Page 29 of The Alpha and the Baker
Once the hydration issue was handled, I needed to move on to the pounding in my head. I struggled for a bit longer than I would like to admit with the child-safety cap on my extra-strength headache meds, but eventually I got it open and poureda thousand milligrams of blessed medicine into my mouth. I washed it down with more tap water.
After that, a nice hot shower and my morning routine helped me feel a little more right in the head. Glancing at the clock, I saw that it was nearly three-thirty a.m.. I hadn’t been sleeping for long, butit had been deep.
Too bad it was Sunday, aka my busiest day of the week. I needed to get on my prep ASAP because I hadn’t done much the day before because of the whole cake fiasco.
“Early bird gets the worm,” I croaked to myself as I trudged down the stairs.
Coffee on, list ready in my head, I zombie-walked through most of the prep that I knew by heart, little trickles of my memory only beginning to come to me once I began actually mainlining the coffee. Once the coffee was all gone, I grabbed a sports drink from the fridge and mixed it in a canteen with Pedialyte. It was a trick I hadn’t used since college, but it worked a right treat. I always had Pedialyte on hand just in case I got the flu and couldn’t go out to get something to help.
“God, my fucking head,” I groused to myself for perhaps the dozenth time as I began to boil some bagels. I still didn’t understand how a third of a glass of punch had knocked me so far off my feet. What could they have possibly put in there? Extra-strength Everclear?
Could it have been moonshine? They were kind of country, after all. God, wouldn’t that be hilarious?
Whatever it was, it had definitely been an experience. I didn’t regret it, but my head certainly did. Thankfully, between the warmth of the kitchen, the hydration, and the meds, the headache soon backed off, and I got caught up with my very long to-do list.
“A baker’s work is never done,” I mused to myself, and I was satisfied when my voice sounded a little more normal and less like nails scraping on a chalkboard.
As I was whipping up the filling for my Boston cream donuts, a strange glint caught my eye. Pausing, I went over to my door to see two sets of keys on the ground right next to the little end table that I usually put my keys on.
“What’s this?” I asked, picking up the foreign set and realizing they definitely weren’t mine. And now that I thought about it, howhadI gotten home?
Closing my eyes and furrowing my brow, I tried to recall what exactly had happened once the sun went down. I remembered lying with the dogs, then dancing with Cas, and having the most magical time.
And then…
Nothing.
Well, maybe not nothing. There were glimpses of streetlights that streaked golden on the slate-gray of a dark city night. The open road. Some giggling. That was it.
Idefinitelyhadn’t driven home. Not only did I like to think that even inebriated I wouldn’t allow myself to do such a thing, but I was pretty sure I wouldn’t have been able to even if I’d wanted to. I’d been so exhausted and so cozy—it was like sleep had had its own gravity that relentlessly pulled me toward it.
“He must have driven me home,” I murmured to myself. My habit of keeping up conversation with me, myself, and I was cropping up again.
But how did I get his keys? Surely he would have noticed them when he got home. And for that matter, how did he even get home?
“He didn’t Uber all the way back just for me, did he?”
That seemed incredibly far-fetched, but what other explanation was there? It wasn’t like he could just walk homeconsidering how far it was. Or run for that matter, even if he and his family were apparently avid runners.
As crazy as it was, I was utterly flattered. He’d already spent a pretty penny on my services, allowed me to spend the whole day partying with his family while eating their delicious food, and then taxied me all the way home. What a gentleman!
And they say chivalry is dead.
The next thing I knew, my phone was in my hand, my thumb hovering over his number in my contact list. Then I remembered it was five in the morning andnotthe right time to call someone.
“Close call.”
Despite the great pain it caused me, I put the phone down and got back to doing what I was doing.
That lasted maybe an hour and a half before I was right back at my phone, shooting off a text before I could stop myself.
Felicia:Hey, I think I somehow got your keys? Yesterday is a bit hazy, but I don’t recognize these.
I snapped a picture of the keys and sent it.
And then I waited.
Maybe the wordwaitedwasn’t exactly accurate, because I walked a few feet away before returning. And then I did a round of double-checking the ovens,andthen I checked it again. I was getting almost nothing done. Thankfully, my phone started ringing.
