Chapter 1
ONE
ADAM
There was one rule at Divine Confections: Adam wasn’t allowed to interact with the customers. He made the baked goods. He was fabulous at it… and it was why his boss, Maggie, put up with everything else.
Only, it turned out that Evie’s shuttle had gotten a flat tire on the way back into town from the airport, and the tow truck was still at least an hour away.
With so many non-witches with her, she couldn’t fix it with magic.
Maggie had finally gotten that appointment with the witch specializing in healing spells, and Simon was neck-deep in customers in the front.
So when Joseph, their delivery driver, called to say that Charlene, today’s bridal shower client, was having a conniption fit and saying there was something wrong with the cake that could only be fixed by an expert… well, Adam hadn’t had a choice, had he?
It was an almost thirty-minute drive to the venue.
Adam had taken the second delivery van and not thought about the fact that Maggie had once told him he was never allowed to drive any of the delivery vans ever again.
(It had only been a fender bender. Okay…
two fender benders.) He’d carefully not rushed, reminding himself that if he got into another accident, Charlene was definitely going to remain unhappy with her cake.
Adam had been just about done for the day, since he started early in the morning, so it made sense for him to go.
Thankfully, the koi pond patio at the South Coast Botanic Garden was located near the entrance, so he got there quickly after he’d explained to the staff what was going on.
To his relief, they still hadn’t served the cake.
What looked like almost a hundred women were chattering while holding glasses of what he was pretty sure was pink champagne and a variety of virulently pink cocktails.
Servers were passing amongst them with a variety of delicious-looking appetizers; if they weren’t pink themselves, they had pink garnishes.
A number of the women were clustered around Joseph and eying him like they’d like to eat him.
Adam suddenly wondered if there was anything wrong with the cake at all, or if this had simply been an excuse to make Joseph stay longer.
He was twenty-one, 6’2”, and built like a football player.
He was, in fact, a lion shifter, all honey eyes and tawny golden hair that curled around his shoulders.
Way too many people seemed to be finding a reason to pat him on the chest or biceps.
Admittedly, the Divine Confections polo shirt fit him very well.
(Adam wasn’t interested, but he wasn’t blind, either.)
Adam tugged a bit self-consciously at his own shirt, smoothing it over the soft belly that had maybe gotten a bit bigger and softer the longer he’d been working at Divine Confections.
Fortunately, Joseph was nothing like Adam, and he took all the attention with friendly smiles and casual grace.
The term “animal magnetism” had surely been invented for shifters.
But Maggie had been clear about what behavior was expected of all of them when they were on the clock, and Adam had never seen Joseph be anything except professional, although he was admittedly way friendlier than Adam—and far less likely than Adam to spill a drink on someone.
(Adam wasn’t jealous of the almost preternatural grace that most shifters seemed to have. No, not at all.)
Numerous garlands and cut flowers festooned the patio, trellises, and round tables, all of them varying shades of pink.
January in California was a lot nicer than January in many other locations, but it clearly didn’t have the amount of decoration that was desired for this event.
Adam began to feel like he should have been wearing a pink shirt, at a bare minimum, to blend in.
He tended to wear dark or neutral colors to try not to stand out.
In this crowd, unfortunately, it had the opposite effect.
The cake was on display next to a table filled with what looked like very expensive gifts, going by the logos on the gift bags.
For the most part, the women didn’t seem to be paying it any mind.
It certainly didn’t seem to be the disaster that Joseph had said Charlene was acting like it was.
His coworker looked relieved to see Adam, and Adam assured him that he had everything under control now, and Joseph could go on his way.
There was a chorus of boos and pouts from the surrounding women, but Joseph gave them all a bow and assured them that while duty called, he was sure he wouldn’t encounter another group half as appealing as this one.
An inordinate number of kisses seemed to be blown at him, but they let him go—and that was part of why Adam was supposed to stay in the kitchen and not interact with people.
He didn’t think of stuff like that off the top of his head.
Joseph was now at least forty minutes late for his next delivery, but he just smiled and waved, and only one glance at Adam betrayed how glad he was to be getting out of there.
Part of Adam wanted to beg Joseph to stay—and he would, he was always good like that—but the whole point of Adam being here was because everyone else had a job they needed to do.
Adam was feeling outnumbered because he was surrounded by a sea of rich, frilly pink, but cake was what he did. He shouldn’t need backup for this.
Joseph had assured Adam that it didn’t look like anything was wrong with the cake, and Adam was pleased to see that this appeared to be the case. It was rare, but every once in a while, something went awry during transportation.
They almost always sketched a small refrigeration and stasis charm over the cake before it left the shop, but every once in a while they couldn’t, like if normal people were there, rather than only witches or shifters.
(Nothing, Adam had learned as a child, caught someone’s attention more than overhearing someone talking about “humans.” So normal people were people without magic—and witches and shifters were something else.
This sometimes led to normal people assuming witches and shifters were neurodivergent or really geeky, but since they could be that, too, it worked out okay.
The important thing was that they didn’t figure out about magic.)
Sometimes there was no opportunity to sketch the stasis charm, and sometimes they forgot. (Yes, that had been Adam. Also, it turned out that a minor stasis charm could be overcome by a car accident. Ask Adam how he knew.)
This particular event was all normal people, as far as Adam knew—and he didn’t get the feeling he usually did if he was in the company of a witch or a shifter, like his magic recognized theirs—so he’d come armed with spare fondant, buttercream, sugared rose petals, spun-sugar roses, and all the other small decorative elements.
They were, naturally, all in a profusion of pink, as per the bride-to-be’s request. He was preternaturally aware that he was approaching a three-tiered cake in front of a hundred people.
He watched where he put his feet. He was careful where he set everything down.
He made sure he wasn’t touching the table at all when he turned to Charlene to listen to all her complaints.
She was tall, graceful, and very beautiful, which always made Adam feel even more long-limbed, gangly, and awkward than usual.
He assumed she was well-off, given that she’d rented the patio at the South Coast Botanic Garden not for her wedding but just for her shower.
(He’d once thought that bridal and baby showers were small and intimate, but years working in custom baking had taught him that was not necessarily the case.
Or maybe Charlene would claim these were her hundred closest friends.
Adam had a handful of friends on a good day, and those were mostly his coworkers.
None of his school friends had stuck, not even Liam, whom he really thought he’d connected to.
But maybe that had just been in his head.)
Charlene was dressed, unsurprisingly, in pink.
Her hair was done up in some fancy twisty style with pink gemstones scattered throughout it.
Her dress no doubt cost more than Adam made in a year.
She looked extremely elegant. Adam was pretty sure he had a smear of buttercream on his shirt. Probably more than one.
Charlene’s issues seemed to boil down to the fact that the cake wasn’t perfectly symmetrical—and she’d only ordered from Divine Confections because all her friends had told her they had the most amazing cakes they’d ever tasted.
Since a) Adam was a human not a robot and b) she’d asked for an asymmetrical design on the cake, he was really proud of himself for simply letting her vent and then painstakingly making the minute adjustments that couldn’t possibly have made the cake look any different, but now it was suddenly exactly what she wanted.
He also let her have the spare spun-sugar roses he’d brought, never mind how long it had taken him to make them.
Smoothly, Adam said, “I’m so sorry we didn’t meet your expectations the first time. Thank you so much for giving us the opportunity to correct our error.”
Although he didn’t have to deal with customers directly very often, he knew that Maggie still lived by that stupid “the customer is always right” rule.
She would back them up if the customer was completely wrong, but she was running a business, and she wanted happy customers.
Happy customers came back, and happy customers got their friends to come, too.
So even Adam, relegated to the kitchen, was aware of how he was supposed to respond in this situation.
Charlene huffed a breath. “At least you’re not stingy with your little decorations. You wouldn’t believe the people who are so ungenerous when I’m the one paying!”