For the Love of Cake (31 page)

“I know that.”

“Do you?”

“What do you mean?”

“It has to be pretty surreal. She’s someone you looked up to professionally, and let’s admit it—lusted after personally. She’s famous and unattainable. Then all of a sudden, she isn’t so unattainable anymore and you’re spending time with her. I can see where that would be an adjustment. If I’d told you two months ago that you would get close to Maya Vaughn and even sleep with her, what would you have said?”

“That you’re crazy.”

“Exactly.”

Sure, parts of the last two months felt surreal, but she’d thought she stayed pretty self-aware as well. She had to admit, though, that this was the Greta Haus situation all over again. She couldn’t expect to maintain a relationship with Maya if she was constantly waiting for her to leave her—to find someone else she’d rather be with.

“I overreacted.”

“I think you may have. It sounds like she was trying to be straight with you, and instead of believing her, you took the word of a tabloid reporter. How do you think that made her feel? Certainly not trusted.”

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-ONE

A bell attached to the door tinkled as Maya opened it, thwarting her attempt to sneak in unannounced. But she entered anyway, drawing in the intoxicating aromas as she went.

When Jori came through the door from the kitchen and saw her, she gave her a wary smile.

“Hi. I thought you were a customer.”

Maya bent to look in the display case. “How do you know I’m not?”

Jori reached in and lifted a brownie from a stack inside and wrapped it in tissue paper. The tag in front of them read
CHERRY CORDIAL BROWNIES
. Maya’s stomach growled loudly.

She grimaced. “I skipped lunch. But in my defense, I was on a plane.”

“Not that I’m condoning sweets as meal replacement.” Jori handed her the brownie. “I know it’s not what you’re really here for anyway, but I think you’ll like it.”

“I’m sure I will.” She inched open the paper, lifted it to her nose, and drew in the scent of chocolate.

Jori laughed. “God, you really are just like Sawyer.”

“Maybe one day I’ll meet your partner. Sounds like we’d get along great.” Maya gave in and took a bite, moaning as the tang of cherries and sweetened cream cheese cut the richness of the chocolate.

Jori raised a brow. “Maybe. Are you planning to be around here often?”

She didn’t know how to answer that question, so she asked one of her own. “Is she here?”

Jori tilted her head toward the kitchen. Taking that as an invitation, Maya started to move around the counter, but Jori stopped her with a hand on her arm.

“I don’t need to do the whole overprotective-friend thing and tell you how special she is, do I?”

“Um—”

“Because, with the show, she’s under a lot of stress right now, and no matter how amazing a chef I think you are, I’m not afraid—”

“Okay.” Maya held up her hands in surrender. “I’m not sure I want to know how you might end that threat. I’m not going to lie. I’m a little afraid of you right now.” She met Jori’s eyes and gave her as honest an answer as she could right then. “I don’t want to make things harder for her. I just—I had to see her.”

She didn’t say that she hadn’t stopped thinking about her and their last conversation. Or that she’d tried for two days to deny her urge to get on a plane and fix things face-to-face, and finally had given in and made Wendy clear her schedule. She didn’t say that she knew how their almost certainly divergent paths complicated the situation and right now she didn’t care. And she absolutely didn’t say unless she could figure out how to restrain herself, she would probably grab Shannon and kiss her right there in Jori’s kitchen. And she might have trouble stopping at a kiss.

“Okay. Go on.”

Maya took another bite of her brownie and raised it in tribute to the woman who created such a heavenly confection. “Amazing. Seriously.”

“Just go.” Jori waved her away. “I know how easy you chocolate whores are to please.”

Maya feigned an injured look that she knew Jori wouldn’t buy. After she passed through the door to the kitchen, it made a soft thud as it swung closed behind her.

“I’m almost done with this one. Then there’s just the one birthday cake left,” Shannon said, not looking up from the cake she worked on. She obviously thought Jori had returned.

Instead of announcing herself, Maya watched her decorate. With her left hand she spun the pedestal, rotating the round two-layer cake while she applied an even line of lime-green piping with the pastry bag in her right hand. The number of different colors staining her fingers indicated this wasn’t her first project of the day.

“Are you keeping up your skills?”

Shannon looked up from the cake, and the tip of her pastry bag smeared green icing into the pristine white edge of the cake. “What are you doing here?”

“Obviously distracting you.” Maya rushed forward and picked up a spatula. “I’m sorry. Let me help you fix that.”

“I’ve got it.” Shannon took the spatula and began carefully lifting away the marred section of icing.

Maya waited while she expertly fixed the cake. Now that she was here, she didn’t know exactly what to say. Maybe she should have been rehearsing that during the two-and-a-half-hour nonstop flight from LaGuardia.

“Is that the remaining birthday cake?” She indicated a stack of un-iced cakes on the rack behind Shannon.

“Yep. That one’s going to take the rest of the day, so I knocked out the others first.”

“What’s the theme?”

“Pirate ship.” Shannon nodded toward a pile of small wooden dowels and a spool of thin filament.

“Can I help?”

Shannon finished the last line of piping on the green cake with a flourish. She pulled a flattened box from under the counter, then expertly folded and tucked the flaps in place. “Is that really how you want to spend your time?”

Maya took a step closer. She’d held herself back for long enough, and now she just needed to touch her. She rubbed at a smear of pink icing along Shannon’s jaw, flaking away the dried sugar. When she sought Shannon’s gaze she found it locked on her own lips. Maya sucked her bottom lip between her teeth and Shannon jerked her eyes up, desire reflecting in them.

“I can’t think of anything I’d rather do.”

Shannon smiled. “You’re getting better at this. That one actually sounded sincere.”

“It was.” When Maya kept her expression serious, Shannon’s smile faded. “I’m sorry. I was a jerk.”

“No. I was. I should have believed your explanation.”

Maya nodded. “I got frustrated when you didn’t, and I lashed out. But if you can’t trust me, we can’t have a future. I know that’s true for any couple, but for us—for the life I’m living and the one you’re about to be living, it’s even more important and more difficult. Reporters will make something out of nothing. Jealous people will say things to break us up. And we’ll have to spend time apart, more than we want to. You have to trust me.” She took Shannon’s hands and bent her head to meet her eyes. “When I tell you that I love you, you have to believe that is more important to me than anything else.”

“You—did you just say that you love me?”

“I did.”

“And you meant it?”

“Yeah.” She circled her arms around Shannon’s waist and pulled her close. “I love you.”

“
The
Maya Vaughn just said that—”

Maya pushed her back against the counter and silenced her with a kiss. Had the counter not been full of decorating supplies, she might have lifted her onto the counter and shown her just how real she was. Actually, if it wasn’t for Jori and the certainty that they would get caught, she might do it anyway and put the various colored icings to good use.

As they eased apart, Shannon stroked Maya’s cheek tenderly. “Are you going to just hop on a plane to apologize every time we argue?”

“I hope not.”

“No?”

“I hope we’ll figure out how to be in the same state from time to time.”

Shannon nodded. “We’ve got time.”

*

“Hey, I didn’t think we’d see you here today.” Sawyer strolled through the alley from the direction of the restaurant just as Shannon arrived.

“Is that why you’re sneaking into the bakery? For a quickie?”

“I wish. I can’t wait for those preg—”

“What?”

“Nothing.” Sawyer sighed. “I was going to say, I can’t wait for those pregnancy hormones I’ve heard so much about to kick in.”

“Jori’s pregnant?”

Sawyer nodded. “But keep it to yourself. She doesn’t want anyone to know until after her first trimester. But she’s busting to tell someone, so if she finds out I already let you in—”

“I’ll act surprised when she tells me. Oh my God, that’s so awesome. I didn’t know you guys were trying.”

“We only decided recently. Can you believe it took on the first attempt? I didn’t think it would be so quick when I agreed to try.” Sawyer pulled open the bakery door and waited for Shannon to go in before she followed.

In the kitchen, Mackenzie had just pulled a tray of sugar cookies from the oven. Sawyer gravitated toward her side.

“Nope. Step back,” Mackenzie said. “These are for a customer order.”

“You don’t have even one extra?”

“Go out front and get one out of the case.” Mackenzie put her body between Sawyer and the tray of cookies and sent Shannon a silent plea for help.

“But those are still warm.”

“Leave the cookies alone,” Jori called as she walked into the kitchen. She glared at Sawyer, then turned disapproving eyes on Mackenzie and Shannon. “Can’t you two handle her? You outnumber her.”

“But she outranks us,” Shannon said.

“
I
pay both of you. Part of your job is to protect my inventory.” Jori waved in Shannon’s direction. “Shannon, can I speak to you privately?”

“Sure.”

“I’ll be up front.” Mackenzie grabbed Sawyer’s arm. “You come with me. I don’t trust you with those cookies.”

As the door closed behind them, Jori said, “Have you seen any tabloids today?”

“No. I haven’t been to the grocery store in over a week.”

Jori pulled a folded copy of one of the trashier editions from the inside of her bag and set it on the counter between them. Her nervous expression had dread building in Shannon. She didn’t pick it up, but she didn’t have to in order to see Maya’s face across the entire cover. She sucked in a breath at the words in bold print scrawled across the front of the image. M
ISCARRIAGE
S
HOCKER!
A
BORTION RUMORS FALSE.

“Shit.”

“Okay. You’re mad, but you’re not shocked. You knew about this.”

She nodded slowly, a cold feeling squeezing her heart. “I wanted to tell you. But she asked me not to.”

“According to this article, Maya revealed this voluntarily in an interview.”

“It’s a long story. She promised this interview to keep a photo of us from going public.”

“What photo?”

“Don’t let your imagination go crazy. It wasn’t that risqué. But it could have tarnished my career before it really got a chance to take off, so Maya tried to protect me.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. I was trying to talk her out of it. But apparently now I’m too late. Damn it.” She wanted to talk to Maya—to see her. “She’s at my apartment—”

“Really? I told Sawyer she wouldn’t be getting a hotel room. I’m surprised you made it in so early this morning.”

Despite the flush burning up her neck, Shannon didn’t address her implication. “She’s staying in town for a few days.”

“Sure. She did fly all the way down here.”

“Then in just three weeks she’ll be back for the finale. And I have a ton of preparation to do before then anyway.” Shannon’s eyes fell on the tabloid again. She clenched her jaw against a resurgence of anger. “Do you mind if I go home early?”

“No problem. Whatever you need.”

*

“Maya.”

“In here,” Maya called from the kitchen. She’d hoped to have dinner ready when Shannon got home from work, but then she hadn’t expected her so soon.

“Something smells good,” Shannon said.

“Roasted turkey breast, with my secret ingredient.”

Shannon glanced at the packaging on the counter. “Butterball?”

“I’m a pastry chef, not a line cook.” Maya kissed Shannon’s cheek, then returned to cutting up red potatoes for roasting. “You’re home early.”

“Are you okay?”

Maya stopped and laid down her knife. “You saw the story.”

“Actually, Jori brought it to my attention. A little warning would have been nice.”

Maya nodded. “I’m sorry. I know I should have told you, but—”

“What happened? I thought you were going to wait until the show was over.”

Maya shrugged. “The story had to go a little early.”

“Why?”

“It doesn’t matter.” She didn’t want to tell her that Hugh had demanded she give the interview early. She’d tried to stick to her deal, but he said the reporter was getting antsy and threatening again to run the photo. She suspected the producers wanted the ratings associated with a sensational story heading into the finale. And of course, her personal tragedy made for better press than a controversy that could call into question the integrity of the show. She almost laughed aloud at the direction of her thoughts. After her mentoring experience, she no longer had any illusions about the show having integrity.

“When did you give this interview?”

“The day after we argued.”

“So you knew it was coming out today.”

Maya nodded.

“Is that why you came here?”

“Not entirely. Look, I wanted to apologize. I wanted to see you. Even though I chose this, I knew when the story ran, it would be hard for me, and I wanted to be with you. And yes, maybe hide out from where the press knows to find me.”

“Maya, you didn’t have to do this.” Shannon sounded exhausted.

Maya led her into the living room and guided her to sit on the couch. She settled beside her. “I know you don’t agree with this. But it’s already done, so there’s no point arguing. Please know that I had your best interest at heart.”