turned to the doorway leading to the back of the bakery.
"Annabeth!" she called. "Visitors for you!"
She turned back to Maggie and Steve. "Hi guys! Welcome back!"
Then Annabeth rushed out, all smiles, and came around the counter into the café area.
"Maggie!" she exclaimed, opening her arms for a hug. "I’m sorry I missed you yesterday!"
Maggie's longtime friend hadn't changed a bit in the years since she'd left Cacao to start her own bakery in Bearpaw Ridge.
Scratch that, thought Maggie as she stepped into Annabeth's soft embrace and hugged her back, hard. She was always pretty. Now she's downright gorgeous.
It helped that Annabeth's features were clear of the constant strain that had haunted her back in their San Francisco days. Instead of her former tightly wound anxiety, her bright blue eyes were clear and happy, and she radiated a gentle confidence. It was a joy to see how much she had blossomed since coming here.
She was dressed in checked chef's trousers and a flour-dusted bright teal chef's coat with a matching pillbox hat on her mass of curly, strawberry-blonde hair.
When the two of them finally released each other, Maggie was smiling, and Annabeth's grin stretched from ear to ear.
"And you must be Steve," Annabeth said to him.
"Someone told you to look out for the pirate with the peg leg?" he quipped. "Arrrr, matey!"
She giggled. "Not too many pirates this far from the ocean," she responded. "I've been dying to meet you."
She opened her arms and gave Steve a gentle hug, taking obvious care not to unbalance him.
When they parted, she turned back to Maggie. "I approve," she said, smiling. "Is it true that you guys only met two weeks ago?"
"Guilty as charged," Steve said. "I knew she was The One the minute I laid eyes on her."
Again, Maggie sensed that Steve was telling the truth. Instead of freaking her out this time, though, it made her feel warm inside.
Annabeth nodded. "Dane told me the same thing. It took me a little longer to accept that he was serious, mostly because I couldn't believe someone like him could really be interested in someone like me."
She gestured at the café area, which was empty in the aftermath of the lunch rush. "Have a seat, you two. I want to hear all about this whirlwind courtship of yours. Can I get you any coffee?"
A few minutes later, they were all seated around one of the café's marble-topped tables with steaming mugs in front of them and a plate piled high with an assortment of cookies to share.
"First, how's Matt doing?" Maggie asked Annabeth.
"Great. He made a full recovery by dinnertime, so Dane and I both think that he ate something that disagreed with him," Annabeth replied. She leaned forward, eyes sparkling. "Now, I want to hear all about you two. Spill."
Maggie and Steve recounted their carefully edited story of how they had met.
Annabeth was an Ordinary, so she didn't have a built-in-lie detector the way that Maggie's family did, but still, they needed to keep their story straight.
After that, Maggie and Annabeth told Steve the story of how Maggie had helped Annabeth escape from an abusive relationship, and how Maggie's suggestion that Annabeth move to Bearpaw Ridge had led to Annabeth meeting Thor's oldest brother and marrying him.
"If you're part of Thor's smokejumper team, does that mean you're a shifter too?" Annabeth asked Steve.
Maggie grimaced. After all these years of being married into the Swanson bear shifter clan, didn't Annabeth know it was impolite to ask about someone's shifter lineage?
But Steve didn't seem to take offense. He nodded. "Yeah. I'm a jaguar shifter, like Maggie."
"Ooh," Annabeth exclaimed. "Your family must be thrilled, Maggie! I know they've been worried that you weren't ever going to find anyone."
"You have no idea," Maggie said dryly. "They're so thrilled that I’m surprised that they haven't scared Steve off yet."
"Only because I've been trained to deal with fast-moving forest fires," he quipped.
They all laughed.
"Maggie, did I tell you that I finally bought a dough laminator? And that croissant-making machine I've been lusting after forever?" Annabeth pushed back her chair and rose.
"No!" Maggie took her friend's cue and got to her feet too. "Can I see them?"
She turned to Steve, hoping that he didn't want to tag along. She sensed that Annabeth was dying to talk to her in private.
To her relief, Steve shook his head and indicated his crutch, which was leaning against a nearby chair. "Hope you don't mind if I stay put and enjoy the rest of these