“Why are you being so nice to me?” she asked suspiciously.
He cocked his head to the side, his blue eyes wide, and was silent an uncomfortably long time, finally saying, “Because you freed me.”
That hurt, it really stung. She wasn’t sure why she felt so guilty when only moments before she was certain he was the world’s biggest reprobate.
“But I put you right back into another prison, didn’t I?” she asked, wondering why in hell she would say that, truth or not. She never should have opened the door. She was ruining everything.
“Come out here,” he said. She stayed out of reach, unable to take her eyes from his, which were unreadable. “Please.”
She only hesitated a moment longer and stepped outside her room, where he promptly wrapped his arms around her.
“I like your prison, Audrey,” he said.
Chapter 9
She took the newly finished batch out of the oven and placed the pans on racks to cool, then stretched to crack all her achy joints before stepping into the front to check on things there. The high school girls were back again, and she wondered if she should start serving sandwiches. It couldn’t be healthy for them to come here on their lunch break every day and cram themselves full of sweets, just to get a glimpse of Erik. A group of moms and little kids were in the far corner, a bunch of small toys strewn across the table with their decimated cupcake remains. There were four people in line and she went to help pack their choices up for them, when she recognized the last person in line and gasped.
“You!” she hissed, scurrying around the counter to be on the same side as Erik. It was one of the thugs, looking as distressed as she was about being there. “It’s not a week yet. You have to give me the whole week.”
She’d finally placed the ad for her car, and hoped to get a bite soon. She hated giving it up, but even with the success of the shop, there was no way she’d have twenty grand to hand over in another three days without selling it.
He leaned across the counter, leaning back again when Erik came and stood beside her, scowling down at him.
“Is this man bothering you, Audrey?” he asked. His deep voice held a menacing note that made the thug visibly blanch.
“He’s one of the mobsters,” she whispered. “But it hasn’t been a week yet.”
“If you’re not supposed to be here, I suggest you leave,” he said, even scarier sounding.
He was doing such a good job of unsettling the thug, she had to grip the counter to keep from bouncing in victory.
“Look, I’m not here about the money,” he said. “My boss doesn’t know about this, so let’s just keep it between us, okay?”
“Why are you here, then?” she demanded, feeling a hundred times braver than normal with Erik standing glued to her side.
He sighed. “Can’t you tell? I’m here for cupcakes. I gave those banana ones to my girlfriend and she won’t shut up about them. I have to sleep on the couch unless I get her some more, even though I explained to her the obvious awkwardness of the situation.”
“It is awfully awkward, isn’t it,” she gloated.
The man rolled his eyes and leaned against the counter in defeat. “Look kid, I don’t exactly like having to shake down honest folks like yourself. I get this ain’t no doing of your own. Your uncle was a real piece of work for getting you into this, and if it was up to me, I’d let you slide, call it a wash. But it isn’t up to me.” He took out his wallet. “Are you going to let me buy some cupcakes or not?”
As much as Audrey wanted to watch Erik toss him out of the shop, a sale was a sale. “Fine,” she said. “We didn’t make the banana ones today, would she like any of these?”
He perused the display. “I’ll take one of each, and we’ll see,” he said, smiling to reveal a gold tooth. “Looks like the place is doing pretty well, eh?”
“It is,” she said eagerly, thinking if they could only see she was good for the money, they’d give her more time. “It’s been doing great.”
“I hope so,” he said, taking the box she handed him, along with his change. “See you in three days. Hey, you don’t think you’ll make the banana ones then, do you?”
“Out,” Erik snarled.
She sat down, shaken and not wanting the customers to see anything was wrong. “What am I going to do?”
If she managed to scrape up the money in three days, that was still only a small portion of what she owed them. If she gave them every extra cent she made, how could she pay her bills, her mortgage, her business loan?
“Where are your weapons?” she asked, knowing the mobsters were like a hydra. If Erik cut off one of its heads, two more would grow in its place. But she’d still feel safer if he had his giant axe. “Didn’t they come with you when you got out of the painting?”
He looked confused, then nodded. “Ah, yes, I remember from the years I had to stare at myself in the mirror. I wasn’t actually holding any weapons when she cursed me. The venomous snake must have painted them in to mock me.”
He cracked his knuckles and snarled ferociously and she had to admit maybe he didn’t need them after all.
“You were perfect with him,” she said. “Not over the top, but really scary. I wish I hadn’t let him buy the cupcakes, now that he’s gone. Serves him right if he has to sleep on the couch. I was just so nervous.”
“Were you?” he asked. “I couldn’t tell. I didn’t think you needed me, actually.”
She was glad to hear she hadn’t acted like a hysterical scaredy cat, but grabbed his hand as if he would leave right then.
“No, I definitely need you.” She gasped, thinking of something. “There were three of them before, but now that he knows about you, there might be more when they come back. Oh, what do I do if they come in here when there’s a bunch of customers?”
“I’ll take care of them, don’t worry. Let’s keep doing what we’re doing and not let them ruin this.”
He waved his hands at the people who happily munched away at their treats, and she nodded. She may not be making a profit, due to her damn uncle’s gambling, but there was no taking the success of the shop away from her. She wanted to run this place until she was too old to stir the batter, out of love of baking and not money, and that was what she was going to do.
More customers came in just as her phone buzzed, and she gave Erik a quick, grateful squeeze before running into the kitchen to answer. It was an unknown number and she was both fearful and hopeful that it would be someone for the car.
It was, and she agreed to meet him after the shop closed so he could look it over, and when she ended the call, she let a few tears fall over the dumb thing. She’d never been particularly attached to it, and hardly drove it since the grocery store was so close, but the fact that she was in such a predicament that forced her to sell it, felt like a kick while she was already down.
***
“Audrey, I’m exhausted,” Erik said after the last customer wished them a good night. He put his forearms on the counter and rested his head against them. “Can’t we make few batches right now so we can sleep later tomorrow?”
She smiled ruefully, not able to count how many times she’d wanted to do just that, but she wanted to uphold her high standards, and with her luck, a food critic would come around the very day she tried it, blasting her stale cupcakes and ruining her.
“It’s tempting, I know,” she said. “Especially since most people wouldn’t know the difference, but it’s not worth risking our reputation for a little extra sleep.”
“They’d only be a few hours older,” he cajoled, looking up at her with puppy eyes.
She reached across and patted him. “Yes, but I have it down to the exact amount of cooling time before frosting, so the frosting doesn’t melt, but they’re still a smidge warm inside? If we baked them tonight, they’d get dry if we didn’t frost them, and if we did, the frosting would get stiff and crack. It’s kind of like—”
“A science, yes I understand,” he said
fondly.
She hoped it was fondly. It might have been sarcastically. She wasn’t sure. “Are you making fun of me?” she asked.
He shook his head. “No. I’m in awe of you.”
“Now I know you’re making fun of me.”
“I’m not. I’ve known many hard working women in my lifetime, but none who worked so hard as you. Not even my grandmother.”
“You can stop now,” she said, feeling her cheeks heating up, and liking his compliments more than she should have. As if she cared about what he thought of her.
He pressed his lips together and nodded, and this time she could tell his smile was definitely fond.
“You didn’t really have to stop,” she said after he was silent a moment.
He rolled his eyes and reached over to tug on her pony tail. “Yes, I did,” he said. “I had plenty more to say, but your command made me forget them all.”
She realized he still had to do everything she said and she mentally poked herself for wasting a prime opportunity to hear him say nice things about her. Feeling like a loveless, compliment-starved fool, she flounced to the kitchen to hide how flustered he made her.
He followed her, and helped clean up the kitchen. When they were done, he sidled over to her, clearly ready for their traditional after work gropefest. Just seeing the intent look in his eyes gave her a heavy limbed feeling of lust she wanted nothing more than to give in to. She glanced at the clock above the stove and made a childish noise of disappointment.
“I have to meet someone who might buy my car,” she said. “You can come with me in case he’s a psycho killer.”
“I will prevent you from being psycho killed,” he said seriously, then perked up. “Wait, you have a car? I’ve always wanted to ride in one.”
“Here’s your chance,” she said, then sighed. “Maybe your last chance.”
“Why are you selling it? There won’t be enough from sales to give to the moneylenders?”
She shook her head sadly, feeling worse about losing the car than before, now that she knew what a dream it was of his to ride in one. She could have taught him how to drive, and they could have made out in the backseat. She eyed him up and down, changing her mind when she pictured him crammed into the backseat of her tiny Mazda. He wouldn’t fit.
“Even with how well things have been going, I’m still going to fall short. I’m too scared to risk not having the whole amount. What I hope is that I can show them good faith with this first payment, and if they see how successful the shop is, they’ll give me more time to make the next payment.”
“But you don’t look or sound hopeful,” he said, tracing his finger across her brow.
She wasn’t at all, but she didn’t want to spread her bad mood to Erik, not when he was about to take his first car ride.
She showed him how to buckle his seatbelt and turned the engine on. Music blared from the last time she’d driven it and she turned the radio down.
“I don’t really drive all that fast,” she said, pulling out onto the street and heading towards the meeting place. “You probably won’t find it all that exciting.”
He gripped the door handle when she started down their busy shop-lined street, looking wildly left and right.
“There’s so many other cars out, and they’re all so close,” he said. “Do they never collide?”
“They collide all the time,” she told him flippantly, wishing she hadn’t when he paled. “I’ve only been in two accidents,” she assured him, and reached over to take his hand.
“Shouldn’t you keep both of them up there?” he asked.
They were only going thirty and she struggled to keep a straight face. She had meant to take the highway to their destination, but now she wondered if he could handle it.
“It’s really very safe, this means of travel,” she said. “One of the accidents wasn’t my fault and the other one was when I was a teenager.”
She could see that didn’t reassure him and put her hand back on the steering wheel, pointing out how to open the window if he wanted, and telling him he could choose the music. Once a breeze blew through his hair and he had a thundering rock song playing, he visibly relaxed, even tentatively holding his hand out the window to waggle his fingers against the rush of air.
They were running short of time, so she had no choice but to pull onto the freeway. “We’re about to go faster,” she said.
“Oh, good. I think I’m enjoying it now.”
She kept a surreptitious eye on him, entertained by the looks that passed over his face. Still traces of nervousness, amazement, joy.
“I never could have imagined something on land could move so swiftly,” he mused. “How fast are we going, exactly?”
She glanced down at the speedometer. “Sixty-five,” she told him.
“But what does that mean?”
She smiled, utterly charmed by his curiosity, and wished she could hold his hand, but didn’t want to risk it. He was a Viking after all, and had a reputation for bravery to uphold. She didn’t want to crumble the tenuous grasp he had on his courage by taking her hand off the steering wheel.
“It means we can go sixty-five miles in an hour at this speed,” she explained. “If you want, we can look it up later to see what the equivalent is in knots or furlongs or whatever you used back in your day. It’s probably close to twice as fast as the fastest horse, though, if that helps.”
His mouth dropped open. “The marvels I’ve lived to see,” he said. “Thank you for this, Audrey.”
Unfathomably, tears sprang to her eyes at his tone of wonder. That such a simple thing as trying to get to an appointment should bring him so much happiness made her heart feel like it was on the brink of bursting. It felt very close to love. The next feeling she had felt very close to terror when a jerk on a motorcycle swerved in front of her, causing her to slam on her brakes to keep from hitting him.
She leaned on the horn and shouted out the window, and the jerk tossed a middle finger in the air, swerving in front of someone else in the carpool lane. She swore again, slowing down a little until her heart rate returned to normal, and turned to see Erik clutching the dashboard, eyes wide.
“That was road rage,” she explained. “Driving sucks. I’ll be glad to be rid of this heap.”
“It seems to offer only tenuous happiness, that’s for sure,” he agreed, keeping his hands planted on the dash until they arrived.
The man who was interested in buying the car had his mechanic friend look it over in the parking lot of the mall. Erik stood in his battle ready stance a few feet away, never taking his eyes off them and barely blinking. She felt bad about it at first when it was established they clearly wanted to buy a used car and not add anymore bodies to their basement freezer, but then found it so funny she had to keep pacing away to keep from laughing.
He took his responsibilities seriously, no matter what they were, and she found that endearing.
“You’ve had this car four years and it only has this many miles on it?” the mechanic friend asked.
“I live in town, so I mostly walk everywhere,” she explained, hoping they wouldn’t think she was lying and it had already rolled over onto its second hundred thousand miles. “It’s never been out of the city limits.”
The two conferred and she took Erik’s arm, trying to get him to stop looking so frightening now that they were on the verge of a decision. No one else had called on the ad yet, and she didn’t have enough time to sift through offers anyway. She needed cash, and fast.
The man tried to haggle her down a few hundred, but she had already looked up the car’s worth and placed the selling price several hundred lower to begin with. She was bitter enough about having to sell it, and mentally crossing her fingers for luck, said she couldn’t go any lower.
Erik stepped forward like he might offer his opinion and she shook her head, but apparently he only had to listen to her if she spoke her orders out loud.
“Is the price Audrey set for the c
ar fair?” he asked, glaring at each of them in turn.
The mechanic friend laughed nervously and scrolled through his phone. “It is, actually,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with it, Danny. You probably won’t find another car with this low mileage for this price. If you can quit getting in wrecks, you got a good ten-fifteen years with this car.”
She looked at Danny, the car wrecker, and almost pulled the plug. She should be the one having the good ten or fifteen years with the car, not him. The visit from the thug was still fresh in her mind. She wondered if he wasn’t there for his girlfriend at all, but to subtly intimidate her while checking to see she hadn’t fled town. The promise of their return in three short days sent her into such a tailspin she almost lowered the price, but realized Danny had already agreed.
“Well, okay, then,” she said, shaking his hand.
They arranged for him to pick it up at the bakery the next day, and she instructed him at least four times to bring cash. She couldn’t risk the bank holding a check for any length of time.
“I’m sorry you had to sell your vehicle,” Erik said, once he was tightly buckled back in. He peered out the window at the brightly lit signs of the shopping mall. “What is this place?”
“A bunch of overpriced stores mostly. Food, too.”
“Should we go in?” He rubbed his stomach. “For food?”
She couldn’t face an after work shopping crowd, and realized this was the last night she’d have a car.
“I’ll take you somewhere better,” she promised. “We can get food on the way.”
Chapter 10
After she went through drive-through and got him a bucket of chicken, she made him close his eyes, secure he wouldn’t peek because she expressly told him not to. They were already halfway there, and after a few minutes she pulled into one of the closest parking spots in the nearly vacant lot. Scurrying around to open his door for him, she helped him get out while he managed the chicken and side dishes with his eyes still closed.
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