All In by Kate Willoughby

were with him. They were also needy and demanding.
    Mariah was different. He’d noticed her fingering the pendant in the glass store and had half expected her to hint around for him to buy it for her. She hadn’t. Most of the women he’d been with in the past few years would have done more than hint, and most likely, knowing the exact amount of cash he had in his pocket, they would have chosen something much more expensive. Not Mariah. She was independent, used to providing for herself and working for what she wanted.
    Too bad she had a lousy sense of timing, because he was just about to dive into a slice of Chocolate Earthquake Cake when she put the dessert aside and announced it was time to get to work.
    “You’re going to be bouncing off the walls if you eat any more chocolate,” she warned.
    “Don’t worry about me,” he said, waggling his eyebrows. “I know exactly how to get rid of any excess energy.”
    “Well, so do I,” Mariah said. “It’s called whipping cream. By hand .”
    Tucker groaned loudly and Heidi giggled.
    As Mariah propelled him toward the swinging door behind the counter, she said, “Heidi, if you need me, I’ll be in back making that cake.”
    “Okay. Have fun,” Heidi said with another laugh.
    Behind the storefront was a pristine kitchen of gleaming stainless steel, white tile and large, intimidating appliances. Against one wall were cupboards and employee lockers. Shelving units held neatly organized supplies—bags of flour and sugar, canisters filled with a variety of extracts, stacks of empty cake and candy boxes, some decorated with her signature brown and pink, others plain white. A security monitor suspended in a corner near the ceiling showed the front register where Heidi was greeting a customer.
    “Here, put this on,” Mariah said, tossing Tucker a striped apron.
    He looked at it with exaggerated horror. “It’s pink.”
    “Your powers of observation are astounding,” she said, chuckling. “But it’s only half pink.”
    “All right,” he said, tying on the apron, “but any more abuse like this and I’m quitting.”
    “That’s an empty threat if I ever heard one,” she replied, after getting a bowl and some other utensils. “Because if you quit, you won’t get your kisses.”
    Then she caressed his cheek and damned if his stomach didn’t do a funky little flip-flop thing.
    “You know,” he said, “now that you mention it…”
    He grabbed her and pressed his mouth to hers, sliding his tongue in and copping a feel at the same time. Her nipple stiffened against his palm and her breath came a little harder. He thought seriously about pushing something in front of the door to ensure their privacy, but knew that was going too far. Unfortunately, Mariah must have been of the same mind and ended the kiss all too quickly.
    “Okay, back off,” she said, her eyes bright with passion. “Heidi might come back here and see us, and more importantly, I have a cake to bake.”
    “No, we ,” he said, stepping back. “ We have a cake to bake.”
    * * * * *
     
    No stranger to a kitchen, Tucker took Mariah’s orders and in no time they had several cake pans in the oven and were preparing a large batch of buttercream frosting. While they worked, he talked about his gingerbread house making days.
    “Every year during Christmas break, Claudia gears up for her holiday project. There’s always some new theme, bigger and better than the last year’s.”
    “Like what?”
    “One year she made the Eiffel Tower with a bunch of French shops at the base. She’s done Santa’s Workshop a couple of times. But the absolute best was when I was about fourteen. She made a haunted mansion with all the monsters wearing green and red. That was a lot of fun. Tony and I went crazy making marzipan zombies.”
    Tucker’s best childhood memories were of Tony and his family. He still flew back to San Jose for holidays with the DeLucas when he could. His parents were inevitably traveling