Courtship of the Cake (7 page)

The diamond bore down on me like an all-seeing eye. I quickly snapped the velvet jaws of the box shut. Riggs's recitation of
they don't pay me nearly enough for this
revolved around my mind like a broken record.

Nash pulled at a tuft of grass and let it sift through his fingers.

“So tell me about this award.”

“Key to the city?” He smiled into the distance. “It's a promotional tool schemed up by Riggs, no doubt.
I'm
a promotional tool.” He grabbed at more grass, ripping it from the hard earth beneath us.

I waited for him to go on, hugging my knees to my chest and staring out at the vista.

“That.” He nodded down to the view, the crowd swelling bigger and bigger as the spotlights began to wink and roll on the stage far below, and the guitar tech began the sound check. “That is my key to the city. Unconditional love. Every night.”

I could only imagine the feeling. Before Maxine canned me, my role at the festival had been only a microcosm of the entire production, and nothing compared to the magic that happened when the first note was played. But I had liked being a link on the chain, working out the chinks for these talented men and women.

“I'd rather stay on tour than accept some lame-ass, meaningless award. Fucking Canada.” A clump of grass went flying over his shoulder, earth still clinging from it.

“Why won't they let you cross the border?”

“Suspected arson.” He flattened me with his gaze, daring me to make one of my usual smart-ass retorts. “B and E. All bullshit. I was seventeen. Who doesn't do stupid shit at that age?”

I didn't answer. I had no desire to refute or rebut his statement.

“Anyway. There's another reason I need to go home,” Nash admitted, facing straight ahead and not looking my way. “And I can't do it alone, not as the same asshole I've always been. I'm sick, Dani. I've got something. A disease.”

I turned to him, wary. If it was communicable . . .

“I'm sure you're thinking it's sexually transmitted and would serve me right, right? But it's not.” He pulled a piece of paper out of his wallet. “I can't even pronounce the goddamn thing.” He handed me the paper slip.

“Ankylosing spondylitis.”

“Just the fact that you can say it makes me think you've heard of it.”

“I have.” During school, during clinicals. “It's a form of progressive arthritis.”

He took custody of the paper again. “I've been carrying this around with me. Diagnosed just before I left for tour. Haven't told Riggs or the guys.”

My mind started to race, thinking of all the possible contraindications, and the damage I could have inflicted, simply by massaging someone in his condition without knowing. “I wish you would've told me sooner.”

“Sorry to worry your pretty little head, China Doll.” His tone was caustic. “You didn't break me. It's all good.”

He struggled to his feet and stood stiffly. I recalled the condition was also referred to as “bamboo spine,” due to the way it fused the backbone into a rigid stick, pressing on nerves and causing increasing numbness in the lower part of the body. Not good.

Especially not good for a performer who used his body as his livelihood.

“The doc told me I might lose the ability to play . . . even to hold my guitar. Then what?” Nash said quietly.

“Oh, Nash . . .”

He shrugged, gave a defeated little smile, cupped his hands, and
bellowed, “THEN WHAT?” at the top of his lungs. A few people down in the crowd below turned; some raised their fists and cheered. At our distance, they couldn't tell if he was a rock god or just a mere mortal like them.

At our height, they couldn't judge whether he was thirty feet tall and bulletproof.

“I'll stiffen up like the Tin Man. The band will kick me out. Or I'll have to quit. Who will love me then? I've never had a heart in me. I've only had my music.”

“You're getting way ahead of yourself,” I said, although I didn't blame him.

“Am I?” He stalked back over to the cart and pulled his long legs in. “I need to be prepared. For if the day ever comes. I need . . .” His voice dwindled out in the mountain breeze. “I need to get to know my son.”

Nash's statement felt loaded with meaning. “AS . . . ,” I began, suddenly remembering more about the condition. “There's a genetic marker, isn't there?”

He nodded. “Most people with the disease have it. I do.”

I got what he was saying. He wanted to find out if the son he never met was at risk, too. I joined him in the cart.

“There's that normal curiosity, you know?” He gave me a wistful smile. “Like, is he going to look like me? Will he have my smile, my hands?” Nash turned his palms over, displaying his nimble guitar-playing fingers, flat at the tips with calluses as custom made as his signature Les Paul. “Will he hate me? Even before he knows . . . or is old enough to understand?”

I didn't know what to say or do, other than cautiously wrap my arms around him, clasping his bare shoulder with my hands. I had never hugged a client before, but he wasn't on my massage table right now. He was on my imaginary psychiatrist's couch. And he didn't feel like a client, he felt like a friend who had just confided in me.

Nash surprised me by leaning and placing a chaste kiss on my
forehead, before turning and staring down the mountain as the sky grew darker and the crowd grew larger.

“Going home isn't going to be easy,” he said. “Not with my past track record. I've burned so many bridges there . . . I'm gonna need someone to help me cross the Delaware. My son's mother isn't going to let me near him if I show up without someone next to me to make me look good.”

The velvet box was growing sweaty in my grip. I had forgotten I was even holding it. “Why me?” I blurted, setting it in the cup holder of the cart.

Nash had his choice of girls, as evident from Go, Later, Kylie, and the rest of his groupies. Hell, they had named themselves the Dramettes.
We stayed behind to party with Nash
, I recalled their words on the tour bus. Would they truly stay with him, were the party to end? Could they live up to their name, or would the drama become too much?

“Because you, Doc, are the perfect package. Fucking Ivy League,” he scoffed, “and you sound smart when you talk. You have more on your mind than sex and money, and these hands . . .” He took both of my hands in his. “These magic mojo hands. I
need
them on me every day. And that is probably the first time Nash Drama has ever said anything and meant it in a totally nonsexual, innocent way. Truth.”

I laughed, and so did he.

“You're not totally innocent,” I pointed the fact out to him. “You'd be lying to your whole town.”
And I would be, too.

“It wouldn't be the first time.” He tossed his hair back, and there was the old bravado I was used to. “Unless you want to really let me make an honest woman out of you? Maybe Riggs had the right idea, after all. You know, Nash Drama doesn't like doing things half-assed, darlin'.”

Perhaps this was my next big adventure?

I loved massaging—everything about it, from the atmosphere of the candles to the smell of the oils. Most of all, I loved to help people. But what Nash was asking was way out of my scope of experience.

“Would it be so awful, being married to a guy like me? You wouldn't
have dudes pawing at you any longer, not on my watch. No boss bitches pulling rank on you . . .”

Those points were tempting. But just the tip of the iceberg, and it was going to take a lot more to get hell to freeze over and get me to agree to
I do
.

“And the sex—”

“Would be amazing, and whenever you want it.” His bare chest puffed with pride.

“It would be nonexistent,” I corrected. “Between us, anyway.” I waved my arm to indicate my point. “Personal and professional boundaries are high on my code of ethics.”

Was I seriously spouting off about ethics, while sitting on a mountaintop with a half-naked rocker? “If you want me to help you,
really
help you, you need to see that anything beyond platonic would seriously muddy the waters under that bridge you need help crossing.”

Nash stared at me for a long minute. The sigh he released deflated his chest to normal size. “Makes sense, I guess. In the long run.”

The long run. He truly wanted to go the distance.

“And then what?” Echoing his words was deliberate on my part: had he seriously thought all this through?

“You'll help me finish out the tour and decide how I'm going to treat this thing. Then . . . I don't know. Maybe go back out west.”

“There are docs in Philly, you know.”

“Yeah, but I won't want to overstay my welcome. See my friends, get to know my kid. Take the damn key they're offering me. And should the rock-and-roll dream—and my body—go belly-up, maybe there will be more of a shoulder to lean on, you know? And—hold up . . . how do you know where I'm from?” Nash asked.

He had me there.

“Let's just say . . . maybe a little of the Nash Drama fan club has rubbed off on me.” I pinched my thumb and forefinger together. “Just a little.”

“So is that a yes?”

Nash pinched his thumb and forefinger together, too—offering up the ring.

Now it was my turn to ask myself
why me?
I knew Nash's reasons for entering into such a thing. But my own?
WWDD?

Guitar riffs floated up the hill, distant and haunting. A tech tested the Vox organ on stage, coaxing carnival sounds from it. Nash began to hum the opening lines from The Doors' “You're Lost Little Girl” in his dark, throaty timbre. Go Get Her frequently covered the song during their encore, and its meaning wasn't lost on me.

It had been easy to hide behind my smug rhetoric from the other side of the fence.

You'll never find yourself, if you haven't yet lost yourself.

I had caught the bouquet at Laney's mom's wedding. And before that, I had pulled a wedding cake charm from my sister's cake, and let my heart and my mind get away from me. Maybe this was the way it was meant to be. All signs were pointing to commitment, but maybe it wasn't so crazy after all. Especially if it was for a good cause.

I was tired of running, and making excuses to everyone and myself. If I said yes to Nash—for real, and for more than a week—I wouldn't have to think of reasons to say no to everyone else. I wouldn't have to protect my heart, or my dignity, from guys like Mick. I wouldn't be left to make any more wrong choices. And I could truly help this man, who was obviously not used to asking others for help.

All I had to do was say yes.

All we had to do was go through with it.

Go through it.

“You've got one chance to ask me, mister. So you'd better make it right.”

THE HONEYMOON IS OVER

I woke up in a pool of chocolate sauce.

Better that than my own blood.

Dabbing a thumb against my sticky cheek, I licked and sampled the goods. It was a step up from your average household-variety chocolate. But it certainly wasn't the Valrhona I used in my shop. Torani, maybe?

Whose house was this?

Under the crisp sheets, my bare foot made contact with the cool stainless of a whipped cream canister. Oh yes, I remembered going there.

Reaching over, I touched the sticky hip of the woman sleeping with her back to me, and ran my fingertip along the string of her apple-green thong.

Oh, Mick. You motherfucker.

I had worked the Davis-Dixon wedding last night. Party of two hundred. And Jack Daniel's and I had officially crashed it, late night.

“Ms. Davis, the caterers have arrived,” called a voice from the other side of the door. A light knocking followed. “Ms. Davis?”

The lady of the house sat bolt upright. Hours of private Pilates
lessons had kept her abs tight and her bottom firm, and I admired both from my side of her massive king bed. “Be right there!” she called with false cheer to her housekeeper. “Oh my God, what time is it?”

Her voice wavered as she turned to look over my head at her bedside clock. “Mick, you have to get out of here. Sixty out-of-town guests will be here in a half hour! Shit, shit, shit!”

Even with her eye makeup smudged, and her professionally done hair now a matted mess, the mother of the bride looked delectable. The swell of her breasts had my chocolate fingerprints all over them, and I had a vague recollection of all the places I had garnished and drizzled last night.

“Is there time for a shower?” I had had so much fun getting dirty with her. It would be nice to get clean with her, too. I rolled over, my thigh tacky against hers. She had sprayed a garland of whipped cream down there last night, and had had an all-you-can-eat extravaganza.

Early-fiftysomething babes were the best.

“For me, yes.” She rolled off the bed and into her silk robe. “For you . . .” She tossed me my work pants in response. “Take the back stairs, please.”

“Yeah, yeah.” I knew the drill.

“You were fun, though,” she conceded, reaching to button me back into my double-breasted chef's coat and pulling me in for a stale, sugary kiss.

“Be a dear and put these back where you found them, please?”

Be a dear?
That sounded like something a grandma would say. Okay, maybe the seventeen-year age gap was a bit of a chasm.

With sneakers in one hand and numerous edible items I had raided from the pantry in pursuit of late-night fun in the other, I crept down to the kitchen. After a night of passionate servicing, I was well aware why I had been relegated to the servants' staircase.

Story of my life.

I loved my freakin' life.

Chocolate and caramel went back into the fridge, honey into the pantry,
and what was left of the big bowl of grapes and berries was returned to the mammoth kitchen island. I refilled the ice cube tray with calm and calculated domesticity as the catering crew stepped lively around me.

If it weren't for the honey in my hair and the caramel-streaked scratch marks across the back of my coat, I could totally pass for the man of the house. If there were one. And half the town knew there wasn't.

A familiar, tattooed arm reached past me to light the Sternos under the chafing dishes. “You look a little rough, Spencer. Just punching in?”

Leave it to Jerry Blake to arrive for sloppy seconds. He'd copied off me during our time in culinary school, and now managed one of the trendy catering upstarts in the township. Whose desserts couldn't hold a candle to mine.

“Nope, I'm not working this party. Just did a double.” I was officially punching out my time card on the Davis affair.

“You see this morning's front page?” he asked, jutting his chin toward the paper still in its plastic sleeve on the counter. “Big news about your buddy, Nash Drama.”

“Thanks,” I said, tucking the paper under my arm. When it came to my oldest friend, he lived up to the stage surname he gave himself at age nineteen. No matter what drama was playing out in the news, I wasn't going to give Jerry Blake the satisfaction of watching me go hunt for it. But curiosity got the better of me by the time I reached the front hall.

L
OCAL
G
UITAR
H
ERO
TO
R
ECEIVE
K
EY
TO
THE
C
ITY

Okay. The world had totally gone mad. In what alternate universe was Nash a “hero”? Hell, calling Nash “local” was a stretch. The guy hadn't been home in ten long years. Still, it was a short enough time for me to still hold a grudge.

Outside, my ride was completely cock-blocked by catering vans and a florist truck parked on both ends of the circular drive.
Great.
I
fingered my useless keys to the Night Kitchen van, and flipped them back into my pocket. At least it didn't look out of place. I'd have to come back for it later with Bear.

The thought of my best friend made me pull out my phone and check the time as I began to hoof it toward town. Nine forty-five. “Damn it!”

Like clockwork, and because my aunt Sindy always swore Bear and I shared half a brain, the phone buzzed its retort against my hand.

Quinn on warpath. Logan needs cake.

I had promised Bear's nephew I'd help him bake a cake today. It wasn't just any old day; today was his tenth birthday. I had Spiderman cupcakes back at the shop ready for his party guests later on, but quality time in the kitchen with me had been high on his wish list.

I could just picture Quinn standing in the doorway with a cake server. Ready to scalp me with it. Bear's sister didn't take kindly to people disappointing her kid. Especially in favor of a booty call.

Quinn Bradley was not a fan of the booty call.

Not since she had been one, ten years and roughly nine months ago.

“Where you headed, kid?”

The trucker's shout and idling engine startled me. Second nature had forced my thumb up and my arm out. I had been walking with my back to the west and hadn't even realized it.

“The Half Acre. Just past the 32 curve.” I had been hitchhiking my way there since junior high. “You know it?”

“I can't take you over the New Hope–Lambertville Bridge; my rig's over the weight limit. But I can drop you close enough. Hop in.”

We were on the Jersey side, but if he got me to the bridge, I could be at the Half Acre on the Pennsylvania side in twenty minutes. I began to sift through my mental recipe box for a quick cake to make with Logan. Two layers max, with seven-minute icing.

“Used to drive these roads all the time,” the trucker shared as we bumped along slightly faster than the speed of sloth. “Up Route 32. Didn't they used to call it Heaven's Half Acre?”

“That was a long time ago. It's just the Half Acre now.”

I tried to fix my gaze on the road ahead, but the trio of beads swinging from the rearview mirror caught my eye first. They were Mardi Gras colors—green, gold, and purple—with tiny glittering masks that clicked cheaply against one another. With a shaking hand, I reached out to silence them, my thumb rubbing over the tiny hump of the gold mask's nose.

God, I had managed to make it almost a whole morning without thinking about her.

It was hard to forget a girl like Dani.

Not to mention spending the evening with the girl of your dreams and waking up in a Louisiana jail.

“You like those, eh?” The driver leered. “Got 'em down in New Orleans this year. Ever been to Mardi Gras?”

“Yeah. I lived down there. For a time.” It felt like a lifetime ago.

“You see a lotta tits when you lived down there?”

“I saw my fair share.” Mardi Gras was a season down in New Orleans. But I had seen some in the off-season, too.

“The ladies on Bourbon Street sure love the beads. But I had to keep a few. Beads, I mean.” He laughed. “'Course I wouldn't have minded bringing some of them ladies home, neither.”

The gold mask continued its hypnotizing sway.

I had come home empty-handed, too.

Gold for power
, Dani had said, relinquishing the sequined and feathered mask she hid behind that night. I hadn't known there was significance behind each color until she'd told me.
Green for faith
, she had whispered, allowing my fingers to slowly zip her out of her dress until she'd stood before me in nothing but a lacy thong.
Purple for justice
.

I hadn't known the power she would hold over me.

And I was losing faith in the hope that I would ever find her again.

No justice in this world.

The driver had braked to a stop, and the bridge was in sight.

“End of the line.”

“Thanks.” I jumped down from the rig, still under the spell of Dani's memory.

She wasn't just the one that got away. She had gotten under my skin, just like I knew she would, the minute she came parading down Royal Street.

•   •   •

“And here comes another one! Those brides from up north sure do love a second-line parade.” Derek, our captain waiter, took a shaky drag off his cigarette, nodding his head to the blare and the beat of the brass band slowly making its way toward us.

We had just finished service on a wedding for two hundred, and while I couldn't vouch for the rest of the guys, I was bone-achingly tired. Taking both a server job and a pastry apprenticeship at a busy New Orleans hotel kept me hopping from before dawn until well after dusk. And unlike my fellow waitstaff born and raised on the Bayou, my internal thermostat was still having trouble adjusting to the climate difference, despite having left Pennsylvania three years ago. And especially while wearing the penguin suit the caterers insisted upon.

“How do you know they're from up north?” I asked, giving a tug on my bow tie as the happy bride and groom came strutting behind the band with a twirl of a painted parasol and colored cane. Their police escort gave a whirl of his siren and lights, getting into the mood, too.

Derek smiled wide, showing a gold tooth on one side and a gap where its twin was missing on the other. “Oh, you'd know if they was locals. Believe me. Northerners, ain't I right, Eddie?”

“Throw a rock on Royal Street, you'll hit a second line these days.” Eddie's shoulders were already rolling to the grooves being laid down. “It's the city's bread-and-butter, not complaining. But that there ain't nothing like a jazz funeral. Now
there's
a second line!” He took a stealth haul off the flask of Maker's Mark he kept in his jacket pocket
before passing it to me. “I'll show you one of these days, Mick. Just need some old cat like Derek to kick it,” he affectionately teased.

Derek and Eddie were third cousins, or maybe it was second cousins, once removed. Something like that. Eddie had told me all about his almost-famous relative the day we both got our jobs. “He's got brass in his blood,” were his exact words. And after having the pleasure of seeing old Derek pick up a saxophone in some hole-in-the-wall jazz club last spring, that explained it all. He should've been first in line with the band, not stuck in catering.

We passed the flask and watched as clusters of wedding guests moved past, self-consciously waving handkerchiefs and shuffling. Sure enough, they were wilting in the sultry heat like true Northerners.

Save for one.

She was smack in the middle of the bridal processional, shimmying all the things God gave her. The tumble of wild, white-blond curls caught the late-day sun like a cascading blaze as she twirled in her bridesmaid dress and stepped high to the beat of the big bass drum. She shook her white handkerchief with abandon, one slim arm raised to the sky as the other snaked smoothly out to catch the crooked elbow offered by old Derek. Around and around they went, swinging in a fun and frenzied dance, until she broke off, blowing him a kiss and laughing as she continued down the street.

“Now that you don't see every day.” Eddie blew out a breath, hypnotized. Derek was still clapping and laughing, doing a little jig in the street as it emptied.

“Seriously.” My bow tie was in my hand. “Cover for me?” In some kind of trance of my own, I also shed my penguin coat, tossing both to Eddie and running to catch up with the parade before I even had time to consider what I was doing.

I had to find out who the girl in the emerald dress was.

Actually, it was more like an absinthe green; I had been mixing icing colors in my aunt and uncle's bakery since the tender age of
thirteen and learned there were more hues of color out there in the world than there were moods. I had the feeling that, like the drink, just a taste of that girl would intoxicate me. You could tell her spirit was potent.