Taste of Romance

by Darlene Panzera

  “What about your roses?” she asked. “Sjölander’s Garden Nursery?”

  “My brother will take care of her,” he said and smiled. “Now, what do you think of your first balloon flight?”

  Kim’s stomach churned. “I—I think I need you to take me down.”

  Nathaniel frowned. “Just a moment ago I saw the excitement in your eyes, heard the longing for adventure in your voice. I don’t think you’re afraid of flying, Kimberly. I think you’re afraid to fly, to let go, to take hold of your dreams. Perhaps afraid of where they will take you.”

  She wouldn’t look at him, wouldn’t let his warm, lilting, musical voice penetrate her heart. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Is it?” Drawing her close, he brushed his mouth against hers and kissed her.

  Kim resisted at first, but his lips were so soft and gentle, that her eyes closed, and she found herself lost in a world of enchantment, of wonder, bursting through the air, soaring . . . flying . . . higher and higher.

  “Open your eyes,” he whispered, holding her tight.

  She opened her eyes slowly, her lashes fluttering against her skin. Then she looked up into his face, just inches from her own, and her heart signaled she’d just taken the trip of a lifetime.

  “Don’t hate me,” he said, his mouth twitching as if to hide a smile. “But I may have let the rope slip a bit further.”

  Kim glanced around her and tightened her grip around his waist. “We’re high. Like, fifty feet high!”

  “More like seventy-five.”

  Kim gasped. And smiled. And laughed. “I’m flying.”

  “I love your passion, Kimberly. You put your passion into everything you do. It’s in the way you paint, the way you decorate your cupcakes, and . . .” He grinned, his mouth drawing near hers again. “It’s also in the way you kiss.”

  She prepared to kiss Nathaniel again, when a sharp ring sounded from her pocket. Her cell phone.

  Nathaniel drew back, and she answered the call, hoping she hadn’t lost track of the time. Had she been gone from the cupcake stand for more than an hour?

  “Grandpa Lewy is missing!” Rachel shouted through the phone. “He was sitting in the chair behind me, and then he was gone. I left Meredith in charge of the booth, and Mike and I have been all over the place but can’t find him. Where are you?”

  “I’m up in a balloon.”

  “A what?”

  “A hot air balloon.”

  There was a pause on the other end, then Rachel asked, “You’re kidding, right?”

  Kim laughed. “No, I’m serious.”

  “I’ll need details later,” Rachel said, “but right now I need to find my grandfather. Can you see him?”

  Kim looked about and whispered to Nathaniel, “Rachel’s grandfather is lost. Can we go up higher so I can try to spot him?”

  Nathaniel nodded and took them up to one hundred feet. They peered down at the crowd below, hoping to spot the old man, but it was hard to tell one person from another. Then Kim saw a man with white hair holding a box close to his chest. “Rachel, I see him,” she said into the phone. “He’s over by the Polka Chicks, sitting on a bench, east of the cupcake stand.”

  “I’m on my way. Thanks, Kim.”

  Kim put her phone away and turned toward Nathaniel.

  “I need to get back,” she told him.

  “Can I see you tomorrow?” he asked.

  Another date, another kiss, another heartbreak when he left her for Sweden. She shouldn’t make the inevitable even worse. She shouldn’t say yes.

  “Yes?”

  She nodded. Common sense told her she should decline, but it looked like her heart had a different plan.

  KIM RETURNED TO the Creative Cupcakes booth to find Rachel screaming at Meredith.

  “What happened?” Kim asked, eyeing Meredith’s belligerent expression.

  Rachel swept her arm toward the back of the tent. “The cupcakes are gone!”

  Kim glanced at the empty table where they’d stacked the dozens of cupcake boxes they’d unloaded from the Cupcake Mobile earlier that morning.

  “We were pretty busy. Are you sure we didn’t sell them all?” she asked.

  Rachel shook her head. “When I left to find my grandpa, there were still thirty dozen boxes on the table. Meredith only sold eight dozen during that time. That means twenty-two dozen cupcakes are missing. How could Meredith not notice someone lifting the flap and stealing from the back of the tent?”

  “I was too busy to notice,” Meredith shot back. “With both you and Kim gone, I was the only one here to serve. You shouldn’t have left me here alone.”

  Kim glanced from one fiery redhead to the other, and guilt crept up her spine. If she hadn’t been with Nathaniel and had stayed to help Meredith, this never would have happened. There was no way twenty-two dozen cupcakes would have gone missing under her watch.

  “Hey, great cupcakes,” a young man said as he walked by. He took a bite of a cannoli cupcake with a Swedish red candy fish on top. “Tastes fantastic!”

  “I didn’t sell him any cupcakes,” Meredith said, her eyes wide. “He could be the thief.”

  “Where did you get that box?” Rachel demanded, stepping toward him. “You didn’t pay us for them.”

  “I got them from the troll,” the man said with a grin. “He said everyone had to try one.”

  “Troll?” Kim demanded. “What troll?”

  Rachel pursed her lips. “Maybe a troll followed you from the race.”

  “The guy said he was a troll,” the young man replied, giving them both a mischievous grin.

  “Wait!” Kim shouted, running after him. But he had disappeared in the crowd. Then she realized that several other people around her were eating their cupcakes.

  “Excuse me,” she asked an older woman. “Where did you get that cupcake?”

  “A handsome man gave it to me,” the woman told her.

  Handsome? They had a handsome thief who claimed he was a troll?

  “What did he look like?” she persisted.

  “He was tall,” the woman answered.

  The next woman Kim stopped said, “He was short. He went that way.”

  Kim ran down the path in the direction the woman indicated and came across more and more people eating Creative Cupcakes.

  A group of kids laughed when Kim asked about the cupcakes, and one of them said, “The troll had white hair and a beard and a pointy green hat. He was fierce and ugly and handed us the cupcakes and ran away.”

  A mother with two young children told her, “He was such a nice man. Very kind. Not many people do good deeds for others anymore.”

  “What do you mean by ‘good deeds’?”

  “When I told him we didn’t have any money, he gave us the cupcakes for free.”

  Kim returned to the Creative Cupcakes tent and discovered the Cupcake Mobile had left.

  “Mike drove Grandpa Lewy home and went to get us more cupcakes,” Rachel told her. “Did you learn anything about our thief?”

  Kim nodded. “People described him as tall, short, handsome, ugly, young, old, in human form, and a troll. One woman referred to him as Robin Hood.”

  “Because he steals from the rich and gives to the poor?” Rachel asked. “Our cupcakes are rich, but we’ll be poor now that he’s given our cupcakes away.”

  Kim hesitated. “He didn’t give them all away. He sold most of them . . . and pocketed our money.”

  Chapter Seven

  * * *

  Stolen kisses are always sweetest.

  —Leigh Hunt

  “SOMEONE TOOK CASEY!” Mia cried, running across the tile floor of the cupcake shop.

  Kim watched the tears roll down her niece’s cheeks and she dropped down on one knee in front of the child to console her. “Where did you last see your doll?”

  Mia looked around, as if puzzled. “I don’t know.”

  “You had Casey with you yesterday at the festival,” Andi said, coming around t
he counter. “Did you leave her there?”

  Mia’s big blue eyes welled with more tears. “I don’t know.”

  Andi glanced toward Jake’s daughter, Taylor, who was coloring with crayons at a table by the front window. “Taylor, did you take Mia’s doll?”

  Taylor shook her head. “No.”

  “Must be the bandit,” Mia said, her lower lip wobbling.

  Taylor agreed. “The Cupcake Bandit.”

  “Should we offer a reward?” Kim suggested. “A free box of cupcakes to whoever finds and returns Casey.”

  Mia nodded.

  “If you and Taylor draw reward posters, I’ll hang them up in the shop,” Kim told her.

  The little girl dashed off to sit at the table with Taylor, and Andi brought them two pieces of white paper.

  “That will keep them busy for a while,” Andi said with a grin.

  “Long enough for us to load the Cupcake Mobile for the festival,” Kim agreed. “Where’s Rachel?”

  “Right here,” Rachel sang, ushering her grandfather through the front door. “Had to take Gramps to the doctor’s. He had a fever this morning. My mom’s coming by to get him in ten minutes.”

  Rachel seated him at a front table near the door by the girls, then noticed the new vase of roses on the counter. “Well, well, Kim. What have we here?”

  Kim rolled her eyes as Rachel counted the stems.

  “Nathaniel sent six red roses. That means, ‘I want to be yours,’” Rachel teased.

  “It doesn’t mean anything. Nathaniel isn’t looking for a relationship. He’s—” Kim took a deep breath and steeled herself against their pity. “He’s going back to Sweden.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Andi said, her voice barely audible.

  Kim nodded and turned away, unable to look at her. “It’s okay, really. I’ve got my job here . . . for at least two more weeks. And I’ve got my painting.”

  “I really like this new one,” Rachel said, pointing to the fresh canvas on the easel.

  The picture she’d painted of two people holding hands and looking up at the stars.

  Kim squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, trying to block out the image, but Nathaniel’s face appeared instead. How could he leave when she’d just found him? It all seemed so unfair.

  “I finished!” Mia called out and held up her colored paper. “Hang up my reward poster, Aunt Kim.”

  She retrieved a roll of tape and was in the middle of attaching the poster to the front window when something hit the glass with a sharp bang.

  “What was that?” Taylor asked.

  “A bird,” Mia said, pressing her face against the pane. “I think it’s dead.”

  Kim took an empty cupcake box off the back counter and went outside, followed by Mia and Taylor. The little blackbird hadn’t died, but instead appeared stunned and was on its side. When it righted itself and tried to fly, it fell back down.

  “The bird’s alive,” she told them. “Just a hurt wing. In a few days our feathered friend will fly as good as new.”

  “Are you sure?” Mia asked.

  No, she wasn’t sure. She wasn’t sure of anything anymore. In fact, she’d felt as dazed as this little bird ever since Nathaniel told her he was going away. Would she ever meet another person with an adventurous spirit who connected with nature and made her smile as much as he did?

  Gently, Kim picked up the bird and placed it in the box, then walked back with it into the shop.

  “You’re bringing that thing in here?” Andi asked, her eyes wide. “What about germs?”

  “I’ll keep it in the box by the side door in the back party room,” Kim said, carrying the bird across the room.

  Mia and Taylor followed, squealing with delight.

  ANDI’S SQUEALS LATER that afternoon were of a different kind, more like a burst of outrage. She held up the Cupcake Diary. “The thief left a ransom note.”

  Rachel looked up from the tray of red velvet cupcakes she had just brought out from the kitchen. “In our Cupcake Dairy?”

  “The diary was missing since this morning, and I was afraid maybe the Cupcake Bandit stole that, too. But I just found it here on the end of the counter with this written inside.”

  Kim walked over by Andi and read the note aloud, squinting to decipher the poor handwriting:

  I have a doll. Astoria Column. 6:30. Bring the cupcakes. Chocolate.

  “Does he mean 6:30 today?” Andi asked, turning the book around to read the note again.

  Kim shrugged. “He doesn’t mention any other day.”

  A half hour after Andi called his private number, Officer Ian Lockwell entered the shop. Andi showed him the note and explained how Mia’s doll had gone missing.

  “I’m afraid I can’t write a report over a missing toy,” Officer Lockwell told them. “Or order a stakeout.”

  “But if he shows up to exchange the doll for the cupcakes, we can catch him,” Andi insisted. “And find out who he is.”

  “I’m sorry,” Officer Lockwell told them. “The person who took Mia’s doll and the thief who stole your cupcakes might not be the same person. Plus, you have to think—what kind of crazy person would do something like this? Sounds to me like a child.”

  “The video showed pale hair and the elbow of an adult,” Andi argued. “And the people at the Scandinavian Festival said it was a man. He was selling the cupcakes for money.”

  Officer Lockwell sighed. “I’m working at the station tonight, and there’s no way the department is going to invest precious money or manpower to catch a dollnapper.”

  “Someone’s got to take the cupcakes to the column,” Andi said, lifting her chin. “Except Rachel and I have to head back to the festival. We told Heather and Theresa we’d be back with the next load of cupcakes ASAP.”

  Kim watched her sister turn toward her and gasped. “Why are you looking at me?”

  “You’re the only one who can do it,” Rachel told her. “You need to go on a recon mission to catch our cupcake thief.”

  “I—I can’t go alone.” She shook her head. “I’m not the type to hide in the bushes and scout out criminals.”

  “You don’t have to go alone,” said a smooth, friendly voice behind her. “I’ll go with you.”

  She spun around. How did Nathaniel manage to sneak up behind her?

  Andi and Rachel clapped their hands, and each gave her a big smile.

  “Sounds like a plan,” Rachel said and gave her a knowing look. “Be sure to take a blanket. The air might be cool tonight.”

  Kim rolled her eyes. Rachel was a blatant matchmaker who didn’t know when to stop.

  “I have a blanket in the saddlebag of my motorcycle,” Nathaniel told her.

  “You brought your motorcycle?” Kim asked, unable to keep her excitement out of her voice.

  “I thought you might like another taste of adventure,” he said and grinned as he took her hand.

  KIM HELD THE binoculars up to her eyes. The box containing a dozen chocolate cupcakes with creamy chocolate icing sat on the stone bench near the hedges toward the back side of the Astoria Column. The ransom note had not said where to put them, and she thought if she chose a place in the open, the thief wouldn’t make the exchange.

  “It’s 6:30,” Nathaniel whispered. “The Cupcake Bandit should be here any minute.”

  “Do you think he saw us cross the parking lot and climb the column?” Kim asked.

  Nathaniel shook his head. “We were here over an hour early, he doesn’t know me, and I doubt he’d recognize you.”

  Kim glanced down at the black leather motorcycle jacket Nathaniel had given her to hide her white work shirt. The jacket was about five sizes too big, but she didn’t care. It smelled like him—like warm summer rain and happiness.

  “We can see if he takes the cupcakes, but we’ll never climb down fast enough to catch him,” Nathaniel told her.

  “That’s okay,” Kim said, looking down at the people wandering around on the lawn below. “I don’t want
to confront him. I just want to see who it is.”

  There were 164 steps to the top of the Astoria Column on Coxcomb Hill, where a square, railed platform let viewers oversee not only the site’s thirty acres, but the entire region. Kim loved the historic frontier banded murals circling the column that Italian immigrant artist Attilo Pusterla had created using a technique combining painting and plaster carving.

  “It’s like the top of a lighthouse,” Nathaniel commented. “And just as windy. The view reminds me of Sweden, with all the green valleys and waterways in between.”

  Kim swung her gaze from the huge cargo ships traveling under the massive steel truss Astoria−Megler Bridge on her right, around the piers lining the tip of Astoria, and followed Youngs Bay around to the flats of green, with trees and subtle rolling hills in the distance.

  “My home city of Göteborg is a lot like Astoria,” he continued. “Your town sits on the mouth of the Columbia River where it meets the Pacific Ocean, and mine sits on the mouth of Göta älv, which flows into the North Sea. Also, like Astoria, Göteborg is a thriving fishing community. I think you’d like it there.”

  Was he asking her to go to Sweden? Nathaniel turned toward her, and her pulsed raced. What was she supposed to say?

  “There are many art galleries in Sweden,” he told her, his eyes sparkling. “Including the Göteborg Museum of Art.”

  “And rose gardens?” she prompted, loving the sound of his accent as he talked.

  “Ja, before I came here, I worked in the rose garden in Trädgårdsföreningen park, with four thousand roses of nineteen hundred species.” He grinned. “A lot more to smell than in my backyard.”

  Kim smiled at his teasing and took another glance at the stone bench to make sure the cupcake box was still there. It was.

  “No wonder you want to go back,” she replied.

  “I want to go lots of places,” Nathaniel said, smiling down at her. “But I’ve discovered it’s more fun traveling with someone than traveling alone.”