Her Gentle Gangster by Carolyn Faulkner
Chapter Two
Cara
A hundred gourmetchocolate chip cookies, seventeen Granny Smith apple hand-pies with Saigon cinnamon, and nineteen cakes of varying flavors with colorful handmade icing flowers are attractively spread out over all the banquet tables I could find in my parents’ storage locker. The other pre-K teachers helped me make fun signage, festive balloon centerpieces, and eye-catching banners. My sister Cherise contributed a few batches of cupcakes in between her busy days at culinary school, as did a few of her classmates. My parents helped by letting me use their yard—smack in the middle of the wealthiest neighborhood in this suburb. But if I’m honest, the most significant help of all was name-dropping my brother-in-law.
Famous British chef Phillip Wildwood married my older sister Chloe last year, as luck would have it. I may have implied on the Facebook event that Phillip himself had donated cakes to this fundraiser. While that might not be one hundred percent true, the cakes I made came straight from Phillip’s many cookbooks. He’d permitted me to use his image on the promotional materials, which, let’s face it, is pretty eye-catching for anyone in the market for baked goods.
So it’s a good thing I know how to bake. And it’s a good thing I know how to use all the top-tier ingredients that Phillip was kind enough to donate; he couldn’t bear the thought of anyone selling cakes based on his recipes using basic supermarket ingredients. Bless his snooty British heart.
Mom was livid when Chloe announced she was not coming home after meeting Phillip in England. Dad was taken aback but mostly okay with it, realizing he had no leg to stand on if he opposed the match, having built up Chloe’s confidence with the entire scheme. “I didn’t think it would work,” was one memorable line from the toast Dad gave at the state-side marriage reception. Now, anyone who looked askance at the age difference has come around because everyone can see how much he loves and takes care of Chloe. Her pregnancy, and Phillip’s willingness to fly family members back and forth to England anytime she needs them, has also softened everyone toward him, even if he is at times a bit prickly and difficult to read, except to Chloe, and to our mother. It might not be the most traditional mother-son-in-law relationship, with my mother being a year younger than Phillip, but he dotes on her almost as much as he does Chloe.
Diana, my younger sister by a year, is here to help with the sale as part of her court-ordered community service, but she’s helped chiefly by eating the merchandise. I snatch a scone out of her hand. “What are you doing?” I hiss.
“I’m hungry!” she defends through a mouthful of lemon poppyseed.
“Then go inside and raid Mom’s fridge like you always do.”
“Hurtful,” she says, with a playful smile on her lips.
I roll my eyes. “Every bite you sneak is a dollar taken away from my kids. Kids you are supposed to be helping as part of your community service, remember?”
“Your kids, huh? I don’t see any kids anywhere for me to help.”
I cross my arms. “As soon as you stop damaging property, maybe grow up, become a judge, then you can decide what sort of community service is best for career criminals such as yourself.”
“Career criminals don’t get sentenced to volunteer at snooty schools in the suburbs.”
“Would you rather be picking up trash on the side of the highway? Because this is a pretty sweet gig. Any anyway, special-needs four-year-olds deserve playground time too.”
Diana squints at me like I’m dim. “Of course they do. But why are we doing this here, at Mom and Dad’s house?”
I sigh and explain it to her again. “Because Mom and Dad have a big yard. And this neighborhood is where the money is.”
Diana arcs a brow at me and says, “Uh-huh,” as if she’s reading me silently.
“And because Mom has a huge kitchen. So it’s more convenient.”
“Right,” she says thoughtfully.
“And it’s where I live. Because I can’t afford a place on my own on a teacher assistant salary.”
“Yeah.”
“And it’s close to Cherise’s culinary school, and she and her classmates donated the cupcakes.”
“And?”
“And what?!”
“And it wouldn’t have anything to do with the proximity to the big wiener across the street.”
I could blame my instant beet-red face on the morning chill in the air, but there’s no point. Diana sees everything. And she loves to be in the know. Typical middle child.
“God, you’re tactless! That’s not it at all!” I splutter.
Diana gasps at my indignation. “You are so obvious! You’ve been obsessed since you were thirteen!” she stage-whispers.
I set down the final pies fresh from the oven on the gingham tablecloth. “This whole crass subject could have been avoided if you hadn’t read my diary when we were kids.”
Diana chuckles through a mouthful of peanut butter fudge. “This could have been even better avoided if I hadn’t set my ex’s car on fire. But to be fair, your crush on our Uncle Mike traumatized me into this life of crime.”
“I hate you,” I chirp in a sing-song way that only sisters can say without hurting each other.
“People always hate the truth-tellers,” Diana says.
I roll my eyes. Diana might be the most Aries who ever Aries-ed. “If I give you some peanut butter fudge and sign your form for the judge, will you take it inside, stick it in your face hole and never say the words ‘Uncle Mike’ to me ever again?”
Diana considers this. “Done.” She grabs the plate of fudge she’s been nibbling at for the last hour and goes inside. I love my sister, but she’s a handful. She’s always been the wildest, snarkiest, and at the center of most Williams family drama. You’d think that middle child would have gotten herself enough attention by now, but that well is bottomless.
Once she’s gone, I look around me and wonder if Diana was right. Maybe I did set this whole thing up just to be closer to Michael. To maybe get a glimpse of him. Just like the way I did when I was in high school. In my senior year, I started going to city college twice a week. The downtown campus was just up the road from his condo, and I might have staked out where he would go running in the morning. I was so embarrassed when he’d spotted me.
And when he handed me that huge check at my high school graduation party, I chickened out. I was eighteen, had pined for him for five years. I looked at the amount and realized just how powerful this man was, just how out of my league. Sure, we live in a fancy gated neighborhood, but we’re far from wealthy. My parents needed a big house for us five girls and jumped on a bank-owned Fox Chase house during the mortgage crisis. They got the house for a song and have worked hard to fix it up. We and others like us who bought the houses here for cheap have never quite fit into this neighborhood. This is why Daddy convinced Michael to move here, so he’d have someone to golf with now that he was nearing retirement from his house-flipping business.
Ugh. Why am I torturing myself?
Diana has been having fun with one boyfriend after another for years. I’ll bet she lost her virginity at 15, with as much as she sneaked out of the house. I don’t see anything wrong with that. Maybe she had the right idea.
Maybe I’m pathetic, carrying a torch for someone almost as old as our father. Perhaps I’m sick.
Is that why I dressed like this?
I check the time on my phone, 7:59 a.m. My motive doesn’t matter now: time to sell some cakes. “All right, folks. I’m ready for you. Come and get it!”
Behind me, a deep, male voice sears the skin on the back of my neck and makes my inner thighs gush with sweat.
“How much for the cherry?”
Wide-eyed, I whirl around and come face to chest with Michael Brennan. Face to bare chest. Oh no. Oh my. This isn’t happening.
There he is, my dad’s best friend, bare of chest, wearing blue plaid flannel pajama bottoms, and looking mussed and sleepy and sexy as hell.
“Hi, Cara.”
I’m not prepared for him, nor am I prepared for the way he says my name. Like The Witcher just woke up with a croaky morning voice and wants me to join him in the bath. Uh, yes, please. All you need to do is ask. A wrinkle from the bedsheets still marks him across his shoulder, slashing down across his sternum. Wild images invade my stupid horny skull, involving Michael asleep, tangled up naked in sheets.
“Hi. Hi…”
“Michael.”
“I know,” I laugh, slapping myself on the forehead. “Of course I know you.”
My cheeks heat at the intensity of the way he’s looking at me while his Adam’s apple bobs.
“I haven’t seen you since your high school graduation party.”
I nod dumbly. Don’t comment on his shirtlessness. Don’t do it. “You had on more clothes then, as I recall,” I say, actually dipping my forehead to gesture at one small erect man nipple. It’s surrounded by soft salt and pepper fuzz that I would love to cuddle up to. Or grab tight to while I climb the man like a tree and grind on him.
It’s not as if I have any room to criticize his man nipples. I, for one, should probably go inside and fetch a cardigan to cover up what my own nipples are doing right now, and not just because of the morning chill in the air that seems to hang on.
Oh god, what is he doing to me? If he only knew the thoughts I was having about that chest, those lips, that slight scruff of beard.
This man has no idea—none—how much he’s appeared in my fantasies over the years. So much so that I’ve never entertained the thought of anyone else. It’s preposterous, holding out for a man twice my age. But then, Chloe gives me hope. No fantasy is too ridiculous for the Williams girls. Some might say we like our men unattainable. I would say we have big dreams.
One of those big dreams is threatening to push its way out the fly of his pajama pants.
Don’t look at the tent. Don’t look at it. Don’t you dare.
“Nice tent,” he says.
“What?” I say, horrified, and my eyes do the thing they’re not supposed to do. They look down. My eyes can’t look away from the morning wood.
His slightly bloodshot eyes are still as gorgeous as ever with those delicate crow’s feet that smile down at me. Michael gestures toward the cashier station next to me. He meant the awning tent. Not the…other kind.
“Oh,” I say, laughing. “Yeah. I went a little bit overboard, but it’s all for the kids.”
“How much for the cherry pie?”
“Five dollars each.”
He looks incredulous. “That’s it?”
I give an exaggerated wave of my arm like the woman on The Price is Right. “Well, they’re small and portable. You can take them right back to your house. Where the clothes are, I presume.”
He blinks at me.
I stammer, “A-and we have a fine selection of layer cakes as well.”
“l guess I’m pretty hungry. I’ll try some cake,” he says. He’s looking at me so strangely, like he wants to say something, but he’s holding back.
I stammer. “I can’t cut you a slice of cake unless you buy the entire cake.”
“Fine. I’ll take all of them.”
“Mr. Brennan?” I look up at him, blocking the sun from my eyes. Politely, he steps sideways to block the glare for me.
“How old are you, Cara?”
“Twenty-three.”
“I think you can call me Michael now,” he says.
I shake my head at my silly self. “Of course. Force of habit.” What I don’t say is that force of habit has nothing to do with my good manners and everything to do with shouting “Mr. Brennan!” every time I come when using my vibrator. And not just shout his name. I named my vibrator Mr. Brennan. I know. I know!
“Now, Michael, what is it that I can get for you?”
“All of them. Everything. How much for the entire inventory?”
I bluster, “What? Why?”
Ever the businessman, he peers down at me. “You drive a hard bargain. I’ll pay twice the asking price.”
I shift my weight nervously. “This…this isn’t an auction, Mr. Brennan…Michael. I don’t think you understand….”
He sighs. “Fine. Triple. For every cake you got.”
I can’t believe he’s doing this. “That’s not your wallet in those pajama pockets, is it?”
Don’t look down, Cara. You’ve seen that bulge before that time your family went out on Michael’s boat.
“Fine. But I have dibs. I’ll be right back.”
He leaves, and I expect Michael to come back fully dressed. I exhale in relief that I don’t have to face all that bare skin again, or all that lovely fuzz, or his dick’s outline. I mean, really. How dare he?
A sweet older woman approaches the checkout station with a fistful of tens. “I’ll take the carrot cake, dear.”
I stutter, “Ah, well…you see….”
She furrows her brow. “What’s the problem, honey? Just the cake, that’s all.”
I glance over at the nine-inch round layer cake decorated with chopped walnuts on the sides and orange carrot shapes frosted in a circle like a crown around the top.
Looking over at Michael’s house, I begin to doubt he’s coming back. He’s probably toying with me. Maybe he’s known all along about my childish crush, and he’s messing around now. Taunting me with his money, reminding me how out of my league he is.
“Of course,” I say to the grandmotherly woman, taking her cash and placing it in the cash box. I set about boxing up her cake, and then I text Diana to come outside and help carry the cake to the woman’s car.
“Thank you, dear. This cake looks lovely,” she says. “You’ve done a tremendous amount of work.”
I shrug and smile. “It’s all about the kids.”
Diana comes outside at the exact moment I see Michael’s door opening. I hurriedly give her instructions and tell her to follow the woman to her car.
Diana does as she’s told—thank god—but gives me the stink eye. “Alright, I’m going. Calm your panties.”
I roll my eyes. “So gross.”
She wags her head and follows the woman down the street, just as Michael reappears. Still shirtless. Still in those godforsaken flannel plaid pajama pants.
Diana swivels her head around from Michael’s direction back to me and mouths, “Oh my god!”
I purse my lips and wave my arms wildly for her to keep moving. And hopefully, disappear forever into the ether. Maybe then I’ll have some peace.
Michael’s not just got a wallet in hand, but his open checkbook.
“I see you couldn’t wait for me.” He winks, readying his pen. “Coulda got triple the asking price. Now, how much for everything here?”
I shake my head in amazement. He’s not messing around. I think he’s unaware of the effect his half-naked body has on me. I swallow, my throat still dry as a bone.
“If I sold all of this? Probably around eight hundred dollars. Including all the cookies and cupcakes, too.”
He stills his pen in mid air and stares down at me. “What did you say this was for?”
“I didn’t,” I say. “But it’s for a new pre-K playground. Special needs pre-K, to be exact.”
“So you need a lot more than eight hundred.”
I stammer. “W-well, yes. I have three more fundraisers planned for this year, and hopefully, we’ll—”
He shakes his head. “Nope. Here.”
He scribbles out an amount and tears off the check. When he hands it to me, I goggle at the amount. It’s five figures.
“This is too much.”
“On the contrary. Have your sisters, or whoever is around, deliver everything to my house. I’ll be in the shower.”
I find my boldness, and I ask, “Why are you doing this?”
As he walks away, he shouts over his shoulder, “Because I can’t let people give you money in the street. It’s HOA rules, not mine. I’m just protecting you from trouble. Everyone here can go home!” he shouts.
People are grumbling and starting to ask questions, pressing me to let them pay for their cakes and cookies they’ve been browsing.
I turn back to the crowd and tell them, “I’m so sorry folks. Mr. Brennan over there just bought me out. Thank you for coming, and I’m sorry.”
By the sound of protest, you’d think I’d just told them all they were banned from buying cake ever again, for life.
Michael has created more trouble for me by showing off with his money.
And he’s gonna get it.