Danielle "Dani" Joyce has been working long hours and living paycheck to paycheck to keep her bakery, The Dough Divas, open. Spending all her time at the store, her only romantic outlet is to crush on regulars like Justin Waverly. She keeps her flir...
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With my head so full of thwarting Justin's plans to end our fake engagement, I completely forgot about the party we haphazardly agreed to at dinner.
I had plenty of chances to remember, though. Justin took it upon himself to call me every single day up to the day of the party. The conversations were always the same. He'd beg and plead for me to help him end this civilly. He even offered to be the one that cheats, offering some details about the wild affair, all of which sounded eerily similar to one of the story lines on Complacent Househusbands. Justin also offered for me to just come forward and tell everyone how awful he was. I, however, had reached a point where it was the truth or nothing. If he wanted to stand in front of his family and admit I had caught him in the act or stumbled across racy text messages, then he could go for it, but I was done lying. However, he couldn't pull the trigger and so every day he tried again to convince me to take part in one scheme or another, and every day I denied him.
Not that it was easy to say no. He took the opportunity to guilt me into performing the charade, reminding me of how Fran had already suffered and I told him I felt for her, but that I just couldn't lie anymore. Each phone call ended with one of us hanging up abruptly and with curses on our tongues. The way we were fighting, we almost were an old married couple already.
"Do you see him?" I asked, rising on my tiptoes to add one extra inch to the two-inch heels I was already wearing.
"No, he wasn't getting a drink or one of these things." Mindy held up an hors d'oeuvre before taking a sip of wine. "What do you think it is? It looks like bacon wrapped in puff pastry. I'm not sure who came up with this, but I think we need to serve this at the store because, I mean, bacon soaked bread! What's not to love?"
"Mindy, keep your head in the game." A groan rumbled in my chest as I searched for Justin somewhere out in a crowd full of people that shared far too much genetic material with him to make the task an easy one. "I have to find..."
"There you are Dani!" exclaimed a man that I only recognized as someone sharing the trademark Sanders nose. "So good to see you again."
"Hi," I said, shaking his offered hand and scouring my memories to recall who he was. "Nice to see you again."
"Who's this?"
He pointed at Mindy, who couldn't respond since her mouth was full of breaded pig meat.
"My business partner and best friend, Mindy Nelson."
"Hi Mindy, I'm Randall's cousin Fred. Which I guess makes me Justin's first cousin, once removed. I think..."
"Yeah, who knows with that stuff." Mindy wiped crumbs from her mouth with a napkin before accepting Fred's hand. "Nice to meet you."
"Yes," said Fred with a thin smile. "I'm glad I ran into you because I was wondering if you planned to do the wedding cake."
Fred's posture straightened, his shoulders square, his hands clasped in front of him, and his head cocking down to assess her reaction.
