“All gawkers welcome.” She returned his smile, feeling as if some internal light fixture, which had been dark for ages, was sparking signs of life. “Did you have something in mind?”
“Yes, actually.”
“Bread?” She gestured to the loaves he’d been ogling. “All made daily on the premises.”
“No, actually.” His voice broke. “I’m here for cupcakes.”
Cupcakes. So much emotion in that word. What was the significance? She was dying to ask, but gestured instead to the case on her right, where rows of them, somewhat depleted by the day’s purchases, were displayed. Angela decided impulsively that this particular demigod was a chocolate guy. Not devil’s food or German sweet, but dense, moist, bittersweet. Possibly with coffee frosting, or caramel, but more likely chocolate sour cream. “Flavor?”
“White with white frosting.”
No. No way. She was so sure, she found herself having to stop from shaking her head at him. White-on-white? He didn’t get that lean, muscular body by inhaling sugar. That lean muscular body, which she had noticed keenly, was displayed to advantage in a tight athletic shirt. Below the counter she could glimpse black biking shorts hugging powerful thighs. In large, strong-looking hands he held a biking helmet.
Times like these she was very glad her cases were see-through.
“White-on-white?” She put her hands on her hips, regarded him doubtfully. “I would have said chocolate.”
“Yes, usually.” He glanced at the chocolate flavors, then back to her, causing a renewed buzz in her internal circuitry. “Today white.”
“A gift?”
“Sort of.”
“Special occasion?”
“Birthday.” His words became clipped, lips thinning.
Angela nodded, wanting nothing more than to continue her interrogation, but recognizing the signal to back off. “How many would you like?”
“Six.”
“Six white-on-white coming up.” She grabbed a flat box and pulled it into shape. “Is it your birthday?”
“No.” He spoke as if he were strangling on the word.
Hmm. She glanced at him after the first cupcake, feather-light under clouds of sweet icing, had gone into the box. She wasn’t going to pry if it made him uncomfortable, but she wished there was something she could do or say to help. Tom’s very sensible voice spoke again in her brain—Why are you always wasting energy taking on problems that aren’t yours? Yes, yes, he was right. But …
“Would you like a chocolate cupcake for yourself right now? On the house?”
“I’d …” He frowned, seeming to deliberate. “No. No, thanks.”
As if he were tempted, but shouldn’t. Diabetic maybe? With a bod like that he certainly couldn’t be concerned about losing weight. Whomever’s birthday he was celebrating with cupcakes he didn’t care for must have power over him. Though he didn’t look like the kind of man a woman could dominate.
Listen to her. She knew nothing about this guy and was already inventing an overbearing girlfriend and hating her. It could just as easily be true that his woman was a total sweetheart and he was a rat bastard who’d done her wrong. Cupcakes could be his way of trying to squirm back into her good graces.
“I’m Angela by the way.” She put the fourth cupcake in the box.
“Oh.” He looked confused. Then wary again. “Uh, hi.”
Not going to tell her his name apparently. Angela put cupcakes five and six in the box, slighted by the rejection. “You live around here?”
“Not far.”
She glanced pointedly at the helmet, feeling reckless now. The guy didn’t want to talk to her? Too bad. She wanted to talk to him. And until he got what he’d come in for, he was her prisoner. “You ride a lot? On all these hills? Our neighborhood has some of the city’s worst.”
“Biking clears my head.”
Cleared his head. That was progress. Practically an intimate confession. “Your head needed clearing today?”
He blinked, eyes losing their blankness and fixing on her vividly. “Something like that.”
The old sputtering bulb inside her started a steady glow. This man was truly delicious. His combination of ultramacho body and vulnerable demeanor …
Apparently she was a sucker for a fixer-upper.
Her demigod gave the boxed cupcakes a pointed glance.
Right. She started to close the lid, then hesitated. White frosting, white cake, white box, bleah. “Would you like these gift-wrapped?”
“No, I’ll just take them.”
She frowned. For whatever reason she wanted to give him something with color. “Even a ribbon?”
“No, not a ribbon, nothing. It’s fine as is.” He spoke calmly, wasn’t impatient, which gave her courage to look up again.
Their eyes met and held, and her heart gave a lurch of sympathy and, yes, attraction. He looked half-broken, and even more masculine for the pain.
He looked away first; Angela picked up the box, cheeks flushing. The last man she’d been instantly drawn to like this was Tom, and look what poison he’d turned out to be. Though Tom’s look had been cocky, sexual, beckoning. The haunted look in this man’s eyes was entirely different. And much more powerful.
“I’ll be right back.” She fled to the back of the shop, grabbed one of the overflow chocolate-on-chocolate cupcakes, wrapped it in bright red paper and tucked it neatly in the center of the box, which she tied with a length of rainbow ribbon.
Maybe he wouldn’t appreciate the gesture. Maybe she was spoiling some birthday surprise for a woman he loved, maybe he’d come back furious and cause a scene. Maybe. But this guy was miserable, and he wasn’t a white-cake eater, and Angela wanted to give him something that might also make him smile.
More than that, after he left her shop, got on his bike and pedaled away, she wanted him to have something that would remind him of her.
2
DANIEL FLYNN climbed the newly carpeted stairs to his second-floor apartment, carrying his bike in one hand, his riding bag with the box of cupcakes in the other. At the landing, he rolled his eyes at the new gold and ivory cherub figurines his landlord apparently decided would look good on the windowsill, and kept climbing, legs leaden and shaky after his thirty-mile ride on Seattle’s hilly streets. A longer ride than usual, but he’d been in one of his self-punishing moods, trying to use physical pain to squelch the emotional.
Today was Kate’s birthday, exactly two months before his. She would have been twenty-nine. She would have completed her first year of graduate school and be into her second. They would have been getting married in six months, right after she graduated.
Over and over, around and around, like a merry-go-round made of spikes, the emotions tore into him as they had for the past year. Granted, in the last few months there had been minutes, then hours, then finally whole days that were easier here and there, and the intensity of the pain had lessened on the whole, but significant occasions like today brought his Kate roaring back, her image, spirit, even her scent … her. How could he ever get over someone who was so much a part of him? The final stage of grief was supposed to be acceptance. Did that mean at some point a loss like this would