Page 5 of Fake It ’Til You Mate It

Another shake of my head. “Don’t tease Gus.”

“Don’t keep your pet rat in the bakery where you can get fur in the croissants,” is her cheeky retort.

Ignoring the way she’s teasing by calling Gus a rat again, the reality is that I have to. I don’t really have a choice. Ever since Gus imprinted on my opossum, treating me like a member of his brood, I’ve been stuck with him. I was lucky I could convince him to wait at the apartment when I went to work at the grocery store. Now that I live over the bakery, there’s no way I can keep him from joining me downstairs.

Not that I would if I could. Roxy might know that I’m an opossum shifter, but I’d rather keep that to myself for the moment. That means, if my scent-dampener charm fails, I have the excuse of blaming Gus for the eau de possum aroma permeating the bakery beneath the scents of yeast, cinnamon, vanilla, and sugar.

Besides, that’s one of the best things about a shifter-run town. When you can never tell if an animal is a resident in their fur or their wild counterpart, who’s to say that I can’t keep an opossum in my bakery? There’s no health department in Moonburrow, and a little fur never hurt anyone—especially when the fur she’s picking out of her teeth could be her own.

I keep all of that to myself, though. My former frenemy might have grown up over the last decade, becoming someone that I can tolerate, but it’s better if I keep my own secrets.

So I just wave her off as she heads toward the front door, the still untouched cupcake in her hand, waiting for her to take a bite. “See ya.”

“Make almond croissants tomorrow!”

I don’t even dignify that with a response to the pastry thief. Instead, I grab another cupcake and my jar of sprinkles, replacing the one that Roxy snagged from the display.

She must have stopped at the door because it’s still shut as she calls out, “Oh, and Honey?”

I look up.

“I should tell you that your back door lock sucks. Anyone could have broken in, not just a talented raccoon.”

With that last remark, Roxy disappears out the front door before I can come up with a retort to that.

Next to me, Gus pointedly uses his paw to knock that mangled, chewed cupcake liner to the floor. He chitters, and I can’t help but interpret his regal complaint without, you know, actually speaking ‘opossum’ while I’m in my skin.

I boop his nose. “Don’t mind Roxy, bud. She’s always like that.”

CHAPTER 2

CAN’T RESIST CUPCAKES

What a waste of perfectly good treats…

It’s okay. I’ll get them from the trash later.

— gus

Every week, I try to make a new recipe from my grandmother’s book to give away as free samples. It was a way to introduce myself to the town while assuring Grandma Jean’s customers that I have just enough of her magic to run the shop while she’s overseas.

After Roxy’s unexpected visit this morning, I got a later start than usual. I didn’t even start searching for one that sounded interesting until after I sold out of the chocolate croissants that Roxy ‘taste-tested’, but when I saw that Grandma Jean named the recipe Can’t Resist Cupcakes, I knew that’s the one I wanted to try.

I don’t have as much magic as Grandma Jean, but most of her recipes don’t call for it apart from some unique herbs and powders that you wouldn’t normally find in pastries—but when I follow her recipes exactly, they come out pretty damn good, if I do say so myself.

The Can’t Resist Cupcakes have a lemon filling and strawberry buttercream frosting. I garnish them with some candied lemon slices and set them out on the free sample tray in between customers. Because I got slammed directly after, I didn’t even have a chance to try them myself before I was too busy, currently bagging up a loaf of rye bread for Mrs. Carlson, a sweet hedgehog shifter who was friends with my grandmother in between sending Gus to check that the batch of choux I was baking didn’t get burned.

I had at least five customers milling around the free sample table—including a wolf shifter who had my nerves twanging—when the first cupcake kicked in.

It was Sondra. A squirrel shifter with a high metabolism who works for the Moonburrow postal service, she brushes a chunk of soft grey hair out of her dark eyes and announces, “I hide acorns under my pillow in case I get hungry in the middle of the night. When Willie”—her rat shifter mate—“starts to snore, I drop them on top of his forehead until he stops.”

Um. Okay. Not something I was expecting her to share, but I get it. I’ve never slept in bed with anyone other than Gus, but if he ever started to snore, I might nudge him in the side until he stopped.

“I dye my fur,” blurts out the red-haired shifter that I’ve seen come into the shop once or twice. Her pointed face and coloring tells me she’s a fox. “I’ve always wanted to be a vibrant shade of orange and the drug store just outside of town sells it in a box.”

Her hands fly up to her face, cheeks pinkening.

My stomach drops. What the…