Sugared (Misfit Brides #4) (2 page)

She fanned harder. “Oh, anybody can bake a cupcake.”

“But I want
your
cupcakes.”

Kimmie had known guys who would’ve accompanied that with a wink. Or a brow wiggle. Or a nudge-nudge.

Josh didn’t do any of those things.

He stood there in his suit, hands tucked into his pockets, nothing but completely untrustworthy
you can trust me
lingering between the lines of his
I play a good playboy, but baby, I get what I want in business
expression.

For all her social awkwardness, Kimmie had lived too long with her mother to be a total fool. “My last fortune cookie said that I shouldn’t make deals with the devil.”

Her secret side cupcake hobby was
hers
.

It didn’t pay much—she generally had fewer than ten orders a month for risqué-named cupcakes that she sold through Dahlia’s ice cream shop—but it was the only thing that was entirely hers.

“Sugar, your mother
is
the devil,” Josh said.

Kimmie opened her mouth.

Then closed it.

Mom
meant
well. She—well, she was as socially awkward as Kimmie. The difference was, her mother hid it behind an organized, savvy, take-no-prisoners dictatorial approach to leading Bliss in maintaining its destination wedding-and-bridal-haven image.

“Got a birthday coming up,” Josh said. “My mom’s looking for a new cupcake recipe. Thought you might share one. Or five.”

“Oh, no. My mother would—”

Josh quirked his lips.

Kimmie swallowed the
blister my toffee
. “Pinterest has lots of great cupcake recipes. I saw one that looked like a walrus eating a s’more made of penguins and polar bears—no, wait. That was a dream. But—”

“I’ll pay you for the recipes.”

If other dimensions were a real thing, Kimmie was fairly certain she’d stumbled through a portal to a backwards one.

“I kinda don’t think that’s a good idea,” she said.

He straightened his tie. “Name your price.”

Loud, clanging, Cake Readiness Condition Four alarm bells went off in her head. “I—it’s—did you know St. Honoré is the patron saint of bakers?”

“Kimmie.” He smiled, and her legs went melty as buttercream in summertime. “You scribble down a few recipes. I write you a check. Your mother will never know.”

Kimmie was better at keeping secrets from her mother than people gave her credit for. The trick was in deciding which secrets were worth keeping, and in “accidentally blowing” a secret every now and again to make her mother think she still knew everything.

But selling recipes to Josh?

That would’ve been betraying the bakery. He never should’ve had a right to it in the first place. General Mom had sold half of Heaven’s Bakery to a distant cousin to fund Bliss’s annual Knot Festival the year after the town flooded, and before Mom had raised enough money to buy cousin Birdie back out of the family business, Birdie had set sail to visit the great bakery in the sky.

And left her share of Heaven’s Bakery to Josh.

Kimmie’s pulse shimmied higher. She tasted cotton balls. And her melty buttercream legs were two degrees from liquefying.

She licked her lips. Then she stuck her chin out like her mother would’ve, squared her shoulders, and clenched her fists to keep them from shaking. “I can give you a recipe.”

His lips spread into a patronizing,
good girl
smile.

Kimmie wanted to kick him in the cumquats. “In exchange for your share of Heaven’s Bakery.”

His smile didn’t waver, though the rest of his expression went brittle. “One recipe. For half a bakery.”

It was a good thing the music was loud, or he probably would’ve heard her heart slapping her ribs. “Maybe three recipes?”

He swiped a hand over his mouth, but not fast enough.

The jerk was
laughing
at her. His eyes twinkled and shimmered like the sun glinting on a lake. He angled closer until she could count the pinstripes on his jacket. “Three recipes will get you a crash course in the Josh Kincaid school of negotiation, but sugar, even your recipes aren’t worth my stake in a profitable business.”

Kimmie blinked. That shouldn’t have stung—she knew her cupcakes weren’t the key to world peace or anything—but for over a year, she’d had a ridiculous, stupid, unrequited crush on Josh Kincaid.

And he thought she was an airheaded, silly girl whose best feature was her cake.

He didn’t look at women like Kimmie and see anything more than someone who could give him something or do something for him. He didn’t see her feelings. He didn’t see her dreams. He didn’t see that she even
was
a woman.

“Please leave,” she whispered again.

Someone touched her elbow. “Hey, Kimmie. Okay here?”

Max Gregory—tall, dark, overprotective, and as uninterested in Kimmie as all of the other guys she’d grown up with—gave her a brotherly
does this guy need his muffins kicked?
glance.

“Just fine,” Josh said.

“I was talking to the lady.”

Josh slid Kimmie the mother of all
she’s something, but I don’t know that I’d call her a lady
looks.

And something snapped.

Way deep down, deeper than her brain, than her heart, than her soul.

Kimmie didn’t want to be the Misfit Princess of Bliss. She didn’t want to be protected by her friends. She didn’t want to placate her mother.

She didn’t want Josh Kincaid to mock her.

She wanted Josh to see her as a person. As an equal.

As a
woman
.

Money and fancy clothes and regular mentions in Chicago’s gossip pages didn’t make him better than her.

The man needed his ego taken down a cake tier or two.

And Kimmie knew
exactly
how to do it.

“It’s okay. Really.” Her lips were as cooperative as frozen marzipan, but she forced a smile at Max. “Actually, this is better than that time I dreamed my faucets had coconut and chocolate taps instead of hot and cold. Have you met Josh? He’s my boyfriend.”

If there were an eyebrows-shot-to-the-ceiling, jaw-slammed-to-the-floor contest, Max would’ve won. Josh caught himself before his brows hit his hair. His lips settled in a formidable line that could’ve gone up against some of General Mom’s biggest
oh, you dare, do you?
expressions. As if Kimmie had issued a challenge, and he had accepted.

Urp.

Max looked at the dance floor, then at Josh. “Thought you were here with another date.”

“Cover story,” Josh said. “Marilyn disapproves of our relationship.”

Uh-oh. “Very much so,” Kimmie squeaked.

Max’s dark gaze shifted between them and the dance floor again. Kimmie held her breath. She couldn’t look. She
wouldn’t
look. The beautiful, slender, flexible Serenity was probably holding the captive attention of every unattached male in attendance. Probably a few of the women too.

“Can’t imagine why Kimmie dating a snack cake heir would displease the Queen General,” Max said dryly. The lingering questions in his expression added
or that it’s real
.

“Always more to a man than his reputation.” Josh put a hand on Kimmie’s waist.

She jumped.

And not just from the fireworks his touch sparked.

“It’s okay, sugar,” Josh said. “I’ll take care of your mother.” He flicked a glance at Max. “Kimmie wanted to keep us a secret, but I can’t resist being with her.”

“I don’t know what’s going on here,” Max said, “but if you hurt Kimmie, her mother will be the least of your worries.”

“We’re in far more danger of Kimmie hurting me.” Josh’s words were nearly a purr that inspired thoughts of rose petals, a king-size bed, and rumpled black satin sheets.

She stifled a whimper and squeezed her rubbery thighs together. “Isn’t he the sweetest?” A meteor attack wouldn’t have been unappreciated right about now. She was probably in over her head. And her hair too. And she had a lot of hair to be in over.

“He’s something,” Max said.

Josh turned a remarkably admirable impression of her mother’s
I will be obeyed
piercing stare on Max. “If you could keep this quiet until Kimmie’s ready to go public, she’d appreciate it.”

And there it went again.

That
snap
.

She wasn’t pretty or skinny enough.

She wasn’t sophisticated.

And Josh—rich, handsome, playboy Josh—would never publicly claim a woman like Kimmie. More likely, he was playing along with this charade to avoid making a bigger scene.

General Mom had raised Kimmie better than to make scenes. Especially at weddings.

But in that moment, Kimmie’s pride didn’t care. Why should
she
be the only person uncomfortable and embarrassed?

“Oh, Josh,” said someone who sounded remarkably like Kimmie and felt remarkably like Kimmie, “I don’t want to be a secret any longer.”

Her legs moved, her body followed, and she launched herself at him. Her arms flailed around his broad shoulders, her non-petite hips collided with his solid thigh, and she mashed her lips against his parted mouth.

His rough whiskers prickled her lips and the heat of his skin radiated through her. She tasted sugar and lemon and something inherently male.

She flew forward until both their bodies slammed to a teetering stop. Josh tilted. Kimmie tilted. And—oh,
pumplegunker and fugglebuckets!
—the cake table tilted.

Kimmie yanked away from Josh. “The cake!”

She scrambled for it, but the cherries and chocolate chunks were already tipping off their ledges. And she hadn’t washed her hands. And she’d been touching
Josh
.

“The cake!” she shrieked again.

Max lunged for the table. Kimmie put her arms out to block the cake’s slide, but it was too late.

The naked cake toppled into her, powdered sugar and fruit and cake bits cascading down her dress and arms.

Dahlia’s cake. Dahlia and Mikey’s cake.

She’d ruined a wedding cake.

General Mom would slice her bananas. Skin her pomegranates. Pulp her oranges.

“Oh, no, no no,” she whispered.

Mikey stepped into view, tall, bald, and slack-jawed. Dahlia skidded to a stop beside him in her white wedding dress, her short brown hair swishing, her mouth forming a perfect O.

“I’m sorry,” Kimmie babbled while she held the cake. “I’m so sorry. So,
so
sorry.” Her nose itched with a telltale drip. Her eyeballs stung. The lump in her throat was bigger than the wedding cake statue that stood a hundred feet tall outside the country club.

Mikey’s gaze ping-ponged between his bride and the cake before finally settling on Kimmie.

A slow grin spread across his lips.

“Cake fight!” He grabbed a chunk off the top layer, drew his arm back, and then lobbed it across the dance floor.

Straight at Billy Brenton.

After a long moment of silence, a
whoop!
went up around the room. Guests descended on Kimmie, shrieking with laughter and flinging cake and cherries and chocolate chunks at one another.

And, Kimmie realized, Josh had disappeared.

But worse, her mother had seen. And General Mom had a
look
.
The
look. The one that came with steam rolling out of her ears, her feet levitating, and flames shooting from her mouth.

Kimmie’s potatoes were officially mashed.

I
t was almost
nine before Kimmie stepped out of the shower in her cozy one-bedroom apartment. As a professional cake baker, she often got frosting in her fair share of unfortunate places—some visible, some not—but she’d never had to shampoo that much cake out of her hair.

Or her ears.

And she wasn’t sure how her bra had caught a serving’s worth of crumbs, but it had.

She fluffed her long, curly hair with a bright orange towel while her cat, Peep, dove into the bathtub and attacked the wet loofah hanging from the faucet, then flipped around to lick the water droplets off herself. Kimmie stepped into a pair of plain white panties and yellow pajama pants, and topped it with a bright green
Cake is The Answer
T-shirt.

Not exactly a suit of armor, but it was the best Kimmie could do.

Her mother hadn’t said a word to her after the incident at the reception. She wouldn’t have, of course—the Queen General of Bliss didn’t make scenes at weddings. She waited for the opportune private moment to fling the fire and brimstone.

As General Mom liked to say, Bliss didn’t get to be the premiere destination wedding location of the Midwest by giving anything less than the best to every wedding, every annual Knot Festival, every event related to brides and grooms and
Bliss
. Under normal circumstances, wrecking a cake at a wedding was grounds for having one’s toenails removed with a rusty frosting spreader. Wrecking a cake at such a high-profile wedding—and with Josh’s assistance—was probably grounds for meeting the great cake baker in the sky.

Kimmie had lost track of how many of her friends had offered their couches or to stay here with her tonight. To act as buffers between Kimmie and her mother’s wrath. But she’d turned them all down.

She had baked her own cupcakes. Now she’d live with the consequences, whatever they might be. While Kimmie had never toppled a cake at a wedding before, her mother was generally more reasonable than the whole of Bliss expected when she dished out discipline in private.

But Kimmie had wrecked a wedding cake.

At a reception.

In Bliss.

With dozens of nationally and internationally famous musicians in attendance.

Her eggs were boiled.

After she was dressed, Kimmie dug deep into her freezer for her emergency stash of coconut cream cake balls. Most evenings, she liked to curl up in her polka-dotted papasan chair, her two kitties playing at her feet, and read a romance novel until she fell asleep. She’d had weird dreams since before she could remember, but she’d learned to steer them, and reading about hunky heroes and spunky heroines before bed sometimes inspired sweetly romantic dreams.

Long hours, her mother, and coconut always sent the dreams into whackadoodle land.

But she couldn’t seem to quit any of them. And since her mother would undoubtedly arrive any minute now, the coconut cream cake pops couldn’t make her dreams much worse.

While Kimmie waited for Judgment Day, she pulled up her Pinterest app, did a random search for cupcakes, and scrolled until she was inspired. Peep, the gray tabby she’d rescued from the shelter seven years ago when she moved out of General Mom’s house, had abandoned the loofah and now meowed helplessly from the top of the fridge. Kimmie lifted her down, and she scampered off. Boo—a calico who had shown up at Heaven’s Bakery, emaciated, matted, and missing half her left ear shortly after the flood waters receded five years ago—dashed in, attacked a dishrag on the floor, slid into the wall, and then dashed out of the narrow kitchen.

Kimmie found a smile.

Normal
. Normal was good.

Half an hour later, a batch of German chocolate cupcakes were in the oven and Kimmie was nearly done with the dishes. Peep had snuck into a lower cabinet, and Boo was doing somersaults with a water bottle lid between her paws.

Kimmie had also eaten four cake balls. She could no longer tell if her heart was racing from the sugar bombs or the dread of knowing that her mother was increasingly likely to arrive with each passing second.

Probably some of both.

Peep suddenly bolted out of the kitchen, while Boo’s good ear tilted toward the hallway. A moment later, General Mom knocked.

Only General Mom knocked with that degree of precision and authority. Plus, Peep had a sixth sense about when menacing forces were nearby.

Kimmie unlocked the deadbolt with jittery hands. There was a high probability she would be fired. And disowned. And possibly excommunicated from Bliss.

Which didn’t sound too terrible at this exact moment.

She opened the door and found herself face-to-face with what she assumed she’d look like in another thirty years. If she lived through tonight.

General Mom was Kimmie’s height, though she always wore pumps that added two inches. She had wide, steel-blue eyes, a solid, square jaw, and bobbed light brown hair that was always dyed and styled to perfection. Her immaculately painted lips were red or pink, depending on the light, and her fingernails were short, bare, and clean. She was dressed in her normal white business suit. The only thing out of place was that her diamond earrings—the last gift Kimmie’s dad had given her before he died in a car accident when Kimmie was two—had been replaced with a larger set of rubies.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Kimberly.”

Her mother sailed into the apartment. She passed judgment on Kimmie’s not-entirely-spotless kitchen with a simple glance and a nose tilt when she passed the doorway, then marched into the living room, where she claimed a perch on the edge of Kimmie’s bright orange leather couch. Boo hopped on the couch, head-butted General Mom’s arm, and then flopped onto her back for belly scratches.

The cat hadn’t forgotten who had found her, and usually, General Mom humored the cat with her own awkward attempts at petting Boo.

But not tonight.

Tonight, General Mom’s spine was stiffer than meringue. She clasped her hands in her lap, but instead of an expression more sour than a lemon, she wore—uh-oh.

Kimmie’s heart took a nose-dive to her toes.

Mom had the look of
I have a plan, and you have displeased me, and therefore you will go along with whatever I say
.

Kimmie’s belly followed her heart.
Splat
. Right there on the tan carpet. If her kidneys and liver could’ve jumped too, they probably would’ve. The cupcakes baking in the kitchen no longer smelled like chocolate heaven. More like chocolate flavored with cinders, sulfur, and hellfire. They’d probably fallen out of self-preservation. Better to collapse than to be incinerated in the fallout of whatever was to come in Kimmie’s living room.

“Sit,” General Mom said.

Kimmie sank onto the carpet and tucked her legs under her. Boo scampered off the couch and slunk to the bedroom.

“Kimberly, we are gathered here tonight to take back full control of Heaven’s Bakery.”

Well.

That was… unexpected.

And mild.

Way,
way
too mild.

General Mom flicked a commanding finger, and Kimmie snapped her jaw shut.

“Generally, destroying a wedding cake
at a reception
would be grounds for immediate termination,” General Mom said, “but as you were not the only person at fault, and as I have heretofore been unable to terminate Mr. Kincaid, even by the power vested in me as the seventh generation of Blythe women to run Bliss and Heaven’s Bakery, I have concluded that an alternate arrangement is necessary.”

“Erm—ah—thank you?”

“It has been a long and arduous sixteen months of having Mr. Kincaid interfering with my bakery, and I am quite done with it. But my own efforts at ridding ourselves of his interference have been ineffective. Therefore, your punishment for defiling a wedding cake is to convince him to step aside and surrender his portion of my bakery.”

Lava exploded in Kimmie’s cheeks. She had avoided communication with the Josh Juan for all of those sixteen months, until tonight. And she would’ve preferred to continue pretending he didn’t exist, and for him to have never known she existed. “H-how?” she said.

“By seducing it out of him, of course.”

This woman carried herself like Kimmie’s mother, but those were not words Kimmie’s mother should’ve known. Having her brûlée crème’d would’ve been better than this.

And she suspected General Mom knew it. “Mom—I don’t think—I can’t—”

“
Can’t
and
won’t
are two distinct words, Kimberly. Use them carefully. You most certainly
can
. And you will. Our ancestors founded this town. They set Bliss on a path to becoming the bridal capital of the Midwest. They set
us
on a path to the opportunities we have today. Heaven’s Bakery has been an institution, the anchoring shop among the local shops on The Aisle since before the First World War. Your grandfather commissioned the wedding cake monument. And our descendants will continue the proud tradition of supplying the best, biggest, and most delicious wedding cakes to Bliss brides for decades to come. But not until you embrace the Blythe side of your blood and reclaim our future for us.”

And this was why she’d earned the underground nickname of the Queen General.

Kimmie swallowed hard.
I had a dream you and the wedding cake monument became one and together you made it rain pickle-flavored frosting
would’ve deflected the conversation with anyone else, but not with her mother. “Mom, I want Heaven’s Bakery back in the family as much as you, but maybe I can try something… more subtle first?”

“I have located a picture of Mr. Kincaid kissing you tonight, and I have ensured that it has been uploaded to every social media outlet known to man, along with bringing it to the attention of certain friends in the right places. Before midnight, all the tabloids that care about alien abductions, the Kardashians, and the girlfriends of conscienceless playboy heirs to national snack cake corporations will be spreading the news that Joshua Kincaid has fallen in love with Bliss’s premiere wedding cake baker.”

Kimmie closed her eyes. But hard as she prayed, the floor didn’t open up and swallow her whole. And when she opened her eyes, her mother hadn’t been replaced by a sweet, grandmotherly type who would’ve been a fantastic kindergarten teacher.

The only thing worse than this plan would be the mortification when Josh denied the rumors. “Mom—”

“You chose your path when you flung yourself at him.” General Mom stood and rose to her full height. “I’ve emailed you a complete dossier on the man. I expect you to read it, memorize it, and use it to your greatest advantage. I will give you one month—until the end of Knot Festival—to resecure his portion of Heaven’s Bakery. After that—”

Mom stopped, blinked, and took a shuddery breath. “Running a business is not for the faint-hearted, Kimberly,” her mother said softly. “If you are to inherit Heaven’s Bakery, the
whole
bakery, you need to learn to run the bakery as efficiently, smartly, and ruthlessly as a man would. It’s not all about the sweet frosting and fluffy cake. And if you have to do it alone, without the aid of a husband, as you seem determined to do, I need to know that you won’t fail.”

“Because our heritage is everything,” Kimmie said on a sigh.

“It’s not just our heritage. If Mr. Kincaid were to decide he wanted more control, he has the financial resources to bankrupt us with a legal fight over his rights within the bakery. And if something were to happen to me, what would he do to you?”

Hard to argue with that. Kimmie had slunk out of the bakery every time Josh had stopped by and started conversations with,
Marilyn, the bakery’s looking stale. I’m sending an interior designer to make recommendations for getting rid of these horrid white walls
and,
Marilyn, when your contract is up with your supply distributors, I want you to use the company we use at Sweet Dreams
.

She’d missed the day he suggested changing the bakery’s name. Thank the cake gods.

General Mom blinked rapidly, and her chin wobbled. “I worry about you, Kimberly. You have never shown great interest in leading the community as I have done, or in taking managerial roles at the bakery. You could make a decent living for yourself on the strength of your baking alone, but you could be so much
more
. You have been blessed with genes, heritage, and the luxury of privilege because of your ancestry. I cannot allow you to take it for granted any longer, or I’ll be doing
you
the greater disservice. I had hoped a husband would provide balance in the management of the bakery, but that, too, seems impossible. If you don’t wish to carry Heaven’s Bakery into the next generation, then I need to make provisions for its future. But God help me, I
will not
surrender my bakery to a spoiled, arrogant, intolerable man like Joshua Kincaid, nor will I leave it to chance that he’ll take it over my dead body.”

These were the rare moments when Kimmie remembered that her mother was flesh and blood. With a real heart, real worries, and real feelings. Even if she had trouble expressing them.

“Mom? Are you… sick?”

The imperial eyebrow of
germs dare not enter this body
made an appearance. “No, Kimberly, but I am mortal. There will come a day when I’m unable to stand between you and Mr. Kincaid. He has no
idea
the history and the legacy not just of the bakery, but of Bliss itself. Putting him in a position of power here could ruin everything Bliss stands for. Bliss needs him gone before my time here is done.”

Kimmie hadn’t thought General Mom’s sixtieth birthday had made much of an impact on her mother. Apparently she’d been wrong. “I won’t ruin any more wedding cakes,” Kimmie whispered. “All those famous people—they made me nervous.”

Her mother sniffed imperiously, then squared her shoulders. “You’ll have to adjust. With someone as famous as Billy Brenton claiming Bliss as his second home, we’re bound to see more high-profile musicians and other stars. Including at
his
wedding. As businesswomen, we need to embrace the opportunities instead of letting fear paralyze us and keep us in the status quo. By the way, Mr. Kincaid’s birthday is Thursday. Any girlfriend worth her salt will be seen personally delivering him an unforgettable birthday cake.”