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Chapter One
December 1st…24 Days Until Christmas
“Be honest, you at least spit in the frosting, right?”
Jessica Connolly placed the bride-and-groom topper on the white-and-silver, tastefully Christmas-themed, three-layer cake and stood back to admire her work. “The only joy in all of this is that they will never know.” She winked at her best friend Whitney as she carefully boxed up the forty-hour labor of love.
Later that day, her beautiful creation would be enjoyed at ex-boyfriend number three’s wedding. Three weddings in the same year for three guys she’d had relationships with. Unbelievable.
“No one would blame you if you did.” Sitting at the counter of Jessica’s bakery, Delicious Delicacies, her not-so-recently engaged friend flipped through the book of wedding cake designs that she’d looked at a dozen times already. Her beautifully manicured, candy cane-themed nails flicked the pages so fast it was a wonder she could actually see the choices. Whitney shook her head. “I can’t believe these guys, asking you to do this.”
“To be fair, I’m the onlyrealbakery in town. And besides, John, Cameron, and Dallas are great guys. They just weren’t the right guys for me,” Jessica said, repeating her mantra. She could put on a brave face, but this was getting exhausting.
Three brides in the last year. None of them her.
And worse, there wasn’t anyone in her small hometown of Blue Moon Bay that she wanted to date that she hadn’t already. At almost thirty, she’d been hoping to design her own wedding cake soon.
“The funny thing is,” Whitney said, “they all found ‘the one’ after they ended things with you.”
“Thanks for pointing that out, Whit.”
Her friend’s laugh was apologetic. “Sorry. I’m just saying, you’re like a good luck charm for these guys. Wasn’t there a movie like that?”
“Believe me, if this was a movie, I’d have your legs and Sarah’s butt.”
Whitney paused her page-flipping, her expression contemplative as she tilted her head to the side.
Did they have a winner? Excitedly, Jessica leaned over the counter to see which design had caught her friend’s attention. Her heart stopped. It was the three-tier cascade wedding cake, white with lavender accents and sugar work doves adorning the top. Jessica’s favorite. The cake she’d always wanted for her own wedding…if it ever happened.
Please don’t select that one.
If her best friend wanted it, there was no way Jessica could deny her from having it. She held her breath, waiting…
It’s only a cake. No big deal. She could design a new one for herself. Nothing would be as pretty as this one, but…
A second later, Whitney resumed flipping.
Oh thank God.
Letting out a breath of relief, Jessica tagged the box with the couple’s names and then struggled to carry it to the freezer without dropping the fifty-two-pound cake. “Can you grab the door?”
Whitney hurried to open the walk-in freezer and shivered as a blast of cold air escaped. “I think you should charge them more, at least,” she said, pointing to the price tag on the box. “The ingredients alone cost more than this.”
Jessica removed the price tag and avoided her friend’s gaze as she said, “Actually, the cake is my wedding present to them.” She set the box inside on a shelf and closed the door.
“Wait. You’re going to this wedding?”
“I was invited.” Watching her ex proclaim his everlasting love to someone else may be challenging, but she was secretly hoping there might be a single guy at the wedding that could help ease the sting a little. John’s fiancée, Emily, was from out of town and she had six siblings. She was gorgeous, and good looks had to run in the family, right?
Whitney’s disapproval was written all over her face. “Can I talk you out of it?”
“Nope.” The truth was, Jessica was infatuated with weddings. She’d even been known to crash a few, but she always brought cookies or something—she wasn’t a total creep. She just couldn’t walk past a beautiful beach ceremony or a wedding reception in the park without stopping to say congratulations to the bride and groom. She’d been that way since she was four years old, wearing lace doilies on her head as a veil while she forced the kid next door to “marry” her.
“Are you going?” she asked Whitney.
She checked her watch, avoiding Jessica’s frown. “I have to work. Which I should get to now. Trent will be there, though.” She gave Jessica a quick hug. “Enjoy!” she called behind her as she made her exit—which seemed suspiciously more like an escape—from the bakery.
She watched her best friend climb into her banana-yellow Miata convertible, crank the music, put on her oversize sunglasses, and drive off. Jessica sighed, unable to shake the nagging feeling that Whitney wasn’t completely sold on this whole marriage thing that Jessica would do just about anything to have.
