Page 16 of Hungry As Her Python

My kitchen table was buried under notes and swatches of fondant colors, little jars of edible shimmer, and enough cake boards to build a fort.

This wasn’t just a cake.

Oh no. This was the cake.

The kind that made people gasp when they saw it and moan when they tasted it.

The kind that would be immortalized in wedding photos and whispered about at every future Summer Solstice Festival.

The kind that made Witches and Shifters alike weep frosting-induced tears of joy.

And it wasn’t lost on me that I’d been waiting for this moment my whole life—my chance to create the quintessential wedding cake.

The one all other cakes would be measured against.

The fact it was for my two oldest and dearest friends?

That was just icing.

And honestly, the timing couldn’t have been better.

Because I needed something—anything—to keep my brain from circling back to all things tall, sexy, and impossible to ignore.

Otherwise known as Conrad Boman.

The man was like the culinary equivalent of salted caramel.

Sweet, tempting, just the right amount of sinful, and absolutely impossible to get out of your head once you’d had a taste.

And thanks to that recent kiss—you know what I’m talking about, uh huh, that kiss—I’d had more than a taste.

Which was exactly why I needed to keep my hands, my mind, and my heart busy.

So, if anyone asked, I wasn’t avoiding my problems.

I was simply busy, elbow-deep in buttercream.

Sure, Bells, tell yourself that.

Anywho, the last few days had been quiet.

No suspicious smoke.

No mystery shadows lurking outside my shop.

No broken cutlery or upended trash cans.

I’d been lulled into a false sense of security, my mind wandering far too often to a certain tall, broad-shouldered, emerald-eyed—ugh, no.

Not going there.

Not out loud.

Things were looking up, and I was almost ninety-nine percent sure I was going to get over this little hiccup I was having in my brain—not my heart—over a certain sexy Python and emerge all the better for having refused his claim.

Right? Right.

It was just optimism galore in my neck of the woods, er, Castor’s Corner.