Whetted Appetites by Anastacia Kelley Page A

baking.
         Melissa quickly ran to the back, shouting, “I’ll get it!”
         Dalton cleared his throat nervously.  “I think I’m going to come by before you close.  I want to buy my mother a box of chocolates.  I know she has a strong penchant for gooey brownies.”
         “That’s very sweet of you.  I’m sure she’ll enjoy them.  I know I do.”  Victoria licked her lips.  Dalton gulped.  She looked like she was removing a hint of chocolate from them.  He groaned inwardly.
         Melissa came out after a few minutes.  “Victoria—sorry—your mother called a minute ago.  I told her you were tied up at the moment and you would call her back as soon as you could.”  The look on Melissa’s face told her that Victoria’s mother had something up her professionally tailored sleeve.  Yet again. 
         Victoria took a deep, exasperating breath.  Probably another blind date her mom tried to set her up with.  “Thanks, Melissa.”  She turned to Dalton.  “Will you please excuse me for one minute?” she said apologetically.  “I’ll be right back.”
         “Sure.  I’m going to look around.”  Dalton watched her go into the back.  He took this opportunity to peruse all the inventory of the bakery. 
         From the look in her eyes, returning her mom’s phone call was the last thing she wanted to do.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter Five
         Victoria sat down in her office chair and dialed her mom’s number.
         “Hello?”  The haughty ‘I’m-too-good-for-you’ answer was always the same.  It made Victoria want to scream.
         “Hello, Mother,” Victoria said irritably.
         “Victoria, darling,” her mother started, not picking up on Victoria’s petulant tone.  “The Duncan’s family and our family are having a gathering in two weeks.  And you know, Travis has been asking about you.”  She said that last sentence a little off-handedly.  But she sounded thrilled at the concept of Travis Duncan asking about her only daughter.
         Victoria rolled her eyes heavenward.  She knew it!  Her mother was trying to set her up.  All her matchmaking efforts were done in vain.  Didn’t her mother know that it never worked out and never would?
         Victoria knew who Travis Duncan was.  He was handsome, sophisticated and, thanks to daddy’s money and connections, rich.  Not to mention dull, dull, dull.  He was so boring, uninteresting and all the other adjectives that she couldn’t think of at the moment thanks to her mother trying to push Travis down her throat.  No pun intended.  Victoria shivered at the thought.
         All Travis could talk about was his new house in Aspen.  Or his condo in New York.  His yacht in the Florida Keys.  All of which he didn’t work one minute for.
         Blah.  Sick.  A no-way-in-hell.  He didn’t earn all those things.  He was one of those bratty kids born with a silver spoon in his mouth.  He didn’t have to life a perfectly manicured finger.
         But how was she supposed to tell her mother that she didn’t want to be set up with any more of her ‘discoveries’?
         “So, what do you say, darling?” her mother inquired airily. 
         “Mother,” Victoria sighed.  Her stomach tied itself in knots.  Why couldn’t her mother let her do her own choosing?  “I’m sure Travis is suitable for some woman,” she forced herself to say.  “But to tell you the truth, I’m not at all interested in being another blind date with any more of your picks.”
         “Humph.”  She always made that childish sound when something didn’t go her way, which was rare.  “You really hurt me, Victoria.”
         Victoria knew her mother’s act by now.  And that’s all it was: an act.  A show she put on with Victoria as the audience.  She would begin with the ‘poor little mother’ routine; lecture her about the