Chapter 2
CAN’T RESIST CUPCAKES
What a waste of perfectly good treats…
It’s okay. I’ll get them from the trash later.
— gus
Every week, I try to make a new recipe from my grandmother’s book to give away as free samples. It was a way to introduce myself to the town while assuring Grandma Jean’s customers that I have just enough of her magic to run the shop while she’s overseas.
After Roxy’s unexpected visit this morning, I got a later start than usual.
I didn’t even start searching for one that sounded interesting until after I sold out of the chocolate croissants that Roxy ‘taste-tested’, but when I saw that Grandma Jean named the recipe Can’t Resist Cupcakes, I knew that’s the one I wanted to try.
I don’t have as much magic as Grandma Jean, but most of her recipes don’t call for it apart from some unique herbs and powders that you wouldn’t normally find in pastries—but when I follow her recipes exactly, they come out pretty damn good, if I do say so myself.
The Can’t Resist Cupcakes have a lemon filling and strawberry buttercream frosting.
I garnish them with some candied lemon slices and set them out on the free sample tray in between customers.
Because I got slammed directly after, I didn’t even have a chance to try them myself before I was too busy, currently bagging up a loaf of rye bread for Mrs. Carlson, a sweet hedgehog shifter who was friends with my grandmother in between sending Gus to check that the batch of choux I was baking didn’t get burned.
I had at least five customers milling around the free sample table—including a wolf shifter who had my nerves twanging—when the first cupcake kicked in.
It was Sondra. A squirrel shifter with a high metabolism who works for the Moonburrow postal service, she brushes a chunk of soft grey hair out of her dark eyes and announces, “I hide acorns under my pillow in case I get hungry in the middle of the night. When Willie”—her rat shifter mate—“starts to snore, I drop them on top of his forehead until he stops.”
Um. Okay. Not something I was expecting her to share, but I get it. I’ve never slept in bed with anyone other than Gus, but if he ever started to snore, I might nudge him in the side until he stopped.
“I dye my fur,” blurts out the red-haired shifter that I’ve seen come into the shop once or twice. Her pointed face and coloring tells me she’s a fox. “I’ve always wanted to be a vibrant shade of orange and the drug store just outside of town sells it in a box.”
Her hands fly up to her face, cheeks pinkening.
My stomach drops. What the…
Lara, a pretty witch with bouncy blonde curls, might’ve snickered to hear the fox shifter’s unexpected confession, but that was before she finished taking a bite out of her own cupcake.
One bite. That’s all it took. One bite and her soft green eyes go slightly glass as she says conversationally, “I cursed the printer in my boss’s office.
Whenever he wants to waste paper on another ridiculous memo, it jams and then—” She blinks suddenly, looking down at the cupcake she just took a bite out of.
“Hang on. What kind of cupcakes are these, Honey? One of your grandmother’s recipes? ”
Uh-oh.
Can’t Resist Cupcakes. I just… I thought it meant that my customers ‘can’t resist’ enjoying their flavor.
Um. No. That’s not it.
Not at all.
They can’t resist blurting out their secrets.
Truth bombs. Holy shit, Honey. You just served truth bombs to your customers.
I hope I’m wrong. I hope she’s wrong. But when the amber-eyed wolf shifter I pointedly pretended not to notice prowling around the bakery starts saying something about the Alpha and my heart drops, it doesn’t matter.
I shut down when it comes to anything to do with that male.
Max Lobo, that is, and not the dark-haired wolf who is popping the second half of the cupcake into his mouth.
No!
Mrs. Carlson reaches to grab one from the sample tray on her way out of the bakery.
I point, then hiss under my breath, “Gus. Go!”
The wily opossum immediately leaps to the floor, his long tail trailing behind him as he heads for the sample tray. He’s quick. In no time, he’s spiraled up the stand, hooking his teensy claws on the edge of the table, and leaping onto the tray.
Gus buries his face in the nearest cupcake. That’s okay. I’m not worried about him spilling his guts, even if I’m more concerned about him adding to his pudgy belly by feeding him all that sugar.
Ah, well. It can’t be helped.
His snout is in one cupcake. His right paw is covered in frosting from another. Even his tail dips past the frosting of a third, digging into the cake. When he pulls it out, it’ll be covered in lemon filling, but at least the Can’t Resist Cupcakes won’t be messing with my neighbors any longer.
Thank you, Gus.
Mrs. Carlson draws her hand back. From one supe to another, she’ll never judge me for keeping an opossum in here, but that doesn’t mean she’s still interested in a cupcake.
Phew.
Racing around the counter, I pull a stern expression to my face, wagging my finger at Gus. “Bad Gus. Those were for our friends.”
Gus doesn’t understand English. Not really.
He’s an opossum after all, and I’ve had three different witches verify that he’s not a shifter in disguise.
But while I can understand the gist of what he means, same goes for me—though, if I’m being fair, Gus is way better at understanding me than I am him.
Which is why he doesn’t seem upset that I’m scolding him. Or maybe that’s just Gus being Gus because he gives me a mischievous look before darting his tongue out, licking the frosting from his whiskers…
Either way, I use the distraction to grab the tray. Hurrying behind the counter, I drop the plate of cupcakes into the trash before any of my customers can get caught in the spell and confess some of their deepest darkest secrets to me.
And then I grin.
“Who wants to try one of the eclairs I was just about to fill instead?”
I hoped that the snafu from this morning went unnoticed. That my customers were grateful for a fresh batch of eclairs on the house, and that they went on their merry ways, not realizing that they blabbed about more than they would’ve ever wanted to.
If only.
The bakery slows down in the early afternoon.
There’s always a small rush near close when customers come in for the last of the daily bread for their dinners, but in the three-hour gap between lunchtime and when I get ready to close for the evening, it’s usually slow enough for me to start some of the bakes for tomorrow morning.
I tried to pretend like it was a good thing today, and not like rumors from the morning rush meant that Moonburrow locals were avoiding my shop.
Optimistic… that’s me. And if I’m nervous-baking some cinnamon sandies while I work to keep from peeking out into the street…
well, at least I’ll have something delicious to snack on after I slink back upstairs with Gus.
I’m just measuring out the flour when the other shoe drops.
A familiar scent of woodsy pine and something sharp slaps me in the face so effectively, my hand jostles, sending flour flying everywhere.
And I know without trying to focus on the why that I’m about to have company.
See, I’m really not a big fan of cops, human or supe—but that goes double when it comes to Sheriff Max Lobo. He’s the head of the small law enforcement office that keeps us all in line which makes sense since that’s not his only title in town.
Sheriff Lobo is also the Alpha of the Moonshadow Pack.
Made up of mainly wolves, it’s a heavy predator pack that is tasked with watching over the prey shifters and making sure no other supes get into trouble in town.
Even if you don’t respect the Alpha—and who wouldn’t—you have to deal with Sheriff Lobo.
Or, if you’re like me, you buy a scent-dampener charm from a coven about a half an hour away so that you can hide who and what you are from the most powerful male in town…
I’ve managed to do so for two months. I was planning on doing it for a lot longer if I could, but just because I’m covering up my innate Honey-ness, that doesn’t mean that my inner opossum stops chittering whenever I sense he’s near.
Or my sidekick, either.
Gus leaving tracks in the spilled flour as he races across the counter, perching near the register… yeah. He knows who’s about to walk through the bakery’s front door.
Considering what happened with the truth bombs this morning, so do I.
It’s the mate who doesn’t know that I’m his mate, and once again I’m in trouble.
It could’ve been worse.
Reflecting on the events of yesterday while I work out my frustrations by kneading some bread dough, I remind myself that it could’ve always been worse.
On the plus side, I managed to get through the conversation with Sheriff Lobo without fainting which, to me, is a huge success. He just came by because—like I’d expected, even if I hoped otherwise—the Moonburrow gossips were talking about what happened with the honesty cupcakes.
Turns out, the ‘boss’ that Lara mentioned is actually the mongoose mayor of Moonburrow (say that three times fast) and Mayor Rhimes wasn’t too happy to hear that his assistant had used magic to curse his printer.
The fox shifter, I learned, is Frannie, the owner of a pricy salon in town.
Embarrassed by her own admission that she dyed her fur, she spilled Lara’s secret to hide hers and…
yeah. No surprise, it got back to the sheriff after he had to break up a witch-shifter fight that left Lara nursing a couple of scratches and Frannie cursed to be bald.
Somehow, that led to the sheriff—and the Alpha—to getting involved, but since I don’t shy away from the fact that this is a witch-owned bakery that sells charmed treats, I wasn’t in trouble.
Small mercies, I guess. Anything that had me drawing Sheriff Lobo’s attention… yeah, no. I was happy to tell him my side of the story, wave him off when he didn’t push back, and hope like hell that my charm held.
For a moment there, right before he headed for the door, I wasn’t so sure it did.
He paused, claws tapping against the metal badge he wears pinned to his hip—the only concession that the too-handsome sheriff is the town sheriff—as he tilted his head just enough to sample the air.
First with his open mouth, tasting the air on his tongue.
Then, drawing in a deep breath before shuddering it out again.
I nearly stopped breathing myself.
He didn’t say anything, though. Wearing a puzzled expression and a scowl, the sheriff let himself out of Dough You Believe in Magic, and I refrained from having a panic attack until the lingering pine scent was as much a ghost as my prospective mate bond.
Hey. Fake it ‘til you mate it, right?
Or, if you’re a wound-up opossum who trembles every time you think of the predator that Fate wants to give you to, not.
You see, discovering that the all-power wolf shifter is my mate was the biggest shock to hit me once I finished relocating to Moonburrow.
For the opossum who spent all of her twenty-eight years alone, never really too fussed with finding her mate just yet, the heat flooding through me when Sheriff Lobo’s scent reached me fully triggered my fight or flight instincts.
Well, no. I’m a particular type of prey shifter. I have a flight or faint—or ‘play dead’—response, and I was stunned when I didn’t drop… even if I did do everything possible to hide myself from the sheriff’s own sniffer while I figured out what the hell I was supposed to do.
I’ve ran into Sheriff Lobo countless times over the last two months—and, okay, it’s not countless because my inner opossum has been keeping track and it’s been sixteen times—but as far as he’s concerned, I’m just the witch granddaughter of the witch baker who makes treats for his town.
And, for now, that’s all I can be.