“You’re welcome.”
A kid ran up asking for a picture and Link waved and turned away.
Reese looked down at the map on her phone, determining which way to walk and headed west, before cutting uptown at a brisk pace. In order to book a hotel room for the night, she would have to dip into what she called her Victory Fund. The bank account she and her mother added to occasionally, in case her dreams came true and she needed to move to New York on a dime. There wasn’t much saved, about enough to sublet a room for maybe a couple weeks before she started earning a paycheck.
But before she committed to that, she needed a miracle—and his name was Leo.
Chapter 3
Leo leaned an ear toward the swinging door separating the Cookie Jar’s main floor from the back room where he did all of baking. It was creeping up on dinnertime, which usually led to a lull in customers, during which he would finally emerge from the back. At the moment, he could still hear unfamiliar voices, so he went back to piping white icing onto a red velvet cake, a deep groove of concentration between his brows.
Interacting with customers didn’t scare him or make him nervous. At twenty-eight, Leo just wasn’t one for small talk, especially since his tendency to let silences linger seemed to make people feel awkward. Why say something unless it was important or needed to be said?
Are you allergic to tree nuts?
Do you prefer milk chocolate or dark?
Those were pertinent questions.
Talking about the weather or politics didn’t make a lot of sense to him when an acquaintance had been made for the sole purpose of consuming calories, so he tended to do a ton of sighing while people peddled extra fast to be polite.
A lot of time that nervous chattering led customers to the inevitable question. Do you sample everything you make? And then they would look twice at Leo and realize what a ridiculous question that was, their faces turning the color of the red velvet cake. Of course he sampled everything. It showed—and then some—on his six-foot-three frame.
By staying in the back, Leo figured, he was saving everyone a lot of trouble. His confections did all the communicating. And if his customers wanted a conversation to go along with their coffee and cake, Jackie and Tad more than made up for Leo’s lack of verbal skills. Their voices were filtered through the door now, muffled, unmistakably cheerful. They’d said more words in the last five minutes than Leo had uttered in the last five weeks and never seemed to get exhausted. They were probably robots masquerading as humans, but they were a huge part of the reason customers returned to the Cookie Jar. Leo was smart enough to know he wouldn’t be half as successful without them.
Hoping to drown out the background noise and finish the piping before heading home, Leo started to pop in one of his earbuds, Nick Cave’s low rasp reaching out—
But he paused when he heard the tinkling of the bell out on the bakery floor and Jackie’s called greeting…followed by a voice that brought his head up, the piping bag lowering to the metal decorating table. Her tone was pleasantly accented, husky, smooth and feminine. Like a mixture of warm butter and cinnamon. Leo’s interactions with customers might be limited, but he was positive he’d never heard it before.
“Hello!” Jackie called. “What brings you to the Cookie Jar? Looking for a snack?”
“Well if I wasn’t,” murmured the voice, “the smell in here would have changed my mind. Do you sell this in a perfume?”
Jackie laughed. “Yes, but the trick is you have to walk through the doors to put it on. Once you leave, it’ll cling for about an hour. Unless you’re me and you work here eight hours a day. I can’t get the smell off with a scrub brush.”
A bright laugh. “Lucky you. Oh my God, everything looks amazing. Is that peppermint bark? After Christmas? You are doing the lord’s work.”
“I just sell the stuff. Leo makes it.”
There was a short pause. “Oh, is he…the head baker or…?”
If there was ever an opening to pop his head through the swinging door and get a look at the girl who owned that interesting voice, now was the time. Normally he couldn’t be remotely tempted to leave his baking haven in the back to do a meet and greet with a stranger.
Which is probably why Jackie said, “Actually, he’s the owner. Comes in early to bake everything, then skedaddles.”
“Ah.”
Leo set down his piping bag slowly, wiping his floury hands down the front of his white apron. Was he considering going out to the front? For a girl? That behavior didn’t track. He hadn’t asked anyone on a date since culinary school, for a lot of the same reasons he stayed in the back of the bakery. He didn’t know how to be entertaining. Or romantic. His associations with women now were more casual. Although he couldn’t remember the last time he’d associated with someone. Maybe before Thanksgiving?
Last summer, on a particularly slow day at the Cookie Jar, Jackie and Tad had set him up a dating profile—Leo, baker, 28, UWS—and convinced him to meet a few women for dinner. On each one of the dates, he’d done a lot of listening, trying to keep up with the breakneck subject changes. And a lot of eating. Not a lot of connecting, though. And Jackie assured him, over and over again, that connecting was the end game. Not simply getting a look at the restaurant’s dessert tray.
Bottom line, Leo was content to be alone with his ingredients. To avoid that look women gave him when the conversation ran out that said, what else you got? He understood there was a certain gratitude that was expected when a woman went out with him, considering he tested the seams of every dress shirt he owned and grunted as a form of communication, so he always asked them out again. Some of them even said yes, but he’d yet to find someone he could relax around. He’d been more than happy to give up on the endeavor.
“Actually,” Jackie said on the other side of the door. “You’re just in time to help me and Tad out with something.”
“I’m Tad. Hey.”
“And I’m Jackie. Double hey.”
“Hey.” The Voice came closer. “What are you working on?”
“We’re brainstorming an idea for Valentine’s Day.”
“We could use an outside perspective,” Tad added. “You definitely fit the demo.”
“Do I?”
“In a roundabout way, yes,” Jack said. “Generally speaking, men are our main customer on Valentine’s Day. Buying something for their girlfriends. Usually chocolates.”
“Ahh…so you’re wondering what I’d like to receive? As a gift?”
“Bingo.”
Leo frowned at the door. How ridiculous that he didn’t like the idea of her having a boyfriend. The idiot probably wouldn’t know what the hell to pick out of the display case. Honestly, he didn’t want to hear her start a sentence with the words, “My boyfriend…”
So he cracked his neck once and pushed open the door, stepping out into the open.
“Leo!” Jackie exclaimed, with an edge to her tone, probably since she’d covered for him and then he turned her into a liar. But his employee’s subtle admonishment faded out like the final note of a song when he spotted the owner of The Voice.