“I said thanks for helping out with the cupcake emergency tonight.”
Her hair had fallen in front of her face, giving him a glimpse of the shyness Miz G had spoken of. “You’re welcome. And don’t worry, tiger, I won’t tell Miz G about how blatantly you broke the rules tonight since I know how worried you are about disappointing her.”
“The ‘rule’ is pretty absurd. But if you know my grandmother as well as you claim to, you also understand the more times we tell her how ridiculous or unenforceable her rule is, the more stubborn she’ll get about it. If she thinks we’re going behind her back and purposely breaking it? She will be a hard-core pain about it. We’ll never hear the end of it.”
Tobin laughed. “That’s true. So what are you suggesting?”
“Nothing. This conversation never happened.” She flashed him a grin and left the kitchen.
Tobin thought everyone was sleeping early the next morning when he walked out the front door, heading to work.
He’d only reached the top porch step when he heard, “Tobin Hale. I need a word with you. Right now.”
He faced Miz G and bit back a groan. She hadn’t bothered to take out her curlers or change out of her flannel pajamas and fuzzy flippers. “I’m running late. Can’t it wait?”
“No. Kitchen. Now. And don’t dawdle, sonny.”
Shit. She’d already seen the titty and dick cupcakes. He hadn’t figured out a way to fix them last night, so he’d just left them and gone to bed.
Sure enough, Miz G stood by the counter, her arms crossed over her bony chest, the bunny head on her slipper flopping side to side as she tapped her foot impatiently. She’d peeled back the aluminum foil halfway on each pan. “Care to explain these?”
Tobin had decided to claim he was drunk—sad when that lie was better than the truth. So when he saw the pans she was pointing to, he did a double take. The dick cupcakes looked like pinwheels with the banana-shaped candies pressed into the frosting. And the titty cupcakes were flowers—flattened pieces of gumdrops shaped to resemble sugared rose petals, arranged around a hole in the center of the cupcake that was filled with strawberry-champagne preserves.
Jade. That little sneak. She’d come back down here last night and saved his bacon.
Totally unexpected.
Totally sweet.
He laughed with relief and delight because once again, Jade had shocked the hell out of him—in a good way.
Then Miz G’s bony finger was drilling him in the chest. “I don’t find this funny in the least. Dadgummit, boy, why didn’t you tell me you had a flair for cake decorating?”
Flair? Oh hell no. He had to nip this in the bud ASAP. “It was a fluke.”
“Horse puckey. Tell me the truth.”
It wouldn’t be fair to drag Jade into this so he said, “I used to make cupcakes with my grandma.”
A beat of silence passed.
“And after she passed on . . . you couldn’t do it without thinking of her. Gol-durn it boy, I thought you were getting teary-eyed looking at the frosting last night, but I figured it might’ve been from fear that you’d gotten in over your head.” Her chin wobbled. “I’m sorry. It’ll be our secret.”
He hadn’t lied, but she’d gone a little farther with the half-truth than he’d expected. “I’d appreciate it.”
She patted his cheek. “Have a good day at work, dear.”
Chapter Six
After tossing and turning in bed for an hour, Jade got up and slipped her clothes on.
She opened her bedroom door slowly, unsure if it creaked. Not that she thought it’d wake GG, tucked away in her bedroom on the main floor.
The hallway light had been turned off. Two plug-in night-lights sent a bluish glow across the wood floor. She closed the door behind her, noticing Tobin’s door was shut.
As she passed the sitting room, she debated on playing a few hands of solitaire to wind down. She’d had that itchy need-to-do-something feeling from the moment she’d woken up. It hadn’t helped that GG left her to her own devices again, all day, so she’d cleaned the house, scrubbing bathrooms, vacuuming everything, dusting and mopping floors. After lunch she’d talked to her parents and that had been a fruitless endeavor, attempting to explain her continued restlessness. Their advice? To relax.
Relax. Right. She’d never mastered that particular skill. And people telling her to chill out when she knew she couldn’t only increased her feeling of inadequacy. What was wrong with her that she couldn’t even take a nap in the afternoon? Instead she’d practiced her violin for two hours. Then she’d watered the flowers, cleaned off the porch and by that time GG had returned home. Even a heavy meal and several glasses of champagne didn’t flip the switch to shut off her brain when she crawled between the sheets.