Baked with Love

by Erin Wright

  “Cady Walcott,” Cady said, putting her hand out for a firm handshake. She liked the handshake, and the woman. She was open and friendly and direct. Somehow, Cady knew that she would never have to wonder how Michelle Winthrop felt about her. She was the kind of woman who’d say it how it was.

  She didn’t know how she was so sure about the woman, considering they’d just met, but she was.

  “So, Gage,” Michelle said, flashing a grin at Cady’s date. Cady ignored the flash of jealousy at the sight. She couldn’t go around telling everyone that they didn’t get to smile at her boyfriend. “I didn’t know you had a girlfriend. Where’ve you been hiding her all this time?”

  “Well, next door, it turns out. Cady here bought the storefront next to the Muffin Man and is remodeling it into the Smoothie Queen.”

  Cady felt her cheeks go pink. Gage seemed downright proud to claim her as his own.

  “Oh, damn. You don’t say – you’re the one who knocked out the power to the whole town?” Michelle asked, turning back to Cady, mouth agape.

  “Am I ever going to live that down?” Cady asked rhetorically to the world at large.

  “Nope!” Michelle and Gage said in unison and then laughed.

  “So, are y’all interested in a pup?” Michelle asked, steering the conversation back to what she clearly considered the important topic. “Or are you just lookie-loos?”

  “I already have a cat,” Cady said with sincere regret in her voice as she watched the playful puppies roll and wrestle with each other, “and my landlords only let me have him because I paid a large pet deposit. I don’t think I could convince them that a puppy wouldn’t cause any damage.”

  “I’m a homeowner so I don’t have a landlord to convince,” Gage said, dropping to his knees next to the pen, muscles rippling under his shirt as he went. “I’ve been so busy with the bakery, I haven’t let myself get a pet, but maybe…maybe it’s time.”

  “It’s always time to have a pet,” Michelle said, pulling up her folding chair and sitting down in it while Cady and Gage crouched next to the pen. “Having a dog to greet you when you get home…there’s no better feeling in the world.”

  Gage put his fingers through the wire mesh and immediately, a puppy came bounding over, tumbling over its overly long ears and landing on its back, revealing to the world that it was actually a she.

  “What kind of a dog are these?” Cady asked, trying to puzzle it out. The ears were longer like a cocker spaniel but the fur was all wrong – straight instead of wavy – and the legs were way too short, almost like a corgi or something. She’d never seen such an adorable puppy in all her life but none in the litter bore any resemblance to any breed Cady had ever laid eyes on.

  “This here is what I like to call a ‘mutt,’” Michelle said, and laughed. “They’re the love child of about ten different breeds, from what I can tell. The good news is, they should have excellent health. No problems with inbreeding here.”

  “I guess there’s that,” Gage said with a grin as he pulled his fingers out from the wire mesh and instead scooped the girl out over the top of the cage. “You’re a friendly one,” he murmured as the dog whined and licked and nuzzled his hand, clearly in the throes of ecstasy over someone actually petting her.

  Apparently a little too excited because with a shout of surprise, Gage yanked the dog up into the air and away from the widening wet spot on his jeans. In her excitement, the pup had peed all over him.

  Cady laughed so hard, she snorted. She didn’t even know that was something she was capable of, but she’d never seen such a hilarious sight in all her life.

  “You know, there’s that rule,” Michelle said dryly, clearly trying to suppress her laughter and doing a shitastic job of it. “You break it, you buy it. Except in this case, it’s ‘You get peed on, it’s yours.’ Not quite the same ring to it, but true anyway.”

  Gage, who was holding the squirming dog up in the air, as far away from his body as he could manage, looked up at Michelle and said, “You think I should adopt her?”

  “Well, of course,” Michelle said smoothly. “I think she was just trying to mark you as hers. Show you how much she likes you.”

  “You could like me a little less,” Gage told the puppy seriously. “My feelings wouldn’t be hurt, promise.”

  “Poor girl,” Cady crooned. “She was just excited.”

  “You want to hold her?” Gage asked, holding the puppy towards Cady with a dare in his eye.

  “Sure!” Cady said brightly, holding her hands out for the darling dog. “Hell, her bladder is empty now.”

  It was Michelle’s turn to snort with laughter. “I like you,” she told Cady. “’Bout time a girl brought this handsome bachelor to his knees.”

  “You think I’m handsome?” Gage asked, clearly choosing to ignore the rest of what Michelle said as he handed the dog off to Cady. “All this time and I never knew.”

  “Well, us girls can’t go around telling you that or you’d get a big head,” Michelle informed him pertly, but Cady missed his retort as she began to snuggle the soft puppy against her chest. She’d never felt something so wonderful in all her life. Skittles was soft, sure, but he was a cat. He was happy to spend most of his day in the high window sill of the basement apartment, taking in the sun. This puppy, on the other hand…Cady didn’t know a puppy could be so sweet, so soft, so loving. Sensing that Cady wanted to just cuddle, she snuggled her tiny snout into the base of Cady’s neck, snoring within seconds, her soft whistling breath like a love song only Cady could hear.

  She held the puppy against her, letting the world around her just swirl out of focus as she felt the love that this dog had for her wash over her in waves. How was it that a puppy could fall in love with a human so quickly? Or a human in love with a puppy?

  Finally, her eyes fluttered open and she realized that Michelle and Gage were just staring at her. “I think she’s found her new owner,” Michelle said seriously. “She just loves you.”

  “I can’t…” Cady said weakly, her defenses melting in the face of the overwhelming love of the dog. “My landlord…Rochelle didn’t want Skittles, and he’s fully house-trained and snipped.”

  “Rochelle and Mike?” Michelle asked. Surprised, Cady nodded. How was it that Michelle knew the names of her landlords? “Small town,” Michelle said dismissively, answering Cady’s unspoken question. “Anyway, I’ll talk to them. See if I can’t get them to make an allowance, just this once. They’re real nice people – they had real bad renters a couple years back who destroyed the place, and they’ve been skittish ever since.”

  “I’ll double my pet deposit if it’d help,” Cady said eagerly. “I don’t mind.” She had to stop herself from promising to walk the dog twice a day and pick up her poop after her, too. Michelle wasn’t her mother. Cady was just so excited about the idea of a puppy – this puppy…

  “Well, I promise I’ll adopt her even if Mike and Rochelle don’t allow it,” Gage said. “Like I said, I’m a homeowner. No one can tell me no.”

  Michelle nodded her approval. “I’m going to put you down on the paperwork then, Gage, so y’all can take her home today. There is a $50 adoption fee, to pay for her shots and her getting spayed. You okay with that?”

  “Absolutely,” Gage said, reaching for his wallet over Cady’s protestations. He waved her away, which was probably good anyway because Cady was struggling to figure out how to get into her purse to get her wallet without waking up the snoring puppy on her shoulder. “Hell, she might end up as mine anyway. And even if your landlords say yes, well then, it’ll be my gift to you. Mark our first official date together.”

  Things moved quickly after that. They took the pup down to the local pet store in Franklin – a tiny, overpriced shop where the dog woke up from her nap and got into a wrestling match with a rolled-up newspaper – and then once they had all of the necessary supplies, including training pads for her to pee on while being house-trained, they headed back to Sawyer, all thoughts
of the art festival left far behind.

  “I can’t believe we went to an art festival and brought home a dog,” Gage said with a laugh as he scratched the pup behind the ears. She yipped in pleasure and began licking his hand enthusiastically. “I think I’m about to become the cleanest human being on the planet,” he said dryly. “I haven’t had this many baths since I was a toddler and wouldn’t stay out of the mud puddle.”

  “What are we going to name her?” Cady asked, the thrill of that sentence running through her. We. What a lovely word. Could she really be co-adopting a dog with her boyfriend of one date? This should be freaking her out hardcore, but somehow, it wasn’t. “We can’t keep calling her ‘She.’ She needs a good name.”

  “With her creamy light coloring, I would’ve thought it’d be obvious.” Gage sent her a challenging look, as if daring her to figure out where he was going with this.

  He’d emphasized the word creamy, as if that was the key to what he was thinking, and Cady’s mind tore through their time that they’d known each other. Creamy? Creamy. Creeeaammmyyy. Cream—

  “Oh, Cream Puffs! You want to call her Cream Puffs?!” Cady asked, laughing, retrieving the end of her braid from the dog’s mouth and flipping it over her shoulder and out of reach. “What kind of name is that for a dog?”

  “You have a cat named Skittles,” Gage reminded her, as if she was in danger of forgetting that. “For a girl who hates sugar, you sure seem to surround yourself with sugary names.”

  She narrowed her eyes in mock disapproval at him. “His name is Skittles because he’s every color of the rainbow,” she informed him pertly. “And, I haven’t agreed to Cream Puffs yet.”

  But at the words “Cream Puffs,” the pup let out a yippy yowl of happiness, her tail going a million miles an hour, and then she was tugging on Cady’s necklace, trying to pull it off from around Cady’s neck.

  “Oh no you don’t,” Cady said, gently extracting the necklace out of the dog’s mouth and rotating the emerald pendant to the back of her neck and out of reach. She had a feeling she’d be doing a lot of that over the coming months. “And fine. Cream Puffs it is.”

  With a sigh of regret, Cady let Gage drop her off at her apartment, wishing she could be there with Cream Puffs that night as she tried to settle into her new home, knowing that the puppy would be lonely and would want to snuggle with Cady.

  No matter how much Rochelle and Mike wanted for a pet deposit, Cady resolved to pay it. Now that she’d had a taste of how much fun a puppy was, it was hard to let it go.

  She let herself into her apartment and Skittles did a big Halloween-cat stretch and then padded over to greet her. As Skittles wound his way around her ankles, hoping for attention or at least wet cat food, Cady headed for the couch where she collapsed and let Skittles sniff and inspect every inch of her. “I know, I know, I smell like dog,” she said, laughing at the disgruntled look on Skittles’ face. “Just wait until I manage to bring the puppy home. You’re going to love her. Actually, you’re probably going to hate her guts but someday you guys will be best friends, I’m sure of it.”

  As she idly scratched Skittles behind the ears, she thought about the least romantic goodbye in the history of goodbyes. Gage had been trying to keep Cream Puffs from jumping out of the truck and following Cady into the house and had only barely managed to hold onto her slippery body. Cream Puffs hadn’t been let in on this plan and kept wiggling and clawing her way towards Cady, yipping when Cady closed the passenger side door behind her. Cady’d been hoping that she and Gage would kiss goodbye at the end of the date, but there’d been no chance of that with Creamy there.

  She let out a disgruntled sigh. She’d told Gage that she wanted to move slow, of course, but there was slow and then there was slooowwwww. What if he was waiting for Cady to make the first move?

  If so, they were going to be waiting a very long time. It’d taken them a month to go out on their first official date, since that day she’d apologized to him and told him about going to see Dr. Jane. If it took another month for them to kiss again…

  “C’mon,” she said to Skittles, a little sharper than she probably should have. “Time to go to bed. You and I can snuggle together. It’ll be almost exactly the same as snuggling with Gage.”

  Officially making that statement the biggest whopper Cady had ever said.

  Chapter 19

  Gage

  September, 2019

  “Hi!” Mom said happily, kissing Gage on the cheek and pulling him into the house. “And now, this is your girlfriend, right?” she asked, turning expectantly towards Cady, already holding out her arms for a huge hug.

  Cady plastered on what Gage was sure was supposed to be a cheerful grin, but instead looked more like a painful grimace as she stepped towards his mom, dutifully accepting the incoming hug. She seemed to understand that she was going to get hugged, whether or not she wanted to be. Watching the awkward-as-hell exchange, Gage was torn before laughing and worrying to death. His mother could be a little overwhelming even to the most extroverted people, and that definitely didn’t describe Cady. But if Cady was going to get intimidated by his mother, just wait until Grandma showed—

  “There you are, Gage,” Grandma said primly, stepping up behind Mom as Cady quickly pulled back from his mom and turned towards this new threat. Seeing the austere woman in front of her, she seemed to drain of all color, quickly matching the pale beige of the door jam. If she lost any more color in her cheeks, she was liable to pass out. “And this is…?”

  “Mom, Grandma, this is Cady Walcott. Cady, this is my mother, Donelle Dyer, and my grandmother, Nana Dyer. My grandma and grandpa are the ones who owned the bakery before me.”

  Cady put her hand out to formally shake Donelle’s hand but his mother pulled Cady in for a second big bear hug instead, even more enthusiastic than the first one had been. “I’m so glad to meet you! I’d just about given up on Gage bringing anyone home to meet the family.”

  “Gage has a lot of life left ahead of him,” Nana said stiffly. “Plenty of time to bring girls home.” She put her hand out to shake Cady’s, the differences between her and her daughter-in-law stark and raw.

  Scrambling for something – anything – to say, Gage was saved by his younger sister. “I’m so glad you came!” Emma said, crowding up behind their grandmother. “I told my big lunk of a brother that you were too good for him and that he ought to count his lucky stars that you keep saying yes to dates but still, I’m glad you continue to take pity on him, even if you’re just doing it because of me.”

  “Are you trying to say that Cady is dating me so she can spend more time around you?” Gage asked incredulously.

  “If the shoe fits,” Emma said in an overly sweet voice. “C’mon, Sugar’s in here,” she told Cady as she began dragging Cady out of the overly crowded entryway. “I told her to bring Hamlet to keep Cream Puffs company.”

  “Hamlet?” he heard Cady ask before the door to the study closed behind them.

  “Thanks for letting me drop Cream Puffs off beforehand, Mom,” Gage said, turning back to his mother, avoiding the reproachful gaze of his grandmother. Creamsy had ended up settling into his house quickly and they’d decided that it would be best for all if she just stayed with Gage full-time. “Trying to juggle the puppy and Cady in my truck…I need to get a dog carrier. Somehow, we didn’t think of that while we were picking up supplies in Franklin after the arts festival back in June.”

  “No problem, dear,” Mom said. He could tell she wanted to nag him about cutting his hair – her fingers had even reached out to touch it before dropping down to her side – but in a spate of self control he didn’t know she possessed, she managed to keep her thoughts about his hair to herself. After looking at her husband – Gage’s dad – for twenty years in the Marine Corps, she tended to think that anything longer than a buzz cut was simply out of control. “Hey, you want to go tell Chris that it’s time to eat? Dinner’s on the table. I think he’s down in the basem
ent.”

  Of course he was down in the basement, and probably playing video games to boot. Despite having graduated from high school back in May, he was still doing almost nothing of value with his life.

  Hell, at Chris’ age, Gage had been in charge of dinner three times a week, helping out as his mother worked late night shifts down at Kmart to make ends meet on military pay – not always an easy thing – and taking care of his younger siblings to boot.

  He doubted if Chris even knew how to make a grilled cheese sandwich.

  Biting back his thoughts on his parents’ parenting choices when it came to the baby of the family, Gage moved past his mother and grandmother and thundered down the stairs to find Chris lazing on the couch, controller in hand, blazing his way through Call of Duty. “Ah, shit,” Gage said, feigning worry. “You’re about to have your ass kicked when you go around this corner.”

  “What do you mean?” Chris mumbled, not even looking up from the TV to greet his older brother. “There’s no one around this corner—”

  Gage pushed the power button on the game console, plunging the giant TV into blackness.

  “Yup, dead,” Gage said in a very cheerful voice, over the curses his brother was hurling at his head. “Oh, dinner’s ready, by the way. And my girlfriend, Cady, is here. Try not to be a troll.”

  “You shithead!” Chris was yelling. “I can’t believe—”

  “Better hurry up,” Gage said mildly, talking over his teenage brother without a smidgen of guilt. “Everyone’s waiting.” He took the stairs two at a time, listening to the insults grow quieter as he left his brother behind. He used to be like a second dad to Chris – with a 12-year gap between them, he’d helped bottle feed and change diapers and keep Chris away from the electrical outlets for years. Chris had been the gap-toothed, adorable baby of the family who everyone loved, and then…