From A LEGEND IN THE BAKING by Jamie Wesley. Copyright © 2024 by the author and reprinted by permission of St. Martin’s Publishing Group.
Chapter Three
August Hodges blew out a breath as soon as the door shut behind Sloane. Maybe his heart rate could return to normal now. Maybe. He gripped the counter and let out another breath.
His day wasn’t going bad—at least it hadn’t been until he noticed the small leak in the pipe under the sink. He had no reason to complain. His careers—as the starting fullback for the San Diego Knights and one of the co-owners of the cupcake shop—were going well. And even a minor leak wasn’t that big of a problem. He’d fixed similar issues with no problems since he was a kid. But this little fucker wanted to be stubborn. No matter how much he cursed and yanked, a bit of water trickled out.
He hadn’t wanted to believe it, but he needed a new repair clamp. It didn’t matter that he’d replaced it last month. To make matters worse, just when he’d thought he’d asserted his dominance over the inanimate object, he’d heard it.
It being the magical voice. The voice sure to lead any man interested in women to doom.
And he’d responded by embarrassing himself, smashing his head against the underside of the sink. And he hadn’t even gotten to the part where a puddle of water spelled doom for him and his twelve-year-old promise to never commit the folly of touching Sloane again. As her breasts contoured against his chest, as their stomachs pressed against each other, the air had seized in his throat, and his skin began tingling. The desire to wrap his arms around her killer body and draw her closer nearly overwhelmed him. But then common sense returned.
Sloane didn’t feel that way about him, which was fine and expected. Totally. He’d moved on. So had she.
Fuck.
August scrubbed a hand across his face. So yeah, his day was no longer going okay. But the day wasn’t over yet. Time to get back to work.
He shook out his arms and turned his attention to the cupcakes on the counter. They weren’t going to decorate themselves. Although, truth to be told, they were so good they didn’t need frosting or any other ornamentation to make them appealing. As Sloane often liked to say. His lips quirked as he recalled the many times she turned cupcakes upside down and ate the desserts from the bottom because she didn’t give two damns about hand-whipped buttercream frosting.
August shook his head.
No more thinking about Sloane. For now, anyway, an annoying inner voice whispered.
Anyway . . . he liked decorating. Giving the cupcakes that final touch before they were presented to an eager public that would ooh and aah over them before devouring them in the next breath. He liked the repetitive action that never led to uniform results. Each cupcake, though decorated in the same way, was its own unique, beautiful creation. He got to work, his eyes narrowing as he concentrated on the task at hand.
A few minutes later, his phone chimed. August picked it up from the counter and sighed. His father was calling. He gave a moment’s thought to not answering. Actually, two moments, but the phone kept ringing and the man was his father, and maybe unicorns would start flying and this conversation would go better than their other, infrequent talks. Not likely, but again the man was his father. Stifling another sigh, he answered. “Hey, Dad.”
“August,” the esteemed Dale Hodges boomed. “How’s it going? Training for the upcoming season?”
“I’m at Sugar Blitz.”
A beat of silence followed, then a slight chuckle. “Good, good, but you’re not slacking on your training, are you?”
Football was okay. Not great, but acceptable. The sport had made him a lot of money and he was on TV every week. His father got to claim he was the father of a pro athlete. Cupcakes, on the other hand . . .
“No, I work out every day.”
“Right, right.”
His father was already losing interest. Someone was talking to him in the background. The familiar pang, now mostly a dull ache, zinged inside August’s chest.
“What’s up with you?” August asked, the need to respect his father and garner his attention never really leaving him.
“Business as usual. About to close another deal. Paula said I should call.”
Right. Paula. His father’s latest in a long string of lady friends, as Dale referred to them. August hadn’t met Paula. He’d long ago lost any desire to meet the women who flitted in and then out of his father’s life when they realized the suave, debonair Dale would never give them or their relationship the attention or care each deserved.
August could have told them that from jump. He knew firsthand his father’s shortcomings. The internal scars from childhood never fully healed, did they?
“We’re on our way to San Francisco and wine country for a weekend away.” Dale sounded aggrieved. The trip had undoubtedly been Paula’s idea.
“Sounds fun.”
Dale grunted. Someone was still talking to his father. August made out “meeting” and “contract.”
“Son, I gotta go. Make sure you keep working out. Cupcakes? I don’t know why you’re wasting time with that. My son making cupcakes. So silly. If you wanted to cook, you could have trained under me. Do something respectful. Important. Women make cupcakes.”
After one final sniff of disdain, the phone went dead. Not that August needed to hear much else. He’d heard it all before. Baking cupcakes wasn’t manly enough. Owing a shop wasn’t ambitious enough. Not when he could be a Michelin-starred chef like his father and own several world-renowned restaurants. Be a New York Times bestselling author of a series of cookbooks. All bullshit. He’d tried, a time or two, to correct his father—respectfully, of course, thanks to the lessons drummed into him by his grandfather, who’d essentially raised him. All to no avail.
His father was self-centered. His father was a chauvinist. Facts August repeated to himself on a regular basis. And yet it still hurt that he couldn’t gain his father’s approval.
From A Legend in the Baking by Jamie Wesley. Copyright © 2024 by the author and reprinted by permission of St. Martin’s Publishing Group.
Sugar Blitz
In A Legend in the Baking, the new romance from Jamie Wesley, a cupcake-baking football player gets assistance from a social media maven—and his best friend's little sister—to help promote his new bakery after accidentally going viral online.
August Hodges was supposed to be the silent partner in Sugar Blitz Cupcakes. Emphasis on silent. That is until his impromptu feminist rant about how women bakers are the backbone of the industry and baking cupcakes isn’t a threat to masculinity goes viral, making him the hottest bachelor in town. With a new location in the works, August and his partners decide to capitalize on this perfect opportunity to help cement their place in the community. But the hiring of his best friend’s younger sister, the woman who has haunted some of his best dreams for years, was as much of a shock as his new-found fame.
Social media manager Sloane Dell fell hard for her brother’s best friend the moment she met him more than a decade ago, but that teenage infatuation cost her dearly. Still, she accepts her brother’s request to revamp the bakery’s social media presence to take advantage of August’s newfound popularity, knowing it’s the big break her fledgling career needs. She’ll just ignore the fact that August is still August, i.e. sexier and sweeter than any man has a right to be. And that he drives her crazy with his resistance to all her ideas.
They vow to leave the past in the past. But when an explosive make-out session makes it clear their attraction burns hotter than ever, Sloane and August are forced to reconsider what it means to take a risk and chase your dreams.
As they’re both about to find out, all’s fair in love and cupcakes.
Romance Contemporary [St. Martin's Griffin, On Sale: November 19, 2024, Trade Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9781250801876 / eISBN: 9781250801883]
Jamie Wesley has been reading romance novels since she was about 12 when her mother left a romance novel, which a friend had given her, on the nightstand. Jamie read it instead, and the rest is history.
She loves sports and spends an inordinate amount of time rooting for her hometown Dallas’s pro sports teams and her alma maters, Northwestern and the University of Texas at Austin.
She also adores Walt Disney World, shopping, and pop culture. Want to know if your favorite TV show is going to be canceled or what the newest Disney attraction is? Ask Jamie. She'll probably know the answer.
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