“Hi, Dan,” she said as he approached, and leaned out the window.
“Hi,” he said back. She noticed that his gaze flicked down to her tank top but went straight back to her eyes. She appreciated the effort. And she appreciated the attention from Dan a little differently than she did from Joe. A down-low-in-her-belly appreciation.
“I’ve seen you just about every day and you never come over to say hi,” she said.
“OK. Uh, hi.”
“Been a while.” She brushed an errant curl behind her ear. His eyes followed her fingers.
“Been busy. You?”
“So far, so good. Is your office around here?”
He pointed to an office across the street. She knew that, of course. It said FIELDS ACCOUNTING LLC across the door. Mrs. Harris came out of there every morning, and every morning she talked about her boss, Dan, and how he would never take a break for a cookie or a slice of cake but that he was just as nice as could be. Worked too hard, so he sure could use a break. She thought Mrs. Harris was trying to either help Mona make a sale or marry them off. Probably both.
“Ah, Mrs. Harris’s building,” she said, letting this charade that they didn’t really know each other continue.
“She works with me.”
Mona knew that Mrs. Harris was his secretary, and that she preferred to use that old-fashioned job title instead of the more twenty-first-century administrative assistant. But Mona appreciated that Dan said Mrs. Harris worked “with” him, and not “for” him, even if that was technically true. She took it as a touching show of respect.
“Mrs. Harris is one of my best customers,” Mona said, as if Mrs. Harris had not been planting the seed for this conversation for the past several years.
“I know.” He sighed.
“You want to try something?” she asked. “On the house.” His gaze flicked down her body again, then quickly back up to her eyes. Ha, she thought. Do that again, her belly said.
“No, thanks, I’m not much of a sweets person,” he said as his eyes lingered over the fruit tarts.
She shrugged. “A little sugar could do you some good.”
“Why are you only out here once a month?”
It was a question she got a lot from customers, and she was pretty good at deflecting it. But most people just asked out of polite curiosity or because they wanted her to feed their sugar cravings more often. Ever since she’d started Apple of My Pie—even when it was just an idea and a hatchback—Dan had been up her butt about making it more permanent. He just wouldn’t let it go, and here he was again. He didn’t even know if her goodies were good enough for a full-time business!
It made her hackles rise. It made her defensive.
Because she had a feeling he wouldn’t take polite deflection for an answer, that he wouldn’t stop until he got the truth.
He couldn’t handle the truth.
The truth was, she was cursed.
It had to do with the moon. Every full moon, she baked. No, that was an understatement. Her baking skills erupted into an almost maniacal inspiration around the full moon such that she could not ignore them, compelling her to bake and bake and bake. She couldn’t do anything but bake—she couldn’t read, she couldn’t check her e-mail, she could barely sleep. She definitely couldn’t hold down a regular nine-to-five job—not unless she would be allowed to take a few days off a month. To bake. When the moon told her to.
She was grateful, usually. Her curse gave her a talent that enabled her to do something she loved to make an OK living. But in moments of self-pity—usually about halfway between full moons—she began to feel that maybe her full-moon-inspired baking bursts were holding her back. She would never be able to open a real shop, or make more than her modest living. She didn’t want riches—although she wouldn’t turn down some sparkly jewelry—but it would be nice to know that she could pay both her mortgage and the electric on time without scraping under the couch cushions for lost change.
Sometimes, she just wanted to be normal. Khaki normal.
It didn’t matter. Her grandmother had the curse, and her mother before that, and they passed it on to Mona’s father, who, with typical Dad efficiency, tried freezing his pies and tarts to be able to enjoy them throughout the month. But full-moon baked goods don’t freeze well. They don’t keep at all. She learned that you just have to get them while you can, and enjoy them while you got ’em.
It took her father a long time to accept that, but it was a lesson he made sure Mona learned. And she had. So, yes, there were times when she wanted to be normal. But her curse had forced her to create a life for herself that was unique and satisfying, one that left her exhausted during the full moon but with plenty of free time to foster friendships, volunteer around the community, and use her nonbaking talents to make people happy. It wasn’t perfect, but no life was.
And this guy, she thought as she stared down Dan the Accountant, King of the Khakis, this guy comes up here and accuses me of laziness. That’s what he was doing. He wasn’t the first one. Her curse wasn’t commonly known—outside of her family, only her best friend Trish knew, and she was sworn to secrecy. A lot of people found it strange that her work schedule was so . . . flexible. (When in reality, it was more rigid than they knew—she was at the mercy of the moon, after all.) But something about this guy, with his obsessive routine and his smart-looking briefcase, really pissed her off. Mrs. Harris told her he hadn’t ever eaten anything from Apple of My Pie, at least not that she’d seen. So what did he even care!
And the fact that his blue eyes nearly crackled with fire when he confronted her, that pissed her off, too. Those were some really nice eyes. The nerve of those eyes.
“Wouldn’t you make more money if you didn’t have such a capricious business model?”
Mona stood up straight. She was short enough that she never towered over anyone, but she towered over him now, her inside the food truck, him on the sidewalk down below.
“What’s it to you how much money I make?”
He flushed. Good, she thought.
“Maybe I don’t need to make money,” she said, leaning back down. “Maybe I’m a baking empire heiress, just slumming in Ohio.” Uh-oh, she thought. Her imagination tended to go wild when she was mad. And her mouth tended not to be able to stop it. “Maybe my business is backed by a handsome desert sheikh who tasted a slice of my apple pie and decided he had to have me, all to himself, but once a month he sets me free into the world as long as I promise to return to him in his desert lair.”
His eyebrows went up. “Desert lair?”
“Yeah, a desert lair.”
“In Ohio?”
Stupid logic. She wanted to disarm him, badly. “You think I couldn’t get a desert sheikh?”
Down his eyes went, again. She wanted to tease him, ask him if he had a muscle spasm or something. But she sort of liked it. Dan the Accountant did not seem like the kind of guy who was out of control very often. The power to unnerve him was intoxicating.
Not that it meant anything. Despite Mrs. Harris’s assertions to the contrary, Khaki Dan was an egotistical control freak. He wasn’t even a customer, and here he was, trying to tell her how to run her business. And now there was a line forming behind him.
“Listen, do you want something or not?”
This time his eyes didn’t wander. They just honed right in on hers, and she felt a jolt. She wasn’t sure of what—recognition? Lust, at least. Definitely lust.
Oh, he wanted something.
She would be happy to give it to him.
Two
Dan sat at his desk, willing the figures on his monitor to stop swimming. He had taken some data entry from a pile on Mrs. Harris’s desk, thinking he could lose himself in the almost-mindless task. It didn’t work. He needed only half his brain to make sure he was using the right column of the spreadsheet, and the other half of his brain . . . well, the other half wasn’t focused on his work at all. He was aching and uncomfortable, and three times already Mrs.
Harris had asked him if he felt all right.
No, he did not feel all right. His office was filled with the smells of Apple of My Frigging Pie. Mrs. Harris had picked up a pie for dessert—caramel apple pecan pie with Kentucky bourbon—and the scent of it was so strong, he could practically taste it. And he had a raging hard-on. Not from the pie, he was pretty sure.
No, definitely from the woman who’d made it.
So what if she was hot? So what if she was funny and smart and quick?
He was sure he had impressed her by acting like an uptight asshole.
He cringed when he remembered the look on her face when he’d asked her why she didn’t work more. He might as well have said, Why are you so lazy? He didn’t mean it like that, though. He meant it like, Your food is so popular and you seem so happy feeding people, why wouldn’t you try to do that all the time?
There had to be a reason. Maybe she wasn’t really the baker. Maybe she had a hired gun, like a hidden Grandma or something. Maybe she kept wood sprites locked in her basement, and they only came out during the full moon to bake up a frenzy. Maybe she bought her baked goods from a grocery store, but a really nice one that was really far away and she could only get there once a month.
She was probably a fraud.
She didn’t seem like a fraud.
She seemed genuine, and sweet. And soft. And she smelled really, really good.
Had his desk chair always been so uncomfortable?
“You sure you feel OK, Dan?”
Mrs. Harris paused on the threshold of his office—her version of a knock—and came toward his desk. “You look, I don’t know, nauseous. Did you eat something weird for lunch?”
“No, I—“
“Of course not. You always eat the same thing. Maybe the mayo at the diner is bad. Should I call over and have Marylou smell it?”
“No, don’t ask her to smell the mayo!”
Man, he really was boring if half the town knew what he ate for lunch every day.
He liked turkey sandwiches, dammit.
But Mrs. Harris was already at her desk and on the phone. He started to get up and follow her, but, well, hard-on. He didn’t need to have a conversation with her about that. Because she would definitely make him talk about it.
That actually helped the situation a little.
“Marylou said you hardly touched your sandwich.” Mrs. Harris charged into his office with a white paper bag in her hand. “That’s not like you, Dan.” “Maybe I’m getting tired of turkey.”
“Well, don’t tell Marylou that. She’ll be heartbroken. Although her meatloaf is delicious. You might switch to that?”
This conversation was really depressing Dan. His middle-aged secretary was trying to set him up with a new regular lunch menu. When had his life become so sad? Was this really how he liked to live?
Since when had he had so many existential crises in one day?
He was sure it was Mona’s fault. He never had existential crises before he talked to her.
“You must be hungry, that’s it. Eat something, and then you’ll be able to concentrate.” Mrs. Harris dropped the bag on his desk. “I know, I know, you’re not much of a sweets person, but you can run an extra mile tomorrow morning. Besides, a little sugar might do you some good.”
Dan eyed the white paper bag warily. There was no grease dripping out of the bottom making a stain on his desk. He couldn’t even smell what was inside, not with the top turned down and scrunched closed. He could leave it there. He could let it sit there, on the corner of his desk, and get on with the rest of his day. He could ignore it.
He couldn’t ignore Mrs. Harris, though. “Thanks.” There. Now he could get back to work.
She rolled her eyes. “For a grown man, you can be such a child,” she said, then turned on her sensible heel and went back to her desk.
What was that supposed to mean? He almost got up to ask, but getting up would mean he would have to walk past the white bag haunting him from the corner of his desk, and there was no way he was going to give Mrs. Harris or Mona the satisfaction of knowing that his indifference was all a lie.
So, OK, maybe that was a little childish.
Whatever.
He had work to do.
Data entry.
Here we go, he thought. Enter the data.
He got about three cells in before the bag called out to him.
This was stupid. He wasn’t even hungry! He had eaten most of a sensible lunch! Well, he didn’t eat much of the sandwich, Mrs. Harris was right. It did taste weird to him. No, it tasted fine, but it didn’t feel right. It wasn’t what he wanted. He had never wanted anything for lunch in his life—it was just lunchtime, and he ate. He didn’t know what he had wanted for lunch, but a turkey sandwich on wheat, light on the mayo, was not it.
Maybe what was in the bag would be.
What’s the worst that can happen, he thought. He could really like it, and prove everyone in town right and become a regular customer of hers. Or he could hate it. He could hate it, and then he would be the only weirdo in town who didn’t go to Apple of My Pie. Which he already was, but if he hated it, he would have a good reason. Or it could be poisoned. Mona could have known that he had bad feelings about her professionalism and she could have made a special poisoned batch of whatever-it-was and sold the piece to Mrs. Harris knowing Dan would not eat his whole lunch and Mrs. Harris would be her usual generous self and offer it to him, and then Dan would eat it and his insides would melt and he would die, and Mona would sit outside in her pink truck and laugh and laugh because her revenge was finally complete.
Where the hell was that coming from? He was starting to sound like her. The possibility that she had that amount of nefarious foresight was just as likely as the nefarious desert sheikh with a sweet tooth.
He didn’t like the idea of a desert sheikh. Not a nefarious one, anyway. And not one who would hurt Mona.
Or do other things to her.
“Stop it!” He thought he said it to himself, but he heard Mrs. Harris get up, and a second later her head was poking in his office. He looked up, imagining how ridiculous he must look to her, standing over his desk, pointing at the most innocuous white paper bag in the world like it was a naughty puppy.
She rolled her eyes again. “Just eat the damn thing, would you? I’ve got work to do.”
“Fine,” he said. He picked up the bag, unrolled the top. Oh, man, it smelled good. Apples and cinnamon, and something else he couldn’t identify. He inhaled deeply.
Mrs. Harris chuckled. “I’ll leave you two alone,” and he barely registered that she shut his office door.
Slowly, carefully, he lifted the contents out of the bag. It was surprisingly heavy, but he could feel that it was moist through the thin wax paper it was wrapped in. Oh, sweet Jesus, apple cake. He loved apple cake. His grandmother used to make apple cake.
But he knew right away this wasn’t like Grandma’s apple cake. This was a step beyond. The thin layers of apple on top were laid out in neat, radiating rows, and he imagined how perfect they would have looked before Mona cut into the cake. He peeled the paper down and admired the thick chunks of apple mixed throughout.
It was the best-looking apple cake he’d ever seen in his life. He wanted to take a picture and frame it. Or Instagram it. Or . . . no. He just wanted to eat it.
He took a bite and groaned. This was . . . heaven. The cake was spongy and sweet, but not too sweet, and it didn’t overwhelm the slight crunch of the apples. These were definitely Delicious’s famous apples; even this early in the season, he could tell. And the cinnamon was balanced with something a little tangy—ginger? What was it? It was subtle, and it was blowing his damn mind.
He meant to savor every bite. This kind of thing was too good to rush. But before his brain could finish telling him to slow down and enjoy, he was already licking his fingers clean.
That was some damn good cake.
He sat down on his office chair, hard. He was exhausted. He
wanted more. He swiveled around to face the window and parted the blinds. She was still out there.
He heard Mrs. Harris chuckle at his retreating back, but he didn’t care. He would have to thank her later. For now, he needed another taste.
“Ow, dammit!”
Mona dropped the hot pan on the counter, sending cookies flying. Normally she didn’t have a problem remembering that when metal comes out of the oven, one needs an oven mitt to touch it. But today she was all out of sorts. Not all day, but this afternoon. She would have just driven home and said forget about it, but the customers were still trickling in and she still had plenty to sell, even with the lost sheet of cookies.
They were definitely lost. She took great pains to keep her mobile bakery clean, but even she wouldn’t eat cookies off this floor. And she would eat anything.
It was all stupid Khaki Dan’s fault. Ever since he gave her that tongue lashing, she was off her game. She blew a piece of hair out of her face. Tongue lashing probably wasn’t fair. More of a mild scold that she totally overreacted to. Did she really tell him her weird desert sheikh fantasy?
Just thinking about him got her blood boiling. She thought she had been doing a great job flirting with him—and not just to get him to buy a cookie. She really thought he was cute. No, she thought he was freaking hot, and she thought he might feel the same way about her, and she thought she was pouring on the charm to let him know she was open to whatever kind of flirting he might want to throw at her. And instead, boom. He called her a lazy bum.
She figured it was probably more her pride that was hurt than her feelings, although her feelings stung a little bit, too. She didn’t often put herself out there, preferring to keep it strictly professional with her customers. She didn’t want to get into a situation where she had to avoid certain areas of town or certain times of the day if things didn’t work out. Because of her curse, she had to be very flexible with where and when she could sell, and she couldn’t afford a bad romance souring her business.
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