Recipe for Love (12 page)

He covered her left hand with his own, and although the unexpected contact made her
jump, she ignored the impulse to pull her fingers away. His gesture seemed more an
act of compassion than anything else, and, frankly, she liked the feel of his firm
yet gentle touch.

“What if I told you,” he said, leaning forward, “that I’ve traveled five hundred and
seventy miles and waited sixty-three days to taste this one cupcake?”

Andi leaned toward him as well. “I’d say that’s ridiculous. There’s no cupcake in
Astoria worth all that trouble.”

“What if this particular cupcake isn’t from Astoria?”

“No?” She took another look at the box but didn’t see a label. “Where’s it from?”

“Hollande’s French Pastry Parlor outside of Portland.”

“What if I told you I would send you a dozen Hollande’s cupcakes tomorrow?”

“What if I told
you
,” he said, stopping to release a deep, throaty chuckle, “this is the last morsel
of food I have to eat before I starve to death today?”

Andi laughed. “I’d say that’s a good way to go. Or I could invite you to my place
and cook you dinner.”

Her heart stopped, stunned by her own words, then rebooted a moment later when their
gazes locked, and he smiled at her.

“You can have the cupcake on one condition.”

“Which is?”

Giving her a wink, he slid the bakery box toward her. Then he leaned his head in close
and whispered in her ear.

An Excerpt from

THE CUPCAKE DIARIES: TASTE OF ROMANCE

All I really need is love, but a little chocolate now and then doesn’t hurt!

—Charles Schulz

F
OCUS
, K
IM REPRIMANDED
herself.
Keep to the task at hand and stop eavesdropping on other people’s conversations.

But she didn’t need to hear the crack of the teenage boy’s heart to feel his pain.
Or to remember the last time she’d heard the wretched words “I’m leaving” spoken to
her.

She tried to ignore the couple as she picked up the pastry bag filled with pink icing
and continued to decorate the tops of the strawberry preserve cupcakes. However, the
discussion between the high school boy and what she assumed to be his girlfriend kept
her attentive.

“When will I see you again?” he asked.

Kim glanced toward them, leaned closer, and held her breath.

“I don’t know,” the girl replied.

The soft lilt in her accent thrust the familiarity of the conversation even deeper
into Kim’s soul.

“I’ll be going to the university for two years,” the girl continued. “Maybe we meet
again after.”

Not likely. Kim shook her head, and her stomach tightened. From past experience, she
knew once the school year was over in June, most foreign students went home, never
to return.

And left many broken hearts in their wake.

“Two years is a long time,” the boy said.

Forever was even longer.
Kim drew in a deep breath as the unmistakable catch in the poor boy’s voice replayed
again and again in her mind. And her heart.

How long were they going to stand there and torment her and remind her of her parting
four years earlier with Gavin, the Irish student she’d dated through college? Dropping
the bag of icing on the Creative Cupcakes counter, she moved toward them.

“Can I help you?” Kim asked, pulling on a new pair of food handler’s gloves.

“I’ll have the white chocolate macadamia,” the girl said, pointing to the cupcake
she wanted in the glass display case.

The boy dug his hands into his pockets, counted the meager change he’d managed to
withdraw, and turned five shades of red.

“None for me.” His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “How much for hers?”

“You have to have one, too,” the girl protested. “It’s your birthday.”

Kim took one look at his lost-for-words expression and said, “If today is your birthday,
the cupcakes are free.” She added, “For both you and your guest.”

The teenage boy’s face brightened. “Really?”

Kim nodded and removed the cupcakes the two lovebirds wanted from the display case.
She even put a birthday candle on one of them, a heart on the other. Maybe the girl
would come back for him. Or he would fly to Ireland for her.
Maybe
.

Her eyes stung, and she squeezed them shut for a brief second. When she opened them
again, she set her jaw. Enough was enough. Now that they had their cupcakes, she could
escape back into her work and forget about romance and relationships and every regrettable
moment she’d ever wasted on love.

She didn’t need it. Not like her older sister, Andi, who had recently lost her heart
to Jake Hartman, their Creative Cupcakes financer and news writer for the
Astoria Sun
. Or like her other co-owner friend, Rachel, who had just gotten engaged to Mike Palmer,
a miniature model maker for movies who also doubled as the driver of their Cupcake
Mobile.

All she needed was to dive deep into her desire to put paint on canvas. She glanced
at the walls of the cupcake shop, adorned with her scenic oil, acrylic, and watercolor
paintings. Maybe if she worked hard enough, she’d have the money to open her own art
gallery, and she wouldn’t need to decorate cupcakes anymore.

But for now, she needed to serve the next customer.
Where was Rachel?

“Hi, Kim.” Officer Ian Lockwell, one of their biggest cupcake supporters, sat on one
of the stools lining the marble cupcake counter. “I’m wondering if you have the back
party room available on June twenty-seventh?”

Kim reached under the counter and pulled out the three-ring binder she, Andi, and
Rachel had dubbed the “Cupcake Diary” to keep track of all things cupcake related.
Looking at the calendar, she said, “Yes, the date is open. What’s the occasion?”

“My wife and I have been married almost fifteen years,” the big square-jawed cop told
her. “We’re planning on renewing our vows on our anniversary and need a place to celebrate
with friends and family.”

“No better place to celebrate love than Creative Cupcakes,” Kim assured him, glancing
around at all the couples in the shop. “I’ll put you on the schedule.”

Next, the door opened, and a stream of romance writers filed in for their weekly meeting.
Kim pressed her lips together. The group intimidated her with their watchful eyes
and poised pens. They scribbled in their notebooks whenever she walked by as if writing
down her every move, and she didn’t want to give them any useful fodder. She hoped
Rachel could take their orders, if she could find her.

“Rachel?”

No answer, but the phone rang—a welcome distraction. She picked up and said, “Creative
Cupcakes, this is Kim.”

“What are you doing there? I thought you were going to take time off.”

Kim pushed into the privacy of the kitchen, glad it was her sister, Andi, and not
another customer despite the impending lecture tone. “I still have several dozen cupcakes
to decorate.”

“Isn’t Rachel there with you?”

The door of the walk-in pantry burst open, and Rachel and Mike emerged, wrapped in
each other’s arms, laughing and grinning.

Kim rolled her eyes. “Yes, Rachel’s here.”

Rachel extracted herself from Mike’s embrace and mouthed the word “Sorry.”

But Kim knew she wasn’t. Rachel had been in her own red-headed, happy bubble ever
since macho, dark-haired Mike the Magnificent had proposed two weeks earlier.

“I’ll be in for my shift as soon as I get Mia off to afternoon kindergarten,” Andi
continued, “and the shop’s way ahead in sales. There’s no reason you can’t take a
break. Ever since you broke up with Gavin, you’ve become a workaholic.”

Kim sucked in her breath at the mention of his name. Only Andi dared to ever bring
him up.

“Gavin has nothing to do with my work.”

“You never date.”

“I’m concentrating on my career.”

“It’s been years since you’ve been out with anyone. You need to slow down, take time
to smell the roses.”

“Smell the roses?” Kim gasped. “Are you
serious
?”

“Go on an adventure,” Andi amended.

“Working is an adventure.”

“You used to dream of a different kind of adventure,” Andi said, lowering her voice.
“The kind that requires a passport.”

Kim wished she’d never picked up the phone. Just because her sister had her life put
back together didn’t mean she had the right to tell her how to live.

“Painting cupcakes and canvas is the only adventure I need right now. I promised Dad
I’d have the money to pay him for my new art easel by the end of the week.”

“Dad doesn’t care about the money, but he does care about you. He asked me to call.”

“He did?” Kim stopped in front of the sink and rubbed her temples with her fingertips.
Her sister was known to overreact, but their father? He didn’t voice concern unless
it was legitimate.

With the phone to her ear, she returned to the front counter of the couple-filled
cupcake shop, her heart screaming louder and louder with each consecutive beat.

They were
everywhere.
By the window, at the tables, next to the display case. Couples, couples, couples.
Everyone had a partner, had someone.

Almost
everyone.

Instead of Goonies Day, the celebration of the 1985 release date of
The Goonies
movie, which was filmed in Astoria, she would have thought the calendar had been
flipped back to Valentine’s Day at Creative Cupcakes. And in her opinion, one Valentine’s
Day a year was more than enough.

She reached a hand into the pocket of her pink apron and clenched the golden wings
she had received on her first airplane flight as a child. The pin never left her side,
and like the flying squirrel tattooed on her shoulder, it reminded her of her dream
to fly, if not to another land, then at least to the farthest reaches of her imagination.

Where her heart would be free.

Okay, maybe she
did
spend too much time at the cupcake shop. “Tell Dad not to worry,” Kim said into the
phone. “Tell him . . . I’m taking the afternoon off.”

“Promise?” Andi persisted.

Oh, yeah.
Tearing off her apron, she turned around and threw it over Rachel’s and Mike’s heads.
“I’m heading out the door now.”

F
IVE MINUTES LATER
, Kim stood outside the cupcake shop on Marine Drive, wondering which direction to
head. The tattoo parlor was on her left, a boutique to her right, and the waterfront
walk beneath the giant arching framework of the Astoria−Megler Bridge stretched straight
in front.

Turning her back on it all, she decided to take a new path and soon discovered an
open wrought iron gate along Bond Road. The side entrance, she assumed, to Astoria’s
new community park.. Hadn’t her sister told her to “smell the roses”?

Kim walked through the gate toward a large circle of white rosebushes and began to
count off each flower as she leaned in to fill her lungs with their strong, fragrant
scent. “One, two, three . . .”

After smelling seventeen, she moved toward the yellows. “Eighteen, nineteen, twenty
. . .”

Past the gazebo she found red roses, orange roses, and a vast variety of purples and
pinks. “Forty-six, forty-seven, forty-eight . . .”

Her artist’s eye took in the palette of color, and imagining the scene on canvas,
she wished she’d brought along her paints and brushes. “Sixty-two, sixty-three, sixty-four
. . .”

Andi had been right. The sweet, perfumed scent of the roses did seem to ease her tension
and help block out all thoughts of romance. Even if the rose was a notorious symbol
of
love
. And the flower that garnished the most sales over
romantic
holidays. With petals used for flower girl baskets at
weddings
.

Who needed romance anyway? Not her.

She bent to smell the next group of flowers and noticed a tall, blond man with work
gloves carrying a potted rosebush past the ivy trellis. As his gaze caught hers, he
appeared to pause. Then he smiled.

Kim smiled back and moved toward the next rose.

“Can I help you?” the gardener asked, walking over.

Oh,
no.
He had a foreign accent, Scandinavian, like some of the locals whose ancestors first
inhabited the area. And she had an acute weakness for foreign accents.

“I think I need to do this myself,” Kim replied. “My goal is to smell a hundred roses.”

“Why a hundred?”

“That’s the number of things on my to-do list. I thought stopping to smell one rose
per task might balance out my life.”

“Interesting concept.” The attractive gardener appeared to suppress a grin. “How many
more do you have to go?”

“I’m at sixty-seven.”

“I didn’t mean to interrupt.” He set the rosebush down, took off a glove, and extended
his hand. “I’m Nathaniel Sjölander.”

“Kimberly Burke,” she said, accepting the handshake. His hand, much larger than her
own, surrounded her with warmth.

“I have to load a couple dozen roses into my truck for the Portland Rose Festival
tomorrow, but by all means—keep sniffing.”

Kim pulled rose number sixty-eight toward her, a yellow flower as buttery and delicately
layered as a . . . freshly baked croissant. Hunger sprang to life inside her empty
stomach, and she realized she’d been so busy working, she’d forgotten to eat lunch.

She watched Nathaniel Sjölander move between the potted plants. Was he single? Would
someone like him be interested in her? Maybe ask her to dinner? And why
hadn’t
she dated anyone in the last few years? She could argue that good-looking single
men were hard to come by, but the truth was, she just hadn’t taken the initiative
to find one.

Nathaniel made several trips back and forth between the greenhouse and the gate, his
gaze sliding toward her again and again.
Oh, yes!
He was definitely interested. Her pulse quickened as he approached her a second time.