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“Mira.”
“Right, Mira.Mira, Mira, Mira.” Her head tilted with each repetition. “What’s your endgame here, Cole?”
He slid his phone into his back pocket. “Endgame with what?”
Her blue eyes rolled. “You’ve spent the last three weeks grinning at your phone like a gooey-eyed prepubescent boy. What, are you in love with her or something?”
“Nancy,” he warned. “You have your shit, and I have mine. I don’t ask about your life. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t—”
“Fine, but I’m worried about you. Long distance isn’t your thing.”
“There’s nothing to worry about. We’re just friends. And what do you mean it’s not my thing?”
Her eyes lit up, because that had been bait, and he’d just fallen for it. “You’re a fixer, Cole. You freak out when you can’t make everything good and lovely and perfect all the time. And it’ll be too hard to make everything perfect for her when she’s so far away.”
“It’s a little early in the morning for character assassination, Nance,” he said, even though after spending literal decades doing everything in his power to fix their relationship before finally realizing it was irreparably broken, he couldn’t say her take surprised him. But the nice puffy clouds, the lovely blue sky, the perfect picture of Mira in a towel on his phone, shrank his tolerance for Nancy’s bullshit to a pinpoint. “Besides, don’t you have an album to focus on instead of worrying about me?”
“Yeah, yeah,” she said, brushing him off, because if Nancy was anything, it was unflappable. “Have you come to your senses about drumming for me?”
“Answer’s still no,” he said over his shoulder while he mounted the stairs.
“You’ll change your mind,” she singsonged, then stopped him in his tracks with “Oh, and by the way, there’s a gift from your not-girlfriend in there.”
He whipped back around. “A gift? From my not-girl—from Mira?”
Rolling her eyes for a second time, she grabbed his shoulders and spun him toward the door. He’d barely taken his first step into the studio when the sweetest scent he’d ever known nearly took him out at the knees.
Lemon, sugar, Mira.
Pink Glazed and Confused boxes crowded the big table, cupcakes, cookies, and,good lord, two entire boxes full of tarts.
“Overkill much?” Nancy bumped her shoulder into his. And then, lowering her defenses for half a second, she said with sincerity, “Happy birthday, Cole.”
He stared open-mouthed at the bright pink boxes, splashes of color filling the typically dark studio with light. “She did this…for me?”
When he looked at Nancy, she looked away. “She must really like you or something.”
Pulling his phone out, he flicked his thumb up the screen, found Mira’s contact, and said, “Try the tarts, Nance. They’re amazing.”
“Bakery Goddess?” she mocked, looking over his shoulder at Mira’s caller ID. “Seriously? So fucking cheesy.”
While Benji eyed them warily from the table, a chocolate cupcake suspended in midair on the way to his mouth, Cole decided not to call Mira yet. Opening Instagram, he repeated, “Try a tart.” And then, with a smile so smug he was almost ashamed of it, he added, “They’ll change your life. They’ve definitely changed mine.”
CHAPTERTWENTY
MIRA
The dough wassoft as air under her palm, slightly sticky, almost velvety. She’d been worried she’d overworked it since she’d lost track of time while kneading, her mind preoccupied by the fact that Cole was about to walk into his studio, about to see the present she’d sent him. She was worried it was too much, too obvious, like a big pink sign saying, “Hey! I’m super into you!”
She’d never felt this way about a man before, not with Paul, not with her other boyfriends or crushes, not with anyone. It made perfect sense. It was so typicallyherthat the first time butterflies swarmed in her belly, it would be for a man she couldn’t touch, couldn’t see, couldn’t have—
“What are you doing?”
“Shit!” she shouted, slamming a hand over her pounding heart. “Don’t sneak up on me like that!”
Ian’s right brow hitched, his hair particularly unruly today, surrounding his head like a spun-sugar halo. “I knocked three times. I thought you were sleepwalking.”
“Sorry.” Putting the dough into a bowl to rise, she covered it with a proving cloth. “I must have spaced out for a minute.”
