Don't Go Baking My Heart

Reba

“Fucking hell, not another one.”

“Pardon?”

Reba looked up from her phone, having completely forgotten she wasn’t alone. Cherisse’s expression remained neutral, but the man standing next to her was looking at her as if she had lost her whole mind.

Maybe she had, cussing like that at a client meeting. But really, it was Devon’s fault.

“Fudge is what I said. You asked what we could do differently. Most people never consider the delight of fudge as a dessert. It’s different and local. Your foreign visitors would literally eat it up. What about an entire section of just local sweets?” she asked, pulling that save out of her ass.

Mr. Carlton nodded, rubbing his beard. “Hmm, I wouldn’t have considered it either, but it sounds good. Is that something you can do?” He turned to Cherisse.

“Of course.” She gestured for Mr. Carlton to continue the walk through the venue.

He would be throwing a party to wine and dine some international clients and had reached out to them to do the desserts. Reba blew out a breath. God, she could have almost cost them that job if she had been any louder.

Damn Devon King’s entire existence. The man had sent her another cat meme. The folder she had set up just for that purpose on her phone was thriving, but the why of it all was making her lose her mind.

She looked down at the message again. The meme was a reply to her text telling him good luck. He had that presentation today. She hadn’t expected a response in the first place, let alone a bunch of cat memes, which he was basically spamming their chat with now.

This man really didn’t do anything halfway, did he? It was sort of cute.

They wrapped up with Mr. Carlton and Reba drove them back to Cherisse’s apartment, where they found Remi staring intently at her laptop.

Remi didn’t look away from the screen. “How was the meeting?”

“Great.” Cherisse hovered over Remi’s shoulder, looking at her screen. “Reba cussed in front of the client but made a quick save, so all good.”

Reba’s face heated. “Now why did you need to bring that up? I don’t have a good excuse. Just saw something on my phone that surprised me. Sorry.”

“It’s cool,” Cherisse assured her. “He’s fully on board with the local sweets idea. This is why I keep you around. I’ve never thought of adding that to our menu. I can experiment with different flavours of fudge.”

“Sounds fun.” It did. She had missed Cherisse when she’d been gone, but now, they could resume all their usual work shenanigans.

Remi perked up. “Fudge?”

“Yes, you get to taste-test.” Cherisse rubbed her hands together and turned to Reba. “I know you still have to help Devon with that bake-off, but I can’t wait to fully steal you back. I have some plans in the works. More on that in due time. Speaking of Devon…”

Oh, Cherisse wasn’t being slick at all. “Nothing to talk about there.”

Remi turned away from her laptop to look at them. “I still want to hear more about the fudge, but yes, do tell me more about Mr. King. Have things progressed since I saw you two looking like a sexy power couple at that exhibit?”

“Excuse me? What exhibit?” Cherisse asked.

“Uh…” Right, she had never told Cherisse about that. She shot Remi a look. She shrugged, the “I don’t give a shit” message coming through loud and clear. “That was also nothing.”

“Hmm. You sure?” Cherisse’s eyes narrowed. “Keiran told me Devon called him for advice this morning. On whether he should make an unannounced stop at your house on Sunday. That sounds like a whole lotta something to me. Care to share what that was about? What happened after we left the party?”

Devon hadn’t shared that. Huh. So even in an attempted moment of spontaneity, the man had still needed to run it by someone. That shouldn’t be so endearing, and yet Reba smiled at the picture Devon had probably made while talking to Keiran. She dropped down onto the couch. Better to get comfortable since an interrogation was coming. Remi had already given up on her work and turned her chair around.

“He just returned my phone and bag. That’s it.”

“But didn’t you have to return to get your car?” Cherisse insisted. “After you left with Scott. You would’ve gotten your stuff anyhow.”

She loved this group of people, truly she did, but Scott could have also kept that little tidbit to himself. She hadn’t gone into details with him, but it had been obvious that Devon was the reason she was fleeing the party.

“What exactly did Scott say?”