Bond (Klein Brothers 1)

“I am,” I admitted slowly, wondering if I should be proud or scared by how excited she was.

“Oh, my God, you made my daughter’s wedding cake three months ago. She had the edible flowers and the narrow cascade of dried fruit in a trail around it.”

The description was weird unless you’d made the cake or had been part of choosing it. There’d been a spiral of dried fruit and silver lustered fresh fruit that’d started narrow at the top of the four tiers, then it’d widened as it’d gotten to the bottom. I’d added accents of edible flowers that suited her wedding colors, too, and it was one of my favorite cakes to date.

“Lanie and Ted’s wedding?” I asked, smiling at the wall.

Behind me, I heard a “Jesus Christ.”

“That’s the one! Oh, Lord, I swear, Lanie cried when she cut into it because she didn’t want to ruin it, and I think the guests all took more photos of it than the photographer. It was a work of art. You also made my husband’s retirement brownies last week.”

“Were they the banoffee brownies?”

“Yes! Sweetie, no lie, you’re the best thing ever to hit Piersville. I’ve been singing your praises to the other towns, too, because they need to know how skilled you are. My Facebook photos have been shared thirty-two thousand times, did you know that?”

I hadn’t. That was pretty awesome.

“Thank you so much. I absolutely love what I do, and Lanie’s cake has to be my favorite one to date. She was so much fun to work with, and her wedding colors were perfection.”

Done with listening to me talk about my work, Cash yelled, “Can someone please come and cut me out of this thing. I’m doing the splits, lady, and my nuts are confused as hell. If there’s no one available, just send a saw or the jaws of life, and I’ll do it myself!”

There was silence from the dispatcher, but then she started laughing her ass off. “You can tell him help’s on the way, and I hope his nuts don’t revolt or disappear before they get there.”

Relaying this to him, Cash just mumbled a thank you and returned to what he was doing—nothing. Granted, he couldn’t do much, but still.

Thanking her, I hung up and turned back to him.

“Can I get you anything?”

“I need to piss, like now.”

Taking a step away from him, I shook my head even though he wasn’t looking at me. “That’s not something I can help you with, and if you pee in a bottle, you’re going to get it on my carpet.”

Cash pursed his lips and then surprised me by giving an almighty tug on his leg. He didn’t get it free of the wall, though, because what we didn’t know was that there was a piece of the frame that was jagged, and as he pulled his leg, he’d managed to get the sharpest part of the broken piece of wood wedged in his shin. As it happened, he bellowed out, making me scream, and the longer he made his noises for, the longer I made mine for.

And that’s how the fire department and police found us… after they knocked my door down.

Chapter Four

Bond

“It’s your turn to pay for lunch,” I said to Jarrod as we walked toward the bakery. The owner had just added sandwiches, salads, and wraps to her menu, and damn if that wasn’t a relief.

Yeah, I was an adult, so I could have brought lunch to work with me every day or even had it made for me in the restaurant, but too much of one location wore on me if I didn’t change things up. I also wasn’t the kind of person who could eat a main meal during the day and not fall asleep, so there was that. And finally, I also liked to have ‘non-cooked’ food.

Eating at the diner every day was too much grease and cooking for me, and eating buns and donuts was too much sugar. I liked a happy medium, and that’s where appropriate lunch foods came into play.

And it was Jarrod’s turn to pay.

“I already knew that.”

As the eldest, you’d think it would be me who was the surliest and quietest out of us all, but instead, it was the ‘penultimate’ child who was. I swear he’d come out of the womb somber.

“Is that kid going to run across the road?” Reid hissed, stopping in place so quickly, Canon almost went into the back of him.

Following where he was looking, I saw a kid way younger than I’d expected to see running across the road before her mom could catch her. Checking both ways for oncoming traffic and getting ready to grab her, I blew out a breath when I didn’t see any vehicles.

And then I noticed who the adult was with her, and my heart sped up all over again.