No Weddings (No Weddings #1)(23)

Nearly launching off her stool, she hustled over and saved the day.

Still within earshot, I overheard the discussions by the cake.

“I can’t cut into it.” The woman had a stricken look on her face.

Hannah grabbed the long knife lying along the side of the platform that held the cake. “No worries. That’s what I’m here for. I made it, I can destroy it.”

Resolved not to interfere, I remained seated, watching from across the room. The cake part was Hannah’s gig, and she beamed brightly in her element.

Admiring this new composed yet outgoing facet of her I hadn’t expected, I kept my distance, studying her. All wrapped up into one, she was an excited artist, occasional Ice Queen, and a smooth businesswoman. And who could forget the tempting seductress.

The woman continued revealing pieces to an ever-growing puzzle.





How did I not say no Valentine’s Day?

If there was any single holiday worse than a wedding, it was Valentine’s Day. But worse than the entire Western World’s commercialism of a day sprung from Christian saints and courtly love, worse than all the cutesy hearts and obligatory bouquets, worse than even the professions of love and proposals, were all the suckers that bought into that shit.

My stomach soured.

I’d been staring at the blinking cursor on my screen for longer than was visually healthy when I sighed and decided to just buck up and deal. They didn’t have therapy for what ailed me, but maybe if I drowned myself in little pink hearts and boxes of chocolate, all the sap-filled overload would shove me into a sugar coma—or off a cliff.

Resigning myself to the fact that the event Kristen had booked was happening—whether or not I wanted to stab myself in the eye with a fork over it—I drafted the email, providing the pertinent details to Hannah, and hit send. There. Done. Moving on.

The blender or mixer, or whatever had been whirring in the background on and off in steady rotation for the last hour, stopped. I closed my laptop and settled further back into the corner of a fairly comfortable couch.

Hannah appeared suddenly, stalking toward me with the lit screen of her sparkle-coated cell phone held up by her face. Her hair was a tousled mess, trying to escape a pink hair clip. Her eyebrows were raised. She was goddamn adorable with that incredulous look on her face—kind of made a guy want to keep putting it there.

“Did you just email me from twenty feet away?”

I looked past her, gauging the size of the front room. “No. More like thirty-five.” I leaned back, bouncing into the cushion, rocking my thighs forward and back. “This couch is perfect.”

Her eyes narrowed, hiding their icy green color behind thick black lashes. “Glad you approve. Couldn’t you have just told me we have a new gig?”

“Why would I do that? This method was much more effective in getting your attention.”

Yes. I was the kid who pulled on girls’ pigtails just to make them squeal.

“Urgh!” She clenched her hands into fists and then exploded them out in midair toward me. Her phone went flying into the back of the couch, bounced off the middle seat cushion, and flew onto the floor before skidding to a halt next to her bright yellow tennis shoe. She glared at it, as if bending over and picking it up would lessen her frustrated display.

She stormed off, abandoning the innocent phone.

I scooped it up and chased after her into the bakery war zone. “Awww, c’mon. Don’t be like that. I’m kidding.”

Ignoring me, except for a cute little snort she made, she measured off dry ingredients into various sizes of clear bowls. While she pretended I wasn’t there, I watched as she visibly unwound with every measure and pour. By the time she dumped them all into a larger mixing bowl, her breathing had calmed, her expression relaxed.

Work was her therapy; it dissipated stress. Very much like bartending did for me. Familiar tasks that required your attention pulled you out of your head and into the present moment. Kendall, all into yoga and meditation, once told me the practice was called “mindfulness.” I got it—what I called my Zen Zone.

I walked over to her desk and placed her phone on the center of the surface, in between a fax machine and a neatly stacked pile of mail. “Besides, now you have a written record of the event, time, place, and cake request.”

Hannah glanced over her shoulder, her expression softening further. “Yeah, I guess. Thanks.”

Leaning back on the edge of the desk, I regarded her while she lost herself in her craft as she poured measuring cups of liquid into the bowl before turning the mixer on again. And, privileged as I was to be ignored, yet at the same time allowed to be here while her guard was down, I saw right through the ice-queen fa?ade. That wasn’t her—never had been. She excelled at constructing monstrous walls, then hiding behind them. Compartmentalized like no one I’d ever met before.

Well, besides me.

She turned the mixer off and pulled a bowl of batter out from under it before lifting it with both hands over to a worktable. She glanced up at me before pouring the mixture into a dark-gray rectangular mold, amusement glinting in her eyes. “Were you joking in your email about the cake theme being ‘Love is a Battlefield?’”

“No joke. The client didn’t have a preference, but I did. So that’s the theme.”

“Seriously?” She smiled.