AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He raised a brow. “Ah, I’m doing that thing where I think I’m better than you. I was inferring that your moral superiority would prevent you from lying effectively, but who am I to claim…I’ll shut up.”
I snickered and let go of him, pushing open the gate, which squeaked loud enough to raise the dead. My mother was across the courtyard full of dirt boxes in a wild cacophony of plant life. She stood up, revealing the night shirt that went down to mid-thigh and read, “Gnomed if you do,” which was probably a racial slur of some kind, but I’d never understood it clearly, and she thought it was hilarious. Crap, her sense of humor was so weird.
“Gabby! I’m so glad you made it home after your night shift. And who’s…” She trailed off when she saw Percy.
I glanced at him to try to see what she saw. He wasn’t wearing a suit, just cool dark jeans and a drapey t-shirt that hung off his broad shoulders and clung to his pectorals. I blinked and refocused on my mom. “This is Percy. We’re going to make cupcakes.” I smiled brightly while my mom stared at him, then at me.
“You’re going to make cupcakes? You don’t bake, do you?”
“I can bake cupcakes,” I said, feeling my cheeks heat with a blush. Just because the last batch had burned, and the one before that was mostly raw dough, didn’t mean that I didn’t make good cupcakes. I shouldn’t have added so many frozen pineapples, but I wouldn’t make that mistake this time, and I wouldn’t sleep through the timer.
“I brought the ingredients,” Percy said, raising a bag I hadn’t noticed, but now that I did, I saw his hand, how strong and capable it looked, and his forearm, with slightly bulging veins as he gripped the flour and baking soda like a real man. What was I even thinking? He’d said that he wouldn’t be adorable, but now, him bringing cupcake ingredients was deadly, dangerously adorable.
“Come on, Percy. We’d better get started,” I said, grabbing his other hand and pulling him past my mom and towards the iron-grated door.
“It was nice to meet you, Mrs. Doe,” he said, raising the bag while he smiled at her, a nice smile that I’d never thought he was capable of producing, not in a million years, not for a million dollars, but there he was, smiling a genuine-seeming smile at my mom.
My heart ached weirdly as we went inside, my mom staring after us, looking delighted. “You two have fun. I’ll be here soaking in the sun. Bring me one of your lovely cupcakes when you’re finished,” she called after us.
After we got inside the dim hall, I dropped his hand and took a deep breath, trying to steady my heart.
“Weren’t you going to tell her about the scholarship?” he asked.
“What scholarship?” Earl asked, poking his head out of his office halfway down the hall. Right, he had regular hours in the middle of the day. My mother mostly took care of overflow and apparently night clients.
“Hey, Earl. I didn’t see you there. Yep. I got a scholarship to Gray College. Turns out I have some magical ability after all. Who knew?”
He snorted. “Well, even if you don’t do magic, it’s a good school for sure.” He didn’t believe I had magic. No, of course he didn’t, because he’d checked my magic on and off my whole life. He’d delivered me when I was a baby, so he knew me as well as anyone.
“Okay. My friend and I are going to make cupcakes.” Of all the stupid things to do in the middle of a working day. I should be sleeping and getting ready for my night shift, but a deal was a deal.
“Sure. Don’t make too much noise.” He gave Percy a pointed look and then disappeared back into his office.
I dragged Percy to the stairs, blushing so hard I felt like my head was going to explode. Baking cupcakes wasn’t a euphemism for whatever Earl thought we were going to do. I mean, I’d only had my first kiss a week ago, and it was with a gargoyle, so some kind of hot and heavy make-out session with an Adonis was completely out of the blue. Just like baking cupcakes. I shook my head and moved faster. The main thing was to get this over with as soon as possible.
Percy’s goal was not to get things over with as soon as possible. First, he had to explore my kitchen, then go through a dozen cupcake recipes with me that he’d looked up just so this would last longer. He had ingredients for all of them, including a molten chocolate thing that looked absolutely incredible.
He put on some music once we’d picked two kinds of cupcakes to try, because Percy couldn’t decide, and I’d said he could have both just to hurry him up, which made him smile that disturbingly sweet smile which made my heart pound and my face snarl. He kept slowing me down, making super nice suggestions that couldn’t be taken as corrections or orders, but were definitely him correcting me. I wasn’t going to argue about it, because he was being nice, and that had to be killing him when it was clear that I was not a cupcake diva as I may have led him to believe.
It took hours. The molten chocolate with bits of crunchy toffee sprinkled on top of the swirling bi-chocolate frosting was not the real time killer. It was the apple jam cupcakes, because we had to make the jam from scratch, with his excellent apples. And every time he turned around to get an ingredient, I’d find myself staring at his, um, well-clad posterior, and then he’d turn around and I’d have to awkwardly be staring at something else at that height, which made me realize how grimy the cupboard doors were. I needed to clean the tiny apartment until it sparkled as bright as Percy’s smile. He kept smiling at me, and handing things to me so politely, and helping me stir things, and adjusting temperatures if I didn’t mind him helping, and it was so creepy, and bewildering, and absolutely weird, that I was in a slightly hysterical head space when my mother poked her head in the front door.
She smiled sweetly, but her scarred face probably didn’t look sweet to Percy. I tensed up while Percy frowned in concentration at the swirls of jam he was topping the apple curls with. He had a sprinkling of flour on his pants, a dab of chocolate on his cheek, and a blob of frosting in his otherwise immaculate hair.
I had this overwhelming urge to lick the frosting out of his hair, which showed how utterly insane I was at that point. If Percy wanted to torture me with this procedure, he’d succeeded with interest.
“Oh, you really are baking cupcakes,” she said, surprised.
Kill me. Turn me to stone. Throw me to the demons and end the humiliation now.
“Yep.”
Percy straightened up and smiled at her that smile, the sweet one that was a dirty lie. “Would you like one? The chocolate ones are finished cooling, and the apple jam are close.”
“I’d love a cupcake.”
I said, “I have to eat one first to make sure Percy didn’t poison them while I wasn’t looking.” They both laughed like it was as ridiculous that he’d poison something, as that I wouldn’t have been watching him every blistering second of the last few hours. I had been. He was just so alien in my kitchen, and so gorgeous when he flipped his hair out of his face, or stirred batter, or stood there thinking about ingredients possibilities. Maybe it would be okay for me to wear clothing that highlighted some of my more positive attributes if I was going to be going to classes at Gray College with him. What was I thinking? I was myself and wasn’t going to change for anyone, besides which, I had a thing for a gargoyle. Anyway, we wouldn’t have the same classes. I was four years behind him, at least if his genius accelerated rate was any indication.
“We’re going to order Chinese food and watch Bride Wars, so you should stay,” my mother said brightly to Percival, which was a complete betrayal of me.
