Chapter 14 #2
Laurin laughed bodily, and even Candace’s shoulders started to shake, no matter how hard she was clearly trying to keep herself subdued. “Man, just think what we could make if we worked together, Candy.”
Candace immediately zipped back up at that, her neck bowing down and her hands flying back to the puzzle. “Please don’t call me that,” she said, her voice soft but polite, a little shaky. She wasn’t mad about it, she was scared, maybe sad.
“My apologies,” Laurin said. “I didn’t mean any—”
“It’s okay. It’s just . . . only one person has ever called me that.”
Laurin cringed, thinking it had to be either her ex-husband or Lucas who had given her the nickname.
He wanted to talk a little more about Lucas, hopefully give her some advice on how to go through with reporting him, even though she wasn’t going to like it, or just let her get it all off her chest if she stubbornly refused to do the right thing here, but he wasn’t ready for that yet.
He wanted to sleep on it, really think about everything she said about why she hadn’t reported him immediately.
She wasn’t ready for it, either, he suspected, and he didn’t want this to ruin the peace they had between them.
To his relief, she said, “My Aunt Miriam. Great-Aunt.”
“Was she an awful old biddy?”
Candace chuckled. “Quite the opposite. And she’s still alive, Great-Uncle Eustace, too, but the dementia’s done a number on him.”
Laurin grabbed one of her stacks of pieces, thinking now might be a good time to keep his attention off her.
“My grandfather had dementia at the end. He was the reason my father got into football — soccer,” he corrected himself, even if it did feel dirty.
He’d had his very arrogant days as a youth, fighting everyone about the proper name for the sport, going out of his way to say American football whenever anyone brought up what he still considered to be sensationalized rugby.
“They both got to the professional level, but neither of them got off the bench much. Still, they had the jerseys and the rosters to prove how good they were.”
“Is that how you prove how good you are?” Candace asked, her voice tinged in disapproval. “With jerseys?”
“I prefer medals,” he said, “but I don’t need to prove myself to anyone.”
“Strange thing for a reality show contestant to say,” Candace mused.
He shrugged. “I was a fine footballer once, and now I’m a decent baker and a mighty fine decorator. Both talents I’ve done out of love and for profit, and I’d like to profit as much as I can off it. Is that so wrong?”
The camera made a whirring sound, reminding Laurin that there was still a cameraman there, lurking in the corner, looking to pick up all the juiciest bits.
Laurin stood by what he said, though. He was here for both love and profit, and hopefully, everyone else could say the same.
This was far too stressful for anyone who didn’t absolutely love to bake.
“Not so wrong,” Candace conceded. “But I think you’ve forgotten something in all of that.”
“What’s that?”
Candace snapped a large chunk of puzzle to the border, securing the shape of it. “The glory. If you weren’t doing this for glory, you’d still be on the sidelines, coaching. You can’t tell me that’s not better money than what you and your mom make in the bakery.”
“Was never much for coaching, to be honest. I’ll agree that I do like the glory, but there was more to it than that. This is the first chance I’ve had at baking glory, after all, even if I did miss the competition.”
Now that Laurin was in a lower position, working next to Candace on his own chunk of puzzle, he could see the curl of her lips under the hood and felt better for the sight of her smile.
She wasn’t arguing. She was making conversation.
“When I started doing the Bake-Offs, Aunt Miriam got so excited that I was going to be competing again. It was so silly; I’ve never been good at anything, really, just these little pockets, but Aunt Miriam was always excited just to cheer me on about something. ”
“What did you use to compete in?”
“Math bees.”
Laurin coughed. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Don’t laugh at me!” she cried out, even though it was her own laughter that broke his shock over such a bizarre competition.
“It’s like a spelling bee, only with math problems. Math bees.
And that’s the most sophisticated way of saying it.
Trust me when I say every other name they gave them made them sound even nerdier. ”
“So, you went up to a podium, and they gave you a math problem to solve? Were there questions . . . like language of origin, only, like, mathematical principle of origin, or . . .?”
She shoved him away, but it was a playful push. “Oh my god, you are making fun of me! Competitive math is really hard!”
Laurin held his hands up in defeat. “Hey, I’m terrible at math. I’d fail as badly at it as you would at soccer, I’m sure.”
She gave him a little pout, and there it was, that perfect moment.
The pucker of that pout, that fierce but diminutive scowl, and the dip in those pale brows, the flush in her cheeks that bloomed in conversation but never at her work station, the incessant fluttering of her fingertips no matter what she was doing, even when she was engrossed in a book, he was fascinated by all of it.
Especially that quirk at the corner of her lip when she finally said, “How do you know I’m not an amazing soccer player, too?”
The answer was easy enough — she’d just said the only things Aunt Miriam had ever been able to cheer her on for had been math and baking.
He touched her leg, instead, feeling through the thick pile of velour to her slender calf beneath.
“You’re not a runner,” he said. “You’d have more definition here. ”
Her breath snagged slightly, nothing more than a faint stutter he wouldn’t have noticed if he hadn’t been watching so closely.
Her eyes locked onto his. It took far more willpower than he cared to admit to hold himself back from leaning in to examine all the colors that had blended to make the wintry blue of her eyes.
“Are you calling me weak?”
He stroked her leg ever so lightly. “No, I’m sure you have plenty of . . . stamina.”
There was a glimmer of unmistakable body language: a dilation of the pupils, a glance down to his lips, a flick of her tongue. But then her eyes darted to the camera, and she shimmied an appropriate distance away.
Laurin couldn’t blame her. Wrong place, wrong time. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t try again when everything was right. He flashed one last grin at her and picked up a puzzle piece. “So, tell me more about your Aunt Miriam.”
After that one touch, that one innuendo, Laurin was the perfect gentleman for the rest of the evening. Not a touch, not a wink, not a molten gaze that got Candace’s heart beating hard and her . . . her other areas doing . . . other things.
It was infuriating, but she wasn’t sure what bothered her the most: that he’d touched her to begin with, that he hadn’t done it again, or that she wanted more.
He stuck to safe conversation but didn’t try to hide his past when she pushed him into answering personal questions about himself. Yes, he’d always been popular with the ladies and had gone through plenty of girlfriends, yes, he’d probably been a jerk to a lot of them.
“If I had to do it all over again, I doubt I’d change anything,” he admitted on Tuesday when it warmed up enough that they could go out on the lake.
The canoes weren’t big enough for three people, and Candace got the feeling Laurin took some secret pleasure in forcing the production team to get not only a second canoe but also a crew member to row.
If they wanted Candace and Laurin to be filmed all day, they’d have to work for it.
“Another decade plus of life experience wouldn’t be nearly enough to counteract the stupidity of teenage boy. ”
Candace frowned, forcing her attention away from Laurin’s arms as he worked the double paddle. He had a sleek build, but his biceps strained at his sleeves as he led the poor cameraman on a race around the lake. “So then, there’s nothing to be done about it but to let boys be boys?”
“I hope not. I was cocky. Prowess on the field led to popularity in school, led to unchecked arrogance. I’d rather have taken future consequences, no matter how bad they were, to current moderation.
So if I’d known my sports star days were numbered, I’d have been even worse.
” He dipped his head slightly, but any embarrassment he was feigning at was easily dashed by the glint of sunlight off his teeth.
“So you’d have been just as horrible with girls then if you knew what you know now?”
Laurin’s fluid stroking hiccupped as he dug to one side, turning the boat a sharp ninety degrees. Behind him, the second boat nearly capsized in the scramble to avoid the bank of lily pads Laurin had maneuvered around.
“And to more of them, likely. God, I’d probably shag all of them back then.”
“You can’t now?” Candace asked before realizing how many horrible ways that question could be translated. Why were they even talking about this?
Laurin glanced back to see where the other canoe was.
It had gotten stuck in the lilies, and the cameraman was helping with an oar.
Candace and Laurin were alone for the moment, and he took advantage, dropping a hand from the paddle to her knee and squeezing it, his first touch in almost three days.
“Of course I can. But I’m a different man, now, and I won’t set a bad example for Vivvy.
She needs to know the proper way for a man to treat a woman so she doesn’t fall for an arrogant footballer. ”
It was there in Candace’s mind to ask about Vivvy’s mom, but the frogs were chirping, the dragonflies were buzzing, the boat was rocking, Laurin was leaning in just enough. All she had to do was lean a little more, and—
Laurin backed off and got back to paddling, leaving her hanging there, desperate for touch and terrified of touch. Knowing exactly what he was doing but not knowing why, scared that he was fake and just as scared that he was real.
He was piecing together the heart she was sure she’d smashed to smithereens, and there wasn’t nearly enough glue to hold it together this time.