Kimberly rolls her eyes. “Good morning, Dane. Hello, Lorelei. Lovely to see you both. Did you need the bride?”
“We do,” Lorelei answers for me. “My dad’s experimenting with fruitcake flavors for a special side cake that he’s making just for Amanda, and he wants to know which kind she prefers.”
“Today’smyday with her,” Vicki says. “Your family had their chance yesterday.”
“I like all of the flavors,” Amanda says to Lorelei.
“If you can’t leave, we’ll bring them by. You can sample on your lunch break.”
Vicki sucks in a breath.
Kimberly visibly suppresses a smile.
Amanda looks at me again. The utter misery in her face is so opposite how she looked in bed this morning, and it’s pissing me off.
Family shouldn’t make you miserable.
“We just have three more batches to make,” she says. “I might get the thickness right by the last batch. Maybe.”
She hasn’t told them.
She hasn’t told her grandmother that she can’t take over the bakery.
That’s why she’s stuck here. She’s still playing along.
Or maybe this isn’t playing. Maybe she’s completely given in.
That’s why she’s so unhappy.
Because she’s giving up a life she loves to fulfill an obligation her family’s putting on her shoulders so that they don’t have to change anything about their lives.
Fuck unhappy. Fuck obligations.
Fuck the continued stubbornness from family members who are standing in the way of everyone else’s peace.
“You can watch from the windows,” Vicki says, shooing Lorelei and me away.
Fuck watching from the windows too.
I slip around the prep table until I’m standing behind Amanda, settling my hands on her waist and pressing a kiss to her hairnet-covered hair. “You okay?” I ask softly.
“Fantastic.”
If that’s fantastic, I don’t want to know what she’d sound like if she ever confessed to being miserable.
“I could use your opinion on a tux today,” I say, louder.
“She’s busy,” Vicki says.
“I can make the gingerbread,” Kimberly says.
“Amanda needs to.”
“She’s getting married tomorrow and we all have your party tonight and the world won’t stop if we run out of gingerbread one or two days in late summer.”
“She’s marrying the enemy and trying to get out of her family duties.”
“She doesn’t owe us this, Vicki.”
