Decadent Dreams. A.C. Arthur

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      Chapter 3

      She’d changed to flat black shoes with thick rubber soles that would grip the floor so there would be no slipping and falling. Her jacket and top had also been changed to a short-sleeved black T-shirt with the word DIVA scrawled across her delectable breasts in white rhinestones.

      Malik continued to watch as Belinda went directly to the third hook on the rack that held their coats and jackets or whatever else they decided to hang up on any given day. Her apron was always on this hook and nothing was on the two hooks surrounding it. Belinda had a thing about her apron touching street clothes so nobody hung their stuff near hers. She pulled the apron over her head, reaching behind her back to tie it in place. He smiled each time he saw her put that on, he couldn’t help it.

      “What are you laughing at?” she asked, her brows immediately wrinkling with a frown.

      “You,” he replied, moving from where he’d been standing across the room to the double Sub-Zero refrigerator.

      “I wasn’t aware I looked that funny,” was her cool retort.

      Malik almost laughed again but knew better. There was only so far you could push Belinda and he wasn’t trying to get on her bad side. It wasn’t quite noon yet so they had a lot of hours to work together in the kitchen.

      Shari was traveling with a delivery of two cakes that replicated sculptures by an up-and-coming artist that were being shown at a gallery in Bridgeport. Drake had closed himself in his office, making more moves where the bakery was concerned, no doubt. He was definitely dedicated to the business. As were the rest of the Draysons. They were a close-knit family, the business holding them as strong as their familial bond.

      That left him and Belinda in the kitchen today to get out the orders. Carter was expected, but there was no exact time one could ever expect Carter. He worked his own hours, which were usually long and rigorous since he was always striving to achieve more, even though he was already a master at his craft.

      “You don’t look funny,” he said when he’d closed the refrigerator, carrying the rolls of fondant over to the working table. “You look really cute in your Betty Boop apron.” It was an honest assessment, one he usually kept to himself. Today, however, Malik had the urge to go out on a limb.

      “It was a gift,” she said, slapping her hands down over the apron. Too hard to be an attempt at wiping something off, more likely she thought she could erase Betty Boop’s voluptuously shaped body from the material.

      “A very nice gift. Who gave it to you?” he asked as he worked.

      Belinda had finally stopped touching the apron and obviously decided to get to work herself. There were two full sheet cakes on the other end of the table. She picked up a bowl of buttercream icing and a spatula and moved closer to the table, on the opposite side from Malik.

      “My father.”

      “You a Betty Boop fan?”

      “Yes.”

      It was cordial conversation, the likes of which he and Belinda had gone through on more than one occasion. It wasn’t normally this stiff, even though Belinda was not a fan of conversing while she was working. But Malik sensed there was something bothering her today. She was even more reserved than normal.

      He retrieved a marble cutting board and rolled out the first layer of pea-green fondant. Using the rolling pin, he began the painstaking process of smoothing it out just another layer or so before he would drape it over the golf course cake he was working on.

      “I can like Betty Boop if I want to. I’m not so stuck-up that I don’t know a simple cartoon character when it’s splattered on the front of my apron,” she said abruptly.

      Malik had looked up at her, not speaking for a moment. She hadn’t even gazed at him, just kept scooping icing onto that spatula and gently smoothing it onto the cake. It was amazing how much pent-up emotion she was holding on to. He could see it in the stiffness of her shoulders, the stern set of her lips. And yet, her hands were supersteady, smoothing icing in lengthy strokes, making sure the cake was covered evenly.

      “You can like whatever you want. That makes you decisive, not stuck-up.” And yet he wondered who’d called her stuck-up, and if they’d had the guts to do so to her face.

      “Right,” she said slapping the spatula into the icing bowl. She turned the cake, surveying it.

      “If you tell me who, I’ll gladly punch the person who called you stuck-up,” he offered with a serious face. “Providing it’s not a female.”

      The edge of her lips twitched and he knew she wanted to smile. He’d seen her smile before, had received a sucker punch to his gut each time. This one, albeit small, was hard earned. Something was really bothering her.

      “It’s not worth it,” she said with a shrug of her shoulders. “His loss.”

      The last was spoken in a softer tone. So much so Malik had barely heard it. After only a few minutes of trying to phrase his question just right, he asked, “So a guy you were dating called you stuck-up. Why? Because you weren’t into him?”