Page 5 of A Wilder Wedding

My stomach tightened at that, but I ignored it. Because I had been here for years now. I started here right out of school and hadn’t looked back. I had actually still been in college when I first started working here, and had worked my way up to innkeeper. Which meant I had been here longer than anyone.

I finished my degree before the Wilders had bought the place, and so I had always been in this position, never changing, never moving on. Maybe I should have, but I didn’t want to think about that. Didn’t want to think about the fact that I felt stagnant, like I was running in place as I tried to come up with what to do next.

Only there wasn’t a next.

I was at the top of the food chain in my position. Everything I did wasn’t exactly by rote, as the guests were always different, but over time I had pretty much seen and heard everything.

I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do to change things, other than make a huge change that could ruin everything, or maybe make me feel as if I was finally doing something.

“Naomi? Are you okay?”

I smiled and put on a brave face. Because I was fine. Yes, my head hurt, and I felt like maybe I wasn’t doing things correctly every day, but I was okay.

I knew that. They knew that.

And if I kept lying to myself, maybe it would become truth.

“Anyway, what cake do you have for me today?”

Aurora studied my face, but I didn’t let her look too hard. Everybody knew something was wrong, after all, they knew that I’d had my heart broken. All because I had fallen in love with a man that didn’t love me back.

I hadn’t realized he didn’t love me back. But what was I supposed to do, pretend?

Amos had thought I wasn’t old enough to make my own decisions, even though I was nearly thirty. But because he had been an idiot—according to him—who had gotten married as a teenager and hadn’t been able to work through his feelings about it before coming to work for the Wilders, marriage itself must be the issue. It didn’t matter that he worked at a damn place that hosted more weddings than anything. No, he wasn’t good at marriage, and I was far too young. Even though that did not make any sense. But sure, he could break my heart and I could pretend to move on. And we could call it a fucking day.

I was tired of men making choices for me. I wasn’t going to let that happen anymore.

I hated that I still loved him and he never told me he loved me. In all those years, he had smiled or had hummed something about him too. But he had never said the words. And that made me an idiot.

I knew that he loved me. I could sense it, everyone could. But apparently he hadn’t wanted me to make the same mistakes his ex-wife had.

Those were the excuses he kept making, and so every time I thought maybe we could work it out, we would just fall apart. Because, frankly, we were not good at this. We should have been, but we really weren’t.

“Okay I have three cakes for you to try today, and a few more later. I just want to see what you think.”

“You know I love cake. You should go with what you like.”

“I know, I know. Ridge picked the groom’s cake, which I’m really excited about because it’s double chocolate with a praline center. But not the crunchy praline that hurts your teeth, more like a praline cream.”

My stomach rumbled. “I hate you right now. Because I really want that.”

Aurora winked. “I may have some in the refrigerator for you.”

“I take my hatred back. I love you more than I can say.”

“Well, that’s good to know. I like to have options.”

She tapped the three plates in front of her.

“Ridge said that I got to pick this cake because of course I want to. He wants to make sure I get exactly what I want because he’s getting exactly what he wants.” She blushed, and I realized that Ridge had not been talking about cake. Well then, I wasn’t jealous at all. Okay, I was horribly jealous. Everyone around me was falling in love and finding happiness, and I thought I had been on that track too. Only Amos had decided for us that hadn’t been the case.

“Okay, I thought about going with the chocolate and raspberry, but we already have the chocolate, so I’m moving away from that. This one here is a spiced pear with a chai icing. Now if the chai is too much or doesn’t work with the pear, I have a brown butter or a cashew frosting instead.” My eyes widened, but I took a bite, spices exploding on my tongue.

“That’s amazing. Utterly amazing. And I’ve never had anything like this from you before.”

She grinned. “I didn’t want just lemon or vanilla. I’ll have cupcakes of those flavors on the side for anyone who doesn’t like spice.”

“Okay, this is already a winner.”

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