Courtship of the Cake

by Jessica Topper

  “Soldier Boy was fun,” I admitted. He and I had both arrived in town last week to attend Laney and Noah’s charity soirée for the Kitchen of Hope and had had even more fun. “But now he’s back overseas.”

  “Pity. Mona and I really liked him.”

  While I had my dalliance du jour, Jax had long-term relationships. Mona—or Bitch’n’Mona, as Laney liked to call her—was his latest ladylove. She had appeared on the scene after I’d moved out of state for my last job, so I didn’t know her all that well. But if I knew Jax, it was serious . . . until the day it wasn’t. My friend was an open-and-shut textbook case of serial monogamy.

  Jax leaned over my shoulder and guided me through the last of the forms. His cologne had a hint of chilled cucumber with a citrus bite, and hung from his neck like a scrapbook for my senses. I was seventeen and running along the ocean shore again, not thirty-two and running away from my memories of Mick.

  If that was even his real name.

  “Tell me you’re not still thinking about Mystery Man from a year ago?”

  “Yep.”

  And I was still dreaming about him, too . . . especially on the nights when I ate dessert after eight o’clock. Mick had been just that sweet, just that sinful, and just that much of an indulgent fantasy.

  “Lucky is the thief who steals your heart, Dani . . .” Jax murmured.

  Yeah, right. Not to mention the twenty thousand dollars in wedding gifts that disappeared that night.

  “Please, don’t start. Posy has finally agreed to speak to me again.” I ran my fingers along the creamy silk ribbon at my throat, avoiding the charm tethered to it, and refrained from saying more.

  While I sometimes found it easier to talk about it with Jax than Laney, I still hadn’t been completely honest. The past year had hardly been a cakewalk.

  Despite what Mick did to my family, I couldn’t shake him from my thoughts. “But you were the one who pulled the slutty Cinderella, right? Leaving him with a hard-on and a glass slipper at the end of the night?” Jax shuffled, collated, and stapled my paperwork while wearing a frown that either indicated intense concentration, or massive disapproval.

  Swallowing hard, I managed, “I just thought . . . he was different.”

  “No, you thought he was perfect. And he wasn’t. So your playdar wasn’t working that night? Time to forgive and forget.”

  I sighed; during the plane ride home from my sister’s wedding in New Orleans, I had managed to work through all five of the Kübler-Ross stages of grief over Mick’s deception: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Forgiving was in there somewhere.

  But forgetting? Kind of impossible. Not when those pale blue eyes haunted me every time I closed my own. His were icy like a husky dog’s; mine were more of the Fiona Apple variety. Our gazes, made more electric and mysterious from behind the vintage masks Pat and Posy had insisted everyone wear during their reception, had locked in on each other the moment he’d stepped onto the dance floor.

  I replayed his every move in stark, cinematic loops. And I heard his soft, sexy voice in stereo surround sound. I rewound my favorite parts and tortured myself by examining them in slow motion. Mick smiling. Tilting his head back in laughter. Touching my chin. Removing his black and gold Scaramouche mask by its long-beaked nose as he moved to kiss me.

  “I still can’t believe I fell for a wedding crasher.”

  “You may just have met your match,” Jax gently teased. “Funeral crasher.”

  I blushed at the title, thinking back to the day he and I met. I hadn’t meant to attend the solemn graveside service for Jackson’s family’s patriarch. But if I hadn’t, this townie never would’ve met the teen tycoon turned used-car salesman sitting across from her. Rolling his pen between his fingers in thought and absorbing everything around him, even though his imagination was light-years away.

  Jax didn’t need the job at the car dealership. But he took any opportunity to study the human condition as fodder to fuel his fiction.

  “Maybe you’ll write that story into one of your books someday.”

  “Maybe.” Jax came back to earth and smiled at me. “But right now, I want to put you in the driver’s seat. You ready?”

  He grabbed my hand, and we wound past the Bentleys and Lamborghinis smugly gracing Jax’s uncle’s showroom floor. The Davenport footprint was stamped all over Eleventh Avenue, where most of Manhattan’s elite car dealerships sat. It had also worn a path down to Wall Street and back with its hard work and success.

  Back in high school, hitching a ride with Jax meant showing up at the mall in a vintage Porsche Spyder, and posing for prom pictures in front of the Lotus used on the set of a James Bond movie. Until Laney and her high school sweetheart Allen had decided to reenact a Whitesnake video on the hood of Grandmother Davenport’s Jaguar, resulting in a ban on young Jackson borrowing the keys to the family cars.

  June heat rose from the city concrete and licked at my bare ankles as Jax pushed me gently through the automatic door and we left the air-conditioned building behind. Still, a shiver rode up my spine as smooth, cool hands slid in place to block my vision.

  “You ready? No peeking, Danica James.”

  “How can I peek with your hands over my eyes?”

  Jax knew me too well. I reached to pry his fingers apart to sneak a look, just like I’d do when he’d try to protect me from the gory parts in a horror movie.

  His hands dropped to my shoulders, mingling with my curls, and we both gazed upon the mustard yellow Volkswagen bus baking in the midmorning sun of the back alley.

  “You like?”

  “Oh my God. It’s perfect.” I gave his hands a squeeze, then shot forward to run my own down the VW’s flat face. “How on earth did you get it?”

  “Mugged a hippie.” I threw him a look, and he laughed. “I put my feelers out. Auction in Michigan. It’s a 1972 Westfalia. Fully restored, with a pop-up top.”

  “I see that.” Teetering on the tiptoes of my sandals, I scoped out the camper’s interior through the long side window. “A sink?”

  “Yep, along with a few other upgrades. Built-in closet, icebox. Table folds out. Convertible bed, the works.” Jax rocked back on his heels, pleased with himself. “Check out the seats; I think the upholstery is original.”

  “Avocado green. So sexy!” I reached through the open window and tentatively touched the wide steering wheel. The cogs in my head were already turning. “How many miles does it have on it?”

  “Seventy-nine five.”

  Not bad for a car ten years older than me. But still. I was going the distance. “Will it last me all summer?”

  “It’s going to get you where you need to go,” Jax said.

  I grimaced. That wasn’t exactly the answer to my question.

  “Treat you to lunch?” he asked. “We can hit the Rocking Horse.”

  “Depends. Where’s your evil twin?”

  Dexton Davenport hated me with the fiery passion of a thousand suns. And was often Jax’s lunchtime companion if he roused himself out of bed early enough.

  “Midtown. I think he was hitting Sam Ash and a few other guitar stores today. Come on,” he coaxed. “Manhattan’s big enough for the both of you.”

  “Dex despises me.”

  Jax rolled his eyes. He’d been stuck in the middle of this tug-o’-war between me and his brother for years.

  “No, Dex is just in a mood.”

  “He’s been in a mood since your grandfather’s funeral.”

  Jax laughed. It was a fairly accurate observation; what teenager wouldn’t be grumpy upon learning of a deathbed confession that rocked his cushy little world, threw his family’s inheritance in jeopardy, and forced him to slum it out in the suburbs for the rest of his high school career?

  Jackson Davenport, for one. The good twin.

  “So . . .
carnitas and margaritas?”

  His offer was poetic and tempting.

  But I really needed to get going while I had the light.

  “Rain check,” I promised, throwing my arms around my friend. “How can I ever repay you for this?”

  “Make good on the loan,” he laughed. “Gypsy masseuse heartbreakers carry their checkbooks out on tour, right?”

  “Always.” My fingers performed a fluttering effleurage down his spine. “And maybe you’ll take me up on that offer of a massage someday?”

  “Rain check on your magic fingers,” he managed, pulling away before he allowed himself to melt into me. “Oh, and I took the liberty . . .” He reached through the passenger window and pulled out a pair of custom vanity plates stamped with WWDD.

  “Oh, Jax.” Now it was my turn to melt as I watched my friend affix my favorite motto to my ride.

  “Listen to that little voice inside your own head for once, will ya? W-W-D-D?”

  What Would Dani Do?

  The phrase echoed as I navigated Mean Mistress Mustard, my new old van, through the snakes of traffic and into the Lincoln Tunnel with her headlights on.

  It was true; my friends always looked to me for that voice of reason. My perfect mixture of level-headedness and levity. Just walk away, I had told Laney tenfold, guiding her through the land mines that came with loving a rock star like Allen Burnside. Live a little, I had urged her, when I knew all she wanted to do was die a little after losing him to cancer. And be open to a grand adventure were my words that helped get her on that plane to her mom’s wedding and move her from heartache to happiness with Noah.

  I needed to take my own advice, and taking the job as a backstage masseuse for the Minstrels & Mayhem Festival tour was certainly a start.

  The tunnel rose, darkness dashed away by the unblinking eye of the summer sun.

  And I would forget Mick.

  Starting with no dessert after eight o’clock at night.

  The Caged Bird Sings

  I had plenty of time on my hands while they rested on the wheel, driving four hundred miles from Manhattan to Hampton, Virginia, for the first stop on the tour. Plenty of time to think about everything, and nothing. And I had come to the conclusion that even the most down-to-earth brides are entitled to their one crazy Bridezilla moment.

  For my sister, it was the birdcage.

  From the minute Posy spied it during a weekend of antiquing in Cold Spring Harbor, she made it her mission to incorporate the Victorian cage into her wedding plans. It didn’t concern her that the thing was tetanus-inducing rusty and large enough to house a vulture. She fell in love with its graceful arches and scrollwork, and paid a mint to have it re-enameled before shipping it to the wedding reception in New Orleans.

  It became the silver-stamped motif on her one hundred invitations, and graced the thank-you cards for later. And it had sat, stuffed fat with stiff envelopes for the happy couple, on a long table next to her beautiful hummingbird cake during the entire celebration. All evening long, guests came by to admire both, and to slide their own gifts through the thin, curving slats of the cage. I know, because Mick and I had passed the table at least a dozen times as he swept me off my feet, around and around the ballroom floor. I’d watched the pileup inside, a jumble of pastels and pristine white forming the newlyweds’ nest egg. Assuring their future together was off to a solid start.

  • • •

  “Tell me you have the cage.”

  The tremor in Posy’s voice was in stark contrast to the melodic laugh that had followed her around like a little fairy bell during her wedding. Just as the morning sky outside my hotel window, gray with the threat of rain, had been a world away from the golden sun that had streamed down on the wedding party the day before.

  “You were my maid of honor.” Hysteria wavered through the phone line. “I put you in charge of the cage. It’s gone, Dani! It’s disappeared.”

  How the hell could someone have walked out the front door with a gaudy two-foot-high birdcage full of gifts, and not one person had noticed?

  I clutched the hotel bedsheets to my naked chest; they smelled vaguely of cake and sweet dreams.

  They smelled like Mick.

  And he had disappeared, too.

  The newly blended immediate family had gathered at the police station to wait for any news.

  “We’ve never had anything like this happen before,” assured the catering manager. It was unnecessary, as it didn’t make us feel special, or any better. “We are cooperating fully with authorities, and they are reviewing our security tapes now. They don’t think it was an inside job, but there is a . . . person of interest we recognized in the footage.”

  “They’re looking at all the cameras, honey,” my mother stressed, turning toward me. “Including the videographer’s and the digital ones from the vendor rentals. Is there anything you’d like to tell us?”

  “Yes, how about it, Dani? Starting with the mystery man you were four inches away from fucking in the photo booth!” Posy screeched. Pat steadied her with a hand to her arm, but I saw his fingers shake. His parents discreetly turned their heads from their new daughter-in-law’s justifiable rage. Probably wondering about the questionable morals of the family their son had just married into.

  My father’s face was stone, only his eyebrows giving away the one thought that I knew had crossed his mind many times throughout my adolescence: I wish I’d had sons. My mother’s disappointment was mirrored in his. Wondering how my brain and all its bad habits had formed, despite all their careful parenting. And how they could have spawned one child to follow in their sane, staid footsteps, while the other one turned out to be, for lack of a more scientific term, boy crazy.

  Remorse had coated the bitter pill of pride I swallowed. “If anything he said can be believed, then he’s waiting for me at the Café Du Monde.”

  • • •

  I pulled Mean Mistress Mustard into the first rest stop over the Maryland border. Coffee sounded good right now. Wiping my eyes, I sighed. There was no use in rehashing the memories now. Even Posy had advised against it, once she broke her silent treatment. “Abreaction is so nineteenth century,” she joked. Psychologist humor. “Stop beating yourself up about it, Dani.”

  Well, if the current school of practice frowned upon reliving past trauma, then I would take the cognitive therapy route—a hands-on, practical approach to changing behavior—and I’d achieve it one massage client at a time. Working my way upward through my chosen professional path, and keeping my mind off my joke of a personal life.

  The Calling

  “Will you marry me, luv?”

  The most famous man at the festival had an accent that was crisp and delicious, even when muffled by the face cradle of my massage table. “Christ,” he moaned.

  I laughed and reached for my revitalizing oil. His wasn’t the first proposal since the Minstrels & Mayhem tour had started a month ago.

  “Somehow I don’t think your wife of twenty-two years would approve.” Not to mention he was, at sixty-two, twice my age . . . and a grandfather.

  It was so much easier to talk to musicians when they were lying prone and pliant under my hands. Especially when they were as famous as the current client in my tent, who went by one name only and probably had more Grammys lined up on his shelf than I had little amber bottles of essential oils.

  I chose two—lemon for energy, basil for clarity—and added tiny amounts to the almond oil I had warming beside me. He had mentioned a dull back pain from sleeping awkwardly during his seven-hour flight over, so I knew my custom blend would work wonders before he had to take the main stage that night.

  He was the buffest, sexiest rock-and-roll grandfather on the Minstrels & Mayhem tour, that was for sure.

  “My wife doesn’t have your magic fingers.” He shuddered as I worked my way toward the groove between his s
pine and erector spinae. Using my knuckles, I slid slowly and strongly along the length of the groove, the oil helping me glide with ease as I worked out each knot of tension along the way.

  “There you are,” I whispered to a particularly stubborn trigger point, which finally gave under my pressure, and the reward was seeing his strong shoulders release. The platinum recording artist was putty in my hands.

  “I want to”—he gasped—“pack you in my road case and”—my stripping technique down his back caused his sentence to staccato—“take you on tour. Good God.”

  It was high praise for this influential artist to want to add me to his daily regimen, along with his yoga and macrobiotic diet. But I couldn’t let it go to my head.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Now, my dear. I’m not nearly old enough to be a sir. I quite like my title of CBE, and I highly doubt the queen will be knighting me anytime soon.”

  Earning a playful wink from the Commander of the Order of the British Empire currently lying shirtless on my table made up for the low pay and grueling hours of my dream job. Not to mention the rampant sexist comments, endless “your mama” jokes and insufferable pull-my-finger gags I’d been subjected to since coming to work for the dudefest known as Minstrels & Mayhem.

  I loved my work. And getting the chance to massage a legend was the proverbial icing on the . . .

  I sighed and dared a glimpse at the clock to the right of my table. One of these days I’d make it through a few blessed hours without the memory of New Orleans.

  We bantered a bit more before finishing his hour-long massage in comfortable silence.

  “Bloody amazing,” he murmured as my hands finally came to rest, signaling the end of our session. I took my leave outside the tent to give him privacy as he dressed, feeling equally exhilarated.

  Stretching my arms toward the sun, I observed the festival grounds waking up around me. From the second stage came the muted thump of sound check. Security was checking wristbands as fans flowed from the lots through the venue gates. One of the younger Marley brothers’ brand of reggae jingled cheerily over the PA, a perfect summer soundtrack. Blankets and lawn chairs already dotted the hill where music lovers would spend the day, and evening, watching the rotating lineup of bands.