Even his threat of making me watch him clean out my forgotten spice cabinet gave me dirty thoughts. Have I unlockeda new kink? A cleaning kink? Would he wear nothing when he did it?
I slammed on the cart’s brakes in front of Boom Boom Blooms next door to the bakery.
What the hell was wrong with me?I was on my way to meet the love of my life, and here I was, fantasizing about my fake fiancé.
Ruining Jesse’s wedding would require focus. Rowan was right about one thing. I couldn’t do it myself. I didn’t have the first clue where to start mucking up the works. Last night, as we cleaned up, well, Rowan cleaned up. He wouldn’t let me touch a thing like he didn’t trust me to follow through. It’s not that I didn’t like cleaning, but I got distracted in the middle.
Plus, I didn’t like cleaning.
So, whilehecleaned, we talked about the little things we could do.
“I could hide the rings,” I suggested.
“You think rings will stop someone from getting married?” Rowan raised an eyebrow. “That’s a pretty shallow person who would call off a wedding because of that.”
I crossed my arms and leveled a glare at him. “Okay, Mr. Smarty Pants. What do you suggest? Screaming out his name and banging on the church windows like inThe Graduate?”
“I thought Jesse and True were getting married at the beach?” Rowan asked.
Two points to the hot Australian. “Yeah. That’s right. Church banging. Out.”
Rowan’s lip quirked up in a smile.
“Get your mind out of the gutter.”
“Too late, Goldilocks. It’s been there since you walked out of your bedroom.” The man smoldered at me. How the hell did he do that? Was it an alpha male thing or an Australian thing?
It didn’t matter because a few minutes later, my houseboat was spotless. He left, and we had not come up with a workable solution.
I would have to improvise.
Electronic chimes sounded overhead as I pushed through the doors of the Early Riser Bakery. The sweet, buttery aroma of freshly baked bread hit me in the face as I entered the business. Glass display cases ran the length of the wall that separated the sales area from the kitchen. One case contained a rainbow of pastries, from glossy fruit tarts to chocolate-covered croissants and sugar-topped blueberry muffins. Another case was empty, save one pastry that a smudged chalkboard sign told me was something called acronut. There was only one left, and it was bacon and maple-flavored. My mouth watered.
Behind the case, Selene Strickland puttered, restocking napkins in a dispenser. She was older than dirt and twice as cranky. She always wore mourning black, as if this were the 1800s, and she would forever be marked as “The Widow Strickland.” As far as I knew, the woman never married and, therefore, couldn’t be a widow. The only reason she lived in Pleasure Point was to help out her twin brother Strick, the nicer of the two.
“What do you want?” She barked at me.
See what I mean?
“Hey, Selene, I’m meeting Jesse here,” I said, then pointed to the last remaining cronut. “But while I wait, I’ll take that thing. What’s a cronut?”
Selene sighed and set down the pile of napkins. “Don’t you kids have The GooGoo to look that up?”
“Google?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Right. Google. I can google that.” I pulled up my phone and ordered my digital assistant to tell me what a cronut was.
“Geez. You can’t even type it in. You Millennials are so lazy,” Selene huffed as she put the cronut onto a plate with a napkin.
I resisted the urge to tell her I wasn’t a Millennial and that she could stuff it up her Boomer ass when a sugary-sweet voice broke through my murder fantasies.
“Kendra! I was hoping I’d run into you here!” True called from the doorway to the kitchen. “C’mon back here. I’m finishing up. We can talk while you wait for Jesse!”
“She can’t go back there. It’s a health code violation,” Selene grumbled.
“I’m working on my cake. Everything for sale has already been made,” True responded, then waved me toward her. “Put that cronut on my tab, Selene. C’mon Kendra. You get a sneak peek at the cake!”
