Sugarlips (Beefcakes Book 2), Katana Collins [ebook smartphone .TXT] 📗

the whole reason for stopping in. Just friends. A friendly hi. Ugh, keep telling yourself that, Chloe. “Is that allowed?”

Finn shrugged. “Just don’t tell your sister or she’ll slap us with more health code violations.”

If I had a nickel for every time someone has said that to me in the last few years, I’d likely have enough to cover the loss of the rest of my wedding deposits. Hiking my Kate Spade purse higher on my shoulder, I nudged my way through the crowd and behind the counter, pushing the door and waltzing in.

The sight before me sucked all the air from my lungs. Not just because Liam was quite possibly the most handsome man I’d ever seen—and that included the time I saw Mark Consuelos shopping in Boston—but because surrounding him were dozens of immaculate looking cupcakes. Unicorn cupcakes. My absolute favorite.

“Wow,” I gushed.

He startled—well, for Liam, he did. Which basically meant he glanced up and his eyes widened upon noticing me standing there. That’s it. That’s Liam startled. I bit the inside of my cheek to stop myself from laughing at the sight.

“What are you doing here? And what’s so funny?” he asked.

Huh. Guess I should have bit my cheek a little harder.

I shook my head and tossed my purse onto a table beside the door. “Just you. Being all Liam.”

He gave me a weird look and set down the piping bag. “Okay… you didn’t answer my first question. What are you doing here?”

“Friends pop in on friends.”

His tongue ran across his bottom lip briefly as though he was tasting our kiss from this morning. “Thought we agreed that with Elaina and Neil, the ‘friends’ thing was sort of out of the picture.”

“Right. Well, I gave it a little more thought—”

“Oh, boy,” Liam rolled his eyes.

“No, hear me out. Look, I don’t know why they broke up, but whatever the reason, it’s got to be stupid. I can’t see Neil pulling something like what Dan did—”

“There is no way Neil cheated on her,” Liam interjected, defending his brother.

“Exactly!” I confirmed. “So, this breakup is probably a misunderstanding. I’ll know more tonight. But Neil and Elaina are really good for each other. Seriously. For years, I said that she should dump Brad’s ass and go find Neil.” Not that Elaina ever listened to me. Like, ever. If I was the Tasmanian devil, she was my polar opposite. What’s the opposite of a Tasmanian devil? A sloth?

Liam worried his bottom lip and stared at the half-decorated unicorn cupcake in front of him. “They are pretty perfect together.”

“Perfect doesn’t exist. But they’re great together. Maybe, just maybe, if you and I become best friends as originally planned, they will have no choice but to make up?”

I held out my hands as though this plan was a tangible item I was presenting to him.

He grunted a noise that sounded half like huh and hm… huhm. “Or they’ll both just be mad at us for becoming friends.”

I snorted and waved my hand. “That’s stupid. You can’t be mad at someone for being kind to another human. At least you can’t be mad for long.”

The tiniest smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Have you met your sister? She’s the queen of holding grudges.”

“Hey,” I snapped and pointed into his face. “Watch it, bestie. That’s my sister you’re talking about.”

He rolled his eyes and grabbed the piping bag once more. “You can’t just call me your bestie and—poof—have it be true. It doesn’t work like that. It’s something you grow toward, not something you decree. You can’t just, like, knight me as a best friend.”

My eyes widened. “We should have knighting ceremonies for friends. How cool would that be?”

“I feel like the only part of that sentence you heard was knight. You missed the part where I said you can’t knight someone as a friend.”

I waved a hand, dismissing his thought. “No, no. I heard you. You’re just wrong.”

“Okay, weirdo,” he laughed. “I need to get back to work.”

“Wait!” I shot my hand out to place over top of his, still clutching the pastry bag. Unfortunately, I underestimated the force with which I brought my hand down and I sent buttercream shooting out of the gun across the floor of the kitchen.

Oops.

We both stood there an extra moment staring at the mess.

“Sorry.” I winced.

He gave a small laugh. Almost just like a single huff of breath. “It’s okay. I spill all the time in here.”

Somehow, I doubted that.

“I was thinking… Neil and Elaina get home today around four o’clock… maybe closer to six, once they get their luggage and drive up from Boston airport. It made me feel so good when you had sweets leftover for me, I thought maybe we could bake them each something. Have it waiting and ready for their arrivals?”

Liam’s brows narrowed. “Won’t cupcakes be kind of a painful memory for Elaina? Seeing as how probably every cupcake will remind her of Neil from now on?”

Damn. He was right. I hadn’t quite thought this through beyond wanting to hang out with Liam and knowing that the cupcakes made me feel better. “Well… what if we don’t make cupcakes? We could make more of those donuts. God, those were good. Elaina loves donuts.”

“I still have another two dozen unicorn cupcakes to decorate for a pick-up tomorrow morning.”

“I’ll help you, bestie! Then we can make the donuts!”

He narrowed his mossy-green eyes in my direction. “You’re not going to let up on this, are you?”

I wasn’t sure if he meant the besties thing or the donuts. I nodded because it was true in either case.

With a sigh, he slid a pastry bag across the stainless-steel countertop. “Fill this with the lavender and pink buttercream.”

“This isn’t taking long at all,” I said, glancing over at Liam. His mouth twisted as his eyes fell to the unicorn I was sprinkling edible glitter on.

“Usually they look… well… more edible than that.”

I tilted my head, examining my unicorn. Okay, sure. The eyes were a