Loose Lips Read Free Page A

I actually hadn’t
realized Frosted was so close...
    Cocking my brow at what was obviously a
genius idea, I lowered the window of my Jeep to give Kiska some
ventilation and walked toward the shop.
    Inside, Frosted was dark and smelled of
sugar.
    The poor lighting was a bit disturbing for a
place that sold food, but the smell of sugar pretty much wiped out
my concerns.
    Cindy was working alone, waiting on a
customer who, from the back, didn’t look as if she’d tasted so much
as a sprinkle, much less a cupcake.
    Cindy glanced at me. I couldn’t tell if she
recognized me or not. We’d only met once before, during a painful
mountain bike excursion that I’d stupidly done to impress a
male.
    Luckily, my love life was currently wrapped
up, and any thoughts of submitting myself to silly self–improvement
efforts were safely behind me.
    Based on Cindy’s chosen profession, and the
fact that she looked as if she’d put on a few pounds since our last
meeting, I assumed that they were behind her too.
    After a quick nod my direction, she returned
her attention to the skinny minnie.
    “So, a double batch tomorrow? I can do that,
but I’ll have to let you know about Thursday. Our...”
    She glanced at me. Realizing I’d had my
hands and nose pressed against the display case’s glass in an
attempt to see whether the cupcakes inside were red velvet or just
plain chocolate, I stepped back and studied a sign posted with
pricing instead.
    “...flour supplier hasn’t returned my call.
We should be okay, but there’s always a possibility of a
shortage.”
    There was a pause in the conversation,
making me feel like one or both of them was looking at me again. I
took another step away. Encroaching on Cindy’s space would do
little to help my case when I asked to borrow whatever she might
have access to from her family’s past.
    “I understand,” the female customer replied.
“But if this is going to become an ongoing issue—”
    “It won’t.”
    Cindy was a bit abrupt with her customer,
but then the customer threatening to take her business elsewhere
seemed less than polite too.
    I shrugged off the exchange and went back to
planning my cupcake order... and what I was going to say to Cindy
to plead my case, of course.
    Cindy disappeared for a moment and then
reappeared with a disposable aluminum pan that was covered with
another sheet of aluminum, making it hard for me to say for sure
what was inside.
    Well, not that hard. I smelled brownies.
Chocolate ones.
    I hadn’t seen them on the menu. Wondering
what other delights had been left off, I looked back at the
sign.
    “Tomorrow we’ll be okay, but Thursday we’ll
need more. I can stop before five. If it’s later than that, you
will have to deliver. By six a.m. we’ll be swamped with
customers.”
    Swamped with customers and by six
a.m.?
    I turned to see who this business phenomenon
was.
    The woman holding the pan of brownies was
young, maybe twenty two, although her braids made her look even
younger. She was also attractive, with assets that said she wasn’t
afraid of surgical enhancement, and a smile that said she knew that
I had noticed.
    It wasn’t, however, her assets or her smile
that caused me pause. It was her t–shirt, emblazoned with the title
Caffeine Cartel Cutie
. The string tie of a bikini top
poked out the neck.
    Joe’s newest competition, the coffee kiosk,
was called The Caffeine Cartel. I hadn’t realized the girls working
in it were known as
Cuties
.
    Not that I could argue with the title. She
was
cute. Way cuter than Joe, darn her.
    She left with a bounce in her step that I
was fairly certain was for my benefit. I watched her go, feeling
old and decidedly un–bouncey.
    The door had barely swung shut when I heard
the tell–tale sound of a malamute wooing. I considered ignoring it,
but after catching Cindy’s eye and her annoyed expression, I
thought better of it. I walked to the door and peered out.
    My dog was standing in the Jeep with