Page 23 of Whisking It All

“They’re not getting on video. She won’t even send him a picture,” Gavin pointed out.

“Are you even sure she’s a woman?” Baz asked. “She could be a sixty-year-old man for all you know.”

“She’s not a sixty-year-old man,” Jamie snapped. “She’s a—actually, I don’t know exactly how old she is. But she is an adult, human woman. Not that it matters because she’s not my girlfriend. Can we talk about one of your love lives for a change?”

“Oh, Jamie, I don’t think we’re quite done talking about yours.” Jamie squeezed his eyes shut as the older woman’s hand fell onto his shoulder, her familiar Chanel perfume hovering like a cloud around her. “I hear it didn’t go so well with Trisha.”

“There’s a third woman?” Ethan blurted out.

Jamie ignored his best friend. “Trisha was lovely, Helen,” he said carefully. “But we didn’t have much in common.”

The older woman sucked her teeth. “I was afraid that might be the case. Though it sounds like maybe you did hit it off with some other young ladies.” Helen clicked her tongue and shook her head. “You won’t be able to bounce from woman to woman forever,” she chided, and Jamie caught the glee in his friends’ eyes at Helen implying that Jamie, the serial monogamist of the group, bounced between women. “When are you going to settle down?”

“Not yet, Helen,” Jamie said. “You keep turning me down.”

Helen laughed and patted him on the shoulder. “You couldn’t keep up, young man,” she said with a wink.

Bullet dodged. Helen White and her friends were regulars at brunch at Lemon and Thyme, but more than that, they had the ear of everyone who was anyone in Aster Bay. Getting on their bad side was the death knell for any business in town.

“Where’s the rest of your team, Mrs. White?” Ethan asked.

“Right over there,” she said, gesturing with a perfectly manicured hand to a table near the announcer’s stand where Ruth, Dot, and Judy waited for her to join them. “Are you boys ready to lose again?”

“Not this time, Mrs. W,” Gavin said. “This is our lucky week. I know it.”

Helen laughed. “Alright, boys. If you say so. Next round’s on me. Least I can do for embarrassing you like this every Monday.”

“Thanks, Mrs. White,” Baz, Gavin, and Ethan chorused as she walked away, joining her friends who each raised a hand to wave in their direction.

“We cannot keep losing to our elementary school teachers,” Baz grumbled once Helen was out of earshot.

“Yes, that must be really embarrassing for you,” Jamie said as he checked his phone again.

Still no reply from Whisky.

“Will you put that thing away?” Ethan said. “Even if she wrote back right now, you don’t want it to look like you’ve been sitting around waiting for her to text.”

“That’s exactly what he’s been doing,” Baz said.

“I’ve got a good feeling about our chances tonight,” Gavin said, setting down his beer. “Brodie’s been catching me up on all the Marvel movies.”

Jamie took another sip of his gin and tonic to keep from saying that Brodie should spend a little more time focused on his work at the restaurant and a little less time watching Captain America. Gavin’s son had been slacking off lately, too busy flirting with the waitresses to pay attention to the things Anabel was trying to teach him. The kid said he wanted a future in the restaurant business, but from what Jamie could see, all he wanted was to get laid. Not that Jamie could tell Gavin that. Gavin would feel the need to defend his son and it just wasn’t worth the conflict with one of his best friends. Anabel would set the kid straight eventually.

“I still can’t believe Brodie’s old enough to drink,” Baz said, his eyes drifting to the crowd at the bar where their friend’s son was holding court with a group of local twenty-somethings.

“Me either,” Gavin said. “I think that officially makes me old.”

“That’s what happens when you have kids before you graduate from college,” Jamie said.

Ethan shook his head. “Can you believe you were his age when he was born?”

All four friends stared at the twenty-one-year-old at the bar with his cocksure grin and shuddered. No one wanted to picture Brodie being responsible for a baby.

“Can you believe you already had a four-year-old when Brodie was born?” Baz asked.

“Speaking of TJ, is that her?” Gavin asked. “I thought you said she wasn’t coming.”

Jamie’s head whipped around, following Gavin’s gaze to where Tessa and Kyla, Cheryl’s baking assistant, were standing by the front door. Kyla searched the crowd, clearly looking for someone. Jamie and Tessa locked eyes. A cautious smile tipped up the edge of her lips and his cock stirred at the sight of her sinful curves in those painted-on jeans and a cropped sweater, slivers of her olive skin taunting him as she moved.

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