Wedding Cake Wishes (3 page)

“It's up to you,” Caroline joined in, “but if I were one of your wedding guests, I might like the warmth and community of sharing cake with a friend.” She didn't look at Logan, but she could feel his gaze on her.

The woman thought for a few seconds and then nodded. “I guess that could work.”

“It'll be great. You'll see,” he said.

Having won the bride over, Logan made an appointment for her to meet with one of the designers early the next week and walked her to the door. Caroline had bent to return the photo albums to the shelf behind the counter when she realized he was standing behind her. She straightened and turned to face him.

“You just couldn't help yourself from coming to my rescue.”

“No— I mean, I didn't—” Finally, she gave up and shrugged. She couldn't deny it because that was exactly what she'd been doing.

Instead of answering, Logan stepped around her and pushed through the kitchen door. Caroline trailed after him, relieved that the eavesdroppers had had the good sense to scatter.

He announced to the others that he would be taking his lunch but didn't even look back at Caroline as he switched into his riding boots, grabbed his helmet and jacket and headed outside. The door had barely closed
before the sound of his motorcycle reverberated off the concrete walls.

He had every right to be mad. She might as well have worn a firefighter's helmet and carried a flashing red light as obviously as she'd tried to rescue him. Only, he hadn't needed rescuing, and he'd ended up covering for her. She didn't know what to do with that truth.

She listened, waiting for the roar of the motorcycle engine to filter away, but instead, the sound stopped. Seconds later, Logan stomped into the entry, carrying his helmet under his arm. Strange how he didn't look the part of Matthew and Dylan Warren's little brother as he stood covered in all that leather gear and indignation.

Caroline drew in a breath, not entirely from shock.

“I need to talk to you,” he said, lowering his helmet to the floor. He glanced around at the employees who were pretending not to listen. “Outside,” he added.

Swallowing, she followed him, and when he held the door open for her, she didn't argue. Under normal circumstances, she would have considered telling him she was uncomfortable with such chivalrous notions, but the tight set of his jaw told her this wasn't the time.

As soon as the heavy steel door closed behind them, he whirled to face her. “Why did you do that?”

“I don't know what you—”

But Logan didn't let her finish. “You know exactly what I mean. You showed up like the cavalry, planning to save the day, and you did it in front of the whole staff. As if they weren't already doubting my abilities.”

“It's just like when were kids and you fell off your skateboard and…” She blew out a breath. “I was just trying to help.”

“No, you were just disappointed that I didn't fail.”

She shook her head. “That's not true.”

He paced to his motorcycle, shoving his hands back through his hair. “I knew I was making a mistake. I knew it.”

Though he'd been speaking more to himself, he turned back to her now. “I get it that you agreed to come here because you thought you could do a better job running the shop than I could. If I hadn't felt sorry—” He stopped himself but not before his message became clear.

Caroline drew in a breath. Just because she'd suspected he'd only accepted her presence out of pity didn't make it any easier to hear the truth spoken aloud.

“I didn't mean that.”

“Yes, you did.”

He started to deny it, but one side of his mouth lifted and the steel of his posture softened. “Okay, I sort of did.”

“And you're kind of right about why I came here. I also had quite a bit of free time.” She shrugged and then met his gaze directly. “But you're wrong about me wanting you to fail. I just wanted to pay you back—”

Logan drew his brows together. “Pay me back?” Realization must have dawned because he started nodding. “Of course. I got the ladies to stop before they started asking a bunch of nosy questions, and you're trying to return the favor.”

“It's good that you understand.”

“You mean how crazy it would make a control freak like you to be indebted to anyone? Sure, I understand.”

“Thanks, I think.”

“I knew that some of the employees were listening from behind the door.”

Caroline stared at him. “You knew? I'm sorry that they don't seem all that supportive of you.”

“It's always tough when the boss's kid takes over.”

“Well, that's unfair of them to discount you before they've given you a chance.”

“Is that so?”

At his smile, she felt ashamed. Wasn't that exactly what she'd done? “Sorry.”

“No problem.”

“You didn't need my help, anyway. You were amazing with that bride.”

He studied her, as if waiting for a punch line. “Thanks,” he said finally. “Look, why don't we just call it even? We don't have to keep score for the next few weeks. I'll even try to listen to your suggestions while you're here, preferably if you don't give them in front of the other employees. And you can…”

“I don't know…trust that you know what you're doing until you ask for help? And maybe you could avoid mentioning my being…er…unemployed around here.”

“Deal.”

His smile was so warm that Caroline was convinced she could feel the heat on her own skin, but she tried to shake away the thought. This was just the invigorating feeling of having a purpose again. That had to be it. If not, she was in big trouble because her immunity to Logan Warren was in danger of falling faster than a cake after someone slammed the oven door.

L
ogan trudged along the tiles of the same hospital corridor he'd paced so many times in the last few days, the antiseptic scent stirring nausea in his belly. Caroline's footsteps tapping in time with his only unsettled him more.

As if visiting with his mother this way wasn't heartbreaking enough every time, it was even harder seeing the shock on friends' faces the first time they visited. None of them saw any hope for Amy's recovery, no matter how much lip service they paid to it later. He could just imagine how bleak Caroline's expression would be. She tended to see the world in blacks and whites with little hope for grays.

“Will your motorcycle be okay where we left it?” Caroline asked from behind him.

The uncomfortable look on her face when he glanced back at her probably had more to do with the critical care unit they were about to enter than the fact that she'd insisted on driving when they'd left work, but he nodded anyway. He would have declined her offer of a ride, but then he would have been forced to consider
why he'd needed to put space between himself and this particular woman. He didn't want to touch that with a ten-foot pole.

“The bakery's in a pretty safe neighborhood. Even if the door really had been unlocked this morning, the store probably would have been fine.”

The last he'd added to calm her nerves, but she was too busy staring at the sign that said “Critical Care” to notice his effort. He stopped just outside the department's double doors, with his hand on the button that automatically opened them.

Caroline paused beside him. “Has she been conscious?”

“Most of the time. She'll be glad you came.”

Caroline's gaze darted to the door and back, and then she straightened her shoulders. They entered the department and Logan turned at the first hall.

“It's down this way.” After a week of visiting, he could have found her hospital room with his eyes closed.

Next to him, Caroline was fidgety and nervous, the same way she'd been at the bakery that morning. And then he remembered the likely reason for her disquiet. Caroline had lost her father two years before, and hospitals probably reminded her of that loss.

Well, they shared that discomfort with hospital settings in common. Just as he had during every visit, he felt as if he was coming out of his skin, and they weren't even inside his mother's room yet. He paused just outside the door.

“It's going to be okay,” he said, for his benefit as much as hers.

He could tell from Caroline's sharp intake of breath the exact moment she saw his mother lying asleep in the
second bed of the double room. He could barely keep himself from gasping every time he saw his mother this way.

In sleep, his mother's face was relaxed, but so far at least, her face became no more animated even when she was awake. The silver hair, which was rarely out of place, now stuck out all over her head and appeared to have turned white overnight. Her left arm rested tightly against her torso, her fingers curling back toward her body.

For several seconds, Caroline just stared, and then she took a few steps toward the bed. Over her shoulder, she whispered, “She's sleeping. Do you think we should go?”

“Wha…” Amy's eyes blinked open. She looked back and forth between them, her gaze filled with confusion. “Lo…”

“Yeah, it's me, Mom. Logan,” he answered before she could struggle further. “Caroline's here, too.”

The movement was small, but Amy managed to turn her head toward her best friend's daughter.

“Goo…”

“Yes, Mom, it is good.”

He looked to Caroline then, but her stricken expression was gone, and the smile that replaced it could have made even the sickest person feel better. Rather than hang back as some of his mother's other visitors had, Caroline rushed forward and dropped a kiss on top of that matted head of hair.

“Oh, Mrs. Warren, I'm sorry I haven't made it here to see you yet.” Lowering into the seat next to the bed, she reached around the bars to grasp Amy's good hand. “Are you feeling any better tonight?”

“Pea…”

“Mom, I sure hope you're saying that you're feeling ‘peachy' and not like ‘pea soup.'” He crossed to the opposite side of the bed and bussed his mother's cheek before returning to take the seat next to Caroline.

“Bo…th,” Amy said with obvious effort.

Logan and Caroline chuckled over her comment that sounded humorous whether she intended it to or not. Caroline lifted up from the seat and leaned in to brush the hair back from Amy's face. Logan pretended not to notice that as she did it she blinked back tears, but he swallowed the emotion thickening in his throat.

When Caroline lowered into the chair again, she gestured with her head for him to take his mother's hand instead. An unsettling feeling squeezed in his chest, and his eyes burned. He drew in a gulp of air and let it out slowly. Tears wouldn't give his mother back the full use of the left side of her body or her ability to speak. He believed that prayers could, but he wished God would hurry up with His healing power.

They sat for a few minutes longer, watching as Amy nodded off. There was something comforting about Caroline being there, someone who cared for his mother almost as much as he did. This compassionate side of Caroline was new to him, seeming to soften her hard edges, but he suspected that side had always been there, buried beneath all of her goals and lists.

The sound of footsteps brought his attention to the door. Mrs. Scott pushed the door open, a paper cup in her hand.

“I didn't realize you two were in here. Dylan and Jenna are in the waiting room. They'll want to come in when you're finished.”

“Oh. Okay.” He lowered his mother's hand and stood.

Trina stepped to the bed and lifted the pitcher off the side table, pouring ice water into the cup and replacing the lid and straw. “Did everything go okay at the shop today?”

Next to Logan, Caroline stood up from the chair, sending him a worried glance.

“We did fine,” he said.

Caroline blinked but seemed to recover from her surprise. “Logan did a great job handling a difficult customer. You would have been impressed.”

It was Logan's turn to be surprised, but before he had the chance to look over to Caroline to see if she was serious, his mother shifted next to him.

“Shop?”

Amy had just awakened again, and already she was asking about her business.

“The bakery is going to be okay, Mom. No matter what it takes, it will be there when you're ready to come back.”

Caroline looked his way then. Her gaze touched him in a warm, steady connection. She didn't have to say anything aloud for him to understand what she meant. He'd made a commitment to his mother, and she'd stepped forward to help him keep it.

 

As Logan sat in one of the folding chairs squeezed around Trina Scott's small dining room table, he couldn't help thinking that something was wrong with that picture. In fact, everything was wrong with it.

The Saturday-night dinner should have been around his mother's mammoth dining room table. As always.
She would have insisted on doing all the cooking and would have managed to top her last amazing meal. As always. This was his mother's domain. Her fifty-plus-hour weeks making desserts for other people's families should have taken away the novelty of preparing food for others, but she lived for dinners like this one. That only made it more tragic that she might never be able to host another one.

Logan pushed the thought from his mind. He should have been starving for a good meal. When was the last time he'd eaten anything that hadn't been wrapped in cellophane? Still, he found himself pushing meat sauce and ricotta around on his plate.

“It's not quite the same, is it?”

Logan looked up to find Mrs. Scott studying him from the other side of the table. She glanced at his plate of nearly untouched lasagna and then back to his face.

“No, the food's great. Really.” He took a big bite to reinforce his comment but had to follow it with a gulp of iced tea to choke it down.

“You can't kid a kidder, son.”

“It does seem strange, I guess.”

“Whew,” Haley called out as she reentered the room, her folded arms using her pregnant belly as a resting spot. “I thought nobody was going to say it. No offense, Mom. Your cooking is great, but having a Warren-Scott dinner anywhere but in Amy Warren's dining room just seems wrong.”

Murmurs of agreement came from the others crowded around the table. Logan smiled at his sister-in-law, who pressed her hand to her back while she lowered herself into a chair. The two of them hadn't agreed on much
over the years, but they were in complete agreement on this one.

“I miss Grammy,” Lizzie said as she rounded the table and climbed up in her aunt Caroline's lap.

“We all do, sweetie.” Caroline wrapped her arms around the child and pressed her cheek to Lizzie's.

The movement of brushing her fingers along the little girl's braids in a comforting touch appeared surprisingly natural for a woman who was probably more comfortable in a boardroom than anybody's living room. But then Logan remembered the Scotts' unusual family dynamic. Because Mrs. Scott wasn't comfortable with emotional scenes, she often sent Caroline to deliver hugs as her surrogate.

He'd heard all the stories about Caroline comforting Haley after she'd been dumped by her fiancé and wiping away Jenna's tears after she'd messed things up with Dylan. He'd just never witnessed these things himself until the last few days, and he was having a tough time reconciling this person to the businesswoman who'd marched into the bakery and tried to take it over.

Logan didn't realize he'd been staring at her until she glanced over and caught him. He turned away in time to find Matthew watching
him
.

“Now, Logan, I would have expected you to be the last one to show up to joint family dinners,” Matthew said. “You were amazingly talented at finding ways to avoid them.”

Logan understood that his brother was only trying to lighten the serious mood in the room, but it didn't make him feel any less guilty over what Matthew had said. Still, he tried his best to play along with the joke. “Could I help it if I had a date?”

“When didn't you have a date?” Jenna supplied.

He didn't mind that they all had a laugh at his expense. They needed a reason to laugh, and the reasons had been precious few the last few days. Out of his side vision, he caught sight of Caroline watching him, and he couldn't help wondering what she saw.

“I did a pretty good job of avoiding family dinners myself,” Dylan said. “Optometry conferences, you know.”

“All because you didn't want to see me.” Jenna elbowed her fiancé and then, linking her arm with his, smiled down at the diamond solitaire on her hand. “Both of you were also trying to avoid the matchmaking schemes.”

“I never missed any of those dinners,” Matthew said. “I am the good son, after all.”

They all shared another laugh at that, and Haley reached over to ruffle her husband's hair. “Those were some good times,” she said in a wistful voice.

Matthew took her hand in his. “Yeah, good times.”

Trina planted her hands on the edge of the table with a thud. “Stop it, all of you. The last thing Amy needs is for you to be thinking this way, as if she's not going to be able to do any of things that made her happy. She will be fine, and she doesn't need any of you naysayers holding her back.”

“But none of us said—” Caroline began, but she cut her words short when her mother frowned her way. She lifted her hands in surrender.

Trina turned back to Logan. “And, Logan Warren, don't you worry. You'll have plenty of chances to avoid your mother's amazing dinners for dates with your blonde-, brunette- or redhead-of-the-week.”

They were laughing at him again, but at least they were laughing.

Trina pressed her hands together as if to signal that the earlier subjects were closed. “Now how did things go at the bakery today?”

Automatically, Logan shot a look at Caroline. She was staring back at him.

Dylan leaned forward and rested his hands on the edge of the table. “Go ahead. Tell us. Was it as bad as the other day? We heard you two were arguing outside the back door. We would have direct quotes, but no one could hear through the steel door.”

“You heard wrong,” Logan grumbled.

“That's the same story I—” Matthew started, but Caroline cut him off.

“It was pretty quiet today since we had no wedding cake orders this weekend.”

“No weddings on Memorial Day weekend?” Trina said.

Logan looked up in surprise and noted that Caroline had reacted the same way. Clearly, he wasn't the only one who'd failed to notice they were in the middle of a holiday weekend. They wouldn't be celebrating the beginning of summer with a cookout this weekend anyway.

Before Caroline could answer for the two of them again, Logan spoke up. “You know how small Markston is. Some weekends Mom has three weddings to bake for and other weekends, none at all.”

“We're booked for every weekend in June,” Caroline added. “As long as new orders are coming in for fall and not going to Cakes & More instead, we're fine.”

Scoffing sounds came from around the table.

“That name isn't spoken aloud around here,” Logan explained. “That place has been a thorn in Mom's side for the last six years.”

Trina snapped her fingers. “So that was what Amy was trying to tell me at the hospital today. She's worried about the competition.”

“She doesn't need to worry,” Logan assured her.

“Oh, she knows that, sweetie. She's just keeping the business in her thoughts as her brain heals. She's processing all those memories as she works her way back.”