Tart (The Fluffy Cupcake Book 2)

by Katie Mettner

  I finished filling the last hole and leaned the shovel I’d borrowed from her dad against the shed at the back of the property. “It sounds to me like a meeting tomorrow is necessary. I hope you guys can find a way to make it work. The town has a fondness for your fluffy cupcakes.”

  So did I, but I wasn’t going to say that.

  “Her cupcakes are all she cares about, other than Brady, of course,” she said as I helped her by the elbow across the driveway.

  “And you,” I said, kneeling by her chair after she sat. “I bet she cares about you a lot, too.”

  Her heavy sigh stole the laughter from her lips, and I regretted uttering that sentence immediately. “Sometimes she cares too much about me,” she whispered with her eyes on her lap.

  Today, she wore a gorgeous red sundress with colorful daisies all over it in a willy-nilly pattern. I won’t lie. It made my dick twitch every time it swished around her to reveal tiny glimpses of her figure. It swayed with the natural motion of her body in a way that told me I’d be taking a cold shower at the first opportunity tonight. It wouldn’t matter, though. Every time I saw her, my lower half stood at attention. She was that damn beautiful. There was just something about the way she moved that told me she was a firestorm in bed. I wanted to know just how much, but I was smart enough to see that was likely never going to happen. This woman had too much on her plate and not enough forks or spoons to empty it.

  “I don’t think that’s possible, sweetart.”

  “Sweetart?” she asked, a brow in the air.

  I smiled to let her know I was teasing. “Like the candy. They’re my favorite.”

  “I know what they are, but it’s not a good term of endearment. Zero out of ten, do not recommend.”

  I frowned but never broke eye contact with her. “I thought it was perfect. That tart I got the other day was as sweet as the woman who made it.”

  “You should call Haylee that then,” she said dryly. “She’s the one who made it.”

  I tried to hold in my laughter but failed when it came out on a snort. I held up my hand. “I stand corrected. The tart was as sweet as the woman who handed it to me.” I pointed at the house. “I’m going to go wash up and grab some cold drinks. When I come back, I’ll help you with the fence. Then we can start dinner when the work is done?”

  “Sure,” she agreed, nodding her head along with me. “I’ll wait here.”

  I stood and patted her shoulder on my way to the house. I hoped my face didn’t show my surprise when she grasped my hand with hers for a moment. I squeezed her shoulder once and then made my way up the stairs into the house. I stripped my shirt off on the way to the bedroom for a quick shower before I joined her again. It was going to be a cold shower for the simple reason I needed to cool my overheated libido for a few moments. I was smart enough to know the only way to quench it for the rest of my life was to be the one who laid down next to her every night, though.

  The idea should have startled me more than the cold water, but it didn’t. I fell hard for Amber Larson the first time I met her. If only I knew where to go from here.

  THE LAKE WAS GORGEOUS in the late afternoon sunshine. I had purposely waited until later to come out and see how Bishop was doing. As much as I wanted to enjoy his company, my brain knew it was smart not to enjoy it too much. That could result in catching feelings for someone I couldn’t afford to have. Down deep, I knew he was one of those good guys people talk about in this world. I’d met a few like him. Guys like my father, who willingly took in another mouth to feed because his daughter cried that her friend was hurting. Brady, who protects my best friend like she was a fragile porcelain doll who would break if you handled her too roughly. She wouldn’t. She had survived a knife attack at the hands of a deluded woman, but that wasn’t the point. The point was, Brady knew how strong Haylee was, and that was why he loved her the way he did. He had already experienced what it would feel like to lose her, and he was going to do everything in his power to keep her safe. With no family of her own other than me, Brady also knew she needed someone to prop her up in life. He was that kind of guy. Something told me Bishop was cut from the same cloth. That was the reason I had to be so desperately careful about how close I got to him.

  I shook my head at the blue sky. Right now, I could use some propping up, but that was never going to happen, not after what happened with Rex.

  “There you are,” a voice said behind me.

  I spun quickly, having been lost in thought, and lost my balance. My arms pinwheeled in the air, but Bishop was too far away to catch me. I fell backward, directly into the cold water of Lake Pendle. I came up sputtering, water running down my face in rivulets and my lips sputtering to clear it from my mouth.

  “Amber!” he called, running onto the dock in shock. “Let me help you!”

  I stood up on the lake bottom and laughed, pushing my hair out of my face. “It’s not exactly deep here,” I said, shaking the water from my hands. “I’m in no danger of drowning. I think you should come in. The water feels great.” I leaned back in the water and let the gentle waves carry me across the surface toward deeper water. “I’m serious, Halla. Get your bones in here.”

  “I just took a shower. Besides, I’m rather enjoying myself right here,” he answered.

  I snuck a peek at him sitting at the end of the dock, his feet in the water, and his eyes on my wet chest. I didn’t care. I’d prefer they were on my chest rather than my leg.

  “Where are you from, Bishop?” I asked, lowering my leg a little bit more into the water so he couldn’t see the brace. It was stupid since I was going to have to get out of the water eventually, but no one ever said self-preservation made sense.

  “A little town smack dab in the middle of Illinois. It was loud, hot, and stunk like big industry most of the time.”

  “I bet you never thought you’d be sitting on a dock overlooking a small lake in an even smaller town.”

  His eyes drifted to the sky for a moment before he answered. “It wasn’t on my radar, that’s for sure. I just knew I needed a change. It was weird when the Lake Pendle position opened up. I can tell you how many times I’ve applied for a job that had one opening for physical education and one for English.”

  “One?” I asked, and he pointed at me with a strange look on his face.

  “This was a first and I’ve been teaching for eleven years. I’ve worked for three different school districts, but never once saw an opening like this one.”

  “Serendipity?” I asked, and the air was filled with his laughter as his head nodded.

  “I hope it’s serendipity, for sure,” he agreed. “I’m tired of being unhappy with where I am in life. Moving here in the middle of a school year and living in an old run-down cabin for months was the first time I found myself truly happy in years. My commute was short and stress-free, I had time to get to know my students and create a fun curriculum to keep them active in the winter, and I had something to look forward to with the new house,” he explained, pointing to the place behind him.

  “Do you miss the people you left behind?”

  “I wasn’t close to anyone but my daughter, and she’s an adult now.”

  I sat up in the water. “Your daughter? You’re divorced?”

  He shook his head as I swam over and hoisted myself up to sit on the edge of the dock. I would dry in the sunshine while he explained that bombshell. “I was never married to her mother. My daughter is eighteen now and moved to Southern California for college. She plans to come to visit in July.”

  “Wait, she’s eighteen? How can you have an adult daughter if you’ve only been teaching eleven years?”

  “She was born just before I turned seventeen, that’s how,” he said, shaking his head slightly.

  “Oh, wow, I guess that was a shock.”

  “Shockingly dumb on my part,” he said on a chuckle. “Her mother and I were counselors at a summer camp and had a fling. We were responsible, but accidents happen when you’re only us
ing condoms and trying not to get caught by the other camp counselors.”

  “Not an infrequently told story,” I agreed. “It must have been difficult.”

  He leaned back on the palms of his hands and bumped me in the shoulder. “Not as much for me as for her mother. She didn’t live with me, so I didn’t shoulder that responsibility for her, you know?”

  I nodded while I squeezed the lake water out of my dress. “That’s usually the case in those situations. Not your fault, just what it was.”

  “That’s a refreshing statement.”

  “Why?” I asked, confused.

  “Usually, when I mention my daughter, women make an instant judgment about the situation. That I was a deadbeat dad or didn’t take responsibility for my actions.”

  “I would never assume that, Bishop.”

  “I did what I could while I went to college and worked to support her. I took care of her on weekends and took her as many weeknights as I could to give her mom a break. I made bottles, changed diapers, and cleaned up vomit. I was lucky that her grandparents on her mother’s side were godsends and took care of her while her mom and I went to school. My parents weren’t in the picture, and my grandparents raised me. I wasn’t going to ask them to raise their great-grandchild, too.”

  “Some kids would have.”

  “The difference was, from the moment I knew Athena existed, I wanted her. I wanted to be part of her life. I wasn’t going to be a no-show kind of dad. I might have been a kid myself, but if I was old enough to create her, I was old enough to take care of her.”

  “That’s,” I paused and made the mind-blown motion with my hands. “Not too many guys would do that, Bishop. You know that, right?”

  He shrugged and stared off over the lake. “Maybe not, but I’ve never been like other guys. I loved pushing a baby in a stroller while I ran around the track. She didn’t ask to be created, so she wasn’t going to suffer because the timing of her birth was inconvenient for us. Her mother and I both agreed on that point.”

  “I’m absolutely certain now that not too many guys are like you, Bishop,” I said, trying not to sound as shocked as I felt. “Athena. That’s a beautiful name.”

  “The goddess of wisdom. Athena has always been wise. An old soul, my grandmother used to say. The first time I held her in my arms, it just didn’t matter that I was sixteen, still in high school, and didn’t have a clue what I was doing. She was mine, and I would take care of her forever.”

  “I would say that makes you a stand-up guy, Bishop Halla.”

  “No, it just makes me a dad, which most women don’t want to hear. They don’t want to be weighed down with the idea that I have a teenager and responsibilities.”

  “Which is strange because, at our age, we should have responsibilities. We should have a wide enough base of knowledge and understanding to see other people’s pasts as not the end of the world, but as life experiences.”

  “And in my case, that life experience will be part of my life in a tangible form forever.”

  “I suppose some women might see that as a problem, but I don’t. Those women probably think you aren’t interested in having more kids when you’ve already raised one, or if you do have kids, your allegiance will always be to Athena.”

  He nodded while he stared out over the water. His head just kept nodding like he was searching for the right thing to say, but couldn’t come up with anything. Finally, he turned his head to drink me in from top to bottom. “You are something else, Amber Larson. Refreshing. Wise. Understanding. Compassionate. Intuitive.”

  “I’ll take those adjectives as a good thing,” I teased.

  “You should. I meant them all. I usually don’t bring Athena up on a first date, or second or third for that matter, because it muddies the water.”

  “But this isn’t a date, so that rule doesn’t apply.”

  He froze and swung his head to stare at me. “Ri—right,” he stuttered. “I just meant that’s why I don’t talk about her with women, even if it’s just while getting to know my neighbor.”

  Did he want this to be a date? Was I reading his friendly dinner to make friends outside of school the wrong way? It was starting to feel like I was.

  “I suppose we should get back to that fence,” I said, unsure what else to say. “I need to fire up the grill for the steaks, too.”

  He stood and wiped off the butt of his shorts, while I took a good long drink of his tight buns in that denim. He was definitely as yummy as Haylee’s tarts, but I wasn’t going there. Not now, not ever.

  “Sure,” he agreed, his eye to the sky. “I suppose it’s almost dinnertime, and we still have to finish taking the fence apart.”

  I suddenly realized there was no way for me to get up from where I sat. I couldn’t roll over to my knees when I wore the brace, I couldn’t push myself up from the dock without something to grab, and I wasn’t going to ask him to help me. All that left was jumping back into the water and wading to shore. I hated to do it since I was almost dry from the first swim, but I didn’t see much choice. If I was going to save face and keep my secret a secret, I was going to have to. I’d change when I went to grab the steaks from my fridge.

  Before I could make my escape into the water, his strong hands were under my armpits, and he pulled me up into a standing position in one motion.

  “I figured you might need a hand after being down there for so long,” he said, slipping his hand into mine and helping me up the uneven dock to the grass. He didn’t drop my hand then either.

  “Tha—thanks,” I muttered, my limp pronounced after sitting on the dock for so long. “Do you have a grill, or do you want to use ours?”

  “I have one big enough for a couple of steaks. Why don’t you get them while I fire it up? We can work on the fence and then, after dinner, have a little bonfire.”

  “Sounds like an excellent way to spend a summer Saturday evening,” I agreed with a smile. “I’ll be over in a few minutes.”

  We parted ways at the property line, where he dropped my hand and watched me walk toward my apartment, the leg dragging behind me in a bit of a swishing motion rather than any kind of proper gait. I hated that my issues were displayed in a way that he could see, but it didn’t matter, because we weren’t dating. I told myself that the whole time I fixed my hair, put on dry clothes, and dug the steaks out of the fridge.

  Bishop Halla might have a kid, but that would be the least of his worries if he got involved with me. The smartest thing to do was to beg off from dinner and stay holed up in my apartment for the night. I couldn’t do that, though. I grabbed my cane on the way out the door and made my way across the yard. I had to admit to myself that I didn’t want to stay holed up in my apartment anymore. The admittance scared me more than thunderstorms, and that was truly saying something.

  Five

  The sun began to set just as clouds moved in across the lake. The oranges, reds, and yellows of the sunset made it stunning, but it also gave an ambiance to the space around us that made me entirely uncomfortable. Suddenly, the summer campfire felt close and intimate as we sat around it, drinking beer and talking about absolutely everything. We’d covered music, literature, and politics. I was pleased to see we liked the same music and tended to stand on the same side of politics, but our literature tastes differed significantly. Bishop assured me that was okay. He said there’s a book out there for everyone, so we don’t all have to like the same ones. I had to take that as the gospel truth, considering he taught literature for a living.

  “I bet your dad will be surprised to learn the fence is down. I hope he doesn’t get upset,” he said, tipping his beer bottle up to his lips. He was relaxing more and more with every sip he took. It was nice to see him enjoying himself in his new home. I wasn’t so arrogant that I believed it had anything to do with me, other than companionship at a time in his life when he needed a friend.

  “I sent him a picture while you were in the house. He sent me back a picture of him doing a fist
pump. He said he owes you a beer when he gets back. I promised I’d pass the message along.”

  “I would be honored to share a beer with him,” he said, tipping his at me. “He raised a brilliant woman. I know that doesn’t happen if you’re a slouch.”

  “Is that what people say about you?” I asked, sipping my lager. It was hoppy, thick, and glorious on a warm, sticky night like tonight. The humidity had increased considerably, so I kept my eye to the sky to make sure a storm didn’t take us by surprise.

  “That I’m a brilliant woman or a slouch?” he asked, confused.

  “As a father. That you raised a brilliant daughter, so you aren’t a slouch.”

  He shrugged, but his eyes remained on the fire, which was unusual for him. He rarely broke eye contact during discussions. “Her mother does, but not too many other people know that I’m a father—those who do haven’t even met Athena. As much as I hate to say it, she’s in the periphery of my life now. She doesn’t need me as much as she used to. Now that she’s in college, I rarely see her.”

  “Sort of out of sight, out of mind.” I waved my hand in the air while I swallowed the sip of beer I’d taken after uttering the words. “I didn’t mean that in the literal sense.”

  He chuckled and leaned forward, setting his empty bottle under his chair. “I know what you meant. Athena is never out of my mind, but she is out of sight. There is nothing I can do for her when she’s across the country. I’m geographically closer to her than her mother is at this point. It’s new. It’s foreign. I still struggle with it, but I know she needs her space and independence. She’s a smart girl, and I have confidence she can take care of herself. She only lived with me during the summer, so I guess we have always had that independence from each other.”

  “Versus me who can’t take care of myself, isn’t independent, and still lives with my parents.”