Risking the Shot (Stick Side #4) - Amy Aislin Page 0,58
Dad piped in, raising his voice to be heard around his kids’ laughter. “If you need to impress someone so badly that you need NHL tickets, is he really worth it?”
“I don’t need to impress him,” Stella said. “I want to impress him.”
“Take him to the titty bar,” Tay suggested, which got them all laughing again.
“You haven’t asked him yet?” Dakota paused what he was doing to glance over the top of the lemon shortbread cupcake he was piping with raspberry-lemonade-flavored icing. On the other side of the dining room table, his phone was propped against a stack of books. “Owen.”
“Don’t Owen me.” His brother’s forehead was creased with lines. “I chickened out, okay?”
“Daddy.” Next to Dakota, Andy was decorating mini cupcakes Calder had made just for him, a kid-sized apron over his ever-present signed jersey. “What’s chickened out?”
Owen blew out a breath. “It’s a not very nice way of saying I was scared.”
“Daddy says it’s okay to be scared.”
“Ha!” Owen crowed, vindicated.
“An’ he says that if you can be brave, you can have whatever you want.”
The under-the-breath mumbling from the phone would’ve been funny if Owen was anybody else. That it’d been three weeks since Owen had first admitted to buying wedding rings and he still hadn’t asked Kas to marry him was concerning. What his brother wanted, he went after.
On Andy’s other side, Calder nudged the laptop aside and leaned toward the phone. “Could it be that you don’t actually want to marry him?” he said, voicing Dakota’s thoughts.
“But I do! I guess I just . . .” Head falling back, Owen rubbed his eyes. “What if he doesn’t want to get married? Not just to me, but ever. Marriage isn’t for everyone.”
Dakota went back to his icing. “Have you guys talked about it?”
“Yeah.”
“And?”
“I think we’re on the same page.”
“Uncle Owen, I can ask Uncle Kas to marry you if you want,” Andy offered.
“Would you?” Owen mumbled. A second later, his eyes went huge and he sat up straight. “He’s home!” he whisper-shouted. “I gotta go. Bye.”
“Bye, Uncle Owen,” Andy said, even though the screen had already gone dark. He split his cupcake in half to add icing to the inside. “Dad, can I get married too?”
Calder’s eyebrows went up while Dakota leaned over to kiss his son’s head. “Maybe in a few years, okay?”
“How many?”
“Let’s give it twenty, at least.”
Andy’s little nose scrunched. “That’s a lotta years.”
“Trust me, it’ll be here before you know it.”
They worked in silence for a few minutes, Andy licking icing off his cupcake every once in a while just so he could add more, and a furrowed-brow Calder on the laptop. Finished with the icing, Dakota moved on to the garnishing.
“Do you think we should do a sampler platter?” Calder scrolled through the menu section of the Once Upon a Time Cakes website.
Dakota pursed his lips and gently added a small raspberry, a mint leaf, and a thin wedge of lemon to the top of the cupcake. “Like an appetizer platter you’d get in a restaurant?” Carefully, he pushed a small yellow-and-white striped paper straw into the cupcake for perfect summer-themed, indoor pool party tomorrow.
“Yeah.” Bringing the laptop to Dakota’s other side, Calder clicked on Cookies. “We could do a version for the cookies—two each of the snickerdoodle, crispy chocolate chunk with coconut and pecans, gingerbread, and shortbread.”
“Our most popular.”
“Yeah. Or we could have a make-your-own ten-cookie platter.”
“Oh, I like that idea.”
Sinking into the chair on Dakota’s left, Calder scrolled down their order form, then back up to the top. “I’m not sure how to do this on the form, though.”
Dakota garnished his fifth cupcake and set it aside. “Make it a clickable option in the cookie section and then add a comment box below.”
They’d spent all week figuring out the logistics of who would be the point person for taking phone orders—it would still be Calder; it made the most sense given he’d soon be jobless—how many cakes and cookies Dakota could realistically decorate in any given week, and what Calder would have to take on himself. They’d even gone back and forth over whether they should include an order form on their website, but they weren’t a big enough shop yet to worry about having too many orders. When—if—that became a problem, they’d remove the form and take orders by phone only.
“You need Instagram, Daddy.”
He stared at the top of Andy’s head. “How do you know what that is?”
“Are they teaching social media in preschool?” Calder asked.