Page 8 of The Baker and the Kraken

Truly, nothing seemed to faze Calder, and while Adam had only known him for a short time, he couldn’t quite shake the feeling that he was always like this, somehow imperturbable and ready to go with the flow unless he needed to take a stand. It felt a bit like a fraction of his calm was spilling over onto Adam, making him less nervous about this whole encounter. (He was always at his most clumsy when he was nervous, which was why he rarely dated anymore. First dates were the worst. Not that this was a date, of course. Maybe that was the difference.)

Once they finished their cake and coffee, Calder suggested he get Adam’s number so he could send him the details about dinner, and he immediately texted Adam back, making it hugely less likely that he was going to ghost Adam as soon as he left the bakery. (Yes, that had happened. More than once. It had made Adam a lot less confident about his perception of things going okay.)

Calder smiled at Adam with the same smile he’d used at the beginning of their impromptu cake-eating session. He still seemed genuinely happy to have spent this time with Adam, and when he said he was looking forward to the dinner they’d set up for Sunday evening, Adam… believed him.

Adam didn’t even realize he was staring after the man long after he’d disappeared out the front door of the shop until Simon gently hip-checked him and said gleefully, “You’ve got a date.”

“It’s not a date!” Adam exclaimed instinctively. “He just wants to apologize.”

Simon sighed. “You keep telling yourself that, boo.”

Earlier, Simon had insisted that the cake and drinks were on the house—and Calder had left a tip in the tip jar big enough to cover the cost and tip Simon.

Adam sighed. Someone that awesome couldn’t possibly be real. Or if they were, they definitely wouldn’t want to date Adam.

It wasn’t a date, right? Adam had kept telling himself that even as he prepared… kind of like it was a date. Thankfully, Calder had assured him that he should dress comfortably and casually. The man had also checked in to make sure that Adam had no food allergies or serious dislikes, and he’d casually given Adam the option of either meeting him or of being picked up. Since this wasn’t a date, he’d gratefully seized on the offer to meet Calder.

Calder had a sense of honor, Adam reminded himself. He felt responsible for Adam’s tripping, even though Adam would definitely have done that on his own. Calder was going to take Adam out, and then he was going to go back to whatever awesome things he did when he wasn’t thanking an awkward baker, and then Adam would be really relieved that he hadn’t read too much into this.

This was an apology, and while they weren’t even friends, it was… friend-adjacent.

Adam wouldn’t tell anyone how many times he’d changed clothes or how anxious he’d been about this particular not-date. (And he would never mention to Simon that he wished he’d been there to help Adam figure out what to wear. Because this wasn’t a date!)

Honestly, Simon seemed even more excited than Adam—and way less anxious. He’d certainly had an opinion about Adam and Calder and their cake-eating, though Adam didn’t think it could be nearly as suggestive as Simon said.

“They stared at one another the whole time!” Simon had told Maggie and Joseph and Evie.

Adam had huffed out a breath. “Yes, because we were sitting at the table together, and that’s totally what you do when you’re sitting and chatting with someone. You look at them!”

The others had exchanged glances, and Adam had given it up as a lost cause. They already knew something was up because he’d dropped about twenty-five percent more utensils and bakeware in the kitchen, and one batch of cookies might have caught fire—but that wasn’t a totally unusual week for him.

Maggie had just sighed, not even scolding him, and Adam had tried really hard to concentrate. He’d made her a prinsesstarta in apology, since that was her favorite, and she’d smiled at him and squeezed his shoulder before digging into the white sponge cake, jam, and pastry cream, which was covered in marzipan.

“You’re doing fine,” she’d told him a little thickly around a mouthful of cake. “You don’t need to worry about anything.”

At least Adam was good at baking, because he’d been doing a bad job of not worrying. He’d been worrying… well, his whole life, really, wondering what he would mess up next. This not-date seemed like a prime candidate.

After an inordinate amount of hemming and hawing, he finally settled on light-weight trousers and a teal button-down that Simon had bought for him and told him he looked amazing in. And yes, okay, his sassy best friend might have said at the time that it would be perfect for a date, but this wasn’t a date; this was just Adam wanting to look nice since someone was taking him out for a meal.

When he’d texted to set everything up, Calder had suggested a late lunch instead of dinner so that Adam wouldn’t be up too late. So many men he’d tried to date hadn’t wanted to accommodate him, like the fact that he got up at three thirty in the morning was his problem and not a requirement of his job. He and Calder were meeting on Sunday, so he had Monday to recover, but the fact that Calder had taken his schedule into account anyway made a warm glow settle in Adam’s belly.

He grabbed a bus to get to the beach, and when he got off, Calder was waiting. At least half of Adam’s anxiety melted away. Calder was here, just like he’d said. His smile was amazing, lighting up his dark eyes and changing his somewhat stern expression into something completely relaxed and open. His gaze never wavered from Adam’s. He was dressed in khaki cargo pants and a pale green shirt that made Adam think of sea glass. It set off his skin beautifully.

“Adam! Hello.”

“Hi,” Adam said, stumbling slightly, then tearing his gaze away so that he could watch where he was walking and actually arrive next to the man in one piece. Sure, it sounded romantic to trip and fall into someone’s arms, but as someone who’d done that on more than one occasion, he could attest to the fact that it wasn’t romantic. It worked in movies because it was scripted. Accidentally tripping into someone’s arms could easily result in knocking them over or otherwise injuring them.

But it was totally fine, because Adam had watched his approach instead, and he made it all the way over to Calder without tripping.

“How are you?” Calder asked.

“Good.” Adam resisted the urge to tug on his shirt and fidget. “I’m good. How are you?”

Because “awkward” should really have been his middle name.

“I’m wonderful,” Calder said, smiling at him. “I’ve been looking forward to this all week.”

“Me, too,” Adam confessed before it occurred to him that maybe he shouldn’t.