Page 20 of The Lyrics of Love

“Yes, I need a consult.” Nash just didn’t explain what for.

“Just a minute.” The woman stepped to an open door. “Hey, Ainsley, you’ve got a guy who needs a consult.” The woman paused and then nodded. “Sure thing.”

She returned to him. “Can I get you a drink? Ainsley will be about ten minutes. She’s finishing up icing a birthday cake.”

“Could I watch?” he asked, thinking the pastries and cupcakes which Rylie had brought for dinner had been small works of art. He would enjoy seeing another artist at work.

“Huh.” The woman walked back through the doors, vanishing. She returned quickly.

“She said go on back.”

She frowned at him, and Nash knew she was trying to place him. If he appeared on TV or at some awards show, people knew exactly who he was. But out in public, on the street, when he was out of context, they often had trouble figuring that out.

He moved behind the counter and went into the back. To his left, a man was kneading dough. Another woman who appeared to be in her early twenties was decorating cookies. Nash glanced to his right and saw Ainsley in front of a sheet cake. She’d iced green grass around the edges of the cake, while the bulk of the round center was blue water. A fisherman sat in his boat, holding a rod which dipped into the water. The mouth of a fish had taken the bait and was raised slightly out of the water. It looked so realistic that Nash did a double-take.

“Be with you in just a minute,” Ainsley said, her focus on the cake.

He watched her put the final touches on the fish and then lift a tube and attach something to the end of it. She wrote out Happy Birthday, Oswald in a script so beautiful, it looked as if it came from a book on calligraphy.

This woman was in a league all her own.

Stepping back, she surveyed the cake, her head cocked. Then she called out, “Gus, come here. Tell me what you think.”

The other baker moved toward her, his brow furrowed as he studied it. “Oswald’s gonna love it, Ainsley.”

“I think so, too.” She wiped her hands on her apron and turned to Nash, holding out her hand. “Hi, I’m... Ainsley.” Her smile faltered.

He knew she had recognized him.

“Can we talk?” he asked, noticing the man had gone back to his bread, while the other woman hadn’t looked up from her cookies.

“Yes, we can go to my office upstairs.”

She moved through a door, and Nash followed her up the stairs. They entered what he supposed had at one time been an apartment. It had a large desk and a few pieces of furniture. She went and sat behind the desk, her eyes narrowing.

“You told Gloria you wanted a consult.”

“I do. I need to consult you about your cousin. I need her cell number.”

Ainsley bit her bottom lip. He could see the wheels turning in her head.

“Why would you want that—and from me? Why didn’t you ask for it last night? Oh, wait. Things didn’t go well, did they? I’m sure if you asked Rylie, she refused to give it to her.”

So, the cousin already knew about how last night had ended.

“I never asked her for it,” he said. “I was hoping to get it just now when I visited her at Antiques and Mystiques.”

That caught her interest. “Why did you stop to see my cousin this morning? All I know is she thought last night’s date was a total failure.”

“It wasn’t. At least until the very end. And I’m the one who blew it.”

She nodded thoughtfully. “At least you’re man enough to admit to that.”

“I get that you’re protective of Rylie. I would be, too, if I were in your shoes. But I realized I made a huge mistake with her. I even wrote a song about it after she left.”

“What did you call it?” she fired at him quickly.

“A Mistake I Can’t Take Back. It’s probably going to make me a bucketful of money. But that won’t mean a thing to me if I can’t get a second chance with your cousin. I want to play it for her.”

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