Page 4 of Heartbreak & Cupcakes
Only one thing could distract me when I was in my zone.
Cupcake Girl.
She had a name, Sadie Burke. In a rare moment of weakness brought on by several glasses of whiskey, I’d told Maddox and Nick about meeting her. They’d looked her up on social media and seen that her handle was @cupcakegirl. It had sort of stuck.
I didn’t know her, not really. I knew things about her.
I knew that her smile was like a song that got stuck in your head that you couldn’t stop replaying.
I knew that her voice was as soothing as the ocean waves crashing on the shore.
I knew that her hourglass figure caused a sheen of sweat to break out on the back of my neck every time I saw her.
But there were so many things I didn’t know.
I didn’t know how she’d gotten the tiny horseshoe scar on her forehead that she touched every time she was concentrating.
I didn’t know what had caused the sadness in her eyes that I could see beneath the Suzy Sunshine persona she presented to the world.
I didn’t know what she said to herself under her breath when she mumbled.
And I didn’t know how in the hell a woman like her was single. Or at least not married. She could have a boyfriend, or girlfriend, for that matter.
I tried to push thoughts of her out of my head as I concentrated on the rhythm of my feet pounding on the pavement, but she just kept creeping back in.
As I approached the end of my run, I came up to the side street her bakery was on. I didn’t have to turn down the street to get home. In fact, it was a straighter shot not to. I checked the time on my Apple Watch and saw that it was 4:09.
For the past six months, every morning, without fail, she rushed down the stairs from her apartment above her bakery at exactly 4:10 a.m. Not 4:05. Not 4:15. 4:10.
I knew it was her residence because I’d run a background check on her four months ago. That was also how I knew that she wasn’t married. I hadn’t been able to get her out of my mind and so I’d had the P.I. that was retained for my firm do a background check on her. As soon as I’d done it, I felt like it was wrong. Illegal, no. Unethical, yes.
I’d only found basic information that was available on public domains. She was single, never having filed a marriage license. She was born in Boston and had grown up back East. She moved to California ten years ago. She’d worked as a nanny, a bartender, a dog walker, and a photographer for a novelty shop down on Pier 39. She didn’t have a criminal record, unless you counted unpaid parking tickets which had caused her car to get booted several times. She didn’t own any property and was the sole owner of Sweet Temptations. Her father was a homicide detective and there was no information on her mother.
My heart pounded as I made the left onto her street. As soon as I did, I saw a flash of blonde hair rushing down the steps that led to the glass storefront that housed her bakery, Sweet Temptations.
Right on time.
She was mumbling under her breath as she rushed to the front entrance that sat below a huge sign with her logo which featured a cartoon blonde with huge brown eyes and a blonde ponytail—that bore a striking likeness to Sadie—holding a cupcake.
Just like the first time I’d seen her, I was stunned at her beauty.
I watched as she fumbled with her keys, then dropped them. I did my best not to stare at her perfect, heart-shaped ass, but I was only human. When she bent over to pick them up, I felt like one of the boys leaning on the fence in the Cindy Crawford Pepsi commercial.
Her generous curves made my mouth water. I’d never seen her in that exact position and it had all sorts of images of activities I’d like to do with her bent over like that.
She cursed as she picked up her keys and put them in the lock. I forced myself to look away and continue down the street.
I’m not going to go into her shop before work, I told myself.
I was averaging three stop-bys per week. At first, I’d justified my frequent visits because she had a new business, and I was supporting her. But from what I’d seen, her business was doing well. She had a near-perfect Yelp rating and had been featured in several popular Bay Area blogs. Which I knew because I had a Google alert set up with her name on it.
A Google alert. Background check. And constant visits to her shop. Alone they might not be bad, but together they added up to stalker behavior.
I definitely wasnotgoing to stop by today before work.
No matter how much I wanted to.
