Just One Kiss

by Isabel Sharpe

  Times like these she was very glad her cases were see-through.

  “White-on-white?” She put her hands on her hips, regarded him doubtfully. “I would have said chocolate.”

  “Yes, usually.” He glanced at the chocolate flavors, then back to her, causing a renewed buzz in her internal circuitry. “Today white.”

  “A gift?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Special occasion?”

  “Birthday.” His words became clipped, lips thinning.

  Angela nodded, wanting nothing more than to continue her interrogation, but recognizing the signal to back off. “How many would you like?”

  “Six.”

  “Six white-on-white coming up.” She grabbed a flat box and pulled it into shape. “Is it your birthday?”

  “No.” He spoke as if he were strangling on the word.

  Hmm. She glanced at him after the first cupcake, feather-light under clouds of sweet icing, had gone into the box. She wasn’t going to pry if it made him uncomfortable, but she wished there was something she could do or say to help. Tom’s very sensible voice spoke again in her brain—Why are you always wasting energy taking on problems that aren’t yours? Yes, yes, he was right. But…

  “Would you like a chocolate cupcake for yourself right now? On the house?”

  “I’d…” He frowned, seeming to deliberate. “No. No, thanks.”

  As if he were tempted, but shouldn’t. Diabetic maybe? With a bod like that he certainly couldn’t be concerned about losing weight. Whomever’s birthday he was celebrating with cupcakes he didn’t care for must have power over him. Though he didn’t look like the kind of man a woman could dominate.

  Listen to her. She knew nothing about this guy and was already inventing an overbearing girlfriend and hating her. It could just as easily be true that his woman was a total sweetheart and he was a rat bastard who’d done her wrong. Cupcakes could be his way of trying to squirm back into her good graces.

  “I’m Angela by the way.” She put the fourth cupcake in the box.

  “Oh.” He looked confused. Then wary again. “Uh, hi.”

  Not going to tell her his name apparently. Angela put cupcakes five and six in the box, slighted by the rejection. “You live around here?”

  “Not far.”

  She glanced pointedly at the helmet, feeling reckless now. The guy didn’t want to talk to her? Too bad. She wanted to talk to him. And until he got what he’d come in for, he was her prisoner. “You ride a lot? On all these hills? Our neighborhood has some of the city’s worst.”

  “Biking clears my head.”

  Cleared his head. That was progress. Practically an intimate confession. “Your head needed clearing today?”

  He blinked, eyes losing their blankness and fixing on her vividly. “Something like that.”

  The old sputtering bulb inside her started a steady glow. This man was truly delicious. His combination of ultramacho body and vulnerable demeanor…

  Apparently she was a sucker for a fixer-upper.

  Her demigod gave the boxed cupcakes a pointed glance.

  Right. She started to close the lid, then hesitated. White frosting, white cake, white box, bleah. “Would you like these gift-wrapped?”

  “No, I’ll just take them.”

  She frowned. For whatever reason she wanted to give him something with color. “Even a ribbon?”

  “No, not a ribbon, nothing. It’s fine as is.” He spoke calmly, wasn’t impatient, which gave her courage to look up again.

  Their eyes met and held, and her heart gave a lurch of sympathy and, yes, attraction. He looked half-broken, and even more masculine for the pain.

  He looked away first; Angela picked up the box, cheeks flushing. The last man she’d been instantly drawn to like this was Tom, and look what poison he’d turned out to be. Though Tom’s look had been cocky, sexual, beckoning. The haunted look in this man’s eyes was entirely different. And much more powerful.

  “I’ll be right back.” She fled to the back of the shop, grabbed one of the overflow chocolate-on-chocolate cupcakes, wrapped it in bright red paper and tucked it neatly in the center of the box, which she tied with a length of rainbow ribbon.

  Maybe he wouldn’t appreciate the gesture. Maybe she was spoiling some birthday surprise for a woman he loved, maybe he’d come back furious and cause a scene. Maybe. But this guy was miserable, and he wasn’t a white-cake eater, and Angela wanted to give him something that might also make him smile.

  More than that, after he left her shop, got on his bike and pedaled away, she wanted him to have something that would remind him of her.

  2

  DANIEL FLYNN climbed the newly carpeted stairs to his second-floor apartment, carrying his bike in one hand, his riding bag with the box of cupcakes in the other. At the landing, he rolled his eyes at the new gold and ivory cherub figurines his landlord apparently decided would look good on the windowsill, and kept climbing, legs leaden and shaky after his thirty-mile ride on Seattle’s hilly streets. A longer ride than usual, but he’d been in one of his self-punishing moods, trying to use physical pain to squelch the emotional.

  Today was Kate’s birthday, exactly two months before his. She would have been twenty-nine. She would have completed her first year of graduate school and be into her second. They would have been getting married in six months, right after she graduated.

  Over and over, around and around, like a merry-go-round made of spikes, the emotions tore into him as they had for the past year. Granted, in the last few months there had been minutes, then hours, then finally whole days that were easier here and there, and the intensity of the pain had lessened on the whole, but significant occasions like today brought his Kate roaring back, her image, spirit, even her scent…her. How could he ever get over someone who was so much a part of him? The final stage of grief was supposed to be acceptance. Did that mean at some point a loss like this would be okay with him? Impossible. Kate had become the anchor of his world from the moment he met her when they were both at Highland Park High School outside Chicago. They’d started dating almost immediately, and in her he’d found all the love and stability his feuding parents were too busy to remember he needed. Without her, he would have taken a seriously self-destructive turn in order to cope.

  Outside the bachelor apartment he shared with his coworker, Jake, he set the bike down, grimacing at the volume of music coming through the door. Coldplay. Not his favorite. He fumbled in the zipped pocket of his bag for his key, feeling the sharp corner of the bakery box inside. Kate’s weakness, white cupcakes with white frosting, the more sugary the better. Daniel had always been a chocolate guy. Funny how the woman at the store guessed that. She’d seemed very perceptive. Her eyes—beautiful eyes, brown and widely spaced, friendly and bright—had seemed to peer right inside him.

  Daniel’s fingers touched the key, closed around it and held still. She’d had nice hair, too, brown with reddish tints, cascading and shiny, falling from a widow’s peak at the crown of her wide, pale forehead. Odd how he remembered her so vividly. The quick smile, the cheerful energy she brought to her movements…

  He drew out the key abruptly and jammed it into the lock. Today, he’d honor Kate’s memory by eating the treats she loved. Earlier he’d also bought the ingredients for her favorite meal: rib-eye steak, creamed spinach and brown and wild rices mixed together, though right now the idea of eating made his stomach churn. Small wonder he’d dropped nearly ten pounds in the past year and a half.

  Inside, he wheeled his bike through their front hallway into his bedroom and leaned it against the wall, which was already marred with scuff marks from previous handlebar encounters. He dug out the cupcake box from his bag, and yanked his empty water bottle from its cage on the bike, feeling restless, grimy and stuck in a cage himself, from which the ride had liberated him only temporarily. The small apartment with gray carpet and his room with bare, white walls—his own fault for not hanging pictures—didn’t help.
>
  A shower got rid of the grime, but didn’t help his mood. Pounding on Jake’s door quieted the music, but underscored the painful fact: some days he just had to get through. Luckily Jake understood. The two men had met at Slatewood International, where they designed software to stay ahead of increasingly sophisticated hackers, and had formed a fast friendship. After Kate’s accident, Jake had been solid, taking Daniel in, and developing an uncanny sense of when to kid him out of a scowl and when to back off, when to prod him into talking and when to leave him alone.

  Sometimes Daniel felt he owed Jake his sanity—however much of it he still had left. Kate would approve. Sort of. She and Jake got along like fire and ice. She thought Jake was a shallow butthead; he thought Kate was an uptight bitch. Daniel had sat in the middle, rolling his eyes at both of them.

  In the kitchen, he pulled the steak out of the refrigerator to warm up, and put the brown-and-wild rice mixture on the stove to cook. Daniel was a bread man, always preferred it to rice or potatoes, preferably fresh the way it had looked at Angela’s bakery, thick slices spread with softened butter.

  Did she get up early every morning and make it herself? He pictured her, drawn-back hair emphasizing her heart-shaped face, flour dusting her high cheekbones, room warm with the fresh, yeasty smell of dough.

  But tonight, for Kate, he’d eat rice.

  With leaden movements, he pulled down the bottle of her favorite Washington State cabernet from Donedei vineyards, got out the fancy corkscrew she’d bought him and hesitated. Before he met Kate, he’d been a beer guy, and reverted to being one after her death, since he associated wine so strongly with their relationship.

  The bottle went back up on the shelf for another, easier day. Too many triggers. Fine line between honoring her memory and needlessly torturing himself. Kate of all people would understand. He opened the refrigerator, grabbed out a Mack & Jack’s Serengeti Wheat beer and felt himself relax a little.

  “Hey.” Jake ambled into the kitchen and gestured at the steak. “Nice piece of meat. What’s the occasion?”

  “Kate’s birthday.” He answered automatically, robotically. “Her favorite meal.”

  “Oh. Yeah, um. Okay.” Frowning, he grabbed a beer, popped off the top and took a long swig. “So. How are you doing on all that?”

  Daniel took a long swig himself, wanting to laugh at the perfect sitcom moment. Two guys drinking beer, trying to talk about emotions. “Okay.”

  “You’re celebrating her birthday tonight.” His tone made it clear he thought the idea was beyond moronic. Jake was not exactly the sentimental type. “You gonna eat that all yourself?”

  Daniel shrugged. “Unlikely.”

  “Excellent.” Jake pulled up a chair to the table in their bland kitchen, gray on white on black. “You have yourself a dinner date.”

  “I guess I do.” Not exactly his plan, but now that Jake was here, the idea of sitting alone miserably thinking about Kate felt like a direct route to unnecessary pain, pain he was tired of having to battle.

  “I met this girl last night.”

  “Yeah?” Daniel got up and grabbed a bag of pretzel twists from the counter, brought it back to the table. Jake had a genius for interacting with the opposite sex. Women found his puppy-dog dark eyes brimming with humor and short stocky body unthreatening. Before they knew it, he’d literally charmed the pants off of them. Few relationships lasted longer than a month or two, but Jake kept trying, claiming he’d eventually stumble over the great love his parents had. “How come you slept here last night, you strike out?”

  “She’s not for me.” Jake tipped his beer bottle toward Daniel. “Your type. Brainy, petite, high-energy.”

  Daniel’s grin faded abruptly. “You know I can’t—”

  “Yes, I know.” He rolled his eyes and made his fingers “talk” like a sock puppet. “You promised Kate you wouldn’t date until your wedding date, which, after a year and a half of celibacy is still six months away.”

  “Jake…” Daniel warned.

  Jake put down his hand. “Cruel and unusual punishment.”

  “Punishment.” Daniel chuckled bitterly, shaking his head. He and Kate had been looking toward their wedding day for so long, planning, dreaming, fantasizing. How could Daniel even think about another woman before that date had passed?

  Okay, maybe he could think about other women. Once in a while. Like now, when Angela’s luminous face had come into his head again. “You don’t understand.”

  “Why wouldn’t she leave it to you to decide when you were ready to move on? Wouldn’t you know better than she would?”

  Daniel narrowed his eyes, tamping down the instant flash of temper. “Lay off Kate.”

  “Someone needs to say this shit, Daniel. She had you by the testicles while she was alive, now you’re moping around like you buried your balls with her.” He leaned forward, eyes earnest, dark hair falling forward, in spite of the gel he tried to keep it combed back with. “Dig ’em up, dude! Start living again! Go out with a woman, or two, or three. You’re not being unfaithful, Kate is gone.”

  “I know she’s gone.” Daniel spoke through his teeth. “I feel it every day.”

  “Because you haven’t tried to get past it.”

  Anger rose so fiercely Daniel had to white-knuckle his beer to keep from punching Jake in the mouth. “What the hell do you know about it?”

  “Everything.”

  His answer shocked some of Daniel’s anger out of him. “How?”

  “My high school girlfriend. We dated three years. Aneurism. She was there—” he snapped his fingers “—then she wasn’t. But you know what? That was her life ending. Mine went on.”

  “So you climbed on top of the next babe who came along and that fixed everything?”

  “Yes, I did and no, it didn’t. But dating after her death didn’t mean I never loved her or that I didn’t miss her. I still do sometimes. But I sure as hell didn’t serve some bullshit two-year sentence crying over my dick in my own hand.”

  “Shut the f—”

  “I’m telling you, you bury yourself in that shit, your life might as well be over, too.”

  “Stop.” Daniel stood abruptly, chair scraping over the hardwood floor.

  “Okay.” Jake held up both hands. “Okay. Calm down.”

  “Don’t ever say that crap about Kate again.”

  “Okay. I was out of line. I was right, but I was out of line.”

  Daniel stayed where he was, trying to get his breathing under control. Most of the time he believed strongly that people could think and say what they wanted, it was no skin off his ass. But Jake’s words had cut deep. “You want this steak or not?”

  “Sure, man.” Jake nodded. “Sure. You need any help?”

  “No.” He turned to the stove and started a pan heating. By the time the steak was ready to be turned, he’d calmed down some. After they’d finished it—Daniel had more appetite than he expected, and the steak was damn good—he was tired of Jake’s apologetically cheerful conversation, and just wanted to retreat to his room and reconnect with Kate over the cupcakes.

  “I’m going out with Mark tonight. You want to come?”

  “No, thanks.” Daniel took his plate to the dishwasher.

  “Do you good. Take your mind off the bad stuff.”

  “I’m staying in.”

  Jake shrugged. “Okay. Your choice.”

  “Yeah, how about that.”

  Jake chuckled. “I won’t say another word.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “Not tonight anyway.” He put his own plate in the dishwasher and slapped Daniel on the back. “It gets better.”

  “So I hear.”

  “And it will get better a lot faster if you—” He saw the look on Daniel’s face and backed up, hands lifted again. “Right. I’m going. I’m gone.”

  A few minutes later the kitchen was clean, the front door closed behind Jake. Daniel went into his room with the cupcakes and put on Kate’s favorite C
D, Little Earthquakes by Tori Amos.

  The music filled the room, poignant and throaty, gut-wrenchingly evocative. Daniel drifted back toward the desk, throat thickening, remembering Kate singing along, horribly out of tune, which had grated on his nerves. The memory seemed so endearing now. In a trance, he carefully untied the burgundy and gold ribbons he hadn’t wanted on the box and lifted the lid.

  What the—

  Chocolate. There was a chocolate cupcake nestled in red paper in the center of the white ones he’d asked for, devil amidst the angels. Angela. Her face rose in his mind again, pretty mouth curved in a smile, eyes brimming with mischief as she handed him the box after her mysterious disappearance into the back room.

  The tiniest burst of light skittered through his chest. He found himself half smiling. Angela had guessed he was a chocolate guy, and made sure he got what she was so sure he’d like. The gesture was a little weird. But also…oddly sweet.

  The light in his chest burst again. She’d been tall, as he remembered. Maybe five-seven or five-eight. Kate had been tiny, five-three to his six feet two inches, but with wiry strength that continually astounded him. Any and all obstacles buckled from the sheer force of Kate’s determination.

  And she’d been determined he not date until their wedding day had passed. Her last wish, whispered as her young, promising life left her. Daniel had been so devastated he would have promised her anything.

  He pulled up his desk chair and sat, rubbing his hands on his jean-clad thighs. He could smell the chocolate, wafting up like temptation from the innocent vanilla surrounding it.

  His finger swiped through rich, dark frosting, lifted it to his mouth.

  Ohh, man. Real chocolate, killer chocolate. Bitter and sweet, with a tang of some kind—sour cream?

  He tried the white frosting.

  Mmm. Cleanly sweet with an appealing vanilla-marshmallow flavor. Fresh, real ingredients there, too.

  His hand went back down on his thigh. He pictured Kate in the hospital, head raised painfully toward him, her pretty features bruised, contorting with the effort to speak. No other women until after our wedding day. Please. Do that for me. And for you. For us…