Chapter 15
Captain Kendra’s Log: When ruining a wedding, improvisation is key.
Eight o’clock was too freaking early to be meeting someone at a bakery. Well, for me, it was too early. I’m sure for other people who had real jobs, eight o’clock in the morning was fine as wine.
Ugh. Let’s maybe not think of wine.
I got a little thrill as I turned off Eros Street onto Venus Avenue.
I was meeting Jesse at the Early Riser Bakery, which was right next to the bed and breakfast. Jesse said it would be a great place to go over my Best Ma’am duties.
Alone. He stressed that last part in his text message, asking me to leave Rowan at home.
My face heated as I thought about the dirty words Rowan whispered in my ear at my home before Jesse and True arrived last night, and I got another thrill as I imagined Rowan doing precisely what he told me he would do.
His words echoed around my brain as I tried to sleep off the copious amounts of wine from the dinner party. I couldn’t even eat breakfast at the table this morning without thinking about the different ways he promised to pleasure me there.
Even his threat of making me watch him clean out my forgotten spice cabinet gave me dirty thoughts. Have I unlocked a new kink? A cleaning kink? Would he wear nothing when he did it?
I slammed on the cart’s brakes in front of Boom Boom Blooms next door to the bakery.
What the hell was wrong with me? I was on my way to meet the love of my life, and here I was, fantasizing about my fake fiancé.
Ruining Jesse’s wedding would require focus.
Rowan was right about one thing. I couldn’t do it myself.
I didn’t have the first clue where to start mucking up the works.
Last night, as we cleaned up, well, Rowan cleaned up.
He wouldn’t let me touch a thing like he didn’t trust me to follow through.
It’s not that I didn’t like cleaning, but I got distracted in the middle.
Plus, I didn’t like cleaning.
So, while he cleaned, we talked about the little things we could do.
“I could hide the rings,” I suggested.
“You think rings will stop someone from getting married?” Rowan raised an eyebrow. “That’s a pretty shallow person who would call off a wedding because of that.”
I crossed my arms and leveled a glare at him. “Okay, Mr. Smarty Pants. What do you suggest? Screaming out his name and banging on the church windows like in The Graduate?”
“I thought Jesse and True were getting married at the beach?” Rowan asked.
Two points to the hot Australian. “Yeah. That’s right. Church banging. Out.”
Rowan’s lip quirked up in a smile.
“Get your mind out of the gutter.”
“Too late, Goldilocks. It’s been there since you walked out of your bedroom.” The man smoldered at me. How the hell did he do that? Was it an alpha male thing or an Australian thing?
It didn’t matter because a few minutes later, my houseboat was spotless. He left, and we had not come up with a workable solution.
I would have to improvise.
Electronic chimes sounded overhead as I pushed through the doors of the Early Riser Bakery.
The sweet, buttery aroma of freshly baked bread hit me in the face as I entered the business.
Glass display cases ran the length of the wall that separated the sales area from the kitchen.
One case contained a rainbow of pastries, from glossy fruit tarts to chocolate-covered croissants and sugar-topped blueberry muffins.
Another case was empty, save one pastry that a smudged chalkboard sign told me was something called a cronut.
There was only one left, and it was bacon and maple-flavored. My mouth watered.
Behind the case, Selene Strickland puttered, restocking napkins in a dispenser.
She was older than dirt and twice as cranky.
She always wore mourning black, as if this were the 1800s, and she would forever be marked as “The Widow Strickland.” As far as I knew, the woman never married and, therefore, couldn’t be a widow.
The only reason she lived in Pleasure Point was to help out her twin brother Strick, the nicer of the two.
“What do you want?” She barked at me.
See what I mean?
“Hey, Selene, I’m meeting Jesse here,” I said, then pointed to the last remaining cronut. “But while I wait, I’ll take that thing. What’s a cronut?”
Selene sighed and set down the pile of napkins. “Don’t you kids have The GooGoo to look that up?”
“Google?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Right. Google. I can google that.” I pulled up my phone and ordered my digital assistant to tell me what a cronut was.
“Geez. You can’t even type it in. You Millennials are so lazy,” Selene huffed as she put the cronut onto a plate with a napkin.
I resisted the urge to tell her I wasn’t a Millennial and that she could stuff it up her Boomer ass when a sugary-sweet voice broke through my murder fantasies.
“Kendra! I was hoping I’d run into you here!” True called from the doorway to the kitchen. “C’mon back here. I’m finishing up. We can talk while you wait for Jesse!”
“She can’t go back there. It’s a health code violation,” Selene grumbled.
“I’m working on my cake. Everything for sale has already been made,” True responded, then waved me toward her. “Put that cronut on my tab, Selene. C’mon Kendra. You get a sneak peek at the cake!”
Goody for me.
I accepted the cronut and followed True to the kitchen.
Wooden shelves full of dry ingredients lined the wall to my left.
To the right were the industrial ovens, gleaming and quiet under the buzzing kitchen lights.
Directly ahead were steel doors that I assumed led to the freezer and walk-in cooler.
Smack in the middle of the room was a long stainless steel table topped with a three-tiered wedding cake.
My heart sank as I approached the creation. It looked as if True was adding decorative flowers.
It was breathtaking.
“Isn’t this fun?” True picked up a piping bag and began to draw frosting flowers on the outside of the cake expertly. It sat on a turntable, making it easier to get all sides. The flowers were freaking perfect. Like her.
“Fun? I’m not a big fan of baking.” I admitted.
She smiled at me over the cake. “That’s okay. Not everyone is. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t want to captain a boat. I get seasick.”
I frowned. “Then why were y’all at Pegleg Pete’s the other night?”
True shrugged. “Jesse wanted to see you. I wanted to meet you. That’s why God invented Dramamine.”
“Huh.” I moved to the worktable and sat down my cronut, then pulled over a stool to sit. “Is it okay if I sit here?”
Her smile was as sunny as her disposition. “Of course! I’m so glad you’re here!”
Acid coated my stomach, and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to eat my “donut crossed with a croissant” treat, which I had discovered in the case out front.
“Jesse is running a little late.” True turned back to her decorating. “I’m guessing he didn’t tell you that?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“That’s so like him.” True pressed her lips together. She paused the piping and twirled the cake this way and that, squinting one eye to look at her work like an artist would.
“You’re good at that,” I admitted.
“Thank you! I love baking. It’s the science of it. Everything has to be exact, or a cake will fall, and bread won’t rise.”
“Science?”
“Baking is chemistry. If you don’t get the amounts right, it turns to doo-doo,” True laughed. “Shit. It turns to shit. My grandmother used to give me grief for swearing.”
“Your grandmother who recently passed?” I raised my eyebrows.
She smiled and stared at the piping bag in her hands.
“She raised me and taught me how to bake. Although, her method was ‘a little of this, a little of that.’ As you can imagine, that didn’t work well when I tried it.
She had been making some of her creations for so long that she knew exactly how much flour and sugar to put in a recipe.
I had to go to cooking school to learn it. ”
I joined her in laughter. She was easy to talk to, and it pissed me right the hell off. I didn’t want to like this woman. I was planning on ruining her wedding. It didn’t matter that there was no workable plan at the moment; the time would come when I would end things.
But how to do it?
My chance came a few minutes later when True headed into the walk-in cooler to get something.
I was alone in the kitchen: me and the cake.
I glanced around wildly, looking for inspiration.
A shelf of spices caught my attention, and I scrambled to look closer.
Chili powder, garlic, lemon pepper. Who the hell put lemon pepper in sweet treats?
Focus, Kendra!
What would ruin a wedding cake?
I thought back to my lunch with Jesse and wondered if there was an extract of rotten eggs. That made me giggle, but I stopped when I spotted almond extract on the shelf.
Didn’t True say she was allergic to almonds?
I pulled up the bottle and perused the ingredients. It contained real almonds.
I could put a drop in the icing on top of the cake, the part where the bride and groom ate, and it might cause her a minor allergic reaction, nothing dangerous, but something that would ruin the day, right?
I loosened the cap and turned back to the cake, ready to leave a drop of extract on the top, when I swear I could practically hear Rowan ask, “Is that the honorable thing to do?”
What the fuck was I thinking? Adding almond extract into a woman’s wedding cake when she was allergic? Only a damn monster would do something like that.
Not honorable at all.
The handle on the walk-in cooler rattled. My heart pounded in my ears as I tightened the cap on the extract, shoved it on the shelf, and flopped back on my stool.
True rejoined me at the table with frosting. “Are you okay? You look sweaty and are breathing heavy.”
I laughed nervously. “Ha. Yeah. I’m good. So good! Just excited about this cronut.” I took a big bite out of the confection and nearly orgasmed on the spot. “Holy shit,” I said around a mouthful of heaven. “This is amazeballs.”
True stood straighter. “Thank you! My Canadian baker friend and I devised that idea during one drunken cooking school weekend.”
“Cronut good.” I managed to say while I shoved the rest of the treat in my mouth. The pastry hit my stomach like a lead weight as I considered what I nearly did.
I needed something else—another plan.
True’s phone chimed. She carefully set the piping bag on the table and picked up her phone to frown at the screen. “Jesse’s not going to make it.”
I pulled out my phone to check for messages. There was nothing from Jesse, but there was a text from Rowan.
Rowan
I have a surprise for you at the dock.
I wonder if my surprise rhymed with dock? I snort-laughed, spitting right onto True’s wedding cake.
“Oh, my god! I’m so sorry!” I scrambled off the stool, sending it clattering to the tile floor. “What can I do to fix that?”
True waved her hand dismissively. “Meh. Don’t worry about it.” She turned toward utensils near the ovens and pulled out a spatula. “I’ll scrape off the part you got and redo it. Won’t take long.”
“I’m so sorry!”
True grinned at me. “Do you know how often I’ve botched the frosting on a cake and had to start over? Too many to count. This is on the back of the cake. No one will ever know.”
I shook my head, unsure of what to do now. Jesse wasn’t coming. My cronut was sitting heavily in my stomach. And True probably wanted me out of her kitchen. I bent to pick up the stool and set it to rights.
“Since Jesse’s not going to make it this morning, I can go over the Best Ma’am duties with you,” True offered. “It’s not much, but maybe you’d like to be part of some of the bridal activities?”
Kill. Me. Now.
“Sure,” I responded weakly. “Sounds like fun.”