Sugar Rush Read Online Free PDF Page A

crown escaping whatever she’d used to secure it. At Gateau, she’d employed some kind of slim, clever chopstick-like affair, holding it strategically, perfectly in place. All he could see now was something puffy ... and pink. A very bright pink—which seemed even brighter against her skin.
    Gone was the cream and rose complexion he’d remembered. She was tan, which changed everything. What with the loose, wild hair, it lent an almost ... heathenish edge, giving her normally pretty blue gaze a somewhat piercing, laser-like quality. Conversely, though she’d always been a sturdy thing, lithe, but strong and solid, at the moment, she looked ... enveloped by the chef coat she wore, as if it were a size too big, or she’d suddenly grown smaller.
    None of that mattered. Just stepping into the same room with her again settled something inside him. Something vital. Necessary. As he’d hoped it would. In fact, prayed it would. Nothing short of believing that would have driven him to come to this godforsaken, beastly hot, bug-infested place. It was October. Humidity of that sort shouldn’t be possible.
    Standing there now, he couldn’t believe he’d ever been foolish enough to let her go.
    “Why?” she asked, ignoring the cupcake carnage at her feet.
    It was only then he noted the uncharacteristic mutinous set to her raspberry-smeared chin ... and realized she wasn’t so happy to see him. Or at all happy to see him, it appeared. “You might want to mind your step there,” he began, nodding to the floor, but was cut off from offering further assistance when she repeated herself.
    “Why, Baxter?” And, in case he hadn’t understood what she meant, she clarified—through tightly gritted teeth. “Why are you here?”
    Confused, and thinking he was obviously just missing something, he grinned and held out his hands. “Is that any way to greet an old chum?”
    “Chum?” It hadn’t come out as a screech. Exactly.
    He winced all the same, and the confusion grew. “Compatriot, then?”
    “There are a number of terms that come to mind when I think of you—which I don’t—but, if I did ... that one wouldn’t make the list, either.”
    “Oh.” His smile faded. “I see.” Except he didn’t. Not at all. He hadn’t really known what to expect seeing her again, but it hadn’t been this. Her parting from Gateau had been rather abrupt, and though he’d wished her well, and Godspeed to her family, he hadn’t been able to see her off personally before she’d left New York. Was that it? Then she’d made the decision to stay in Georgia with her father, and he’d never seen her, or worked with her, again. He couldn’t help that, could he? Just as he couldn’t have known how that sudden shift in his world would make him feel. He did now.
    “Did you get the flowers?” he asked, treading more carefully. “For your shop opening?”
    “I did. You didn’t have to do that.”
    He lifted his shoulders, tried a bit of a smile. “I wanted to. I know it hasn’t been long, but I hope it’s been a successful launch thus far.” He was nervous, he realized. It wasn’t a state he regularly found himself in. Rarely, if ever, in fact. Her reaction had thrown him badly. “You’re wearing your Gateau jacket, I see.” Striving for some common ground, he was hoping to quickly whisk out the lumps and smooth things between them. “Haven’t gotten your own shop jackets as yet?”
    She looked down, then back at him, and he could have sworn a bit of pink that wasn’t raspberry filling colored her cheeks. Though what on earth she had to be embarrassed about, he hadn’t a clue.
    “I—uh, no, I don’t have—I wear aprons. Out front. With the customers. I’ve always had—I collect them. I have since—” She broke off. “I only wear this back here, when I’m baking, because—” She stopped again, frowned, at herself or him, he wasn’t sure. “It doesn’t matter why. What does matter is why you’re standing in my