Come On Closer (2 page)

Sure, fewer clothes, a little frosting . . . Ugh, I need help.

“I trust you,” he said, his voice dropping. She recognized the twinkle in his dark blue eyes and knew what was coming. “So what do I have to do to get a slow dance and a Bob Marley serenade?”

Larkin arched one eyebrow. “Find a reggae bar. And a really, really drunk dancing partner.” He might not be able to get a date to save his life these days, thanks to that shining reputation, but he hadn't let his flirting skills get rusty. Why would they? He had her to practice on, since she couldn't seem to muster the good sense to send him on his way. It was so
hard
, though. Shane was like a puppy. A big, cute, slightly obnoxious puppy that ate furniture when left to its own devices but was still kind of irresistible. How dangerous could he be?

Seriously? Shall we walk down memory lane and reminisce about a few of the winners you've pulled into your orbit over the years, Larkin? Here's a reminder . . . that lane is littered with leather pants and bad decisions.

“You're a hard woman, Cupcake Queen.”

“Hey, you have to be tough to make it on the mean streets of Harvest Cove,” she replied, and was treated to Shane's low chuckle. Larkin stepped away before she did something stupid, like flirt back, and headed for the cake caddy waiting for her on the counter. Outwardly, she was completely casual. Inside, she was the puddle of goo she always became when he started
teasing her this way. She was pretty sure he was just on a mission to make her blush and giggle like all the other leggy blondes he'd probably been through. She'd never seen any of them with him, of course. But the idea of them was bad enough.

Not happening, Shane. I'm a human fortress. There's nothing you could throw at me that I haven't—

“Ouch, damn it!” She grabbed her elbow, which was shooting off bright sparks of pain where she'd banged it into the edge of the counter. Why couldn't she just learn to walk like a normal human being? In her path, everything was a hazard. Including her own feet.

Shane took a step forward, looking concerned. “You okay?” He could barely contain his smile, though Larkin gave him a little credit for at least trying. “How are you not in traction somewhere? Seriously?”

She waved him off. She'd probably find a way to give herself a head wound if he started fussing over her latest injury. The throbbing subsided quickly to a dull ache quickly enough.

“I'm fine. Shouldn't you be, I don't know, racking up the hours on some case or something?”

He wrinkled his nose. “Uh, no. I don't work weekends.”

She'd never met a lawyer who worked less than Shane, and she'd known a few. Either his father didn't pay much attention to what his only son and heir was doing, or he just didn't care. Both scenarios would explain a few things about Shane's attitude.

“Nice for you,” she said. The look on his face only reinforced her notion that Shane wasn't all that enamored of his life's work. Such a tough life, she thought, to have your undergrad and law school tuitions paid
for, with a nice cushy job at daddy's law firm waiting for you when you came home. She didn't know what he had to be unhappy about. In the Cove, the Sullivans were A Big Deal, big old house out on the swanky Crescent, invites to the mayor's exclusive Christmas parties and everything. Larkin breathed in and tried to brush off her annoyance. Shane wasn't the first spoiled brat she'd encountered in her life . . . she just liked him better than most. Maybe because Shane could admit to being spoiled, even if he didn't seem all that repentant about it.

Stop it. Not everyone's childhood is a crappy Lifetime movie, you know.
Larkin rolled her shoulders a little to try to loosen the tension in them. She also began to wish Shane would take his brownies and go away. Some days, the struggle to keep her hands to herself was difficult enough that she preferred to admire him from a distance. Like across town.

So naturally, instead of leaving the way she wanted him to, he approached the table.
I am the all-powerful Jerk Magnet. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.

“What do you have going here?” And just like that, he was beside her again. Larkin bit the inside of her lip and resigned herself to her hormones singing the Hallelujah Chorus for the rest of the day—one of the few things she couldn't blame him for directly, since he didn't seem to have any idea of his effect on her. He never would, either, if she had her way.

“Baby shower cake,” Larkin said, forcing a cheerful, breezy note into her voice. “Brynn is throwing it for her sister. I promised I'd drop the cake over, so I'm headed out soon. Aimee and Jo can hold down the fort while I'm gone.” It was a relief to be able to say that.
Jo Bennett might have only been with her a year, but she'd stepped into the role of second-in-command at the bakery as though the job had been tailor-made just for her. Jo was a wonderful, warm, thrillingly competent human being who baked like a dream, especially compared to the string of ill-fitting predecessors Larkin had seen in the years leading up to Jo's hire. Gushing over her, however, was a surefire way to get frosting lobbed in one's direction.

“Huh.” Shane bent to examine what he could see of the cake through the top of the caddy, then looked at his watch, and then at her. The mischievous little quirk of his lips told her she wouldn't be getting rid of him easily. “You up for some company? I'll spring for cheesy bacon fries on the way back. I know you probably didn't eat lunch, and it's almost two.”

Yay! I mean, no! I mean . . . Oh God, why does this keep happening?

“You want to help me deliver a cake to a baby shower?” she asked. “Are you really that bored?” It was almost as surprising as the fact that he'd been paying attention to her eating habits.

Shane was silent a moment. “How sad is it if I say yes?”

“Pretty sad.”

He screwed up his mouth and looked at something on the far wall before returning his gaze to her. “Yeah, I really am that bored. And I don't feel like eating all those fries by myself, which is what's going to happen if you turn me down.”

It was almost endearing. He had a knack for that. “I—” Larkin waffled for exactly half a second. Common sense be damned, she wanted him to come along.
He made her laugh, and she genuinely enjoyed him when she wasn't thinking about climbing him like a tree. Okay, sometimes even
while
she was thinking about climbing him like a tree. She bit back a frustrated sigh. Honoring her long-ago vow to embrace whatever little pleasures life threw her way had been pretty easy up until those pleasures had stopped being little and started involving Shane.

But she found that right now, just like always, she couldn't quite refuse him.

“Sure. But it had better be a double order of fries,” she added. “Extra bacon. I'm hungry.”

Shane smiled, and the simple pleasure of it made her day. “Done.”

“You have to be nice to Brynn, though. You make her nervous.”

“It's my abundance of charm.”

Larkin eyed him. “It's definitely your abundance of something.” She picked up the cake caddy and headed for the back door. “Come on, minion. Our chariot awaits.”

Shane winced, following. “Uh . . . I'll drive.”

“Nope.” Shane drove a Lexus. Some occasional vehicular humbling was good for him.

His deep voice rose to something very close to a whine. “Don't make me ride in the bakery's van.”

“You're the one bored enough on a Saturday to tag along. My van and I are a package deal.”

“But . . . it's a van.”

“Yep.”

Shane groaned loudly, but he held the cake for her while she shrugged into her coat. The pained expression on his face almost made up for her own sexual frustration.
Almost
. Larkin slipped out of her lime
green sneakers, tugged on her big furry boots, and then took the container back.

“Still coming?”

“Yeah.” He lifted the cupcake box hopefully. “Can I at least eat in the van?”

Larkin rolled her eyes. “Yes. But if you make a mess you have to clean it.”

“Deal.”

She walked out ahead of him, and even as she heard the door shut he was beside her, keeping pace to the van with legs even longer than her own. She risked a glance at him, accidentally caught his eye, and felt her cheeks heating despite the cold when he smiled. What was she
doing
? Grabbing a burger once in a while or throwing some goodies at him when he came into the shop was one thing. But letting him tag along while she was working, just for the hell of it? They were inching into territory she shouldn't even tiptoe around the edge of. She knew damn well there were some things you couldn't have—not to mention some things you
shouldn't
have—no matter how badly you wanted them.

Shane Sullivan fell into both categories. And whether or not she ever managed to stop thinking about what he would look like with his clothes off, Harvest Cove was too small a place to risk a fling with the town's most ineligible bachelor. That was that.

As Larkin slid behind the wheel, she almost believed
it.

S
hane wasn't exactly sure how he'd come to be sitting in Brynn Parker's neat little kitchen in the middle of a Saturday afternoon. But since it meant he got to watch Larkin scatter edible confetti onto a pastel pink cake pedestal—a task she performed with the tip of her tongue poking ever so slightly out one side of her mouth—he didn't much care. He might be relegated to the outer regions of the friend zone where she was concerned, but at least he got to look at her.

And when she was messing with baked goods, he didn't have to be sneaky about enjoying the view.

“Okay, I know I'm probably making weird faces, but it can't be
that
interesting to watch.”

Shane tried not to wince.
Might have misjudged the “sneaky” thing.

Larkin's eyes, the green of spring leaves, sparkled with mischief as she looked at him from over the edge
of what had to be the girliest cake he'd ever seen. Shane shifted position on his stool, which didn't seem to have been created with men his size in mind. It creaked in protest, and he wondered whether Brynn's head would explode if it broke. She'd always struck him as more relaxed than her boss, but her kitchen was unnervingly spotless. And everything was so . . .
white
.

Shane lifted one shoulder in a disaffected shrug and smirked. If there was one thing he could still do, it was act like he didn't give a damn what anyone thought. He'd had plenty of practice.

“You're underestimating just how weird the faces you make are,” he told her.

“Uh-huh. Lean forward a little and say that again.” Larkin scooped some frosting out of the little container she'd brought with her and waggled a finger at him. “I won't shove it
all
the way up your nose. I promise.”

Shane laughed softly, though he couldn't stop the image of catching her finger in his mouth and sucking the frosting off it flickering to life to taunt him. In a perfect world, she'd already be sliding into his lap to make that happen. In this world, however, she popped the frosting in her own mouth and then went back to fussing over her cake.

“Why such a little rainbow?” he asked. If he had to make small talk about baked goods to keep her attention on him, so be it. It might be a cheap tactic, but it worked. One of her brows arched as her gaze pinned him.

“You have a
problem
with the size of my rainbow?”

Inwardly, he pumped his fist in triumph, even as his own common sense told him to give it up already. He'd tried. He didn't know why he kept hanging around. It wasn't like him. Larkin had made it pretty clear that
she wasn't interested in him romantically. But . . . she was still good company. And beautiful. And for whatever reason, she didn't hate him. In fact, sometimes, like back at the bakery, he'd swear he wasn't the only one trying desperately to keep his paws to himself when they were alone together.

Nope. This is not the time for self-indulgent bullshit. Focus, man.

“It's not a problem. I'm just saying that if I had made that cake—which I wouldn't, because I'm not an eight-year-old girl—I would have gone with a big-ass rainbow,” he said. “The kind of rainbow that makes people change all their ideas about how big a rainbow should be. Maximum rainbow.”

Larkin's eyes narrowed, but the corners of her generous mouth curved upward. “Don't even try to get into a rainbow-measuring contest with me, Sullivan. You'll lose.”

He laughed just as Brynn breezed into the kitchen, eyeing him warily on her way by. Shane pretended not to notice. She'd come from the living room, which looked like the scene of some kind of mass explosion of pink and white decorations. Flowers and dainty little goodie bags and some kind of blobby things that he assumed made sense in the context of a baby shower. Not like he'd ever been to one, and not like that was breaking his heart. It wasn't the kind of party he'd normally crash.

Which was why Brynn could have been a
little
nicer about the tiny quiche he'd popped into his mouth on his way by the food trays. She wasn't as nervous around him as she used to be. He couldn't decide whether or not that was a good thing.

“That looks amazing, Larkin,” Brynn said, tucking a lock of long red hair behind one ear as she rounded the small island and examined her friend's handiwork. “I owe you big.”

Larkin waved her hand. “No problem. It was fun. I love making the cute ones.”

“It shows. You could have skipped the bakery and just made cakes for a living,” Brynn said.

“That would never work.” The words left his mouth before he gave it much thought, and when both women turned their heads to look at him like they were expecting him to say something rude—which, granted, wasn't an unreasonable expectation—Shane felt uncomfortably like an interloper. It wasn't an unfamiliar sensation, but it also wasn't one he wanted to have around Larkin, especially not today. “Larkin would get bored,” he explained. “Just doing cakes would get old for her. Plus it would mess up her thing with Gina, and then we'd never hear the end of how the positive vibes in her life had been ruined or . . . something.”

Brynn's lips twitched, and he heard a muffled snort as she gave Larkin a sidelong glance. Brynn was a cute little redhead. More than cute, if he was being honest. He'd actually considered asking her out last spring, but work had sidetracked him. And then he'd asked Emma to get him a date for Jake and Sam's wedding, and Larkin had blown into his life like a hurricane, and now he couldn't seem to muster up anything more than detached appreciation for other women's looks. He didn't want other women, not that it seemed to help his chances with Larkin. And Larkin . . . well, who the hell knew what Larkin wanted.

Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, probably.

“I don't talk like that,” she protested, frowning as she looked between the two of them. “You think I talk like that? I'm not a hippie.”

“Mmm.” Brynn pursed her lips, but her eyes were dancing. Larkin's mouth curved into a self-deprecating little smile.

“Okay, I'm not a
total
hippie.”

“No. A total hippie wouldn't have made her bake shop look like Candy Land threw up in it. I'm right anyway,” Shane said. “If you wanted a cake business, you'd have one. Even if it meant a blood feud with Gina Valeri.”

“Gina might win,” Brynn said. “She's meaner than you.” Gina
did
run a cake-decorating business, and Shane knew that since Larkin had strict limits for what she'd take on, she directed a lot of people Gina's way. The two women were very friendly, from what he knew. But that was a wall he ran up against pretty often—he might have figured out plenty about Larkin's personality, but her personal life? He knew almost as little as he had when they'd first met. It was a neat trick, seeming so open while managing to be so private.

An odd look flickered across Larkin's face, vanishing almost as quickly as it had appeared . . . but there was something fierce about it that surprised Shane. “Gina's not mean,” she said. “She's a sweetheart.” Then she turned the full force of her smile on him, and it was like being blasted with sunshine while she deftly changed the subject. “You're right about the bakery, though. I have a short attention span.”

“Bull. You seem pretty focused to me.”

“Shows how much you know.”

“I know everything.”

Brynn made a soft disgusted noise and rolled her eyes, but Larkin laughed, which was all that mattered. In Harvest Cove people expected him to be kind of a pompous jackass. She was the only one who treated it like nothing but a funny act. Maybe it had been once, although he wasn't entirely sure anymore. He'd been playing the role an awfully long time.

There was something in the way she looked at him—the same heat and spark that had kept him hanging around long past when he would normally have given up and moved on—that banished whatever stupid comment he might have made from his mind before he could even form the words. Instead, Shane simply watched, fascinated, as Larkin's laughter faded into a warm smile. She didn't look away, and neither did he. He didn't think he'd ever seen her look at him quite so closely before, or with so much . . . affection, maybe? He didn't want to kid himself. Still, he felt the warmth of her gaze heating his skin like sunshine, and he could almost believe . . .

“Ahem.” It took Brynn's not-at-all-subtle clearing of her throat for him to realize that an awkward silence had descended over the kitchen. When he finally tore his gaze away from Larkin, he saw that Brynn was watching the two of them with a combination of interest and alarm.

“Well,” she chirped brightly, her voice slicing through the silence like a knife, “I've got to do a few last-minute things before everyone gets here. Not to throw you out—”

“But you're throwing us out.” Larkin's cheeks had gone suspiciously pink, and the smile she directed toward her friend was more forced than he was used to
seeing from her. He'd flustered her. Or rather, whatever had passed between them had flustered her. That made two of them. “Don't worry, Brynn. Even when you're giving orders you're nice. I'll pack up my things and go. I won't even poke a hole in your pretty cake out of spite.”

Brynn laughed, but there was a nervous undercurrent to it, and the expression on her face was one he was very familiar with. She clearly didn't approve of any possible relationship between the two of them. Shane managed to suppress an irritated sigh. It wasn't like Brynn had anything to worry about. Larkin could handle herself even if anything were going on between them. Which it wasn't.

“Shane? Earth to Shane.”

Larkin's voice yanked him out of yet another silent, righteous rant on the injustice of his reputation. “Huh?”

“You? Me? Leaving? Unless you really, really want to stick around for this baby shower. I'm sure Brynn would be happy to have you. You can play the poopy diaper game. It wouldn't be weird or anything.”

Brynn wrinkled her pert little nose. “We're not playing the poopy diaper game. I've got a couple of guessing games, but no fake poopy diapers. I drew the line.” She looked at Shane with a flicker of a wicked smile. “We will be making a hat out of ribbons. I suppose you could wear it until—”

“Nope.” He hopped off the stool so fast that he almost knocked it over. “No, I'm good. I promised Larkin some fries, and I'm hungry. You have fun with all the, ah . . . girl stuff.”

“We will,” Brynn said sweetly. The hug she gave Larkin was more genuine. “Thanks again, you. Karaoke this week? I owe you a drink, at least.”

“Absolutely,” Larkin replied. “I'm going for it this time. Larkin channels Eminem.”

Brynn let out a half laugh, half wail. “Oh God. No.”

Shane looked between them, confused. That familiar sense of being on the outside looking in bubbled back to the surface, as frustrating as it ever was. What kind of mysterious female things did Larkin and her friends get up to when nobody else was around?

“Eminem?”

Larkin looked smug. “I keep telling these girls I know all the words to Eminem's ‘Lose Yourself.' They don't believe me.”

“We
do
believe you,” Brynn said, leading the way to the door. “We've just begged you not to demonstrate.”

“You're no fun. And you can't stop me.”

Shane snorted. “I want to see this.”

“Don't encourage her. Besides, if you come to karaoke night, you have to sing,” Brynn informed him. “Those are the rules.” She clearly thought that would deter him. But as clever as she was, Brynn Parker didn't know everything.

Shane lifted one shoulder in a shrug and smirked. “Pretty sure I could manage that.”

She lifted her eyebrows, and he felt Larkin's hand on his back, pushing him out the door. “Quit telling him not to do things, Brynn. It's like waving a red flag.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” he asked once they were crunching down the front path to the driveway. “You think I do everything people don't want me to?” He was more curious than offended. He still wasn't quite sure how she saw him. He only knew that whatever she saw didn't seem to bother her.

“No,” Larkin replied. She stopped beside the van and turned to face him, her breath rising as steam in the cold air. “I think that you enjoy proving people wrong.”

Sure.
He tried to keep the bitterness from his voice when he replied, knowing she wouldn't understand just how impossible he'd discovered it was to prove people's expectations wrong where it really counted. She didn't need to. “Is that why I'm so popular?”

The smile turned into a grin that made her eyes sparkle. “No. You're so popular because you're stubborn
and
obnoxious. As if you didn't know.”

“I told you, I know everything.” He considered for half a second and took a chance, moving in just a tiny bit closer. He'd danced with her at Jake's wedding, sat close enough to her that they'd touched, but still she always somehow felt just out of reach. “Anyway,” he continued, “you like me. So somebody around here has taste.”

She smelled like frosting and sugar. Shane's muscles tensed in familiar frustration, fingers curling with the need to touch her. Every time he'd ever thought she might close the distance between them, she'd pulled back at the last second. But if he could just slip past those defenses . . . if he could just know for sure whether he was alone in this attraction . . .

Larkin looked up at him, head slightly tilted, a curious expression on her face. When she watched him this closely he never knew whether to be glad or nervous. It was like she was looking for something. Whether she ever found it was an open question, but she hadn't blown him off yet. He hoped that was a good sign.