Cupcake Club 04 - Honey Pie (15 page)

He found himself chuckling. “I'm finding it harder and harder to believe you're tellin' me the truth about those broken hearts.”

“Oh, that part is true enough.”

Just don't break mine, sugar,
he thought, then shifted uncomfortably because it had even entered his mind.

“Where are we going?”

Dylan tightened his grip on the wheel, keeping his eyes on the road. Superman or utter fool, he supposed he was going to find out. “To look at your new shop space.”

T
hat was pretty much the last thing she'd have ever expected him to say. “My . . . what? I already told you my farm hasn't sold, so I don't have the money for a lease.”

“What about the lease payments on your aunt's place? That's rightfully your income now, isn't it? Wouldn't that cover all this?”

“Yes, well, that's the other thing I looked into today. Turns out Lani and Baxter paid the full five years up front with some cookbook advance they got. They didn't even do anything with the place for the first year, but Lani knew she wanted to expand when the time came, so when Bea put it up for rent, she jumped on it.” Honey waved a dismissive hand. “Anyway, it's all moot. The lease payment went to the management company Bea had hired, as it should have, who deposited it into the account they'd set up for her, as they were supposed to do. That money, along with her savings, took care of her senior care living expenses and medical bills. Anything left over and her life insurance paid for her funeral and any outstanding bills. I am just thankful the Dunnes paid what they did, when they did, because if not, I'd be responsible for that debt, too.”

“At least everything was handled properly. But wouldn't your aunt have known then that her property wasn't available for occupancy when she left it to you?”

Honey sighed. “To be honest, I'm not sure what her thoughts were or how sound. That she kept so much from me, which was really uncharacteristic of her, has me wondering just what her state of mind was. I think the stroke did more damage than she knew. It was certainly more than she allowed me to know.”

“You were in contact with her?”

“Oh, all the time. I wanted to come out here, spend time with her, help after the stroke, but she wouldn't hear of it. She knew that flying would have been a nightmare for me, putting myself on a plane with so many people.” Honey still shivered a little just imagining the horror show that would have been. “She led me to believe she was doing really well, that with physical therapy she'd recovered most of her abilities, and was doing far better than expected. I should have known when she wouldn't Skype with me that something more was up.”

“Wouldn't . . . what?”

Honey laughed. “We used to chat via our computer monitors so we could see each other while we talked. It was as close to being together as we could get. Only she stopped doing that after her stroke. She told me it was because it had left her face droopy from muscle loss on one side, and she didn't want to worry me. Normally, she'd have just made a joke about it and we'd have dealt with it, but . . . I was trying to be sensitive and, given how scary the whole thing was, who knew, maybe it did really bother her.”

Honey lifted a shoulder, then sighed. “That's how she got away with moving to the senior care facility without me knowing, and putting her shop up for lease. Of course, when she wrote her will, I'm sure she didn't think she'd be gone so soon. I spoke with the care facility today, too. They said she'd been doing much, much better and was in good health, just limited by the recovery far more than she'd let on to me, but needed continued assistance. The aneurysm . . .” Honey trailed off, closed her eyes for a moment, willed the threat of tears back, then continued. “She probably hadn't thought that far ahead about the shop. She should have lived for a much longer time, so maybe she just hadn't finished putting her plans into place.”

“You knew she wanted the shop for you?”

Honey nodded. “She left me a letter with her will, but it was written before the stroke. She hadn't updated her will, either.”

“So, it was written assuming she'd be living there and operating the business up until the time she passed it on to you?”

“Yes—which is exactly what I thought had happened. Her lawyers didn't advise me differently because they didn't know, either. Bea never planned on retiring. She loved her work, loved her customers, who were also her friends. Her business was what gave her purpose and kept her engaged with life. I had no doubts that she'd gotten back to it so quickly after her stroke. That was exactly what would have motivated her to get better.”

“You weren't surprised she left the business to you, then? Even though she discouraged you from coming to see her?”

“Oh, she'd urged me to move here over the years, but I wouldn't even consider it. I told myself I was happy, successful—which I was, as much as I could be—so why mess with that? It was a lot more than some people had. It was only after I read her letter that I”—she paused again and swallowed hard—“really took stock and allowed myself to admit what I'd buried for so long, which was that I wanted a chance at a more normal life. I simply hadn't had the courage to reach for it. Bea leaving me her shop space and her apartment was . . . I don't know, like a sign. Or certainly a tantalizing prospect. One, in the end, I couldn't ignore.”

“Just because it's not panning out as you'd thought it would doesn't mean it can't work.”

“When the lease is up and they renew—and I'm assuming they will, given the popularity of the cupcake shop and Lani and Baxter—then it will be income for me, but that's years off. As it is now, technically, it's just an additional burden. As the landlord, I'm responsible if anything goes wrong with the place. I mean, the management company is still on the lease agreement, so that's who Lani would call to come fix whatever . . . but then they'll call me for payment.”

“There are ways around that, but that's not the main thing at the moment.”

She looked at him. “Ways around it how?”

“Your aunt was infirm and had no choice but to sign on with a management company. You're not in the same position—that's all I'm saying.”

“I don't know the first thing about doing building repair or whatnot.”

“True, but you're on a small island where if you ask pretty much anybody how to fix something, they will tell you who to call. I think if you handled whatever came up on a case by case basis, you could cut out the middleman.”

“Because the management company will charge a fee on top of the repair fee.”

“Exactly. When you lived out in that barn of yours, surely things came up that you had to deal with.”

“True, but—” She blew out a breath. “Actually, there are no buts. I didn't always fix the things that needed fixing, but when I had to, I did. So, you're right. One less thing to worry about. Maybe.”

He grinned over at her. “Don't borrow trouble.”

She couldn't help it—when he grinned like that, she grinned, too. “Yeah, I have enough actual trouble already.”

“I didn't say that.”

She laughed. “You didn't have to.”

It surprised her that she wasn't more spun up at the moment, given the avalanche of crap she had to figure out and the healthy dose of terror that went along with the idea she was going to try to open a shop, anyway. In fact, though there were a hundred different thoughts fighting for first place on the worry list, she was a lot more relaxed than she'd imagined was possible. And she knew she owed that to the man sitting beside her.

She scrunched up her nose. That was funny, because the very last thing he made her feel was relaxed. Maybe it was just having someone to talk things through with again. It helped. A lot. She knew she'd missed her aunt a great deal, but she was realizing the loss ran even deeper than she'd known.

She turned toward him. “Thank you.”

He glanced at her as he took the turn toward the causeway, a lifted brow his only response.

“For . . . well, for all of it, but mostly for the ear. And the shoulder.”

“Everyone needs one now and again.”

“I'm thinking you don't.”

“Just because I don't bend someone's ear or cry on their shoulder doesn't mean I don't have my fair share of frustrations. Just ask Lolly. Good thing she's a dog and not a kid, because she's heard some very naughty words.”

Honey snickered.

He slid a glance her way again, accompanied by that slow, sexy grin that did shivery, tingling things to her insides. Now that she knew she hadn't imagined how good that mouth of his tasted, it also made everything that could ache . . . ache that much harder.

She pressed her thighs together and tried like hell to keep her thoughts on the more important business at hand. And tried not to remember the look on his face when he'd lifted his head from that last kiss. Like maybe she wasn't the only one who'd been completely and utterly poleaxed by it. There'd be time for endless analysis later. And probably one or two very heated dreams as well.

“For the record,” she said, “I might have whined a little, but I didn't cry.”

“Oh, those eyes of yours were swimmin' yesterday. How soon you forget.”

“That doesn't count. I can't help things like that when I'm . . . seeing stuff. It's . . . emotional.”

Dylan slowed the truck as he bumped over the grids at the island end of the causeway and looked at her. “How does that work, anyway? Do you just see things, like you're watching a movie, or—”

Honey shook her head. “I see things like I'm actually there. Sometimes I'm an observer and I want to rush in and help. It's very frustrating, because it's like I'm running through mud and what I see is always out in front of me. I can never catch up, never change what's going to happen. Other times, it's like I'm the person it's happening to. Or I'm in their head, seeing what they see. It's not linear. Images flash, then shift, then other information comes in. It can be a swirl. Sometimes it's clear and easy to understand; other times it's like operating in a jumbled up fog. It doesn't always make sense to me, but if I tell whoever I'm seeing, it almost always makes sense to them.”

“Sounds frustrating and exhausting.”

“You have no idea.”

He idled the truck at the stop sign at the end of the ramp leading onto the island. “You said you see bad things more than good things. Is it because the more dramatic stuff sends out stronger signals? Have you ever wondered if maybe it's because you attract it?”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

He grinned. “Now, don't go getting all offended, sugar. I just meant that maybe you're more emotional yourself, more worried about folks, about things, so you, I don't know, draw that stuff to you. Bea was less . . . deep than you are, and I don't mean that unkindly. Maybe she only got the more superficial stuff. Or maybe you just get what you can handle.”

“I couldn't handle any of it.” She snorted. “That's how I ended up living in the barn.”

He made the turn toward the town square, but didn't comment, leaving her to her thoughts.

No one had ever just come out and asked about her second sight so directly and matter-of-factly. Her parents had known how uncomfortable it made her, how stigmatized she felt by it, so they went out of their way to pretend it was no big deal and dealt with it only if she brought it up—usually because something bad had happened at school and she was being picked on. Her mother would focus on the bullying itself to help Honey find ways to deal with it, but largely left alone the reasons behind it, not wanting to make her daughter feel more like the freak she was.

Of course, her parents were hardly mainstream themselves, so they were used to being a bit ostracized or looked at a little funny. They'd laugh about it, try to get her to see it from their perspective—that being just like everyone else wasn't the be all and end all. But then, they'd never dealt with the things she had.

Bea had talked to her about it, of course. But the real irony was that because they both had the ability, they didn't have to talk about it. It freed Honey up to talk about any- and everything else like a normal person, without feeling self-conscious, worrying about being ridiculed, or, later, when she was away at school, that her secret would get out. She'd hoped she'd grow out of it, that if she ignored it and didn't engage with it, her powers would diminish like muscles not being used.

Her time at college had proven that assumption very wrong. So she'd pretty much shut everything else down when she'd left school and gone back home.

Her father, bless his heart, had gotten a few local shops to sell her work, saying it was his, so they wouldn't think the freak girl was putting her weird magic into the pieces. It had been enough to give her something of an income, which had been her father's hope, and a direction to follow. Honey had been so blown away by the idea that folks liked and wanted her work, she'd begun looking for other outlets to sell it, where she could build something in her own name. The internet seemed the obvious direction, and once she'd really started selling her pieces, the business more or less grew itself from there. Since then, with her folks both gone, other than Bea . . . there hadn't been anyone to ask simple questions, nor anyone who was curious about her.

She wasn't sure how it made her feel, that Dylan was asking questions and was curious. She did know . . . she was more intrigued by it than nervous. After all, her secret was out already with him. And he was still asking questions—sincerely, it seemed—and wanting to know more.

“I can almost hear the wheels grindin', darlin'. I didn't mean to upset you.”

“You didn't.” She looked over at him again and smiled. “That's why the wheels are grinding. I can't remember the last time anyone just came out and asked me about . . . those things. Made it seem almost . . . normal. Or at least, not like the freak show folks used to treat it as.”