Love Takes the Cake by Betsy St. Amant

Author:Betsy St. Amant
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2015-06-30T16:00:00+00:00

It wasn’t quite 5:40 yet.

Will hesitated outside the front door of The Dough Knot, lingering just out of sight of the picture window that boasted the bakery’s name in gold script. A little girl sat at a table inside, head down as she scribbled on top of a—was that a toy cupcake?—with a pink marker. Other than that, the bakery appeared empty. Charlotte must have been in the kitchen, or on the other side of the counter that he couldn’t quite see from this angle.

He paced back and forth on the sidewalk, hands in his pockets, braced against a sudden gust of September wind. The temperature was starting to change, some days dipping lower and hinting at the coming autumn, other days burning hot and clinging tight to summer. Like the world couldn’t make up its mind if it was going to transition or not.

He knew the feeling.

If he went inside The Dough Knot and told Charlotte everything that his heart wanted to say, he’d be free falling through transition himself.

But if he didn’t . . . well, how could he keep this up? He’d have to buy cookies for Melissa elsewhere, and that was the least of his problems. He saw Charlotte’s face every night before he closed his eyes and woke with her the first thing on his mind.

Yesterday at the gym, he was trying to teach old Mr. Conrad how to lift weights without throwing his back out. Adam had been there, following him around and bending his ear about Charlotte.

“Go for it, man,” Adam said. “You know we’ve been trying to set you up with someone for months now. Don’t you want the bliss me and Brittany have?” He winked.

Conrad, a feisty old geezer who had to be ninety if he was a day, seemed to have an opinion on everything—including Will’s love life. “Sounds like this girl’s a keeper,” he huffed between bicep curls. “You better make your move or somebody else will.” He grinned, showing a mouthful of perfectly white, straight dentures. “Or if you don’t, give me her number."

“He’s right,” Adam said as he spotted Will on the weight bench. “How come you’re dragging your feet? You could do a lot worse than Charlotte, dude.”

No kidding. Charlotte easily beat every one of those superficial women who had been at the party the other night, without even trying. Maybe that was why she beat them. She didn’t try. She didn’t have to. She was real. Had substance. Was sweet—and beautiful, without having to flaunt it. She was just . . . Charlotte.

And that was more than enough.

But it wasn’t about simply not being single anymore. If that was the case, he’d be content being Free Willy for life. His priorities shifted the day that SUV crashed into Melissa’s car, and it wasn’t his decision to shift them away from her now. Over and over again he tried to explain that to Adam, who didn’t get it. After denying Mr. Conrad Charlotte’s digits and after

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