“You sure?” At her nod, he selected a plain vanilla cupcake from the assortment, leaving her the red velvet. She looked like the red-velvet type. “Thanks.”
She leaned a hip against the table. “So you’re an amateur cupcake photographer too?”
“Nope,” he said as he peeled away the wrapper. “A friend’s boyfriend just opened a bakery, and she’ll want to see the downstate competition.”
“Ooh, the big-city accountant has a friend with a bakery? Tell me more.” She licked a smear of chocolate icing off her finger and looked at him expectantly.
“Josie’s actually my sister’s best friend,” he said. “I sort of inherited her.”
Another clang sounded in his brain.Josie.There’d been a time when he cared that Josie was single, just like he cared that Mabel was single.
The hand holding the cupcake fell to his side in recognition. How had he been so slow to recognize it? The nervous jokes, the sweaty hands, the pressure in his chest that was equal parts anticipation and fear. And this wasn’t like with Josie after all.Thiswas Asha Abebe all over again.
“Well?” Mabel pointed. “Are you gonna smash it or eat it?”
“S-sure. Sure.” Mechanically, Jake lifted his hand and took a bite, his heart hammering too hard for him to taste anything.
He’d spent three months with Asha in their accounting capstone study group senior year before he’d figured out that panic attacks weren’t causing his anxiety to spike when he was around her; it was his attraction to her that was causing the kind of down-low tingles he’d never experienced before. After he’d sorted it all out—hi, hello, I’m Jake, and I’m a demisexual—he’d rushed in and fallen hard.Asha was the first woman he’d slept with, the first woman he’dwantedto sleep with, and he’d loved her enthusiastically and with his whole heart until the day two years later when she told him she’d accepted a job in Munich. She’d asked him to come, but how could he abandon his career, leave his mother and sister to fend for themselves? She made her decision without ever consulting him, and their relationship fell apart immediately.
He’d survived the pain of that loss, but it had left him wondering if Asha was his only shot at love. This though, with Mabel? He was experiencing the same riot of emotions, the same jangled nerves and hyperawareness. In fact, if anything, it was even more intense. After all, Asha hadn’t had thatvoice.
“What did you think? Positively orgasmic, right?”
The word reverberated in the space between them—orgasmic, orgasmic,orgasmic—and pink marched across her face while he struggled to reorient himself in a room that seemed to spin around him as he focused on her mouth. Her kissable mouth.
His eyes snapped down to his hand, where all that remained was the empty cupcake wrapper. Her mouth, her voice, her words… Was it really happening again? Was his world about to tilt on its axis again after seven years? Queasy excitement flooded his veins.
A relationship. He was thinking about a relationship with her. Mabel. The woman with honey in her voice.
Panic has entered the chat.
Then a miracle happened. “Oh my God!” Mabel dropped her face into her hands with a wail. “Forget I said that. Rewind! Rewind!”
Her palpable embarrassment chased away his own mounting anxiety. This bright, funny, confident woman was just as awkward as he was right now, and the realization allowed him to regain his footing. He cleared his throat and clenched his fist around the empty cupcake wrapper. “Tell you what—the next time I’m in Chicago, I’ll swing by Have Your Cake and bring you some of Erik’s cupcakes for a taste test. See which is more, ah, orgasmic.”
A bleat of laughter erupted from her throat. Yes, the woman with a voice richer than the icing he’d just consumed laughed like a barnyard animal, and he liked her even more for it.
“Hey, what are you doing tomorrow night?” She rubbed her fingers against her skirt as the pink returned to her cheeks. Before he could respond, she said in a rush, “A group of us are going to that trivia night thing you helped out with. We’re not competing, but it’ll be fun just to hang out and watch. And all the drinks you buy help the local homeless shelter.”
She smiled hopefully up at him, but the panic edged back in, and he was shaking his head even before she’d finished speaking. Wanting to spend time with Mabel, wanting to go out with her,touchher, all that ran counter to his work goals. Trivia was a no-go, for so very many reasons, yet somehow, when he met her bright eyes, his lips started to shape the word “sure.”
Then, thank Christ, his phone dinged with a text from Susan Suarez asking for a numbers update on one of his projects. Saved by the motherfucking bell.
“Sorry.” He gripped his phone and pushed out the excuse. “Saturdays are when I catch up on my email backlog, and it’s even worse than usual since I’ve been gone from the Chicago office.”
Disappointment flitted across her face, and he forced himself to ignore it.
“Sure. I get it.” Her shoulders lifted and fell on a sigh, and then she picked up the box with the remaining cupcake. “Well, I’d better call it a night. See ya.”
With a small nod, she spun and headed out the door, taking all the vitality from the room with her. Which was fine. His job was simple: keep his head down, keep his eyes on his spreadsheets, keep the partnership in his sights. This… this would pass. Ithadto pass, and his life would get back to normal again.
Five
Two more minutes. Two more minutes and she’d be out the door.
Mabel gathered the stack of ad copy she’d marked up and headed toward the main office, hoping to drop it on Brandon’s desk while everybody was gone for lunch. Then it was home to shower and hope for a smoother day tomorrow.
When she stepped into the room, however, she was dismayed to discover it wasn’t empty; Jake’s handsome face was furrowed in concentration as he stared at his laptop and rhythmically drummed a pen against the desktop. For one cowardly moment, she considered backing out of the room so he wouldn’t spot her; the embarrassment over him turning down her trivia invitation last week was still fresh. But she must’ve made a noise because his eyes flicked up from the screen and immediately back down. Then his pen-tapping slowed, and he dragged his eyes back up to her face again.
