His blue eyes brightened, telling her she was doing the right thing by pushing him a little. “How?”
“I had to suck up to my worst coworker to do it. Think you can rustle up a dessert buffet for 150 of Chicago’s older, wealthier shoe-shopping citizenry by next week?”
She watched his baker brain engage. Was he mentally sifting through possible recipes like he sifted through flour? Measuring his remaining sugar supply in that inscrutable head?
“Sure, I could—”
“Here we go!” Lily was back, brandishing a binder. “I really need to work on my organizational systems. Anyway, their wedding’s August twelfth, and I’m expecting to meet with them this weekend to finalize their choices. Want me to pass along your info?”
Josie didn’t rush to answer this time, curious if Erik wanted this as badly as she thought he did. Finally, after an eternity of silence, his massive shoulders lifted in a sigh. “Yes. Thank you.”
“My pleasure! I owe you after you saved my wedding.” Lily shifted to face Josie. “My husband Grant’s grandmother turned out to be allergic to the dahlias in her corsage, and I was too much of a bride to have extra supplies on hand, so Erik let me raid his cake-table decor to make her a new one.”
He brushed it aside. “It was nothing.”
“It was plenty. Grant and I are still grateful.” She turned to Josie again. “Please tell me you’re running all his marketing. This shy-guy routine isn’t going to make him the success he deserves to be.”
Lily’s support of Erik reinforced Josie’s instincts about the whole proposition, and she leaned back on her stool to eye him lazily. “Oh yes. I’ll make sure the world hears all about him.”
He sighed. “So you weren’t joking? You actually want to help me start a bakery?”
“More than anything.” She bit her lip and fluttered her lashes at him. “I’mreally goodat branding and advertising and social media.”
Lily jumped in. “And we all know that’s the stuff that’ll either bore or confuse you.”
An ally. Excellent. The two women shared a quick, conspiratorial glance as Erik scrubbed a hand along his scruff and then sighed. “Let’s at least come up with a better name than Blondie Bakes.”
Josie didn’t bother to hide her triumphant fist pump. She was damn well going to show Vile Val that she was good enough to will a new business into existence even if it happened during her spare time and on a volunteer basis. Good thing for Erik that he’d gotten on board.
Nine
Erik kept his eyes on Josie’s highly ogle-able ass in that tight green dress as they climbed three flights of stairs to her apartment, letting her chatter flow over his skin like water. By his estimate, she’d said more words to him in the two weeks that he’d known her than he’d exchanged with any other human being over the past year.
“So it’s a couple of ideas I pulled together on my laptop, just to see what you think,” she was saying. “No big deal. It’s the kind of thing I do for clients all the time. But we need to decide soon so you can get business cards and whatnot.”
He grunted and followed her down the hall to her door.
“If it’s clean, that’s only because of my roommate,” she said as she jiggled the key in the lock. “On my own, I’d be buried in laundry and take-out containers in a week.”
She ushered him into the standard-issue “Chicago apartment with a roommate” setup: kitchen on the right, living room on the left, bedrooms to the back. Unlike his own place, it had enough square footage for some breathing room, even for someone his size. She gestured to the kitchen table, and he took a seat while she fetched her laptop.
“Here we go.” After a flurry of taps, she turned the screen toward him, and he was hit with his own face staring back at him. It was the caricature she’d drawn on the napkin at the bar, but perfected. The strokes were bold and spare, yet it was clearly him. Him on his best day, looking confident and approachable and cartoonishly appealing in logo form. Next to it were the wordsHave Your Cakein a clean, modern font.
He swallowed. Swallowed again. “That’s…”
She clicked to enlarge it. “The name’s pretty great, right?”
“Yeah. Yes.” His voice sounded hoarse, and for the life of him, Erik couldn’t figure out why a lump had settled in his throat. It was just that… she believed in him. So many people had questioned his plan to devote his life to making beautiful creations, and when he wasn’t in her presence, it was easy to talk himself out of this crazy plan. But her faith in him was like oxygen to a dying fire. This gorgeous chaos agent had looked at him and seeneverything.Everything he was scared to want.
“The name’s perfect,” he said roughly. And it was. Clever, memorable, and far better than anything he’d have come up with.
“Thanks.” She grinned before turning all business again.“So I was thinking your website should have a slider that flips through shots of your best cake designs and then a page for different flavors and decoration options. Information about you, of course, and a contact page. We’ll try to answer all the basic questions but still encourage them to reach out personally.”
The website formed in his imagination, simple and informative. He could see it. Hewantedit.
“Birthdays,” he said.
Josie nodded, getting the gist. “Good idea. Non-wedding items to bring in more cash. Special-occasions cakes. Anniversaries, graduations, things like that?”
