Chapter 18 Gracie
Four Weeks Before the Wedding
Walking inside my friend Valerie’s cake shop is an automatic dopamine hit as every pore on my body absorbs the scent of warm chocolate and vanilla beans.
The tasting room is small and chic with a selfie wall, and below its neon-pink sign that reads You Had Me at Cake are hundreds of Polaroid pictures of couples kissing.
Through an open doorway at the back, I can hear the hum of a mixer at work.
“Oh my God,” Jude says, breathing in deeply. “Did I just get a contact high? From… sugar?”
“Quite possibly,” I say as a short, stressed-looking woman bustles into the room with a streak of flour beneath her hairnet. She isn’t anyone I recognize.
“Hello, hello,” she greets us, tucking a stray piece of frizzy blond hair into place. “You must be here for the tasting?”
“We are,” I say, glancing toward the back doorway. “Is Valerie here, by any chance?”
“No,” she says in a surprisingly severe tone. “She had one of her headaches and left me to make three rush orders on my own and conduct two tastings.”
Disappointment promptly turns into anxiety. Valerie is a vendor I really wanted Jude to meet, since Larkwood is one of her biggest sources of income during wedding season.
“Oh,” I manage. “That’s too bad.”
“Yes. It is,” she agrees with a frown. “And if you can believe it, I had to cancel the last tasting appointment, because the wedding planner came instead of the couple.” She shakes her head.
“What if she’d chosen a flavor they hated?
I’ll tell you what would have happened: someone would’ve gotten blamed, and that someone is me. ”
I’m immediately taken aback by how unprofessional Val’s new assistant is, but unfortunately, it’s not the biggest issue at hand.
Dread settles like an anchor in my stomach as I realize I’ll somehow need to reschedule this tasting on an already impossibly tight timeline and convince Calvin and Brooke to do it themselves.
But then Jude steps forward and holds out his hand.
“That’s unbelievable,” he says as she takes it.
“Who wouldn’t want to choose their own wedding cake?
I’m Calvin, by the way, and this is my fiancée, Brooke.
I don’t think we got your name though…” He trails off, letting her fill in the blank he’s left.
Meanwhile, I try not to look like I’ve just been smacked directly in the face with a pillow embroidered with the words BAD IDEA.
“Actually,” I squeak, but our grumpy host has no eyes or ears for me.
“Betty,” she answers, seeming to fully register Jude for the first time.
“Lovely,” he responds warmly, before taking his hand back to tug my waist against his. The sudden feeling of his warm body against mine turns my stomach into an electric squiggle, and a nervous, nonsensical laugh ejects from me. Luckily, Betty barely spares me a glance.
“I can’t imagine that dropping everything to do a tasting is very convenient with all your rush orders,” Jude says to her. “If it’s easier, you could just bring the samples and get back to work. We’ll leave a note for Valerie about our choices.”
At this point, Betty may as well be a pool of melted chocolate in the center of his palm. “Oh, it’s no trouble. No trouble at all,” she says, patting her hairnet. “Just give me a moment.”
She walks off with a coy smile at Jude over her aproned shoulder, and I’m left gawping up at him, still snug against his hip.
“Okay, Casanova, this was not the plan,” I whisper-yell. “I don’t want to be fake-engaged to you!”
He smiles down at me. “You do if you want to check this task off your list, Brookey.”
I clench my teeth. I do love checking things off my list, dammit.
“You are the most—”
“Charming improviser?” he finishes for me before leaning closer. His voice is a low whisper that travels along every one of my nerve endings. “How much do you want to bet she’s going to bring us extra cake from the other tasting?”
But I don’t get to tell him what I think because, for one, his grip on my waist has eliminated my ability to speak, and secondly, Betty is back.
When she sets down a platter with eight hefty slices of cake on the table, I feel Jude’s nearly silent I-Told-You-So chuckle against my ribs and discreetly kick his foot.
He responds by leaning down to nuzzle my hair, which my body registers as a seismic event.
My brain may know this is all for show, but my pounding heart sure doesn’t.
“Young love,” Betty says with a sigh, her crinkled blue eyes twinkling in a complete mood reversal. “I know you only ordered four samples,” she goes on, “but since you two actually showed up for your tasting, you may as well have the other order, too.”
“Betty, you shouldn’t have,” Jude says, like he’s been getting extra helpings from her his whole life. “But my angel does deserve every option,” he says, before booping me on the nose.
My jaw goes slack. Angel? I’m half-tempted to feel his forehead for a fever when he smirks at me. Just a tilt of his wide mouth, and I realize he’s messing with me. No. Challenging me.
The game? Who can be more cringe. The prize? Not having to face the nightmare of rescheduling this appointment.
For a second, I nearly laugh, but then all my mental spiraling stops as I meet his gaze.
Beneath the traces of humor, there’s something else.
A silent understanding that if we’re only playing a game, then all of this physical contact doesn’t have to mean anything.
If it’s just a game, then I can touch him, too.
And just like that, nothing seems more important than proving that cringe is basically my middle name.
“Now. As you know,” Betty says, “Valerie is known for her unique flavors, but I can always tell what someone’s favorite will be.”
She squints an eye and slowly lets her gaze travel down the length of Jude.
I have to wonder how she thinks his crotch is capable of communicating whether he’s a Funfetti or lemon meringue guy, but when her gaze returns to eye level, she says decisively, “Valrhona chocolate and espresso. Complex, dark, and decadent.”
Jude makes an approving hum I feel against my rib cage as Betty turns her gimlet eye to me with far less interest. Suddenly, I’m terrified of losing this game and all my dignity by being equated to fruitcake—boring and universally disliked.
On an impulse that feels like a shooting star in my chest, I turn to press myself fully against Jude.
Lying a hand on his chest, I look up at him with the most lovesick gaze I can muster and try to keep a straight face.
“How did she know, sugar bear?” At the stupid nickname, he has to pass a snort off as a cough, and I try not to grin in victory. Instead, I turn my head to give Betty a long-suffering look. “I can’t keep any dark chocolate in the house. Or coffee for that matter!”
She chuckles, pleased that I’ve confirmed her guess, and I beam back at her as a sparkling, first-sip-of-champagne feeling goes straight to my head.
“Guilty as charged, rose petal,” Jude responds, placing his warm hand over the back of mine and pressing it to his alarmingly sculpted chest.
I try to get a grip on reality, but it’s slippery at best. When his thumb starts idly stroking my captured hand, a mental image flashes through my mind so vivid and inappropriate, I have to swallow a quiet gasp. Me, pressing my lips to his blunt fingertips; him, sliding them into my open mouth.
Heat surges between my legs, and I try blinking the image away, but apparently, it’s been permanently branded behind my eyes. To make matters infinitely worse, Jude is staring down at me like he knows—like he’s watching the same private movie as I am and—
“Now you,” Betty says to me, snapping us both back to the present moment, “are citrus and rose Battenberg. Sweet and almost too pretty to eat.”
I glance up at Jude and feel his heart kick beneath my palm.
“She is, isn’t she?” he murmurs, lifting his hand from mine to smooth the collar of my blouse.
His fingers dip between the fabric and my skin, brushing my collarbone, and game or no game, scorching heat draws a fiery line from the spot he’s touching directly to my low belly.
I draw in a shaky breath. It’s all just for show, a distant voice in the back of my mind insists. Just for show.
Betty laughs and places the slices of cake in front of us. “Okay, let’s see if I guessed right. Would the groom like to try first?”
Groom. The word lights firecrackers in my blood as I lose myself in the world’s most reckless game of make-believe.
Jude seems just as lost because he doesn’t make a move.
Telling myself it’s just part of the game, I pick up the fork and cut a lush bite of chocolate cake.
Rising onto my tiptoes against him, I raise the piece to his mouth.
“Open up, sweetheart,” I say, barely registering how breathy my voice sounds. But he does as he’s told, and carefully, I slip the chocolate cake into his waiting mouth. His lashes shudder.
“Christ, that’s good,” he rasps after swallowing.
I’m trying not to pant as he cuts a piece of Battenberg for me and raises the fork. “Your turn,” he says, and obediently, my mouth falls open for him. The restless shift in his hips seems involuntary while his expression straddles the line between pained and hypnotized.
When he puts the fork into my mouth and I slide the cake off with my lips, a small hum of pleasure escapes me at the taste of the delicate sponge. All at once, Jude’s eyes become hungry in a way that has nothing to do with cake.
“Good?” Betty asks.
“Delicious,” Jude responds, eyes still on my mouth.
Betty laughs. “You look at her like she’s the cake!”
Jude doesn’t seem capable of replying, and I’m barely better off. I feel like a piece of cake, incapable of thought and ready to be devoured.
“You two must be on our Wall of Love,” she says, gesturing to the giant collage of Polaroids behind us before grabbing the camera off a small table.