His half laugh turned into a cough. “No risk of that. It’s too...”
“What?”
“You know,” he said, gesturing as though he could catch the appropriate words.
“Too pretty?” she asked. “Too large? Too powerful for you to handle?”
He cracked his knuckles. “Lady, I’m cold and tired. I’d like to get home.”
Gus stepped down from the chair and faced him. “Keys are in the van.”
He shot her an unreadable look. Without a word, he turned and strode through the door.
Gus placed the top layer and piped neat borders around the bottoms of each circle, meshing the layers together and bringing the whole cake into focus. Small spring flowers dotted the snowy landscape of white icing and piped designs. Pink rosebuds, yellow daffodils and purple sweet peas trailed over the sides. Perfect for a wedding on the first weekend of May. She dug a camera out of her plastic toolbox and took careful pictures from several angles. It would make a nice addition to her catalog of cakes. Maybe even a portrait for the wall of her bakery.
She rolled her aching shoulders and realized she was mimicking the tall stranger with the wet suit. He was probably long gone by now. She just hoped he hadn’t decided her new van—although pink—was nicer than his old SUV. Just her luck, he was on the highway right now with his kayak bumping around in the back of her bakery truck.
When she left the kitchen, the first thing she noticed was her pink van glowing in the early-evening light. It was parked in almost the same location. But the other vehicle was not. The owner had managed to extricate the ugly brown-and-tan SUV, and it now sat at the top of the access road.
Blocking her van.
The tall man leaned on an old wooden railing along the bay. His trim frame was silhouetted against the sunset and the lights of the amusement park across the water.
Gus stowed her cake tools and slammed the back doors of the van, hoping the noise would inspire the kayaker to leave. She wanted to unload the van, clean her pastry bags and get to bed before midnight for the first time this week. Gus took off her apron and tossed it on the passenger seat near a small box of cookies. Her shop was testing new recipes for sugar cookies, and she’d brought home three different kinds for the weekend.
She took a second look at the white bakery box on the front seat. One corner was open.
She scrutinized the contents.
Cookies were definitely missing.
* * *
JACK TRIED TO think of something clever to say as the owner of the pink van approached. There was no good reason for hanging around. He’d pulled off his wet suit and slipped into worn jeans and an old Starlight Point sweatshirt. The ragged gray shirt had a stretched-out collar and frayed cuffs. The skyline of the amusement park was barely visible after dozens of washings. But it was his favorite sweatshirt, and he felt more comfortable in his own skin when he had it on.
She stopped and leaned on the rail next to him. Without the pink apron, her graceful curves caught his attention and his breath. She was unusually tall, probably just shy of six feet. And although his world was definitely upside down these days, he was sure of one thing. He’d never seen her before.
She looked him right in the eye, a quizzical grin lifting the corners of her mouth.
“Are you Aunt Augusta?” he finally asked.
Probably a few years younger than he was, she wasn’t anything like his matronly aunts he saw twice a year at family parties. Her long brown hair was pulled back, revealing her whole face. Fair skin, delicately arched eyebrows. Her eyes were shadowed by the late-afternoon sun behind her, but he remembered their color. Green.
“Which one did you eat?” she asked.
“Which one what?”
“Don’t deny it. You’ve got cookie crumbs on your face.”
“The carousel horse.”
“Ah,” she said. “That’s a good design. Only three colors, but the Florentine pattern on the saddle really makes it.”
“It reminds me of something.”
She glanced at his sweatshirt. “Ever been to Starlight Point?” she asked.
He coughed. “Quite a few times.” Like, every day of his life for almost twenty-seven years. He glanced across the bay. The lights were coming on at the amusement park. Starlight Point occupied the entire peninsula separating the bay from the larger lake. Although the park wouldn’t open for another two weeks, the lights on the roller coasters glittered in anticipation.
“The carousel-horse cookie is patterned after a horse on the midway carousel.”
“Nice idea,” he said.
“Thanks. I love that place.”
Everybody loved Starlight Point, Jack thought. Especially when roads got paved and taxes poured into Bayside’s city coffers from the largest tourist draw in the area.
“How about the cookie’s flavor? The frosting?” she asked.
“Loved them both. Very sweet,” he said, turning back to look at her and moving closer. “Perfect.”
“I was planning to see if the perfection would last, see how it would taste tomorrow at this time. Longevity is a serious bakery issue. Have to keep it fresh or people won’t want it.”
“Lucky for you I didn’t eat them all,” he said.
“Lucky for you I’m more flattered than angry.”
“I’m glad.”
“So,” she said. “I thought you were in a big hurry. Didn’t you have someplace to be?”
Jack propped a foot on the rail and gazed at the amusement-park lights. The lights on the rides he now owned. Two weeks ago, his father’s sudden death stunned his family. Jack’s steady orbit around his father had been brought to an agonizing halt. Every day since had sped up like a scrambler ride and Jack wished he could just get off.
He shoved away from the rail. “There’s a thousand places I need to be right now,” he said, reaching in his pocket for keys.
Maybe tonight was the night to crack open the good bottle of whiskey a friend had given him after his father’s funeral. He wanted to run for the safety of his twelve-year-old car.
“Good night,” he said abruptly. He walked straight to his SUV, got in the driver’s seat and shoved his keys in the ignition. They didn’t fit. What the heck? He flipped on the interior light. In his hand was a key attached to a pink-and-gold ceramic wedding cake.
Her door slammed. In two seconds, she’d be at his window.
“First my cookie, now my keys?” She leaned in his open window and grinned. “Next you’ll be stealing my heart.”
She grabbed her keys, spun and disappeared. He dug deep in his pocket for his own set, waited a second until he heard her engine start, then rolled over his ignition and headed home.
JACK HAMILTON STRIPPED off his suit jacket, rolled his sleeves and dug through the toolbox bolted to the side of the blue maintenance truck.
“Find it?” Mel Preston yelled. He was almost one hundred feet over Jack’s head, perched on the Sea Devil coaster. The navy blue track had white crests of paint at the top of each hill that looked like ocean waves. If all went well, the Sea Devil would whip and spin and make riders feel as if they were in the clutches of a leviathan.