‘You said it first,’ I replied childishly.
‘And then you said it back,’ he reminded me quietly.
He was right. I had. Sometimes my mind erased that bit of the story.
Sleep might not have been able to find me, but the memory knew where I was. Like an antidote to the day, I eagerly returned to the night I’d met Adam, as though it was a film pressed on pause, just waiting to be played.
Chapter Twelve
Seven Years Earlier
Adam asked me out five times before I finally said yes.
I hadn’t taken him seriously the first time. How could I when, just moments earlier, he’d been staring with fascination at the giant penis that I’d crafted out of sponge and fondant icing? With hindsight perhaps I shouldn’t have accepted his offer to help reload the cake boxes into the car.
‘We need to be extra careful with this one,’ I’d warned him, when there was just one last box to move. ‘It’s the groom’s cake.’
‘I’m not sure I even know what one of those is,’ Adam said, walking beside me to the dry-stone wall.
‘It’s an American thing, and the guy getting married comes from Texas. Basically, it’s a cake for the stag do that’s meant to reflect the personality of the groom.’
Adam took the box from my hands and carried it carefully to my car.
‘Can I take a peek?’ he asked when the box was safely stowed in the boot.
‘Knock yourself out,’ I said, outwardly nonchalant although inside I was already cringing.
Adam lifted the lid, his eyes widening and then crinkling around the edges when he saw its contents. ‘So, this groom is actually an enormous dick?’
I grinned. ‘If those were his friends we just met, I’d say you’re probably right.’
He bent down to examine the cake more carefully, as though it was a sculpture in a gallery. ‘I was thinking more along the lines of the Star-Spangled Banner, or maybe a Stetson.’
I laughed. ‘Both of those would have been so much easier to make.’
Again, Adam stooped lower, studying the intricate icing that gave the surface of the cake a very realistic appearance.
‘I’m impressed with your eye for detail,’ he said, his attention still on the craziest cake I’d ever been asked to produce. ‘And, also, a little intimidated.’
‘Why so?’ I asked, reaching past him and carefully closing the boot of the car.
‘Well, I was planning on asking you out, but if this is drawn from the guys you’ve dated before, I might not be in your league.’
‘There is no league,’ I said, and then before he started to think I was encouraging him, I quickly added, ‘But please don’t ask me out.’
‘Because you’re already taken?’
I knew his eyes had already gone to my ring finger. I’d clocked him checking it out while I was changing the tyre.
I shook my head.
‘Living with someone?’ he guessed. ‘Going steady? Courting?’
I gave a laugh that sounded worryingly like a snorting pig. ‘Courting? Really? Did you time travel back to the 1950s for that one?’
‘Ah,’ Adam declared, leaning back against my car, looking extremely confident for a man who’d just been knocked back. ‘Doesyour refusal have anything to do with my ignorance about car maintenance and how all I could do was hand you the spanner-y things while you changed your own car tyre?’
‘No, of course not.’
