Page 50 of 2045 Clementine Lane: Catherine

“You’re soliciting feedback?” I ask. “On, ah…on cupcakes?”

“They’re not justanycupcakes. They’refifth birthdaycupcakes for a special girl,” she insists. Taking my hand, she leads me back to the small table and points to a chair.

I sit obediently and loosen my tie to try and accommodate my raging body heat, but I’m too overwhelmed to act natural as she makes frosting from scratch, chatting away the entire time.

“I always thought I could be a pastry chef,” she tells me. “The problem is I don’t do well with structure. I bake what inspiration calls for. And any time I divert from my mood, all hell breaks loose.”

“You could open your own place,” I suggest, clasping my hands together between my knees and leaning forward on the chair. “That way you could bake whatever you wanted.”

“Yeah, but I’d be that bakery owner who puts out ten variations of canelé instead of the typical favorites. No day would ever be the same.” She laughs, and the sound is genuinely happy. Not quite relaxed. But happy. “Probably not the best business model.”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I’ve never met anyone who didn’t like a canelé.”

She replies, “You bring up a valid point,” but doesn’t turn back to me as she works. I’m silent for fifteen minutes as I sit there, swamped in her—her smell, her voice, her happy chatter.

I watch as she fills a piping bag, puts the bowl back in the fridge, and then walks to the table, icing in hand. “The kid likes dinosaurs,” she explains.

“Makes sense.” I look down at the table, only just noticing the baking supplies lying next to a batch of perfectly iced cookies in various dinosaur parts.

“They’re for the top.” She sits down and, removing a cupcake from the batch, expertly ices it. Taking the three dinosaur parts—head, body, and tail—from the tray, she sticks them into the top of the small cake so that it looks like a Triceratops, swimming in the frosting.

“That is an objectively cool cupcake.”

“You think so?”

“Yeah. I do.” Taking myBlackberryout of my pocket, I angle the camera and snap a picture. When I look up, Catherine is staring at me. “For my nephew,” I explain. “He’s also into dinosaurs.”

“Oh!” Pushing to a stand, she walks over to a cupboard and rummages around until she comes back up with a container. “You should take him some.”

“That’s really not-”

“Necessary?” She grins at me. “Cupcakes are nevernecessary. None of the good things in life are.” She sits back down. “Besides, you’d be doing me a favor.”

“How?”

When she smiles at me, my heart thumps against my ribs. “The girls have a love-hate relationship with baked goods. Sometimes, I feel like I’m the only one who genuinely loves to eat.” She shrugs. “As you can probably tell.”

I know what she means. She’s pointing out her curves and comparing them to her friends’ slender frames. And as much as I hate that she does it, I won’t break another professional boundary by calling bullshit. Because then I might not be able to stop. Then I might tell her that I’d gladly give my right arm just toseethat glorious body of hers unclothed.

“Ah.” The sound that comes out of my mouth is supposed to be noncommittal.

“That sounded like a knowledgeableah. Girlfriend? Wife?” She doesn’t meet my eyes when she asks.

“I once watched my sister, Jenny, eat an entire tray of cookies and then start crying. She was sixteen at the time and rail thin, so I never quite understood the dilemma.”

“Mhnm, spoken like a man who never wanted to fit into a size two.”

“Thank God,” I mutter, pulling a quick laugh from her.

There’s something oddly grounding about watching her work. The parts that I’ve seen of her until now have been ingrained in a past I know she’d rather forget. Butit’s a new perspective, to see her here, calm and relaxed, at home, baking cupcakes for a kid’s birthday party. She quickly ices, decorates, and packs half a dozen cupcakes, her movements fluid. Confident. She almost looks like a professional, except she’s not dressed for the occasion.

It might not fit with my preconceived notion of who I imagined she was when she’s not talking to me as Lieutenant Aiden Flint, but I like it. I likeher. During every interaction with her so far, I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop, the moment when she says or does something that ruins the ridiculous fantasy I have of her in my head. And, instead, every time I learn something new about her, I like her more.

It's dangerous, to be this hopelessly intrigued by a woman. Shit, it’d be dangerous if she wasn’t a suspect in a murder investigation.

But she is.

And, as Mani’s previous accusation rings through my mind, I realize that maybe I’m a little too far down the rabbit hole than is safe.

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