She was still wondering the same thing when she arrived at work the next morning. But even her doubt couldn’t overshadow the lingering glow she felt after her night with Vlad.
“Anything wrong?” Dana asked when Meredith walked into the Divine Desserts’ kitchen. “You look sort of strange.”
“And a good morning to you too,” Meredith said. “Exactly how do I look strange?”
“Not sure. First you were sort of frowning, then your frown morphed into this half-smile. Very confusing.”
Meredith sighed. Yep, the man was definitely screwing with her moods. But now wasn’t the time to unload her angst on Dana, not when she had twenty-eight “sorry, we don’t sell the stuff you want” messages to send to her twenty-eight sex-loving almost-customers.
“It was a crazy night,” she explained. “That’s probably why I seem a little bipolar today.”
“Crazy good or crazy bad?”
“Some of each.”
“That’s what I was afraid of. Wanna start with the bad?”
No, she didn’t. She hated even thinking about it. But she owed it to Dana to let her know exactly what they were up against.
“Some scumbag hacker hijacked the website and renamed it ‘Devilish Delights.’ For about six hours we were selling sexual aids.” Meredith made a face. “Waterproof G-Spot Vibrators, anyone?”
“Y’know, if it brings in more sales than our cakes, that might not be a bad idea.”
“You could be right. Before Vlad fixed things, we got twenty-eight orders, which is twenty-four more than we’ve gotten in the past few weeks.”
“Vlad? What about Steve? He’s the one who’s supposed to take care of those things.”
“That’s what I thought too. At least that’s what I pay him to do. But I couldn’t reach him last night, and when we finally did connect at about seven this morning, he apologized profusely, said his wife’s water broke, so he rushed her to the hospital, was stopped on the way by a police car with all its sirens blaring, got a ticket for speeding, and then was escorted to the hospital by the same police car, with all its sirens still blaring.”
“Oh my gosh, the poor guy. No wonder he wasn’t on the job. How’s his wife?”
“Currently the proud new mother of healthy twin girls. We’ll have to make a special cake to celebrate the birth.”
“Births,” Dana corrected. “And from the way things are going, we shouldn’t have any trouble finding the time to do it. Heck, since we only have four jobs scheduled for the next few weeks, we’d have more than enough time to make cakes for every child born in the whole city.”
Meredith shook her head, feeling more disheartened by the minute.
“Don’t remind me. If you need me, I’ll be in my office, regretfully informing the horny twenty-eight who ordered from our hijacked website that we are unable to provide their X-rated purchases.”
She turned to go, until Dana’s question stopped her.
“Hey, what’s the good news?”
“I think I may be in serious like that even verges on serious love.”
Dana nodded, grinning as though that announcement made up for the bad things that had gone before. “At least that is good news.”
Meredith shrugged. “But, unfortunately, with a guy who’s not as invested in my business success as I am.”
Dana’s smile dimmed with sympathy. “Okay, semi-good news. I assume the guy’s initials are V.W.”
“The same.”
“Look, I’m at least a hundred-and-ten percent sure he feels seriously loving about you too, and Valentine’s Day is just a week away. Hold on until the big day, then stuff him with sugar. Maybe an overdose of high-glycemic goodies can help him see the light.”
Meredith froze at the reminder. Valentine’s Day. February fourteenth. And the fifteenth was the day she’d promised to tell Nanette and Julia Ogilvy that her plans for their wedding cake were firmly in place.
“More bad news,” she said, hating to admit how awful things really were. “Those candy hearts we need for the Ogilvy wedding cake—I checked a bunch of websites and don’t think we can get them. So that sale is probably as good as flushed down the well-known porcelain bathroom fixture.”
Dana sighed. “I’ll make a quart of triple-rich hot chocolate and bring it in to you.”
“Love you, sweetie,” Meredith said as she headed for the door. “But maybe you’d better make it a gallon.”
****
Two hours later, Meredith sent the last message explaining that her website had been hacked and the customer would not be getting any X-rated merchandise. Then she included a gift certificate for a dozen free cupcakes. Financially, perhaps not the best business move, but at least it might ease some of her almost-customers’ disappointment at not being able to get their orders. Maybe they’d even remember Divine Desserts if they ever needed some non-sexual goodies.
She took a swig of Dana’s hot chocolate, hoping it would settle her nerves. It didn’t, but her obsession with the candy hearts suddenly triggered the reminder that she was supposed to search the candy company’s website to see if she could get some help.
“Do it,” she said and keyed in a search engine to find the right URL.
“Merry,” Dana cried as she burst into the office.
Meredith jumped in surprise, and her fingers skittered off the keyboard as she turned to Dana. “What?”
“Have you seen our website?”
Meredith stiffened, fearing the worst. “Don’t tell me. Someone transformed it into an illegal marketplace that sells stolen nuclear devices, and Homeland Security is now happily battering down the door.”
“For God’s sake, no. Valentine’s Day orders are coming in. A bunch of them.”
“With only one week left, people are ordering now?”
“Hey, beggars can’t be choosers, remember? Just go to the site and take a look. We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us, and it has to be done soon.”
Meredith clicked on the website and stared at the incoming orders.
“Procrastinators,” she murmured.
But what the heck. A sale was a sale, and that’s what they needed. Sales.
She studied the orders. Okay, nothing spectacular. Merely rather standard items—many heart-shaped; most piled high with berries and a color scheme that favored pink; all boasting Valentine’s Day motifs. Even taken together, they didn’t match what she would have had with Julia Ogilvy’s wedding, but these customers were good people who wanted and deserved the best, and that’s just what Divine Desserts would give them.
“Okay, let’s get to work,” she told Dana as she switched off the computer and stood up to follow her to the kitchen.
Chapter Seven
Three days later, they were still baking up a storm. Several of the orders had already been sent out, but too many more still had to be prepared, packaged, and shipped.
Six-o’clock mornings and nonstop days became the pattern of Meredith’s life, but she still tried to save an evening or two for some downtime with Vlad, even though when they were together, her mind often wandered into thoughts of work, finances and, most of all, the unattainable Ogilvy account.
So close, and yet so far.
She sighed as the thought invaded her mind again one evening when she stood in her kitchen with Vlad, making dinner.
“Meredith,” he said.
Not that it ever left her completely alone, of course.
“Meredith!”
Usually it was there from the moment she got up until the moment she—
“MEREDITH!”
She turned to Vlad, startled when she realized he’d been talking to her about…something.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t hear you. I was thinking of—”
He gave a curt nod. “I know what you were thinking of.”
“Do you?”
“Damn right I do. This is the fourth time you haven’t heard me since I arrived, and the cause is always the same thing.”
Meredith saw something spark in his eyes and knew he was pissed. All right, so she’d been a little inattentive, but it wasn’t personal. She was just weighed down with problems. Surely, he should understand that.
She fisted her hands at her sides, trying not to become too annoyed. “Oh? And what might that thing be?”
“Those damn hearts.”
And that ripped it wide open. Obviously he didn’t understand, and despite her vow not to overreact, Meredith felt the heat of anger set up a slow boil in her veins. She narrowed her eyes at him, suddenly ready for a fight, and when she spoke, she didn’t try to hide the frost in her voice. “That’s right. Those damn hearts and how my company could fail without them. I’m sorry if you don’t think the success of my business is worth a little worry.”
“Look, you’ve got other customers, right? From what you’ve told me, you’re loaded down with Valentine’s Day orders.”
“That’s true, but the amount she’s agreed to pay will take care of my bills for months.”
“For God’s sake, Valentine’s Day isn’t the only holiday that people celebrate by buying cakes. Mother’s Day will be here soon, and right after that there’s Father’s Day and—”
Meredith shook her head. “That’s all in the future and completely speculative. This is real, and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
“It’s still not worth making yourself sick over.”
“Well, to me, it is. So I’m sorry if you’re not interested in my success.”
“I’m interested in your success. I’m just more interested in your not turning yourself into a basket case because you’re so obsessed with your success that you forget there’s another part to life.”
Meredith snapped the oven off before the meatloaf baking there turned into a charred brick. “And just what might that part be?”
“How about simply living? You know, breathing the fresh air, taking a walk without that worried frown I usually see on your face, kissing me good night as if you were really thinking about what you’re doing instead of about some mega-bucks customer.”
Meredith pressed her lips together. Her kisses were lukewarm? That’s what the man thought of them? Then from now on he could bloody well kiss himself. “I apologize if I’m not fun enough for you…if I’m too focused and serious to waste your valuable time on.”
He folded his arms across his chest, legs apart, biceps bulging in the short-sleeved T-shirt he had on. It was the same hyper-masculine pose that always made her hormones teeter somewhere between anger and the urge to simply rip his clothes off.
“That’s not what I said, and you know it. So stop trying to turn my words around to mean something they don’t,” he countered.
Despite her anger, Meredith steeled herself against succumbing to the irresistible sexiness she always found in that damn pose of his.
Do not succumb to it
, she warned herself. So, instead, she turned even angrier. “Oh, now I’m some sort of manipulative female, is that it?”
In answer, he blew out an exasperated breath. “Okay, you’re doing it again—taking everything I say completely out of context.”
Meredith moved to the other side of the table to be farther away from him, because if he kept that stance long enough, she was sure she’d probably melt and give in.
But he didn’t keep it. He simply threw his hands up in frustration.
“You know, this conversation is getting us nowhere, except to aggravate the hell out of both of us. So I think I should be leaving. I made a reservation for that restaurant on Lenox Street. I’ll be here on the fourteenth, and hopefully we can start over again without all the hostility.”
He turned to go.
“I don’t think so,” Meredith said.
For an instant, he froze, then he turned slowly back to her. “You don’t think so,
what
?”
“I think I’ll be too busy on the fourteenth to spend any time at a restaurant.”
“All right, then I’ll cancel the reservation, and we can order something special and eat it here.”
Meredith shook her head firmly. “I don’t think I’ll be eating anything special here that day.
With anyone
.”
For a moment, he simply stared at her in silence, then he nodded. “Fine, if that’s what you want.”
What she really wanted was to cave right then and there. But she was already too deep into her anger, so she just stiffened her resolve and let the anger speak for her. “That’s exactly what I want.”
“Does that apply to the rest of the month too? All of February?”
“It does.”
“And the month after that?”
She took a deep breath and forced herself to push on till the end. “Yes, March, too, and April and—”
He held up a hand to stop her. “You don’t have to recite the whole calendar. I get the idea.”
For a split second, his face contorted with an expression that seemed to be caught somewhere between hurt and anger. Then in a tone so calm and frigid it chilled her bones, he said, “No problem. If that’s the way you want it, consider it done.
Permanently
!”
Swinging around, he stormed out of the kitchen without looking back.
A moment later, Meredith heard the front door slam with a finality that startled her. She felt a flow of tears dampen her cheeks and dashed them away with the back of her hand because, damn it, their fight wasn’t completely her fault. If only he’d sympathized a little more, told her that her success was just as important as any other part of her life, instead of spouting off about wanting her to enjoy a life of sunshine and laughter and let’s-all-just-stop-and-smell-the-flowers blandness.
All right, it was true she had a hard time not thinking about the Ogilvy loss. But that made perfect sense. Without the money it brought and the potential for other lucrative contacts, she could be struggling for years to keep her business solvent.
Maybe she’d succeed, but she could just as easily fail, and then her lifelong dream would be dead.
Somehow Vlad couldn’t understand that. Or if he did understand, then he just didn’t want to appreciate it and what it was doing to her.
Well, what did she expect? He’d once claimed he had the tenacity of a junkyard dog when something was important to him or someone he loved. That meant just one thing—her success wasn’t important to him, and neither was she. And if that was the case, then to hell with him.
Sniffling back any more stupid tears, she marched into her office, took a pen, and slashed a big X through February fourteenth on her desk calendar, happily obliterating the note she’d made about spending the evening with him.