Total pages in book: 143
Estimated words: 138881 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 694(@200wpm)___ 556(@250wpm)___ 463(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138881 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 694(@200wpm)___ 556(@250wpm)___ 463(@300wpm)
But when it comes to these letters, I’m not sure I want to go it alone. I want to talk about them with someone. To figure them out. To enjoy them. And that’s when I can see the recipe come together.
Take one letter for each milestone. Make a cup of tea. Have a treat. And read them as a team.
“Corbin, what if we take our time with these? Treat them like rewards? For each thing we accomplish at the bakery—getting through opening day, landing our first wedding cake order, getting a great review—we get to read one. What do you think? Do you want to? Read these all with me?”
“As if I’d let you read them alone,” he says with a smirk.
“Really? I don’t want to pressure you,” I say. “I mean, they’re love letters. Or they will be.”
He scowls. “You think because I’m a hockey player I can’t handle a love letter?”
No, I think it’s because you said you can’t stop thinking about me, can’t stop wanting me, and that’s messing with your head.
Or maybe that was just the heat of the moment talking. “I didn’t want to presume,” I say, a little coolly.
He stares at me like I’ve lost my mind. “Look, if you’re asking if it was on my bucket list to find your great-grandmother’s love letters and read them with you, then of course it wasn’t. But you found them—”
“You found them.”
He stares at me sternly. “This isn’t a hockey game. This isn’t a finders-keepers situation. And I’m not some douchebag twentysomething who thinks romance can be found on a reality dating show where everyone is acting.”
“I’m not entirely sure what that has to do with love letters, but keep going,” I say, both amused by the insult to Dax—since I love insults to my ex—but also intrigued by this train of thought.
Looking away, he rubs his jaw, something he does when he’s weighing something. When he returns his gaze to me, and the letter in my hand, he says, “Look, maybe I see a little of myself in this guy.”
“The firefighter? Because you like to help?” I ask, thinking of how he rescued me at the romance fair, then rescued me again when I needed an investor.
“Maybe,” he says with a shrug. That’s as close as I’ll get to an admission for now. “But if I found something like this, whether it was recipes, or letters, or a journal from my mom, I’d want someone to read them with me.”
My throat tightens, but then that annoying doubt creeps up again. He said someone. He didn’t say me.
“It’s been two years since she died,” he continues. “Of Parkinson’s complications. It was…rough. Really rough. Some nights, I look up her old emails to me where she’d tell me about her day.” He exhales as if this admission costs him something. “And I don’t think I’m finding anything she left behind. There are no letters. So, I think what I’m trying to say is”—he stops, holds my gaze with such vulnerability in his emerald eyes—“I’d really like to do this too.”
My throat catches. It’s happening again. Stupid tears. Annoying emotions. Doing my best to swallow them, I offer a smile, and I say, “Let’s do this then.”
“Let’s do it,” he confirms. Then he lifts his brow and glances around the space. “But we also need to do that.” He points at the mural. “Open a bakery. And incidentally, we need to put a smash cake on the menu.”
Those words echo in a whole new way. He was supportive of me that day at the romance fair. He was helpful. He stood up for me.
That’s what I needed then. And I hope that whatever he needs, I can give to him. Or maybe the letters can.
“And monkey bread too, Mister Ten Out of Ten,” I say, and we’re returning to friends, to business partners, to two people trying to realize their dreams together.
With a plan in place, we tuck the letters away in the jar, put the jar on the shelf, then return to the mural.
When it’s done, it feels like he painted my chest and I rode his leg in another lifetime. But we need to talk about it.
“Corbin, are we just forgetting about earlier?” I wave a hand breezily toward the wall. The scene of the leg hump. “Like we forgot about the kiss in the trailer?”
His eyes darken, perhaps from the memory. But quickly, he nods. A decisive gesture. “We have to. I have to. It’s the only way. I want this to be a success. You get that, right?”
I do. More than before. I understand the things he’s been sharing in bits and pieces about his family, his mother, and her dreams. And the things Charlotte has shared. This—our bakery—matters.
“I do,” I say.
He steps closer to me, like he’s going to cup my shoulders. Like he did that day in the trailer. But instead, he tucks a loose strand of my hair behind my ear, and that’s even better than a shoulder squeeze since he lingers, his finger brushing the shell.