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Where the hell were they all coming from? Hadn’t she served everyone within a five-mile radius by now? She’d expected her business to be slow because of the wedding stunt.
“Anyone here?”
“No, I just leave my bakery unattended…hope the Keebler elves sneak in to do all the baking at night,” she muttered, pushing through the screen door that led to the front of the bakery. “How may I help—” She stopped and her jaw dropped. “Mitch Jameson?”
He hadn’t changed at all in the years since she’d last seen him. If anything, he’d gotten hotter.
Or maybe, as a teenager, she just hadn’t noticed Lia’s older brother in that way.
She sure as hell was noticing him in that way now.
Tall, thin in anI have muscles under this shirt but I’m not a gym junkieway, and handsome in the traditional dark hair, dark eyes stereotype, he was definitely the best-looking disturbance so far that day. Or any day in recent memory.
“I’m sorry…you’re…” He glanced at the stack of business cards on the counter. “Jessica?”
She didn’t take offense to him not recognizing her—she’d been a chubby kid, a teenage friend of his sister’s the last time he’d seen her, and he’d already been completing his medical degree. They may have said ten words to each other the entire time she’d hung out with Lia. “Yes,” she said. “Hi… It’s just Jess.”
His dimpled smile and dark-rimmed glasses seemed to contradict each other. Like when Adam Levine tried to downplay his hotness by wearing glasses, the “hot geek” look was definitely working for this guy. She rubbed at her chest beneath beneath her shirt. It was really hot in here.
“Hey, do you think I could borrow a small towel…or napkin?” He removed his glasses and ran a hand over his face, and rain dripped from his dark hair. Shorter around the back and sides, longer in the front. It looked soft and thick, the kind of hair that her hands could run through forever. “A paper bag, even?”
“Oh, yes.” She had to quit gawking. It wasn’t as though she’d never seen an attractive guy before. She reached for a clean dishtowel in the drawer and handed it to him. “Here you go.”
“Thank you,” he said, wiping his face and exposed neck in his open-collared blue dress shirt.
He wasn’t dressed for the weather…or for Blue Moon Bay at all, really. In dark, charcoal dress pants and shiny leather shoes, he stuck out among the board-short-wearing crowd of the coast. Even in the rain, the humidity would have made what he was wearing look uncomfortable on anyone else, but Mitch looked cool and relaxed, as though the rolled-up sleeves were the only casualness he needed.
“I was sent to pick up an order for my mom,” he said, looking around.
Her eyes widened. “The Jameson Nightmare Christmas order? That doesn’t need to be ready for another week and a half.” The family always placed a massive Christmas order for their holiday entertaining. Usually, Jessica had until the twentieth, but that year they were celebrating early with Lia, reducing her deadline.
“You have a name for it?”
Oops, had she said it out loud? “Yes?” She winced. “Sorry, no offense, it’s just a really big order and… It’s just that I haven’t actually started it yet this year.” She might regret admitting that, but he had a trustworthy face. And if he was there to pick it up early, he was going to be leaving empty-handed, so she may as well be honest.
“Well, you’re off the hook for now,” he said. “Today, there was just some cookies and cupcakes…”
She released a sigh of relief. “Right.Thatorder is almost ready. Just waiting on the oatmeal raisin cookies.”
“I’m surprised you continue to take on the…what did you call it? Nightmare Christmas order every year,” he said with amusement. “With all the dietary restrictions I’m sure you’re trying to accommodate, you may as well just tell us to serve gluten-free rice cakes and fuck off.”
“Right?” He really got it, and she liked him immediately. “So, Lia says you’re working with Doctors Without Borders now.” Good-lookingandcharitable, an incredibly tempting combination.
He nodded, but his expression darkened slightly. “Just back from Cambodia—wonderful country, amazing people. The scenery was breathtaking.”
Hewas a little breathtaking. “Yeah.”
“You’ve been?” Interest showed on his features, and the temptation to lie was strong. Compared to his life, hers would sound so boring.Shemight be boring. Just a small-town baker who had never been farther out into the world than L.A.
“No, I’ve never been,” she said, just as the timer on her oven went off. Another cake that would need icing within the hour. “Excuse me for just a sec.”
“Take your time.” He climbed up onto one of the counter stools. “Can I grab one of these muffins?”
“Help yourself to anything you want,” she said, then feeling herself blush, she added, “In the display case, I mean.”
Or otherwise.
Pushing through the kitchen door, she released a deep breath. Damn, what the hell was happening to her? She donned her oven mitts and opened the top oven, then retrieved the chocolate cake and set it on the cooling rack, before resetting the oven’s temperature and sliding in a tray of oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. After that day’s traffic, her display case was practically empty. Luckily the muffins in the bottom oven were almost done.
