9

There were folding chairs, camping chairs, and even long benches dotted around as well, some with their own smaller tables or even arranged around a stump, as if anyone who needed a break from heavy socialization could just sit and still enjoy their food without fully exiling themselves.

Wow.

What a setup.

It was mind-boggling to me, since the only family I’d had on the continent was my mother. I literally could not imagine what it was like to have so much family that it looked like a small town when they all gathered together. Perhaps they’d all pitched in for the rescue cakes, and that’s how they’d been able to afford to pay me double. Yeah, they definitely loved that niece.

“Lucky girl,” I mused. I wasn’t jealous; if anything, I thought it was incredibly sweet. But I couldn’t deny I felt a bit melancholy. It seemed like a lovely thing to experience, but something I would never have.

Oh well. I still wouldn’t trade the life I’d had with my mother for anything. Would it have been nice if my father hadn’t died so young? Of course. But I didn’t have a time machine to go back and warn him not to return to Malaysia, so there was no changing that part of my history.

Finally, I reached an area where a bunch of cars were parked—probably relatives who had to travel and didn’t live in the clusters of houses I could see across what looked like a main dirt walkway—and pulled my van up. I thought about calling Cas, but figured I might as well unpack my stabilizing case and get everything ready to be carried over to the dessert table I could see from where I was standing.

I had plenty of pep in my step as I went around to the back of my van. I was really excited to get paid, but it was more than that. It was hard not to smile when I was surrounded by delicious food and so much laughter and happy chatter. Sometimes cooking and kitchens were far too serious, so I enjoyed true levity when I encountered it.

I opened the door, then my stabilizing case. It wasn’t anything super special, just something I’d jimmied together with wood and the help of an online tutorial. It wouldn’t win any awards, but it stopped my cakes from sliding or mashing the top of their frosting against anything, and really, that was all a girl could ask for. By the time I got the first cake out, I nearly dropped it when I turned around to see two middle-aged women standing beside my van.

“Would you look at that? Cas did manage to get a replacement cake,” the woman said, clapping her hands in delight. She had a generous smattering of freckles across her pleasant features, the same auburn hair as Cas, and pretty, blue eyes. She was pleasantly plump in a stereotypical, Midwestern-mom kind of way, and something told me she gave amazing hugs.

“He managed to get three cakes, actually,” I said with a grin, setting the tray down on a small rack I had right at the edge of the van. I clambered down before picking it up again. “Where would you like me to put them?”

“Three?” the other woman said, her twang much stronger than her auburn-haired counterpart. “He only left here this morning! Did you manage to do all that today, or did you have a client cancel on you last minute and it all happened to work out?”

“No, no other clients,” I said brightly. I didn’t know these women, but they seemed so genuinely delighted to see me that it was hard not to feel a little bit like a rock star. “Made these specially for you. Even included your family’s rhubarb jam and sweet cream. It was impressively thick for being in a jar and all the travel it had to do!”

The dark-haired woman grabbed the other’s arm. “Did you hear that, Polly? She used Auntie Letitia’s jam! Oh, I don’t know you, baker lady, but I do know you’re an angel!”

That startled a laugh out of me, and I felt myself blush. I liked the attention, but I didn’t feel that I’d done quite enough to earn it. After all, baking was my literal job, and they were paying me nearly double what I usually charged. “Now you’ve gone and embarrassed her, Penny!”

Penny and Polly? Of course. How perfectly Americana.

“You ignore her, sweetie. Here, I’ll show you where you can set those beautiful creations of yours. Penny, you make sure to ward off any interlopers who would try to steal a slice.”

Penny gave a salute, and the three of us set off over to the field and the dessert table. Well, one of the many dessert tables. I’d worked for a couple of catering companies in my life, and I doubted I’d ever seen so much food in one spot. It was hard to believe the cakes would have been missed—except that nearly everyone we passed made a comment, no matter what their age. “Ooh! We have a cake, after all?”

“Hey, where did you get that?”

“Goodness gracious, that looks delightful!”

“Yoooo, where’d we get cakes?”

“I thought those were burned!” “What smells like cake?”

“Now that you know where to put it, we’ll go ahead and get out of your hair,” Penny said, smiling brightly as I set the cake down. “Do you want us to send some lads to help you unload?”

I ignored the flicker of disappointment that it wouldn’t be Cas helping me, but that was probably for the best.

“No, I’ll be fine. But if you wouldn’t mind getting Castiel so he can approve the final payment, I would be most grateful.”

Technically, I already had his card information saved from the deposit, which was an agreement to be automatically charged upon delivery, but I’d learned from the tried and true CYOA—or as my more-PG mother used to say: “watch thine own booty”—method that it made things much easier if I got a signature upon delivery confirming everything was in order. I’d only had two fraudulent chargebacks in my entire professional baking career, and while the first one had me out of sixty dollars in supplies and six hours of my time, the second one I’d been prepared for with a signature upon delivery and photos.

Not that I thought Cas would try to scam me. He didn’t really seem like the type. But sometimes wolves really wore sheep’s clothing, so I wasn’t about to risk it.

“Oh, of course! We’ll go hunt him down. He tends to run around like a chicken with his head cut off before these events!”

“Only because everyone and their mom needs something from him,” Polly interrupted, almost sounding defensive for the guy. “But I suppose that’s part and parcel with being an al—uh, all-around good guy.” She cleared her throat as if she had said something embarrassing. “We’ll be off now!”

“Sounds good,” I said, tipping my head before returning to my van. Yeah, maybe it would have been easier to have an extra set of hands, so I didn’t have to make three trips, but I wasn’t exactly gunning to rush off. And I figured since I was waiting for Cas’s signature, I had time to burn.