Graham released the bungee cords that secured a large rubber container in place in the bed of his truck. He lifted the container over the side. The pre-measured ingredients, cupcake tins, utensils, and clean rags tilted toward the opening and threatened to spill onto the sidewalk. He shook it to settle the items back inside. The pans clanked together with each step. By the time he’d lugged it to the front door of Zen Cafe, his biceps burned. He shifted the container to his hip and pushed through the door.
The competing scents of ginger and frying bacon and cabbage and biscuits were as exotic and eclectic as the woman who combined them into Asian-infused Southern staples. Thalia Li glanced over her shoulder as Graham walked into the kitchen. She shoved her glasses up to hold her silky black hair out of her face and quirked one side of her mouth up in a familiar greeting. She tossed the contents of the sauté pan twice more over the licking orange flames before setting it on a cold burner, wiping her hands on a rag, and launching herself at him.
He gripped her hips to keep her from knocking them both over.
Despite being nearly a foot shorter than him, she popped a friendly kiss on his lips. “You weren’t kidding about burning shit, were you?” she asked, wrinkling her nose as she rocked back on her heels.
“Nah. It’s a new cologne: Eau de Burned Shit. Supposed to make all the girls go crazy,” Graham said. He looked down at her and grinned.
“Crazy from fumes, maybe.”
He pulled his apron from the tub and tied the strings around his waist. He rubbed at the black smudges, releasing another whiff of charred chocolate. “Seriously, thanks again for letting me steal your oven for a bit. I promise I’ll be done soon.”
“Stay as long as you want, Graham. You look good in my kitchen.” Thalia twirled her towel and whipped it through the air to smack him on the ass.
His hand jerked out to stop it. He pulled back just before making contact, remembering that interfering would only add another one to the original total from losing a bet to Thalia. The damp cloth connected with a loud slap. He sucked in a sharp breath before asking in as normal a tone as he could muster, “What’s that? Eleven?”
“Twelve. But if you want to give me a free one, I’ll take it.”
“Not a chance. You get three more. Use them wisely, T.”
“Spoilsport,” Thalia said. She winked at him and started acquainting him with the various stations in the spacious, stainless steel-covered kitchen.
The room was twice the size of his kitchen. And everything—even down to the electric can opener—was state-of-the-art. The coolers had temperature controls on the doors, a bank of three food steamers were built into the counter for expedited plating, and the cork floor, in a vibrant pink, not only gave the kitchen a fun atmosphere, but also made it easier for Thalia to race back and forth without slipping.
After instructing him to set up “anywhere,” she twisted a few knobs on the stacked oven. It clicked softly as it heated up. Trays of glazed orange rolls occupied the five cooling slots of the rack below the oven. She swiped two and tossed one to Graham, who had to drop the bag of sugar back into the tub to catch it. It made him think of Jack as he bit into the flaky outer layer.
He closed his eyes and let the flavor overtake him. “I bet I could turn this into a killer cup,” he mumbled, his mouth full.
“Try it and die, cupcake boy,” Thalia threatened. She shook a knife in his direction. Her dark eyes narrowed, but the smug amusement sparkled under thick lashes.
He grinned at her and turned back to his ingredients. He started dumping them into a stainless steel mixing bowl that was roughly the width of one of his bike wheels before he’d unloaded the whole tub. As the sugar and butter creamed, he laid out the whisk, spatula, and tins he’d lined before he left Crumbs.
“Need any help?” she asked.
“I’ve got it,” he said.
“Are you sure? You know I’m good with my hands.”
Thalia stepped closer and curved her lips into the smile that had charmed more men than he cared to count. The fact that he’d been one of them at one point in time had him backing into the counter.
Graham cocked an eyebrow at her and asked, “Rain check?”
“I’ll keep an umbrella handy,” she said.
two
Hours later, even thinking about Melanie’s insinuation that her business was failing still made the tips of Jack’s ears burn. She idled at the street corner that headed to Graham’s. Jack considered skipping out on the weekly guy’s night with him and her brother. Bed sounded good. Drowning her pissy mood with beer and friends sounded better.
She turned left onto Magnolia Street and had to wait for a cluster of college boys in ripped-to-be-fashionable jeans and polos to move out of the street in front of Sweetwater Brewery. Recognizing two or three of them as customers, she waved. She caught the words cupcakes and hot even through the rolled-up windows, then the subtle hint of gardenias. The desire wasn’t strong, just enough to get her attention. She smiled at the boy in front. He patted the hood of her car twice before stepping out of her way.
Jack cracked open the window to coax the scent of her perfume from the car. She didn’t have to look in the rearview mirror to know he was still watching her as she drove away.
The car bumped over the brick crosswalk bridging the two sides of Sugar’s main shopping district. Though the majority of shops were closed for the night, the restaurants looked full.
A parking space opened one building down from Three Sugars Coffee Company. Figuring it was the closest she was going to get, she pulled in. The air had cooled and held a faint scent of caramel as she got out of the car. Her shoulders popped when she stretched. The first traces of tension began to dissolve.
She glanced up at the apartment windows two floors above the coffee shop, and seeing Graham’s lights on, walked through the thin alleyway that led to the residents’ entrance in the back. Jack keyed in the code, and the door opened with a trio of beeps. The overhead lights in the stairwell had burned out months before. There was one window on the second-floor landing. It was grimy and let in more air than light from deep cuts in the casing.
Jack took the steps to the third floor two at a time.
She rapped one knuckle on the door—a deep thunk, thunk that echoed down the hallway. She entered without waiting for Graham to open it. His one-bedroom apartment smelled of lavender and salt.
Small terra-cotta pots of herbs lined the windows. He coaxed tarragon, basil, lime thyme, chocolate mint, pineapple mint, rosemary, and lavender from the dirt with delicate fingers and soft murmurs. He babied his plants and, in return, they sprouted strong and potent. Clumps of dried herbs hung from fraying string tied to the knobs on the kitchen cabinets, which his gray tabby, Alice, pawed at like piñatas.
Before Jack had taken more than three steps inside, Alice weaved around the legs of the coffee table and greeted Jack with a warbling cry.
She bent to scratch the cat’s ears. “Hey, Fuzzball,” she cooed. The greeting was returned with a thunderous purr as if Jack had cranked a motor. She straightened when Graham padded, barefoot, into the room.
His hair was damp and spiked out from his scalp. In a Breaking Benjamin tee and jeans frayed at the pockets and hems, he looked much more like the music store employee he’d been in high school than the award-winning pastry chef he’d become.
She imagined running her fingers over his scalp, messing up his hair even more. Instead she said, “Sorry. I’m early.”
“No problem. Hutt’s running late. Walked out of the house without the beer.”
“We give the man one job and he can’t even do that.” She sighed, a dramatic outpouring of breath. She flopped onto the sofa and nestled into it with a rough, full-body shake that caused her to sink into the plush folds.
“I don’t see any pizza, either. You Pace kids are worthless,” Graham said.
“Indeed we are. I don’t know why you put up with us.”
“Old habits are hard t
o break.”
She smiled as the air shifted, a subtle flutter against her skin. She rubbed her hands back and forth on her arms to settle the goose bumps. For a few seconds, the air smelled like mint and lime. She let it wash over her. It seeped into her pores so that her blood pumped faster through her veins. The scent was so warm, so seductive that she closed her eyes and wished she could live in the moment forever. Her skin felt like she’d spent the day at the beach instead of at work.
It disappeared just as quickly as if she’d imagined it.
Graham looked away when she caught him watching her. At the knock on the door, Jack hefted herself up. “That would be my pizza.” She pulled money from her purse and paid the delivery guy. The box burned her hand. She set it on a stack of old cycling magazines. “We’re not all worthless.”
His mouth tugged up into a half smile as he sat next to her. He reached across her for a slice, letting the lid fall back into place with a soft scratching of cardboard on cardboard. He ate his first piece in four bites before she had even started on hers.
“Did your day get any better?” he asked.
“Nope. Worse,” she said. He raised an eyebrow at her and waited for her to continue. “Melanie stopped by. To check up on us. She’s worried that you’re going to realize you’re too good for this place and leave. She practically said that I was irrelevant.”
“Well, she’s wrong,” Graham said.
“I’m serious, Graham. It’s like people think I don’t do anything around here. I give them exactly what they want every time without asking, but they don’t even notice.”
“C’mon, Jack. You can’t be mad at them for not knowing something you want kept a secret.”
“I know. I know,” she groaned. Dropping her head back on the cushion, she tried—and failed—to rein in her frustration. “But is it too much to ask that they at least recognize that I’m damn good at my job? That what I bring to the table makes them happy every time they stop in?”
He bumped his shoulder to hers. “I promise you, people don’t just come in for the cupcakes. They come in because you make sure they’re happy. Don’t let Melanie get in your head.”
Too late, she thought. But she pushed it out of her head. “We’re gonna have to knock the Twilight cupcakes out of the park if we want to make her happy.”
“We will.”
He was so matter-of-fact, Jack turned to look at him. His face was inches away from hers. His breath caressed her cheeks. She met his eyes. They were so steady and confident. They held none of the fear she knew must’ve been staring back at him from her own. The hair on her arms stood up as she inhaled a subtle hint of mint. She held her breath. The scent filled her, spreading like a shot of whiskey to warm her chest, and made her dizzy. He was still watching her, unblinking.
Jack shifted away from the middle of the couch. Away from him.
By the time her brother arrived, the cheese had congealed into a thick crust on top of the last two pieces. The pepperoni and bacon looked like shriveled bits of shrapnel. Hutton devoured them anyway. Then he popped the cap off of a Corona and guzzled it.
“Rough day?” Jack asked.
“Nah. Just trying to catch up,” he said. Hutton grabbed her beer and drained it, too. The muscles in his forearm flexed as he plopped the empty bottle on the table in triumph. He stood and headed to the kitchen.
“At least get me a new one.”
“Not a chance.”
“Thanks for nothing, Perm Boy,” she said. She could tell the insult penetrated when his back stiffened.
Hutton’s blond hair was cut close, revealing no hint of the dense curls that had plagued his childhood. Old ladies would pat his cheeks and asked if his mother had had it permed. The day he was old enough to decide his hair’s fate, he’d whacked it all off and had yet to forgive their mom.
Hutton came back with two bottles, and for a fraction of a breath, Jack imagined his hand tilting, upending the contents on her head. Instead he handed it to Graham. The bottle passed so close to her face that the fizz from the lime tickled her nose.
Graham took a long swallow before handing it to her.
Jack’s fingers brushed his as she took the bottle and said, “Thanks.” She beamed at her brother.
Hutton grunted his disapproval.
“I’d wind up getting her one anyway,” Graham said with a shrug.
Jack straightened on the couch. “I could’ve gotten it.”
“But you wouldn’t,” he said. “You’d sit there pouting and Hutt would sit there egging you on for long enough that I’d get you the damn beer just to get the evening moving again, and you both know it.”
“He’s got a point,” Hutton said. He checked his watch and turned back to her. “Do you still have a vacancy above the shop?”
“Do you know someone who might want it?” she asked.
“Um, yeah. I might,” Hutton hedged.
“That would be great. I’d like to get someone in there before the oven spontaneously combusts and takes the whole building with it.”
“I’m not gonna burn the place down, Jack,” Graham muttered.
“I know you won’t, but that oven has it out for me. It would blow up just to spite me.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Hutton said. “I heard it plotting with the toaster the other day. They’re taking you down, missy.”
“We don’t have a toaster,” she said.
“That’s what you think. They’ve got you surrounded and you don’t even know. Victory is at hand!” His voice jumped up several decibels so that the last sentence boomed around the room. He had perfected his evil chuckle over the years so that it came out as a singsong “muahaha,” punctuated with short bursts of dead silence in between to prolong it.
Jack rolled her eyes.
The television hummed low in the background. It sent flashes of color and light dancing across the room. The conversation shifted between the strangest cravings Jack had sensed that week to a detailed description of an articulate—if slightly inaccurate—term paper one of the students in Hutton’s young adult literature class had turned in on why the Unites States is headed toward becoming a dystopian society and how the government leaders in The Hunger Games had a point. Hutton recounted a few of the more salient points and said he was just glad that at least the student had put some thought into it unlike half the class who had written about how they wished Hogwarts was real.
He jumped up when a knock resounded from the door. He waved Graham back down and threw Jack a strained smile over his shoulder before opening it.
Their sister stood in the doorway. Harper’s pale hair was streaked with chunks of hot pink. In her teens it had progressed through a rainbow of colors: desperate black, violet, flame-tipped, atomic red, and platinum. And every style had fit her. She’d added a lip ring and a silver bar through her left eyebrow since the last time Jack had seen her.
She had never looked more beautiful.
The one rebellious thing Jack had done with her appearance was a tattoo—the lyrics to her favorite song—inked in black on the soft underside of her forearm. “If I told you I loved you, you might melt away on my tongue like spun sugar and disappear.” She traced the curved letters as if they were Braille. Her life story, at least as it pertained to Graham, was inscribed in plain view. But he may as well have been blind for all he noticed it. Or her.
Harper’s face was flushed with color, though the only makeup she wore was a thick trail of eyeliner and mascara. Over the years, she had put on a healthy ten pounds, which did more than merely hint at curves and removed all traces of the sharp cheekbones and restlessness of her youth.
“Hey,” Jack said. The greeting stretched between them. One syllable extended into two. She removed her hands from her back pockets. When Harper stepped closer, Jack stood and looped her arms around Harper’s waist. She sighed when Harper did the same.
“Hey yourself,” Harper said.
They broke apart and stepped back as if the clo
se proximity had made them feel more like sisters than the almost strangers they were.
“How long have you been in town?”
“A few days.”
Jack’s surprise burst out of her in a squeaky Oh. She would have backed up if Graham hadn’t been in her way, his fingers lightly held to the small of her back.
“It’s not like that,” Harper rushed to clarify. Her cheeks burned, matched her hair. “I needed to figure out what I was doing before I sprang myself on y’all. I just saw Hutton yesterday, and Mama and Daddy don’t even know I’m back yet.”
“Are you back?” Graham asked.
“I think so. And I hear there’s a vacancy above your shop.” Her tone was hesitant, hopeful. She glanced at Jack.
When Jack had leased the retail space, the landlord said he’d only rent it to her if she took charge of keeping the studio apartment rented as well. Until a few months ago, the room had yet to be empty for more than two weeks. She couldn’t keep her shop afloat and cover the apartment rent, too. But she wasn’t desperate enough to believe that she could rely on her sister for anything.
Determined to keep her resolve, Jack said, “I think it’s a little out of your price range.”
“But it’s just sitting there empty. So it’s not like you’d be any worse off if I crashed there for a while.”
“But if you’re living there I can’t very well get some paying person to move in.”
“If you find someone, I’ll move out. I don’t have much stuff so I could be out quickly. Please help me out, Jack,” Harper said.
“C’mon, Jack. What’s it gonna hurt?” Hutton pressed.
Everything. She shrugged and avoided looking either of them in the eye.
***
Love and Cupcakes Page 2