by Skye Warren
This is my big shot.
I glance from the kitchen into the main store—not a sign of anybody, and I’ve been here for four hours with the open sign flipped, just in case. I baked a fresh batch of Santa Claus cookies and some pastries on the off chance that somebody would stumble across one of the few open stores on Fifth Street in Forestview on Christmas Eve and decide that baked goods were for them.
What’s Penelope Chadbourne’s dress going to be like?
The thought comes to mind just as I register the first flakes of snow drifting to the bare sidewalks. Winter is coming a little late to Forestview this year. I punch my fist into the air. Who needs a white Christmas when it just means a harrowing drive to the Forestview Country Club in…two hours and forty minutes?
I turn back to the cake and give it a firm nod. Everything is good to go. I just need to carefully, so carefully, remove the top two tiers and put them into their separate boxes, prepared just for this occasion.
I reach for the second tier and slide my hands underneath. They don’t shake at all as I lift the weight up, and to the side—in a few moments I’ll place them onto the table next to the bottom half, and then—
The front door of the shop slams open, the bell smashing against the window, and I’m so deep in thought about moving the cake, about Penny Chadbourne’s dress, that nagging thought that I wish I could be her, I wish I could be—that the sound startles me, my entire body jerks, and the cake—oh, God, the cake—
It slips.
It slips out of my hands in slow motion. I try to tighten my grip, though I try to shift my weight to get it back in balance, it just falls, colliding with the ground in an explosion of rainbow cake and Swiss dots.
I stand over it, mouth frozen half-open, and stare at the ruins of my career.
Which might seem dramatic, if you didn’t know how much sway Penny Chadbourne could have over my fledgling bakery.
After several long moments I turn my head to see what hellish creature has caused this to happen. At first, all I see through the kitchen door is a man, standing in the middle of the shop with his hands in his pockets and his head cocked a little to the side, like he’s trying to figure out what the noise was.
Well, it was just my dreams crashing to the ground, Mr…
My heart leaps in my chest, then plummets to the ground next to the pile of buttercream frosting and broken dreams.
It’s the last person I want to see in the world.
Chapter 2
“Is…is everything okay?”
His voice, despite the fact that we haven’t seen each other for nine years, is exactly the same. The sound of it would shock me to the core if I wasn’t already rendered numb by the fact that the most important cake of the year—of my lifetime—is half-destroyed on the floor of the bakery, with two and a half hours to go until it absolutely has to be at the Forestview Country Club.
I tear my eyes away from him and back to the rainbow mess, then back to his…oh, god, his body, the sheer masculine perfection of it underneath an army green jacket, the tattoos he started to get in high school snaking down to just over his right wrist bone.
“Shit.” I mean to say it under my breath, but it comes out louder than that. Much louder. Almost a yell. My voice is high and thin with panic. Two and a half hours.
All at once, my body snaps into motion like it never stopped. I rush out through the open kitchen door and come around in front of the counter until we’re sharing the same space in the center of the store, only I don’t stop. I do inhale a big whiff of him as I go by, and my insides go liquid at the scent—something soapy, spicy, him.
It had to be Adam Walker. It just had to be.
I stride to the door like it’s the most important thing I’ll ever do and flip the open sign so that CLOSED faces out toward the street. Then I flip the switch that turns off the icicle lights I strung around the front windows.
Then I turn back toward him, my heart pounding.
“We’re closed.”
He straightens up. “You were open a second ago, when I walked—”
“Something’s come up.” I raise my chin a little and fix him with what I hope is a steely glare. “Is there anything I can bag up for you before you go?” I put the slightest emphasis on the word “go.”
He turns back toward the display case, which contains all of the cookies and pastries I made this morning. This should be an easy decision. While he’s not looking I smooth my hair back, tucking a few loose strands back into the protective netting that covers most of my head. Damn it. If I’d known I was going to see Adam again today, I would have worn—
This. I would have worn this. I would have worn the black pants and fitted top I wear to the bakery every day, with my white apron over the top. I would not have put on anything special. Not for him. Not after—
“How much are the cookies?”
“Two-fifty.”
“And the pastries?”
Oh, my God. “Listen. You can have three of each of them. On the house.” I hustle back around behind the counter and snatch up a piece of wax paper and one of the bags with my logo on it.
Adam steps to the side, craning his neck to see into the kitchen. “What fell?”
“Nothing fell.” The lie is instinctual, though I’m not sure why it makes any difference if Adam Walker knows that I’ve destroyed half of the most important cake in the world.
“It sounded like something fell.”
I stop shoveling the baked goods into the bag and look across the counter at him. When he senses my gaze he looks back at me. His eyes are attentive, blue, deep, electric—just how I remembered. I remember those eyes in other places, too. Like behind the gym, where he kissed me for the first time, and my entire body lit up with a need for him like I never experienced in my life, before or since.
The truth tumbles out of my mouth before I can stop it. “A cake.”
“Oh, shit.” The corner of his mouth twitches upward, and my heart seizes.
“Yeah. So, if you could just go, that would be—”
“Is there anything I can do?”
Since when does Adam Walker care about helping me?
“No.”
The moment the word is out of my mouth I want to shove it back in. The truth is, if he has steady hands, if he has any patience whatsoever, there’s a chance that he could—
No. No way.
After what he did, I never want to owe him anything.
“You sure about that?”
Every cell in my body aches for him, for his strong hands on my body, even though it’s been nine years and his hands are hardly the same as they were back then. They’re stronger now, a little bit rougher. What’s he been doing since then?
My mouth drops open to ask him, but instead, the mortifying truth rears its head.
“Not…not exactly. I’m a little pressed for time.”
“What kind of cake is it? Birthday?”
“You think I’d be closing my shop over a dropped birthday cake?”
He gives half a shrug, his eyes shining, but he doesn’t smile.
“It’s a wedding cake.”
He raises his eyebrows, nods.
“It has to be at the country club in two and a half hours.”
“Put down that bag.” Adam starts shrugging off his jacket. “We have to hurry.”
Chapter 3
I hurry into the kitchen ahead of him, my heart jumping and dancing in my chest, competing with the sinking feeling in my gut at the sight of the fallen cake.
Adam Walker isn’t the type to show up after nine years and pitch in. He’s a total asshole who never cared about me, not even a little.
I raise my hand to my lips as I rush over to the handwashing sink. Even after all this time, the sensation of his mouth on mine, kissing me as tenderly as anyone ever did back in high school—although admittedly it wasn’t that many people—still burns underneath my fingertips, almost as badly as my cheeks did when the gym doors opened to
reveal six of his friends from the basketball team.
In slow motion he jerked away from me, grinning into the sneers on their faces.
“Walker, what are you doing?” Colton Chamberlain, the king of the basketball team, had glanced at me like I was a bug to be crushed under his shoes.
“Nothing,” Adam said quickly. “Just fooling around.”
He shot me a look then that I read as dismissal. For weeks I afterward I tried to convince myself that there was some sorrow there, but when he ignored me, stone cold, in the hallways, I let the flame die out.
Or so I thought.
I wash my hands with a meticulous focus, not daring to look back over my shoulder in case he’s watching, then dry them. Squaring my shoulders, I turn back to face the destruction of my baking career.
“You should probably wash—oh.” My words die in my throat. Adam is sweeping up the remnants of the cake with a broom he located with startling efficiency. While I stand there like a frozen idiot, he tips the last of the crumbs into the waste bin I keep in the supply closet. Then he rolls the bin back into the closet, hangs up the broom and dustpan on their designated hooks, and moves toward me.
The space between us closes, narrows, and something goes tight and hot in my chest. Is the air thinning out in here? His eyes are an electric blue even under the fluorescent lights of the kitchen. I turn half-toward him, my breath shallow, and he stops a foot away, the energy between us crackling.
Our gaze locks. I’m painfully aware of the fact that I’ve been here for several hours, that there’s probably at least a little flour in my hair, that I’m wearing the most ridiculous hairnet in all of history.
His mouth turns up in the same half-smile that drove me absolutely wild in high school and I return it without having to think. Maybe none of this matters. Maybe he came here because—
“Adam,” I say, at the same time he says, “Excuse me.”
“What?”
He cocks his head to the side. “Gotta wash up—there’s no way I can help you salvage this cake disaster with dirty hands.”
The color surges to my face, but Adam doesn’t mention it. He just waits patiently while I step to the side and flee as far away as I can get—to the oversize fridges where the quarter-done replacement layers are waiting.
I always have a backup—every baker does—but this time I got overconfident. This time, I didn’t finish the full decoration because—and I could completely slap my past self across the face—I spent every waking moment over the past week getting the “official” cake just right.
God. Cynthia Hayes is probably right. Cynthia Hayes—she wouldn’t even be sweating right now. She’d just pull out the replacement layers and drive smugly to the country club without missing a beat.
It’s all I can do not to drop my head into my hands. Instead, I pull the door of the fridge open and remove the first layer—the third one, second-smallest, and carry it gingerly to the decorating table. Then the top layer, the smallest.
All I have going for me is that they’re frosted with buttercream. That is as far as I got.
Adam comes to stand beside me and every hair on the back of my arms stands up. I want to reach across for his hand, but he makes no move toward me, just considers the two halves of the cake.
“So…I’m assuming all this decoration is supposed to match.”
“Yeah.”
“And I’m assuming it took a lot longer than…” He raises his arm, turns his wrist. He still wears a cheap watch. “Two and a half hours to do all this.”
“At least…at least these ones are smaller.”
He laughs, and the sound sends bubbles of delight through my torso.
“You’ve got that going for you.”
What do you have going for you? I want to ask. Where are you on your way to?
“Let’s get started.”
“What can I do?” Now he does put his hand on my arm, and I turn toward him. His eyes are overflowing with sincerity. “Anything you need, I’ll do.”
Chapter 4
“Okay.” My breath hitches in my lungs, but I draw in a lungful of air and try to steady myself. “The first thing we—” The “we” slips out before I can stop it, but with two hours and fifteen minutes to go I don’t have time to do anything but notice the flash of a smile on Adam’s face as I flick my eyes from the cake on the table over to him, then back again. “The first thing we need to do is make the frosting for the decorations.”
He turns away from me, somehow knowing exactly which bowl I prefer to mix everything while I flit around the kitchen, gathering together the ingredients. It’s a simple buttercream with the perfect ratio of edible glitter to give it that sparkle and shine. My clients love it.
At the thought my heart picks up speed. The clients that will drop me like a hot potato if word gets out that I ruined Penelope Chadbourne’s wedding.
I shake my head a little as I run the mixer through the bowl one final time. That kind of thinking is ridiculous. If she’s really so fragile that a tiny mishap with the cake could derail her entire day, she has some serious reevaluation to do.
“Done.” I scoop a generous portion of the frosting into a brand-new piping bag, seal it off, and lay it on the table. “Oh—”
Somehow, Adam has read my mind. The two layers are on two different rotating cake stands, ready to go.
“I found them while you were mixing. I hope that’s okay that I moved the cake.”
“Yeah, I just—” He’s even slipped on a pair of gloves, which he peels off and throws in the garbage. Then he heads back to the sink to wash his hands.
I confront the cake.
I’ll start with the lattice pattern on the third layer.
The moment I start to pipe on the frosting, my nerves settle and my shoulders relax down into their sockets. This is what I’ve always loved—this detail, the tiny movements that create beauty.
Down, down, down. The lines come easily now, after having done so many. One inch apart, even as can be, all the way around the cake.
I reach the end and then start back in the opposite direction.
“Hey.”
His voice is warm and deep but rises slowly, like he’s trying his best not to startle me.
“Yeah?”
I don’t take my eyes off the cake, but I feel him standing close by.
“This other layer—it’s got little dots on it. You have to put all those on once you’re done with this?”
I can’t help the tiniest sigh.
“Yeah. I do.”
“I can do that.”
I pull the piping bag away from the cake and look him in the eyes. They glitter in the light of the kitchen but his mouth is set, serious.
“You know cake decorating?”
“I’m a fast learner.” The corner of his mouth quirks in a smile that makes me want to lean in and press my lips against his, the hell with this cake.
I put my own piping bag down with a smile I can’t hide and go over to the widest, longest drawer in the kitchen, pulling out a smaller piping bag with a connector and a number one decorating tip with a round end.
I fill the bag, connect it, and present it to Adam with both hands.
He takes it into his big hands and tests it on a scrap of cardboard I was using earlier to get some cupcake decorations just right.
“And these are just…dots where the line intersects?”
“Yes, but—”
His laugh is a low rumble, but he lets me put my hands over his, demonstrating the right size for the dots, the right pressure, the right motion.
Where our skin touches is like a pleasant fire, and I can feel him pressing his hand against mine just a little more than absolutely necessary. Something deep in my core goes to liquid heat, and I bite my lip.
“Are you okay?”
“What?”
I jerk my hand away from his, then bring it to my face, stopping just inches before I touch my skin.
“You stopped moving.�
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“Oh—you’ve got it.” My cheeks go bright red again, and I snatch my own piping bag up from the table and turn my body toward the cake.
Then Adam is next to me, closer than before, and it takes me three steadying breaths before I can go back to drawing the lattices.
I can feel the heat radiating off his body—or is it mine?—as he reaches toward the cake with his piping bag, then starts making the Swiss dots where the lines intersect.
He follows along behind me, the only sound in the kitchen our breathing. Mine is shallower. His is deep and steady.
I finish before him and move across to the second layer, but before I refill the piping bag I take another look at him. His head is bowed. He’s concentrating hard on every single dot, his arms flexing beneath his black t-shirt.
God, I want him so much.
I just have one question that I can’t bring myself to speak out loud: why is he here?
Chapter 5
The flower pattern is more intricate, but there are no Swiss dots to follow it with and so I throw myself into the work.
I have less than an hour to go before this cake has to be at the country club, and who knows how long before Adam walks back out the door and I never see him again?
Do I even want to see him again?
The laughter of his friends, even from nine years ago, still echoes in my ears when I breathe in his scent.
I’m halfway done with the smallest layer.
Fifty minutes to go.
It’s a fifteen minute drive to the country club if there’s no traffic.
All of it comes back to me in waves. The day our eyes locked over the last oversized cookie, baked fresh by a jovial lunch lady. Adam Walker and I existed on different planes the social spectrum—he played basketball, for God’s sake, and I was in just about every club you could imagine. I ran cross country. There wasn’t much prestige.
