The Forget-Me-Not Bakery

by Caroline Flynn

  ‘Actually, you are.’ Allison reached across the table and cupped Paige’s hands in hers. Paige could feel the warmth still permeating from her fingertips from the coffee mug she’d held between her fingers. ‘This is classic Paige Henley. You’re just doing what you’ve always done – convincing yourself that you can’t do this. That you and love can’t get along. And that’s the one thing I’ve never quite figured out about you, Paige. You’re always so confident and ambitious and overzealous when it comes to work and succeeding, yet you shy away from anything that might result in you being happy outside of your career.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ Paige argued. Even as she said it, she could hear the weakness in her words. She wasn’t one of those women who had some awful past relationship that marred her confidence when it came to romance. Allison was right, she’d been so driven to succeed since her early years in high school, she’d spent her entire adult life putting her career before everything else. Love included.

  ‘Paige!’ Allison gave a hollow laugh. ‘It’s so true that you turned down Dr Cohen without realizing it! That’s how freaking true it is! You’re on romantic autopilot.’

  Paige opened her mouth to plead her side of the story, found she had no redeeming argument, and slumped forward onto the table, her head in her hands, narrowly missing her half-full coffee cup. ‘What have I done, Allison?’

  ‘Nothing you can’t fix,’ she replied softly. ‘Just go talk to him.’

  ‘And say what?’ Paige exclaimed, sitting up straighter. ‘That I panicked? That I actually do like him, but I am too emotionally inept to know how to handle it?’

  Allison shrugged, looking amused. ‘There you go. Now we’re getting somewhere. You’ve got the truth figured out, and you’re finally past the denial stage, so there’s nowhere to go but up from here.’

  Paige ran her hands through her hair, letting out a long breath. She knew her cousin was trying to be funny, but there was a sincerity in those words as well. ‘Thanks, Allison. How am I ever going to repay you for these impromptu therapy sessions?’

  ‘Oh, please,’ she replied, pulling her long auburn hair up into a ponytail just as the door chime announced the arrival of another customer. ‘I’m going to want every juicy, romantic detail, my friend. That’ll be payment enough.’

  Saturday had always been Paige’s favorite day of the week. Not only because the bakery opened a bit later in the morning, but because there was a calm that the weekend evoked, making her waking hours seem somehow less full. She did all the same things, but the day itself held more promise of downtime with Sunday just around the corner. That’s what Saturdays were to Paige, a day of promise.

  This particular Saturday was no different. Sunlight streamed in the windows, and if she looked out the storefront windows at just the right angle she could see slivers of the water glistening as the breeze pushed it in easy ripples and the sun reflected off it. Customers meandered in slowly, taking their time to peruse Paige’s displays. During the week, there was less of that simple perusal; people had places to go and things to do. Transactions were quicker. It was just another reason Saturdays appealed to her so much – she had a bit more time to chat and mingle, and her customers had more time to appreciate her efforts. Heck, she had more time to appreciate her efforts.

  She also had more time to think, which wasn’t necessarily a good thing. The more she contemplated her kneejerk reaction to Cohen’s suggestion, quickly followed by her cousin’s swift explanation, the more Paige realized how right Allison was. She didn’t want to outright admit that, but she was beginning to understand what she was talking about.

  Does the name Alex ring any bells? Allison was never going to let her forget that her boss had attempted numerous times to take her out on dates. She could practically hear her cousin’s voice screeching at her through the computer screen on one of their many Skype calls, demanding to know why she wouldn’t at least give the guy a chance, why she wouldn’t walk out that office door with him and have dinner, just to see where the conversation led. Why she wouldn’t give herself a chance to find love with a handsome, successful man like Alex Livingston.

  It should have been easy. She and Alex were similar in many ways – holding marketing degrees, thriving in the hustle and bustle of New York, married to their work and unafraid to burn the midnight oil to accomplish their goals. They were so much alike, yet just different enough to complement each other. Whereas Alex wasn’t afraid to let his opinions be known or to verbalize his determination, Paige had always preferred her actions to do the talking for her. She spoke up when she needed to, but one look at her completed projects or work schedule, and it was pretty clear what was important to her and where she stood when it came to her own goals. She and Alex were great together, and there was no denying he was attractive. Somehow, though, it had never seemed like the right time to try to take things further.

  Allison’s vehemence was enough to make Paige contemplate it, but Paige always held back. In her mind, she didn’t think she should have to make the choice to love someone. Perhaps she had watched one too many chick flicks during her college days, but Paige wanted to believe real love happened without thought. Thought suggested it was governed by the mind – Paige didn’t buy that. True love was felt from the heart, not thought up or decided upon.

  Her own mother, happily married to Paige’s father for more than thirty-five years, had once told her, ‘I knew your dad was the one the day I met him. Ask me to think about it, and I’ll tell you he’s far from perfect. But ask me to tell you how I feel about him, and that man is as perfect for me as they come. When it comes to love, it’s the heart that counts, Paige, not the mind.’

  Because of that, Paige politely turned down Alex, again and again. She just couldn’t let her mind – or Allison’s, for that matter – persuade her to ignore her mother’s powerful words.

  Now, if she could just remind her heart of that fact and get it back on track, maybe she could refrain from automatically turning men down before she’d realized she did it.

  Not men. Cohen. Just Cohen. Paige didn’t think she’d ever reflexively turned down someone before, but if Allison’s theories were any indication, she might have. One thing Paige did know for sure was that it had never plagued her the way her dismissal of Cohen’s suggestion did.

  She figured that had to count for something.

  As she smiled at an elderly couple who milled about at the cupcake display case, Paige vowed she was going to rectify this. She was going to apologize to Cohen Beckett, and she was going to be honest with him. Dating had never been her thing, and she frankly didn’t have a godforsaken clue how to go about it.

  But his easy mannerisms and kind face made her want to try.

  Paige raised her head and nodded to herself. There, she had a solid plan: Brutal honesty at the expense of her own humility. She wasn’t ashamed of her lack of knowledge when it came to romance and dates. If she’d learned anything from her glimpse of time with Cohen, she thought he would understand. He would forgive her hasty dismissal and give her a second chance to—

  For a moment, she thought he was merely a mirage, an image her brain had conjured up because of his constant presence in her jumbled thoughts. Blinking rapidly and still finding him there in her line of vision, she realized that wasn’t the case.

  Outside the bakery, Cohen had stopped in front of one of the huge bay windows that jutted out onto the sidewalk. He glanced back toward the veterinary clinic, his hand raised to shield his eyes from the unyielding sun. A moment later, Bryce appeared, bouncing on his heels as he caught up with his father. Paige watched as the man’s hand came to land on his son’s shoulder affectionately, and they both laughed at something. Presumably something Bryce had said, if Paige had to wager a bet.

  Paige didn’t think he was going to look her way, seeing them both take the first steps past her bake shop. In response, she was the one to take a step forward, wanting nothing more than to close the gap between them, both phys
ically and situationally. This was her second chance. She would explain and they could move on from her lapse in judgment.

  Cohen’s head turned, facing into the bakery window. Through the glass, his eyes scanned the interior, causing Paige to halt mid-step, her heart leaping into her throat. Cohen stopped, too, on the other side of the window, his eyes squinting in the afternoon brightness.

  Could he see her, standing there? Could Cohen and her customers hear the incessant beating of her heart as she stood, still, silently pleading for him to come through the door and give her a chance to say what she needed to say?

  If he saw her silhouette through the glass pane, Paige wasn’t about to find out. She held her breath, watching as Cohen slowly shook his head and mumbled something to Bryce, a resigned sadness etching his features as he forced a smile and tugged his son onward, proceeding down the sidewalk.

  As she swallowed, Paige couldn’t look away as Cohen disappeared past the window. So many questions whirled in her head, so many scenarios. Things she should have said, things she should have done. There had to be something she could do to heal whatever wound her accidental rejection had caused him. The fact that she wanted so irrevocably to mend whatever this was between them spoke volumes to Paige. She couldn’t ignore it. She wouldn’t. Because for once it wasn’t her mind calling the shots; it was her heart.

  That counted for something, too.

  Chapter 10

  Cohen

  Sunday, the only day of the week the veterinary clinic was closed to the public. Cohen was still on call – that wouldn’t change unless he managed to hire a second veterinarian – but the folks of Port Landon were generally good about only calling him in cases that were real, true emergencies. Therefore, it was rare he got called into the office on a Sunday.

  Sunday mornings were the only mornings where he left Bryce to his own devices. Every other morning during the week, his son was forced to get up for school and come with Cohen through the backyard to the clinic where Bryce’s friend Hunter and his mom would pick him up and drive him to the school in North Springs, about ten miles away. Saturday mornings were spent alongside Cohen at the clinic, either doing his homework in the back office or hanging out with Jazz until the clinic closed at noon. Cohen felt like the boy was always being tugged to one place or another, never given the time to do what he wanted without some sort of schedule to adhere to. So, Sunday mornings were Bryce’s time to fill however he sought fit. Sometimes, he slept in until almost eleven. Others, Cohen would find him huddled under the covers playing one of his handheld video games until hunger forced him out into the kitchen in search of food. At other times, Bryce would disappear into the backyard for hours, backpack slung loosely on his back, and he would hide out in the treehouse Cohen had built for him four years ago. It’d taken Cohen months to construct that thing around his clinic schedule, but it was worth it – his son utilized that treehouse more than he ever dreamed he would.

  Today was one of Bryce’s video game days. Even from the kitchen table where Cohen had the Port Landon Ledger opened, the town’s own newspaper, and his third cup of coffee sitting on a coaster, he could hear the digital zapping sounds and bomb blasts of the game. Now and then, Bryce would let out a muffled ‘Yes!’ or ‘Take that!’, making his father raise his eyebrows and chuckle to himself. It was well past one o’clock in the afternoon, but Cohen wasn’t going to rouse Bryce from his bedroom if he didn’t have to. Besides, he had two weeks’ worth of newspapers to skim through and a half pot of coffee to be drank before he had to think about doing any real adulting today. It would help to keep his mind from replaying his conversation with Paige at the Hansel and Gretel House over and over in his head like he’d been doing since Friday night. He had wondered constantly since then how he’d managed to get up the nerve to ask her on a date. Where the hell had that desire come from, and how had the thought bypassed his brain completely, tumbling off his tongue like an instinctive reaction? Better yet, why did those instincts tell him it was a good idea to hold her hand? He’d seen the fire in her eyes, so he didn’t understand how it had all gone so damn wrong, so quickly.

  Those same instincts were what made him second-guess whether or not to step foot in her bakery yesterday when he and Bryce took a twenty-minute break and walked to the convenience store for milk and eggs. Okay, and a small tub of chocolate ice cream. Anything to get a few minutes’ reprieve from the appointments that seemed to be piling up on his short weekend schedule. The clinic was only opened till noon on Saturdays, but noon had come and gone hours ago and the phone just kept ringing.

  His moment of reprieve had quickly turned into the inner turmoil of deciding whether or not to say hello to Paige or not. Something so simple, so innocent. In the end, Cohen couldn’t let his instincts steer him wrong again. He let his logical mind win the war, and he trudged on without so much as a word to her, despite Bryce’s protests. And his own.

  He needed to give her space and time. It was only fair. Cohen had held out a branch for her to wrap her fingers around, and he needed to let her grab a hold of it when she was ready. At least, that’s what he’d told himself as he walked away from the bakery, the Open sign glaring at him in the window just as stoically as if Paige herself were staring in his direction, watching, waiting.

  It took every ounce of patience he had to walk away, letting her words echo in his ears.

  I can’t. Why not? Was it him? Or was it a matter of timing?

  These were the questions that were going to take up his entire day, as they had done for the past two. Whether he liked it or not. He vowed not to let them ruin his only day off. Bryce wasn’t the only one who was a big fan of Sunday mornings. Especially Sunday mornings that dragged lazily into the afternoon.

  Which was why, when a soft knock sounded at the front door of his house, and Cohen was still clad in only his worn jeans and a plain black T-shirt, still barefoot and sporting messy bedhead, he groaned. His relaxation was about to be interrupted by an urgent veterinary emergency.

  ‘Paige.’ Cohen couldn’t have been more shocked if the Queen of England herself were standing on his doorstep. ‘I wasn’t expect—’

  ‘I didn’t mean it.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ Cohen held the edge of the door, his brows furrowed. He was still reeling over the fact she was there, on his doorstep. He couldn’t keep up with the conversation. He stood there, still, unsure what to do, or what was happening. ‘Didn’t mean what?’

  ‘I didn’t mean what I said to you at the Hansel and Gretel House,’ she repeated quickly. ‘I wasn’t thinking. Or, rather, I was thinking too much.’

  The weight that lifted from Cohen’s shoulders at the sound of her confession was massive. For the past two days, he had replayed their conversation, dissecting everything he’d said to her, trying to decipher where he went wrong. How he could have been so mistaken. He just couldn’t figure out how he had managed to misread the signals so badly.

  ‘Will you come in?’ he offered, opening the door wider. ‘We can talk about this over coffee.’

  She let out a relieved sigh, her shoulders sagging with the effort. It made him wonder if she thought he might have slammed the door in her face instead of hearing her out. ‘That sounds wonderful. I’ll just be one sec.’ She turned and promptly hopped back down the front stairs.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  She whirled around to face him. ‘I brought cake. It’s in the car.’

  Of course she did, he thought, amused. The woman sure knows how to apologize.

  Cohen’s kitchen was modern in style, with stainless-steel appliances and a logical, industrial feel to it. A stark contrast to the comfortable style of jeans, T-shirts, and plaid tops he usually wore when he wasn’t working. The cupboards were wooden and white, but the rest of the room boasted metal-legged furniture and sleek gray countertops that resembled concrete. He wasn’t blind to the fact that the room – as well as the rest of the house, for that matter – begged for a woman’s trendy touch.r />
  But the house was tidy and well-kept, and there was a swell of pride that washed through him as he watched Paige glance around, taking in her surroundings.

  ‘Quite the place you’ve got here,’ she remarked, taking a seat in the chair he gestured her toward. ‘It’s really nice.’

  ‘Thank you. It’s weathered a few storms with us.’ Okay, some of those storms were more like category-five hurricanes, but it was their home and it had been their sanctuary through those tumultuous times. Cohen pulled a pile of three plates from the cupboard above the dishwasher, followed by a few forks and a knife from a drawer nearby, then went to work cutting into the two-layer Dutch chocolate cake Paige had brought with her. In a bid to keep the conversation light, he tilted his head toward the hallway. ‘Have you ever seen that commercial for cat treats when the cat runs through the wall at the mere sound of the treat bag being shaken?’

  ‘Of course. Why?’

  ‘Watch this.’ Cohen served a slice of the cake onto a plate. ‘Bryce! Cake!’

  A strangled sound that sounded an awful lot like ‘Oh, yikes!’ came from down the hallway, and his son emerged from the depths of his room like his pajama cuffs were on fire.

  ‘Paige, I didn’t know you were here.’ He turned to his dad. ‘Oh, wow, that cake looks insane!’

  Her hand came up to cover her tightly pressed lips, but Paige managed to keep her eruption of laughter at bay. ‘Thank you, Bryce. You’re more than welcome to it, as long as your dad says it’s okay.’

  ‘You yelled,’ the boy reasoned. ‘Therefore, you must be willing to fork over a slice or six, right, Dad?’

  Cohen shook his head. Where on Earth had his son inherited such negotiation tactics? He was pretty sure this was where his own mother would remind Cohen of just the kind of ten-year-old he had once been. ‘One slice, but it comes with two conditions.’