Whether or not he means that, I feel the praise down to my toes.
“But where is she living?” someone asks.
I wish I knew who it was so I could glare at them. What does that matter? “With my husband, obviously.” Thank goodness I never got a hotel room, since I’m sure someone working at the Coralberry Cottages would have been sure to spread that info around if I had.
“Are there any other questions about our personal lives, or can we get this line moving along?” King asks. Some of the growl has returned to his voice, his expression harder than it was a moment ago. “If you’re going to order something, great. If not, I’d appreciate it if you step to the side and make some space for paying customers.”
An older woman near the front of the crowd raises her hand, her eyes darting between the two of us before resting on me. “Will you be making those raspberry danishes you had on the show?”
I perk up. That’s my kind of question. “I can if you want me to. They’re not on the Kingston menu, but—”
“What about those eclairs with the cherry center?” someone else asks. “Those looked amazing.”
Before I know it, someone has produced a piece of paper and a pen, and people are writing down their requests of things they want me to make here at the bakery. While I’m thrilled to be able to put my talents to use beyond cookies and cupcakes, I can’t help but notice the way King slowly deflates with each new request. The way he looks up at the handwritten menu that has been relatively the same for the last twenty-five years.
The way he doesn’t look at me for the rest of the afternoon.
Chapter Ten
King
A scream pulls me out of bed with a jolt, and though I try to grasp at the details of the dream I’d been having, they slip away like smoke through my fingers. It’s still dark, and a part of me wonders if the scream was in my dream as I gaze blearily around my quiet bedroom.
Then I hear the whimper.
Fully awake now, I scramble out of the room and through the back door to find Georgie crouched in a ball near the pool, her arms over her head and a stream of muttered curses spilling from her lips. The sky is an inky black, but there’s enough light coming from the open door of the pool house for me to see the cause of her distress.
Prince Harry is smelling her hair with great interest.
I release the tension from my shoulders with a breath. “What are you doing?”
Georgie’s head snaps up, knocking into Prince Harry’s mouth, and then she cowers again. “Get this monster away from me,” she hisses.
I reply through a massive yawn. “You must smell good.”
“King.”
One step forward is enough to convince the llama that his freedom is in jeopardy. Abandoning his sniffing, he lumbers quickly toward the pool. I shout and leap forward, but he’s too fast for me and plunges into the dark water with a kerplunk.
I curse and stuff a hand into my hair. “Stupid beast,” I mutter.
Standing, Georgie hurries to my side but stops about a foot away when she seems to realize I’m in nothing but my boxers. Though she averts her gaze, her blush is still obvious in the dim light. “Can, uh, can llamas swim?”
I press a hand over my heart to try to calm its racing. I think my dream had been a nice one, whatever it was. I also think Georgie might have been in it, so maybe it’s a good thing she interrupted it. “Yes, they can swim. Whether they can float is another question.”
Prince Harry lets out a mournful cry when he realizes his feet can’t touch the bottom of the pool. A few feet to the left, and he’d be fine…
“How does he keep getting out?” I ask under my breath, moving over to the pen and the wide open gate. Even I can barely get the latch open half the time, so I really have no idea how an animal with a clear lack of opposable thumbs has managed it more times than I can count.
“Why don’t you just wire it shut?” Georgie asks.
I turn to explain to her Prince Harry’s bizarre need for a walk around the neighborhood every couple of days but stop when my eyes catch on what she’s wearing. A tank top snugly hugs her curves, and her shorts could never be accused of being long. The sight of her legs—the sight of all of her, really—traps any words I might have said in my throat, leaving me standing here like an idiot with my mouth gaping open. Georgie is all woman, and I have never been gladder that I’m forcing her to sleep in the pool house.
Only the sounds of Prince Harry’s splashing and complaining fill the space between us for a long few moments, until Georgie clears her throat and wraps her arms around her middle.
“Um. Does he need help, or…?”
I glance at the llama, who has begun doing laps side to side. If he would turn ninety degrees, he would discover a whole other side of the pool that he could enjoy. “He’s fine. For now.” I’m tempted to jump in and force him out anyway, if only for the shock of cold water to keep my thoughts where they are safe. I may need to make a few more rules if I’m going to make it through this marriage. No tank tops. No shorts. No early morning wakeups when I’m too tired to keep my eyes from studying her face. And everything else. “What time is it?”
She looks at her watch. “Three.”
A laugh escapes out of my lungs. I’m used to waking up early, and bakers tend to keep early hours. But this is Willow Cove, and this town tends to sleep in. Kingston’s doesn’t even open until eight. “Why?” I breathe.
She shrugs. “I was slee…” She stops, seems to consider what she wants to say, and then shakes her head. “I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I would get an early start today. But then this creature”—she nods toward Prince Harry—“decided he wanted to take a bite of my hair.”
“Llamas don’t eat hair.”
“Yours seems to.”
I lift my eyes to her head, which is a safer place to look anyway, and barely hold back a wince when I see a giant glob of slobber in her damp curls. At the same moment, a breeze picks up, and I get a whiff of her shampoo. My body tenses up as I resist the urge to step forward and get a deeper lungful of the tantalizing scent. She smells amazing, and I would love to bury my face in her hair and breathe her in. Kiss her like I did in the bakery. Maybe…
I dive into the pool before I get any bad ideas.
It takes a good twenty minutes to coax Prince Harry up the stairs on the far end and out of the pool, and neither of us are happy when I shove him back into the pen and triple check that the latch is closed. I’m soaked, I smell of wet llama again, and my early morning wakeup is starting to catch up to me; the only reason I’m not in a foul mood is because I can probably go back to sleep for a couple more hours now that Georgie is around to handle the bakery. I haven’t had that luxury in weeks.
“Will it hold?”
