Love Takes the Cake by Betsy St. Amant

to fix it. He already missed the friendly banter they’d created over his weeks of Tuesday visits to The Dough Knot. The thought of losing that made his head throb. “Aren’t we friends?”
    She lifted her chin. “You’re my client.”
    That one cut even deeper. He silently stepped aside. She slipped past him without a backward glance.
    He knew, because he watched her leave.

“Why are all men the same?” Charlotte struggled to keep her voice down as she rinsed out a mixing bowl in the industrial kitchen sink.
    It was Tuesday afternoon, but Zoe was in the dining room, eating a chocolate-chip bagel and baking pretend cupcakes. She’d been out of school for the day for teacher conferences, so Charlotte had set her up at one of the tables with a rainy-day toy baking set she’d stashed for just such an occasion.
    â€œIs that a rhetorical question?” Julie paused to swipe a lick of cheesecake batter from a spatula before tossing it in the other side of the sink. “Or are you actually expecting an answer?”
    â€œI don’t know.” Charlotte dried the bowl and set it on the counter. She needed to zest the lemons for the next batch of lemon bars. Needed to put the leftover cake pops from the Hannigans’ birthday party in the front display case. Needed to sort through inventory for their upcoming order. She was pretty sure they were running low on bakery boxes.
    But all she could think about was whether or not Will would show up at 5:40 and what on earth she would say if he did.
    â€œRhetorically, I agree.” Julie ran hot water over the dirty dishes, then shut it off. “But technically, it’s not really true. You just had a bad experience.”
    â€œBad experiences .” Charlotte emphasized the plural.
    â€œEvery guy isn’t the same as Zoe’s dad.”
    â€œI know.” Maybe. But Julie didn’t know the whole story. Didn’t know that Charlotte had been the other woman. Didn’t know about Will and the mistake she’d almost made— again .
    Unless Charlotte was terribly mistaken, Julie didn’t have any major mistakes in her life that she was still trying to atone for. She wasn’t a single mom struggling to overcome a bad reputation—one so mottled she still wasn’t entirely sure which stories were lies anymore.
    She grabbed the grater and pulled a lemon from the bottom drawer of the refrigerator. Zoe’s sing-song voice carried from the front of the shop as she made up a poem about her toy cupcake. My cupcake is big, my cupcake is yummy, my cupcake will go straight to my tummy.
    Zoe deserved better than this. Better than a mom who still carried a Scarlet Letter of shame. Better than a mother who was still somehow drawn to the Wrong Guy.
    My cupcake is glad, it never has a frownie, my cupcake is marrying the crumbly Mr. Brownie.
    Better than a dad who allowed his fiancée to talk him out of his daughter’s life.
    Her grater worked faster over the lemon. Would she and Zoe ever be able to settle down with someone predictable? Safe? Committed?
    â€œCareful there, Boss.” Julie’s voice rang a warning as she started digging through their pile of bakery reject cookies. “Don’t want to add knuckles to the ingredient list in those lemon bars.”
    Some days, Charlotte felt like a reject cookie herself. Good enough for someone to be attracted to initially, but not worth selling out for. “It’s just . . . you know Will?”
    â€œFrom the Bridezilla wedding? Of course.” Julie popped one of the too-crispy-to-sell cookies in her mouth and mumbled around it. “Your very own Mr. Darcy.”
    â€œHardly. Mr. Darcy isn’t available. But you wouldn’t have known it from the way he flirted at that engagement party.” Just remembering that crowd of women gathered around him twisted her stomach. But not from jealousy—just out of respect for Melissa.