Chapter 18 Stella #2
“Thanks, Luna. With all the craziness from Braden, I’m okay with having a quiet night at home, trying on some clothes, and reading a good book. I honestly have fallen behind on my latest romance book with everything going on.”
“You mean because you’ve been living a real-life romance novel with mister hunky Viking,” Luna said, raising her brows and shimmying her body.
I rolled my eyes and shook my head at her comment, but I also smiled.
Axel definitely gave me the butterflies in my stomach you read about in romance books. I was falling hard for this man and could picture spending the rest of my life with him.
We’d only known each other for a few weeks, so on the surface it felt too soon for love, but I also knew it felt different with him.
The bell chimed over the door, and I looked up to greet whoever came inside. My eyes did a double take as I swore I was looking at Axel but thirty years older.
I shook my head slightly, trying to clear my brain. Since I had just been thinking of Axel, my mind was now seeing him in other people.
“Hello,” I greeted Axel’s older lookalike and the woman carefully draped on his arm. “Welcome to Scandinavian Sweets. What can I get for you?”
“Are you Stella?” the older woman asked, and I noticed she had a similar accent to Axel’s.
“Yes, I am. Can I help you?” My voice stayed pleasant as I tried to figure out what was going on.
“I’m Ingrid, Axel’s mother,” she announced with a polite smile on her face.
His mom is here?
“Oh, hi. Hello. Ummm. I’m Stella. Sorry. You already knew that.”
Wow, I sounded like a bumbling idiot. Way to make a great first impression.
I cleared my throat and stuck my hand out over the counter. “It’s nice to meet you.”
She took my hand and shook it gently and then turned to the man next to her. “This is Axel’s father, Karl.”
“Pleasure to meet you,” he said to me as he stuck out his hand.
I was a very outgoing person and loved to talk to people, but her body language and his standoffishness made me very nervous.
“We are sorry for arriving unannounced, but we heard you worked here, and we wanted to meet you,” Ingrid told me. “Do you have a few moments to sit down and talk with us?”
“Yes, she does,” Luna’s voice interrupted from behind me. I had totally forgotten she was standing there.
“Wonderful,” Ingrid said with a smile, though I noted it didn’t fully reach her eyes.
Perhaps I made her just as nervous as she made me.
“Could we get some coffees and some of these items as well,” she asked, pointing to a princess cake and cinnamon roll—Axel’s favorite.
She handed me her card, but I shooed her away, telling her that wasn’t necessary.
“Stella, it would be rude of me to walk in here and require free food when we have only just met. Please.”
I didn’t want to make her any more uncomfortable, so I let her pay.
Luna told them to have a seat at any open table and that we would be right over with their order.
I joined them at the table and sat down.
“So, Stella, tell us about you. You own this bakery, yes?” Ingrid asked.
“I do, yes. I worked at a different bakery in Chicago after culinary school but came home to open my own to be closer to my parents.”
“Your family is from Sweden, yes?”
“I’m actually adopted.” I then proceeded to tell her about my ancestry kit and my adopted father’s family being from Denmark.
“That gave my dad and me a bond growing up, and we often made foods from our cultures together.”
“This is very good,” Axel’s dad said, pointing to his cinnamon roll.
“Oh, thank you,” I told him, feeling elated that not only did someone from Sweden like it, but that someone was my boyfriend’s dad.
“Do your parents live nearby?” Ingrid asked.
“They live about an hour away, but I see them at least every other week.” Though as soon as the words left my mouth, I realized I hadn’t seen them as much now that Axel and I were dating.
“And you moved back to be closer to them, yes?” Ingrid asked.
They listened as I told the story about my dad’s health and moving back home, both of them nodding intently.
“I’m so glad your family is close by,” Ingrid said, picking up her coffee, though her gaze stayed focused on me. “That’s why we are excited to have Axel come home. Karl’s health is not so good now, so we are happy Axel will move home when his work visa is up in a few months.”
My heart dropped to my stomach, though I tried to remain calm on the outside. “Oh, I thought everything was okay with his visa.”
I swore Axel had told me everything was all set.
Plus, he had already told me he didn’t want to go back to Sweden.
But maybe he had made that decision before he knew his dad’s health was bad.
Though, looking at him, Karl didn’t seem very sick.
Then again, my father hadn’t looked too bad in the beginning either.
It was after the chemo that everything had changed.
“I’m not sure, but with Karl’s health, he has decided it will be good,” Ingrid said to me. “You understand. Because your father’s health was bad too.”
She was right. I understood more than most the decisions that Axel would be going through. I even remembered Axel telling me it was very noble that I had moved home to be close to my dad when he became sick.
“Yes, I get it,” I replied.
But what I didn’t get was how he had come to this decision so quickly and without saying anything to me. This now made sense why the trip was such a surprise to Axel. But had he really made a definite decision already? Especially since he seemed so adamant about never going home…
I decided not to get too upset just yet, because I also remembered Axel’s comments about his mother and father’s obsession with control and that being why his sister had moved away too.
I decided to give him the night to spend with his family and then talk to him about it when I saw him tomorrow.
But I would be lying to myself if I didn’t admit that I was upset about the idea of him leaving.
We were building something between us, and if he moved home, I wasn’t sure what would happen.
I didn’t want to leave my father either, or my bakery.
They left a few minutes later, informing me they were exhausted from their travels but that we would meet up together before they left to go home.
I was in a weird mood after Axel’s parents left.
With Luna already gone to get ready for her sister’s party and Axel busy at work until going to dinner with his family, I decided to stick around a little later than usual.
I let Milo go home early, doing clean-up duties before heading upstairs to my place to relax.
As I walked up the stairs to my unit, my phone buzzed in my purse. I looked down at my watch to see it was Axel calling. My hands were full of the bags Luna had given me earlier, so I decided to call him back after I dropped everything off on my table.
After I topped the stairs and stepped into my small dining space, I went to set the bags down on my kitchen table. However, the vase full of flowers Axel had gotten me was sitting there, and when the bags hit it, it toppled and shattered across the tile floor.
“What the hell?” I said out loud to myself.
I didn’t remember the vase being there. I swore I had put it up on the counter near the sink when I brought it up earlier.
I sighed in frustration but moved to the kitchen to grab some paper towels and a small plastic bag to put the flowers and glass in, the incoming call from Axel momentarily forgotten.
I was crouched down, scooping up the glass into my little dustpan, when the hallway floor creaked behind me.
I turned toward the noise, and when I did, I came face-to-face with a gun. A gun that Milo was pointing at my face.