Cakewalk: A Calhoon Small Town Romantic Comedy Read online

I texted back before she could keep guessing.

  Me: You don’t know him. He’s new in town. But I don’t have anything to wear to a fancy restaurant.

  Mrs. Davidson: My wardrobe is yours for the picking, sweetie.

  Me: You’re a lifesaver.

  Mrs. Davidson: How is King Kong behaving?

  I didn’t feel like explaining how King Kong indirectly orchestrated this entire mess.

  Me: He’s behaving as well as a giant wild lizard can behave.

  Mrs. Davidson: That’s great, dear. Let me know how your date goes. I hope you get lucky tonight!

  I gaped at my phone and said out loud, “What?” Was Mrs. Davidson just too old and kindly to get what that phrase really meant? I typed back, “Haha. Thanks,” then made a run for her closet.

  Chapter 7

  Griffin

  The dark and candlelit atmosphere of Martello’s Bistro was far more romantic than I had expected. I made sure to be ten minutes early to stake out a good table, but that turned out to be unnecessary. I was the only one here besides an old couple dining in the corner.

  This is a Friday night, right?

  Though the place was all but dead, it looked like it would have been able to rival any of the best restaurants in the city. Empty wine bottles of various colors with little lights inside hung from the ceiling, and each white-clothed table was adorned with both a rose and a candle. Out through the windows, the ocean waves lapped against a nearby pier as the silhouettes of little boats bobbed against the starry sky.

  Quite a bit more romantic than I meant for this meeting to be. Or, I guess it was a date now. I had just wanted to settle the lease agreement and sign whatever I had to sign, but Jade took my question for something else.

  Not that I hadn’t been a little vague just in case…

  I reopened the text conversation for the dozenth time, cocking my head as I read over her response, my eyes focusing on a few key phrases.

  I’m hopelessly single.

  One-night stand.

  Odds through the roof.

  I had to appreciate her honesty, at least. Not only was she a bull in a china shop, but she was one of the most frank people I had ever met. Then there was her fierce loyalty to her sister, and even to her ex friend, who sounded like a real piece of work.

  It all added up to a woman I found fascinating.

  Part of me felt like it’d be a shame to have things go straight to me burying myself in her tonight, but another part of me strained against my pants at the very thought of it.

  Thank God for the tablecloth.

  It had been five years. Not that I had any struggles with women in the past, but prison had a way of keeping you celibate whether you liked it or not.

  This was an itch I really needed scratched now that I was out, and it seemed like she had been in a similar drought.

  The front door opened, and a woman came in, the picture of elegance.

  Jade?

  Her dark blonde hair was done up in a bun, revealing an elegant neck and shoulders, which the thin straps of her tight black dress only further emphasized. The dress stopped halfway down her thighs, and she wore high heels that made her ass tighter than usual.

  I suppressed an almost feral growl. I would have waited another five years locked up if that was what it took to have this. To have her.

  I stood, and she spotted me and waved like a doofus. The waitress approached her and led her to our table.

  Jade hesitated in front of me, as she seemed to wonder what the right course of action was. I could see her reasoning as she first lifted her hand as if to shake mine, then spread both arms out for a hug, then put her hands both firmly at her side and gave a little bow in greeting instead.

  I didn’t have the mercy to immediately stop her little display, as I learned early on that her cheeks would burn red hot any time she did something silly, and it was about the most adorable thing I ever saw.

  Finally, I hugged her, making it quick because God knows just the lightest touch of a woman was going to set me off.

  I pulled back and walked around her to pull away her seat. “Oh, thank you!” she said, sitting down and clutching her little purse in her lap. She kept tugging at the bottom of her dress, as if she wasn’t used to wearing anything so short and revealing.

  She was pushing herself out of her comfort zone—for me, of all people. I never felt so flattered in my life.

  I pushed her chair in, then sat opposite her. “You look stunning,” I said.

  She motioned at my suit. “You too. You never see people wearing suits around here, I’ll tell you what.”

  I wasn’t sure I’d ever grow bored with that southern drawl. Of course, I’d been informed that I had one too, but it had to be much more subtle than hers. Georgia had been my home for only the second half of my life.

  And most of that time had been spent in prison.

  Would that scare her if she knew?

  Jade sipped her water. “I bet not many people know there’s tattoos underneath your suit.”

  “Yeah, I have to keep them covered in my line of work.”

  “Yeesh. Is the business world still that posh these days?”

  No, but the prison tattoos certainly wouldn’t go down well. “Sort of, at least in the South.”

  A momentary silence fell between us, pleasant for me, probably very awkward for her. We shared a smile before she couldn’t handle it anymore and looked at the view of the ocean outside the windows.

  Were we going to talk about that text message? Because I had a feeling she sent it more in an “I’ve got nothing left to lose” sort of sense, and I didn’t want to let her off the hook for that so easily.

  I spotted the waitress making her approach, so I decided now would be a good time to broach the subject, as the waitress’s interruption would give Jade a minute to think of a response.

  I could be merciful on occasions.

  “So, hopelessly single, huh?”

  Jade’s eyes grew wide. She must’ve thought we could both go on like that never happened.

  I continued, “You know ‘one-night stand’ implies it only happens once, right? You really wouldn’t consider something more long-term, if you happen to enjoy yourself for the first time?”

  The waitress appeared with menus in hand, and I smiled up at her as Jade was having another one of her mini heart attacks. I was pretty sure I had given her two since we first met.

  The waitress handed us our menus. “Would you be interested in one of our signature wines today?”

  I looked over the wine section on the menu and ordered something red. I wasn’t a wine connoisseur by any means, but it looked like Jade really needed something for her nerves.

  “Great, I’ll be right back.” The waitress took off, and I returned my attention to Jade.

  “I-I mean, it doesn’t just have to be a one-time thing,” Jade said, responding to my earlier question. “Honestly, you should forget you ever saw that message! It was a joke, and I only sent it because King Kong whipped me with his tail.”

  “King Kong?”

  “This giant iguana I’m babysitting.” She spread her hands about five feet apart, which I figured signified the length of said iguana.

  “Wouldn’t it make a lot more sense for his name to be Godzilla?”

  Jade gawked at me. “Of course it wouldn’t! Godzilla doesn’t climb things. He just rampages around on the ground.”

  “Okay, that makes sense.” I paused to actually think about it. “No, wait, that doesn’t make any sense at all. One’s cold-blooded, one’s hot-blooded. One’s scaly, the other’s hairy. And King Kong doesn’t even have a tail.”

  “Hey, I’m just the one who babysits him, okay? Don’t be giving me lip about his name.”

  I leaned forward. “So it’s King Kong’s fault you sent that message? I guess he used his opposable thumbs to type it?”

  Jade crossed her arms. “Iguanas don’t have opposable thumbs. That’s apes.”

  “T
his is just furthering my point that he should be named Godzilla. So how much longer do you think you can dodge my original question?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m aiming for a time range in the neighborhood of infinity.”

  The waitress arrived with a bottle of red wine and poured us each a glass before setting the bottle down. “Need more time to order?”

  “Yes, please. Thank you,” I said, and we were alone again. I turned my full attention back to Jade. She squirmed and grew redder under my gaze.

  Sublime. I wondered how red she’d get once I took her clothes off.

  “I’m a dumbass, okay?” she said. “I didn’t know how to respond, and I wrote like twenty different replies and kept deleting them. That just happened to be the one I accidentally sent. I’m sure it comes as no surprise that I haven’t dated for years. The last time I had a boyfriend was in high school, so I’m not even sure how adults go about dating! I don’t know if there’s a specific way to gauge whether something’s an old-fashioned kind of date, or if it’s going to be a casual hook up kind of thing. I don’t know what the usual milestones are for the first date, second, third. I’m completely clueless, and I really didn’t want to ask my sister for advice because once she finds out who you are, she’ll be mad that she ever helped me, and my only other girl friend hates my guts right now and probably won’t ever talk to me again.”

  She finally had to pause for air, then decided to just leave it at that and gulp down half her glass of wine.

  I took a moment to process everything. “Okay. Well, since we’re being so out in the open about everything, I’ll give you the advice that I think Madison would have given you if you two were still best friends.”

  Jade nodded, waiting.

  “I think she’d tell you, ‘Jade, you’re the prettiest girl in town, even prettier than me, and I don’t know what’s made you so nervous about dating again, but that Griffin guy seems way cool, and he’s had a dry spell probably even longer than yours, so you both should just do it, get it over with, and see that it’s really not that big of a deal.’”

  “Really?” Jade said, her voice hardly above a whisper.

  I nodded. “I think it’d be good for us both. Mutually beneficial.”

  “That sounds like a friends-with-benefits situation. Like, as opposed to a possible relationship.”

  “Yeah? It’s not like you’d really want to be with me, anyway. The entire town hates my company, and will be hating my company for a long time before they ever realize that I’m here to help. And it seems like it’s your sister spearheading the hate campaign, so you wouldn’t want to get involved in this mess. There’s going to be some pretty nasty town hall meetings coming up, and I don’t want you to have to pick sides.”

  Jade shrugged. “Honestly? I don’t really care about all of that.”

  I had hoped she would, considering the real reason she shouldn’t be with me wasn’t a point I wanted to bring up. “You don’t think maybe you’re telling yourself that because it’s been so long?”

  Jade sighed and looked down at her glass, running her finger along the rim. “I guess it’s possible. I never really thought of myself as the ‘hooking up’ type, but maybe that’s been my problem all along. Maybe I’ve always taken everything too seriously.” She nibbled on her lip before relenting, “Yeah, you’re right.”

  I felt an odd pang deep down in my chest, and I wasn’t sure what it meant. Maybe it was trying to tell me: Hey, moron, this is the type of girl you actually get serious with. She sees something in you that nobody else has. She sees you as a better man than you are.

  But I wasn’t that better man. She deserved someone better than an ex-con.

  So I’d help her get over this fear of hers instead. I’d help her stop thinking of sex as this do-or-die thing. Then she’d be able to move forward with her life.

  “Want me to help you christen your new apartment?” Jade started, trying to sound confident and failing pretty hard. “I don’t know if you’ve been inside yet, but it comes with a bed.”

  I glanced out the windows. “I have somewhere else in mind. But let’s table that discussion for now, shall we?”

  Her brows furrowed, but she nodded. “Okay.”

  I looked over the menu, remembering she had mentioned that she loved this place. “What’s good here?”

  “Everything. The chicken parm’s great.”

  The waitress eventually returned, took our orders, both chicken parmesans, then we were alone again, save for the old couple in the back. I turned my full attention to Jade, whose big hazel eyes and constantly blushing cheeks I couldn’t get enough of.

  “So, you quit the family cake shop. Any plans for what you might do next?”

  She shook her head softly. “I’ll probably look around at the local non-profits. There’s the animal shelter, the food kitchen. Sometimes the Historical Society will renovate one of the old homes or buildings. One of those could probably use someone like me.”

  “As a volunteer?”

  “No. As a fundraiser. Setting up fundraising events and awareness campaigns for donations. PR work, basically. There are lots of retirees around here, and they can scrounge up a lot of funding if you can convince them the cause is good, and that you have a good plan for their money. It’s not like this town has much of an economy from tourists or new residents moving in, so the retirees are really the only way to subsist around here.”

  I nodded, intrigued by it all. I hadn’t really considered how places like this town got money outside of commerce. Raising money wasn’t ever a thing I had to worry about. “So, is that what you were going to college for?”

  “Yeah,” she said, her expression rueful. “Just a general business degree. I dropped out, though.”

  “I remember you telling me. To help your sister.”

  “Partially.”

  I was surprised to hear that.

  “I had all of this anxiety too, though. And tuition was so expensive, yet I wasn’t seeing how it was ever going to pay off. College was sold to me as some sort of life changing experience, and like some milestone I had to hit to be a fully fledged adult. But most of the classes felt pointless. Completely unrelated to what I wanted to do. I’d rather get real experience in the field.”

  “Nothing beats real experience,” I said, and she seemed relieved, as if she had thought I might judge her as a no-good drop-out. “I don’t have a degree either, yet I’m running a multi-million dollar company. I learned everything I needed to know under my father’s wing.”

  Jade smiled at that. “You must be close to your father, then.”

  She couldn’t be more wrong. “Sometimes. So you have a place to stay?”

  “Yeah. I’m house- and pet-sitting for a couple of months. Hence King Kong.”

  “That damned lizard who got us into this mess.”

  She laughed. “That’s the one.”

  Once our food arrived, it seemed neither of us had a huge appetite. As good as the meal was, we only picked at it. I think we were both thinking about the mutually beneficial arrangement we had agreed upon.

  Thankfully, she didn’t ask me too many personal questions, probably picking up on my earlier caginess about myself. I otherwise wouldn’t have been able to avoid telling her exactly what I had been up to the past five years if she had asked me more directly. Instead, she talked about some Calhoon history, then books and shows she liked, and didn’t seem to realize that I wasn’t familiar with anything that was released in the past half decade.

  Still, her enthusiasm was cute.

  Eventually it came time to finish up. The old couple was long gone, and I had a feeling the owner was waiting for us to leave so he could call it a night, if his hovering by the register was anything to go by. It was sad to see this place so dead, especially considering how good dinner was.

  When the check came, I handed the waitress my credit card. Jade made a half-hearted attempt to pay half, but when I insisted, she gave in without much fuss.


  Outside, Jade and I walked past the quiet parking lot. She glanced at the offerings, cocking her head.

  “Trying to figure out which ride is mine?” I guessed.

  “The Prius that’s missing a hubcap certainly isn’t it.”

  “Yeah. Bit tight inside for me.”

  She turned her eyes to the next vehicle. “An Oldsmobile? They still make those?”

  “I don’t think they do.”

  “Those are veteran plates.”

  “It definitely can’t be mine, then.”

  She crossed her arms and beheld the last pair of wheels. “A motorcycle. I guess Mr. Martello is getting wild in his old age.”

  “Nope. That one’s mine. Mr. Martello must be the Oldsmobile.”

  She gawked at me, the same way she did when she saw my tattoos. “They let CEOs ride around on motorcycles? Isn’t that a huge liability?”

  “Nobody gets to ‘let’ me do anything anymore. They just have to deal.” I paused. “You’re not one for taking risks, are you?”

  Jade put a hand on her hip and tried to look offended. “I take all sorts of risks. Like walking down a sidewalk with a three-tiered cake. Or like wearing a ridiculously short dress with too high of heels, just begging to sprain an ankle.”

  “So you’re definitely not one of those girls who gets hot over a motorcycle.”

  “I mean, maybe I am!” It seemed she was trying to convince herself more than me that she could be fun. “I just need to get used to the idea.”

  “And where’s your ride?”

  “I walked here. Mr. and Mrs. Davidson’s place is only a few blocks down. I don’t have a car, but everything’s close if you live downtown, and I can borrow my sister’s truck for the occasional appointment. But anyway, you said you had some place planned for our spicy liaison.”

  I nodded and held out my elbow for her. “It’s a short walk. I spotted it through the windows.”

  She frowned at me, no doubt going through her mental map of the town to try to figure out where in the hell I might be taking her that I could see through the windows. She gave up, then wrapped her arm around my elbow.