by Violet Duke
Good times.
The next morning, with three finally calm siblings, a just-acquired clean bill of health from his doctor, and no more than a mild lingering headache, Jake drove back down to Juniper Hills at around ten with grand plans for an excitement-free day finishing up the last of the repair work on the bakery . . . which he bid a quick farewell to the second he saw Emma zipping around in the middle of what looked like some sort of baking meltdown.
While five men and one woman he recognized from around town watched her in visibly concerned silence.
“Ohmigod, ohmigod. We’re not going to finish in time!” cried out Emma while simultaneously popping a miniature cake the size of a softball out of a baking tin with one hand and mixing up more cake batter with the other.
The guys had their hands up in the ready position as if they were waiting for the kickoff in a touch football game, while the woman was slowly inching her way out of the kitchen.
“What’s all this?” Jake walked over to Charlie, the single dad who ran the hardware store in town, since he knew him best. Before Charlie could reply, they both ducked to avoid a blob of bright-blue frosting flying right past their heads.
“The party! The girls! They’re so looking forward to this!” Emma’s frenzied answer to his question sounded strung together by a thin cord of sanity. “Anabelle already told all her little friends that they’re each getting personalized cakes designed to match the Disney princess they’re coming dressed up as!”
Judging by the double-oven door hanging on its hinge, the dozen or so ruined cakes in the sink, and all the bright-colored frosting decorating her hair and the tip of her nose, he was going to assume she’d had a rough morning.
“Honey. Breathe.” He edged over to her like he would a manic wild animal doing somersaults from tree to tree. “Just take a deep breath and tell me what’s going on. From the beginning, so I can catch up.”
The closer he got to her, the more vigorously the five men in the room shook their heads to warn him. The woman just held her hand over her eyes as if expecting a massacre.
Seriously, what the hell happened here this morning?
As if hearing his unspoken question, Emma began talking at a mile-a-minute speed. He got a few face splatters of cake batter and frosting during her animated retelling of the morning’s events surrounding her now-broken double oven, a bunch of supertechnical baking reasons why her big industrial oven and the space-age silver monstrosity she called her pie oven weren’t suited for smaller cakes, and how she was nowhere near finished baking the thirty minicakes she needed to have ready by noon for a five-year-old’s birthday party.
“Sweetheart, I don’t understand. I thought you weren’t cleared to cater yet. Did you get an early building inspection or something?”
“This isn’t a catering job. We’re all doing this for Megan’s boss.”
At her use of “all,” the men’s football-ready hands instantly flattened out to look more like they were being held hostage in a stickup.
Jake looked over at Charlie again questioningly.
“Dennis and his wife are throwing a birthday party for their daughter, Anabelle, and her friends today, but the forty minicakes they’d ordered didn’t get delivered,” explained Charlie.
“That baker should be strung up by her apron strings!” called out Emma.
Whoa.
While it was admittedly cute to hear her still be so adorably PG even when she was viciously pissed, Jake wasn’t foolish enough to smile. He just nodded in agreement instead.
“Dennis was one of our very first friends when we moved into town, Jake, not to mention the one who’d first given Megan a part-time job back when she was barely speaking in public, and also the one who started her on the road to her dream career as a librarian in the first place.”
She did a track-star-worthy hurdle over some broken oven parts to get to what looked like a giant toaster oven to slide another two minicake tins out. “Even if I didn’t owe him literally everything for what he’s done for Megan, I just hate letting my friends down,” she exclaimed as she used a giant cookie pan to fan the pint-size cake. “Did I mention Megan and I are little Anabelle’s godmothers? And that Megan’s boss and his wife had tried to get pregnant for ten years before they were finally blessed with Anabelle?”
She scurried over to the counter to whip up two bowls of frosting, one purple and one pink, before rolling flat a white Play-Doh-looking ball and quickly using a cookie cutter to make a bunch of tiny flower cutouts. “Worst of all, a little girl’s dream princess party is hanging in the balance if I don’t finish these cakes!”
Jake calmly walked over to the sink and washed his hands. Then he put on a frilly apron and grabbed a bunch of kitchen utensils that looked sort of like the long putty knives he used to spackle holes in the walls on job sites.
He started passing them out to the guys.
Emma screeched to a halt and gaped at him. “What are you doing?”
“Helping.” He spun the two putty knives in his hands like an old Western gunslinger. “You and Marie over there can focus on baking the last of the cakes, and the guys and I will take care of the frosting—looks as straightforward as mixing grout or mortar. We’ll just lay the foundation and spackle it on the cakes for you before you finish ’em up all pretty.”
Shoulders sagging in both disbelief and relief, she blinked at him. “Ohmigod, that might actually work.”
“Of course it will.”
“Uh . . .” voiced Marie from about as far away as she could be while still technically in the kitchen. “I’m not so sure you want me around the cakes. Tried-and-true recipes and even the simplest dishes seem to have mysteriously tragic outcomes around me. There’s a reason why my husband does all the cooking.”
Jake liked Marie’s husband. He was a good guy. Fantastic with Marie’s two girls from her first marriage.
“Not just that.” Marie pointed at herself and the other five guys. “We weren’t sent here because we’re the best suited for the job. We’re all the rejects from the party. All the other parents have mad skills with crafts and face painting and balloon animals and stuff.”
“Yup.” Charlie nodded. “We have no skills. The party is starting soon, so all the other parents have their big, important jobs. We were the only ones who could be spared.”
“I usually have one job at these parties, and that’s to keep an even variety of Capri Sun juice packs in the cooler throughout the day,” added Zeb, the oldest in the bunch, who had three daughters, if memory served. “As soon as the cake fiasco was announced, my wife dumped all the juice packs in a kiddie pool with ice and told me my job wasn’t a real thing before shoving me out the door with strict instructions to help but don’t touch anything.”
“Hey, my wife told me the same thing,” chimed in Dominic, a funny dude Jake hadn’t had a chance to get to talk to more than a few times. “Then she went and assigned my six-year-old nephew my usual party task . . . as if I hadn’t been voted the best gift-table present stacker ever at the last party.”
The remaining two guys praised them for having had roles instead of sitting on the sidelines like they’d done at the last couple of parties.
These guys were a freaking hoot.
Jake wasn’t much for making friends outside his construction circle, especially not with the dad group. But he could see himself hanging out with these guys.
One day.
When he had a kid and wife so he could join the club.
His eyes strayed over to Emma. The woman was made to be a mom. A great mom. The kind who would run herself ragged to single-handedly make cakes for forty girls, even if she ended up destroying her entire kitchen in the process.
Jake turned back to the motley crew before him. “Well, come on then. Let’s get in there and save the day.”
Marie shook her head soberly. “All kidding aside, our spouses are right. We really should be sticking to the more hands-off helping.”
“I
disagree,” Jake informed them with a smile as he handed Marie a piping bag. “You can handle the writing of all the girls’ names on the cakes.”
Marie paled and gave him a hell-no head shake. “Emma should handle that.”
He raised a pointed brow over at the two finished two-tier cakes decorated like colorful little ball gowns. “Unless those first two party guests really are named Jamio and Biamca, I think you would definitely be helping Emma out there.”
Emma gave him a huffy scowl. “My hands shake when I’m on adrenaline overload—so sue me.”
Leaning in to whisper so only she could hear, he teased with a hidden grin. “What a coincidence—your hands shake when you’re curled up in bed with me, too. Interesting.”
He sidestepped to avoid getting clocked in the head with a batter-covered whisk.
While the now not-quite-as-stressed-looking Emma (thank you very much) was busy blushing and glaring, Jake grabbed the cookie pan she’d used to fan the cakes earlier. “Trent, I’ve seen you do those weighted rope workouts like a champ. You handle this cake fanning.” He turned to Charlie next. “You can take care of adding the food coloring to the frosting to make the colors Emma needs; it’s just like mixing latex paint colors at your shop.”
It wasn’t at all the same, but Charlie looked loads more confident after hearing that.
Jake winked at Emma. “Don’t worry, babe. We’ve got your back on this.”
For the next two hours, they all got into a synchronized-swimming-like rhythm, where Emma took care of baking the minicakes to perfection and doing the fancy decorations, while the others did their assigned tasks that helped keep them all churning ’em out.
Zeb ended up being a surprise star in the cake assembly, using his experience laying brick and tile to mortar and grout the cake layers like a pro.
And at the end of the assembly line was Jake, who used his make-Martha-Stewart-proud, two-putty-knife technique to spackle the frosting on nearly as prettily as Emma did.
And in between cakes, he took care of his other job, which was calming Emma down with inappropriate jokes, all in the name of getting her to blush harder than she was freaking out.
At a quarter after noon, they were officially done.
He and Emma collapsed onto the nearest bench in exhaustion, shortly after Marie and the guys transported the finished cakes back to the party.
After a few minutes of satisfying silence, she lifted her head sluggishly off his shoulder and murmured gratefully, “You were amazing today, Jake. There’s no way we would have finished without you taking control of the situation. Seriously, I don’t know how to thank you.”
“Group effort all the way.” He turned to press a kiss to her forehead. “We make a pretty good team.”
That was as effective as a butt pinch in getting her back up on her feet. Seconds later she was briskly tidying up the kitchen like it owed her money. Sighing, he got up and joined in the cleaning extravaganza.
“So I heard the guys invite you to the birthday party.” She said it so casually, he almost missed the nervous wobble in her voice toward the end. “Were you thinking of heading down?”
She quickly ducked low to put something away. “Because,” she continued, her now noticeably shy voice floating up from the kitchen island, “if you were, maybe we could go together?”
“Took the words right out of my mouth, sweetheart.”
She popped her head up like a prairie dog. “Yeah?”
He gazed at her and fought the urge to drag her into his arms so he could taste if that bit of frosting at the corner of her lips was as sweet as she was. “Yep. It’ll be my first kid’s party, though, so I’ll of course need you to show me all the proper etiquette and stuff.”
Emma smiled, no longer quite so nervous-looking, as she untied her apron and rinsed off her hands. “I’m sure the other dads will show you the ropes.”
She immediately pursed her mouth shut, but she didn’t call back the words. Probably hoping he hadn’t heard her fully.
Oh, he’d heard it all right.
Other dads.
Damn, the meaning embedded there had a nice ring to it. Especially coming from Emma’s lips. And directed at him.
While he wanted nothing more than to ask her why she looked so panicked—or, better yet, why her eyes had softened before the panic had hit—since she seemed ready to bolt, he pivoted and headed to the bathroom to wash up instead. “I’ll be right back. Just going to clean up and make myself a bit more presentable.”
Sometime between her saying what she’d said and his replaying it a few more times in his head on the way to the bathroom, he knew.
He’d gone and fallen head over heels for his girl next door all over again.
And the chances of his getting his heart ripped out of his chest again were even higher this time around.
Chapter Eighteen
“I think we should go out on a date,” announced Jake, clanging in through the front door of the bakery.
“You wha—” Emma lost her footing on the stepladder she was standing on and went windmilling backward into an oh-so-graceful ass-first dismount.
Luckily Jake shot forward to catch her so she could stick the landing. He shook his head. “I swear—I can’t leave you alone here for a second, can I?”
No. No, you can’t. From now on, no more leaving me alone.
Huh, her inner Jezebel Cricket had certainly gotten needier since he’d finished up the last of the bakery repairs the other day and started his contract over at the library.
For once she and Emma were on the exact same page. They both missed having their resident sexy lumberjack in the shop every day.
Instead of telling him that, however, she went with the more Emma-esque response: “Did you hit your head at the job site again?”
He chuckled. “Nope. My noggin is just fine today.”
Yeah, she wasn’t so sure. “Yet here you are asking me out on a date.”
“No, here I am telling you that we should. Go out on a date.” Said it with a persuasive-as-hell double-brow-raise execution and everything. The triple-dog dare of facial expressions.
The man wasn’t messing around today.
“But—”
“Now before you say no, I checked the bylaws of our Jake and Emma 2.0 agreement and found no restrictions on us dating.”
Okay, so she hadn’t put in a clause about that—
“And if you really think about it,” he pushed on, “we’ve pretty much been going out on unofficial dates for the past few weeks. Successfully, I might add.”
Well, sure, if you squinted your eyes just so and looked at their lunch and dinner and art show and barbecue and kids’ party outings with a convoluted magnifying glass—
“So you agree.”
Crap, had she been nodding her head this whole time? Quit it. She stopped doing her impressive imitation of a bobblehead figurine. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”
Uh-oh. He didn’t look fazed one bit by that.
“Okay.” He shrugged.
That’s it? “Wait. You’re dropping it, just like that?”
He gave her an are-you-nuts look. “Of course not. I’ll be back here again same time tomorrow. And the next. And if you’re feeling exceptionally stubborn, the day after that.”
Good lord, the man was charm personified. Don’t you dare smile, Stevens.
She didn’t. Just barely. “So you’re saying that if I don’t agree to your crazy idea, you’re going to keep coming back in to revisit the topic?”
“For as long as it takes,” he confirmed.
Funny, in all her wildest fantasies from her teen years to, yes, even now, she’d imagined him asking her out a million times, and never once did she picture him wearing a neon-bright, high-contrast commercial construction job site T-shirt while he did it.
That alpha, we’re-going-out-and-that’s-all-there-is-to-it gleam in his eyes, on the other hand? Oh yeah, that was consistent with her imagination.<
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“But you’re not actually asking me out. Yet. You’re just here to warn me that you’re going to ask me out?”
“Warn? You make it sound like some sort of Doppler radar alert.”
Yep. That’s exactly what this was, a siren-blazing weather warning for an incoming hurricane. Category five at least.
As if he could hear her thoughts, he gave her a toothy grin.
The sound of a child’s panicked screech and a subsequent collision outside put a swift end to their banter.
Jake ran to the front door with Emma right on his heels.
It was four-year-old Carly, the Jorgensons’ youngest, and her best friend, Miley, in a two-trike pileup on the sidewalk.
Jake knelt down and picked both girls up, one on each hip. “Well, hello again, Miss Carly. I see you have a schnazzy new ride.”
Giant eyes filling with imminent tears grew wider and wider before Carly tipped her head back and sobbed, “I crashed it.”
Since this sort of thing was often quite contagious, it was no surprise when Miley joined in a second later, until the two were crying uncontrollably in stereo.
“Hey, hey. None of that. We can fix these bikes up good as new.”
Both girls sniffled and stared up at Jake like the dragon slayer he was. “You can fix it? Honest?” asked Carly, wiping her nose with her jacket sleeve.
“I’ll do you one better,” countered Jake. “I’ll teach you two how to fix it and even add a few aftermarket upgrades—something along the lines of rainbow streamers and a bigger basket for your toys? What do you girls think of that?”
Twin pint-size cries of delight brought a ripple of approving smiles from the small crowd that had gathered.
Jake walked back over to Emma, with both girls still perched at his sides. “Rain check on what we were talking about?”
No rain check needed. Tell him. Just tell the man “Hell, yes” to his crazy idea so you can move on to the dating portion.
