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“What’s that?” Mav asked.
“Aren’t you supposed to be quiet in my kitchen?” I teased him. “Salted caramel frosting.”
“Oh, man. It’s a good thing you’re not interested in dating. If I married you, I’d be three hundred pounds by Christmas.”
I laughed and carefully iced the first cupcake. “That is the problem with marrying a baker. Problem is, I’m not the best at actually cooking, so all I’d have to offer is pies, pastries, and cakes.”
“I don’t see a problem there.” He grinned and walked over to join me. “You can reconsider not dating, you know. I can’t bake for shit but I’m a great cook.”
“Hmm. Get me drunk and I might just do that.”
Mav laughed. “You’re good at that.”
“What? Getting drunk?”
“The icing.”
“Oh, right.” Of course. That’s what I was doing. “I would hope so, I’ve iced thousands of cupcakes in my time.” I paused and looked over at him. “Do you want to try?”
“Try icing one of these?”
“Sure. You said yourself that firsthand research is the best.” I held out the piping bag.
Maverick looked at it like it was going to blow up if he touched it. “I’m not sure.”
“You’re icing, not baking. If it goes wrong, it goes wrong. Give it a shot.”
“All right…” He took the bag warily, and I put a single cupcake in front of him, then grabbed another bag.
I put a little icing inside it and said, “Here, watch me carefully.” I took my time icing it and talked him through the technique to get a perfect swirl on the top. “Got it?”
“Not at all,” he said slowly. “I’ll try, though.”
I grinned as he leaned forward and squeezed the bag. A huge dollop of frosting splurged out of the end, and I burst out laughing at the high-pitched noise of shock that escaped him.
“Shut up,” he muttered. “It comes out easier than I thought.”
The teenager in me so badly wanted to reply, “That’s what she said,” but I bit back the urge and stayed quiet as he tried again, this time gently squeezing the frosting onto a side plate until he got the hang of it.
Maybe I should have given him a basic buttercream.
“All right, if you can’t make it, don’t waste it.”
“Calm down, calm down.” He leaned forward until he was right in front of the cake and raised the tip of the bag to his starting point. Slowly, he squeezed, gently covering the top of the cupcake in the frosting, but he went too fast for the finish and ended up with a point that was almost two inches high. “Oh.”
It was obviously too much as the frosting flopped to one side and slid right off the cake, splatting all over the counter.
“Oh,” he repeated. “That didn’t go well.”
“Never mind.” Laughing, I took back the main piping bag, then quickly re-iced the cupcake before handing it to him. “There are boxes on the shelf if you want to take it home with you.”
“Here?”
“Next shelf up.”
Maverick took down a single cupcake box and built it, then put the cake in the box.
I met his gaze. “That’ll be two dollars.”
He blinked at me.
I laughed. “Kidding. Don’t look so alarmed.”
Shaking his head, he sat back down at the table. “I get whiplash in this town.”
“Ah, it could be worse. At least your harem of fangirls don’t know where you are.” I tossed a smile over my shoulder. He’d told me the night we met that it was nice to be somewhere where he wasn’t recognized—one of his latest books had blown up overnight, one was being optioned for a movie, and he’d become a heartthrob for book lovers everywhere.
By his own admission he wasn’t against such a portrayal, but apparently his partying had gotten out of control and he was showing up in the media pages, he realized he needed to calm down.
After he’d left a trail of broken hearts, of course.
And that was the reason I wouldn’t and couldn’t date him. I was in no hurry to join that long list of women who’d fallen for Maverick Donovan.
“Don’t. Saylor took a photo of me working in the store and wanted to post it on the bookstore’s Instagram, but Holley managed to talk her out of it until I can move.” He shook his head. “I appreciate the support, but I do miss the anonymity a little bit.”
“Oh, yeah, being a superstar author with the whole world loving your work must be horrible.”
“Well, for every person who loves it there’s someone who despises it, so it’s not all sunshine and rainbows.”
“How horrible. I bet you cry into your large piles of money when someone leaves you a one-star review.”
“I wipe my eyes with one-hundred-dollar bills.”
“Poor Benjamin Franklin. He didn’t ask to be your tissues.”
Maverick laughed, leaning forward as I came over and checked the bread mixes. They were done, so I turned off the mixers and covered the bowls so the dough could rise overnight.
