by Ivy Sinclair
“It’s time for you to grow up and be a big girl.” Tiffany patted the top of Belle’s head.
“I think it’s time that you readdress that baby question with Tom so you’ll stop talking to me like I’m your kid.” Belle couldn’t help being snappish. She was way outside her comfort zone. She took another sip of wine as she glanced at the clock on the microwave. She wanted to will it to move ahead several hours so that this whole bad idea would be over.
Tiffany slid another bottle of wine from the rack by the refrigerator and set it next to Belle. “You know where everything is. Use the liquid fortitude if that’s what it takes to get this done. Be your normal charming self. Everything is going to be fine. This is the coolest thing to happen to you in months.”
“Or years,” Belle grumbled. There was a tiny part of her that was looking forward to meeting Brian Draper. He seemed pleasant enough on the phone, albeit a little direct. It would be the first time she was alone with a man since a horrible first date with a guy from work six months ago.
“You ready to go?” Tom appeared in the doorway. He grinned at Belle. “Ready for your primetime debut?”
“It’s a newspaper article, not a television show.” Belle rolled her eyes. Tom was a decent guy, and she sometimes thought that Tiffany got the last one. “He said that he found fifteen couples who said they got engaged because of my cupcake. That is crazy!”
“Tiffany’s been saying for years that Cupid’s Cupcake is a gold mine. They are so good. I wish you made them more often.” Tom patted his stomach with a fond look on his face.
“I have to maintain the mystique.” Belle took another sip of wine. She felt it settle into her stomach, and then a calming sensation radiated out from her core. That was good. She gave serious consideration to attempting to drown the butterflies with more wine. She pushed the glass away. She couldn’t risk sounding like an idiot.
Tiffany grabbed her purse and keys off the counter. Belle could see that her friend was running through her mental list. “Call us if you need anything.”
“You could stay right here so I wouldn’t have to call.”
Tiffany chose to ignore Belle’s not so subtle hint. Then she hooked her arm around her husband’s and waved to Belle. “Have fun.”
Belle heard the front door open and close and then groaned. Her head slipped into her hands, and she started to rock in her chair. She didn’t move until the doorbell rang ten minutes later. Belle glanced at the clock. He was early. Of course.
Her feet dragged as she made her way down the hallway to the door. Taking a deep breath, she swung it open. Brian Draper, in the flesh, stood in front of her. He was on the phone. Belle wondered why he hadn’t waited to ring the doorbell until he was done with his call. She could have used a few more minutes to wallow in her self-pity.
“Right. Right. Got it. Thanks, Bill. Okay, I have to go.” Brian’s head bobbed up and down, but he had the decency to shrug his shoulders apologetically in Belle’s direction. “Yep. Yes. No problem. Bye, Bill.” He hit the end button. “I’m really sorry about that. My editor calls at the most inconvenient times. If I hadn’t answered that call, he would have kept calling. I appreciate that you were able to schedule this interview with me on such short notice, so I wanted to minimize any potential disruptions.”
The information was coming fast and furious. “No problem. C’mon in,” she said, holding the door open.
He crossed the threshold and looked around the vaulted foyer. “Nice house your friends have here.”
“Yea, they moved built it about a year ago. It was Tiffany’s dream house.” Belle looked around her and up at the chandelier above their heads. In the four years since graduating, Tiffany had managed to work her way up at the ad agency where she worked. Both she and Tom were successful up-and-comers and they had the lifestyle to prove it. Belle tried not to compare herself to her friends, but it was difficult at times. Shaking her head, Belle tried to redirect her thoughts to the man in front of her.
She watched him clean his shoes on the carpet. His profile picture hadn’t done him justice. In person, he towered over Belle’s own five foot two inches. He was wearing a brown leather jacket, and she could see a blue button down shirt peeking out from underneath it. He was trim and filled out his jeans in a mouth watering way. She couldn’t help but glance at his left hand out of habit. It was empty. She felt a small burst of glee. Maybe the interview wasn’t such a bad idea after all.
“Let me take your coat,” she said.
Belle hung his jacket on the tree stand next to the door and found herself fidgeting again. She wasn’t quite sure how to start or what was supposed to happen next.
“I’m excited to hear all about your cupcakes,” he said, smiling at her.
She wasn’t sure if he was being serious, or just humoring her. The moment of truth had arrived.
“Follow me,” she said. She felt so lame. Belle led Brian back to the kitchen. Tiffany had insisted on pulling out every utensil and pan Belle would need and setting it neatly on the island. “Pull up a chair. Can I get you a glass of wine?”
“I shouldn’t, but I will,” Brian said. He seemed relaxed as he perched on the middle stool. She figured that he did this type of thing all the time. She had spent a bit of time researching Brian Draper. His resume was impressive.
A small tape recorder appeared on the countertop next to him. He leaned forward. “You don’t mind if I record this, do you?”
She did actually, but she didn’t know how to tell him that with appearing rude. It was an interview after all, but she hated how her voice sounded on tape. She was glad that it was only a written article. With the added pressure of being recorded, she was doubly concerned that she was going to say something that would serve to humiliate her for years to come.
“Okay.” Belle’s smile stretched across her face so wide it hurt. She picked up the open bottle and poured another glass. “So do you have any questions for me before we get started?”
“I do actually,” Brian took the glass she offered him. “But first a toast. To new acquaintances.”
The craziest feeling came over her. She wanted to forget for just a moment that she was standing there toasting with a complete stranger, and instead indulge in a romantic fantasy that it was her house, and he was her husband. She was getting ready to make dinner, and they were about to exchange pleasantries about their respective days. She clinked his glass with hers, took a sip of wine, and succumbed to its siren call. It was a lovely daydream.
“Belle?” Brian’s voice interrupted her thoughts.
“What?” The word was out of her mouth before she could catch it. Belle felt the heat rising in her cheeks. Things weren’t off to the most auspicious start. She felt slightly drunk, and she couldn’t get out of her own head even though a gorgeous guy was sitting two feet away from her.
“I asked you where the recipe came from. On the phone, you alluded to the fact that it was a family recipe.” Brian put a small notebook on the counter next to the recorder. She could see a list of questions written down the page in a small, neat scrawl.
“It started out as my Grandma’s recipe,” she said. She decided that she needed to keep her hands busy. Belle went to the refrigerator and pulled out the ingredients that she would need. Talking and baking at the same time felt easier. She didn’t have time to agonize over every word. “But I modified it a few times before landing on the current recipe.”
“You must be quite the baker.”
“Not really, or I mean, it didn’t start out that way. I used to bake every weekend when I went to my Grandma’s house. My mom worked two jobs to support me and my brother, and she shipped us over there so that Grandma could keep an eye on us while she was working. I don’t think Grandma knew what else to do with us. I’m amazed that I didn’t end up being five hundred pounds. She taught me everything she knew, but I didn’t appreciate it at the time. As soon as I hit junior high I talked my mom into letting me stay home by myself. It just w
asn’t cool to hang out with Grandma anymore.”
She looked up at Brian and found he was watching her closely. “That sounds really sweet and totally normal.”
Belle shifted uncomfortably. It had been a long time since she had a man’s undivided attention. “Grandma only made this one cupcake at Valentine’s Day. I was the one who started calling it Cupid’s Cupcake. When I tweaked the recipe later, I kind of made it my own. It’s perfect, and it would be hard to top it, even though I am currently working on expanding the line.” Tiffany would be so proud that she managed to work the plug in so seamlessly.
“There’s more to the story, I’m sure.” Brian’s eyes twinkled. “I want you to tell me the whole thing. Start at the beginning.” He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms as if daring her.
Belle couldn’t keep the groan from emerging. “It is so lame.”
Brian laughed. “Let me be the judge of that. You bake and talk, and I promise I’ll try hard not to interrupt.”
“It starts with a boy,” she finally said. She couldn’t look at him. That part of the story was so humiliating when she said it out loud.
He nodded sympathetically. “It always does, doesn’t it?”
“He broke up with me right before Valentine’s Day.” Belle kept her attention on the work her hands were doing. She tried to forget that he was even there. “My friends tried so hard to cheer me up, but at the time, I felt like I was losing the love of my life. I was inconsolable.” Belle still regretted that she and Danny Pickens broke up. Last she heard, he moved to Los Angeles to go to grad school. Danny had ambitious plans for his life, and it had always frustrated him that Belle had none.
“And this was when?”
“Five years ago. It was my senior year of college. So I was up to my elbows in the throes of a post-break-up cleaning frenzy when I came across a box with a bunch of stuff my mom gave me when I moved out after high school. One of the things in the box was an old cookbook my grandma made for me during one of my weekend visits. I just started flipping through it, and there was the recipe for Cupid’s Cupcake. She had crossed out the name on the page and written in the name that I gave it. For some reason, it made me feel better. So then I didn’t want to clean anymore. I decided to bake instead.”
“Can I help with anything?” Brian’s offer threw her off for a second.
“Nope, I’m good. I’m just making one cupcake anyway.”
“One?” Brian looked pointedly at all of the utensils and bakeware spread around him on the island. “You need all of this to make just one cupcake?”
“It’s not Valentine’s Day yet,” Belle said with a grin. “I don’t make them except the day before Valentine’s Day. Consider yourself lucky that I’m breaking tradition for you.”
Brian threw up his hands in mock surrender. “Okay. Unusual, but okay.”
“You want me to keep going?” She took another sip of wine and waggled a spatula under his nose. She couldn’t believe it, but she was starting to enjoy herself. Brian was easy to talk to, and he didn’t seem to think her story was silly at all.
“Please.”
It took a moment for Belle to pick back up the thread of the story. She covered it by turning on the mixer. “So I made the first batch, and they were good. They were close to what I remembered. But they weren’t great. I happened to be taking a chemistry class at the time, and I became obsessed with the idea of making the perfect Valentine cupcake and turning Cupid’s Cupcake into this extraordinary dessert that would someday make me famous. I made probably a dozen more batches going through several variations of the recipe before I hit on what I was missing.”
“Which was?”
Belle shook her finger at him. “I’m not giving up my trade secret. Nobody knows the secret ingredient, not even my best friend.” She had the batter all prepared and then she put a single wrapper into the pan. She carefully poured the mixture into the cup.
“So you’ve managed to perfect a cupcake recipe. That’s cool,” Brian said. “But let’s get to the good stuff. You gave your perfect cupcakes away, and they were so good that, for some reason, they spurred men to drop to their knees and propose in fits of sugary goodness.”
“You make it sound like I’m some kind of fairy godmother,” Belle scoffed. She wiped her hands against her apron after putting the pan into the oven. Then she grabbed her glass of wine again. She knew that she should sit down, but with nothing to occupy her hands, she was now nervous again.
Brian glanced at his notebook. “Fifteen couples say that a proposal occurred the very night they had one of your cupcakes. You have to admit, that sounds like a pretty big coincidence. That’s not a fairy godmother. That’s an honest to goodness Cupid in my book.”
“If you say fifteen then I guess I have to believe you. I gave cupcakes to my friends. Every year after that, my friends, their friends, and their friends’ friends are asking for cupcakes. So there are people I’ve never even met who have received one. I can’t say what happens after they leave my kitchen, so I guess it’s possible.” Belle felt warm. She couldn’t tell if the reason was the heat in the kitchen, the wine, or Brian’s intense stare.
“With the growing popularity of your cupcake, I’m surprised that you haven’t gone into business for yourself yet.”
“Now you just sound like my friend,” Belle said. She slumped onto the stool next to him. “Like I said earlier, I’m looking into expanding the line, but I haven’t had time to do that yet. This year will be the most I’ve ever made. I’ve gotten enough orders to send out ten dozen cupcakes. But really, I make one perfect cupcake one time per year. That does not a business make.”
Brian shrugged. “With that kind of attitude, you aren’t going to get anywhere.”
Now Belle was annoyed. Someone that she didn’t even know was making judgments about her life. She slammed the last few ounces of wine down and pulled the bottle toward her to pour another glass. “I’m a realist.”
“That surprises me. A woman who bakes Valentine’s Day cupcakes that seem to prompt spontaneous proposals doesn’t want to buy into the romantic notion that life could bring unexpected surprises?”
“How about we keep things focused less on me and more on the cupcake?” Belle was saved by the ding of the oven. Her cupcake was done. She hurried over the oven, eager for the distraction. “I just need to let this cool, and then I can decorate it.”
“So what do we do in the meantime?” Brian asked expectantly.
Suddenly Belle found that couldn’t draw her eyes away from his lips. She could think of all sorts of things that they could do, but none of them were appropriate. She grabbed the wine bottle. “Let’s go sit outside for a few minutes. It’s feeling a little warm in here.”
She led Brian out onto the concrete patio in the backyard and slid into one of the seats around the wicker table. Brian sat down across from her. The trees lining the backyard blocked the descending sun, and she could hear the insects just starting their evening songs.
“You seem nervous,” Brian said. He sat back in the chair, but he was watching her closely.
“It’s not every day I have an interview for the paper,” she said honestly. “You must run into that all the time.”
Brian shook his head. “Usually I can’t get people to shut up when I’m interviewing them. They see me and the story I’m writing about them as a means to some end. You aren’t so easy to read.”
“I don’t like talking about myself,” Belle said. “I don’t think I’m that interesting.”
“Everyone has a story. In my work, you find out that everyone is interesting. It’s just what is the interesting part of their lives is different depending on who you are talking to. Give yourself some credit.”
Belle refused to believe him. “You’re just being nice.” Brian looked perplexed. Belle took another sip of wine.
“So what caused the breakup? The break-up that led to this miraculous discovery.”
“I don’t want you to
write about that,” Belle said, looking everywhere but at Brian.
“Scout’s honor that I’m just making conversation,” Brian said.
Belle sighed. “We wanted different things.”
“Obviously you loved him.”
“I did,” Belle said. “But love doesn’t solve every problem. Danny was going places, and he didn’t want to be held back.”
“He thought you were going to hold him back?”
Danny’s hurtful words during their break-up floated through her mind. “I was having a kind of existential crisis at the time. I was a senior in college, but I didn’t have any idea of what I really wanted to be. So I was floating through life. We had been dating for two years. I was such an idiot. I thought that he was going to propose on Valentine’s Day. But instead, he broke my heart two days beforehand. Danny said a rudderless girlfriend would make a dead weight wife.”
“He a sailor or something?”
A laugh escaped Belle’s lips. “He was in the school rowing club.”
“He sounds like an ass,” Brian said.
Belle thought it was sweet that Brian seemed so concerned about her feelings. “Thanks, but he was right. I needed a plan.”
“So Cupid’s Cupcake is your plan?”
Belle had no idea what her plan was. She finished her glass and then stood. “We should probably go inside. It should be ready now.”
Over the next ten minutes, Brian watched her decorate her cupcake. Belle tried to ignore him as he took pictures from all angles and asked an incessant amount of questions about what she was doing. Finally, it was done. She set it on a plate and put it in front of him.
“It’s a very nice looking cupcake,” he said. Belle could tell that he was trying to be serious, but the corners of his lips were twitching.
Belle wondered if she had been wrong about him. He had been so nice throughout the interview, but now she felt like he wasn’t taking her seriously. “Why are you here?” The wine had gone to her head. Her filter was quickly disappearing.
“I’m pretty sure we established that I was doing an interview,” Brian said.