Courtship of the Cake Read online

  Nash was taking me home for a week to meet the family.

  I rubbed the smooth surface of the diamond with my thumb, envying its strong, unbreakable characteristics. Suddenly, Riggs appeared from around the corner, like a genie being summoned from a lamp. “Time to roll, girlie. Nash is looking for his bride-to-be.”

  Dex’s entire frame took a jolt of electricity at the drop of the lead singer’s name. “Drama?”

  I had called Dex many choice things over the years. But incredulous was never one of them.

  “Please. Just tell Jax I’ll call him soon, okay?” I asked, my eyes pleading their case as Riggs hooked my arm.

  “Two words: confidentiality agreement,” the tour manager hissed a reminder in my ear.

  “Two words,” I gritted back. “Shut up.”

  I had enough drama in my life right now without Dex adding to it.

  Mick

  HOMECOMING

  The Half Acre’s grandame of a house awaited me in quiet, lacy-curtained disapproval. Even the square, windowed cupola perched atop the flat roof seemed to be giving me the stink eye. The Italianate structure actually reminded me of the wedding cake I had created for last night’s nuptials: strong and square, with pillars rising up from the bottom layer to support the supple porch roofs whose white moldings were as thick and smooth as rolled fondant. Swathed in a wash the exact hue of peach buttercream and studded around the edges with ornamental brackets as evenly spaced and precise as the beaded border I had piped, the one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old house was a work of art. It rose tall, proud and unapologetic next to its much smaller, plainer neighbors.

  I cut across the lawn and skirted toward the side entrance. Only guests of the Half Acre Bed-and-Breakfast used the front door, its elegant façade warm and welcoming. But those who lived in it knew its perfect appearance was just that: a façade. As shocking as a beautiful fashion model exposing her scarred cheek to the world, the house had a charred, disfigured side where fire had claimed an entire wing. The old limestone foundation had been filled in and seeded, and grass now grew where ten guest rooms once stood. Luckily, a fire wall placed when Quinn and Bear’s father had the addition built spared most of the original landmark, save a bit of smoke damage.

  Those who lived here loved it all the same, and accepted its tragic deformity. Bear had done some halfhearted patching to protect the wound from the elements, then gave up and moved on. Quinn, normally a perfectionist when it came to running her family’s B and B, was strangely unapologetic when it came to guests who enquired why the inn no longer looked like the photos on the Internet, with “no, this didn’t happen since you booked,” and “yes, you can still have a room with a Jacuzzi tub.”

  Logan knew no different, didn’t know the loss. It had happened before he was born.

  It had happened before Nash left.

  And me?

  I was used to filling culinary sinkholes with cake scraps and buttercream; this was beyond me.

  Logan was at the large kitchen island, shaking dregs of powdery cake mix from a box. It sat like a weird, gray volcano in a mixing bowl that was slightly too small. At the boy’s feet sat Bacon, one of our two resident Burmese. Judging from the way the cat was fanatically rubbing his face with his paw, I’d say his whiskers caught some of the fallout.

  “Hey, buddy.” I reached for the heavy white crockery I preferred to use and tapped him on the shoulder, but too late; Logan had already cracked a thumb through his first egg and let it ooze down the powder volcano like lava.

  “Your bowl is too small,” I said, trying to catch his eye with my thumb and forefinger to emphasize my point, but he refused to meet my gaze and reached for the oil. I hated to think about ingesting a cake that only required three ingredients: eggs, oil, and water. Whatever the hell was in the powder I didn’t consider an ingredient.

  Logan used the back of his bony wrist to push his wispy blond bangs from his temple, but still earned an oily cocoa smear in the process.

  “Where’s your mom?”

  He wrinkled his nose at me and looked around for something on the counter.

  “Is she in her darkroom? You shouldn’t have started without me.”

  Bear lumbered into the kitchen, carrying a guitar missing half its strings. Leather pants were his Sunday lounging attire, and he was the only guy I knew who could pull it off without looking like a total tool. His tattoos popped brightly in contrast to the faded yellow damask wallpaper in the hallway behind him.

  “I’m supervising,” Bear said by way of greeting, or explanation. “And yeah, she’s in her darkroom. Exposing you for the drunk ass you are.” He plunked the guitar onto the small kitchen table and nimbly began to re-string it.

  Quinn had worked the Davis-Dixon affair alongside me last night, as the official wedding photographer. I remembered seeing her snapping a gazillion digital shots of the cake before reaching for her old-school Leica camera. She was probably the last photographer in Bucks County to still use film, but she loved shooting her black-and-whites that way. “More dynamic range,” she’d say, whether she was shooting the bridge at night, the shoes of a wedding party all in a line, or a raccoon, dead in the orchard. “Infinite shades of gray.”

  And apparently, infinite ways to prove I was an idiot. Negatives of all my negatives, printed in black-and-white and waved in front of my face. Stacked up to save as ammunition later. No quick delete button of forgiveness when it came to Quinnlyn. No glossing or Photoshopping over my blunders.

  I groaned and plucked what Logan had been searching for—a balloon whisk—out of his hands. Small bowl plus balloon whisk would equal my having to clean the eruption from every flat surface of the kitchen.

  “Buddy. Let’s start again, okay? From scratch.”

  I ran my fingers up and down his back apologetically, but he ignored me.

  “He’s giving you the silent treatment.”

  Bear guffawed at his own joke. His fingers tweaked and tightened the pegs of his Flying V, tuning the guitar by memory rather than by ear first, like some goddamn Jedi master.

  “A little help, here. Please?”

  Bear abandoned the guitar and approached his nephew. “Logan. Mick says your bowl’s too small and he wants to bake a new cake with you. Homemade.”

  I watched as Bear’s fingers flew along with his audio cues. He brought his flat palms close together to show Logan the bowl was dinky. His left hand then went palm down, and he arched his other hand into a claw, bringing it down on top of his flat hand like a cup.

  Logan bit his lip and fidgeted with the empty cake mix box.

  I clutched my fist to my chest and rolled it emphatically.

  Sorry was the one word in sign language I was becoming really good at.

  Logan gave me a curt nod and then his fingers began flying. With one palm up, he karate-chopped it with a V-shaped slicing movement. I thought I caught a couple of letters I recognized, but was helpless without Bear to interpret.

  “He says he’s pretty committed to this super-moist devil’s food cake but you can help him make frosting.”

  “Okay then.” If Logan had his heart set on the box cake, we were going to make it the best damn box cake ever. With a little help from an extra egg, milk swapped for water, and a stealth addition of instant pudding.

  Three layers, no problem.

  Bear went back to his guitar, and Logan and I worked in perfect harmony in the kitchen. The cake pans went into the oven and Logan chose sour cream fudge frosting from the recipes stored on my phone. Luckily, I kept a small store of Perugina dark chocolate on hand in the Half Acre’s pantry. I put Logan to work breaking the bars while I yanked down pots from the gleaming rack overhead to start a double boiler. The clanging metal and cloying sweetness of the chocolate were debilitating with my hangover, but I pressed on.

  “Double digits, huh?” I formed my words carefu
lly. “The big time.”

  Logan gave me a broad smile, all teeth. He proudly rocked his fist back and forth, his thumb up. “Ten.”

  I smiled back. “Happy birthday, buddy.”

  Logan was profoundly deaf. He knew no different; to him it wasn’t a loss. It had happened before he was born.

  “No, we don’t know what caused his hearing loss,” Quinn would sweetly respond to a curious well-wisher’s inquiry. “But let’s pass the responsibility on to his father, shall we? Give him a little credit in all of this.”

  I hoped Nash would take a few precious seconds out of his busy rock star schedule to at least call today, and check in on the son he’d left behind.

  “Did you see the paper today?” Bear happened to ask, that “share half a brain” thing in full effect.

  “Nash getting a key to the city? Yeah. Crazy, right?”

  “Totally,” Bear agreed. “We don’t even live in a city. It’s a borough.” Bear’s mind worked in mysterious ways, and his earnest expression made me laugh.

  “It’s all symbolic,” I assured him. “I hope he knows it won’t get him lap dances.”

  “Or out of parking tickets,” Bear joked. “Let’s not mention it to She Who Runs the Household. Not today, anyway.”

  “Agreed.” At twenty-nine, Bear’s sister was the matriarch of the Bradley family. Not that anyone would ever dare call her matriarch.

  “So I heard the wedding was quite a circus.” Bear gave each string a good stretch before cutting off the excess with wire cutters. “Or maybe it was a zoo . . .”

  Hardy har har. I knew what he was getting at. There were no cougars in the circus.

  “Which band are you gigging with tonight?” I asked, changing the subject.

  Bear played in at least a dozen cover bands around the Northeast. He called them “tributes,” and was able to not only flawlessly re-create the music, but fabricate the look of the lead guitarist responsible for it as well.

  “Guess!” He grinned. “We’re called No Bone Movies.”

  The names were almost always references to the most obscure songs in the original band’s repertoire, that only the die-hard fans would make sense of. But I recognized the black and white polka-dot V-shaped guitar. “You’re Randy Rhoads tonight.”

  “Yep. Ozzy tribute. You should see the singer, he’s got the shakes and everything.”

  “Nice. I like the paint job.”

  “Uh-oh, here comes the Mighty Quinn,” Bear warned, running through a few power chords that sounded like the theme from Jaws, ominous even without amplification.

  Her pounding ascent up the porch steps belied the one-hundred-pound, soaking wet weight and petite, slim stature that eventually appeared in the kitchen doorway.

  “I started him on the box mix because you were MIA.”

  My chocolate in the double boiler was silky and smooth. Quinn’s voice was anything but. Logan handed me the butter and in it went, melting effortlessly as I stirred.

  “A word, Spencer.” There was ice in her tone, but she smiled big toward Logan and signed what I could only imagine meant, Wow, sweetie. Your cake smells heavenly even though the devil incarnate is helping you bake it.

  “Bear, help Logan with the sour cream and Karo? Just whisk it in,” I directed, turning off the burner. “It’s going to need to stand awhile.”

  “Seriously, Mick? The one day when I could do with you being present and accounted for?” Quinn had turned her back so Logan couldn’t read her lips as she ripped me a new one. And sure enough, she gripped fresh 8x10s in her fist. “It’s his goddamn birthday and all he wanted to do was wake up and bake a freakin’ cake with you! And you roll in, reeking of whiskey and mother of the bride? For fuck’s sake!”

  “Body language,” I said through gritted teeth, jerking my head toward the dining room. Logan might not have been able to read our lips, but a blind man would’ve been able to sense the tension.

  She stormed ahead of me. On the seldom-used antique oak dining table, where we served the rare, occasional guests their breakfasts, she smacked one photo down after another. There I was in stark, monochromatic clarity. Clutching the neck of a bottle of Jack like it was an extension of my dick. Jeez. The next photo was a bit more benign: the bride, looking lovely, with the ladies of her wedding party. Even though the picture was in black-and-white, I remembered the colors. Her bridesmaids wore navy, while her mother was voluptuous and stunning in periwinkle blue. Not a hair out of place. On to the next shot: me on the dance floor, grabbing a handful of hot, periwinkle mother-of-the-bride ass.

  “Mandy Davis, Mick? Seriously?”

  “I know, I know. It was just . . . God, she called in a panic saying the caterers were butchering the cake trying to cut it, and I was just around the corner, so I popped in the back and sliced it for her—”

  Quinn interrupted with a disgusted click of her tongue. “And then she wanted to repay you so she gave you a bottle from the top shelf and one thing led to another, right? Jeez, Mick. I recommended you for the job. What does that make me look like?”

  “A pimp?” Bear supplied, loud and clear from the kitchen.

  Quinn’s eyes widened, infuriated. Their warm brown color always made me think of my first experience tempering chocolate in pastry arts class. When Quinn was calm—or properly tempered—her eyes were shiny, smooth, and creamy pools. When she was angry, they took on a dull, mottled, and waxy look. It took me tons of practice to learn how to temper chocolate correctly. And I still hadn’t mastered tempering Quinn.

  “I let Bear talk me into allowing you to live here because I thought it would be good to have another guy around, for Logan. And so you could help out on the breakfast side of things with guests. But you’ve been bedding every skirt that comes your way in, in . . . I don’t know, some vain attempt to fuck your misery away after moving back from New Orleans? It’s getting really old, Mick.” Her voice shook. “I think you need to start looking for a place of your own. You’ve been back home almost a year now.”

  “Come on, Quinn. I’m sorry. I do help out, I never mind chilling with Logan, and you know I would never hook up with a guest, or bring anyone back here . . .” The latter was one of the most appealing things about living at the Half Acre. If I had an itch to scratch, it was separate from my life here, with my friends. It was just an itch. That was it.

  “It’s only a matter of time.” Her words cut deep. “And you are taking up a room I could be renting nightly.”

  I had been stewing in my wounded pride, letting ego and anger simmer for a while now. But even I had a boiling point.

  “Guess what, Quinn? Summer tourist season, if you want to call it that, is over. The phone barely rings. And besides the leaf-peepers who will be here for a week this fall, and the random gay couple escaping Queen Village for some antiquing upstate? Who’s coming to book your rooms, huh?” If anything, my monthly rent was helping her keep the damn property in her family. “You’re not exactly turning a profit as an innkeeper.”

  “All the more reason not to mess with my wedding business.” Her eyes had tempered to hard and unbreakable.

  “We’re in the same business,” I reminded, my hands outstretched to appease her. “Same mission, Bradley. I’m on your side.”

  “Well, Mandy Davis is on the chamber of commerce board. And I like my membership there. So keep your dick in your pants and your head in the game.”

  A blistering guitar solo rattled the stained glass windows of the dining room, and Bacon skidded by, ears back and claws scrambling. Bear had united the rock-and-roll trinity of guitar jack, power cord, and amplifier.

  “It’s no wonder we have no guests here!” Quinn bellowed loud enough for her brother to hear. “It’s a madhouse!”

  “No, that’s next week,” Bear called. “Anthrax tribute.”

  She gathered up all the photos with a hefty sigh, an
d I sincerely hoped she was going to make the incriminating ones disappear. “You’ll help Bear with the party tent? And the tables? And the piñata?”

  “Yes, yes. All of it. I just have to go down to the shop to get the Spidey cupcakes, and meet with one bride. My aunt set up a Sunday consult. I promise it will be quick. Just a meet and greet.”

  “It had better be.”

  I gave Quinn my best trust me, I’m a total professional look.

  She moved to go, but turned back for one last scrutinizing glance.

  I thought she was going for the old “what’s that on your shirt?” gag we all used to do when we were kids, as she came at me with a pointed finger. Many a nose had been flicked as a result of falling for that bit. But Quinn wasn’t in the joking mood. Her curiosity morphed into disgust.

  “You’ve got chocolate syrup in the hollow of your throat.”

  Dani

  WALK THE LINE

  “Nash! NASH! I love you!”

  “Marry me, Nash!”

  “NASH!”

  The term “screaming bloody murder” had nothing on the girls gathered who were “screaming bloody matrimony.” One well-placed shriek at close range from the sea of groupies made me wish I had thought to grab my earplugs off the tour bus. I barely gave them a second thought at concerts; they were a necessary evil.

  The groupies, that is. Earplugs were a godsend.

  But we weren’t at one of Go Get Her’s concerts; we were trying to get a mere twenty feet from door to curb where the limo was waiting. “So much for sneaking out the side door,” I hollered at Nash’s back. The rest of the band had already been whisked off by the bus, along with a hoodie-and-shades-wearing decoy from the road crew roughly the same height and build as their lead singer, twenty minutes prior. The Nash worshippers were apparently smarter than Riggs gave them credit for.

  Their arms undulated like stinging anemone: pretty but painful if they made contact. “Give him room, ladies. Move back!” Riggs barked, his elbow going up to block limbs being thrown in his path as he led us through the melee. With one hand resting on Nash’s shoulder and the other at his waist, I brought up the end of our demented little conga line.