Total pages in book: 119
Estimated words: 112762 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 564(@200wpm)___ 451(@250wpm)___ 376(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112762 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 564(@200wpm)___ 451(@250wpm)___ 376(@300wpm)
And I liked it.
Almost as much as I liked seeing Sloane’s makeup scattered on my bathroom counter and her nightdresses and cardigans hanging from door handles. Despite having her own professional kitchen now, our home still always smelled like a baker’s kitchen. I found flour in the strangest places.
And I liked it.
It felt like a home now instead of a house.
We drove down Castle Street, slowing past the bakery that Sloane would be readying to open in half an hour. A couple of villagers already hovered outside, peering in.
The new signage on the front window read Callie’s Wee Cakery. Suffice it to say, Callie was over the moon her mum named the bakery after her. And the villagers were over the moon that, apparently, for the first time in forty years, they had somewhere they could buy fresh bread.
I guided the car left down one of the side streets that would lead me to the back of the bakery where we could park. With a tiny percentage of the money Sloane’s father had left, we’d transformed the store on Castle Street. Restored the kitchens and bought everything Sloane would need to run it. Since a bakery would mean extremely early mornings for her, she’d decided it would only open three days a week. She would make up the rest of the days taking outside orders as before, but this time she could bake them in her new professional kitchen. Not that she needed to. Sloane’s father had made more cake as a litigator than even I could have guessed. She was independently wealthy, and if she invested wisely, spent wisely, she would never have to work another day in her life.
But that wasn’t Sloane.
Thankfully, however, my hardworking woman had also hired two shop assistants to help run the front of the store.
Pride filled me as I got out of the SUV and rounded it to help Callie. Not only had Sloane dealt with the stress of the upcoming trial against her stepmother and ex and his friend while trying to launch a business, she’d attempted to make life as normal as possible for Callie. And I realized Callie was where Sloane drew her strength. It was awe-inspiring. The woman amazed me. How one person could carry the weight of what she had to carry and do it with such optimism and hope, I’d never know. She looked at me like I could save her from anything, but the truth was, she saved me.
Every damn day.
“Ready?” I asked Callie as I took the box and she clasped her hand in mine.
“I think I should ask you that, eh?”
My lips curled. The longer she stayed in the Highlands, the more she was picking up a wee Scottish inflection from her classmates.
Striding into the back of the bakery, we discovered Sloane arranging fresh loaves of bread onto a tray to take out front.
“We’ve made space for it!” one of Sloane’s shop assistants called from the store.
Sloane looked up to answer and caught sight of us. Her face split into a wide grin. “I wasn’t expecting you guys until opening.” Gaze dropping to the box in my hands, she rounded her long steel prep table to bridge the distance between us. The kitchen gleamed like a shiny new penny, except for one section where she was working on decorating a cake.
Along one wall were a few cakes in varying degrees of decoration, which I knew were from outside orders. Ovens were lit up baking fresh pastries to refresh the ones she’d already set out front. There was flour on one of her flushed cheeks and tendrils of hair loosening around her face from her ponytail. Her apron was also covered in flour.
She looked happy. Beautiful.
“It’s going well, then?” I asked as she stood on her tiptoes to kiss me.
“Well, we haven’t opened yet, but yes.” Sloane leaned against me, even as she hugged Callie into her side. “What’s in the cake box? You’re not buying from a competitor already, are you?”
I shook my head at her teasing and held the box out to her. “Just a congratulations cake we baked.”
Her eyes widened with delight. “You guys baked for me?”
“We tried.”
She was more excited about that than I’d expected, and I felt the first wave of nerves hit me. All right, then. Maybe I was only 98 percent sure of the outcome.
Sloane took the box and laid it on one of her prep tables.
When she flipped the lid, five badly decorated cupcakes surrounded a sixth in the middle.
And in the middle one, instead of a giant chocolate button propped into its messy buttercream, was an engagement ring. The single diamond caught the light, and I watched Sloane’s face as she zeroed in on it and gasped.
As soon as I’d seen it, I knew it was the one. It was a simple white gold diamond solitaire. Not fussy. Understated. Beautiful. Like the woman I wanted to wear it.