Under The Boardwalk. Amie Denman

       CHAPTER ONE

      GUS BACKED HER van down the narrow kitchen driveway at Bay Pavilion Banquet Hall. She was blocking an older SUV parked illegally along the waterfront, but she didn’t have time to feel guilty about it. The wedding reception was two hours away, just enough time to stack the cake and pipe it to perfection.

      She pulled on her apron, an embroidered cake with a glossy bride and groom covering the top half. Two small bells stitched to the upper straps jingled when she walked.

      The early-evening sun slanted off her van’s elaborate paint job. Every square inch was pink. Aunt Augusta’s Bakery swirled in gold metallic lettering across an ornate wedding cake. When she’d pulled in with the new van a few weeks ago, her employees had raised their eyebrows and clamped their mouths shut. All except her aunt Augusta. She had snapped a picture with her cell phone and beamed it to her entire list of contacts.

      Gus loaded three round cakes on a steel cart, propped open the double side doors to the reception room with her foot and rolled through. When she hurried back for the other two layers, a long shadow darkened the blacktop on the other side of the open van door.

      “Cake coming through,” she called out. “Make way or suffer the consequences.”

      She expected to see a catering staffer as she folded the door shut and swung around the side of the van. Instead, a tall man wearing a half wet-suit stood there dripping onto the asphalt. He clutched an oar as if he were preparing to vanquish the mighty pink van.

      Gus looked him over from head to toe. Dark brown hair shoved back from his face. Deep brown eyes. High forehead. An amazing four inches taller than her five foot eleven. Slim, athletic build. Huge ticked-off frown.

      She stopped the cart, stepped in front of it and grabbed a rubber spatula from her apron pocket. Holding the cooking utensil in front of her, she spread her feet and locked eyes with the wet-suit man.

      His lips twitched and his shoulders relaxed.

      “I’m pretty good with this spatula,” Gus said, her small grin matching his. “You should save yourself and run while you have the chance.”

      “I’m thinking,” he said.

      “About putting down the oar and holding those kitchen doors for me?”

      “Nope. About the last time I ran away from a woman wielding a spoon.”

      “It’s not a spoon,” she said, twirling the spatula in a figure eight.

      “My mother’s was,” he said, stepping back a few inches but still clutching his oar. “A wooden spoon. And she was looking to teach me a lesson with it.”

      “Cooking lesson?”

      He laughed. “I wish. My mother can’t cook. It was more of a manners lesson. I’d made fun of my grandmother’s ugly couch, and my mother made sure I couldn’t sit on it for a week.”

      “I like your mother already,” Gus said, “and I’m sure you have excellent manners as a result of her instruction.” She tucked the spatula back in her pocket, and the movement made the wedding bells on her apron jingle. “Does this mean you plan to hold the doors for me?”

      He eyed the cake painted on the side of the van and then his gaze swung to the cart behind her.

      “Does it come with free cake?”

      “Sorry. This one’s for the bride and groom.”

      “Will helping make you get your van out of my way faster?”

      “Am I in your way?”

      “You’re taking up the whole driveway,” he said. “I’d like to load my kayak and get out of here before sundown.”

      “I might have a wooden spoon in the van,” she said.

      He exhaled loudly. “Fine. I’ll get the doors.”

      Gus rolled the cart behind the man in the wet suit. Attractive, she thought. Nice hint of a smile. But he appeared to be on a mission.

      She was on a tight schedule, too. The wedding reception was now one hour and forty-five minutes away. If everything went as planned, she’d be fine. But handsome strangers were not part of the plan.

      Inside, she placed the largest round layer in the center of the cake table, which was decorated with a pristine tablecloth and a gleaming silver knife. She picked up the next layer, carefully turning it so the design would match the bottom layer, and eased it onto the anchor cake. Stacking a wedding cake was in her blood, a skill she’d inherited from her aunt Augusta and hoped to build a business on. If only running a business were as easy as running a perfect line of piped frosting.

      Several servers dressed in classic black and white milled around fussing with tablecloths. They placed silverware on other tables in the elegant reception room and glanced pointedly at her, eyeing the space she was taking up with her cart and cake tools. Apparently everyone was in a hurry.

      “Do you plan to stand there and watch me?” she asked the stranger. She wondered if he was hoping for a handout. Maybe he’d never seen Martha Stewart on TV and was enthralled watching Gus create a wedding cake.

      “I’m waiting for you to move your van.” He rolled his shoulders and stretched.

      Oh. So much for enthralled.

      “It’ll be a minute. I have to get the three top layers off the side table. The servers want to set that table and they don’t like waiting.”

      “Neither do I,” he said.

      Gus picked up the middle cake, its small pink flowers arranged in a crosshatch design. She held it over the layer below as she gauged the perfect placement.

      “If you don’t want to be inconvenienced, you should be more careful where you park,” she said. “You’re stopped in the access road for the kitchen.”

      “No one ever complained before.”

      Gus took her eyes off the cake and gave him a tight smile. She was trying to practice restraint. He was attractive but appeared uncomfortable, his wet suit making a funny contrast with the formal linens. He resembled an oak tree accidentally planted among fussy flowering shrubs.

      The stranger planted one end of his oar on the carpet and leaned on it. Gus lowered the fourth layer into place. She had to focus on the wedding cake that would bring over a thousand bucks into her shop’s cash drawer. A drawer that barely had change for a fifty.

      “If you give me your keys, I’ll move your van myself,” he offered.

      Gus