The Cupcake Diaries: Sweet On You (12 page)

“I’ll be going to the university for two years,” the girl continued. “Maybe we meet
again after.”

Not likely. Kim shook her head, and the bottom of her stomach locked down tight. From
past experience, she knew once the school year was over in June, most foreign students
went home, never to return.

And left many broken hearts in their wake.

“Two years is a long time,” the boy said.

Forever was even longer.
Kim drew in a deep breath, as the unmistakable catch in the poor boy’s voice replayed
again and again in her mind. And her heart.

How long were they going to stand there and torment her and remind her of her parting
four years earlier with Gavin, the Irish student she’d dated through college? Dropping
the bag of icing on the Creative Cupcakes counter, she moved toward them.

“Can I help you?” Kim asked, pulling on a new pair of food handler’s gloves.

“I’ll have the white chocolate macadamia,” the girl said, pointing to the cupcake
she wanted in the glass display case.

The boy dug his hands into his pockets, counted the meager change he’d managed to
withdraw, and turned five shades of red.

“None for me.” His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “How much for hers?”

“You have to have one, too,” the girl protested. “It’s your birthday.”

Kim looked at his lost-for-words expression and took pity on him. “If today is your
birthday, the cupcakes are free,” she said. “For both you and your guest.”

The teenager’s face brightened. “Really?”

Kim nodded and removed the cupcakes the two lovebirds wanted from the display case.
She even put a birthday candle on one of them, a heart on the other. Maybe the girl
would come back for him, or he would fly to Ireland for her.
Maybe
.

Her eyes stung, and she squeezed them shut for a brief second. When she opened them
again, she set her jaw. Enough was enough. Now that they had their cupcakes she could
escape back into her work and forget about romance and relationships and every regrettable
moment she’d ever wasted on love.

She didn’t need it. Not like her older sister, Andi, who recently lost her heart to
Jake Hartman, their Creative Cupcakes financier and news reporter for the
Astoria Sun
. Or like her other co-owner friend, Rachel, who had just gotten engaged to Mike Palmer,
a miniature model maker for movies who also doubled as the driver of their Cupcake
Mobile.

All she needed was to dive deep into her desire to put paint on canvas. She glanced
at the walls of the cupcake shop, adorned with her scenic oil, acrylic, and watercolor
paintings. Maybe if she worked hard enough, she’d have the money to open her own art
gallery, and she wouldn’t need to decorate cupcakes anymore.

But for now, she needed to serve the next customer.
Where was Rachel?

“Hi, Kim.” Officer Ian Lockwell, one of their biggest supporters, sat on one of the
stools lining the marble cupcake counter. “I’m wondering if you have the back party
room available on June twenty-seventh?”

Kim reached under the counter and pulled out the three-ring binder she, Andi, and
Rachel had dubbed the Cupcake Diary to keep track of all things cupcake related. Looking
at the calendar, she said, “Yes, the date is open. What’s the occasion?”

“My wife and I have been married almost fifteen years,” the big square-jawed cop told
her. “We’re planning on renewing our vows on our anniversary and need a place to celebrate
with friends and family.”

“No better place to celebrate love than Creative Cupcakes,” Kim assured him, glancing
around at all the couples in the shop. “I’ll put you on the schedule.”

Next, the door opened and a stream of romance writers filed in for their weekly meeting.
Kim pressed her lips together. The group intimidated her with their watchful eyes
and poised pens. They scribbled in their notebooks whenever she walked by as if writing
down her every move, and she didn’t want to give them any useful fodder. She hoped
Rachel could take their orders, if she could find her.

“Rachel?”

No answer, but the phone rang���a welcome distraction. She picked up and said, “Creative
Cupcakes, this is Kim.”

“What are you doing there? I thought you were going to take time off.”

Kim pushed into the privacy of the kitchen, glad it was her sister, Andi, and not
another customer despite the impending lecture tone. “I still have several dozen cupcakes
to decorate.”

“Isn’t Rachel there with you?”

The door of the walk-in pantry burst open, and Rachel Donovan and her fiancé, Mike
Palmer, emerged, wrapped in each other’s arms, laughing and grinning.

Kim rolled her eyes. “Yes, Rachel’s here.”

Rachel extracted herself from Mike’s embrace and mouthed the word “Sorry.”

But Kim knew she wasn’t. Rachel had been in her own red-headed happy bubble ever since
macho, dark-haired Mike the Magnificent had proposed two weeks earlier.

“I’ll be in for my shift as soon as I get Mia off to afternoon kindergarten,” Andi
continued, “and the shop’s way ahead in sales. There’s no reason you can’t take a
break. Ever since you broke up with Gavin, you’ve become a workaholic.”

Kim sucked in her breath at the mention of his name. Only Andi dared to ever bring
him up.

“Gavin has nothing to do with my work.”

“You never date.”

“I’m concentrating on my career.”

“It’s been years since you’ve been out with anyone. You need to slow down, take time
to smell the roses.”

“Smell the roses?” Kim gasped. “Are you
serious
?”

“Go on an adventure,” Andi amended.

“Working is an adventure.”

“You used to dream of a different kind of adventure,” Andi said, lowering her voice.
“The kind that requires a passport.”

Kim wished she’d never picked up the phone. Just because her sister had her life put
back together didn’t mean she had the right to tell her how to live.

“Painting cupcakes and canvas is the only adventure I need right now. I promised Dad
I’d have the money to pay him for my new easel by the end of the week.”

“Dad doesn’t care about the money, but he does care about you. He asked me to call.”

“He did?” Kim stopped in front of the sink and rubbed her temples with her fingertips.
Her sister was known to overreact, but their dad? He didn’t voice concern unless it
was legitimate.

With the phone to her ear, she returned to the front counter of the couple-filled
cupcake shop, her heart screaming louder and louder with each consecutive beat.

They were
everywhere.
By the window, at the tables, next to the display case. Couples, couples, couples.
Everyone had a partner, had someone.

Almost
everyone.

Instead of Goonies Day, the celebration for the 1985 release date of
The Goonies
movie filmed in Astoria, she would have thought the calendar had been flipped back
to Valentine’s Day at Creative Cupcakes. And in her opinion, one Valentine’s Day a
year was more than enough.

She reached a hand into the pocket of her pink apron and clenched the golden wings
she received on her first airplane flight as a child. The pin never left her side
and like the flying squirrel tattooed on her shoulder, reminded her of her dream to
fly, if not to another land, then at least to the farthest reaches of her imagination.

Where her heart would be free.

Okay, maybe she
did
spend too much time at the cupcake shop. “Tell Dad not to worry,” Kim said into the
phone. “Tell him . . . I’m taking the afternoon off.”

“Promise?” Andi persisted.

Oh, yeah.
Tearing off her apron, she turned around and threw it over Rachel’s and Mike’s heads.
“I’m heading out the door now.”

F
IVE MINUTES LATER
, Kim stood outside the Astoria cupcake shop on Marine Drive, wondering which direction
to go. The tattoo parlor was to her left, a boutique to her right, and the waterfront
walk beneath the giant arching framework of the Astoria−Megler Bridge stretched straight
in front.

Turning her back on it all, she decided to take a new path and soon discovered an
open wrought iron gate along Bond Road, the side entrance to Astoria’s new community
park. Hadn’t her sister told her to smell the roses?

Kim walked through the gate toward the large circle of white rosebushes and began
to count off each flower as she leaned in to fill her lungs with their strong, fragrant
scent. “One, two, three . . .”

After smelling seventeen, she moved toward the yellows. “Eighteen, nineteen, twenty
. . .”

Past the gazebo she found red roses, orange roses, and a vast variety of purple and
pinks. “Forty-six, forty-seven, forty-eight . . .”

Her artist’s eye took in the palette of color, and imagining the scene on canvas,
she wished she’d brought along her paints and brushes. “Sixty-two, sixty-three, sixty-four
. . .”

Andi had been right. The sweet, perfumed scent of the roses did seem to ease her tension
and help block out all thoughts of romance. Even if the rose was a notorious symbol
of
love
. And the flower that garnished the most sales over
romantic
holidays. With petals used for flower girl baskets at
weddings
.

Who needed romance anyway? Not her.

She bent to smell the next group of flowers and noticed a tall, blond man with work
gloves carrying a potted rosebush past the ivy trellis. As his gaze caught hers, he
appeared to pause. Then he smiled.

Kim smiled back and moved toward the next rose.

“Can I help you?” the gardener asked, walking over.

Oh,
no.
He had a foreign accent, Scandinavian, like some of the locals whose ancestors first
inhabited the area. And she had an acute weakness for foreign accents.

“I think I need to do this myself,” Kim replied. “My goal is to smell a hundred roses.”

“Why a hundred?”

“That’s the number of things on my to-do list. I thought stopping to smell one rose
per task might balance out my life.”

“Interesting concept.” The attractive gardener appeared to suppress a grin. “How many
more do you have to go?”

“I’m at sixty-seven.”

“I didn’t mean to interrupt.” He set the rosebush down, took off a glove, and extended
his hand. “I’m Nathaniel Sjölander.”

“Kimberly Burke,” she said, accepting the handshake. His hand, much larger than her
own, surrounded her with warmth.

“I have to load a couple dozen roses into my truck for the Portland Rose Festival
tomorrow, but by all means—keep sniffing.”

Kim pulled rose number sixty-eight toward her, a yellow flower as buttery and delicately
layered as a . . . freshly baked croissant. Hunger sprang to life inside her empty
stomach, and she realized she’d been so busy working, she’d forgotten to eat lunch.

She watched Nathaniel Sjölander move between the potted plants. Was he single? Would
someone like him be interested in her? Maybe ask her to dinner? And why
hadn’t
she dated anyone in the last few years? She could argue that good-looking single
men were hard to come by, but the truth was, she just hadn’t taken the initiative
to find one.

Nathaniel made several trips back and forth between the greenhouse and the gate, his
gaze sliding toward her again and again.
Oh, yes!
He was definitely interested. Her pulse quickened as he approached her a second time.

“I think you missed a few.” Nathaniel pulled a cut bouquet of red roses from behind
his back and presented them to her.

“Thank you.” She hugged the flowers against her chest and lifted her gaze from the
Sjölander’s Garden Nursery business logo embroidered on his tan workshirt to his warm,
kind . . .
blue
eyes.

Oh, man, why did they have to be blue? Blue was her favorite color. She could get
lost in blue. Especially
his
blue, a blend of sparkling azure with a hint of sea green. They reminded her of the
ripples in the water where the Columbia River met the Pacific Ocean just outside Astoria.

“Sjölander. Is that Finnish?” she asked.

“Swedish. Most of my family resides in Sweden, with the exception of my brother and
a few cousins.”

His name was incredibly familiar. Where had she come across the name Sjölander before?
The Cupcake Diary!

“I’m co-owner of Creative Cupcakes,” Kim informed him. “Didn’t you book us for an
upcoming event?”

“Must be for the wedding.”

Wedding? She dug her toes into the tips of her shoes and held her breath. “Yours?”

He flashed her a smile. “No. My brother’s.”

“Of course.” She breathed easy once again.

“They’ve decided to have the ceremony in the new community park.”

Kim looked around, confused. “Isn’t
this
the new community park?”

Nathaniel’s blue eyes sparkled. “The park is two blocks down the street and much larger
than my backyard.”

“Your
backyard
?”

Kim’s mouth popped open in an embarrassed
O
. Heat seared her cheeks. No wonder he’d been watching her. He was probably wondering
what crazy chick was wandering around his property!

And as for the flowers? She doubted he meant them to symbolize anything romantic.
Why would he? She was an idiot! The guy was probably just trying to be nice. Or maybe
he thought giving her flowers would encourage her to leave. Worse—she would have to
face him again in a few weeks at his brother’s wedding.

With an inward groan she squeezed her eyes shut, wishing she could start the day over.
Or maybe the whole last decade. Then without further ado she set her jaw and looked
up.

“Thanks for the roses,” she mumbled. And before she could embarrass herself further,
she hurried out the gate and back to the cupcake shop—where she belonged.