Sweet and Salty (Marshall My Heart #1)

23. Chapter Twenty-Three

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

L aura

“Wait, so he saved your donkey, he’s living above your garage, and you still haven’t banged him?” Frannie shakes her head, tosses a piece of fondant in her mouth, and grimaces. “I really hate fondant.”

I snatch the fondant tiger she’s making out of her grasp. “It’s not for you. Or for eating, necessarily.” Generally, I prefer marzipan, but Daisy Gustavson hates almonds. So fondant it is.

“Yeah, it’s for that ugly-ass wedding cake.” Frannie stands up from the cake-decorating table and refills her coffee from the pot, adding a little dash of condensed milk and stirring her drink until it lightens.

“Hey!” I brandish my piping bag at her, and she laughs.

“No, come on, Mama Bear, you know your cake is gorgeous. Totally Insta-worthy. But ‘Wild in Love’? What kind of a theme is that?”

“The bride is always right,” I say through gritted teeth as I pipe a row of vibrant yellow-and-purple shells along the rim of each layer.

“Yeah, except in this case.” Frannie sips her coffee and sits down again at the decorating table. She draws the balls of brightly colored fondant toward her and pulls off black and white pieces to make the penguins. “Does anyone say no to Daisy Gustavson?”

“Nope. Especially not when she’s marrying Tanner Michaelson, August Dryden’s nephew.” The wedding is going to be massive. Practically the whole town is invited, which means Chris is probably going to show up. “Is there any way I can not go to this wedding?”

“Why don’t you ask your super sexy neighbor? From what I’ve heard around town, you two are already a couple.” Frannie attempts to sound suggestive, but at the same moment she flattens her penguin body by accident. She swears loudly. “I really, really hate fondant. So, back to Jesse. He saved that stubborn mule’s life by figuring out something was poisoning her and you didn’t even give him a thank-you bang?”

“I’m not banging him. We aren’t a couple. It’s just idle gossip.” That I inadvertently started. Jesse hasn’t brought it up yet, but he must be getting the third degree, too. “I know nothing about him.” Except that he lost both his parents. And he loves animals. He is unexpectedly generous and wears boxer shorts like he’s sex on a stick.

I press too hard on the piping bag, turning the shell I’m crafting into an ugly blob. Gross. I wipe it off before Frannie can see.

I’ve spent the past week doing this weird, awkward dance with Jesse, far too aware of him being so geographically close and yet both of us determined not to acknowledge it. It makes it easier—and also somehow more insulting—that he won’t leave the hardware store to come get coffee at my shop.

He probably would if I could have added bourbon to it. Damn Drydens, messing with my liquor license application.

“You don’t need to know or like anything about someone you have sex with.” Frannie uses a crafting tool to carve penguin wings on either side of her creation. “Look at me.”

I glance up. “Wait a minute. Who are you having sex with?”

Frannie waves her hand in the air as if to bat away the question. “You’re completely missing my point. Jesse is a silver fox. Okay, he can’t be that old. But haven’t you always had some latent daddy fantasies? He’s perfect for that.”

“I don’t have any latent daddy fantasies.” Although now that she brings it up, I have a sudden image of Jesse tucking the blanket around me that stormy night, then sleeping in the chair. Watching over me. My protector. No one cares for me like that.

Ugh, there is that tug in my ovaries again. It isn’t that I’m desperate to have a baby or a family. I just want something more. Something to go my way.

Frannie finishes crafting the penguin and sets it beside the rest of the fondant zoo we’ve created. “You’re missing out. Everyone needs a good fantasy.”

“I don’t have time for fantasy.” I step back to review my work, which I’m also capturing on my phone camera using stop-motion. It means decorating this cake takes about eight thousand times longer than it normally does. “I have to decorate this cake. The wedding is tomorrow.” It’s beautiful, really. Unique.

“Then you’d better lock down your date.” Frannie sips her coffee. “Maddy Olmstead wants to set him up with Emma Larson.”

A pang shoots through me. Emma Larson is Opal’s niece and owns the bookstore in town. She is beautiful, tough, and in her late twenties. “Emma’s too young for him.”

“I’ve heard older men like younger women,” Frannie says.

“Are you sleeping with an older man then?”

Frankie rolls her eyes, completely ignoring my jab. “You keep changing the subject.”

“Says you. You’re auditing this entire conversation. Can we stop talking about this?” I finish redirecting the camera and shoot the last few takes for the stop-motion cake-decorating video. “Thank heck this thing is done. How are you? Itching to leave now that you’ve been here a whole two weeks?”

Despite her coffee cup still being half full, Frannie walks over to the machine and refills it. “It’s nice to be home and see Davey. I’ve been doing more training with search and rescue. It’s been okay.”

“Do you think you’ll stick around?” She’s coming to the wedding tomorrow, but neither Mom nor I have heard of her plans for afterward.

She tosses her hair over one shoulder, her mouth pressed in a thin line. “You still have tigers to make.” Frannie gestures toward the balls of black and orange fondant. Ugh. She’s right. “So who in the world would try to poison Lucretia Borgia with green acorns? It’s such a weirdly specific choice.”

I’ve been thinking of that all day. My hand cramps from holding the piping bag too long, so I give myself a quick break and go for a coffee of my own. “I saw Joel Hostetler the other day, walking down the street. He was like two blocks away, and I could feel the hate lasers beaming from his eyes.”

“Gross. Of all the people in this town who deserve superpowers, it is not Joel Hostetler.” Frannie adds another penguin to the menagerie growing beside her. “Is he even smart enough to do something like that? I know you need to keep livestock away from yew and holly and stuff, but oak trees? They’re everywhere. They could have blown in on the wind, right?”

I shrug and sit beside her to roll fondant animals until my fingertips fall off. Maybe Frannie is right. Not all brides should have carte blanche. But I like Daisy and Tanner. They’re so fricking in love. It’s like a Hallmark movie. “I don’t know. They were all clumped together, like someone had dropped them there, and if it had been a weather thing, wouldn’t they have been in the pigs’ pen too? I don’t really want to think about it.”

Frannie nudges me and hands me some black stripes she cut. “Just take care of yourself, hon. We need our Mama Bear happy. You deserve it.”

“I am happy.”

We work in silence for several long minutes, the sounds of the café beyond us muffled behind the curtain that hangs between front of house and the bakery area. Snow Patrol plays on the speakers per Frannie’s request.

“You’d be happier if you had some smoking hot sex with Jesse,” Frannie says.

Snow Patrol is not loud enough to drown out her screech as I pipe frosting all over her hands.