Protected by the BRATVA Grump (Sunshine and the Bratva #2)

Delilah

The apple cake comes out of the oven eleven minutes late and about two shades past where I meant to stop it.

I set it on the rack and look at it for a while.

The top has gone a deep, glossy brown and the edges have gone somewhere well beyond brown, into a color I would describe as cracked-leather-dry.

Behind me, Lemur is sitting in the kitchen doorway with flour on his whiskers and no remorse, which is how I;ll explain the last ten minutes to anyone who asks.

"This is on you," I say, pointing my finger at him.

He blinks once and walks away with his tail up, a creature entirely at peace with his life choices.

It's ten to seven in the morning, and April is doing its thing, where the fog comes off the water and settles in the streets until nine, so the whole town looks like it's being kept somewhere safe.

From the kitchen window, I can see the top of the bridge, and past that the smudge of the city six miles north with its lights still on.

Nobody here uses the city's name. It's just the city, the place people drive into and complain about, then come home from.

I trim the worst of the edges, dust the top with powdered sugar, and set it in the case at the front where the light is kinder.

Sort of. It's a good cake underneath. It just needs someone to give it a chance.

Sammie says my problem is that I bake the way other people daydream, and she's right.

I gave up defending myself about it seriously sometime last spring.

By quarter past seven, the fog has thinned enough to see across the street.

The coffee machine is on, filling Purr and Pour with that perfect scent of coffee, and the cats have all risen from their beds.

Rhodes is lounging on the end of the bench, Red has claimed the third table in the window, and Duchess is on the top shelf above the window, watching me fill the pastry cabinet like she has a plan.

Old Bill comes in at nine with his paper folded under his arm the way he has every morning for four years, and takes his table by the pastry display. I have his Danish on a plate before he's finished sitting down.

"That looks like it's been through a trauma," he says, raising an eyebrow at my innocent apple cake.

"It's caramelized," I offer, frowning at the display and wondering if I should move it a half-turn.

Bill lifts his eyes to mine as I place his coffee beside the plate, the disbelief evident.

"It's rustic." I waft my hands a little, like it’s no big deal. "The middle will be fine."

He laughs into his coffee, which is all I want out of any conversation before ten.

The bell rings again at twenty past, and the whole room does that small lift it does, and Lucifer appears to conduct his daily inspection.

Sammie is already talking as she comes through the door.

Behind her, Eduard is pushing Lilah in the cream pram, a small mobile of cuddly clouds swinging from the hood.

"Good morning, sweetie," I say to Lilah. She turns. She stares at me with her father's exact gray eyes.

"She was awake at four," Sammie says, hanging up her coat. She ties her apron and gives me a look that contains an entire conversation. "Eduard's been up with her every night this week, and he won't admit it's because he likes it."

Eduard says nothing at all and goes to the corner table, which has a laminated reserved sign on it because I made one after his first week of visits as a joke, before he and Sammie officially became a thing. Lucifer is already sitting on it, waiting.

The rush lands at half nine, and for a while, I stop being a person and become a pair of hands.

Two oat lattes, a cortado, a hot chocolate with coconut and more flat whites than I can count.

Sammie works the register and talks to every single customer like she's been waiting all morning specifically for them. It’s not a technique, it's just what she's like, and it's why this place is full at half nine every morning.

It’s almost eleven when Jasper arrives, his eyes landing on mine before he turns to nod at his cousin.

His mug, the large white one shaped like a cat’s smiling face, complete with little pointy black ears, is already in my hand.

I bought it after he had been turning up here to meet with Eduard, and his discomfort around the cats was evident.

It was clear he had never been around pets when every time Cookie rubbed up against his legs, he would freeze and hold his breath.

Now he is used to the cats and strolls in without hurry, holding the door a moment longer for Mrs. Aldridge, who is leaving with a box of pastries balanced in both hands. Jasper's in dark jeans and a leather jacket, carrying a paper bag in one hand.

"Morning," he says, his voice rough enough to make me believe those are the first words he has uttered today.

"Good morning." I slide the mug across to him.

He sets the paper bag on the counter between us and nods at it, which is how I know it's for me. He's been doing this since just after Sammie and Eduard’s wedding last June. Bringing me things. Well, things for the café, I suppose. But it always feels like they’re just for me.

I open the paper bag. Inside is a bottle of the Madagascar vanilla I mentioned yesterday while I was complaining about a supplier.

There's a thing that happens in my chest when he does this. I've had months to come up with a name for it, and I haven't. Mostly because naming it would require admitting the rest of what I feel.

"Oh wow," I say, pulling the bottle from the bag and turning it in my palm. "You didn't have to do that."

"I saw it and remembered you said you’d run out and were struggling to get hold of more. Figured this would keep you going until your supplier issues are sorted." He is looking at the small bottle in my hands.

"The only place that sells this brand is in the city." I quirk an eyebrow, because if he has found somewhere closer, I need to know.

"I had business." He shrugs, picks up the mug and looks at the apple cake sitting under it’s powdered sugar. "You burned another one?"

"I caramelized it." I wait, but I can tell he isn’t buying what I’m selling. "Urgh. Fine. It’s burned, but Lemur is partially to blame." I shoot a pointed look at Lemur who is currently flicking his striped tail back and forth in the sunshine.

"I’ll take a slice," he says, and points to the most burnt side.

I plate it without saying anything.

He pays with his phone and carries his coffee to the end of the counter, leaning there instead of sitting, the way he does when he's staying for a while.

Eduard says something to him in Russian from his corner.

Jasper answers without turning around. Sammie catches my eye across the register, both eyebrows raising about half a millimeter.

I ignore her.

It's Old Bill who breaks the silence that’s rolled in like the fog around us.

"Here," he says, tapping his paper hard enough that Cookie lifts her head and narrows her eyes at him. "Have you two seen this?"

The paper is folded to page five. There's a photograph of the path along the north side of Community Park, the one that runs under the lights past the boat sheds, and a headline about a third assault in five weeks. A woman jogging. Nine in the evening. No leads. The police are asking for witnesses.

"Third one," Bill says. "That’s our local park." He looks at Sammie, then at me, and he isn't doing his usual thing where his eyes are laughing behind it. "So neither of you are to go running about in the dark on your own. I mean it."

I roll my eyes. "Bill—"

"I mean it, Delilah," he snaps, surprising me.

"I'm always careful, and Sammie has never ran a day in her life." I wipe the counter down as I say it, hoping he can see how unworried I am.

"Hey—" Sammie objects, but Bill cuts her off.

"You're not careful. You're lovely, and friendly, and would do anything for anyone. That makes you not as careful as you could be."

Sammie has gone quiet, and I know she's thinking about a night fifteen months ago that we stilldon't talk about directly. I reach over and squeeze her wrist as I pass, and she comes back to herself and takes the paper off Bill to read the article properly.

Jasper hasn't moved. He's still leaning at the end of the counter with the mug of coffee in both hands, chewing the cake lazily. He's looking across at the newspaper with an expression I can't read.

The bell rings again, snapping me back into work mode.

At twelve, I make up a flat white, cut a slice of the good end of the cake, and carry them across the wide street to the gallery.

Kimmie has been here six weeks and has already painted the front of the building in a shade of green that made the town council write her a letter.

She's twenty-four, small, and permanently covered in paint or lacquer or something.

When I walk through the door, she's up a stepladder with a pencil in her teeth and one shoe dangling off.

"Delilah," she says around the pencil. "Delilah. Is that cake?"

"It's burnt," I mutter, giving up on trying to make it sound better than it is.

"I love burnt cake." She comes down the ladder in a way that makes me want to hold the bottom of it. "Sit. Look at this and tell me honestly, because everyone here is far too nice to me."

The room smells like fresh paint and turpentine, and there's a stack of frames against the far wall with a plan for the opening pinned around them. She talks the whole time I'm there. Six weeks and she already feels like someone I've known for years. I love that about her.

"It looks amazing, Kimmie. Like it was always meant to be exactly there."

She beams. "I’m so glad. It’s by a local artist, and I want people to see it as soon as they walk in and think, yes, that’s how I want to feel every single day."

I ponder the painting for a minute and immediately understand what she means. It doesn’t just fill me with happiness or joy. It makes me feel hopeful that more is just around the corner. Like my heart is being opened wide to all the possibilities of life.

By the time I lock up at six, the fog has come back in off the water, softer than this morning’s version. I walk home the long way because I like the town like this.

I change my clothes and stretch on the rug in my small living room, then put my headphones in. It’s a quarter to eight by the time I head for the park.

Community park is beautiful in the Spring.

The lamps are on all the way along the public path, and the trees have fresh growth beginning to fill out their branches.

The smell of the cold water is fresh and sharp, and somebody's woodsmoke drifts over from a house on Merrow Street.

My legs find their rhythm somewhere around the bandstand.

I think about the vanilla sitting on a shelf at the café where I left it, and about the fact that Jasper remembered I needed it when he was busy with work.

My feet thud on the tarmac with every step in rhythm with the music in my ears. I pick up my pace, thinking about which cake recipe I should make in the morning.

Headlights flare and dim in the small parking lot, but I pay no attention and keep up my pace.