Wedding Cake Wishes Read Free Page A

she couldn’t do that if she allowed herself to be distracted. The answer to that challenge was simple: in order to help the baker, all she had to do was to ignore the baker’s son.
    She peeked at Logan again and this time found him watching her, seeing too much. Swallowing hard, she looked away. She realized with a shock that ignoring Logan Warren would be easier said than done.

Chapter Two
    C aroline glanced up from the drawer where she’d been mentally cataloging baking tools only to find that the two cake decorators she’d met earlier were studying her just as intently.
    â€œYou’re Trina Scott’s daughter, aren’t you?” the redhead named Margie asked, squinting as if she hadn’t quite placed her.
    â€œYes, I am.”
    Come to think of it, Logan had introduced Caroline only by her first name when he’d updated the staff on his mother’s condition and on changes at the bakery. After that, he’d slipped off to his mother’s office with the excuse of learning the accounting software. Well, at least one of them could avoid curious glances from the staff.
    Figuring it was time to take charge, Caroline stepped toward the stainless-steel counter where the women sat on stools, working on their masterpieces. “Do you know my mother?”
    The women looked at each other and laughed.
    â€œDo we know her mother?” Margie asked her cohortas she spread chocolate buttercream frosting over a sheet cake.
    Their laughter was enough to make a person nervous.
    The stout brunette named Kamie paused from her task of stretching a sugar dough called fondant over a three-layer yellow cake. “Even if we didn’t already know Trina since…oh…second grade, we would have known her from here at the shop.”
    â€œOh. Right.”
    Her mother probably spent more than her share of time at Mrs. Warren’s business since moving back to Markston. Caroline could only hope that it hadn’t been so much time that she had been tempted to share family stories.
    Margie shook her frosting-covered spatula at Caroline. “You’re the one who’s decided not to marry.”
    â€œI—” Caroline frowned. Definitely too many stories. She needed to establish professional employer-employee boundaries with the staff here…and fast.
    â€œYou sure messed with your mother’s and Amy’s matchmaking plans before they realized they were targeting the wrong bride,” Kamie said, chuckling. “But they figured it out, didn’t they? They got your sisters matched up just right.”
    Her face felt like it was on fire. She needed no reminders of those humiliating matchmaking events, where the two moms had tried to set her up first with Matthew and then with Dylan. It didn’t matter that she’d never planned to marry or even that she was thrilled that both of her sisters had found love. She still couldn’t help feeling sensitive over all of that rejection.
    The decorators were staring at her, curiosity paintedall over their faces. If someone asked her if she was married to her career, Caroline was sure she would die of embarrassment. What was she supposed to say now? That she and her career had divorced? It wasn’t anyone’s business, any more than anyone needed to know that her choice not to date was less about her feminist leanings and more about a broken heart.
    Caroline braced herself, waiting, but the two women were suddenly studying something behind her. She didn’t have to turn to know that Logan was back there, witnessing the whole humiliating exchange. The tingling at the back of her neck gave her enough of a hint.
    â€œJust thought I’d check in and see how the cakes were coming along.”
    Logan leaned against the wall just inside the kitchen doorway, his arms crossed. His words were innocuous, but his jaw was tight, and his fingers pressed too tightly into the snug-fitting cuffs of his short-sleeve polo