Chapter 17 Whisked Away
WHISKED AWAY
Audrey
“That was more fun than the time Jamie Dornan jumped off Dakota Johnson’s roof into the pool. Naked.” Amanda, skipping beside Portia, brushes my shoulder as I walk beside Jack.
Between the Oscar-nominated actress and the colorful candy maker, I think they downed a jug of spiked cider between them.
“I would’ve rather seen Dakota do that.” Portia links her arm with Amanda’s and grins.
“Same, girl.” Amanda winks. “Same.”
The carols ended on a literal high note—thankfully not Jack’s—then tapered to a hush, programs and stray mittens dotting the brick like winter confetti.
Now with the moon out from behind misty snow clouds, shop windows are haloed in white lights, frosted glass winks with candy-cane reflections, and the peaceful silence settles like fresh snow threatening the skies.
Down the square, The Sweet Shop’s striped awning waits at the corner like a peppermint invitation. The four of us fall in together, forming a loose blockade across the sidewalk, our boots clicking in a syncopated beat.
“Hold up.” Jack points to the community board near a set of benches. “Zoning hearing.” He squints in the streetlight to read. “Sale of the Harbor Clinic building.” Pulling out his phone, he steps back to focus the picture. “Give me sixty seconds—Eli needs this photo.”
“Ooh.” Portia pulls her arm from Amanda’s after spotting a flyer a college student looking for part-time hours left tacked to the board. “Let me double-check this.” She veers off with him to scan the information.
Amanda, unbothered—if the soft look she sends Portia is any indication—links her now-free arm through mine. “It’s too cold to stand still.” She pulls me into motion. “Come on, they’ll catch up.”
Walking arm and arm with a movie star isn’t something I thought I’d get used to, and yet here I am.
“So. The movie.” I tilt my chin at the town—fishing nets threaded with fairy lights, wreaths on every door, the glow of the lobster-trap tree pulsing from below the hilltop down by the harbor.
“Is Hideaway giving you enough spark and inspiration?”
Her mouth quirks. “Oh, there’s inspiration.” She glances over my shoulder to where Portia laughs at Jack, who’s just slipped on the sidewalk and grabbed a tree trunk for balance and waggles her eyebrows at me. “And definitely spark.”
Warmth that has nothing to do with my coat fights its way under my skin. I stare straight ahead at my bakery’s painted door across the street.
Amanda bumps her hip against mine, conspiratorial.
“And speaking of spark—you and Jack.” Her tipsy smile turns knowing.
“I know I stole him from you today for the Santa Fun Run, but I’ll tell him I don’t need him for tomorrow’s library reading.
” Her voice dips, gentle. “Portia will be there, and I’m pretty sure if I can handle a pack of paparazzi shouting ‘when did you start wanting to sleep with women and not men’ outside the gate to my house, I can handle a bunch of little kids wanting me to read about Santa’s eight reindeer. ”
I steer her out of the lamppost’s path. “It’s really nice how you’ve volunteered for so many of the town’s activities.
But don’t underestimate little kids—” I drop my voice like I’m narrating a true-crime documentary.
“They’re apex predators. I’ve seen them pull apart a whoopie-pie tower in ten seconds flat. ”
“Yeah, but Portia will be there, and she’s packing candy.” Amanda’s smile turns wry. “Besides, with Jack taking on his big new client, I want you two to have all the time you can together before he starts diving back into the Hollywood agent life.”
My laugh comes out thinner than I’d like. “New client?”
“Yeah. Scott Evans. Great actor.” She looks both ways three times before crossing over Main Street toward my shop.
Although honestly, with my brain having decided to stop working, it could’ve been a busy freeway and I would’ve followed.
“I’d love to work with him myself.” Amanda veers us right to avoid an ice patch. “He’s really made a name for himself in indie films, and he’s poised to have a major breakthrough in mainstream films.”
I pull in a breath so cold it scrapes. “Exciting.”
Something in my voice must draw her attention because she pulls up short in front of the bakery. “You knew, right?” Her eyes bounce between mine, trying to read my expression like a cue card. “I mean, you two have been—”
“Having fun.” I will my throat to stop strangling my voice. “Nothing serious.” It doesn’t listen.
Bootsteps scuff behind us. Jack and Portia reappear, cold-pink cheeks and a fresh phone photo held up like a prize.
“Triple-net with ‘extraordinary maintenance.’” He says it like we should all know what he means before pocketing his phone. “Eli’s going to love that little landmine.”
Portia wiggles the student-hours flyer. “And I found a potential afternoon counter-helper for the shop.”
Amanda—previous concern over my not-so-hidden reaction forgotten in the face of, well, Portia’s—wraps her arm around her not-so-hidden love interest. “My toes are staging a coup. Let’s get to your place before they defect to frostbite.”
We do the goodbye shuffle at my door—hugs over puffy coats, promises to ‘see you soon’ while I keep my bakery-bright smile in place.
“Rest that voice, superstar,” Portia calls to Jack as she and Amanda back away, already linked, wobbling and laughing.
“Hardy har-har.” Jack snorts, his smile wide as the two disappear into the halo of the streetlights, their silhouettes folding into the soft, slow snow starting to sift down.
The night hushes. Jack stands beside me, hands deep in his coat pockets, eyes on the frosted glass of my door, his humor resolving into something else. Something hot but also wary. “Go in?” His look is searching, like he’s checking a pressure gauge.
My key is already in my hand. Stop this now, a voice suggests, the practical one that balances books and cleans mixers and knows better. Another voice—the one that still tastes cinnamon and his kiss—asks for one more night of pretend. One more hour where I don’t count costs.
I turn the key. “Yeah, let’s go in.”
He smiles, relief flickering and heat taking its place.
Nothing wrong with having fun, I tell myself as he follows me inside.
Enjoy it while it lasts.
Jack
The bell over the door gives a polite jingle, and then the dark swallows it.
The bakery is all silver edges and soft shadows—the glass case reflecting a sliver of moonlight from the street, stainless counters gone black, mixers hulking like quiet animals.
The air smells like citrus cleaner and tastes like sugar and something warm I can’t name without saying her.
Audrey doesn’t flip on the lights. Her fingers find mine in the dark and squeeze once, quickly, like we’re crossing a street. The lock clicks back into place behind us; the world narrows to the sound of our shoes on the mat and the hush of a building that knows her better than anyone.
She leads me through the kitchen by memory, her hip brushing against a table edge, a laugh under her breath when I stumble into a stool. My hand—flung out on cool steel for balance—finds the softer give of her waist.
I expect her to linger there, to press back. She doesn’t. She keeps moving.
Up the back stairs, the wood beneath us is the only sound, creaking like it’s telling secrets.
More time for my inner thoughts to amplify—like how she was quiet at the end of caroling too, a little absent in the crowd even after my attempt at a festive off-key act.
And on the way back, when she wasn’t intertwined with Amanda, her hands were jammed into her coat pockets so I couldn’t give her mine.
Top of the stairs. She keys the apartment door by feel and pushes it open.
The living room is darker than the bakery—only the streetlamp leaking around the edges of the shade and the faint pinpricks of the Christmas tree, not lit but catching whatever light there is like a constellation that refuses to die.
The soft shape of the couch. The empty hook where my scarf hung earlier.
Her hand leaves mine to flick the bolt, then removes her coat.
Following her lead, I hang mine beside hers on the rack, the fabrics whispering against each other. She steps out of her boots; I slide out of my poor-choice loafers, both pairs making soft thuds on the mat. The sounds are so domestic my chest aches, Audrey’s silence so loud it’s deafening.
I should ask what’s wrong.
Instead I replay the gathered evidence. At the square, she laughed at Amanda’s joke and said all the right things and gave everyone—including me—the bakery smile she gives customers who ask if they can pay with Canadian cash.
When I asked, ‘Go in?’ she paused half a beat too long.
It was all there if you knew which lines to read.
“Hey.” My whisper carries over the room. “We don’t have to—”
She pivots like a dancer, a neat little half-moon that lands her in my space, and kisses me. Not cautious. Not questioning. Heat, direct and uncomplicated, like turning an oven from off to on without testing the pilot.
The sentence I was building fragments. Her hands slide up the front of my sweater and fist there, pulling me down. She tastes like winter air and the last of the snow drop taffy Portia bullied us into eating. Like a decision already made.
“Okay,” I breathe against her mouth because I am a simple man with a complicated brain, and both parts are very easily convinced by this woman. My palms bracket her jaw, thumbs grazing the warm hinge of it, the place that always goes soft when I touch her. As it does now. Just like my doubts.