Page 4 of Bake You Mine (Port Fortune #1)
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Aubrey’s hand still tingled from Liam’s tight squeeze. She groaned when she remembered the comment she’d made.
The man had to be used to women fawning all over him. That’s why he’d thought he could convince her to forfeit the contest by batting those useless-on-a-dude eyelashes and flicking that dark hair over his forehead.
Okay, she’d give him points for the hair. Dark, slightly wavy, and worth running your fingers through. Maybe even the face, too. He wasn’t hot chef for nothing.
She cut down the alley behind their businesses and entered Petit Chou through the back door. Tom was humming a song from Hadestown to himself as he focused on decorating.
Petit Chou sold a wide range of desserts—French patisserie, of course, since she and Tom had met at pastry school in Paris.
Still, they also offered American favorites and various selections of bread created by her long-time friend, Leroy.
She liked to think of her sweet little patisserie as existing outside the box—comfortable enough to fit in a small market in Central Virginia but still exciting enough to keep the curious interested.
While Tom worked, she slipped out front. Even though they closed in an hour and a half, a hearty crowd lingered. Her recent “happy hour” promotion of half-priced pastries and coffee in the last two hours before closing was going well.
There were a few regulars with their laptops at the single tables squeezed in along the back right of the café. A group of moms sat in the booth in the front window, cooing over their sweet babies while they had coffee and pastries from one of the battered metal serving trays.
A white and gold coffee bar and display case curved along the right side of the cafe. She scanned the cases, finding only a couple of croissants and two mousse cakes left.
This small space was a dream come true. It was both a blessing and a curse, now that they were rapidly outgrowing it.
After checking in with Samantha and Ella, her lead front-of-house staff, she returned to the kitchen-slash-bakery space. She stood in the doorway, holding open the swinging doors. She allowed herself just a moment to daydream about how adding on the new space could work for them.
“Hey, chica, how did the meeting with our resident eccentric millionaire go?” Tom didn’t take his eyes off the cake stand. His black hair fell over one eye as he piped an intricate lace design around the edge of a three-layer chocolate cake.
The doors swung open and closed as she stepped into the space. “I’m glad you’re sitting down, because it was a lot.”
She filled a piping bag with Swiss buttercream to decorate another cake for pickup. While they worked, she filled him in on Gary’s plan.
“You’re going to be in direct competition with the one and only hot chef, huh?” Tom waggled his eyebrows. No one , not even her best friend of thirteen years, knew of her crush.
Which made it feel even more ridiculous.
“Yeah, he already thinks he’s going to win, which is funny, since he practically begged me to let him have it. Screw that. I’m not thrilled that this competition is even a thing, but if I’m going to have to participate, I’m playing to win, especially for that ten-thousand-dollar prize.”
“Wait, roll it back, ten thousand dollars? And with the space next door tacked onto ours? Hell, we have to win this.”
“That’s what I’m saying! We need to knock this first challenge out of the park. Let him see what it’s like not to get his way for once.”
“Yeah, I bet he doesn’t hear the word no very often.”
“Is it wrong of me to consider sabotage?”
Tom hummed an old Beastie Boys tune. “Gimme a cake box, will ya?”
Aubrey reached for a flat pink cake box and began working on the folds to assemble it. “I don’t know, maybe it’s too early to think about that.”
“Yes, perhaps instead, we should consider that shirtless selfie he posted this morning. Liam, thank you very much for an instant addition to my thirst trap collection.”
She did her own creeping on Liam’s social media, carefully scrolling, terrified she’d accidentally like a three-month-old post. She didn’t follow him, nor did he follow her.
Sometimes, she crept over to ogle, sure, but more often than not, her creeping acted as a reminder of why her crush was best kept to herself.
He got a hundred thousand likes on a shirtless selfie, and she always got more comments on her cake posts than she ever did on those about her personal life.
“Hey, speaking of social media, I had a thought,” Tom said.
Aubrey sighed. “Why do I have a feeling I’m going to regret this?”
Mondays tended to be slower at Elevation, so Liam didn’t feel guilty dropping in for an early evening dinner at his mother’s house before his shift.
He was glad for a night when work didn’t feel like running a marathon with one leg in a cast. He had little time for anything else between the restaurant, his family, and his rec rugby league.
He was single as fuck, despite the crazy, stupid attention #hotchef brought him. It was usually the wrong kind of attention.
He scrolled through his texts until he found one from his ex, Dani. She’d last messaged him the day before, interested in hooking up. He fired off a reply and hoped for the best.
His mother’s house came into view, sitting on top of Hollow Hill, overlooking Port Fortune’s downtown. As usual, he had to park on the street. When Ma hosted dinner, there was usually a crowd.
After he trudged up the steep driveway, his gaze dropped to the small statue of a policeman nestled in the front garden.
No matter how often he saw that dopey little guy, his heart fell.
His dad had been gone nearly five years now.
He gave the statue’s head a little pat before hopping onto the porch.
Hopefully, his mother wouldn’t have a perfectly lovely girl sitting at the dinner table tonight. His mother had met the last one at some church function. Once the woman had her eyes locked on Liam, she’d become a barnacle. It’d taken weeks to shake her.
He’d told his mother he wouldn’t come to dinner anymore if she didn’t stop trying to play matchmaker. So far, it’d worked, but she had a short memory.
The heavy aroma of lasagna and the usual chaos greeted him inside. His favorite niece, Kiara, rounded the corner like a car leaning into a Tokyo drift.
“Uncle Liam!” The little girl leaped into his arms, unintentionally slapping him with her long cornrow braids. Not that he minded. He hugged her tight.
His sister Joanie and her wife Carolyn worked in family law, and four of their six kids were adopted.
“Hey, baby Kiki. How was school?”
“We’re reading a book about cats.” She started to meow. His heart melted. The kid was too damned cute. Kind of almost made him want to have a rugrat or two of his own one day.
Joanie rolled her eyes. “Shoulda known she’d be with you. She loves her Uncle Liam.”
Liam’s mother came around through the other side of the open kitchen and pinched his cheeks. “You’re working too hard. You’ll be skin and bones before you know it.”
He stepped out of his mother’s reach.
“Ma, he’s six-two, one ninety. I think he’ll be okay.” Liam’s older brother, Brandon, came out with his wife, Becky, chasing after their youngest son, Brody.
“I still worry. Especially as you haven’t found a nice woman to settle down with.”
“Ma, don’t start, seriously.” Liam hefted Kiki onto his left hip as he greeted the rest of the brood. He crept into the kitchen, set Kiki on the counter, and bent over to peer into the oven. His mother swatted him on the arm. She never appreciated his culinary advice.
“Leave Kiki with me. Can you get your sister? Dinner’s almost ready.”
He took the stairs to the basement and found Sasha hunched in front of her makeup mirror, dressed for her evening hostess shift at Elevation. “Ma’s almost got dinner ready. ”
She didn’t look up from applying her makeup. “Don’t interrupt me while I’m doing my cat eye.”
He brought his hand underneath her elbow to mess up her eyeliner application.
“I will cut that pretty face of yours if you try, big brother.”
He tousled her hair, earning another growl.
Two years apart, he and Sasha were the closest in age among his siblings.
She picked up the odd shift at Elevation while attending nursing school outside of DC.
It was one hell of a commute, but she couldn’t exactly afford to live there working part-time.
She suffered no fools and usually ran interference if anyone, too enamored with his online persona, couldn’t take a hint.
“Come on, I want to have time to eat more than garlic bread before we have to leave for the restaurant.”
Sasha finished off her eyeliner and turned her attention to Liam. “I heard from a little bird that you and Aubrey met with Gary today.”
“Is that little bird named Ashley?”
Sasha’s best friend was one of Gary’s three assistants.
“Maybe. So, what happened?” she asked.
“Ugh, I don’t want to talk about it.”
“So, did he give it to Aubrey?” She peered at herself in the mirror.
He gave her the general gist of what had transpired. She chuckled.
“You thought that space was yours, didn’t you? You were waiting for Gary to take you up on it, finally. Now you’re going to have to compete for it.”
“I’m not sure how much of a competition it’ll end up being, but whatever. I tried to reason with Aubrey, but she wouldn’t hear it.”
“You mean she didn’t just present your desires to you on a silver platter when you batted your big brown eyes at her? Aww, your game is slipping, big bro.” She tossed the eyeliner into her makeup bag. “Maybe Aubrey deserves it more than you.”
It was no secret that Sasha was a big fan of Petit Chou. She loved to bake in her free time, and Aubrey had shown her a trick or two.
He reached forward to muss her hair again, earning him a feral growl.
Before he could tell her anything further, their mother shouted down the stairs for them to come up for dinner.