Page 45 of Stolen Goods
“Yup.” Thad shrugged. “Okay.”
Her entire face lit up, a firework exploding in broad daylight. “Really?!”
Just like that, Thad knew the delays, the extra time, the risk—it would all be worth it. “Sure. I’ve never been. I’d love to go.”Before I’m banned from re-entering the United States.He kept that little side note to himself. “And like you said, it’s not too far out of the way.”
“Oh, thank you,” she gushed, and then bit down, pulling her lower lip into her mouth to try to hide her ever-widening smile, but her cheeks pulled taut regardless. Joy was as much in the eyes as it was in the lips, if not more so, and there was no dimming that bright beam.
“Bet you’re wishing you had that pencil now, huh?” Thad teased, fully expecting Addison to bury herself back in the maps.
Instead, she turned to him with a devilish grin that intrigued him to no end. “No need.”
He pushed his brows together, waiting for an explanation.
“Confidence breeds success, right?” She lifted the map to show him the thick black line running through it. “I already sharpied it in.”
Thad paused, cataloguing every detail of this moment. The curve of her lip. The sunlight glittering against her hair. The slight flush to her cheeks. The blur of trees framing her face. He committed it to memory, in case he wanted to paint it later. Because right here, right now, with Addison throwing his own words back in his face, Thad felt a joy so pure, a feeling so light and bubbling and beautiful, all he could do was put his head back and laugh.
- 16 -
Addison
Turned out life on the run was a little, well, boring. As the views outside the window shifted from thick forests to grassy plains, they played Twenty-One Questions, I Spy, and The Movie Game. They listened to music, fighting between country stations (Addy’s choice) and classic rock (all Thad). Addy told him about the first time she’d seen snow as a girl, a few days before Christmas. Her father tied an aluminum garbage can lid to the back of his car and dragged her and Gracie around for ages so they could “sled.” It was one of her favorite memories with her sister—the two of them hugging and screaming and laughing as they clutched each other and the sled for dear life. Thad told her about the first blizzard he could recall, when the private acres around his family’s estate had been coated with three feet of snow. Jo and her parents had come over to weather the storm, and Thad had spent most of the evening running away from her as she tried to pin him down to put ponytails in his hair while their parents all sipped cocktails by the fire. Addy asked him if he minded being an only child, to which he replied he wasn’t, not really, and that Jo had always been like a sister to him. Addy didn’t know what to say after that, her mind going back to Gracie, and in her silence, Thad grew contemplative too. So they strayed from the personal, and returned to a game, which was, at the moment, Favorites.
“Favorite musician?” Thad asked.
“Ooh, um… Garth Brooks.” The name of the game was to answer quickly, first thing that came to mind. Rapid fire for the most honesty. “Favorite band?”
Thad rolled his eyes. “You can’t ask that. I just asked that. New questions, always.”
“Well, I didn’t know that,” Addy huffed. “Answer it anyway.”
The edge of his lip pulled up and he sighed dramatically, but those dimples gave him away. “Steve Miller Band. Favorite cake?”
“Oh, come on, you said you were going to start easy!” Addy crossed her arms, tossing him a glare. Thad shrugged like,I thought that was easy.But it wasn’t to a pastry chef! “Red velvet with cream cheese frosting. No—wait. Chocolate with buttercream. No—apple spice with pecan caramel filling. No—ah! Okay, fine. I’ve got it. My grannie’s coconut cake. Simple but the best.” She nodded a few times, confirming the choice to herself.Yeah, yum. That’s the best. Now, time for a taste of your own medicine.“Favorite painting?”
“Really?” he scoffed.
“You went there first.”
He shifted his head back and forth like,Okay, I guess I did, and then dropped it heavily against his headrest.
“It’s a tie,” he finally said, as though that were the most difficult decision in the world. Addy wanted to interrupt and snarkily remind him,Those aren’t the rules, but there was a tightness in his expression that made her pause, a sense that she was peeking through the cracks. “Wheatfield with Crowsby Van Gogh, andDance at Bougivalby Renoir. The first is sort of ominous with a dark, cloudy sky and a scattering swarm of crows, with dramatic brushstrokes and that element of madness that was so quintessentially Van Gogh. And the other is the complete opposite, bright and light and airy, two dancers that ooze pleasure. For a second, just looking at that painting, you understand what love feels like, even if you’ve never experienced it on your own. It’s that powerful.” Thad licked his lips and swallowed, darting his gaze in her direction before returning it to the road. He cleared his throat. “So, favorite cake you designed?”
“Oh, that’s easy. You see, for me, it’s not so much about the cakes, but about the story behind them. And my favorite couple ever was the Henleys—they were lovely human beings. The moment they walked into Edie’s shop, I could tell how happy, how in love they were. One of those couples that you knew, just by looking at them, was going to make it to forever.” Addy sighed wistfully. “Anyway, they were high school sweethearts. At eighteen, he was deployed to Iraq, and on the morning they said goodbye, a butterfly came down and landed on her hand. She believed it was a sign from God that everything would be okay. He would see butterflies occasionally while he was serving overseas, and they made him think of her. A week before he was supposed to come home, his family got a call that he was wounded, in serious condition, after his unit got hit by an IED. When she got the call, a butterfly landed on her windowsill, and she knew he’d survive, somehow. He did, after losing his leg. They postponed their wedding until he’d be able to walk himself down the aisle, but while he was in physical therapy, she found out she had a lump in her breast. Butterflies appeared magically, all over the place, giving them hope through every struggle. And they decided, life was too short. They didn’t want to wait any longer. So they came to us for a cake, and it was the first one I designed on my own. The bottom tier was a field of buttercream wildflowers, the second and third tiers were peppered with butterflies of all kinds, and the top was simple, just a little bit of piping around the base of a dancing couple molded from white chocolate.”
A tear pricked at the corner of her eye just remembering the smiles on their faces when they saw the final product on the morning of their wedding. To some people, baking was maybe a silly or unimportant profession. But to Addy, on that day, nothing could’ve been further from the truth. Her work had touched someone else’s life—and that had been everything.
“Anyway,” Addy murmured, fighting through the sudden clog in her throat. “Two days before their wedding, the doctors officially declared she was in remission, and he did manage to walk himself down the aisle. Now they have a little boy who’s two, so everything turned out okay.”
“That’s—” He paused, letting out a deep breath. “That’s beautiful.”
Addy glanced to the side as a tingling sixth sense fluttered over her skin and met the gaze she already knew was turned in her direction. His eyes were bright, intense and yearning, though for what she couldn’t quite tell. She looked away before she had a chance to find out. They seemed to keep doing this careful dance, getting close to something personal, then backing away and spinning around the hidden meaning, almost like a tide, rolling in, then seeping out, then rolling in a bit closer, then retreating. She wasn’t sure what would happen when the water rushed forward next.
“Favorite movie?” Addy asked, changing the subject, letting the wave recede.
Thad grinned. “The Thomas Crown Affair.”
“Really?” Addy sat up, turning toward him in surprise. “Isn’t that a little, well, cliché or something?”
