Danny didn’t like this apartment without Catie here. It was too sharp and modern and clinical. But he wasn’t about to admit that to her. Bring back some eggs. I want to make a cake. He’d tried to bring up his interest in baking with a couple of dates over the past year, and they’d both taken it as a joke. Not that they’d been mean women—Danny didn’t go for mean—but they just had this image of him in their mind, and the whole cooking and baking thing didn’t fit.

He couldn’t blame them. It wasn’t like he put it out there. Then again, wasn’t dating meant to be about getting to know people?

Oooh, can you do chocolate?

I’ll see. He actually wanted to try an experimental recipe but wasn’t sure if they had all the ingredients. After checking, he texted her back. Don’t worry about the eggs. I need to go out to grab a few other ingredients anyway.

I’ll meet you at the supermarket. You’re going to the one around the corner from the apartment? I’m almost there.

Yeah.

He’d just grabbed a shopping cart outside the store when she wandered over from the parking lot. “Whose car is that?” he asked, having seen her drive into the spot on the other side of the cart bay.

“Jacqueline’s.”

Danny was aware they were attracting attention as they wandered the aisles, but he ignored it. It wasn’t the people taking sneaky photos in a supermarket who were the problem. “Did you find your hair goop?”

“Yup.” She put a huge bar of chocolate in the cart. “For the chocolate cake.”

“Subtle, princess.” But he didn’t put it back. “Get me that bar next to the one you grabbed.” He pointed at the strawberry flavored chocolate.

“Ew.” But she dropped it in the cart. “What are you going to do with that?”

“Something.”

She poked him in the side, then pretended to have a broken finger. “Seriously, you’re going overboard on the ab workouts.”

Danny wanted to preen, fed his idiotic happiness into a joke. “What workouts? I’m a natural beauty.”

As she laughed, he threw a packet of oats and one of mixed dried fruit into the cart. The secret ingredient when it came to making a healthy snack was to “trick” people into thinking it was bad for them—sometimes all that took was a hint of chocolate. Because Danny didn’t just want to cook for sports people or others on nutritionist-informed diets. He wanted to cook for everyone.

“If I tell you something, will you keep it a secret?” he found himself saying.

12

TOP SECRET INFORMATION

Catie shot him a considering look. “Like a real secret?”

He nodded.

Her expression shifted, a solemn promise in her gaze. “Yes.”