“It’s not what you think,” he said, dropping the clothes and holding his hands out in front of him as if to stop a car crash. A pair of black lace underwear topped the pile. Her mind struggled to reconcile the scene before her with what she’d expected to find moments ago.
Then it hit Lou like an ice cream headache, cold and blinding. Lou dropped everything. Coffee splattered over the opened apartment door, dry-cleaning plastic slithered off her arm, the cake box broke apart as it hit the wood floor, splattering the frosted cake, soaking up the coffee, and staining the freshly laundered clothes with butter fat. Steaming coffee melted her beautiful coconut cake into slush.
Her heart lay in there somewhere, too, leaving an empty, lonely chasm in her chest. Lou closed her mouth to keep from being sick and took a step away from the open door and into the hallway, eyes still on Devlin. At last, she turned and rushed down the stairs and out of the building, bumping into a passerby as she reached the sidewalk.
“Sorry,” she mumbled, and disappeared down the street.
• • • • •
Al staggered back as a brown-haired blur bumped into him. It was the coconut cake girl again. Al watched Miss Coconut Cake rush down the street, the frosting smeared on the toe of her shoe leaving smudges on the pavement. The pain on her face left smudges on him. He had the urge to follow her, make her smile at him like she had in line at the newsstand. A gust of cold spring wind whooshed down the narrow street, shoving him in her direction. He followed the frosting trail down the sidewalk. When he reached the corner, it disappeared into a busy throng of people rushing to work, with no sign of the cakeless Miss Coconut Cake.
Al shrugged and turned down the street, faintly let down at having lost sight of her. Probably for the best, he thought—he didn’t plan to be in Milwaukee very long.
• CHAPTER THREE •
Hey, Harley, has Lou called?” Sue asked. “I thought she’d be back by now to open.” Now past noon, Harley had started baking bread and making the night’s desserts while Sue worked on prep.
“Nope.”
“I’m calling her cell—she’s never been this late. I don’t care what she’s giving that ass for his birthday.”
“Okay.”
“I’m telling her you ate half the cake.”
“Fine, I’m worried. Happy?”
Harley and Sue looked up as they heard the back door shut. Lou wafted in. Her hair looked windblown even though it wasn’t windy, her coat hung open, and her face was as chalky as the chef jacket she reached for. She missed it four times before lifting it off the hook.
“What did he do?” Sue rushed from behind the prep counter. Lou dragged her face up to look at Sue, but her eyes were fixed on the kitchen behind her.
“I dropped the cake,” Lou said.
“Ooooh, that sucks. Was he pissed? Harley will help you make another. Right, Harley?”
Harley grumbled a yes.
“There won’t be any more cake.”
“What did that jackhole say to you?” Sue asked.
Lou gave her head a little shake but couldn’t quite get the lost look out of her eyes. “It’s over. I don’t want to talk about it. Where are we on prep?”
Harley walked from the pastry station and—without a word—engulfed Lou in his bare, tattooed arms. Once inside those sugar-coated pythons, Lou soaked Harley’s T-shirt.
“I’ll put her in the Lair. We’re on our own tonight,” Harley said, walking Lou toward the office door at the rear of the kitchen. Inside, recipes, pictures, and scribbled menu ideas hung from every surface; a mountain of paper covered the desk; and stacks of cookbooks, files, and supplies filled most of the spare floor space. A small cot sat in one corner and an open door led to a bathroom complete with shower. When the restaurant first opened, Lou had spent hours alone in there, only to emerge with a gleam in her eye and a new idea for the restaurant. Sue called Lou an evil genius, hatching plots in her Volcano Lair. Now everyone just called it the Lair. As they entered the room, the phone began to ring. Sue shoved a stack of paper onto the floor to reveal the caller ID. She looked into Harley’s face and picked up the phone.
“If you ever bother her again, I will slice your bits off and serve it for the daily special.” She slammed the phone down.
“Too nice,” Harley said.
Lou took a deep, shuddering breath and unwrapped herself from Harley’s arms. She looked around at the clutter and shook her head.
“Thanks, but I can’t stay in here. I need to work. If I sit still, I’ll think too much.” Lou yanked off her chunk of an engagement ring and tossed it on her desk, then walked past Harley and Sue, entirely missing the concerned look they exchanged.
• • • • •
Eleven a.m. and Al arrived at work, hustling through the newspaper’s cubicle farm, passing faces he recognized with names he didn’t try to remember. When he reached his desk, his cube neighbor already sat at his desk, adjacent to Al’s.
“What’s up with this cooler-near-the-lake bollocks?” Al asked.
“Bit nippy this morning?” said John. John wrote the style pages for the paper, but Al thought his appearance left something to be desired. His stoner-meets-mountain-man brown hair and beard made it difficult to discern facial structure and looked as if they hadn’t seen water in a good month. John mentioned once he hoped to attract a girl who found facial hair sexy; a girl like that might be into some kinky stuff. He said there were websites.
Today, John wore a heavily wrinkled button-down shirt with a front pocket where he kept two pens (green and purple), wrinkly khakis, and red Converse All Stars. Al saw a little chest hair poking out the top of his shirt.
“Bloody frigid. What’s with the hair?” Al gestured at John’s neckline.
“I stopped manscaping.”
“They’re called T-shirts, mate.”
“No, the ladies love the chest hair. There are websites devoted to it.”
“Have you ever actually Googled any of those topics you mention, or are you all talk?”
“Not on work computers.”
During the four months Al had worked at the newspaper, he’d been unable to reconcile his colleague’s desk with his appearance. John’s bookshelf had all the current fashion magazines neatly filed alphabetically. He separated his bulletin board into quadrants, each with a theme containing swatches, pictures, and street photos. A sleek copper lamp with a pale green silk lampshade stood on his desk and a chocolate-brown cashmere throw was draped from his chair. Neat stacks of boxes under his desk contained shoes and clothing samples from local stores.
Al swiveled around and pushed the power button on his computer. As it whirred to life, he set out the stiff note card with the address and hours for Luella’s. His desk was gray and dull. The only clues to the owner’s personality were several books on food and criticism residing on the shelf. He tried to keep a low profile given his secret identity, and a spare cube discouraged coworkers from extraneous conversations—though nothing seemed to deter the nearest one.
“Wanna grab a drink after work?” asked John.
“I’ve a restaurant to review, sorry.”
“Which one?”
“Luella’s.”
“Can I come?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“ ’Cause you’ve a big mouth.”
“Some girls like that.”
Al rolled his eyes and turned to his computer. John smiled behind his back. The screen finally displayed all the correct icons and had ceased its noise, so Al opened a blank document and started typing tonight’s review, reveling in his scathing wordplay. He would fill in the details later, after he’d dined at the restaurant a few times to experience a variety of dishes and servers.