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Not unusual at all.
I pulled up to the back door of the hall some twenty minutes later with one wolf cake latched securely in my passenger seat. My stomach churned as I hopped out of the car—less than a minute. That’s all the time I needed to spend there. I couldn’t possibly run into Magnus in under a minute. Not even if I wanted to.
And I sort of wanted to.
I missed him.
I was also apparently a glutton for punishment.
“Drop off the cake and go home. Less than a minute.” I practically chanted to myself as I grabbed the cake and headed for the kitchen entrance. The cake was heavy, though, and so was the door. I had to kick the metal surface in the hopes that Misty was waiting for me on the other side. It swung open a second later, and I hurried through, utterly focused on hanging on to the blasted cake until I made it to the prep counter twenty feet away.
“Thank god you’re here,” I said once I was fully in the kitchen space. “Let me just set this down so we can look at it, then I’m heading home. I want to get out of this place before anyone sees me.”
“But you look so pretty in your kitchen whites, Coco.”
I stumbled, nearly dropping the cake as I spun to face the person who’d opened the door. Who wasn’t Misty. Who was the last shifter I wanted to see…ever.
“Nico.”
His lips quirked into a cocky sort of grin as if he thought the breathy way I said his name had something to do with wanting him. It didn’t—the cake was really fricking heavy. I set the behemoth down on the counter and looked around, hoping Misty would appear from thin air. Or that the floor would open up and swallow me whole. Or for a horde of zombies to come racing in to distract the shifter.
No such luck.
“So this is the groom’s cake.” Nico sidled closer. “Did you make it?”
“Madeleine handles the cakes.” Not that I should have to tell him that—he’d heard me talk about the bakery enough to know how our business worked. Not that he’d spent any time there. In fact, Magnus had spent more time in the kitchen in two days than Nico had in months. A heart-stopper of a realization and one that only pushed me to want this over with and fast.
I opened the box and stepped back, still proud of what my sisters had accomplished with the cake even if the man looking was one I had no interest in interacting with. “Madeleine created this per Fiona’s request. I hope it’s to your satisfaction.”
He hummed, barely sparing a glance for the cake my sister had probably put fifteen hours into. “Well, I was hoping you’d handle everything. For me.”
He stabbed me with a look and the sort of smile that had once made my knees weak. Not anymore, though. My feelings for him had long been sitting in the negative column of my mind, and today was no different. I wasn’t feeling nostalgic or missing him—I was over it.
The person I was missing was his dad.
“Well…” No words for him or that ridiculous statement. None. “I should get going.” I turned and headed for the door. For my escape. “Misty’s here and will handle the cake presentation. Congratulations and thank you for using Cake-ily Ever After. If there’s anything else you need—”
“I need to know why you chased after my dad.”
Ice water. It pumped through my veins. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me.” He came up behind me, grabbing my arms and tugging me against his chest. “You miss me that much that you have to go sniffing around the old folks’ home?”
I jerked away, that ice water turning to fire in a heartbeat. “Magnus is not old, and I didn’t know he was your father when I met him.”
“But he is, and it’s weird. So how about you just stay the hell away from him, yeah? Not that he’d give you the time of day after I told him all about us.”
Oh. Oh no. “You…told him.”
Nico shrugged. “He asked about us, so I gave him the full story. How we met, the dates we’d been on, how you liked it when I would bite your nipples while you rode my cock.”
Dead. I was dead. As was any chance at reconciling with Magnus. Ever. “That’s… Why would you do that?”
Misty rushed through the swinging doors at the far end of the kitchen, looking panicked. At least, until she spotted Nico—then she looked pissed. “Shouldn’t you be rehearsing with your mate or something?”
He leaned closer, lowering his voice as he said, “I never was one to share my toys, Coco. And no man likes sloppy seconds.”
Misty jumped between us, looking positively fierce in her anger. “Oh, hell no, you don’t.”
