Stormhaven’s Rejected Baker

“Thirty days, Ms. Brennan. Bake one wedding cake, and the bank forgets every cent you owe.” Mr. Pruitt laid the letter on my flour-dusted counter carefully, as though it might bite him. He looked at my shop like someone inspecting a sinking boat. Cracked tile. Mismatched chairs. A shelf of bread that smelled like heaven and had not paid the rent in four months. “A wedding cake,” I said. “Seven tiers. Three hundred guests. Sixty thousand dollars, paid in full.” He tapped the page. “You would bake it on site, at the groom’s estate. Thirty days from now.” “Whose estate?” “The groom is Alpha Gideon Vance of Stormhaven.” He cleared his throat. “The bride is Seraphine Brask.” I did not move. I did not blink. I held a ball of dough in both hands and kept squeezing it until it was warm. Gideon Vance. Six years since I had heard that name said out loud. Six years since I had lain awake listening to the sea and feeling something sharp where my heart used to be. “Why me?” I asked. “I’m told your bread is the best on the coast.” “That’s not an answer.” “It’s the one I was given.” He stood. “You have until tomorrow noon, Ms. Brennan. After that, the shop goes to auction.” He left. The bell over the door jingled behind him. * * * “Absolutely not,” Marta said. She stood at the back counter with her gray hair sticking out in all directions and a rolling pin in her fist. Marta had been my friend since the week I came to Pellam Cove with a suitcase and a stomach that was just starting to round. She had been in the delivery room. She knew everything. “It’s sixty thousand dollars.” “It’s a trap. That man cut you open in front of three hundred people, and you’re going to bake him a cake?” “He isn’t the one I’m baking for.” I rolled the dough flat. “I’m baking for the bank. And for Junie’s school fees. And for the roof.” “Nia.” “And maybe,” I said quietly, “I want him to look at me one more time.” Marta put the rolling pin down. She came around the counter and took my floury hands in her big warm ones. “He’ll see her eyes,” she said. “If he ever sees her.” “He won’t. I’ll keep her here with you.” “And if he does?” I had no answer for that. Upstairs, my daughter slept with one leg hanging off the bed and her copper curls spread across the pillow. Five years old. Five and three-quarters, she would tell you. Her mouth hung open. A drawing was tucked under her arm: a lighthouse, a purple whale, and a stick-figure woman with giant hair. Mama, it said in crooked letters. I kissed her forehead. She smelled like bread and bubble bath. “Where are you going?” she mumbled. “Work, baby. Just for a little while.” “Will the cake have sprinkles?” “A million sprinkles.” “Okay.” She rolled over. “Don’t forget my lucky spoon.” I tiptoed out before she could see me cry. * * * Stormhaven Hall stood on Gull Point like something that had grown out of the rock. Gray stone. Three tall towers. A lighthouse at the far end, white as a bone against the dark sea. A hundred windows, all black. I parked my little delivery van at the bottom of the drive. My hands were slick on the wheel. I wiped them on my apron and breathed in the smell of salt and wet stone. I had not been here in six years. Not since the night I walked down that sea wall and never came back. “You can do this,” I told the rearview mirror. “Cake. Bake the cake. Get paid. Go home.” The woman in the mirror did not look convinced. A heavy woman with a gray bun and a ring of iron keys at her belt opened the front door before I knocked. “Brennan?” “Yes.” “Bryn Calder. I run the house.” She looked me up and down. “You’re smaller than I expected. Kitchen’s through here. Don’t touch the copper pots. Don’t talk to the Alpha unless he talks to you first. And if the regent invites you to tea, say you have dough rising.” “The regent?” “Magnus Vance. Acting head of the house.” Her voice dropped. “Mind yourself around him. Smiles like a priest. Counts like a banker.” The kitchen was enormous. Copper pots hung from the ceiling. A black iron stove ran the whole length of one wall. A skinny boy with freckles and ears like open car doors was scrubbing a pan in the sink. “This is Toby,” Bryn said. “He’ll fetch what you need. Toby, say hello.” “H-hello, Miss.” He dropped the pan. I laughed for the first time that day. “It’s all right, Toby. Nobody’s perfect.” * * * “So you’re the baker.” A woman stood in the doorway, tall and slim, with sleek black hair and eyes the color of ice. She wore a plain gray sweater and looked as though she could stop a room with one raised eyebrow. “Seraphine Brask,” she said, and held out her hand. “I’m the bride.” The word bride landed in my stomach like a stone. “Nia Brennan.” I shook it. “Congratulations.” “Don’t.” She smiled, quick and crooked. “Everyone says it. I never know where to look.” She glanced around. “I hear your bread made our cook cry.” “It was the onions.” “That would be easier to believe if it weren’t the bread.” She leaned against the doorframe. “I’ve never met a baker before.” Her eyes warmed. “I think we’ll get along.” “Seraphine.” The voice came from behind her. Low. Rough at the edges. It slid down my spine like cold water. She stepped aside. Gideon Vance filled the doorway. He was bigger than I remembered. Broader. His dark chestnut hair had gone a little gray at the temples. A pale burn scar ran across the back of his left hand. He wore a navy coat that made his shoulders look like a wall. And his eyes. Sea-green. The exact green of the water at dawn, the same eyes that looked up at me every morning from my daughter’s face. They landed on me. They stopped. For one long breath, nobody in that kitchen moved. Toby’s mouth hung open. Bryn’s keys had stopped jingling. I watched the green in his eyes flash silver. Fast. A wolf rising in him, then forced down. His nostrils flared. Once. He knew me. He had known me from the second he saw me. “Ms. Brennan,” he said. His voice was flat as a table. “The east kitchen is yours. You will tell Bryn before you leave the grounds.” “Yes, Alpha.” The word tasted like ash. He looked at me one second longer. His left hand, the scarred one, closed on the doorframe so hard the wood groaned. Then he turned and walked away. * * * I could not sleep. I lay in the narrow room Bryn had given me, listening to the waves hit the rocks. At two in the morning, I gave up. I needed butter for the morning. That was all. Butter. I padded down in my socks, lit only by the green glow of the stove clock, and pulled open the door to the big walk-in freezer. Cold air rolled out. I stepped in and stopped. Shelves. Rows and rows of them. Every shelf was stacked with round loaves wrapped in white paper, tied with brown string. My loaves. I knew them the way a mother knows her own child’s handwriting. The twisted top. The honey glaze I brushed on at the end. The little stamp I pressed into every bottom crust. A tiny wave, with two letters under it. S&H. I picked one up with shaking hands. A label was taped to the paper, in neat black ink. Friday, March 4. Fourth year. Another. Friday, July 19. Second year. Another. Dozens of them. Hundreds. Wrapped. Dated. Kept. I counted until I lost my breath. Two hundred and sixty loaves. One for every Friday since I opened my doors. Someone had been buying my bread, in secret, through a driver I had never questioned, every single week for five years. And he had never eaten one. “Please,” a voice said behind me. Quiet. Rough. Broken at the corners. “Don’t ask.” I turned. Gideon stood in the doorway in a gray shirt and bare feet. His hair was a mess. His eyes were silver and wet. He looked like a man who had been caught doing the one thing he had promised himself he never would.