Tempting Taste

by Sara Whitney

  “Why am I requiring you to clad your magnificence in lowly denim this early in the morning, you might be wondering?” She paused for another grunt and was richly rewarded. Her baker was grumpy in the morning. “Since you asked, I’ve found you a delivery van.”

  “You what?”

  “Ah, he speaks!” Yep, grumpy. Maybe even still partially asleep if the lovely, gravelly rasp in his voice was any indication. “It was obvious last weekend that you need something reliable to move your creations around in, so I’ve been trolling for options online. I found something promising, but it’s first come, first served, which is why I called you at this unholy hour. So put your pants on and meet me at the address I’m texting you now before somebody buys it out from under us.”

  Another grunt and he disconnected, leaving her laughing as she slid on her shoes.

  Thirty minutes later, he joined her in an alley in Avondale, north of the Loop, and passed her one of the Dunkin coffees he was holding. “Three sugars, no cream,” he said, tugging out his earbuds with his newly free hand.

  “Thanks!” She accepted it and took a sip, the coffee warming her insides almost as much as the knowledge that somewhere along the line, he’d made note of her usual order. She gestured to the white van parked behind a two-story brick building. “Isn’t it perfect?”

  “For me to abduct children?”

  His grumbled joke made her laugh.

  “Yeah, it’s a little… windowless. But it’s got fold-up racks inside for cake transport.” She sipped her coffee as he scratched his jaw in thought. “Just picture it with your logo on the side. That handsome mug of yours advertising your bakery all over town.”

  His lips tightened. “Absolutely not.”

  “It’s your logo, Erik.” Was he trying to kill her with his bashfulness?

  “My face is not going on a van.”

  “We’ll see.”

  His hair was down that morning, more waves than curls when he came straight from bed apparently. It was all she could do not to reach up and pet that tempting tumble around his shoulders. Maybe it would soothe that forbidding look off his face.

  She distracted herself with another sip of coffee as a shiny black car screeched to a halt in the parking spot next to the van and a fortysomething man slid out of the vehicle, wearing a suit and tie and a stressed expression at odds with it being seven thirty on a Sunday morning.

  “You’re Josie?” The balding man checked his watch and then his phone, barely pausing to meet her eyes.

  “Yes, we’re here about the v—”

  “So here’s the deal,” he barked. “My great-uncle Al died last month, and I’m the only family member left to clean this all up.”

  He retrieved a set of keys from his pocket and clicked a button to unlock the van. “I’m due back in Denver this afternoon for a meeting I cannot miss. If you can pay me cash now for the van, it’s yours.”

  Erik stepped forward and opened the van’s back door, his voice muffled as he peered inside. “It runs?”

  The man handed a piece of paper to Josie, who scanned it. “This is a clean bill of health from Sterling Auto Repair.”

  “Nice racks.” Erik’s voice floated from the back, and Josie bit back a laugh and a dirty joke for fear of jeopardizing the sale. He emerged and walked to the front to climb behind the wheel. When Philip handed him the keys, he fired up the engine, raising his voice above the rumble. “Was your uncle a baker? Sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”

  “Philip Jones.” Another glance at his watch. “And yes, he was. I don’t suppose you want to buy his bakery too? That’s the next thing I need to unload.”

  Philip jerked his thumb toward the building they were standing behind. When Erik’s eyes found hers, a current sparked between them, an invisible wavelength that carried a jumble of messages: Is he serious? Could this be the answer? Is this an actual miracle? Be cool be cool be cool.

  “Bakery?” she finally asked, aiming for polite reserve as Erik turned off the van and stepped out, handing the keys to Philip, who jingled them as he stalked to the building’s back door.

  “Bakery downstairs, apartment upstairs. Al got sick a few years ago and had to close it down, so it’s mostly junk storage now. I have neither the interest nor the time to clean it up myself.” As he spoke, he inserted the key and pushed the door open. “Help yourselves. I have to make some calls.”

  She and Erik exchanged another wide-eyed, is this really happening glance, and then she followed him inside the dark building. He felt along the wall for a light switch and flicked it on, bathing the stuffy space in weak yellow light. While Josie’s eyes adjusted, Erik made a beeline to the massive oven taking up one wall.

  “It’s a Doyon,” he breathed, and she felt an irrational spurt of jealousy toward the big, boxy appliance. Why had no man ever regarded her with that amount of reverential awe?

  “That’s good?”

  “It’s beautiful.” He ran his hand over dusty glass to reveal the dull silver interior.

  Oh. Hi again, jealousy. Over an oven.

  She pushed her weirdness aside and scanned the rest of the room. “It’s the only part of this place that is.” Pans, bowls, and countless cardboard boxes were stacked haphazardly on every available stainless steel surface, and the fuzzy blanket of dust they’d disturbed drifted through the air and stung her nose.

  Erik looked up from where he was fiddling with the oven’s settings. “No. Look at the bones.” He walked over to her, absentmindedly squeezing her shoulder as he went past to run water in the huge sink. “Countertops. Prep stations. Industrial mixers. It’s perfect.”

  The skin where he’d briefly rested his hand tingled, and Josie set her own hand where his had just been. He hadn’t touched her on purpose since he’d placed a comforting hand on her back in the coffee shop that awful afternoon they’d learned about Byron’s car accident. And maybe that was smart of him because damn, one glancing touch had left her nerves on high alert, just like they’d been after she’d rested her hand on his chest during the Fielder open house. But tingles weren’t welcome here. They were working together. And he wasn’t her type.

  She thrust her wayward thoughts aside and glanced around at the Hoarders-level clutter, willing herself to see what he saw. “Okay. Lots of room. You could work back here with a few helpers for sure.”

  But he’d already moved into the front of the building where she found him standing in the center of a small open space, hands on his hips. She joined him and looked around skeptically at the jumble of chairs and tables shoved to one side. This was clearly where customers could sit and enjoy a slice of cake and some coffee while they decided on flavors and layers and whatever else happened in the wedding-cake biz. Still, talk about a fixer-upper.

  “It’ll need lots of work. Scrubbing. Paint. Maybe a new floor.” She stamped a foot on the faded linoleum. “This building has to be at least eighty years old. The plumbing might—”

  “My own bakery.” He spoke the words experimentally, as if trying them on for size, and she shut down her litany of concerns at the wonder she saw in his usually stoic expression.

  The morning sun pouring through the front windows embraced him in a bright halo, turning his dark blond hair golden, and she caught her breath. Something was happening in his brain, and she wasn’t sure if it was her job to encourage it or to slam on the brakes.

  “Hey, I’m usually the full-speed-ahead one here, but you look ready to jump.” She nudged his arm. “Are you sure? I mean, we could keep borrowing Jake’s Jeep while we—”

  “I’m sure.” His decisive words echoed around the space as he walked to the front door and stepped outside. She joined him and looked up and down the street. It was quiet this early on a Sunday, but the row of businesses—a deli, a dry cleaner, an insurance agency—promised plenty of traffic once the block woke up.

  “I’m sure,” he said again.

  Without another word, he turned and walked back to the kitchen, where a door op
ened to reveal a wooden staircase. Erik started to climb, and Josie trailed behind him like a tugboat in the wake of a steamer. The stale heat intensified as they neared the top, and when they stepped into a large open space, they were again greeted with an incomprehensible jumble of stuff, all bathed in early-morning sunlight pouring through large windows. Boxes mostly, and stacks of newspapers and magazines in towering piles. In one corner, a stained dressmaker’s dummy stood watch over the clutter, and Josie could make out the corner of a chest of drawers against one wall, buried under a pile of ratty blankets.

  “My God. How much to rent a dumpster?” She sneezed as Erik lifted a drop cloth and disturbed a few years’ worth of dust to reveal a china cabinet crammed with dishes. Then again… “How much to rent this out?” An apartment in an up-and-coming Chicago neighborhood was a smart way to generate a second income stream.

  “Or I could move in. Sublet my place.” He turned in a slow circle, his eyes traveling the length of the open space, which included a small sink and oven positioned between two large windows, clearly intended for the occupant’s personal use.

  “I don’t know how you’d ever leave your current mansion.” She slapped an overly dramatic hand to her chest, but he didn’t acknowledge the joke. Instead, he reached for his phone and selected a number.

  “It’s Erik Andersson,” he said into the speaker. “I’m willing to sell if you’re still willing to buy.” The words emerged even more clipped than usual, and when he ended the call, he stared at the black screen for a few moments before he pocketed the phone. When he looked at her, there was a tightness to his expression that she hadn’t seen before.

  He produced an elastic from the front pocket of his jeans. “Go ahead. Ask.”

  She almost forgot her question as he lifted his hair up and off his neck and secured it in quick, sure motions. Why, why, why did she find something that simple to be so damn sexy?

  She realized she was staring when he looked at her with raised eyebrows, and she swiftly averted her gaze. “Um. Did you just agree to sell your supply of black-tar heroin or something?” Teasing him left fewer brain cells available to obsess over his hair.

  He humphed and turned to clomp back down the stairs, leaving her to yet again trot after him. She’d been the one prodding him to do the bakery thing all along, and now suddenly he’d grabbed the reins. She… didn’t hate it. Take-charge looked good on him.

  “Look,” she said when she rejoined him in the bakery kitchen downstairs, “I’m a nosy bitch, okay?”

  “I noticed.” Over the past few minutes, the clear blue of his eyes had clouded. At first she thought he wasn’t going to answer her question despite his invitation that she ask it. Then he leaned against a free section of counter and crossed his arms over his chest, eyes pinned to the floor. She ignored the flex of his muscly forearms to focus on the words emerging from his throat in a low rumble.

  “My grandfather died last year.”

  “Oh, Erik.” Her first instinct was to soothe him, to stroke a hand down the tense line of his arm, but his body language screamed hands off, so she settled for a simple “I’m so sorry.”

  “He left me farmland. Valuable farmland.”

  His jaw worked back and forth, but he said nothing more, leaving her to connect the dots on what he was saying and what he wasn’t saying. “And you didn’t want to sell it until now?”

  He nodded shortly, and again, she made an intuitive leap. “I don’t have much experience with good parental figures, but have you not wanted to lose that link to him?”

  He dragged his eyes up to hers and nodded once.

  “But he’d be proud of you for pursuing your dreams, right?”

  More bunching of that incredible jaw. “I disappointed him by walking away from farming. I disappointed him by…” He shifted restlessly, more ill at ease than she’d ever seen him. “I don’t know what he’d think.”

  Well, now she wanted to wrap her arms around his waist and squeeze this man who was radiating loneliness, but she remembered the sparks from the shoulder squeeze and didn’t dare risk more contact. She settled for a small, encouraging smile. “I’m proud of you. Does that count for anything?”

  “Yes, actually.” He raised his brows, looking so surprised that she had to laugh.

  “So who wants to buy your land?”

  “Guy who owns the neighboring acres. He’s been asking me about it for a year.”

  She blinked and looked around the shambles of a kitchen once more as she absorbed what this all meant for their bakery-opening plans. It accelerated everything beyond where she’d been thinking of positioning him. A physical space meant different marketing, different cash flow, different priorities. Her mental gymnastics must’ve shown on her face because Erik sighed and scrubbed his hands down his face.

  “You think I’m being hasty.”

  Yes. She opened her mouth, then shut it. Apparently today was Opposite Day because he was the one to fill the silence with words.

  “I’m really not. Been thinking about it for months. Years, actually. Equipment. Possible locations.” He pushed himself away from the counter and walked to the oven, tracing the nearest edge with the tip of his finger. “This place has everything I dreamed of,” he said, passion thrumming in his voice.

  She willed herself to see what he was seeing. Erik, presiding over his own kitchen. Bashfully greeting customers. Moving that big, strong body up and down the stairs that bisected his personal space and his professional one. Reclining on a couch under the upstairs windows. Dropping to sleep in a bed above his workspace. Her baker had spent his free time imagining this kitchen, this life, and if she could see it after only a few minutes, my God, how much more tangible was that dream to him?

  Warmth sparked in her chest at the idea that she was helping make this a reality for him. But it went beyond the professional satisfaction she’d expected to find by building his business into a success. No, this was something far more intimate, and it scared the hell out of her. So she cocked a sassy hip in his direction and pursed her lips. “Did that dream of yours include a van for abducting children to fatten up in your gingerbread house?”

  To her utter delight, he threw back his head and laughed. “Come on. Let’s go negotiate.”

  Thirteen

  “Erik?”

  Josie’s voice floating up from the back entrance had him straightening so fast he cracked his head against the wall behind him. “Up here,” he called, rubbing the back of his skull and tracking her progress by the progressively louder creaks on the stairs. Another thing to add to the repair list.

  Her bright hair appeared first, tied up with a bandanna, and he braced himself for her unique invasion of color and noise as the rest of her followed.

  “I’m here, chief!” she chirped. “You ready to paint?”

  Chief. He kind of liked that. Then he caught sight of her clothes and bit back a groan. She was in her favorite work shirt again, and he jerked his eyes to the ceiling, narrowly avoiding another smack to the head. More cranial trauma would serve him right for straining to catch a better glimpse of the black bra that was clearly visible under the threadbare T-shirt she seemed to favor during their cleanup days.

  That fucking shirt would be the death of him. He’d seen it way too many times for comfort in the three weeks since he’d summoned the strength to hand Pops’s land over to the Mathison family and Philip the Impatient had pulled some rich-guy miracle and expedited the sale of the building and van at a price that still left Erik breathless. Breathless at the amount of money he’d forked over but also breathless at what a bargain he’d gotten. The man had been too impatient to get back to his Colorado dispensary fiefdom to dicker over the price of a brick building full of junk in Illinois, which left Erik the owner of a well-stocked, if cluttered, bakery. He might actually be the luckiest man in the state.

  Next to him, Josie looked around the increasingly organized living space. “You’re getting things done up here!”

  H
e grunted. “The kitchen’s what matters.”

  “One-track mind.” She grinned, settling her hands on her hips and arching her back in a stretch. It strained the already thin fabric even tighter over her tits and eliminated any doubt in his mind: he truly was the luckiest man in the state, and she had no idea what track his mind was really on.

  Then again, he had a secret weapon of his own. He’d pulled his hair back that morning, but it had slipped out of its band during the hours of work he’d already put in. No time like the present to fix it.

  Purposely not glancing at Josie, he pulled the band free and gripped it in his teeth as his hair spilled around his shoulders. He tilted his head and massaged his scalp, working out the tension that came from pulling the heavy strands up and off his neck. Then he scraped his fingers along his skull to gather it up again, bundling it in place with his left hand and reaching for the band with his right. As he did, he looked up and found her standing stock-still, watching him with an almost feral gaze. He took his time securing the mass behind his head, prolonging the seconds that she’d spend watching him with those ravenous eyes. She didn’t blink once.

  When his hair was safely tucked away again, her lids fluttered shut and she blurted, “Anyway. Yeah. Can you come to the kitchen? I’ve got something to show you.”

  He hid his smile at her flushed cheeks and followed her down the creaky steps, eyes carefully at shoulder level. In the now immaculate kitchen, she gestured proudly to a stack of big, flat cardboard containers on the center island.

  “We just spent a week hauling old boxes out.” He raised an eyebrow.

  “I can’t believe you don’t think you’re funny.” She flashed him a wrinkled-nosed grin, then pointed at the pile. “Open.”

  He did as commanded because that’s how their relationship worked these days. She gave a command, and he picked up or put down or shifted whatever she required. He slid open the lid on the topmost skinny box and was greeted by the words Have Your Cake Bakery looking back at him in the logo’s clean, modern font.