“Don’t start with me. This is business.” Yes, business. The business where I cooked the cake using my recipes, decorated using my ideas, and took home a barely legal hourly wage. I wasn’t too bitter about that, but I didn’t want to work overtime on top of it. Not when Bailey was home with Shelly, and Shelly needed me back so she could go to work and make much more money selling her body.

Meanwhile the Sweet Spot was billed as an authentic family bakery with an eye on modern trends. No, Rick wasn’t my family. And judging by the covert looks he’d steal when he thought I wasn’t looking, he didn’t think of me that way either. But he didn’t touch me, and that made this better than Shelly’s job. Maybe.

“Fine,” I said. “Is that all they said?”

“She wants it classy.” He rolled his eyes.

I smiled slightly, commiserating. “Right. Over-the-hill, fifty people, classy. Got it.”

The back was empty, bathroom door open, so Jeremy had already left. I got to work on the cake batter. In reality the decorating was the easy part. The painful part would be all the waiting that would happen while baking, then cooling, then the first coat, then the full-on decorating. I’d have to work past my shift today to get it done, for sure. Most likely I’d stay up late tonight, rolling out fondant pieces on my counter at home so I could apply them to the finished cake tomorrow.

I barely heard Rick’s yell over the whir of the electric mixer. I flipped it off and listened.

“Allie. Phone!”

Only Shelly had this number; only Shelly would care to call. Well, I had to talk to her anyways, ask her if she could watch Bailey late today. Wiping my hands on my apron, I grabbed the plastic receiver.

“Shelly?”

Silence.

“Hello?”

I looked at the phone, then put it to my ear. Still nothing. I hung up. Poking my head out onto the floor, I called to Rick, “Nobody there.”

He looked up. “What?”

“There was nobody on the phone. Was it Shelly?”

“It was a guy.” Rick shrugged and looked back down at his work. “Asked for you by name.”

“Huh.” Weird. My dad? Not likely.

My heart still beat too fast, thumping erratically as if my body couldn’t make up its mind whether to squeal like a teenage girl or to worry like the woman it had become.

I called Shelly just to check. It hadn’t been her, but she agreed to watch Bailey late tonight. Only after I hung up did I think about using Call Return to call the guy back. Not that it was a big deal. Guys weren’t exactly standing in line to talk to me.