Page 23 of Almost Love

You didn’t see the way he was looking at you, darling.

You’re probably more his type than I ever will be.

That got her mind wandering again. She had felt his eyes on her more than not, and she liked the way it felt to be looked at by him. Clementine knew that most people saw her like a puzzle to solve. She couldn’t be that hard to read, right?

Every day since their first food adventure, he would come into the bakery to pick up donuts and make polite conversation, but leave before it got the attention of her staff. Surprising herself, she was often tempted to ask him to stay. She wanted to serve him another filter coffee and show him what it paired with best. Even with her crush on Xander, she’d never gone this far. He didn’t know about her filter coffee preference or that she tried to make a donut inspired by it once. Because the thing with Xander was one-sided, she knew that now. He liked talking about himself, very rarely asking her questions. Whenever she thought about him of late, Clementine didn’t know what had prompted the crush. He was handsome, had a nice smile and charmed the heck out of her.

This is why she didn’t always trust the part of her brain that developed those feelings, because it seemed like there was never anything more than a surface-level attraction.

Crushes and infatuations were for teeny-boppers, not badass boss babes like herself.

That’s a brilliant way to block out the feelings.

Fortunately, she had a lot of work on her plate to keep her distracted. Clementine prided herself on taking on only as much as she could handle, delegating as was necessary. When it came to wedding cakes, she was always the primary on the creations. Which was what she was doing that day with Roscoe. After Frankie’s last visit and the couple deciding they wanted a three-tier cake with different flavors—Chocolate Chai, Raspberry Champagne and Chocolate and Hazelnut Praline—she had her work cut out for her. It wasn’t impossible, but she had never worked on three contrasting flavors in one cake before.

“Are you sure we should split the chocolate layers with the raspberry one?”

Roscoe looked at the flavor profiles they’d mapped out on the whiteboard in the kitchen. “Without tasting it, I feel like I can’t really make a call.”

“How about we start with buttercream on sponge cakes so we’re not making multiple versions of the same thing?” she suggested.

“That’s a good idea.”

Thanks to the kitchen being almost as large as the front of the bakery, multiple things could happen at once without causing havoc. She had designed the kitchen before she even knew what the rest of the bakery was going to look like. She’d done so much research, visiting other kitchens to get insight into what a good space looked like. Then she had spent months with Mack’s artistic eye to build something that would be spacious, bright, comfortable and good for working as a team.

That was Clementine’s whole thing—she wanted every member of her staff to feel like they were a part of the business. It might be her name in magazines and on people’s lips, but without her team and staff, she wouldn’t have Pretty Baked. She only opened the bakery once at least two people were hired and had worked together for at least a month. She didn’t have time for drama and fighting. She wanted to make sure that everyone was on the same page and cared about baking as much as the next person.

She was also careful to never refer to them as afamily, because that was the worst thing any boss could do. They were a team and they worked like it. They were also friends. But never family. She’d been in enough kitchens where the minute the F word was dropped, you were taken for granted. Clementine wouldn’t let that happen to her staff.

So while she worked on the buttercream and sponge cake on one side of the kitchen, Freya and the others worked on a new batch of cupcakes. The speakers pumped out Noah Kahan’s latest album, making everyone either hum or sing along. The kitchen smelled like heaven as well, which was definitely a win in her column. She and Roscoe switched duties until they had three palm-sized sponge cakes, each of them smothered in buttercream.

“Here’s the deal,” she announced as everyone gathered around their work station. “We’re not telling you what’s what. What we want you to do is taste them in whatever order suits you and mark your votes on the board.”

The whiteboard also didn’t mention the flavors, just the numbers that she and Roscoe had assigned each cake. As she took a step back from washing her hands, Luna appeared with a smile. It didn’t take a genius to decipher that smile—Oakley had arrived—but Clementine still rolled her eyes as she untied her neon green bandana. Smoothing down her dark gray coat, she walked out to find him staring into the display case. He’d already been there first thing in the morning, packing up a box of donuts for his work day. She’d been too busy then to acknowledge him beyond a wave.

Now, she had the chance to admire him, take in the way the dark T-shirt hugged his biceps and his black jeans fitted to his legs. In an unanticipated move, her brain started to strip him naked, but she stopped it quickly with an aggressive shake of her head.Friends, remember? Calm the fuck down. She let her eyes linger on his tattoos, the surfboard and chevron peeking through the lilies wrapped around his arm.

When she looked up, he was watching her, an amused smile gracing his mouth. Huffing at his expression, she put her hands on her hips.

“Didn’t you already clean out our donut supply this morning?”

His smile faded into a frown as he said, “What happened to the orange one from this morning?”

“Haven’t made anything with orange in a while.”

“No, your coat. It’s a dull color.”

Her eyes widened as she looked down at herself and then at Oakley. The fact that he’d been paying attention to her clothes was startling. One of the first things she decided was the softer tones for the bakery decor and aligning their uniforms to those shades just made sense. It wasn’t as boring as the standard white jackets and she wanted her staff to be able to express themselves in some way.

More importantly, Clementine didn’t realize she’d changed coats, because it was normal when working with buttercream. But he noticed and remembered.

“I uh…I like the pastel coats,” he said softly, a blush spreading across his cheeks. “A client canceled, so I thought I’d swing by and, uh…see you.”

She rolled her lips to hide the smile. “Here I am.”

“There you are,” he said softly, voice a little scratchy as he looked her over unabashedly. She hated to admit that she liked it. A lot.

“So…what did you want to see me about?”

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