“Rival sex shops.” He wroteSLATTERNS ‘R’ USon the side of the box with a Sharpie, then taped the order form to the top. “Across the street from each other. Owners need to have sex already and get that shit over with.”
“You...” Processing that information took her a minute. “You’re telling me a town this size supports not one, buttwoadult stores?”
His thick shoulders lifted in a shrug. “Harlot’s Bay, Dearborn. Thirstiest motherfuckers on the planet.”
Dumbfounded, she watched him heft the heavy box with easeand carefully slide it beside the others on the custom-order rack located just inside the door. “And the owners of those adult stores sublimate their sexual frustration through insults written on beautiful custom cakes?”
“Yep. Probably get a retaliatory order tomorrow. Has to be eating into their profits by now.” Another shrug. “Helping mine, though.”
Another pair of gloves landed in the trash, as did his latest beard net. After washing his hands, he took a moment to study her attempted cookie artistry.
“Nice blood spatter.” He indicated a stray red splotch. “Never would’ve thought of decapitating a maple leaf. Creative.”
He sounded entirely sincere, bizarrely enough.
Instead of basking in the warmth of his gruff approval, she forced herself to scowl at him. “That’s not a headless leaf. It’s a seasonal swirl of autumnal wind.”
“Looks like murdered foliage to me, Dearborn. I like it.” He leaned in closer. “Not as much as yesterday’s weird dick-cone, though. Should market that design to Dildos, Vibrators, and Clamps, Oh My. Resembled one of their toys.”
She gasped in outrage. “It was a cornucopia!”
“Sure,” he said, then straightened and nudged her through the doorway to the bakery’s public area. “Whatever you say, Dearborn.”
Fifteen minutes later, she was sitting across from Lise in one of the bakery’s three booths and sipping on Karl’s latest creation: a lavender–white chocolate latte, with a small, pristine cornucopiaon top. Which, yes, looked significantly less like a penis than yesterday’s sacrificial cookie, not that she’d ever tell him so.
Apparently he and Charlotte had collaborated on the custom flavor, although the art was all his. Both were utterly glorious and utterly confounding. Karl had spent the entire week making fun of her “bougie-as-hell, sugary-ass” drink orders, and yet he kept coming up with new recipes especially suited to her preferences and making ever-more-elaborate art on top of his beverage offerings. The man was a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside a beard net.
And what his agile hands could accomplish with only some foam and a toothpick didn’t bear thinking about. Give him different tools—something from Dildos, Vibrators, and Clamps, Oh My, for example—and heaven only knew what he could do. To her. Or to himself while she watched. At this point, she wasn’t picky.
“What sandwich is that?” Lise poked at the bread, and Molly smacked her hand away. “I’ve eaten everything on this place’s menu, and I don’t remember anything with watercress.”
“It’s not a menu item.” Each day that week, around lunchtime—without her asking for anything or even hinting—Karl had presented her with a one-of-a-kind sandwich to go with her one-of-a-kind latte, grumbling the entire time. And as the days went by and he learned what she most liked, his creations had only gotten more and more incredible. “Roast-beef panini, on marble rye with a horseradish-Dijon mayo, horseradish-chive Havarti, red onion slivers, and watercress.”
After a few minutes in the bakery’s panini press, the bread turned thin and crispy, the cheese had begun oozing deliciously out the sides, and she would have married that enormous damn sandwich if given the opportunity.
She wasn’t sure whether all Karl’s time and effort and thoughtfulness had made her trust him more, but it was definitely making her want to bang him more. Turned out, she was kind of a slut for personalized sandwiches and lattes.
Molly’s friend sighed. “It looks amazing. I love rare roast beef.”
Lise—all huge dark eyes and pleading eyelash flutters—gazed at the sandwich like a long-lost lover. Molly wasn’t a monster, so she deposited half of it on her companion’s plate.
Lise clapped her hands together in glee. “Thank you!”
As her friend dove face first into the newly acquired half sandwich, Molly took a moment to survey the lunchtime crowd packed into the modestly sized bakery. There appeared to be even more customers than the day before, which was something of a trend—and also not a coincidence. According to both Lise and Athena, Harlot’s Bay residents were coming by to confirm wild rumors of Karl Dean voluntarily letting someone who wasn’t a Grounds and Grains employee into his back room. Nay,encouragingthat civilian to enter the sanctified, profanity-packed domain, his Fortress of Furious Fucking Solitude.
Zoo animals could probably relate to the sort of endless, delighted scrutiny she was receiving. And if she was a panda chewing on her chosen stalk of bamboo for curious, benevolent crowds, Karl was definitely the cryptid in their midst. Rarely spotted. Potentially dangerous. Able to communicate only in grunts and guttural brevity. Best observed from a respectful, cautious distance. A creature of mystery, whose strange ways fascinated other denizens of his native habitat.
He was basically a Sadie Brazen hero, albeit one with only a single penis. She assumed.
“Maybe Hector finally worked up his nerve,” Lise murmured, her gaze directed at the cash register, where Charlotte was ringing up a familiar customer. “Cross your fingers.”
Hector, if Molly remembered correctly, was one of Matthew’s nurse practitioners. A twentysomething Black man with short twists in his hair, round, wire-rimmed glasses, and a startlingly sweet, shy smile he’d directed at Charlotte every day that week.
If today’s lunch resembled the others, he’d buy a muffin of some sort from Charlotte. Then he’d sit down at a table by himself and eat that muffin alongside his takeout poke bowl—all while his phone rested in his free hand, screen lit and open to whatever book he was reading. Before leaving, he’d find a less busy moment to come up to the counter again, place a tip in the jar, and awkwardly strike up another conversation.
Molly recognized a nerd when she saw one. She also recognized a man smitten. “Does she like him back?”
“I think so, but it’s hard to know. Given her history, Charlotte’s more cautious than most.” In the brief silence, both she and Molly studied the couple as they bent toward each other on opposite sides of the counter. “If the town scuttlebutt is true, her kids absolutely love Hector. Supposedly, they insist on seeing him every time they visit the doctor’s office.”
