Red Velvet Revenge (5 page)

“No peeking,” he said.

Marty gave him a sour look but went and stood with the others.

“Are you ready?” Sal asked.

“Yes,” Angie and Mel said together, but then Angie added, “No, wait!” Sal’s face fell like a meringue on a humid day.

“Why?” he asked.

“Shouldn’t Tate be here?” Angie asked. “He’s our partner and he’d want to see this.”

“Oh, he’s already seen it,” Sal said. Then he clapped a hand over his mouth.

“Explain.” Angie frowned at him.

Sal spread his hands wide in his attempt at sincere. “Well, business being what it is, and costs—”

“You did not!” Angie snapped and stomped her foot.

“Did not what?” Mel asked. “I’m not following.”

“Have Tate pay for the renovations,” Angie said. Then she whirled on Oz. “Did you know about this?”

All six foot three of him squirmed under Angie’s glare, and he said, “Kind of.”

“Kind of?” Angie asked. “Like, I’m
kind of
going to kick all of your butts?”

“Calm down, baby sis,” Sal began. “Tate came around to the shop and saw what we were dealing with—seriously, a dropped transmission and a bad stink that made even my nose hair curl—and he agreed that if this was really going to be a part of your business venture, then some capital had to be channeled into it.”

“How much?” Angie asked.

“I’m not sure,” Sal said. “I’m a little fuzzy on the numbers.”

“Oh, please. You can sniff out the change in a person’s pocket at twenty paces,” Angie said. “How much?”

“You may as well tell her, Sal,” Mel said. “You know we’ll get it out of Tate anyway.”

“Twenty K,” he said.

Angie staggered. Mel would have caught her, but she got dizzy as the sidewalk tipped a bit.

“Whoa, we’re going to have to sell over eight thousand cupcakes to pay him back,” Mel said, doing some quick mental math.

“Pay who back?” a voice asked from behind them.

Mel and Angie turned to see Tate standing there.

“Thanks for the text, Oz,” he said, and they exchanged some complicated handshake thing that to Mel looked like two birds humping. “I didn’t want to miss the big reveal.”

Angie took a swing at him, but Tate hadn’t been Angie’s BFF for more than twenty years for nothing. He ducked and
caught her around the middle, hoisting her up over his shoulder.

“Angie, it’s too hot for this much exertion,” he said. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking I’m going to stomp on you!”

Tate turned to Mel and said, “Well, that’s gratitude.”

Five

“Tate, we can’t borrow any more money for the business,” Mel said. “I thought we were pretty clear on that.”

Tate shrugged. “It was an opportunity.”

Mel gave him a hard stare while Angie grumbled behind them, “Hey, I think all of the blood has run to my head.”

“Good. Then you won’t be able to do any damage,” Tate said, and he slowly lowered her to her feet.

Sal looked at the three of them. “Are we good now? Because I am sweating like a hairy monkey in a polyester suit and I need to get back to work.”

“We’re good,” Mel said as she steadied Angie with a hand on her elbow. Then she glanced at Tate. “We’ll discuss this later.”

He gave a put-upon sigh but didn’t argue.

“All right, then,” Sal said. “Lou, if you don’t mind.”

He gestured for the other man to grab a corner of the gray car cover, and together they lifted it like a preschool parachute up and over the van.

Mel felt her eyes get wide as she tried to take it in.

The faded ice cream stickers were gone, and in their place was the coolest thing on four wheels Mel had ever seen.

Its big rectangular shape had a fresh coat of white paint.
Fairy Tale Cupcakes
was spelled out in their signature cursive font, and Sal and Lou had put an enormous atomic cupcake symbol, the one Mel and Angie used for all of their packaging, which featured an aqua and pink cupcake with the swirls of an atom going around it, on both sides and the back. There could be no doubt in anyone’s mind that this was a cupcake truck.

“Squeee!” Angie and Mel grabbed each other’s hands and made a girly noise heretofore never heard from either of them before.

“It’s awesome,” Angie gushed. All four men flushed with pleasure.

“Truly spectacular,” Mel agreed. “I am so impressed.”

“Oh, you haven’t seen anything,” Lou the mechanic said. “If you’ll follow me, please.”

Mel and Angie stepped off of the curb and followed him around the back. He hauled the roll door up to its full height and stepped out of the way.

“Oh, wow, it’s like a mini-me version of the bakery,” Mel said.

Gone was the nasty shag carpet. In its place was black-and-white tile flooring just like the bakery’s. The interior had been painted pink, and the freezers had been polished up until their steel exteriors positively gleamed.

“And check this out,” Sal said. He moved over to the side that used to have the scratched sliding window. There were new windows there now. He slid them open and then unlatched the side cover, which rose up to form a metal awning, giving shade to both the window and the people waiting at the window.

Angie leaned forward and popped her head out. Tate was standing there, smiling at her. Mel leaned out the window beside her, trying to decide if it was the right height. It was perfect.

“May I take your order, sir?” Angie asked in her best server’s voice.

Tate gazed at her with such a fierce look of longing that Mel had to look away. She heard Angie hiss a breath in between her teeth, and she was sure Angie had seen the look, too.

“That depends,” Tate said, his voice gruff. “Are you on the menu?”

Angie stared at him for a heart-pounding second and then jerked back into the truck and spun around. “Well, I guess that answers that. We obviously need a menu board.”

Mel was rooting around in the freezers, trying to decide if there was enough room in them for all of the cupcakes she had made. It was going to be a tight squeeze, but she thought they’d make it.

She glanced out the window at Tate, who was looking inordinately pleased with himself. Honestly, just because he could make Angie blush, he thought he stood a chance with her. Idiot.

Mel shook her head. She was so not getting involved in this. Instead she took in the overhead storage and the built-in
mini–display rack that Sal had obviously had custom-fit to sit in front of the window. She had to admit, this truck was a work of art. The only question now was how did it run?

“So, Oz, how about a test drive?” she asked.

He looked as if he’d been waiting for her to ask, and he wrestled his keys out of his pocket and jumped in the driver’s seat.

Tate took the passenger’s seat while Marty climbed in back with Mel and Angie.

“Wait!” Sal yelled. “Lou, show them the jump seats.”

Mel and Angie exchanged a look while Lou climbed into the back. Built into the wall behind the driver’s seat and the passenger’s seat were four jump seats that folded out of the wall just like the type flight attendants used on airplanes.

“I can’t have baby sister and brother’s girlfriend driving around in this unless they’re buckled in,” Sal said.

“Oh, Sal, that’s so sweet,” Angie said.

She and Mel took the seats behind Oz, and Marty took one of the two on the other side. Their legs were wedged up against the freezer, but it was better than squatting on the floor. Lou put down the awning and closed the window. Then he hopped out of the back of the truck and pulled the roll door down.

Sal stuck his head in Tate’s window and said, “Call me if you have any trouble.”

“They won’t have trouble,” Lou said with a confidence Mel really appreciated hearing from a mechanic.

They took a winding tour of Old Town Scottsdale and then cruised up Hayden Road along the greenbelt.

There were no ominous grinding noises or puffs of blue
smoke, and for the first time Mel actually believed they were going to pull this off. She thought of a few days spent in the cooler elevation of northern Arizona, and twenty-five thousand rodeo fans eating her cupcakes. She grinned.

“Promise you’ll feed him and play with him every day,” Mel said. “He likes to be rubbed just below his chin.”

She held Captain Jack in one arm and rubbed his chin with her free hand. He purred and pushed his triangular little face against her.

“I promise,” Joyce Cooper said. “Surely, if I handled your brother’s iguana, Figaro, for all of those years, I can manage a wee little kitten.”

“I don’t know, Mom,” Mel said. “He has the ability to slip into another dimension, I swear. One minute he’s there, and the next second he’s gone and you can’t find him anywhere. It’s very disconcerting.”

“Oh, don’t be silly,” Joyce said. She held out her arms, and Mel reluctantly handed him over. She knew her mother would take excellent care of her little man, but oh, she was going to miss him.

“Be a good boy,” Mel said. She kissed Captain Jack’s head and he batted playfully at her nose. She felt her throat constrict, but she swallowed hard and gave her mother a hug. “I’ll have my phone with me at all times, so call me if you have any questions or concerns.”

“I will, sweetie—don’t you worry.”

Mel noted that her mother was talking to her in the same calm and reassuring voice she used on her sister-in-law
when she and Mel’s brother left their sons with Joyce so that they could get away.

“Is dear Joe going with you?” Joyce asked. She always called him
dear Joe
, leaving Mel no doubt as to how she felt about him. Mel sincerely hoped she and Joe never broke up, because she knew her mother would undoubtedly take it the hardest.

“No, he has to work, and with Tate, Marty, and Oz going, we’re pretty much at capacity,” Mel said.

“Well, be careful,” Joyce said. “Don’t get trampled by a bull or anything.”

“I’m not going to get trampled by a bull,” Mel said. She turned away to hide the smile that was threatening to bust out. Only her mother, the worrier, could think of something as crazy as death by bull trampling.

Six

In the end, no one had to sit on the roof, but it was a tight squeeze for all of them in the back with the cupcakes and tubs of frosting and their luggage. Angie made a footrest out of her carry-on, and Mel watched as she texted furiously when they pulled onto the highway and headed north.

The way her thumbs were flying across the QWERTY keyboard, Mel had no doubt that whoever was on the receiving end of her message was not getting a lot of smiley faces or LOLs.

“Problem?” she asked.

“Nothing a swift kick in the leather pants wouldn’t fix,” Angie said.

Mel knew only one person who wore leather pants. “So, it’s Roach, huh?”

Angie slammed her phone shut and glowered at it before dropping it in her lap.

“He’s all mad because I’m going to the rodeo, instead of coming to California to be with him,” she said. “I tried to explain that this is my business and I have to be there, but he’s not listening.”

Mel was quiet for a minute. Because she had such strong feelings about Angie leaving, she had really tried over the past few months not to say anything but to let Angie figure this out herself. But now she felt obligated to point out the obvious.