Love and Cupcakes Read online

Jack seethed as she watched her handyman tinker. Her foot tapped in time with the clock, ticking off each second with a sharp slap of her shoe on the floor tiles. Danny had the top two-thirds of his body crammed into the malfunctioning appliance. He checked wires and heating coils. He thumped on the sides with a rubber mallet. He emerged, scooted it out from the wall, made a few more thwacks, and returned into the belly of the oven, where he started the process over again.

  The longer she waited, the more tense her body grew until her arms were stiff at her sides and her jaw felt fused shut with miles of thick, heavy wire. She’d dropped enough money into repairs that she could’ve replaced it twice with comparable models.

  “Yep, your wiring’s shot,” Danny said from inside. His voice was garbled, gravelly.

  “You were in here not two weeks ago and said it was the thermostat. So which is it?” Jack rapped on the side. The cold metal shook.

  He shuffled backward, scooting his knees along the floor until his face was free. Hefting himself to his feet, he readjusted his girth. Danny was in his seventies and still well over six feet tall. Jack was surprised he could still maneuver in and out of tight spaces. His stark-white hair sprouted from his scalp and face as thick as if he were forty years younger. “Well, I thought it was, but looks like it’s this now.”

  “It looks like, Danny? I’m paying for repairs, not for guessing. I don’t have money for looks like. I need you to be right this time.”

  “Hold on there, Jaclyn. Don’t get huffy.”

  “I need my damn oven fixed. Like yesterday. And if you can’t, I need you to tell me now. We can’t keep throwing away half of everything we make because the stupid thing wants to be put out of its misery.”

  “Whoa, Jack. Chill,” Graham said. He stepped in between them and spread his arms to silence them both. “I know it sucks, and it’s expensive, but it’s not going to do us any good to get pissed off.”

  “This coming from the guy who assaulted it with cutlery yesterday morning,” she said.

  “Yeah, well.” He shrugged.

  “I’ll just leave you to figure it out then.” Jack went out the back door and sat on the gritty concrete. Despite the chill in the air, the sun beat down warm on her exposed face. She shoved her sleeves halfway up her forearms and let the sun prickle her skin.

  The door to the gallery next door creaked open. Caught by the wind, it flew open, banged into the building, and then shut with a deep click when the manager kicked it.

  Jack nodded to the girl, who slouched against the brick wall, puffing on a cigarette. The breeze tangled her hair. She could smell the spicy cloves from the cigarette. She inhaled deeper to savor the scent and made a mental note to ask Graham about a gingersnap cupcake for next fall.

  Her pulse began to slow. She considered going over the finances again but she could pull up any figure from the QuickBooks spreadsheet simply by thinking about it. And the numbers knocking around in her head did not include a new oven.

  “God, what’re we gonna do?” she muttered.

  The girl next door looked up and said, “What?”

  Jack shook her head. “Nothing.”

  Deciding she had given Graham enough time to square things away with Danny, she pushed up from the ground, shaking granules of dirt and rocks from her hands. The door slapped into place behind her. The room was quiet. The oven sat quietly appeased.

  For the moment.

  Graham wasn’t in the kitchen, which meant that he was either still smoothing over the situation or he’d been forced to help a customer. She shuddered at the thought. She walked up front in time to hand the customer a double-chocolate salted caramel instead of the carrot cake she’d ordered.

  “I’d compromised with myself that I could have one if I got one with a vegetable in it, but the caramel is just so good.” She took the box, hugging it to her chest as she left.

  “How did it end with Danny?” Jack asked when they were alone.

  “He fiddled with the wires and said it’ll hold for a bit,” he said.

  “All right.” She drummed her fingers at the base of her neck, along her shoulders. She winced.

  “You okay?”

  “Stress headache. Nothing new.”

  Graham leaned against the doorjamb. Crossing his legs at the ankles, he stuffed his hands in his pockets. “It’s not dead yet. We can probably eke out a few more months from it.”

  “Even if we do, I still don’t know how we’ll pay for it. We haven’t had a renter upstairs for going on two months. And business isn’t exactly booming.”

  “Are we that bad off?”

  Jack shifted around him and slipped the file of spreadsheets out from under the register, where she’d stashed it the day before. “No,” she said, grimacing as she looked at the numbers again. “Maybe. Things are tight, hence my nice little freak out the other day over Melanie. I’ve already been to both banks in town and talked with one in Atlanta on the phone about getting another loan. No dice. Apparently we’re not a ‘good investment’ in the eyes of the bankers.”

  He flicked the cover of the folder closed. “There are other banks,” he said.

  It won’t matter, Graham. No one’s gonna throw money at a dying business. Sighing, she said, “We’re still open, and for now that’s gonna have to be good enough.” She forced a smile.

  “We may not be open for too long if I have to toss half of what I make,” Graham said.

  She followed him into the back. While he rolled a baking rack out of the walk-in cooler, she leaned against the office door.

  Removing cupcakes from metal cups, Graham separated them by doneness—golden, tan, and verging-on-burned. He shoved a row of dark-brown cakes off the edge of the table and into the trash. They tumbled against the bag with a heavy thud, thud, thud as they piled on top of each other.

  “Damn thing’s gonna be the death of us,” Jack said. “Will you be okay if we can’t afford the huge-ass, double oven you’ve been mooning over? I mean, do we really need one that has all those bells and whistles?”

  “Yes, I do need them,” he said. He looked up, hair flopping in his bright eyes.

  His expression was so serious, Jack almost laughed.

  “Not only will that oven not burn half of what I bake, it’ll increase efficiencies, and hopefully lead to a steady rise in our net sales.” Graham ticked off his points by squirting a dollop of icing on each of three cupcakes. “It’ll most likely pay for itself within a few months.”

  “Look at you using all those big businessy words.”

  “I want this oven. Need this oven.”

  “I know.”

  Graham rapped his knuckles on the table next to her in defeat. “I can call my dad,” he said.

  “Graham, no,” Jack said. She pushed up on one of the worktables and sat with a dejected thump. The metal was cool. It seeped through her canvas pants to numb her thighs. She scissored her legs from side to side.

  “He’s got money. And we both know he owes me,” he said.

  “We’ll find another way. Plus you said we probably have a few more months. Things will turn around.”

  Or you’ll go somewhere where they can give you what you want.

  three

  Over the next couple of days, Jack wracked her brain for ways to boost business. Number one on her list was to snag the cover and spread in Dispatch Magazine, Northeast Georgia’s guide to all things hot in entertainment, shopping, and food.

  She loaded a dozen of the seasonal flavor, a Guinness cupcake with chocolate-espresso icing, into a box and pressed a chocolate-covered espresso bean into the top of each one. She popped a couple of beans into her mouth for good luck. The chalky texture of the bean was obliterated as the chocolate melted.

  “Can you handle things for a half hour?” she asked Graham.

  Looking at the box on the counter, he asked, “I take it the cupcake fairy’s about to make a delivery?”

  “If these don’t blow the editor’s mind, nothing on our menu will.�
�� She tilted the box to show off the cupcakes. When he nodded his approval, she tucked the flaps in, slapped a sticker on top, and said, “Just let him try to tell me ‘no’ again.”

  The Dispatch office was less than five minutes away on foot—but then everything in downtown Sugar was. She carried the box with both hands, pressing it against her stomach to steady it in the stiff breeze, which tugged on the hem of her jacket and whipped her hair in frantic circles.

  The six-block radius was an intricate mix of small-town charm—with its historic buildings in varying shades of brown, tan, and rust with a pale-blue façade thrown in every so often to spice things up—and a bustling retail and dining district. Darlington oaks stretched up in front of the two- and three-story buildings, which housed clothing boutiques, bars, coffeehouses, art galleries, restaurants, music venues, and offices on the ground floor and renovated apartment living above. The leaves rustled a soft melody and cast shadows on the sidewalk.

  Most of the stores were empty, which should’ve made Jack feel better about the state of her own shop. Instead her heart gave a little pang of sadness that only a few were doing well.

  Turning down Peachtree Avenue, she smiled at Mr. Porter, who was battling a dust cloud in front of J’s Barbecue Shack. The sweet, tangy scent they pumped into the air from vents in the roof made her mouth water. A car engine started and some pop song blared. It was familiar, but she couldn’t quite place the lyrics.

  Jack shifted the box to one hand when she reached the Dispatch office and went in. “Thought you could use a little pick-me-up this afternoon.”

  “You must’ve read my mind,” Jesse, the front desk girl, said. She reached for the box, spindly arms stretching across the counter.

  Jack paused, waited for the rush of desire to hit. Nothing came. She handed the cupcakes over and said, “Must have. Hope you like beer, coffee, and dark chocolate.”

  “Sounds divine.” Jesse popped the lid open and stuck her face so close to the cupcakes, Jack thought she’d emerge with icing on her nose.

  “Is Tom around? I wanted to give him one personally.”

  “Yeah. Just a sec,” Jesse said.

  Jack waited in the cramped lobby and strained to hear the conversation down the dim hallway. All she got was a murmur of tangled words that she couldn’t string together to form anything coherent. She moved to the wall and studied the framed covers hanging in even lines. The colors popped off the off-white paint. If she played her cards right, Crumbs could be hanging up there one day soon.

  She looked up at the shuffle of footsteps on the carpet and smiled as Tom Berg walked toward her. His tie was loose and the top button of his shirt was undone.

  “We were just talking about how we hadn’t had our monthly visit from you yet,” Tom said.

  “So, I finally got your attention. Hallelujah.”

  He laughed, and Jack did, too.

  “Believe me, everyone here has a soft spot for local kids staying in town and trying to boost economic development. Lord knows we need it.”

  “We’ll all just keep trucking along, doing what we can.”

  Tom nodded, his brown eyes dull and unfocused. “So, whatcha got that’s newsworthy going on over there?”

  “First, a Guinness-and-coffee cupcake.” Flipping open the box, she pulled out a cupcake and handed it to him.

  “Two of my favorite things,” he said. His pinky dragged through the icing of one as he lifted another out. “And I hear Graham’s combining two of his—biking and baking.”

  “You heard we landed the Twilight job?”

  “Melanie’s been in here more than you, trying to woo us. We do an article on the race ever year, as I’m sure you’ve seen, but I couldn’t resist making her work for it a little. I hope you did too.”

  Forcing a smile, she said, “We need all the exposure we can get.”

  “Don’t worry, Jaclyn, I’ll make sure you’re in it.”

  The disappointment hit fast and hard. The expression drained from her face. “So, it’s not enough to get us our own feature?”

  “I wish I could help you. I really do. But I need a stronger angle to get the magazine flying off the racks. You understand.”

  “Yeah.” She shrugged. But she didn’t. What could be bigger news than a small-town cupcakery providing the centerpiece dessert for the largest nighttime bike race in the Southeast? Nothing. She pulled the door closed behind her.

  ***

  Jack joined Graham in the kitchen late the following afternoon and smiled despite the anxiety that still gurgled in her stomach. His short, dark hair was flecked with crumbs. Streaks of pink and brown icing covered the apron on his thighs.

  “You okay?” he asked without looking up.

  “No,” she said.

  She reached for the bowl of icing to set it aside and recoiled when he smacked her hand with an icing knife. She glared at him and licked the frosting from her throbbing skin. She slid onto the empty prep counter next to the table. Her knee brushed just below his hip. She scooted over two inches.

  “Want to talk about it?”

  “No.”

  Shaking his head, he said, “You can always tell Harper no.”

  “No, I can’t. At least not when both of my parents and Hutt are pushing me to let her stay,” she said.

  Graham set down the half-iced cupcake. The icing knife clanked against the side of the bowl. He squeezed her knee and smiled when she looked at him. Her stomach fluttered, a frantic drumbeat deep in her gut at the brief contact.

  “I don’t even know why she wants to live here. You think she’d rather crash in Hutt’s guest room. I mean, it’s not like we’ve ever been close,” she said, more to herself than to Graham. Though that hadn’t been my choice.

  “Don’t say that, Jack. You know she loves you.”

  “Just not like she loves Hutton. I never really stood a chance though, with him sleeping on her floor during thunderstorms and taking her to her first middle school dance because she was too scared to say yes to the boys who’d asked her. I couldn’t compete with the big brother in shining armor.”

  “You never needed to,” he said.

  His hand, soft as a breath, streaked over her hair. Warmth spread across her scalp, inched its way down her spine and spread, tingling, to the tips of her fingers and toes. She stretched and contracted her digits to force her blood to settle.

  It doesn’t mean anything. He’s a Hollingsworth. If I was his soul mate he would’ve known the first time we touched. Let it go.

  Disappointment flooded through her when he pulled his hand from the base of her neck, picked up the cupcake and knife and continued to work. Jack should be used to the casual touches that meant nothing more than they were friends. Should be able to keep a tighter rein on her emotions. But something about Graham made her common sense curl up in a dark corner of her mind and pretend it wasn’t needed.

  She spent the next ten minutes watching him work. Neither spoke; they just enjoyed the calm that came with his rhythmic pacing between counter, mixer and sink. A second batch of icing whirled in the mixer with a steady slap, slap, slap as the beater revolved.

  Though she’d never asked what made him choose cupcakes after pastry school, she couldn’t help but wonder if she had been a factor, or at least the inspiration.

  She’d had a thing for cupcakes as long as she’d had a thing for Graham. Ever since the vanilla cupcake topped with strawberry icing and a helping of beady sprinkles for her seventh birthday, she’d been hooked.

  They’d had the birthday party in her backyard. The sky was cloudless and a shade brighter than the sundress her mama made her wear. The soft breeze carried their voices so it sounded like dozens of kids as opposed to the ten who chased each other in circles with pink and yellow streamers trailing after them like capes. Her sister’s cry had rung out over the tinkling laughter of the kids around them and she grabbed Harper’s hand to help her keep up.

  “I’ve got her,” Hutton said. He pulled Harper away
from the noise, away from Jack.

  Graham trailed after him, but turned back and called, “Hey, Jack, when do we get to eat cupcakes?”

  Boys were supposed to have cooties, but surely that didn’t apply to brothers or their best friends. Grinning at him, she said, “I’ll race you.” She took off at a sprint.

  He beat her by two steps. She couldn’t have cared less—this was the first time she’d been around Graham without her brother and he was still being nice to her.

  “It’s your birthday. I should’ve let you win,” he said.

  She narrowed her eyes at him and said, “It’s not real if I don’t earn it.”

  They hefted the tray of cupcakes from the picnic table, one on each side, and carried them to the patchwork blanket her mama had spread out under the leafy arms of the oak tree. Setting it in the middle, she plopped down on the blanket, breath ragged. Graham sat next to her but not close enough to touch her. She waved to her friends to join them and passed out the cupcakes once they’d formed a circle.

  “Don’t you want candles, Jaclyn?” her mama asked, shaking the box. “You’ve gotta make a birthday wish.”

  She nodded and giggled when her mama stuck seven candles into her one little cupcake and lit them. With the heat flickering on her face, the wax started melting and slid down the sticks into the icing. She blew them out with one breath—and wished for the requisite pony. Removing the candles as a group, she handed them to Harper to lick clean.

  She peeled back the wrapper on the now de-candled cupcake and bit. It tasted like sunshine and fluffy clouds. She closed her eyes. The strawberries were sweet and ripe. She would have licked the icing from her lips if someone hadn’t pressed his lips to hers.

  Blinking, she stared into chocolaty eyes. She held her breath when Graham pulled away. The sugar tingled down to her toes as the fruity scent disappeared.

  “Happy birthday,” he whispered then ran off.

  After that day, she lurked in the pantry, hid beneath the soft folds of the flower-print table cloth, and crept downstairs at three in the morning to sneak cupcakes from the plastic Tupperware container. She’d fall asleep with the sugary icing crusting on her lips and her small fist still clutched around the velvety wrapper.