Babycakes (11 page)

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Authors: Donna Kauffman

BOOK: Babycakes
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The heat faded somewhat from her cheeks and her eyes.
“However, I will apologize for my own behavior. I’ve long since distanced myself from their actions, but I do take full responsibility for my own. I didn’t mean to make you feel personally uncomfortable just now. I was just . . .” He trailed off, surprised to find himself far more disappointed than the situation seemed to merit. They hardly knew each other, had barely crossed paths, so getting shot down shouldn’t be more than a cursory blip—a welcome one, even—considering everything on his plate.
But it wasn’t. And he couldn’t help that it felt more . . . monumental than it should.
“Hopeful,” she supplied for him, collected once again and at ease enough to inject a dry note into her reply.
“Yes,” he said, smiling in response. “Always and in all ways.”
She smiled briefly then, too. “So . . . an optimistic lawyer.”
He shrugged. “I’m trying to save the planet here. I kind of have to be.”
She laughed, and seemed surprised by it. But it did lessen the tension. The bad kind, anyway. “It’s good to have small goals.”
He matched her smile. “Sometimes the smallest goals are the most challenging to achieve. And the most vital.”
“Yes. True,” she said, then broke eye contact altogether as she stepped away from the worktable. “So . . . Captain Environment, where is this bulletin board that needs un-crookded-ing? We have masterpieces to create that the world needs to see. Or, at least, some very large turtles.”
She turned and strode toward the door leading to the rehab area and he grinned at her very straight spine. She wanted him to see the starch, but he’d already seen the heat. And it would be some time before he forgot it. “Let me grab a few nails, then it’s right this way, Madame Cupcake.”
Chapter 9
“
A
nd you just told him no? Straight up?” Lani shook her head and poised her pastry tip over another rack of hollowed-out cupcakes. Death by Chocolate cupcakes, to be exact.
It was a good thing Kit was so distracted by the fact that her personal business was being bandied about at the current evening’s Cupcake Club soiree—otherwise known as the Bitch ’n’ Bake, according to Alva, who had delighted in explaining that to her—or she might have lunged across the table and planted her face in all that deliciously warm and ridiculously rich truffle filling. If chocolate cured all ills, Lani had just solved the world’s problems with a single decadent recipe.
While Kit couldn’t speak for the whole world, she’d vouch it would definitely go a long way to improving her little corner of it. She was beginning to think the whole “get a personal life” thing was highly overrated.
“I just made it clear to him I wasn’t interested in anything other than casual friendship. And I only mentioned it so you all would stop with the nudging. He’s nice, but I don’t want to get involved with anyone right now,” she explained. “It’s not the right time.”
“That’s what everyone says,” Alva offered. “And they end up alone. The right time is whenever you meet the right man.” She went back to sifting powdered sugar on the tops of her gingerbread cupcakes. “Don’t look a gift hunk in the mouth.” She paused, sighed, then went back to sifting. “I certainly wouldn’t.”
Lani laughed at Franco as he grinned and sent Alva a smooching air kiss. Charlotte smiled as she continued intricately decorating a row of cupcakes, turning them into turkey tops, and Dre . . . well, after three weeks on Sugarberry, Kit still couldn’t read Dre.
“How long has it been, dear?” Alva went on.
“Been?” Kit repeated, swiveling her gaze back to the tiny octogenarian. “Since . . . I was in a relationship?”
Alva sent her a sweet smile. “That, too, but I meant how long has the dry spell been? Since you had sex?” she clarified, as the stunned look on Kit’s face led her to assume she hadn’t understood.
Oh . . . she’d understood.
“Well, good sex,” Alva quantified. “Bad sex never helped anyone.”
“Don’t answer that,
mes amie,
” Franco warned.
“The column,” everyone in the room mouthed silently in Kit’s direction. Behind Alva’s back, Lani made a slicing motion across her neck.
“That’s not the point,” Kit hurried to say.
“Dear, if it’s been so long you can’t answer the question, then it most definitely should be the point.”
Lani and Charlotte snickered, though they quickly hid it behind their respective pastry bags when Kit shot them both an incredulous look. Sensing the total loss of any control she might ever have over her private life, she blurted out, “Even if it was the right time, and I wanted to . . . to break the dry spell, as it were . . . it wouldn’t be with him.”
Everyone paused in his or her respective task. Even Dre.
“Really?” Lani said, peeking over her pastry bag with raised eyebrows, drawling the word in a way that made it sound . . . lascivious and . . . promising.
Dammit.
“Is it because he’s a Westlake?” Alva asked.
Sighing in defeat, Kit’s defiant posture deflated. “Not in the way you think. I know he’s quickly become, like, the island hero, rescuing his niece, reuniting her with her other grandmother, but the fact is—”
“The fact is he distanced himself from his family a long time ago,” Lani said, albeit somewhat more gently. “You can’t hold him responsible—”
“I know that. We talked about it, and I don’t.”
As one, they gave her a look clearly indicating they didn’t believe her for a second.
“No, really. I know he had nothing to do with what happened to my family’s business. He didn’t even know anything about it. It’s just . . .”
“It feels like he’s tainted by association,” Alva said. “Is that it?”
“Not tainted, exactly.”
“Why, then?” Charlotte asked.
Kit shot her a surprised look. As the one person she had history with, she’d counted on Charlotte to have her back. Of course, Char’s longer and deeper history with everyone else in the room clearly trumped that.
Kit really didn’t want to get into the whole Westlake defense, mostly because she didn’t want to hear how lame it would sound to her own ears. It mattered more how she felt. “I’m not ready to get involved with anyone at this point.” She shot a look at Alva. “On any level.”
Part of her brain was still boggling that she was discussing her sex life with a group of women who—other than Charlotte—she’d only laid eyes on for the first time less than a month ago. And Charlotte had been more business contact than personal friend. They’d certainly never discussed their intimate relationships before.
“So, don’t get involved,” Lani said. “Just . . . enjoy his company.”
“
Oui, oui,
” Franco said. “Do not be so quick to dismiss those other levels.”
“Exactly. No one is saying you have to marry Uncle Hunk, dear,” Alva said.
“Uncle—Hunk?” Kit choked on the bite of Death by Chocolate she’d just given into tasting. Sheer desperation had lowered all her usual chocolate defenses.
Alva’s eyes twinkled. “That’s what we call him. Lani May started it. But I kinda like it.” She added another scoop of powdered sugar to her sifter. “Suits him. I’ll say that much.”
“I will second that.” Franco sighed. “Hunka, hunka burnin’ uncle. Speaking of which, we haven’t had an Elvis night in a while.”
“That’s because last time . . . well, we still haven’t gotten over last time.” Lani paused and the other’s gazes swiveled toward one person, with Kit following after.
Alva looked up to find them all staring at her. “What? I thought I was pretty good.” Her expression shifted to one of fond memory. “I remember the first time I saw him in concert.” She clamped a sugar-dusted hand to her apron-covered heart. “Oh my, it was simply
scandalous
. The way he moved his hips.” Her eyes twinkled and her cheeks flushed. “I loved every minute of it.”
“Wait,” Charlotte said. “He was popular in the late fifties. You would have been—”
“I had just turned thirty. Harold took me to the concert. Now you see why I loved that man.” She smiled and turned back to her cupcakes. “With some men, you’re always a teenage girl at heart.” She didn’t clarify whether she meant Harold or Elvis . . . but she bumped her hips to one side, then the other, and hummed the chorus to “Hound Dog.”
Kit laughed along with the rest as they picked up at the chorus and sang it, and soon they were all dancing. Only then did she know she’d end up telling them anything they wanted to know. Who could resist cupcakes, impromptu dancing, and group Elvis impersonations?
Franco finished up a particularly rousing rendition of “Jailhouse Rock”—figured he had a killer singing voice—and ended up sliding with a flourish, right onto the stool next to Kit. He pressed his head against her arm, looked up into her eyes, and in a deep baritone, said, “Thank you, thank you very much.”
Kit was laughing too hard to respond. It felt good. Really good. She needed more laughter, more silliness, and more spontaneous acts of craziness. It felt good. And . . . safe.
That was exactly it. She felt safe. She trusted these people. It was a huge thing, given the events of the past year. They weren’t nosing into her business for their own prurient interests, but because they cared and wanted things to go well for her.
Morgan Westlake, on the other hand, made her feel very . . . well, not safe. He felt dangerous and made her want things unrelated to good judgment.
With his head still pressed dramatically against her arm, Franco said in a weird, hybrid French Elvis voice, “It has been a rough year for you,
cherie
. No one would blame you for having a little fun.” He wiggled his perfectly arched eyebrows. “In fact, we here in the Elvis Impersonators Cupcake Club applaud this idea of having
ze
fun.”
“Speaking of
ze
fun,” Lani said to Franco, “what’s the latest with your special someone?”
Charlotte made a low hissing noise, trying to make a slashing motion from behind where Franco was perched, much as Lani had before, but it was too late. Franco had already straightened on the stool, his smile remaining, but it didn’t warm his beautiful brown eyes any longer.
Lani immediately looked contrite. “Sorry, forget I asked.” She winced and sent Charlotte a
why didn’t you tell me?
look.
“When have you had time?” Charlotte said, as if the question had been actually asked.
“I know, I know. With the cookbook promotion starting and finally getting Babycakes off the ground, I’m behind on my nosiness.” Lani sent a soft smile Franco’s way. “I love you, you know. And I’m sure he’s a rat bastard who will die a sad, lonely death.”
“I do know,” Franco said, his responding smile sweet with just a little sadness. “And thank you.” Then, swinging directly around to Kit, broad smile right back on his handsome face and his Bronx roots fully back in his voice, he asked, “What will it take for us to persuade you to jump the hunka hunka hunky uncle’s bones, sweetheart?”
“Persuade me to have a . . . a fling with someone I don’t want? Why would you even do that?”
“Oh, you want.” Dre, who didn’t so much as glance up from her own project, spoke for the first time. “I was there. I saw.”
“Googly eyes,” Lani provided. “I saw them, too.”
“Oh, for the love of—” Kit lifted her hands in utter defeat.
“Googly eyes never lie,” Alva added, smiling with apparent remembered pleasure, then started humming “Teddy Bear.”
Cornered, Kit’s gaze circled the room . . . and landed on Charlotte.
Recognizing what she saw in Kit as desperation, Charlotte said, “There is the child to consider.”
Kit pounced on her comment like the shamelessly desperate woman she was. “Exactly. Thank you.” To the room, she added, “Little Lilly has been through the worst kind of hell a child could imagine. I was in my early twenties when I lost my parents and it leveled me. Still does, from time to time.”
Like pretty much every day for the past year.
She would have given anything to have had her mother with her during the trial, even for a day. “I can only imagine how it must be affecting her. She doesn’t need her uncle complicating her life by introducing new people into it.”
“Well, she’s meeting a lot of new people here on Sugarberry,” Lani offered. “It’s her new home, so that will only continue. Besides, I thought she was adorable.”
“Awesome kid,” Dre said, remaining focused on her project, which was creating a series of sketches, rather than baking. Everyone who’d seen the apron she had made for Kit in honor of the upcoming Babycakes launch had so completely swooned over it Lani had asked Dre to find a way to work the elements into something that could be used for a store logo and other marketing for the mail-order shop, much as she had for the cupcakery.
“She is a great kid,” Kit agreed. “I had fun with her, turtle coloring. She’s bright and sweet, smart, and clearly adores her uncle. But she’s still—”
“She invited you to the rehab center to color with her,” Lani said. “Sounds like she’s the one reaching out to you.”
“Yes, she did, and it’s great to see she’s doing that. For all that she looks like this tiny wisp of a thing, she’s strong, and the more people she has supporting her, the more it will help her adjust—”
“Seems to me Morgan is also responsible for that,” Lani said. “I mean, bringing her here to Sugarberry and getting her away from Olivia Westlake showed he’s not afraid to take a stand, do what he thinks is right.” Lani expertly shot warm truffle filling into another row of dark chocolate cupcakes as she talked. “From what I understand, his mother is a pretty formidable force.”
“To put it mildly,” Alva added. “Morgan is doing right by Miss Lilly, bringing her here, letting her get to know her maternal grandmother.”
“How did that go, by the way?” Lani asked Alva.
“It could have gone better. Birdie was moved to tears just getting to spend some time with that darling girl. Imagine, being kept from your only grandbaby. It was a might overwhelming for the little one and Birdie felt just awful for being too excited. Though you can hardly blame her.”
“Well, they are here to stay, so there will be plenty of time,” Lani said. “I think it will work out eventually. It has to. Everyone who meets Lilly loves her.”
“I agree,” Alva said. “Of course, all that said”—she cast a sly glance in Kit’s direction—“adults need adult time, too.”
Kit merely sighed and gave up any hope of keeping the conversation off her pathetic social life. “It’s a good thing I already love you guys, you know.”
“We nudge because we care,
mi amor,
” Franco said.
Kit laughed. “If this is nudging, I’d hate to see outright pushing.”

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