Her hand rose to her chest to clasp her locket. An unconscious motion he’d watched her make time and time again.
She gasped. “My locket!”
He reached into his pocket then handed it to her. “You left it with your clothes.”
She lowered the chain over her head. “It snapped last night. I thought it broke.”
He gave her a sheepish grin. “I had a little time sitting in Langley Park’s lockup last night. I was able bend it back together.”
She inspected the chain and found the spot where he’d bent the silver oval link back into place. Once, then twice, she ran her finger over the tiny bump in the chain.
“Did you open it?” she asked.
“No, I didn’t know if you would want me to see what was inside.”
“Open it now,” she said and leaned toward him.
He held the silver locket and rubbed his thumb across the carved sunflower. She was so close. Inches separated them. He inhaled. Her scent of cinnamon and sunshine washed over him in sweet, gentle waves. He pressed the release, and the locket opened. Inside, he saw a picture of a man and a woman. The woman shared Monica’s high cheekbones and cornflower blue eyes.
“Are these your parents?”
She nodded. “They died when I was five.”
“What happened?”
“They were free climbers—really good ones, too. People wrote stories about them in climbing magazines. I have a bunch of clippings. You see, I’m not from Langley Park. I was born in Colorado. Free climbing is big out there. My parents met at the University of Colorado in Boulder. My dad taught my mom how to climb. Before they had me, they’d traveled and free climbed all over the world.”
He nodded. He had a million questions. He’d never known the reason she’d come to live with her grandmother, but he wanted to give her space to talk.
A beat passed, and Monica ran her finger across her mother’s picture. “My mom stopped climbing when she found out she was pregnant with me and took some time off. After I turned five, they planned a big climbing trip. My parents brought me here to Langley Park to stay with my grandparents for a week—that was back when my opa was still alive. Then they set off for Yosemite to climb El Capitan.”
“I’ve heard of that,” Gabe said. “It’s one of the world’s hardest free-climbs, right?”
Monica’s finger remained on her mother’s photo. He entwined his fingers with hers, and they held the locket together.
Monica’s lip trembled. “Something happened. People called it a freak accident. I never went back to Colorado.”
“You look like her,” Gabe said, staring down at the two pictures. “I see a little of your dad in you, too. But you definitely have your mother’s eyes.”
She glanced up from the locket and met his gaze. “What about your mom?”
His chest tightened. “It’s not much of a story. She just left us.”
Concern clouded Monica’s blue eyes. “Why?”
He could still see the white envelope taped to the door. “She left a note. It basically said she was unhappy, and she felt that she wasn’t cut out to be a wife or a mother.”
“Is she still alive?” Monica asked.
“Last we knew, she was in upstate New York. Before that, it was California and then Florida. But it’s been many years since we’ve heard from her.”
Monica cupped his face, and her fingertips brushed past his earlobes. Her touch was hot cocoa on a snowy day. Her touch was lying in the grass and watching the clouds in the big Kansas sky float away on the breeze.
“Gabe?”
“Hmm?” he answered. He tried to picture his mother’s face, tried to remember if he had ever seen her smile and drew a blank.
“Have you ever seen the ocean?”
Her question brought him back from the past. He wasn’t expecting it. But it was exactly what he needed to hear.
“Not just a picture but the real thing,” she continued.
He shook his head. “I’ve barely gotten out of Langley Park.”
“Me, too. My whole life has been that bakery.”
He leaned into her touch. “Where would you go first?”
“Paris,” she answered without skipping a beat. “That’s where all the big fashion shows are.”
“I can see you walking down the runway,” he answered.
She smiled. “Yeah?”
“Vanessa is some big designer, and you’re modeling all her outfits. There are photographers everywhere. Flashbulbs are going off left and right.”
“Where are you?” Monica asked.
A grin pulled at the corners of his mouth. “Oh, I’m there watching, and I’m holding a giant picnic basket.”
Monica chuckled. “Why is that?”
“We’re going to have lunch on the grass next to the Eiffel Tower when you’re done dominating the modeling world.”
Her expression grew serious. “We can’t tell anybody about us. I’m not allowed to date until I’m eighteen, and that’s not until the end of the summer.”
Something in his heart swelled, filling the empty space left by his mother’s abandonment and his father’s bitterness. His mind went through each day he’d seen Monica like a flip book, pages turning fast as her form moved alone through the bakery until the last page where he entered the story.
He rested his forehead against hers. “I’m going to be with you in the bakery every day this summer, and if you let me, every day after that.”
Her lips hovered millimeters from his. Apples, cinnamon, and sunshine. When she was close, it was everywhere, around him, inside him, a comfort, a safe place.
She gasped and pulled back. “The bakery!”
Shit!
She was right, and the car was still parked in the hospital’s lot.
Monica glanced at her watch and then back at him. “Have you ever seen a volcano erupt?”
He helped her to her feet. “No, why?”
She gave him a wry grin. “You’re about to.”
The Little Bakery on Mulberry Drive was closed. They had driven past the front of the shop. The display case lights were off, but the light over the workspace remained on. Monica turned the corner and parked the car in the space behind the building.
Gabe placed his hand on hers. “How bad can it be? Your grandmother seems stern but not a tyrant.”
“Do you speak German?” she asked with a mischievous grin.
“No, do you?”
She shook her head. “Not much. That’s the only saving grace.”
“What do you mean?”
Her smile grew. “When Oma’s really mad, she goes into total German freak out. You know she’s angry, but you can’t understand what she’s saying.”
His gut twisted. Now, especially after Monica told him she wanted to be his, he didn’t want to give Gerda Becker any reason not to want him in the bakery.
“Should I apologize? We can say it’s my fault. We can say we’re late because I’m new, and it took longer because you had to teach me the delivery ropes.”
“No, it’s never worth it to try and fool my oma. It’s like she’s got lie detector superpowers. Just do what I do. We’ll go in. We’ll wash up, put on aprons, and then we’ll start the strudels.”
“I’ve never made a strudel before,” Gabe replied. He’d never made much of anything. For more than a decade, frozen pizzas and TV dinners had been as much as his father could manage. A fancy meal at his house was anytime dinner didn’t come prepackaged.
“It’ll be fine,” Monica said.
“Monica,” he said and squeezed her hand.
She leaned over the console and pressed a kiss to his lips. His hands moved to her face. He weaved his fingers into her hair. A twist of anxiety and arousal shot through him. He kissed her like a dying man on his last breath. She sighed, sweet moans escaping her lips as their tongues met and danced a frenzied rhythm.
Monica pulled back, breathless. “If you bring the same kind of enthusiasm into your strudel
making as you do to your kissing, Oma won’t be upset for very long.”
Holy fuck, he loved this girl. He brushed her bangs to the side. “Kissing isn’t the only thing I’m enthusiastic about.”
Her eyes twinkled. “Oh, I know. I was in that elevator with you.”
His cock strained against his pants. He drew her back to him and ran his tongue across her bottom lip. “That was just a little taste. I’ve got enthusiasm for miles when it comes to you.”
Their mouths crashed together again, but the sound of a car door slamming pulled them apart. Gabe looked around wildly. Thank Christ, it was just someone parked down the alleyway. He shook his head. He wanted to punch himself in his fucking face. Monica had just told him they needed to keep their relationship a secret and here he was, making out with her behind the bakery. But then he focused on her lips, her eyes. He wasn’t sure what tore his heart apart more, looking at her or looking away from her. She owned him either way.
He leaned in and pressed a whisper-soft kiss to her lips. “I could kiss you until the end of time, Monica Brandt.”
She smiled against his lips. “If we don’t get inside these may actually be our last minutes on the planet.”
Monica unlocked the back door leading into the bakery. They entered a small mudroom. A narrow hallway with a staircase stretched out in front of them, and a small hall ran across the back of the building forming an L-shape.
“Our apartment is up there,” she said and gestured upstairs. “And the bakery’s this way.”
They passed a small, tidy office and met Oma, hands on her hips, standing next to the long butcher block work table. He followed Monica to the sink as she twisted her hair into a bun.
“Did the car break down?” Oma asked.
“No, Oma, the car’s fine,” Monica answered. She dried her hands, took an apron off the hook next to the sink, and joined her grandmother at the table.
Gabe finished washing up, grabbed an apron, and turned to find Mrs. Becker staring him down.
“It was my—” he began.
Oma raised her hand and silenced him.
Monica looked over her shoulder at her grandmother. “We saw Vanessa Garza after we dropped the cupcakes off at the hospital. They found a heart donor for her. She’d just gotten the news after we arrived.”
Oma made the sign of the cross, but her expression didn’t soften. “Gabriel, do you know how to make puff pastry from scratch?”
Gabe glanced over at Monica. Her hands moved expertly assembling some kind of pastry. He wasn’t even sure what it was.
“No, ma’am,” he answered, then cringed, catching himself.
Monica’s grandmother narrowed her gaze.
“No, Oma,” he said. “But I think I’ve seen it in the grocery store—like in the frozen section.”
Again, he glanced over at Monica. She was biting her lip, clearly holding back a smile.
Oma’s eyes widened. “You think we use grocery store puff pastry from a factory? You think I allow chemicals and preservatives in my bakery? You think you can get that level of taste and flakiness in something frozen?”
“No,” Gabe answered. He had no fucking clue about puff pastry, but he was sure as shit not going to disagree with her.
Oma gestured to a spot next to Monica. A perfect rectangle of what he could only assume was puff pastry—not from a freezer—sat a quarter inch thick on a sheet of parchment paper.
“Because of your tardiness, I had to make all puff pastry dough. Now you make strudel.”
He couldn’t help it. He glanced at Monica for the third time.
“Eyes on dough, Gabriel,” Oma directed like a drill sergeant.
He’d never stared so hard at a piece of raw dough in his life. She instructed him on how to cut off the corners at the top and make notches in the bottom.
So far, so good.
“Now,” Oma continued. “Cut inch thick strips diagonally down both sides.”
Gabe pointed the knife toward the center of the dough.
“No,” Oma said. “You must leave room for the filling.”
He made his first wobbly cut.
“Ach du meine Güte!” Oma shook her head and whispered the German words with a disapproving humph. She took the knife. With the dexterity of a ninja, she made eight quick, diagonal cuts down one side. “You do the other side.”
He released a breath. Had it gotten hot in there? His apron was too tight. The lights were too bright. A bead of sweat slid down his back.
He eyed Oma’s cuts then turned his attention to the untouched side. He adjusted his grip to mimic Oma’s and sliced the knife through the pastry dough. Eight perfect cuts mirrored the cuts she had made.
Oma leaned in. “Precision, timing, attention to task. These are the tools of any chef or baker. It is our job to not only make good pastry and good food. It is our job to make the food an experience. To make that first bite taste of love. Do you understand, Gabriel?”
“Yes, Oma,” he answered, still a bit stunned. He’d made the cuts perfectly. After years of his father harping on him and years of lugging boxes and newspapers, he felt like a careful surgeon practicing his craft.
Oma slid the cut puff pastry over to Monica. She spooned the filling down the center.
Oma placed another rectangle of dough in front of him. “Mach es wieder so.”
Confused, Gabe glanced at her.
Oma blew out a breath. “Do it, again.”
He angled the knife. In barely the blink of an eye, he cut the corners, made notches in the bottom, and sliced 16 perfect one-inch, diagonal cuts.
Oma nodded and untied her apron. “Monica will show you how to fill and braid. You only have thirty-seven more to go.”
“We have to do all of them tonight? It’s getting late,” Monica protested, her attention trained on assembling the strudel.
“Late in. Late out,” Oma said and walked out of the bakery. The squeak of the steps signaled her ascent upstairs.
Monica glanced over at him. Her fingers worked furiously as she crossed the strips of pastry, making perfect X’s down the center.
“You survived,” she whispered to him with a smile.
“That felt amazing!” Adrenaline pumped through him. He’d only made a few cuts, but pride swelled in his chest. It was like making twenty baskets in a row from the three-point line.
“Now for the apple raisin filling.” Monica gestured to a pot brimming with rich, golden brown apples and plump raisins held together in a caramel color glaze.
Gabe inhaled. “It smells like…”
“Rum?” she said with a smile. “We soak the raisins in it.”
He bent down and smelled the mixture again. “I never really thought about what went into baking. I just kind of ate whatever was in front of me.”
Monica laughed. “You’re not done yet. Here’s the next part. We spoon in the filling.” She completed the task. “Not too much or the strudel will burst. Next, we cross the strips. That gives it a braided look. Finally, we tuck it in at the bottom.” She followed each step then carefully lifted the parchment paper and transferred the completed strudel to a baking sheet.
“Here goes nothing,” Gabe said and ladled his filling onto the pastry.
He made the first X, but it didn’t hold.
“Dammit,” he whispered.
“Step back,” she said and slid in front of him. “Watch over my shoulder.”
He stood behind her. With her hair up, the creamy skin of her neck looked good enough to eat.
“Eyes on dough, Gabriel,” she said, mimicking her grandmother.
It was a damn good impression. He straightened up and pushed his dirty thoughts aside.
“Think of it like tucking a child into bed. You don’t want it too loose, or the covers will fall off, and the little one will get cold. And you don’t want it too tight. It’ll pinch and be uncomfortable.” Her hands glided deftly down the pastry, leaving perfect X’s in their wake. “You want it secure and snuggly
warm.”
He pressed his palms on the table and caged her in, watching as she expertly completed the assembly. He inhaled her cinnamon scent. It mingled with the sweetness of the fresh apples and spice of the rum. He was intoxicated with this new world, with this new life.
She leaned into him. “It doesn’t feel like this is the first real day we’ve spent together, does it?”
“No,” he replied, pressing a kiss to her temple. “You’ve always been in my heart, Monica. Now, I get to hold you in my arms. You’re not a dream anymore.”
She swiveled her hips. Her ass brushed against his cock, and he was rock hard in an instant.
“That’s not going to help us make thirty apple strudels,” he said on a tight exhale of breath.
She ran her fingertips down the length of his arms. “It’s thirty-seven.”
Gabe wrapped his fingers around Monica’s slim wrists, pressed her palms to the table, and covered them with his. He kissed the delicate skin behind her ear. “I loved watching you bake in that plaid skirt and those fucking knee socks.”
“They’re right upstairs. I could go put them on,” she teased.
“Christ, Monica,” he growled.
She shifted her hand and laced her fingers with his. “A five-minute break wouldn’t hurt.”
“Labor laws, right? We have to get breaks,” Gabe offered.
“You should mention that to Oma. She’d get a kick out of it.”
He pinned her against the butcher block counter with his body. She hummed her arousal as his cock pressed against her buttocks.
“No talk of your grandmother. Deal?”
“Wait,” she breathed.
Gabe glanced up at the ceiling. “What is it? Is your grandmother coming?”
She didn’t reply, but she turned her head toward the giant picture window at the front of the store.
Shit!
Underneath the lights in the bakery’s work area, they might as well have been illuminated by a spotlight. Anyone passing by could see what they were doing. He of all people should have remembered that. He’d been watching Monica through that picture window for years.
“Come here,” she said and pulled him away from the table.
Monica pushed a few cooling racks out of the way and dragged him into the tiny corner of the bakery. Hidden by the three-tier ovens and the strategically placed racks, Gabe gripped her slender waist. She pressed up onto her tiptoes and wrapped her arms around his neck. Their mouths came together in a rush of heat and desire.
The Complete Langley Park Series (Books 1-5) Page 83