by Ali Parker
"No. We're good. Violet is going to start working more at the bakery. She wants to learn to bake. We might have another baker on our hands." Sicily wrapped her arm around Debbie and leaned her head on her shoulder. "Everything is working out great. Thanks for getting the rest of the cakes out of the car. I appreciate you so much."
"Anything for you, kiddo, and of course everything is working out... That happens when your heart is in the right place." She patted Sicily's face and moved over to loop her arm into Violet’s. "Let's me and you run the cake walk while Sicily does her thing with the townspeople."
"Does her thing?" Sicily called after them as Kari walked toward her. The dainty ring on her friend's finger was beautiful, but nothing matched the radiance in her smile. Kari was a new woman thanks to love.
"So... You good or stressed out?" Kari lifted her hands and smiled, walking slower as if trudging through mud.
Sicily laughed. "I'm really good. Drake's kitchen is a hot mess because I was baking all night. I just didn't want to be at the shop. I don't know."
"It's not just Drake's kitchen, silly. It's yours too." Kari pulled Sicily into a tight hug. "How nutty is it that all of us came here to start a new life together, and now Jake and I are getting married and moving to Texas, Lisa and Marc are sharing an apartment in New York and you and Drake are running the town scam."
"Town scam?" Sicily pulled back and smiled. "Look, just because I fatten people up and he thins them out does not mean we're up to anything."
"I love this little bracelet he got you for Christmas." Kari moved back and took Sicily's wrist, studying the trinkets dangling from it. "Each one of them means something. The fact that your rough bad boy went into a jewelry store on Christmas Eve in New York City speaks volumes. Craziness."
"Right?" Sicily forced her tears back. Drake had proven a million times how much he loved her. He was always intentional about it.
"Baby? We have something for you before the event starts." Drake motioned her over.
"What? Why? I just helped put this together. I don't want anything." She started bitching, but walked toward Drake as Kari grabbed her hand and forced her to move faster.
"You were in charge of the whole thing, Sicily." Marc walked up and wrapped his furry arm around Lisa. He was in a big pink bunny outfit. Sicily couldn't help but laugh at the audacity of it.
"I had a lot of help." She stopped in front of Drake as everyone gathered around. The spring day couldn't have been more perfect, and most of the town had shown up to enjoy the free event put on by the fire station and the sweet treats.
"You did most of this yourself. Stop fussing." Drake reached out and took the flowers Jake was holding. "This is from the boys at the fire station. It is the only time you're allowed to get a gift from a horde of good-looking guys."
"Old! Don't forget that most of us are old!" someone yelled from the crowd and everyone laughed.
"Speak for yourself, Bob." Drake glanced over his shoulder and took a little pink cupcake that Lisa handed him on a clear plate.
Sicily studied it for a minute and handed her flowers over to Jake. "What's this? Did you bake this?" She hadn't made anything strawberry for the event. She'd run out of time.
"Yep. I've learned from the best, but don't eat it yet. Break it in half. I put a special filling inside." He wagged his eyebrows and held the plate out.
"I'm not going to lie. I'm a little nervous to think you were baking in the kitchen."
"In the bakery."
Her eyes widened and everyone laughed again. "Is it still standing?"
"I supervised him," Lisa responded.
"That does not make me feel any better." Sicily laughed and picked up the little cupcake, breaking it open. A diamond ring hit the plate below, stunning her. "Drake? What's that? Someone could have broken their tooth."
"Really? Crazy girl." He moved down to his knee, picked up the ring and popped it in a glass of water Debbie held beside them. He fished it out and lifted it to her. "Marry me. Be my sugar momma forever and let me love you like only I can."
"Seriously?" She glanced around as the world grew dim. She was going to faint if she wasn't careful. "You baked the ring into a cupcake?" Tears burned her eyes and her heart shuddered in her chest. He was too good to be true.
"This is where you say yes, but yes, I did bake it in the cupcake."
She shoved half the cupcake into her mouth and nodded, tears streaming down her face. "Yes. Of course it's yes."
Everyone laughed and cheered as Drake stood up and slid the ring on her finger, pulling her in for a long kiss.
"You taste like strawberries. I want more." He brushed his nose by hers.
"It's all yours. Anytime you want." She leaned up to kiss him and laughed as Lisa's voice rose up above everything else.
"So vulgar, Sis! So vulgar."
The End
Next up is Baited and Baited Christmas. A office romance...
Baited
The Full Series
By
Ali Parker
Description
Rebecca Martin has achieved most things one might hope to by thirty. She is a successful business owner, drives a nice car and is wrapping up the details on a custom built home on the lake. The only thing she is missing is someone to share her accomplishments with.
One man has never been far from her thoughts – Kade McMillian, but his return to town after far too many years of chasing his dreams couldn’t be more poorly timed.
With a younger man demanding Rebecca attention at the office, she has to decide between reconstructing a relationship from her past or diving in deep to something new and seemingly forbidden.
Chapter 1
“Is there really any point?” Rebecca huffed as her best friend Trisha stared her down from across the small table. Rebecca glanced around the bar, which was filled with people and buzzing with excitement.
“You’re not going to be a killjoy tonight. We’re going out this weekend if it kills us. I’m stuck at home with four kids all day, not living the glamorous life of an entrepreneur.”
“I’m not sure who sold you that lie, but I’ve got some oceanfront property in Arizona …” Rebecca smiled.
The bar was busy, but the restaurant was dead around them, which always seemed to be the case on Thursday nights. Their ritual beer at five was a must-not-miss event and neither of them did, unless death or some other large-scale occurrence called them from it. They’d been friends for as long as Rebecca could remember, and yet she’d never grown tired of sharing life with Trisha.
“What are you thinking? You have that look in your eye.”
“What look?” Rebecca held up her empty beer mug, the waiter walking over to pick it up, smiling flirtatiously at them.
“The look that says you’re wishing for marriage and babies.” Trisha laughed, her eyes moving to follow the server as he left in his tip-collecting jeans.
“Stop staring at him. We could be his mother’s age.”
Trisha looked back at her and laughed loudly. “That’s funny. He’s like mid-twenties. What the hell? We’d have to have birthed him when we were ten, for crying out loud.” She sat back in her chair, her short blond hair a perfect bob, complementing her cute pixie-like face.
“I was a goodie-goodie in school, but you were a hooker, so you could be his mother. I’m still waiting for Mr. Right.”
Rebecca shrugged, smirking as her friend’s face changed colors and she started to lay out her opinion for all to hear. The server walked up just in time for Trisha to open her mouth. “You were not a goodie-goodie. Not at all.” She looked over at the handsome boy who was holding two beers out for them and reached for one of them, a smile on her face. “Besides, I got married right out of school, but you schlepped it up, remember?”
Rebecca reached for the other beer, shrugging her shoulders, her gaze on the handsome boy before them, who seemed to be quite interested in their conversation. “That’s true. I just dropped my last boyfriend
because he couldn’t keep up with my appetites.”
The server visibly swallowed and pulled out a pad of paper, scribbling something before ripping the page off and laying it before her. “Call me.”
He walked off and Rebecca bent over in laughter, Trisha following suit.
“Things really never do change, do they?” Trisha asked, finally catching her breath and reaching for her beer.
“When it’s still this fun after all these years, why should they?”
They drank their last drink and talked through the events of the week. Trisha focused mostly on family and the house, leaving Rebecca with nothing to add there, but she did pipe up about work and Jason, their rising-star intern, who’d been with the company for about a year now. That conversation left her frustrated and uneasy when Trisha made a few pointed innuendos.
“What’s the big deal?” Trisha asked as they walked out to their respective cars, Rebecca’s blue Audi parked next to Trisha’s beat up red Honda.
“The big deal is that he’s twenty-two, Trisha. That’s honestly gross.”
“The guy at the bar was at least twenty-six. Is there a set age that’s okay?”
“Yes, and it’s honestly thirty. I’m in my mid-thirties, so the guys I date should be in their thirties too.” Rebecca pulled her keys out and hit the fob, the lights coming to life as the car made a sound of awareness.
“I don’t think age should matter.”
“Well, for me, it does. If I was graduating high school while he was still eating boogers and scraping his knee on the playground, it’s not happening.”
Trisha shook her head. “Jimmy still scrapes his knee and eats his boogers.”
Rebecca laughed and opened the door to her car. “Yes, well, your husband is a special case scenario, obviously.”
“I think you should reconsider. Women are in their prime in their thirties and men are asleep on the couch at that age.” Trisha shrugged and got into her car, waving and then closing the door.
Rebecca stood there for a minute, thinking through Trisha’s words. She looked around and realized that she was asking for trouble standing outside her car at eleven o’clock at night in the middle of a bar parking lot in downtown Houston. She slid in and locked the doors, shivering slightly at the late effects of winter.
“Dating a twenty-two year old. How ridiculous. He probably can’t even hold a conversation,” she growled, starting the car and cranking up the heater. Lionel Richie’s “All Night Long” played from the radio and she laughed. “Of course … perfect.”
The windows defrosted slowly as she moved through the city streets, her apartment sitting in the heart of mid-town, a lively area for young working people, with tons of restaurants and nightlife nestled into the community. Her thoughts moved quickly from her time with Trisha to Jason, her newest and best associate. He was far too young, in her opinion, to be thinking about, and honestly, he wasn’t her type at all.
“And what is your type? I mean really … when was the last time you dated anyone long enough to know your type?”
Kade.
She cringed internally at the thought of his name. Sixteen years had passed since high school, and yet if she had to think back to her type—it was Kade. It always would be. She almost felt sorry for her future husband. She would be comparing him and everyone else to Kade. Kade, the strong football type. The asshole that left her standing alone as he headed for the big life. Hollywood had been so much more important to him than figuring out what was between them. Not that she’d expected him to give up his dreams, but he could have kept in touch—or at least talked to her about it before he left her out in the cold.
“Screw him,” she whispered, the pain of rejection still just as ever-present in this moment as it had been all those years ago. Would she ever move past him?
She reached up and pulled the rearview mirror down, looking at herself with a stern glare. “Yes, you will. You need to start dating again, like tomorrow.”
She smiled and readjusted the mirror. She wouldn’t start dating tomorrow or the next day. Men her age and older were married, and the ones that weren’t were single for a damn good reason. It was like hoping to get picked for the kickball team and coming in dead last. It wasn’t because the rest of the kids were saving the best for last, it was because you couldn’t play the game. So those guys who were still single in their mid-thirties were either duds or were more than happy to forever be playing the game, neither of which appealed to her. That left her looking toward someone in his late twenties or late thirties.
Her mother had married someone eleven years younger when Rebecca’s father passed away, leaving Rebecca to call a man only nine years older than her Daddy. He was a great guy and definitely looked older than her mother did, so growing up with him as her father was okay, but marrying someone who went to school the same time as Dad? No thanks.
She pulled up to the large electronic gate, the apartments looming above her. It wouldn’t be long before she’d be in her new house, the builders hopefully sending out the new contractor on Saturday to do a final walk-through of the structure and talk about the design for the pool. If nothing else in her life was working out, at least her house was almost done and her business was booming.
Having graduated at the top of her class from the University of Houston in business, she’d worked for a few accounting firms and gained a reputation for being brilliant, bold and innovative. A few years after working hard for the man and bringing him and all of his good old boys loads of money, she’d left and opened Martin and Co, a company led by a group of hard-working business professionals. She had an MBA and her license in accounting, and Parker, her business partner, had his masters in marketing with a specialization in multi-generational advertising. They were a one-stop shop for business strategy and practicality. It worked well, and they’d grown to be very much like brother and sister, which was nice, since Rebecca had no siblings.
She parked the car on the last level of the garage, the silence greeting her as she slipped out of the car and walked through the cold concrete jungle to the elevator. The best part about living in Houston was that there were always people out and about. It was no New York, but the oil and gas capital of the world was booming with life and not hurting much for business. Now, if only all the other parts of her life could work out. A little adventure and romance wouldn’t hurt at all. Or would it?
“I need to get a pet,” she mumbled, moving into the cold confines of her one bedroom apartment. The place was decorated in crimson and black, the modern appeal making her feel at home, seeing that her mother’s house was very similar in style. She slipped off her black heels at the door, dropping her purse and rolling her shoulders to get her long-sleeved black jacket to release her from its tight hold. A quick reach up to her hair, and the clip was history, half thrown across the room to land amongst the rest of the hair accessories that found their way to the graveyard as she arrived home each day. To say that she wasn’t tidy would be a vast understatement, but when you were busy trying to figure out how to rule the world, you didn’t have time to clean the house.
The idea of what Kade must look like sixteen years later swirled around in her mind as she moved toward her bedroom, pulling and tugging at various items of clothing until she stood in her undies and bra. Her bookshelf was filled with romance novels aplenty, since reading happened to be her favorite pastime. She loved to dive into a love affair that she figured could only be found in the confines of a book, seeing that her own life showed no possibility of a steamy night to come. She knelt before the tall wooden structure, opening the door to the cabinet at the bottom and pulling out a handful of old yearbooks from high school and junior high. It hadn’t been but a few weeks before that she’d been in a similar position, looking for the same picture, and yet she couldn’t help herself.
The class of 1993 yearbook was the prized book, their senior year giving her the most grown up version of Kade. There was something so very wrong about staring at a
n eighteen-year-old boy, but she’d been eighteen back then too. She brushed her thumb across the picture of them together, her smiling at the camera and him looking at her with a goofy grin. She smiled, unable to help herself. They’d been best friends, but there was always something more to it. She’d never really given anyone else the time of day, and the two of them had been to almost every dance together, though she’d been asked by other boys. Kade had dated some, but always returned to her so that they could spend the weekends holed up at one of their houses, talking, swimming, biking, whatever, as long as they were together.
But nothing ever came of it. She tried to think back on why for the hundred millionth time and came to the same conclusion she always did. He hadn’t been interested in her the way she was in him. Why else would he not have made a move? He wasn’t shy, and even though he was brilliant, he still played football and hung out with all of the meatheads at school. He was a well-rounded guy, the guy that everyone loved and wanted to be around. He was talented in sports, and yet he could play the guitar and sing like an angel.
Why had he never asked her out?
She bent over, yelping softly as the cold book touched her exposed skin. She’d been pretty back then, nothing to gawk at, but definitely pretty. She brushed her fingers over the picture once more and closed the book, sighing heavily and putting her treasures back where they belonged. Why would forever be the question.
She moved to her knees and then stood, using the bookshelf in front of her to assist her. A groan lifted from her lips, her body sore from the long day and the unusually long evening with Trisha. It was just after eleven, and she would normally have been in bed for more than an hour by now. She slipped into her pj’s, promising herself that she’d wake up extra early and shower in the morning. Doubtful.