‘What? No … Rhonda, what the …’ Cohen looked flabbergasted.
‘My point exactly, Dr Cohen.’ She pointed at him with the bottle still in her hand. ‘You’ve got the whole town talking. You might be used to that kind of thing, but your girl isn’t. So, while they’re talking, boss, you’d better be listening.’
Rhonda’s words reverberated through his head the rest of the afternoon, and well into suppertime with Bryce. It never occurred to him that he might have to protect Paige from the unruly side of the gossiping crowd. Before now, he had never said or done anything to be on that side of them. But now that it had been brought to his attention, there was nothing he wanted to do more than just that – protect her.
People were talking. They always would. But were their words, regardless of the truth in them, affecting Paige? Did she listen to them, and did they bother her? He was well aware that Paige Henley was a strong, independent woman who didn’t need a bodyguard.
He planned to mention it, anyway, just as a precaution. Just so she would know he was there for her if she needed him. He kind of liked the idea of her needing him.
‘Are you ready, Dad?’ Bryce’s voice carried from the top of the stairs just before he bounded down them two at a time. ‘I’m going to go get Jazz.’
‘Jazz?’
‘Yeah, Jazz. Cute brindle boxer with an attitude, remember?’ He made motions with his hands, showing Cohen approximately how big the dog was.
‘I know who she is, smart guy. I’m asking why you’re going to get her.’ Cohen tucked his wallet in his jeans pocket.
‘Because she’s coming with us to Paige’s house.’ The boy seemed genuinely confused by the whole conversation.
‘Did Paige say that was okay?’
‘Paige knows we’re a package deal, Dad.’ Bryce bolted out the back door toward the clinic without another word.
Cohen couldn’t argue with that kind of logic, and he doubted Paige would, either. He was starting to think Bryce could get away with just about anything in Paige’s eyes. Within reason. He’d wrangled her into helping him with his school project, called her old, and was now showing up with a seventy-five-pound dog without notice. It was a dog that Paige had already hijacked once from his possession of her own accord, mind you, but Jazz was coming with them without notice, nonetheless. Bryce’s bond with Paige made Cohen’s chest tighten with the sentiment.
The boy was back in a flash, Jazz trotting along happily beside him, ready and raring to go.
‘Has she been fed?’ Cohen asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Been given her medication?’
‘Yes, Dad.’ Bryce let out an exaggerated sigh. ‘Let’s just go, okay?’
‘All right, all right.’ He waved a hand. ‘Lead the way with your trusty mutt.’
Bryce shook his head, leading the dog back outside with him while Cohen closed the door. ‘Did you hear that?’ Bryce pretended to whisper to the dog. ‘He called you a mutt. Don’t worry, we’ll pour kibble in his shoes later on to retaliate.’
Jazz looked far too keen about the idea.
From the street, Cohen could see the soft glow of light coming from Paige’s upper apartment windows. The curtains were pulled wide and it occurred to him what an amazing view she must have from there first thing in the morning with the sun just coming up as she took her first sips of coffee. He rang the doorbell and waited. Jazz sat and waited, too, but her tail was wagging at super speed. She knew exactly where she was.
When the door opened and Paige swung it wide, Jazz ambled to her, her entire backend wagging from side to side with excitement. Paige crouched down, pulling the dog in for a hug.
‘Jazzy girl! What a pleasant surprise!’ Paige’s gaze raised to meet Cohen and Bryce after Jazz got in a lick of her chin. ‘Oh, hey. Jazz brought you guys along with her, did she?’
Bryce gave his father a levelled look. ‘Told you.’
Paige arched a brow as she held the dog in place. ‘Do I want to know?’
‘Nah,’ Cohen replied. ‘He was right and I was wrong. That’s all you need to know.’
Bryce leaned in toward Paige. ‘It happens more than he’ll admit to.’
Cohen let his head lull forward, feigning defeat as Paige grinned. She unclipped Jazz’s leash and let her clamber up the stairs, letting her lead the way.
‘Come on.’ She followed closely behind Jazz.
Upstairs, the scent of warm cake filled the air. Combined with the soft lighting in the living room and the candle that was lit in the middle of the coffee table, Cohen wasn’t sure he’d ever experienced a more welcoming scene.
‘Since I know there’s a certain dog here that’s going to want to taste test every cupcake that comes out of the oven, and a certain doctor who’s going to frown upon it to the hundredth degree, I made sure I was prepared.’ Paige ducked under the cabinet beneath the sink and pulled out a wrapped Dentabone treat. ‘Come here, Jazzy girl.’
Once again, Bryce leaned over to Cohen and whispered, ‘Told you.’ Cohen gave his son a crooked smile. The kid was good, he would give him that.
Paige was busy unwrapping the bone, and once she handed it over to Jazz, the dog held it gingerly between her teeth and scampered off, finding a quiet spot on the throw rug in the living room where she would be uninterrupted to gnaw on her new treat.
‘I didn’t figure you wanted dog hair in the cupcake batter,’ Paige explained, shrugging. ‘But I didn’t want her to feel left out.’
‘That was very sweet of you.’
Bryce let out an audible groan. He didn’t say it outright, but Cohen heard him loud and clear. Dad, you’re doing it again.
Sorry, son, but if that was flirting, you’re going to have to deal with it.
Instead of acknowledging his son’s displeasure, Cohen clapped his hands together. ‘Okay, Paige, you’re the boss. Tell us what you need us to do.’
Paige’s eyes shone brightly. ‘We’ll get to that, but first, I have something for you. Well, both of you.’
‘Is that so?’ Cohen was a little worried she was going to try to feed them a sugar-laden dessert before getting down to work, in which case he’d probably be so stuffed by the end of it he wouldn’t want to decorate cupcakes and Bryce would be the definition of an impending sugar crash, but he couldn’t voice his concerns. He didn’t want to be the reason for that brightness in her sapphire eyes to dull.
She whirled around to the kitchen island, where he noticed for the first time that tea towels were spread over something. Cupcakes, he assumed. But why would they be for him and Bryce?
Paige gripped the edge of the towels. ‘I got the flowers you guys sent me, and I didn’t know how to say thank you for being so thoughtful,’ she stated, a shaky quality edging its way into her voice. ‘So, I thought I’d make you a little bouquet of my own.’ She pulled the tea towels away in one smooth move.
If that was a little bouquet, Cohen didn’t understand the meaning of the word. On the countertop, she had arranged forty or fifty cupcakes of various colors to depict flowers and stems. Four daisy-like flowers, with pink centers and vanilla petals, were created on the countertop canvas, with long, green stems.
‘Thank you for the roses,’ Paige added shyly. ‘Both of you. They’re beautiful.’ She pointed toward the end table near the sofa where the bouquet had been tucked into a crystal vase, displayed where she could see it at almost any angle in the apartment.
‘We sent you roses?’ Bryce piped up, his forehead crinkled.
‘I sent roses,’ Cohen corrected. ‘And may have mentioned your name on the card.’ Something he was starting to regret quickly.
Another groan escaped Bryce’s mouth. ‘Dad, roses? Really? You could have done something more manly.’ Bryce turned to Paige, a very forced-looking, sincere expression on his face. ‘Don’t worry, Paige, I’ll have a talk with him.’
Paige’s eyes grew wide right before she began to laugh, tears brimming at the corners of her eyes. Cohen, on the oth
er hand, put his head in his hands, shaking with the amusement he tried to contain.
‘You never cease to amaze me, Bryce,’ he mumbled.
‘You know what amazes me?’ his son countered. ‘Paige’s flowers. These daisies are the bomb.’
‘Thank you, Bryce,’ Paige managed to utter. ‘And don’t worry, Cohen, I thought your roses were very sweet.’ She winked at him. ‘The bomb, even.’
Bryce high-fived her on her superb use of teenage slang, making Cohen’s chest constrict even tighter. Just when he thought he was falling for Paige, he saw the effortless way she interacted with his son and he knew he was wrong.
He’d already fallen.
Chapter 17
Paige
Baking and decorating a couple hundred cupcakes was no easy task. Add in a ten-year-old boy with a zest for the sugary things in life, and it was even more daunting. More than once, Cohen had to chastise his son for sneaking a cupcake or two when he thought no one was watching.
‘You can’t eat those! They’re for the fundraiser!’
Bryce held up the half-eaten cake. ‘But, Dad, this one had a piece broken off of it. I’m not eating the profits … it’s quality control!’
Cohen scoffed, leaning in toward Paige and whispering, ‘The kid’s going to be a lawyer, I just know it.’
‘Or a taste tester for Hershey’s,’ she joked.
Bryce perked up. ‘That’s a thing?’
‘Look what you’ve started now.’ Cohen pretended to scold Paige, then turned to Bryce. ‘If your argumentative talents don’t work out, maybe Paige can use your chocolate connoisseur ways in her bakery.’
Paige saw Bryce’s eyes light up and she figured he must like the idea. ‘If law school doesn’t pan out, we’ll work something out.’ She smiled wide as she handed him another bowl of green icing she’d just mixed up.
‘I’m not going to go to law school,’ Bryce announced. ‘I’m going to be a firefighter.’
Paige picked up immediately on the way Cohen’s eyebrows shot up, so she knew this must be a new revelation. ‘That’s a very honorable, respected profession, Bryce.’
‘It’s also very dangerous.’ Cohen’s mouth was a tight line. ‘What brought this on?’
Bryce didn’t look at either of them. Instead, he focused intently on the cupcake he was decorating, placing candy googly eyes on the green frosting to make it resemble a frog. ‘Maybe if Port Landon had more firefighters, we could’ve saved Mrs O’Connor’s house,’ he explained simply. ‘So, I want to be able to help the next time something like that happens.’
While Paige hoped nothing as tragic happened here again, she couldn’t deny the flood of sympathy she felt at the boy’s conviction. Only ten years old and he loved this town just as much as his father did. The dedication they had to their home hit her like a tidal wave. ‘You’ll be an amazing firefighter, Bryce.’ She cast a quick glance at his father, whose eyes had softened at the boy’s explanation, too.
‘For now, how about we help Mrs O’Connor the only way we can?’ he said, clearing his throat. ‘With cupcakes.’
‘With cupcakes,’ Paige repeated, holding one without icing up and tapping it against the one in Cohen’s hand in a Cheers! motion. ‘Lots and lots of cupcakes. As daunting as this is, it’s going pretty well, I’d say.’
‘Agreed.’ Cohen glanced over at the pile of containers waiting to be trudged downstairs to the coolers in the bakery, filled with iced cupcakes of every color, design, and flavor that existed. ‘When you said this could be done in three evenings, I was skeptical. But we’ve made a pretty big dent in only a few hours, and you’ve got them all baked, too.’ Pans of cupcakes sat on every available surface in the kitchen, some long since cooled and others still emitting billows of steam. ‘It’s going to be a breeze getting these done by Sunday.’
‘Your confidence tells me you haven’t frosted enough cupcakes,’ she chuckled, watching as Bryce slid off his bar stool and made his way into the living room to check on Jazz. ‘Keep going, then tell me how you feel in another two hours.’
In three hours, they’d managed to not only bake the remaining cupcakes needed but also decorate almost one hundred cupcakes, and package them up. That was an average of a half a cupcake every minute since they’d started, so Paige was thrilled with their progress. Cohen was right. They could definitely finish this by Sunday if they kept up the momentum. But she understood it was ten o’clock at night, and all three parties had work or school in the morning. She also understood the stress that would occur on Saturday night if they were behind in their bid to complete the decorating phase with only hours to go before the event.
‘Are you getting a bit overwhelmed, Paige?’ Gone was the humor in his tone. Cohen looked sincerely concerned. ‘We’ve got time.’
‘I know.’ She felt silly even admitting her fear of not finishing in time. After all, it was just a cupcake fundraiser for a small community. But it was a fundraiser she had organized with Cohen, and it was her community now, too. She wanted it to go off without a hitch. ‘I’m a bit of a perfectionist, though, in case you didn’t notice.’
‘I couldn’t tell,’ he replied wryly. ‘Don’t worry, we can pull this off.’
‘I keep telling myself that, but there’s that little piece of my brain that keeps telling me something is going to go wrong.’ She hated to admit it, but it was the truth. And she wanted to be honest with him.
Cohen set down the spatula in his hand and took a step away from the counter. He shoved his hand in his jeans pocket and pulled out the familiar stone he’d shown her once before. ‘Sounds like you need this more than I do right now.’
Paige let him drop the smooth sand-colored stone in her hand, letting the warmth of it seep into her palm. Think Pawsitive. She read the words silently on repeat until a faint grin tugged at her mouth. ‘How is it that you know exactly how to make things better with only a few words and a stone?’
‘Impressed? I’ve got other tricks up my sleeve, but I’ll save them for a rainy day.’
‘You never cease to amaze me.’
Cohen leaned forward. ‘Ditto.’
She blushed. She couldn’t help it. Paige gave the stone one last squeeze and held it out to him, but Cohen promptly waved it away.
‘Hold on to it.’ He reached out and closed her fingers around it again. ‘It’s helped me out of a few stressful situations. Let it do the same for you.’
She was floored that he would want her to keep it. She knew it meant so much to him. She knew who had given it to him. ‘Cohen, no, I can’t—’
‘Just till Sunday,’ he interjected. ‘Once the event is done, and you see that everything went fine and all is well, I’ll take it back. Deal?’
She met his eyes. After a moment, she sighed. ‘Deal.’ She tucked the stone into her apron pocket for safekeeping. ‘Maybe we should stop for tonight?’ She had a funny feeling neither Cohen nor Bryce would end the evening themselves. She could see the heaviness in Bryce’s eyelids, and Cohen looked worn out from his long day at the clinic. She felt bad enough taking up their evening as it was, let alone running them ragged on the first night. ‘We can pick up where we left off tomorrow.’
‘You sure?’ Cohen asked.
Before she could answer, Paige heard the bleep of her cellphone, announcing a text. She stepped closer to it, using one finger to touch the screen and display the text. She swallowed down a groan, choosing to ignore it. She didn’t have the time and effort to deal with Alex Livingston at the moment.
‘Everything okay?’ Cohen watched her, eyes narrowed.
‘Oh, fine.’ She waved a hand, dismissing it. ‘Just a text from a friend in New York. I’ll reply later.’
Cohen seemed skeptical, but he dropped it. ‘I can help take these cupcakes out of the tins and put them in containers.’ He already had one of the cupcakes extracted from the tin and was working on the second.
‘You don’t have to do that.’ Paige pulled the plastic container closer and beg
an to use a butter knife to free the cupcakes from the tin.
‘Maybe I don’t have to,’ Cohen said. He reached for the same cupcake she meant to grab, and his hand rested on hers, warm, inviting, and full of an electricity that made her glance up at him, surprised. ‘But I want to,’ he added quietly.
Everything seemed to halt. Paige could no longer hear the clock ticking on the wall, could no longer see the flickering of the candle out of the corner of her eye. The only thing she registered was Cohen – the heat that emanated from his skin against hers, the gleam in his hazel eyes that confirmed he felt the same sizzling connection.
‘Let me be there for you, Paige.’ His words weren’t more than a whisper, but they hit her with the impact of a semi-truck. ‘That’s all I ask.’
Paige stood there, taking in the sight and scent and heat of him. All the things that made up Cohen Beckett. The flecks of gold in his eyes that twinkled with the promise in his words. The light shadow of a beard that covered the contours of his cheeks and jaw. The way his lips pressed together and then released, allowing the seductive warmth of his breath to caress her skin and render her weak while giving her strength at the same time. She found herself nodding before she realized it, too enthralled with letting his words wash over her to consciously comprehend her movements. ‘Okay.’ Her simple answer came out shaky and breathless, but it was an answer, nonetheless. His hand didn’t move. Neither did hers. ‘On one condition.’
She wasn’t sure but it looked like Cohen was holding his breath. ‘Name it.’
Paige swallowed, fighting to even out her pounding heartbeat. This was too much. He was too much. Paige wasn’t sure how they had gotten here, to this moment, but she cherished it more than she could put into words. ‘Don’t change,’ she whispered to him. ‘The man you are – the man I see – doesn’t exist anywhere else but inside you, Cohen. You’re almost too good to be true, and it scares me that that could change.’
The upturn of his mouth wasn’t exactly a grin, but more of an understanding one. ‘Who I am is who you’ve seen since the beginning, Paige. I wouldn’t change a thing. I couldn’t. Not me, not you, and definitely not us.’
The Forget-Me-Not Bakery Page 16
