What's Life Without the Sprinkles? (19 page)

Who knew humming could be such a turn-on? And since when did everything Nate did make her gooey inside? They’d been friends for years and she’d never had a dirty thought about him. Well, maybe one or two, but she’d never been this focused on him and aware of his every breath.

Fortunately, he broke her out of her lustful haze by talking. “Actually that’ll be fine. It should be a blast. What time, and what do I have to wear?”

How about right here, right now, and absolutely nothing but a big old smile? She tried to regulate her uneven breathing when it threatened to chuff out of her with the force of a steam engine. “Great. Justin will be so pleased, and it’s suit-and-tie. Thanks for doing this.”

She said goodbye before she could get all sappy about him and the way he thought about Justin’s needs and participated in his life. Or before she asked again if he wanted to be her cake. Maybe she had completely disgusted him with her suggestion and he really wasn’t ready to buy into it. But that kiss he’d laid on her kept popping back into her head, too, and so did the way she’d screamed his name. There was no denying he’d had an erection that would no doubt satisfy her like nothing else. But couldn’t guys get it up for almost any female? Way too much to think about.

If nothing else, at least she’d get to see him in a suit. The last time had been at May’s wedding, three years ago, and she hadn’t fully taken the time to truly admire him. She wouldn’t miss out again.

After raiding the refrigerator looking for something to cool her off a little, Claudia sat at the kitchen table sipping a glass of iced tea. The shower down the hall had turned off some time ago, and now she could hear Justin knocking around in his room. The ceiling fan whirred in the relative stillness as she contemplated the darkening sky in the distance.

Her thoughts whirled and twirled in her head. What was she doing, looking for icing after all these years? She’d done fine for herself, even if she’d had little love outside of her family. Justin and she hadn’t suffered much for it. Life went on, even if you had no one in your bed.

“Bring your homework out to the table,” she called to Justin, more to distract herself than to make sure he actually did it. She wondered what torture she would have to endure in the name of schoolwork this evening as she threw a bag of popcorn into the microwave.

He was like a herd of elephants tramping down the hallway. Zoe was out this evening, doing heaven only knew what on her date. Claudia hadn’t had time to talk to her, either. She was feeling out of sorts without that contact, especially after her conversation with Nate. There was something about his easy acceptance of taking Justin to the dinner that spoke to her heart—and to her libido.

And she needed to get her mind out of the gutter if she wanted to concentrate on whatever torture it was Justin needed to work on tonight.

He trundled toward the living room, books in hand. Following more sedately with the steaming bag of popcorn, she tried, again, to remember what kind of homework Justin had this evening. And when it came to her, she shivered with dread.

Long division.

With books already spread out in a jumble on the low coffee table, Justin pulled his assignment from the bottom of a hopelessly messy backpack and smoothed it flat with his small hands. Hands so much like his father’s. What a shame. Just one more thing he didn’t get from her.

She shook her head to clear it and focused on what she remembered about remainders and carrying numbers.

But before they got started, Justin turned to her with shining eyes. “So what did Nate say? Will he take me? Does he want to be my dad for the night?”

He was practically bouncing, and she was so happy she didn’t have to disappoint him. “Turns out I was wrong about what days he’s out of town. He’s thrilled to take you. He said he can’t wait.” Yeah, in between laughing at her heavy breathing routine and the way she’d totally embarrassed herself with her lame excuse about being distracted by Justin’s shower.

“Oh, yeah! I can’t wait. This is going to be so much cooler than the last couple of years. Did he say he was going to dress up? Do you think we should be, like, coordinated or anything?” He clasped his hands in front of his chest and had the biggest grin on his face she’d seen in a long time.

Inside, she picked up the pieces of her cracked heart and tried to overlook the comment about the other years where she was his date. On the outside, she smiled, ruffled his hair, and told him, “We can decide all that later. We have a few days, but right now we have enough long division to make me feel like my eyes are going to bleed.” Another feeling erupted inside her to override the hurt—happiness for how he responded to Nate. If, and it was a big if, she ever managed to get Nate to see her as an actual woman instead of reminding him she was the one who’d been his friend forever, at least she knew she’d have her son’s complete approval of the man she wanted.

An hour later, as she listened to Justin preparing for bed, she leaned back on the sofa, glad she had survived this interminable day. The water running as he brushed his teeth, the thud of his feet as he went to his room, and the soft thump of music drifting down the hall soothed her. These were normal things. Things she was used to and that fit into her regular day. Nothing like the rest of the day had been, with one upheaval after another. Perhaps she should just forget today ever happened and start anew tomorrow. It wasn’t a bad idea, as far as she was concerned.

Chapter Nine

Claudia could have laughed at her naiveté, a mere handful of days after long division, if she didn’t want so badly to howl at the moon. She’d moped around for days, trying to get hold of Nate, but he wasn’t answering his phone. He never had answered her cake question, and now she didn’t think she wanted to bring it up again, in case she wasn’t getting his subtle hint to drop the whole thing.

She’d tried to talk Zoe into calling him earlier. They still had to go over the build-out plans Nate had left at the apartment on Saturday. But Zoe was absolutely refusing, in retaliation for Claudia making her deal with Dex, the lawyer, and May wasn’t in a position to make any final decisions, since her partnership was still up in the air.

Which left Claudia with a phone call to make. She had even briefly thought of letting her mom handle things, but she was afraid of what might come out of her mother’s mouth.

She sighed, thinking that he hadn’t even taken them out to dinner on Monday as he had promised. She had really screwed things up with those kisses and letting him give her an orgasm. Though she really couldn’t regret that last one. It far out ranked anything her trusty vibrator could provide.

Grabbing up the phone, she punched out his number before she could lose her nerve.

He picked up on the third ring. “I was just going to call you.”

“I doubt that, since you’ve been avoiding me the last several days.” She certainly hadn’t meant to sound so sharp, had in fact meant to be nice and forget anything had happened this last week at all, from Zoe’s very first mention of cake onward, but something inside her was playing the devil.

“I haven’t been avoiding you.”

“Yeah, right.”

There was a long pause, and she thought he’d hung up on her until he cleared his throat. “Look, I wasn’t avoiding you completely. Grandma Stelle had a doctor’s appointment on Monday, and she’s not doing so well. Mom is having fits, and I’ve been on the phone day and night with her, talking about nursing homes.”

“That must have been fun. I bet Stelle is not liking that at all.” Nate’s grandma was stubborn to a fault, and she had always said she would die before she went to one of those “old folks’ homes.”

Claudia knew she should be relieved that he’d been preoccupied and not completely avoiding her, but they had always talked about this kind of thing. Normally, she’d have been the first one he called—before all that mess this weekend. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Do you have a muzzle? Or two?”

“The only one I have I’m using on Justin lately.” The rhythm of their conversation was slowly resuming its normal pace. She did not want to lose this connection, regardless of what did or did not happen in the bedroom department. “It must be a ‘fits-having’ kind of couple of days.”

“They aren’t the only females giving me fits right now, either.” There was another pause and another throat clearing. “Do you have time today, Claudia? I think we should talk. Face to face would be better.”

Why? So he could turn down her cake offer to her face? Not going to happen if she could help it. The build-out on Decadence could wait until this all quietly faded away. “Uh, no. I don’t think I have time at all today, and probably not for the next week or so. But we should definitely set up a time to go over the plans. Or you can meet with Zoe another day. I’m sure she can handle it all without a problem.” Her pulse was frantic, her heart bumping into her breastbone to the point she was afraid it would be on the table any minute now.

“Now who’s avoiding?”

“I am,” she said and hung up before he could say another word.

Of course that wasn’t the end of it, and Claudia knew it. The other shoe would drop at some point. In the meantime, she had a shop to run.

Downstairs, Claudia opened a new box of supplies that had arrived that morning, poking around inside to see what kind of fun new cake decorators had come her way. Nothing but those Styrofoam peanuts, yet, but she had hope her new professional-grade rind grater was somewhere in all the packing material.

Zoe slouched against the counter. She kept peeking out into the front of the store as if expecting something, or someone, to come through the door. She swiped her hair off her forehead and blew out a breath. “I really think that someone else should handle the lawyer thing. I don’t know what Uncle Al was thinking, but if he won’t deal with me, then I’m not dealing with Dex.”

“Well, that sucks for you. You’re the only one who has time to do this right now, and we want to make sure we have all our ducks in a row before we move forward with making May a partner. I don’t want our butts hanging out in the wind with legalities.” She knew the grater was in here somewhere. Why did they always have to pack everything like the deliveryman was going to drop-kick it through her door?

“Right. You’re so busy, what with avoiding Nate now that you’ve finally figured out that he is super sexy. I heard Justin caught you all over each other. I hope you’re not planning to break in the living room floor, since I think that’s already been done.”

Claudia looked up quickly to find Zoe with a smug smile on her face. “I don’t even want to know what it is you’re alluding to. I’m trying to find my grater, and I can’t be distracted by your dirty birdy mind.”

Zoe nudged her shoulder, dipped her hand into the white peanuts, and came out with the grater. “Oh, come on. Like you’ve thought completely pure thoughts since you decided to run out and grab you a piece of Nate.” She handed the shiny new device over to Claudia, who hummed long and low at the back of her throat.

The hum could have been for the grater or for thoughts of Nate, but she wasn’t going to tell Zoe which one. She’d simply avoid that particular conversation all together. “So how about this new guy from Sunday night?”

Zoe was obviously willing to be distracted back to her own life. “He definitely has stallion potential. I could try this one on for size without a single problem.”

“Stallion or not, is he a nice guy?”

“Yeah, well, I guess so.”

It was on the tip of her tongue to caution Zoe against just having fling after fling. But who was she to tell anyone how to run her love life? Claudia had enough of her own problems trying to forget that Nate had seen her as a woman for about ten glorious minutes and now he wanted to “talk.” She hated talking when she knew it wasn’t going to go in her favor. And this conversation could quite possibly embarrass the hell out of her.

Clearing her throat, Claudia dove back into the box of peanuts, looking for the icing tip she’d also ordered. She found the packing receipt but nothing else. The receipt showed it had been shipped, but after sifting her hands through all the packing material, she found nothing. “Can you stick your magic hand in here again and find my decorating tip?”

Zoe did as Claudia asked and came up seconds later with the wrapped plastic in her hand. She handed that over, too, then smiled. “Here you go. I don’t know why you can’t find these things.”

“Yeah, me either.”

“Perhaps you’re a little blind.”

“Not yet.”

“Well, I can tell you a spot where you are blind.”

“I do not want to have this conversation, ever, and especially not right now.” The glint in Zoe’s eyes did not bode well for Claudia, though. She’d been on her to call Nate about the cake thing again, and Claudia wasn’t going to do it. He’d had his chance. She was not looking to be shot down again.

“You should wear something sexy when Nate comes to pick up Justin for that father-son dinner. I bet he’d change his mind in a second if you showed him what he’s missing.”

“Don’t you have something else to do? We’ve been over this before. He’s not interested. We’ll leave it at that. His grandma is having issues, his mom is calling him day and night, and starting something between us would only end up in disaster. I’d rather have my friendship back on an even keel than have my lust satisfied.”

“You were all about the cake just a few days ago.” Zoe twiddled with the trailing vine on top of the cake display counter. “I think you were on the right track then.”

“Well, you think wrong.” Even if she wore one of Zoe’s slut dresses when Nate came to pick up Justin for the dinner, she wouldn’t be wowing him. She’d only come off as desperate. Besides, it wasn’t as if she could lose thirty pounds in three days and fit into Zoe’s size.

Speaking of the devil, though, brought him in the door, wafting a subtle hint of the cologne she’d given him for Christmas last year. He smelled good enough to eat. Despite all her protests to the contrary, Claudia was more than prepared to dig out her spoon for a taste. She should be nervous and wary about him being here so soon after she’d hung up on him, and she was. But she also knew him well enough to be sure he wouldn’t drag her off for “the talk” in front of other people or at her place of business. She decided to play it as if they hadn’t talked and he hadn’t tried to push the issue of her recent behavior. Most likely he would follow along with the program.