Her better dreams usually came closer to dawn, but she was too wide awake to go back to sleep and hope for sugar moons and chocolate lakes. She was also afraid of the bat-dream repeating itself, so she swung her legs over the side of her bed and stumbled to the kitchen in the dark.
She needed the cure for a coconut hangover.
With the sink light on, she dug into her fridge for bacon, eggs, peppers, mushrooms, Gouda, butter, and onion. She washed her hands, then splashed water on her face, the images of her dream at the forefront of her brain.
Five minutes later, the vegetables were chopped, the bacon was cut into pieces and sizzling in the pan, eggs were beaten, and cheese was shredded. Boo was attacking a crumpled newspaper, and Peep had hidden in an empty overturned trash can. Kimmie’s dream was fading, but memories of how she’d gotten her coconut hangover—and what she’d done with a little rum in her system—were making her cheeks hot.
Josh had driven her home.
Nat had let him.
At least Kimmie had had the sense to lock herself in her bedroom and wait for him to go away once she’d gotten home.
“Smells good.”
“Aack!” Kimmie swung around, hot bacon grease flinging off her spatula.
Josh ducked, eyes trained on Kimmie. “Do you always eat breakfast in the middle of the night?”
Her heart was trying to flee her chest, and there he was, gorgeously handsome with his tousled hair, a white Blackhawks T-shirt outlining his pecs, and navy sweatpants slung low on his lean hips, acting as normal and unfazed as if they were having a picnic.
“I had a dream—” She stopped herself. “Thank you for bringing me home, but you didn’t have to stay.”
He didn’t answer, but instead propped himself in the doorway, one thumb hooked in his pants, watching her.
Something fluttered low in her belly. “I had a dream I was at my dad’s funeral, but instead of being dead, he was a zombie-bat.”
Kimmie was used to people smiling or laughing or giving her the you’ve been sampling the special sugar again, haven’t you? look when she shared her dreams.
Josh didn’t do any of those. He never had done any of those. “I used to dream I was on a mission to rescue my mom from the city hidden at the bottom of Lake Michigan,” he said. “I could only breathe until I started thinking about being underwater, and then I felt like I was drowning.”
Something else fluttered under her skin, something under her rib cage.
Everyone had dreams. And usually people shared one or two of theirs with her, but Josh—he wasn’t supposed to have dreams.
He wasn’t supposed to be human. Not in any likeable ways.
“You’re lucky to still have her,” Kimmie said.
“My first mom.”
Since the dawn of Josh coming into Kimmie’s life, he’d inspired many things. Lustful thoughts over his devilish handsomeness. Admirable thoughts over his ability to withstand General Mom’s orders and still continue breathing. Irate thoughts over his ability to mess with Kimmie’s life.
But the husky, vulnerable note in his sleepy voice coupled with what was possibly the most honest, open thing he’d ever said to her inspired a bone-deep need to hug him.
She gripped the spatula harder and concentrated on the frying pan. “Do you remember her?”
His hesitation hung thick in the kitchen while the bacon sizzled, and Kimmie had a flash of bat-zombie-Dad swooping through the water of Lake Michigan.
“Yes,” Josh finally said.
Oh, frogs and muffins, he sounded like a sad, lonely little boy.
Like he needed that hug. “I don’t remember my dad,” Kimmie blurted. “There are these fuzzy memories, but they could be sitting on Santa’s lap at the mall or my grandpa or my dreams, and I don’t know what’s real and what’s not. Everyone here knew him. They say he was a real people person. Everyone loved him. Even my mom. Especially my mom, I guess. They say she was totally different when he was alive. She took vacations with him, and she laughed, and she used to call me Kimmie too. She ran the bakery, of course, and they co-chaired Knot Festival and were in the Bridal Retailers Association together. Nat and Lindsey’s mom told me once that when my dad died, my mom didn’t know how to deal with the grief. She couldn’t control it, so she channeled it. And without anyone to temper her, she kinda… well. She sort of married Bliss itself. Sad, isn’t it?”
“She’s a rational, fully grown adult,” Josh said. “There are always options for dealing with grief. She chose poorly.”
Kimmie’s shoulders hitched. She knew Josh hated General Mom, but then, he’d hardly given her reason to appreciate him either. “Bliss has really grown under her leadership. We’ve gone from a thousand weddings a year to closer to five thousand. Knot Fest used to be locals only, but now, we fill up every hotel within a thirty-mile radius for a solid week. We sold out of tickets for the Husband Games last year, and this year, the Miss Flower Girl and Miss Junior Bridesmaid pageants are on track to raise twenty thousand dollars for charity. She can be a little hardheaded, and, erm, driven toward a goal, but she does solid work.”
“What’s she done for you?”
Kimmie pulled the bacon off the heat, then carefully scooped it out onto paper towels, grateful that he was showing his obnoxious side again. “She taught me to bake cake.” She slid him another look. “And to deal with difficult people.”
He pinched his lips and looked away.
As if Kimmie couldn’t deal with anything or anyone. “I might not be country club material, but I can out-sweet a caramel-coated coconut cupcake.”
“You are a cupcake.”
“Thank you.”
“It wasn’t a compliment.”
“If you say so.” Being a cupcake generally helped her avoid most of General Mom’s wrath. And Kimmie didn’t have Lindsey or Nat or Pepper’s confidence, brains, or beauty, but she knew she was nice. And people liked nice.
People liked cupcakes.
She slid a pat of butter into the pan, then topped it with the two eggs she’d beaten. And when she snuck another glance at Josh, he seemed to be fighting a smile. His lips were twitching, but his brow held a crinkle.
“Do you always make breakfast after bad dreams?”
“After too much coconut.” She sprinkled the chopped veggies into the round egg mix, then added the Gouda and the crumbled bacon. “The bacon by itself usually works, but I’m hungry.” A double-strength Kimmie colada and the equivalent of a slice of coconut cream pie hadn’t exactly been a fortifying dinner. Leftover Chinese probably would’ve done the trick, but she couldn’t eat Chinese without rooting around for a leftover fortune cookie, and she definitely didn’t need any fortunes tonight.
“You go overboard on the coconut a lot?” Josh asked.
She shook her head.
He crossed the small space to stand beside her. He reached for a crumbled bacon piece that had escaped the omelet pan. “Why last night?”
“Felt like it.” She felt an odd sense of safety with him, but she didn’t feel a corresponding need to be stupid. He already thought General Mom was The Enemy, and while General Mom wasn’t a saint, Kimmie had said all she wanted to about her mother. Especially since thinking about her mother reminded her that the next doomsday was coming. Most likely around dawn. If not before.
Word would spread quickly about Kimmie’s announcement that General Mom didn’t own the whole bakery.
Furious was too mild a word for what General Mom would be about having her secret exposed. She wasn’t big on having her mistakes aired in public, and not having enough flood insurance had been a big mistake.
Josh stood there, smelling like sleepy sin, staring at her, not saying a word.
She didn’t say anything else either. That was something else General Mom had taught her—how to withstand uncomfortable interrogation techniques.
He leaned closer into her space.
She refused to budge.
But that cupcake in her chest wa
s bouncing on a trampoline again.
“The Joshanova?” he said.
His voice sent skitters over her skin. “It, erm, wasn’t a compliment.”
He chuckled.
And Heaven’s Bakery help her, that skittering on her skin went to all those delicious, secret places again.
The Josh Juan chuckle was not to be trifled with. Or souffléd with, for that matter.
She folded the omelet and clenched her belly against the fluttering. “You didn’t have to stay,” she said again.
“Promised your friends I’d take care of you.”
“Oh, promises mean something to you?” Fugglemuffins. That was rude. Kimmie didn’t like being rude.
“When it’s convenient,” he said.
There went those sugared-up toddlers bouncing in her belly again. She rarely felt convenient for anyone. Not outside the bakery.
It was odd. Not unwelcome, but not flattering either. She poked her omelet, then flipped it. “I’m sorry I woke you. You don’t have to stay up with me. I’m fine.”
He leaned closer, the warm skin of his arm brushing hers. “Getting hungry,” he said.
For a flash of a second, she thought he was talking about her. But that was as ridiculous as the idea of General Mom agreeing to Josh’s plan of Kimmie buying her out of the bakery. Still, her cheeks went as hot as bacon grease. “It appears there’s most of a coconut cream pie in the fridge. And leftover lo mein. Help yourself.”
She slid the omelet onto a clean plate, then forced herself to move at a relatively casual pace to grab a fork and leave the kitchen.
“Going back to bed?” he said.
Again, he said it smoothly and easily, no implications or insinuations about Kimmie and beds and his relation to either or both, but her belly flipped like her omelet. “I don’t need to keep you up. I’ll go read for a bit.”
“A bit or the rest of the night?”
Josh Kincaid was inspiring too many warm squishy feelings tonight. Because he wasn’t using that seductive Joshanova voice, and he wasn’t using his bedroom eyes to telegraph improper suggestions he didn’t really mean.
Instead, he almost seemed to be honestly asking if she’d be able to sleep after her dream.
As if he remembered being unable to sleep after his bad dreams, and he was asking, in his own way, if she were really okay.
One corner of his mouth hitched up, and a challenge sparked in his deep blue eyes. “Because if you’re staying up, I owe you payback for that Killer Bunnies game last weekend.”
She blinked at him.
“I had a flame thrower I didn’t get to use,” he added.
“I had a quadruple lucky clover and never roll anything less than five. The flame thrower wouldn’t have mattered.”
“Prove it.”
Had this conversation been with any other man, she would’ve asked him to run away to Vegas with her. Right then.
He stood up to her mother, he took her home after she overdosed on coconut, and he genuinely seemed interested in playing an offbeat, geeky game with her.
But he didn’t love her.
He didn’t even like her. And really, that spoke poorly about his personality.
“When I wipe the floor with you, you have to do my dishes,” Kimmie said.
“When I obliterate your bunnies and steal all your carrots, you have to make me an omelet.”
“You’re on. But you’re going to lose.”
He grinned. “Never say that to a street kid, Kimmie.”
“You’re not a street kid anymore. You’re a pampered snack cake heir.”
“Doesn’t that make it worse?”
She opened her mouth, then shut it.
He chuckled again and pushed off the counter. And when he passed her on his way to the living room, he tugged on her hair. “As I said, sugar. You’re going to lose.”
She would definitely lose something.
But it wouldn’t be the game.
* * *
By the time Josh had pulled down the Killer Bunnies box, Kimmie’s color had evened out. She wasn’t flushed, nor was she pale as a ghost. She’d wolfed down half her omelet—which smelled almost as delicious as her cupcakes—and now she was cross-legged on her fuzzy rug in her pink cupcake shorts and a white tank top that left little to Josh’s imagination.
She was flighty and odd and unpredictable, but he couldn’t keep his gaze from the nipples poking at her shirt.
He should’ve been thinking about letting her win to get on her good side for when he brought up his business proposition again. But sometime in the last week, Kimmie Elias had shifted from being a goofball he could talk into giving up a few cupcake recipes to a girl who needed protection from a bully.
Josh wasn’t much of a superhero—he preferred being the guy selling leaks to plumbers, because that put a roof over his head and food on his table—but he knew bad dreams.
He knew bad parents.
He knew terror.
And he knew it was time he did for someone else what the Kincaids had done for him. Which was why he’d brought an overnight bag and told his dad he’d be late getting to the office on Monday.
He set the box on the floor, then opened it up and started pulling out the various cards. “I’m picking the winning carrot,” he informed Kimmie.
Just because he intended to change her life didn’t mean he intended to let her know he was doing it for her benefit, not his.
She flashed him a wide, open smile. “Okay.”
He looked at the small cards printed with the goofy-looking carrot-people, then flipped them to check for markings.
“I don’t cheat,” Kimmie said.
“But you always end up with the winning carrot?”
“The cards like me. It balances the karma from my fortune cookies. It’s also why Mom won’t let me go to any of the bridal conventions in Vegas. She’s convinced I’ll end up in jail when I win too much money.”
She was utterly ridiculous.
And strangely cute.
“Yes, I’m sure I’m not adopted,” she said. “I get that a lot.”
“Didn’t say a thing.” Josh finished shuffling the carrot cards, slid one out of the middle without looking at it and put it on the bottom. Then he grabbed the massive deck of rainbow-colored cards and shuffled it too.
“I actually think it’s a compliment. Mostly.” She speared another bite of her omelet. “We play Killer Bunnies at Pepper’s house sometimes on Saturday nights. The single sons get really competitive, so I’m only invited a few times a year. They don’t like to always lose to me.”
“Single sons?”
“All the unmarried sons of the shop owners on The Aisle. I’m related to half of them. And my mother’s set me up on dates with the other half. But so far she hasn’t used her powers of mind control to make any of them marry me.”
Josh’s teeth clicked together. He grunted an answer. He didn’t have any illusions about all this marriage crap, but the idea of Kimmie being some kind of sacrifice to the marital altar to please her mother pissed him off.
Sure, she was odd, but she was also right—people liked her.
If Kimmie wanted the proverbial love that went with marriage, she deserved to find it. Despite her mother. Or maybe because of her mother.
She finished her omelet while he set up the rest of the game. The gray cat crawled into her lap and collapsed as though its bones had melted. The other one—the calico with the missing half-ear—sauntered into the room with a cottage cheese container on its head, sat down beside Kimmie and stared at Josh without blinking.
Guarding her.
Or contemplating eating Josh when its magic cottage cheese container hat granted the cat’s wish to be six feet tall.
Hard to tell with Kimmie’s cats.
He picked up his cards. Two bunnies, a couple of special cards, that nuclear warhead she’d launched last week, along with a stray asteroid and a new card called a Blown Trojan. He checked a grimace. “I’d o
ffer ladies first, but I don’t entirely trust you in this game.”
She picked up her own cards and graced him with a bright Kimmie smile. “Go ahead. I don’t mind.”
The first few rounds went smoothly—they both had bunnies on the table, he deflected Kimmie’s food processor weapon attack, and one of her bunnies was taken out by a Terrible Misfortune. Something about lawn darts.
But instead of cussing like a sailor over losing a bunny, she giggled. “Did you ever play lawn darts? I did once, at a family reunion when we were still invited to family reunions, and then I had this crazy dream about riding a lawn dart through the air and trying not to pop the balloon animals, since we were on the same team against this giant blimp that was wearing my mom’s apron.”
Josh smoothed a hand over his lips. She really was like this all the time. And she was growing on him. “Have you ever looked into what your dreams mean?”
“I like my dreams. If I knew what they meant, I might not. This one time, I dreamed I was an intergalactic princess, and I was the nicest intergalactic princess in the universe, and my subjects loved me. Aliens and marsupials and humans alike. And that was really awesome. What if I looked up what that meant, and I discovered my dream was compensating for my subconscious knowing that nobody liked me in real life, when I’m pretty sure I’m a people person, and I like people liking me? That would be really depressing.”
“People like you,” Josh said.
She regarded him cautiously. “You don’t.”
That shouldn’t have hit him in the gut. He cared that he continued to deserve the Kincaids’ respect. He cared that he could count on Aiden. Whether the rest of the world thought he liked them or not didn’t matter.
He was a heel for making Kimmie Elias think he disliked her. “I’m unflavored cake batter,” he reminded her. “What do you expect?”
“You’ve actually been acting like a baked marble cupcake who still needs his frosting.” Her nose scrunched. “Is it my turn or your turn?”
“Mine.”
Sugared (Misfit Brides #4) Page 15