Sweet Girl (12 page)

“What. The. Hell?” I sputter as Miko comes to a stop in front of us in all her shining, shimmering splendor.

She is like a Disney movie gone horribly wrong. She smiles at us both, totally unashamed that she is dressed from head to toe in gold leather, with wicked-looking wings and a pretty realistic-looking sword hanging from her hip.

“I didn’t know you guys came to these things,” she says happily. “In fact, I didn’t know you guys came to
anything
together.”

“We don’t,” I grumble. “This is a one-time thing, and the result of my losing a bet. But way more importantly, what are you doing here?”

“Oh, we’re about to go watch the hypnotist. Then later we’re gonna meet up with some friends from the IE for lunch. They have a really good food court, actually,” she tells us.

I can only stare at her in shock.

If I only have two friends and one of them is a fairy on the weekends, shouldn’t I have known that?

“We?” Taylor asks curiously just as a few other people walk up and come to a stop next to Miko. They look like the unwashed extras from Medieval Times.

“These are my friends.” She points out each one in turn. “Sara, Gretchen, Michael, and Lonny.”

Lonny, a mutant of a man in an ill-fitting purple tunic, clears his throat pointedly.

“Sorry, er, this is Lord Dilston, the ninth Earl of Canterbury,” she announces grandly.

Lonny seems mollified and goes back to the Droid in his hand.

“I need a drink,” I announce to no one in particular.

Lonny glances up from his phone at the suggestion.

“Not from you, Dilston.” I look pointedly at Taylor, who smiles and pulls me away.

“There’s a beer garden past that band of jugglers,” Miko calls after us. “If you hit the Dragon’s Lair, you’ve gone too far!”

It is all too ridiculous, and Taylor must agree, because he starts laughing harder with every step we take. Before I know it I am joining him.

I laugh because Miko has no sense of irony. I laugh because somewhere in Van Nuys, Lonny’s parents are wondering if he’ll ever actually move out of the basement. But mostly, I laugh because it feels so good to do it. It is the first time I can remember smiling in a while.

“OK, just one more stop before I take you home,” Taylor says as he pulls into a small lot and parks in front of a nondescript building.

We’d walked around the faire for a couple more hours, sipping beers and people-watching. Once I got over the initial shock of being in such a ridiculous place, it actually became a really interesting way to spend an afternoon, if for no other reason than it was fun to walk around and silently judge others.

I look at the lot around us, which is mostly empty. There isn’t a sign announcing our location, and I have no idea where he’s taken me now.

“Are you going to up the ante?” I ask, fighting a smile. “Maybe push me into the middle of a bum fight or sell my organs on the black market?”

I mean, seriously, he actually succeeded in taking me on the worst date ever. He purposely picked something horrible, which ironically at least garnered him some of my respect.

“Something like that,” he says, pulling the key out of the ignition and getting out of the car. He is already opening my door for me before I’ve even taken my seatbelt off. I forget occasionally that he is southern, since his accent rarely makes an appearance, but he has impeccable manners.

I follow him up to an unmarked door and into a small lobby. The smell of vanilla hits me before I’ve even taken three steps into the room. All around us are wedding cakes of every shape and size, each one more impressive than the one beside it. A small old woman comes out of the back room, and my mouth falls open when I see her hurrying towards us.

“Bennett Taylor, I don’t never see you no more,” she chides while reaching out to pinch his cheek with her weathered old hand. Her southern accent is much deeper and richer than either Taylor’s or Landon’s.

“That’s not true,” he tells her sweetly. “You know I just saw you two weeks ago at the McCarthy wedding.” He nearly yells the words at her, reminding me that of the few stories I’d read about this woman, one of them said she must be nearly ninety.

“Jennings, I’d like you to meet my friend—”

“Edith Marshall,” I say in wonder.

She is the most famous wedding-cake designer. Ever.

Celebrities from presidents to kings vie for her work. She costs a small fortune and is very choosy about who she’ll actually take on as a client. Rumor has it, she doesn’t even take directions from the bride or groom. You get whatever she wants to give you, and it is always epic.

She shakes my hand with a hearty “Speak up, girl, I can barely hear you!”

“I’m so flattered to meet you, ma’am.” I raise my voice to match her volume level, and she nods in agreement.

“Ben says you’re a baker.” She smiles at Taylor indulgently. I panic for a heartbeat, remembering the day I told him everything and thinking for one crazy moment that he might have mentioned it to someone else. But then I realize that regardless of my initial opinions about him, he has never been anything but totally cool about the whole breaking-down-in-the-hallway thing. I couldn’t imagine him sharing that information with anyone else.

Edith keeps speaking. “He thought you might like to try some of my creations.”

I look over at Taylor in surprise. He smiles sheepishly, like he is embarrassed by whatever he sees on my face.

Edith shuffles along ahead of us to a small but pristine kitchen, where a handful of apron-clad worker bees carry out their tasks. Tucked into a back corner is a small table covered with several tiny layer cakes. The cakes are covered on top and between sections with icing, but the sides are bare, so I can tell what flavors they are. Chocolate, vanilla, lemon, red velvet, and either carrot or maybe spice cake sit on the table, and next to them are a ton of little dishes holding fillings. Edith points them out as we take our seats.

“That there’s lemon curd, then strawberry preserves, chocolate ganache, a pistachio cream, raspberry jam, caramel cream cheese, huckleberry preserves, some kumquat preserves, and a maple buttercream which I like to pair with the carrot cake there.”

“This is incredible,” I tell Edith honestly.

“Nah.” She shoos my comment away with her hand. “It’s just a little baking. Some good ingredients, along with a little of this and a dash of that. You mix it up till it’s yummy. If it don’t come off quite right, you try it another way. It ain’t supposed to be scientific; it’s just supposed to taste good. Simple as that.”

I smile at her summation. Most classically trained pastry chefs
would
call this science, and they take it quite seriously. She makes it sound so simple.

“Y’all want some coffee to go with them sweets?” Edith asks.

When we both tell her yes, she shuffles away.

The smell alone is wonderful, and I try to map out which cake would taste best and how I can sample the most options without taking more than a few bites. I checked my levels in the restroom before we left the faire and they were OK, but more than a couple bites of this much sugar is dangerous for me.

Taylor picks up a fork without hesitation and takes a bite of the red velvet. His eyes close as he manages to chew and smile at the same time.

“That one”—he points at the red velvet with his fork—“is my favorite.”

I look around the options before us, struggling to choose. Finally I take the smallest bit of carrot cake and top it with the maple buttercream. Edith was dead on about the combination. It hits my taste buds in an explosion of flavor: nutmeg, cinnamon, apples, walnuts, and even a little allspice, paired perfectly with the creamy icing with hints of pure maple syrup. Taylor follows my lead and tries the same combination just as a young woman sets down two cups of coffee for us. Taylor hums as he closes his lips over his fork.

“Oh Lord, I change my mind,” he chokes out. “This one is my favorite.”

I can’t help but smile at him.

“What next?” he asks me.

I look around at the options before picking up a clean fork from the pile on the table. I spear a bite of the vanilla cake with buttercream icing and top it with strawberry preserves and the pistachio cream. I reach out the fork to him, and he grins before taking a bite, instead of taking the fork from me as I’d intended. I roll my eyes at his attempt to be cute before he slams his own shut in bliss.

“No,
that
one. That one is my favorite,” he says before taking another bite of the same.

I hide my smile behind the rim of my coffee cup.

He goes after the lemon cake next.

“Which one?” he asks before choosing a filling.

I point to the lemon curd and the raspberry jam in answer, and he complies, dipping his fork into each one.

“Don’t tell me you’re not going to have more,” he tells me between mouthfuls.

“I shouldn’t have too much,” I answer vaguely.

“Come on, Jennings, I never figured you for a girl who was afraid of calories,” he says in confusion.

If you’d have told me a week ago, or even this morning, that I’d be sitting here with any man, let alone this one, considering sharing even more personal information, I’d have laughed outright. But it somehow feels wrong to hide something he could easily find out from anyone else, especially when he knows so many other embarrassing details about me, and he’d been perceptive enough to bring me here in the first place. I take a deep breath.

“Not the calories,” I tell him, “just the sugar. I have to be really careful with my diet. I’m pretty severely hypoglycemic, which isn’t as difficult as being diabetic, but it can be really dangerous.”

I say it all in a rush, and when I look up Taylor appears to be trying to figure out the best response to my confession. He lays his fork down slowly in front of him on the table.

“But you’re training to be a pastry chef,” he says, sounding confused, “and even before that, Landon said you’re always baking.”

I wonder what else Landon has told him about me.

“Just because I can’t eat it, doesn’t mean I don’t want to. I like to make things for other people to try.”

I am embarrassed at how small my voice sounds. We are hitting pretty close to a nerve.

He must be able to tell that it makes me uncomfortable to talk about this, and he has to be perceptive enough to know that I’d hate pity of any kind.

“So you’re telling me that I managed to bring a woman who can’t eat sugar on a date to a cake tasting?” he asks slowly.

I nod in reply.

His head falls backwards in laughter. He sits up straighter and rubs a hand over his jaw. The tattoos on his forearms twist in response.

“Damn, I really did take you on the worst date ever,” he tells me with a chuckle. “This has got to be a record or something.”

Suddenly his smile falters.

“You were OK having the one bite, right?” he asks seriously. “I hope you didn’t do it just to be polite.”

I snort in response.

“You think I’d risk my health to save your vanity?” I ask him.

It comes out harsher than I’d intended, because it is easy for me to revert to type.

He looks away.

I have a small, absurd moment of panic. My family is used to my moods, and even Landon and Miko put up with them now. But this man has no reason to deal with me for longer than it takes to get me back home.

“It was the nicest date I’ve been on in a while,” I tell him.

I don’t tell him it is the only date I’ve been on in a while. That is beside the point.

Some of the tension comes out of his shoulders, and he smiles again.

“Can you have any more, or are you tapped out?” he asks.

I look at the options dubiously.

“One more bite won’t kill me,” I tell him, stabbing a piece of chocolate cake.

I have no idea where the flippancy came from. I have never, not once, joked about my condition, because my family takes it so seriously. It actually feels kind of great to mock it for once.

“Not funny,” he says sternly.

“Kind of funny,” I answer with a childish smile.

I dip my cake in the chocolate ganache and the caramel cream cheese and take a bite. I have to force myself not to groan as the incredible flavors explode on my tongue.

“That one”—I point at the chocolate cake—“that one is your favorite. You just don’t know it yet.”

Taylor’s answering smile is boyish once again, and he starts to create his own bite that is twice the size of my own. I happily sip my coffee as he proceeds to eat the rest of the chocolate cake.

I can’t make sense of where I find myself. This morning he’d set out to ruffle my feathers or just out-and-out piss me off. But he picked up on the one thing I loved most, something almost nobody would have chosen for me to do, and figured out a way to work it into our day. I’m not sure what to think about someone who forced me into this day against my will but then tried his best to make it nice for me. When I combine that with his kindness when I was upset, the whole thing makes me feel uncomfortable.

“What is it you want?” I demand.

“What?” he asks, his fork paused halfway between his plate and his mouth.