Married In A Heartbeat novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: Overtime

On Monday night I finished a five-tier wedding cake at the hotel on the Strip, and my forearms ached.

I piped the last sugar rose at 11:40 and set down the bag.

The head pastry chef looked at the cake, then at me.

"You're the girl from the video," she said.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Don't cry on the fondant," she said, and handed me a tissue.

I had slept over the workshop for two nights, and I was still learning the stairs.

Tobin was waiting at the loading dock in his truck with a paper bag of tacos.

"I didn't know if you ate," he said.

"I always eat."

"Good. I got twelve."

We ate six each in the cab with the heater on and our knees touching.

He told me about a bad day at a site, a crane that wouldn't start, and a foreman who cried.

I told him about the head chef, and he laughed until he wiped his eyes.

It was easy, and that scared me more than the sex had.

At the apartment he took off his jacket and went straight to the kitchen sink.

"The faucet's been dripping all week," he said. "I've been meaning to fix it."

"You're fixing it now? It's midnight."

"It's bothering me."

He knelt under the sink with a wrench and a flashlight in his teeth.

I stood in the doorway in my white pastry apron with sugar on my forearms and watched his back flex under his T-shirt.

He had good shoulders. I had said that to myself already, three times.

The wrench clinked, and he swore softly, and the dripping stopped.

He slid out from under the sink and sat up with his hair in his eyes.

"There," he said. "Fixed."

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