A car accident? God, December, are you okay?”
“I’m okay. Just a little bump on the head. The doctor said I’d be fine.”
“Good. Rusty woke me up when he jumped off the bed and started barking. I figured you were home, but when I looked at the clock I realized you were here early.”
“It’s been a long day, but even after the accident, I got the cake delivered to the Owens-Hollingsworth wedding thanks to a hunky paramedic.”
June’s eyebrow went up and her lips quirked into a smile. “Oh? Do tell.”
“There’s nothing to tell, other than he was hot and patient and he rescued me when I needed it.”
“Since when do you need rescuing? You’re the stubbornest woman I know.”
“Today, I needed the help. The accident wasn’t bad, but my head hurt and he refused to leave my side until he delivered me to the hospital.”
“And of course you insisted on delivering the cake.”
“Of course. I’ve never not delivered. And come on, it was a wedding. You can’t have a wedding without the cake,” December said.
June snorted. “You take your cakes very seriously.”
“I do. Cakes are serious business.”
“Okay, I can’t argue that. I’d sacrifice a limb for one of your cakes,” June said. “So are you going to see this paramedic again?”
December shrugged underwater. “I don’t know. I gave him my card at the hospital and told him I owed him. I guess the next move is his, since I have no idea how to contact him.”
“But you’d like to see him again?”
“Oh yeah,” December said, thinking about Dante’s piercing eyes and how the way he’d smiled and squeezed her hand before he left her at the E.R. had given her butterflies. If nothing else, she wanted to meet him again under normal circumstances just to see if he had the same effect on her. To see if he was really as sexy as she remembered, or if she’d been delusional.
“I hope he calls, then,” June said. “Right now, though, I’m going back to bed. I worked late last night and I don’t have to be back at the bar for a few hours, so I’m going to get more sleep.”
June stood and headed for the door.
“I’m going to finish this bath, then crash, too,” December said. “Have a good night at work.”
As June headed back to her room, December slouched all the way under water, visions of Dante dancing in her bonked head.
At breakfast the following Saturday morning, Dante’s next day off, Grammy Lanore said, “What are your plans for the day, Dante?”
“I wanted to hit the gym sometime today, and I should take a look at the leaky toilet. And I told you I’d vacuum for you. Otherwise, nothing. Why?”
He itched to go for a miles-long run and hang out with his teammates. God, he missed his team. He missed guy stuff. While he loved his niece and grandmother, he felt soft, like living as a civilian had turned him weak. His teammates wouldn’t recognize him, even though it had only been a couple of months.
He wondered if they missed him. If they’d replace him and forget about him.
What the fuck? He sounded like a fucking wuss.
“I need to go grocery shopping,” Grammy said.
Well, traipsing around a grocery store pushing a cart behind his grandmother didn’t sound emasculating at all. The guys would literally roll on the floor laughing.
“Sure, Grams. No problem.”
Whipped.
“Thank you, Dante. You’re a good boy. I’ll go get ready.”
After Grammy took her dishes to the kitchen and rinsed them, she tottered toward her room.
Tamera waited until Lanore was out of ear shot, then said, “Grammy’s birthday is next week. We need to get her a present and a cake.”
“That’s going to be hard to do if she’s with us.”
Tamera rolled her eyes. “Duh.”
“So…you want me to convince her to stay here so we can go without her?”
“Yes!”
“How am I supposed to do that? She’s here alone all week. She’s not going to want to stay here while we go out.”
His niece twisted up her face in thought. After a moment, she gave up and shrugged. “I guess we’ll just have to be sneaky.”
“Do you know what you want to get for a gift?” Dante asked. “Maybe we can order that online, then all we have to do is get her cake today.”
“That’s a good idea, Uncle Chill.”
“Tonight after Grammy goes to bed, we’ll shop online, okay?”
“And we’ll get her a cake today.”
“The problem will be getting the cake without her knowing,” Dante said.
“The store has a bakery,” Tamera said. “Maybe we can trick her into shopping for something while we go to the bakery.”
Dante stuck his hand in his pocket and fingered the business card December McKay, the self-proclaimed crazy cake lady, had given him at the emergency room before they’d parted ways. He’d been thinking about her since then, the ghost of her kiss lingering on his cheek.
She had no way to contact him, so the card put the responsibility on him to contact her if they were ever to see each other again. He wanted to, but he had no good reason, other than to check up on her, which seemed kind of lame and not professional. But she’d haunted his thoughts, and there’d been a real attraction between them. He hadn’t been attracted to a woman for anything other than just sex for a long time.
He couldn’t get her pretty face out of his mind, and now he had the perfect reason to see her.
He pulled the card out of his pocket and slid it in front of Tamera.
“I met this woman a few days ago when I took care of her after an accident. She’s a cake designer, and because I took such good care of her she gave me her card and told me she owed me. How about we have her design a special cake for Grammy?”
Tamera’s eye sparkled and her jaw dropped open, and she bounced in her seat. “Yes. Let’s do that. But how are we going to do it without Grammy knowing?”
“Let me call the bakery to see if they’re open today, and how late. We’ll go shopping, bring Grammy home, then go back out. We’ll tell her we forgot something, or we have some other errand to run,” Dante said.
“Okay.” Tamera clapped and grinned. “I’m so excited. I’ve never been to a real bakery before.”
The trip to the grocery store went exactly as Dante had assumed it would be. Grammy rode around in one of those motorized carts with the little basket on the front, while he pushed a regular cart and Tamera danced around them both, darting ahead, touching everything, asking for half the things she touched, and quickly losing interest. The only difference between her and him was that Dante had years of experience dredging up patience even when he didn’t really feel it. But the shopping trip tested it more than some of the long, dull reconnaissance missions he’d been on.
Grammy, however, seemed happy as a pig in shit. She chattered and laughed, and Dante couldn’t blame her for enjoying herself, even if the grocery store bored the hell out of him. If he ended up with custody of Tamera, this would be his life. He couldn’t imagine how he’d manage to still be a SEAL if he was a single parent. The realization sent a shiver of panic down his spine. Could he do it? Could he give up a career he loved to be a father and family man?
Listening to Grammy’s laughter as Tamera giggled and pirouetted for her warmed his heart, though. How could he turn his back on this family? He owed it to his brother, and to these two wonderful ladies. If it had been the other way around, his brother would have sacrificed for him without a second thought.
Family always came first.
So he followed Grammy’s slow-moving cart from one aisle to the next
to the next until they had everything on her list, then through the checkout, before loading it all into the car and hauling it home.
Inside their kitchen, surrounded by plastic bags full of groceries, Tamera goggled her eyes at him and tipped her head toward Grammy Lanore, urging him to give whatever excuse they needed to go back out. Dante bit his tongue to keep from laughing at Tamera’s antics. Lanore had to have seen her, but like a good grandmother, she ignored the child despite suspecting something was up.
“Grammy, I’ve got a couple of other errands to run. Are you okay if I take off for a while?”
“Sure. I’ll just put all this away, and start working on supper for later.” She smiled and glanced at Tamera, who shot Dante a questioning glare. “Why don’t you take Tamera with you? She has a lot of energy to burn.”
“Good idea,” he said. “You want to go with me, T?”
He couldn’t help teasing her. She walked right into it.
“You know I do, Uncle Chill.”
In the car, they made the trip to Tout de Sweet, Tamera chattering the whole way. At first, she got after him for teasing her, but after that she talked about the kind of cake she wanted to get for Grammy, and about meeting a real cake decorator, and after a while Dante only half-listened. Instead, the closer they got, the more nervous he became. He had no idea if December even worked today, but if she didn’t he’d ask after her as his designer of choice, and go from there. He was nervous to see her, hoping she wouldn’t think it was inappropriate for him to show up at her work, and that she hadn’t just been delirious when she’d kissed him and given him her card.
They pulled up out front of the bakery, and Tamera gasped.
“It’s so pretty.”
The building stood alone on a corner, painted pink, with a black sign post out front advertising the name, and big windows with flower boxes full of bright flowers.
When they entered the corner door, a warm wave of fresh bread smell hit them and he closed his eyes and took in a deep breath of it.
“It smells so good in here,” Tamera said.
“It sure does.”
Special Forces: Operation Alpha: December Chill (Kindle Worlds Novella) (Sealed With A Kiss Series Book 4) Page 3