Honey Pie (Cupcake Club) - By Donna Kauffman Page 0,15

first time—“oh.”

Chapter 3

Honey started to lift the bike from its resting spot against the wall behind the auto repair shop, then decided there was no point in rolling it across the alley. She’d come back for it once she was done. Besides, she wanted to get a few small things from her belongings to take back to the B&B . . . and, now that she knew how long her car would be here, she should probably see if she could work something out to get the rest of her stuff taken over later on. She didn’t want it all sitting inside her closed up car for that long.

At the moment, however, she had more important things to attend to. The first of which was to stop thinking about Dylan Ross. Even on a full night’s sleep and after a stern self lecture on keeping her focus on the important things, he still made her jumpy. And twitchy. Mostly, in that can’t-keep-her-eyes-off-his-shoulders-and-biceps kind of way. Just because he wore a grease stained white T-shirt that the heat and humidity had long since caused to cling damply to his very nicely defined torso, did not mean she had to stare at it. Or want to touch it. Nor did she need to be paying quite so much attention to the way his jeans hung low on his lean hips or hugged a backside that gave swagger a whole new meaning.

“Why look if you can’t touch,” she muttered. She pushed her hair from her face and her glasses up the bridge of her nose, and set off across the alley, wishing the elastic band she’d pulled her hair back with hadn’t slid down and blown away on the way to the garage. She’d wanted to look friendly, well put together, and open to discussion when she met with Leilani Dunne. And if, perhaps, she happened to show Dylan Ross that she wasn’t some deranged hippie chick, well . . . all the better.

Instead, she felt sweaty, wind blown, and . . . well . . . twitchy. She could still see Dylan’s broad, very capable hands gripping the handlebars of her bike. If she hadn’t jerked back the way she had, he might have put those broad, capable hands on her.

“And left grease marks on your blouse.” And permanent marks on her overly-active imagination. Logic and common sense clearly weren’t enough to deter her body’s determination to respond to him like a hothouse flower would to a steam bath.

Enough already. Time to talk cupcakes. And lease agreements.

Honey had called her aunt’s estate lawyer first thing that morning, only to be told he was away at a family wedding and wouldn’t be back until the following week. The other partner in the small firm had taken her call. He hadn’t known her aunt well, nor was he familiar with the particulars of her estate planning, but he’d said he would look through the file as it pertained to the Sugarberry property and get back to her. Honey had finally gotten the call from him an hour ago, and he’d said he found nothing untoward or mishandled from his end. According to the will, the property rightly belonged to Honey. If that ownership was being contested, she’d have to go to the county offices over the causeway, and get a copy of the deed, along with the papers she’d filed, claiming the property.

Except . . . no one had explained the part about her needing to fill out paperwork to claim anything. She’d thought that had been handled by Bea’s lawyer. And, perhaps it had. His partner couldn’t say one way or the other. So, she’d called the county to see if they could verify any of the information over the phone, only to be told she had to bring ID and show up in person to access any of her aunt’s deed information. She’d considered hiring a taxi and heading straight over, but decided perhaps going directly to the source on the Sugarberry end of things might be just as informative. Besides, it would eventually all come out anyway, so they were going to have to talk at some point. If she wanted to know who on Sugarberry thought they had the right to lease Bea’s shop to Leilani Dunne, who better to ask than the Cupcake Queen herself?

Honey debated walking around the row of buildings and entering through the front of the shop, as it was still during business hours, but the