heart gave a lurch of sympathy and, yes, attraction. He looked half-broken, and even more masculine for the pain.
He looked away first; Angela picked up the box, cheeks flushing. The last man she’d been instantly drawn to like this was Tom, and look what poison he’d turned out to be. Though Tom’s look had been cocky, sexual, beckoning. The haunted look in this man’s eyes was entirely different. And much more powerful.
“I’ll be right back.” She fled to the back of the shop, grabbed one of the overflow chocolate-on-chocolate cupcakes, wrapped it in bright red paper and tucked it neatly in the center of the box, which she tied with a length of rainbow ribbon.
Maybe he wouldn’t appreciate the gesture. Maybe she was spoiling some birthday surprise for a woman he loved, maybe he’d come back furious and cause a scene. Maybe. But this guy was miserable, and he wasn’t a white-cake eater, and Angela wanted to give him something that might also make him smile.
More than that, after he left her shop, got on his bike and pedaled away, she wanted him to have something that would remind him of her.
2
DANIEL FLYNN climbed the newly carpeted stairs to his second-floor apartment, carrying his bike in one hand, his riding bag with the box of cupcakes in the other. At the landing, he rolled his eyes at the new gold and ivory cherub figurines his landlord apparently decided would look good on the windowsill, and kept climbing, legs leaden and shaky after his thirty-mile ride on Seattle’s hilly streets. A longer ride than usual, but he’d been in one of his self-punishing moods, trying to use physical pain to squelch the emotional.
Today was Kate’s birthday, exactly two months before his. She would have been twenty-nine. She would have completed her first year of graduate school and be into her second. They would have been getting married in six months, right after she graduated.
Over and over, around and around, like a merry-go-round made of spikes, the emotions tore into him as they had for the past year. Granted, in the last few months there had been minutes, then hours, then finally whole days that were easier here and there, and the intensity of the pain had lessened on the whole, but significant occasions like today brought his Kate roaring back, her image, spirit, even her scent … her. How could he ever get over someone who was so much a part of him? The final stage of grief was supposed to be acceptance. Did that mean at some point a loss like this would be okay with him? Impossible. Kate had become the anchor of his world from the moment he met her when they were both at Highland Park High School outside Chicago. They’d started dating almost immediately, and in her he’d found all the love and stability his feuding parents were too busy to remember he needed. Without her, he would have taken a seriously self-destructive turn in order to cope.
Outside the bachelor apartment he shared with his co-worker, Jake, he set the bike down, grimacing at the volume of music coming through the door. Coldplay. Not his favorite. He fumbled in the zipped pocket of his bag for his key, feeling the sharp corner of the bakery box inside. Kate’s weakness, white cupcakes with white frosting, the more sugary the better. Daniel had always been a chocolate guy. Funny how the woman at the store guessed that. She’d seemed very perceptive. Her eyes—beautiful eyes, brown and widely spaced, friendly and bright—had seemed to peer right inside him.
Daniel’s fingers touched the key, closed around it and held still. She’d had nice hair, too, brown with reddish tints, cascading and shiny, falling from a widow’s peak at the crown of her wide, pale forehead. Odd how he remembered her so vividly. The quick smile, the cheerful energy she brought to her movements …
He drew out the key abruptly and jammed it into the lock. Today, he’d honor Kate’s memory by eating the treats she loved. Earlier he’d also bought the ingredients for her favorite meal: rib-eye steak, creamed spinach and brown and wild rices mixed together, though right now the idea of eating made his stomach churn. Small wonder he’d dropped nearly ten pounds in the past year and a half.
Inside, he wheeled his bike through their front hallway into his bedroom and leaned it against the wall, which was already marred with scuff marks from previous handlebar encounters. He dug out the cupcake box from his bag, and yanked his empty water bottle from its cage on the bike, feeling restless, grimy and stuck in a cage himself, from which the ride had liberated him only temporarily. The small apartment with gray carpet and his room with bare, white walls—his own fault for not hanging pictures—didn’t help.
A shower got rid of the grime, but didn’t help his mood. Pounding on Jake’s door quieted the music, but underscored the painful fact: some days he just had to get through. Luckily Jake understood. The two men had met at Slatewood International, where they designed software to stay ahead of increasingly sophisticated hackers, and had formed a fast friendship. After Kate’s accident, Jake had been solid, taking Daniel in, and developing an uncanny sense of when to kid him out of a scowl and when to back off, when to prod him into talking and when to leave him alone.
Sometimes Daniel felt he owed Jake his sanity—however much of it he still had left. Kate would approve. Sort of. She and Jake got along like fire and ice. She thought Jake was a shallow butthead; he thought Kate was an uptight bitch. Daniel had sat in the middle, rolling his eyes at both of them.
In the kitchen, he pulled the steak out of the refrigerator to warm up, and put the brown-and-wild rice mixture on the stove to cook. Daniel was a bread man, always preferred it to rice or potatoes, preferably fresh the way it had looked at Angela’s bakery, thick slices spread with softened butter.
Did she get up early every morning and make it herself? He pictured her, drawn-back hair emphasizing her heart-shaped face, flour dusting her high cheekbones, room warm with the fresh, yeasty smell of dough.
But tonight, for Kate, he’d eat rice.
With leaden movements, he pulled down the bottle of her favorite Washington State cabernet from Donedei vineyards, got out the fancy corkscrew she’d bought him and hesitated. Before he met Kate, he’d been a beer guy, and reverted to being one after her death, since he associated wine so strongly with their relationship.
The bottle went back up on the shelf for another, easier day. Too many triggers. Fine line between honoring her memory and needlessly torturing himself. Kate of all people would understand. He opened the refrigerator, grabbed out a Mack & Jack’s Serengeti Wheat beer and felt himself relax a little.
“Hey.” Jake ambled into the kitchen and gestured at the steak. “Nice piece of meat. What’s the occasion?”
“Kate’s birthday.” He answered automatically, robotically. “Her favorite meal.”
“Oh. Yeah, um. Okay.” Frowning, he grabbed a beer, popped off the top and took a long swig. “So. How are you doing on all that?”
Daniel took a long swig himself, wanting to laugh at the perfect sitcom moment. Two guys drinking beer, trying to talk about emotions. “Okay.”
“You’re celebrating her birthday tonight.” His tone made it clear he thought the idea was beyond moronic. Jake was not exactly the sentimental type. “You gonna eat that all yourself?”
Daniel shrugged. “Unlikely.”
“Excellent.” Jake pulled up a chair to the table in their bland kitchen, gray on white on black. “You have yourself a dinner date.”
“I guess I do.” Not exactly his plan, but now that Jake was here, the idea of sitting alone miserably thinking about Kate felt like a direct route to unnecessary pain, pain he was tired of having to battle.
“I
