Then he lifted his head, looked in my eyes and whispered, “I’ll text you the address to my place. Come prepared to spend the night. I’m doin’ dinner.”

“All right,” I whispered back. “But I’m doing dessert.”

His mouth twitched before he agreed, “You got it, sweetness. Now let me go before I do something we’ll both get arrested for like throw you on the lawn and give your neighbors a show.”

I let him go.

He chuckled low, tipped his chin up at me, turned and jogged down to his pickup at the same time taking a bite of toast.

Then I watched him drive away and I didn’t give one shit that I should have played it cool and walked right into my house and shut my door. I stood there and watched until I couldn’t see his truck anymore.

Only then did I go in.

Then I turned on my music and I didn’t turn on Fiona Apple.

I was an equal opportunity music lover and whatever struck my fancy normally didn’t unstrike it. So, considering “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” and “In America” were kickass songs, I owned the Charlie Daniels Super Hits CD.

And that was what I listened to while I got ready to face the day.

I couldn’t say it was all my gig but I sang “The Devil…” and “In America” out loud and one could not say “The South’s Gonna Do It Again” was not the shit.

And dressed and ready to go forth and bake cakes, I got in my car thinking that was the best morning of my whole...

Fucking…

Life.

Chapter Nine

Dinner at Brock’s

I was sitting in my car looking up at the apartment building, scanning the numbers on the doors, looking for number sixteen.

Brock’s apartment.

I was trying really hard not to make a judgment about the state of his apartment complex, if one could call it that.

It was off the one-way section of Lincoln just up from Speer and perpendicular to the road.

There was a small spread of tarmac in front of a very deep, long two-story building, eight apartments on bottom, eight on top. The doors faced an exposed walkway. The stairs leading up to the top level on the ends of either side were iron, rusting and looked more than a little scary. And the two padlocked sheds off the parking lot, one smaller one with the stenciled word, “Laundry” and the other one bigger and maybe not too intelligently having the stenciled word, “Storage” on it did nothing for the feel of the place.

Sometime in the summer, someone clearly made an effort however they also just as clearly got sidetracked. In Denver, if you planted flowers, in the arid climate you needed to tend them and this tending mostly had to do with adding copious amounts of water but it also didn’t hurt to pull weeds. Now it was a still warm mid-October and in the two half barrels that flanked the short entry from Lincoln to the building and the four that “decorated” the top and foot of both stairwells had a riot of a green, healthy weeds, an equal riot of brown dead bits and some straggly, weak petunia blossoms which had obviously struggled valiantly against the odds but clearly should be put out of their misery and not only because autumn had settled on the Rocky Mountains.

Oh well, whatever. He was a man. A single man. A single man with a Harley Fat Boy and a beat up pickup truck that Martha was right about, it needed to be traded up and that trade up should have happened around a decade ago. This wasn’t a big surprise and, truthfully, I might be concerned if he had a picture perfect house in a suburb that looked like Ada haunted the place.

That would be bad.

I was turning to gather my overnight case, purse and the white bag with the robin’s egg blue ink stamp of hummingbirds and hibiscus blossoms around the words, “Tessa’s Cakes”

when my phone rang.

It was probably Brock though why I thought this, I didn’t know. He said be there at six and although I took time out for my kick-boxing class and extended that with a side trip to the mall, I still left the bakery early to go home and get ready. The kids that worked for me were good and the shelves, displays and cake stands were stocked with plenty of goodies to see them through so I didn’t have a problem doing this and did it often. So it was now two to six.

I wasn’t late. I was actually, if you got down to it, early.

Maybe there was a change of plans. In the four months we were seeing each other, this happened. Not regularly, Brock didn’t usually miss seeing me and if he had to change plans, it usually meant he had to see me later or leave early but it was rare he’d cancel.

In fact, thinking about it, I didn’t recall that ever happening.

Therefore, curious, I pulled out my phone and saw it said “Unknown Caller”.

I touched the screen as I felt my brows draw together, put it to my ear and greeted,

“Hello.”

“Yo, bitch. You got Elvira.”

I blinked at my dashboard.

Then I said, “Uh… hey.”

“Uh… hey right back at ‘cha. Listen, your homegirl gave me your number ‘cause I called her ‘cause Gwen and me were doin’ a little lookin’ around in Cherry Creek durin’ my extended lunch break and we saw you in the lingerie section of Nordstrom’s.”

“Oh,” I replied. “Okay.”

“So?” she asked and I felt my brows draw together again when she said no more.

“So?” I asked back.

“So, what gives?”

“What gives?”

“Yeah, what gives? You were drinkin’ cosmos with us in Stepford country when we were talkin’ ‘bout your bad news boy and I do not think it bodes well two days later that you’re in the lingerie section of Nordstrom’s,” she stated then announced, “This here’s a phone intervention.”

“A phone intervention?”

“A phone intervention. See, I work for Hawk Delgado and Hawk’s Gwen’s man which, incidentally, is why I’m allowed to take extended lunch breaks in the lingerie section of Nordstrom’s with the company credit card. But, anyway, Gwen pumped Hawk for intel about your bad news boy and so did I and we put our heads together. Hawk… well, he says your boy is bad news, not that we didn’t know that already. But Hawk agreeing, considering he’s Hawk, confirms it.”

Damn it all to hell.

It was only me who could run into a well-intentioned but nosy, inappropriately meddling and slightly frightening black woman at a really bad baby shower and it was only Martha who would give her her number and then, in turn, give her mine.