Baked with Love

by Erin Wright

  As soon as the words left his mouth, she could tell he regretted them. Naturally, Cady decided to needle him over it, because why not?

  “Plenty of things, eh?” she repeated. “Care to name any?”

  “Nope!” He popped the “p” when he said it, and then flashed her a charming grin. “I prefer to keep my secrets. Makes me more of a mystery to the ladies.” He waggled his eyebrows at that and she bust out laughing.

  Instead of smiling or laughing in return, though, he began pulling his shirt away from his chest and flapping it, his face a bit flushed. “Does it seem hot in here to you?” he asked, his voice a bit…croaky.

  “Hot?” She looked around the storefront as if a thermometer was going to pop up out of nowhere and tell her what the temperature was in the room. “I don’t think so, but I also tend to run cold. Not enough body here to retain body heat.” She gestured to her small figure with a wry smile. “I’m used to adding on the layers, though. Do you want me to prop open the front door and let a cross-breeze through?”

  “Sure, thanks,” he said, turning away from her and pulling his flannel shirt off, leaving just his thin t-shirt behind.

  After finding a loose brick to prop the front door open with, Cady headed back into the storefront. She’d ask Gage how she could best help, and—

  She froze.

  Gage’s back was turned to her as he rifled through the items from the hardware store, looking for something, muttering under his breath, but she couldn’t hear what he was saying because it turned out that she couldn’t hear anything at all over the roaring in her ears.

  He’d not only stripped off his flannel shirt, he’d stripped off his t-shirt too, leaving nothing behind but acres of skin. And muscles. Muscles everywhere.

  So big. He was so. big. He could crush her with his little pinky. He could squash her flat. He could sit on her and not even notice there was a lump under his ass. Not because he was fat – oh hell no. Not that. She could describe him using a whole lot of adjectives, but fat was nowhere on that list.

  The oh-too-familiar waves of panic began washing over her at the sight. He was big – way too big – and what if he decided that he wanted to hurt her? She couldn’t stop him. She could no more stop him than she could stop the waves rolling up from the ocean.

  But there, just on the edges, tinging her panic was…lust?

  Surely not lust.

  She couldn’t lust after Gage.

  She couldn’t lust after anyone at all, honestly, but especially not after Gage. He was too big. Too terrifyingly gigantic. If she ever managed to find someone to date – if that not-so-small miracle ever occurred – he would have to be skinny as a rail. Preferably short, too. Shorter than her, if she could manage to find such a minuscule being, but she’d be willing to go as tall as six inches over her five-foot-nothin’ height if he was skinny enough.

  But Gage was over a foot taller than her and probably a foot wider and every bit of him was muscles and valleys and lightly tanned skin…

  “Did you bring in the bag with the clamps?” Gage asked, turning towards her, running his hand through his hair in exasperation.

  “I’m…I’m pretty sure,” she said, and this time, it was her turn to have a croaky voice.

  Which, obviously, when Gage’d had a croaky voice, it wasn’t the same reason why she was now having one because that’d imply that he liked her and that, more than anything else, absolutely could not be true.

  She wouldn’t let it be.

  Some disasters simply couldn’t be.

  Chapter 14

  Gage

  It was Day Two of his days off for the week, or as he had begun to call it, Hell on Earth.

  Not because he was bored. No, that definitely wasn’t it. He felt many a thing yesterday, but boredom was not amongst them.

  How was it that Gage could get (almost) any woman he wanted eating out of his hand (sometimes quite literally) without breaking into a sweat, but one tiny Cady Walcott was completely immune to his charms?

  It just wasn’t fair, honestly.

  Maybe it was because it’d been so long since he’d tried to charm a woman. During culinary arts school, business school, and then working at the Sweet Spot bakery for two years to fulfill the requirements set out by his grandparents before he could take over their bakery, he’d been the guy. Every waitress (and half the waiters) flirted with him. He was well liked, and he had no end to the number of women he could convince to join him in bed when he put a mind to it.

  Then he’d moved up to Long Valley and taken over the bakery and…the last four years just passed by in a blur of cooking and paying bills and dealing with high schoolers who didn’t have a clue what it meant to work, and trying to dodge the latest matchmaking attempts from his meddling sister, and so maybe, somewhere in there, he’d forgotten how to be attractive to women.

  He pushed his glasses up the brim of his nose absentmindedly.

  Hey, maybe it was the glasses. He pulled them off and looked at them for a moment. Were they Woman Repellant?

  He shoved the glasses back on with a groan. If Cady was so shallow that she wouldn’t date him because of his glasses, then he didn’t want her anyway.

  But he knew why Cady wasn’t even bothering to look his way. She’d already told him exactly why it was that she didn’t trust any man over the age of 12. But he somehow naïvely believed that this would only apply if she were worried about the guy in question raping her, and surely, surely by now she’d learned to trust him.

  Right?

  Well, here went nothing. Another day of working beside Cady, listening to her laugh, watching her wrinkle her nose up as she thought, his palms itching with the desire to tuck the curly wisps of her hair behind her ears as they flew around her face…

  And then not touching her at all.

  Like he said, Hell on Earth, Day Two.

  He pushed his way through the glass door of the smoothie shop, and forced out a cheerful, “Good morning!”

  Which, he later reflected, it was a damn good thing he’d said good morning before he saw her, because as soon as he did…

  All breathing stopped. All speaking stopped.

  How was it that women thought that they were ugly when they’d just thrown their hair up into a messy bun and pulled on a pair of old, ripped jeans and a tank top? Because Gage was sure of one thing if he was sure of anything at all, and that was in that moment, Cady probably thought no guy would look at her twice, and that she was happy about this fact. She wanted to be guy proof.

  But those tears in her jeans – not expensively destroyed jeans that cost $200 down at the Boise Mall, but rips and holes that came from doing actual, honest-to-God work in them – showed small patches of skin, covering more than they revealed but his imagination was happy to supply the missing pieces and…

  Whoa, boy. Down. Cady would appreciate you touching her like she’d appreciate licking an electric fence set to high.

  “Hey, Gage!” Cady called out cheerfully, turning carefully on the ladder, a small paint can in one hand and a brush in the other. She had a careless streak of white paint across her nose and Gage’s thumbs itched to rub it off.

  Casually, he shoved his hands into his back pockets.

  “You’re already hard at work,” he observed, and was thrilled to hear his voice coming out all normal and shit, like he wasn’t fighting a boner of monstrous proportions in that moment.

  Not bad, Gage. Not bad at all.

  He’d woken up at four that morning – after years of early mornings, his body refused to get on board with the idea that sleeping in was a possibility on his days off – and had forced himself to clean out his fridge, scrub his kitchen floors, and do a load of laundry, all before coming to the Smoothie Queen. No reason to act anxious and excited to please. He could play it cool, even if it killed him.

  Which it just might.

  All of this meant that he was arriving at the Smoothie Queen at the insanely late hour of 8:30. He was rather prou
d of himself for lasting that long. There at the end, it’d either been drive to the Smoothie Queen and get to work, or start arranging his canned food alphabetically, and he still hadn’t decided if tuna fish should go under T or F—

  “I’m a morning person,” Cady said with a shrug, jerking him back to the present. “When I get out of bed, that is,” she said under her breath.

  Gage’s eyebrows hit his hairline at that.

  When she gets out of bed? Does she normally not get out of bed? She’s been coming down here to work every day. Is that something she—

  Even as he scrambled to put the pieces together, her face turned a brilliant red and she waved her paintbrush dismissively. “I mean, of course I get out of bed!” she said gaily, and much too loudly. “Every day!”

  Curiouser and curiouser…

  But in the end, Gage decided to swallow his questions and let her think that he hadn’t noticed her slip of the tongue. He’d figure out a way to casually ask her about it later.

  Of course, how to casually bring up a topic like that – Do you regularly not get out of bed? Are you depressed? Do you have suicidal thoughts? – was a whole different ball of wax.

  Well, he’d let Future Gage figure that one out.

  “You’re making the trim look damn good,” he said, bluntly changing the subject and putting them both out of their misery. Looking relieved, she nodded enthusiastically.

  “It’s a shame to paint real wood,” she said with a sigh, “but it’s been so dinged up and beat up over the years, what with the water damage and…I don’t even know. It looks like chew marks?” She laughed again. Her laugh…he could listen to it all day. “But unless mice have learned how to crawl across the ceiling, I’m pretty sure it isn’t teeth marks. But whatever it is, I figured some smoothing over with wood putty and then painting would hide the sins, as my dad used to say.”

  Gage turned back to his workbench where he’d left his tools the day before. Not staring up the ladder at Cady’s ass was probably a real good idea right about then. “You don’t talk about your parents much,” he said as he began to put his workbench into some semblance of order. “Do they live in Boise?”

  It was quiet for a long heartbeat, and then—

  “Yes.”

  Except her voice was flat and hard when she said it, and surprised by the sudden change in emotions, Gage’s head whipped up to look at her. That “Yes” sounded like Old Cady – the one he’d first met – and he hadn’t seen that version of Cady in so long, he’d almost forgotten what she sounded like.

  But Cady was staring intently at the wood trim she was painting, her brush moving back and forth as she worked her way down the wall.

  Still, she said nothing more, and Gage realized that he’d inadvertently stumbled into No-Go Land. She climbed carefully down the ladder, moved it over several feet, and climbed back up. Still not another word.

  One thing about Cady – you always know where you stand with her. Playacting is not her strong suit.

  “Wanna listen to some music?” he finally asked in the strained silence. Anything to create some noise between them.

  “Oh. Sure,” Cady said, but he could tell her mind wasn’t on the question. “I have a radio over in the corner that you can pair with your phone if you want.”

  Gage put on some Blake Shelton – everything was better with Blake in the house – and got to work on recreating the beautifully carved counter so he could cut out the damaged part and slide in the new. If he did it right, no one would ever know the difference.

  Making an item as beautiful and perfect as it’d been before it was broken…there was something truly satisfying about that.

  If only Cady would let him help her, too.

  Chapter 15

  Cady

  It was probably the fact that she was up near the ceiling and thus breathing in all of the paint and lacquer fumes that had drifted upward, but she felt lightheaded, and…just off, somehow. She and Gage had been working in companionable silence for a while now, broken only by that dreadful country twang that he somehow called music, and the roar of the table saw as he ran boards through it.

  It had been…nice. Other than the dreadful music, of course, but she didn’t think that she could complain about her free labor’s horrendous choice in music. Listening to songs about a guy’s dog running away was the least she could do after all of Gage’s help.

  Food. I need food.

  “Ready for me to pay you back for the welcome-to-Sawyer dinner?” she asked, already eagerly climbing down the ladder. Her stomach had begun its low rumble and she was afraid it’d reach cacophony levels if she held off eating for much longer. “I still haven’t made it down to the diner – Betty’s, right? – and I figure lunch on me is a good way to say thanks for your help today.”

  Gage pulled his safety glasses off and wiped at his face and hair, sending a shower of sawdust into the air. They both coughed and hacked from it, until Gage could finally get out, “Are you sure you wanna go out into public with me?”

  She laughed, scrubbing at her cheek with the back of her hand. “I’m sure I look just as awful,” she said dryly. “I’m getting paint into places I didn’t even know I had. If you’re willing to be seen in public with me, I’m willing to be seen with you. Let me go clean out my paintbrush and put a lid on the can, and I’ll be ready to go.”

  She scrubbed up in the big utility sink in the back, listening to the water run in the bathroom as Gage did his best to clean up too. She knew, of course, that there was no mirror in the bathroom – only a giant light spot on the wall where the old one used to hang – but he’d at least be able to get most of the sawdust off in the sink. Probably.

  He came out of the bathroom, his hair wet and glistening – he’d apparently chosen to dunk his head in the sink – and most of his face was clean, except…

  “Hold on, you’ve got this big stripe right here,” she said, gesturing vaguely to her cheek. He scrubbed at his cheek. “No, the other side.” He switched cheeks. “Now you’ve got a clean spot in the middle of the dirty spot,” she said, laughing. “C’mon.”

  She slipped past him into the bathroom and wet a paper towel as he obediently pulled his glasses off. She dabbed at his face, swiping and wiping and then throwing away the paper towel and starting over again when it got too ragged and dirty to use. His face was a warm, stubbled world under her fingertips and she felt her own face warming up as she scrubbed away.

  She kept her eyes glued to his square jaw, though, using her peripheral vision to clean the rest of his face. What if she looked up and caught his gaze? She couldn’t look him in the eye. She was too close to him.

  Finally, everything she could spot out of the corner of her eye had been cleaned and she stepped back with a forced laugh. “There, you look better,” she pronounced, her gaze hovering vaguely to the left of his head.

  “Okay, but now it’s my turn,” he said, shoving his glasses back on and turning the tap on again, grabbing a paper towel and dipping it underneath the stream of water.

  She sucked in a breath and held it, hoping that if she just didn’t breathe ever again, she could keep from breathing in his smell – which somehow still reminded her of bread and yeast and sugar, even after two days of him not baking anything – and thus keep from making a fool out of herself and she absolutely, positively did not like him because…because…

  Well, because.

  He gently took her chin into his calloused, large fingers, turning her face this way and that, wiping gently with the towel, more gently than a guy of his size should be able to wield a paper towel. She waited for the ever-present panic to well up inside of her and smother her; to roll over her in dark waves and keep her from breathing or thinking but only running, except…

  The panic didn’t come.

  Here she was with a guy – a huge, muscular guy – standing in the doorway of a tiny bathroom, blocking her in, in the back of a building that was otherwise empty, and she should be terrified b
ut…she wasn’t?

  “There,” he said softly, and then his fingers disappeared from her chin and she heard the wet paper towel drop into the trash. “The paint is all gone.”

  Seemingly of their own accord – because Cady knew better than to open up her eyes while standing this close to a guy – her eyes fluttered open and she realized that she was just inches away from Gage and he was looking down at her and even if there wasn’t lust in her eyes and she had no idea if there was because she was all turned around inside, and up was down, and right was left—

  Breathe, Cady—

  But even if there wasn’t lust in her eyes, there was in his. She hadn’t had much experience having a guy look at her like…like this, but even ignorant, naïve Cady knew what that look meant.

  It meant trouble.

  Big, fat, inescapable trouble.

  “Ready to go?” Her voice hit a painfully high note with that last vowel, and then she was practically sprinting out of the store and onto the street…

  Where she came to a dead stop and with a painful sigh, she turned around. Purse. She needed her purse if she was going to pay for this lunch.

  Gage had stopped just inside of the door and was waiting quietly for her as she came bustling back in, acting to all the world – or at least to the Gage Dyers of the world – as if absolutely, positively not a thing was wrong.

  “Purse!” she said with a forced laugh, snagging it out from underneath the counter, blowing all of the sawdust off the top, and slinging it over her shoulder.

  “Ready to go?” she asked again, but this time, oh thank the heavens above, her voice didn’t crack like a thirteen-year-old boy just hitting puberty.

  “Sure,” Gage said, but his normally easy-going personality seemed to be missing. For the first time since she’d met him, he seemed awkward around her.

  It was bright outside, the mid-May sunshine bouncing off every window and car on the street.