Taste of Romance (8 page)

A mother with two young children told her, “He was such a nice man. Very kind. Not
many people do good deeds for others anymore.”

“What do you mean by ‘good deeds’?”

“When I told him we didn’t have any money, he gave us the cupcakes for free.”

Kim returned to the Creative Cupcakes tent and discovered the Cupcake Mobile had left.

“Mike drove Grandpa Lewy home and went to get us more cupcakes,” Rachel told her.
“Did you learn anything about our thief?”

Kim nodded. “People described him as tall, short, handsome, ugly, young, old, in human
form, and a troll. One woman referred to him as Robin Hood.”

“Because he steals from the rich and gives to the poor?” Rachel asked. “Our cupcakes
are rich, but we’ll be poor now that he’s given our cupcakes away.”

Kim hesitated. “He didn’t give them all away. He sold most of them . . . and pocketed
our money.”

Chapter Seven

Stolen kisses are always sweetest.

—Leigh Hunt

“S
OMEONE TOOK
C
ASEY!”
Mia cried, running across the tile floor of the cupcake shop.

Kim watched the tears roll down her niece’s cheeks and she dropped down on one knee
in front of the child to console her. “Where did you last see your doll?”

Mia looked around, as if puzzled. “I don’t know.”

“You had Casey with you yesterday at the festival,” Andi said, coming around the counter.
“Did you leave her there?”

Mia’s big blue eyes welled with more tears. “I don’t know.”

Andi glanced toward Jake’s daughter, Taylor, who was coloring with crayons at a table
by the front window. “Taylor, did you take Mia’s doll?”

Taylor shook her head. “No.”

“Must be the bandit,” Mia said, her lower lip wobbling.

Taylor agreed. “The Cupcake Bandit.”

“Should we offer a reward?” Kim suggested. “A free box of cupcakes to whoever finds
and returns Casey.”

Mia nodded.

“If you and Taylor draw reward posters, I’ll hang them up in the shop,” Kim told her.

The little girl dashed off to sit at the table with Taylor, and Andi brought them
two pieces of white paper.

“That will keep them busy for a while,” Andi said with a grin.

“Long enough for us to load the Cupcake Mobile for the festival,” Kim agreed. “Where’s
Rachel?”

“Right here,” Rachel sang, ushering her grandfather through the front door. “Had to
take Gramps to the doctor’s. He had a fever this morning. My mom’s coming by to get
him in ten minutes.”

Rachel seated him at a front table near the door by the girls, then noticed the new
vase of roses on the counter. “Well, well, Kim. What have we here?”

Kim rolled her eyes as Rachel counted the stems.

“Nathaniel sent six red roses. That means, ‘I want to be yours,’” Rachel teased.

“It doesn’t mean anything. Nathaniel isn’t looking for a relationship. He’s—” Kim
took a deep breath and steeled herself against their pity. “He’s going back to Sweden.”

“I’m so sorry,” Andi said, her voice barely audible.

Kim nodded and turned away, unable to look at her. “It’s okay, really. I’ve got my
job here . . . for at least two more weeks. And I’ve got my painting.”

“I really like this new one,” Rachel said, pointing to the fresh canvas on the easel.

The picture she’d painted of two people holding hands and looking up at the stars.

Kim squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, trying to block out the image, but Nathaniel’s
face appeared instead. How could he leave when she’d just found him? It all seemed
so unfair.

“I finished!” Mia called out and held up her colored paper. “Hang up my reward poster,
Aunt Kim.”

She retrieved a roll of tape and was in the middle of attaching the poster to the
front window when something hit the glass with a sharp bang.

“What was that?” Taylor asked.

“A bird,” Mia said, pressing her face against the pane. “I think it’s dead.”

Kim took an empty cupcake box off the back counter and went outside, followed by Mia
and Taylor. The little blackbird hadn’t died, but instead appeared stunned and was
on its side. When it righted itself and tried to fly, it fell back down.

“The bird’s alive,” she told them. “Just a hurt wing. In a few days our feathered
friend will fly as good as new.”

“Are you sure?” Mia asked.

No, she wasn’t sure. She wasn’t sure of anything anymore. In fact, she’d felt as dazed
as this little bird ever since Nathaniel told her he was going away. Would she ever
meet another person with an adventurous spirit who connected with nature and made
her smile as much as he did?

Gently, Kim picked up the bird and placed it in the box, then walked back with it
into the shop.

“You’re bringing that thing in here?” Andi asked, her eyes wide. “What about germs?”

“I’ll keep it in the box by the side door in the back party room,” Kim said, carrying
the bird across the room.

Mia and Taylor followed, squealing with delight.

A
NDI’S SQUEALS LATER
that afternoon were of a different kind, more like a burst of outrage. She held up
the Cupcake Diary. “The thief left a ransom note.”

Rachel looked up from the tray of red velvet cupcakes she had just brought out from
the kitchen. “In our Cupcake Dairy?”

“The diary was missing since this morning, and I was afraid maybe the Cupcake Bandit
stole that, too. But I just found it here on the end of the counter with this written
inside.”

Kim walked over by Andi and read the note aloud, squinting to decipher the poor handwriting:

I have a doll. Astoria Column. 6:30. Bring the cupcakes. Chocolate.

“Does he mean 6:30 today?” Andi asked, turning the book around to read the note again.

Kim shrugged. “He doesn’t mention any other day.”

A half hour after Andi called his private number, Officer Ian Lockwell entered the
shop. Andi showed him the note and explained how Mia’s doll had gone missing.

“I’m afraid I can’t write a report over a missing toy,” Officer Lockwell told them.
“Or order a stakeout.”

“But if he shows up to exchange the doll for the cupcakes, we can catch him,” Andi
insisted. “And find out who he is.”

“I’m sorry,” Officer Lockwell told them. “The person who took Mia’s doll and the thief
who stole your cupcakes might not be the same person. Plus, you have to think—what
kind of crazy person would do something like this? Sounds to me like a child.”

“The video showed pale hair and the elbow of an adult,” Andi argued. “And the people
at the Scandinavian Festival said it was a man. He was selling the cupcakes for money.”

Officer Lockwell sighed. “I’m working at the station tonight, and there’s no way the
department is going to invest precious money or manpower to catch a dollnapper.”

“Someone’s got to take the cupcakes to the column,” Andi said, lifting her chin. “Except
Rachel and I have to head back to the festival. We told Heather and Theresa we’d be
back with the next load of cupcakes ASAP.”

Kim watched her sister turn toward her and gasped. “Why are you looking at me?”

“You’re the only one who can do it,” Rachel told her. “You need to go on a recon mission
to catch our cupcake thief.”

“I—I can’t go alone.” She shook her head. “I’m not the type to hide in the bushes
and scout out criminals.”

“You don’t have to go alone,” said a smooth, friendly voice behind her. “I’ll go with
you.”

She spun around. How did Nathaniel manage to sneak up behind her?

Andi and Rachel clapped their hands, and each gave her a big smile.

“Sounds like a plan,” Rachel said and gave her a knowing look. “Be sure to take a
blanket. The air might be cool tonight.”

Kim rolled her eyes. Rachel was a blatant matchmaker who didn’t know when to stop.

“I have a blanket in the saddlebag of my motorcycle,” Nathaniel told her.

“You brought your motorcycle?” Kim asked, unable to keep her excitement out of her
voice.

“I thought you might like another taste of adventure,” he said and grinned as he took
her hand.

K
IM HELD THE
binoculars up to her eyes. The box containing a dozen chocolate cupcakes with creamy
chocolate icing sat on the stone bench near the hedges toward the back side of the
Astoria Column. The ransom note had not said where to put them, and she thought if
she chose a place in the open, the thief wouldn’t make the exchange.

“It’s 6:30,” Nathaniel whispered. “The Cupcake Bandit should be here any minute.”

“Do you think he saw us cross the parking lot and climb the column?” Kim asked.

Nathaniel shook his head. “We were here over an hour early, he doesn’t know me, and
I doubt he’d recognize you.”

Kim glanced down at the black leather motorcycle jacket Nathaniel had given her to
hide her white work shirt. The jacket was about five sizes too big, but she didn’t
care. It smelled like him—like warm summer rain and happiness.

“We can see if he takes the cupcakes, but we’ll never climb down fast enough to catch
him,” Nathaniel told her.

“That’s okay,” Kim said, looking down at the people wandering around on the lawn below.
“I don’t want to confront him. I just want to see who it is.”

There were 164 steps to the top of the Astoria Column on Coxcomb Hill, where a square,
railed platform let viewers oversee not only the site’s thirty acres, but the entire
region. Kim loved the historic frontier banded murals circling the column that Italian
immigrant artist Attilo Pusterla had created using a technique combining painting
and plaster carving.

“It’s like the top of a lighthouse,” Nathaniel commented. “And just as windy. The
view reminds me of Sweden, with all the green valleys and waterways in between.”

Kim swung her gaze from the huge cargo ships traveling under the massive steel truss
Astoria−Megler Bridge on her right, around the piers lining the tip of Astoria, and
followed Youngs Bay around to the flats of green, with trees and subtle rolling hills
in the distance.

“My home city of Göteborg is a lot like Astoria,” he continued. “Your town sits on
the mouth of the Columbia River where it meets the Pacific Ocean, and mine sits on
the mouth of Göta älv, which flows into the North Sea. Also, like Astoria, Göteborg
is a thriving fishing community. I think you’d like it there.”

Was he asking her to go to Sweden? Nathaniel turned toward her, and her pulsed raced.
What was she supposed to say?

“There are many art galleries in Sweden,” he told her, his eyes sparkling. “Including
the Göteborg Museum of Art.”

“And rose gardens?” she prompted, loving the sound of his accent as he talked.

“
Ja,
before I came here, I worked in the rose garden in Trädgårdsföreningen park, with
four thousand roses of nineteen hundred species.” He grinned. “A lot more to smell
than in my backyard.”

Kim smiled at his teasing and took another glance at the stone bench to make sure
the cupcake box was still there. It was.

“No wonder you want to go back,” she replied.

“I want to go lots of places,” Nathaniel said, smiling down at her. “But I’ve discovered
it’s more fun traveling with someone than traveling alone.”

Kim stared at him for several long seconds, wishing she could travel the world with
him, pack her hobo bag and her paintbrushes, and fly off to other countries, immerse
herself in other cultures, and capture their essence on canvas. But her gut clenched
into a tight ball at the thought of the airplane flights a dream like that would require.

Avoiding Nathaniel’s expectant gaze, she lifted the binoculars to her eyes. No thief
on the horizon.

“I dated an Irish guy in college,” she said, her voice raw. “After graduation he asked
me to fly off to Ireland with him. But I thought of my mother, crashing in the wilds
of Idaho with my aunt and uncle in their plane, and I . . . I couldn’t go. He left
me behind and flew off without me.”

Nathaniel nodded, as if he understood her dilemma. “I dated a girl in college who
asked me to stay. She didn’t have the spirit of adventure in her and asked me to give
up mine. I couldn’t do it. Giving up who you are and who you are meant to be, giving
up on your dreams, is a fate worse than—”

He looked at her and broke off before finishing, but Kim knew what he was going to
say.
“Giving up on your dreams is a fate worse than death.”
Suddenly she knew she had to change.

“Can you take me up in your brother’s hot air balloon again?” she asked. “This time
without the ropes tying it to the ground?”

“I could, if that’s what you want. Or if you’re willing to try something else, he
has a seaplane that can fly low to the water to make you feel safe.”

“I’d like to try,” she told him. “I don’t always want to be afraid to fly. Someday,
when I’m ready, I’d like to actually use my passport.”

“Maybe when that day comes, you’ll visit Sweden,” he suggested.

“Maybe,” she said and drew in her breath as his mouth drew near. “Nathaniel, we can’t
let ourselves get distracted. We need to be on the lookout for the thief.”

He pulled back. “
Ja,
you’re right. I don’t know what I was thinking except that you’re so very cute when
your eyes are wide with anticipation.”

“Me?” She gasped. “You think I anticipate—”

“I find it very exciting,” he assured her and drew toward her once again.

This time she didn’t protest. Okay, he was right. She had been struggling with the
anticipation of his kiss the entire time he’d been talking to her.

His mouth covered her lips with sweet promise, exhilarating temptation, and filled
her with an intense urge to fly over the moon. Never had she lost her senses over
a man so completely, not even with Gavin, whom she’d thought was the love of her life.

Now she wondered if she wasn’t hurt so much by the idea that he had left her, but
by the idea that he had left her behind. While he flew off to another country, she
remained stuck in Astoria, where she feared she’d remain forever.