Page 1 of Ice & Sweet

CHAPTER ONE

Luke

“How’re you getting on? Do you need anything from me? Were you able to get your suit sorted?” I lowered my spoon of ganache and tried not to chuckle as the questions were fired at me from my phone, which was resting on the counter so I could avoid smearing it with chocolate. I hadn’t been expecting Kane to call this late but I was glad I’d answered. Otherwise I’d have opened my phone to find sixteen missed calls, twenty voice notes, a hundred messages, and fifty DMs on every social media platform I owned.

My best friend had never been so demanding before, but I guessed having forty-eight hours to go until your wedding was enough to put even the most composed person a little on edge.

And his behaviour was nothing compared with some of the celebrities and couples I’d dealt with over the past few years. I’d almost rather have gone back to dealing with Hollywood producers and crazed superfans.

Almost .

“Yes, I got my suit sorted,” I said calmly, my eyes roaming over the half-finished wedding cake in front of me, looking for any flaws in the buttercream. “I picked it up at lunchtime and they’d fixed the lining and the shoulders. It doesn’t look like I’m trying to bring back eighties menswear now.”

“Thank God,” Kane said with audible relief. “Could you imagine?” He sighed and I knew just from the pause he was doing that thing where he rubbed his hand over his forehead and through his hair the same way he always did when he was anxious. “Sorry, I know I’m being a right pain in the ass. Austin keeps threatening to take my phone away from me, but I’m so worried someone will need something and I won’t be able to help.”

I did laugh then because that was so fucking typical of him. “Babe, I love you but if I have a problem, there is no fucking way I’m telling you until I’ve solved it. And no, this is not me telling you I had to fix something else. The suit is fine, the cake is nearly finished, I’m all packed, and I’ll message you tomorrow when I set off. I’ll even send you my location so you can track my every move.”

“That might be a bit much.”

“You still want me to do it, though.”

“I kind of do,” he said sheepishly. “Sorry. You can tell me to get fucked, you know.”

“Literally or figuratively? Because it really seems like getting dicked down would do wonders for you right now. You’re not marrying the man with the world’s most perfect dick for nothing—take advantage of that shit.” Kane’s fiancé just happened to be former teen heartthrob turned porn icon Austin Carter, whose subscription service I’d happily signed up to on the day he’d opened it.

Some people might have thought it was weird that I was happy to watch my best friend and ex-fake boyfriend’s former secret hook-up getting off with an endless parade of beautiful men, but I’d always figured that Austin made this content because he wanted people to watch it and I wasn’t going to shy away from my desires just because we’d known each other growing up. We were both adults, Austin was hot, and he deserved to get paid for his hard work, which I very much enjoyed the results of.

Besides, Kane and Austin had a wedding to pay for, so this was my way of helping to contribute. Apart from making the wedding cake, obviously, but I’d have been devastated if they’d asked anyone else.

Kane laughed and then sighed. “Maybe you’re right.”

“Maybe? Bitch, I’m always right,” I said. “Especially about this. Turn your phone off, go find your fiancé, and ask him to do deliciously filthy things to you. Twice. And if you won’t do it for yourself, do it for me, who hasn’t gotten laid in, like, two months.” The run-up to Christmas was always one of the busiest times at the bakery and I hadn’t had any energy to do anything after work except lie on my sofa and watch endless episodes of First Dates . And while finding a hook-up on Grindr wouldn’t have been difficult, there was also the fact I had to get up at five and was usually asleep by nine at the latest.

Recently I’d even gone to bed at seven as soon as I’d forced myself to eat the tub of takeaway noodles from the tiny, cheap noodle shop that was exactly halfway between my flat and my tube stop. The noodles had been amazing, but being full, cozy, and warm had done nothing but send me to sleep and I’d crashed out as soon as I’d climbed into bed with my laptop and hadn’t woken up until my alarm blared the next morning.

Maybe in January when I’d finished with the Christmas cake rush, I’d get myself back out there again.

“You know, Austin has a lot of friends coming to the wedding,” Kane said and I could hear the wry smile in his voice through the speaker. “I’d be happy to introduce you to some of them. You’d probably recognise a few. And you met some of them at our stag do!”

“I want to tell you I don’t need you to get me a pity lay, but I’m not sure I can turn you down.”

“I’m not going to get you laid, I’m just going to introduce you to a few hot, single people. What you do after that is completely up to you.”

“Mm-hmm, and you haven’t already been telling people about me?”

“No!”

“Kanan,” I said firmly.

“Fine, I might have mentioned you to a few guys but only casually. You know, ‘oh, my friend Luke is my best man, you’ll love him, he’s really funny and talented, here’s a picture of us last year at my birthday.’ That kind of stuff.”

“It better be that super-hot picture of us.”

“I wouldn’t use anything else,” he said. “And I mentioned the cake too because I know it’s going to be fucking amazing.”

“It will be if you let me finish it,” I said, grinning to myself.

“Sorry, I’ll let you go. Don’t stay up too late? And send me your location when you leave tomorrow. Oh and—”

“Bye, Kanan,” I said, cutting him off before he got sidetracked again. “I love you.”

“Love you too!”

I ended the call before he could go off on another tangent or find something else to worry about. Hopefully, Austin would sense him worrying and distract him for the rest of the night. Their relationship was so funny to me—they’d been hooking up on and off for ten years and then last year something had just changed, like a switch had been flicked, and they’d finally seen what I’d seen all along and gotten their act together. Now, less than a year after finally making their relationship official, they’d decided to get married and had planned the whole thing in four months.

I almost felt like I had whiplash considering how many years they’d spent dithering and trying to pretend what they had was nothing more than afterparty hate sex. But I guessed I had a perspective on their relationship not many people had.

I’d been an up-and-coming actor in my early twenties with a few good productions under my belt when my agent had approached me with a proposition. Jude Kane, one member of the global boy band sensation Underground Dreaming, had wanted to come out, and the record label had decided that the only way they’d allow him to do that was if he had a suitable boyfriend on his arm. They wanted someone of a similar age, cute, marketable, with enough fame to help boost Kane’s appeal but not overshadow him, and a perfect squeaky-clean and sweet reputation.

The fake boyfriend in question also had to be willing to agree to a certain amount of public appearances, marketing campaigns, social media posts, and “accidental sightings.” Being queer wasn’t actually a requirement as long as they weren’t opposed to kissing Kane chastely now and then and holding his hand.

All they wanted was to make sure they could package and sell us.

My agent had said it would be a good opportunity and the paycheck had been very nice, although I’d felt guilty as fuck about taking it. I’d agreed as long as I could meet Kane first to make sure he wasn’t a total prick, and what I’d found was a sweet, kind twenty-one-year-old man who was desperately trying to push against the iron cage he’d lived in since he was sixteen.

Our fake relationship had lasted for three years before we’d finally gone our separate ways, but we’d built a genuine friendship underneath the circus surrounding us, and we’d been leaning on each other ever since.

Not long after we’d met, Kane had told me about Austin, who at that point was still an iconic, baby-faced heartthrob tipped to be Hollywood’s next hunk, and how they often snuck off together whenever they were at the same parties or award shows, dodging their security to snatch a few heated minutes together. Just the way Kane spoke about him had made it clear there was more going on than he’d ever admit.

And any ideas I’d entertained about us getting that fake-to-real boyfriends love story had vanished in a puff of smoke.

Looking back, I was glad we’d never tried to be more than friends because Kane was one of the most important people in my life, and I wouldn’t want to have lost him in a petty breakup over some tiny, insignificant argument that neither of us would’ve remembered ten years later.

I sighed and picked up the bowl of white chocolate ganache again. I needed to get this fucking cake finished.

There wasn’t actually a lot left to do since I wasn’t going to add the last of the decoration until the morning of the wedding. The whole thing had been stacked, dowelled, and was almost ready to be packed into one of the specialist boxes I’d had designed. Luckily, it wasn’t a huge cake because the wedding was a small one, so I didn’t have to worry about transporting the tiers separately and assembling it at the venue.

All I had to do was add the gold drip across the top.

Picking the spoon up, I swore to myself. The white chocolate ganache had gotten too warm sitting on the counter, which made it too runny and impossible to use. Any drips I tried would quickly turn into messy puddles and then I’d have to spend more time waiting for them to set, scraping them off, and doing it again. It would be better to stick the ganache back in the fridge, make myself another cup of tea, and wait ten minutes before trying again.

I shoved the bowl of ganache onto the shelf of the nearest under-counter fridge and scrolled through my phone as I waited for the kettle to boil.

I debated putting some music on to energize myself because shaking my ass around the kitchen would solve a lot of my problems.

Ignoring Spotify’s suggested playlists of festive favourites, I stuck on some cheesy pop and tried to imagine I was in the VIP area of a music festival, revelling in the sun with a bottle of champagne, a fabulous wardrobe, and an adoring selection of hot men vying for my attention. It was fantasy that was so much better than my reality, where I was standing in a cold, empty kitchen in the middle of London wearing a ganache-stained old T-shirt with nothing to go home to except an empty bed, an early start, and the peace lily I’d been tenderly caring for over the last two years.

I really needed to get out more.

Maybe getting Kane to introduce me to Austin’s porn friends wouldn’t be such a bad thing after all.