I squealed for no reason.
Gabe carried me to bed.
PS: Gabe picked long and lazy.
And hot and heavy.
Le sigh.
TWENTY-TWO
PERIWINKLE AND TUSCANY
Late the next afternoon, after I’d prepped upcoming orders and delivered the birthday cake (I was right, saving that time driving home, parking and getting sorted at home to dive into more work seemed like I wasn’t saving twenty or so minutes, but instead hours, so when I could stop deliveries too, I was going to be golden)…and while I was waiting for Mom and Robbie, Mike and Shelby to return from their day kayaking (but of course they made plans to do something—together—while Gabe and I worked), I sat at one of the tables in the courtyard with Alexis, going over cake stuff.
“I really want Jacob to have what he wants, and he likes chocolate and peanut butter,” Alexis was fretting to me. “But that isn’t everyone’s taste. And peanut butter doesn’t exactly scream ‘Wedding!’ so I don’t know what to do.”
“Okay, first, and most importantly,” I instructed, “this is Jacob’s and your wedding, so nothing anyone else likes should come into consideration. People can support you and help you find your way to what you want, but if they start telling you what you should do, file it away as advice and stick with what you want. Bottom line, Alexis, it’s your day. Yours and Jacob’s. Nothing else matters. Okay?”
She nodded.
It was uncertain, but I’d get her there.
“And second, when it comes to cake, we need to start with how many guests you think you’ll have. You might need a two-tier, or three. Or I could do smaller cakes to give you three if you don’t want the guest numbers to go that high, but you want a taller cake. Or we could do a smaller cake and some cupcake towers. And each tier can be a different flavor profile. That means Jacob can have his favorite, you can have yours, and we can pick something universally liked for the last.”
“Ohmigod, that’s perfect!” Alexis exclaimed. “I didn’t think about it like that, but it totally makes sense.”
“Right.” I smiled at her. “So, moving forward from that, we’ll need to do a cake tasting. You give me some ideas. I’ll make cupcakes for, I don’t know, five or six of those ideas. You come over and taste them. Once we have the flavors, we’re in the perfect position. We just have to pick the decoration.”
“I couldn’t ask you to make five or six batches of cupcakes just for us to taste them,” she said.
“I can sell the rest of the batches at SC. So it’s no problem.”
Her eyes drifted from me, her gaze got fuzzy, and she mumbled, “Right.”
I turned to see what she was looking at and watched Luke Stark striding toward us.
Luke moving, standing, walking, sleeping, possibly even snoring would make any girl fuzzy, so I got that.
But…
Oh boy.
What now?
“Don’t want to disturb,” his deep voice rumbled toward Alexis when he made it to us. “This will only take a minute. You mind if I talk with Willow?”
“Nope!” she squeaked. “I’m gonna go grab a glass of wine. You want a glass of wine, Willow?” she asked me.
“Sure,” I answered.
She turned to Luke.
“None for me,” he said.
“Okay,” she replied, left her laptop with its dizzying array of wedding Pinterest boards and pins that she’d amassed, and she made her graceful way to her apartment.
Luke folded his long body into the chair beside me.
