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  His eyes fell to her lips. “So what’s it going to be, Syd? You, me, and something spicy?”

  He was only inches away from her. So close that if she leaned in, she could . . .

  “Hayden!”

  A familiar voice in the distance triggered her good sense. Sydney stepped forward and placed her hands on his chest.

  “I think you’re a bit busy tonight.”

  She pushed him out of the elevator and hit the DOOR CLOSE button.

  He grinned and shook his head as she waved at him through the gap between the closing doors.

  “I’ll see you soon, Nini.”

  For reasons she refused to think about, she hoped he kept that promise.

  Chapter 2

  It was one hour and a quick stop later before Sydney found herself walking through the front door to her home.

  “Syd? Is that you?” JJ called from somewhere upstairs.

  “Yeah, it’s me,” Sydney called back to her sister as she kicked off her shoes at the door. She padded through the short hallway into the open-concept living-dining area. Her eyes glanced carelessly around the house that had been her home for the last eleven years, after she’d moved out of her mother’s home to live with her dad, Leroy.

  Leroy had initially bought the five-bedroom dream house for himself; Sydney’s mother, Jackie; and all the children they hoped to have. But somehow it had not worked out the way he had planned, and when Leroy and Jackie split up, Jackie packed up Sydney, Lissandra and JJ and moved them to a dream house of her own. That dream house had seen Jackie through a rebound marriage that produced Sydney’s half-sister Zelia; a short-lived reconciliation that produced her brother Dean and another rebound marriage that gave Sydney her other half-sister Josephine. As it was, Jackie had been with that house longer than she had been with all of her husbands combined.

  By the time Sydney had hit eighteen, the drama of living with a revolving door of stepfathers had been too much for her, and she decided to move in with her father. Her two closest younger sisters, Lissandra and JJ, followed suit not long after, and the four of them became each other’s new family. That was, until Leroy died a year and a half ago. Then things changed again. Now it was just her and her two sisters.

  “Oh my goodness, what is that smell?” JJ asked, coming down the stairs and into the kitchen. She went immediately to the take-out bag that Sydney had placed on the counter.

  “Is that curry?” Lissandra asked, entering from the living room. “From Banjara?”

  “Yup,” Sydney said, as she helped JJ remove the food containers from the bag.

  “Whose idea was this?” Lissandra asked, pulling up a stool to the counter and grabbing a plate for herself.

  “Syd had a craving, apparently,” JJ answered

  “Really, now,” Lissandra said, dishing out a large helping of everything. “Did your craving have anything to do with the tall, dark, and handsome man who was all over you this evening?”

  JJ looked up at her sisters. “What man?”

  “Hayden Windsor,” Lissandra supplied.

  JJ’s mouth fell open. “You’re lying.”

  “She is,” Sydney said as she reached for a napkin. “He was not all over me.”

  “But he was there,” JJ confirmed. She squinted at Sydney. “You two got into it, didn’t you?”

  “That they definitely did,” Lissandra replied.

  JJ shook her head. “I never understood the two of you. I remember you guys were together like every day when we were growing up, but you would never date him.”

  “Because he wasn’t serious,” Sydney said. “I was just convenient and he was just bored.”

  “There were a lot more convenient girls, if I remember,” Lissandra said. “Like our entire high school cheerleading squad.”

  “I heard he did date all of them,” JJ said, going to the fridge for a pitcher of water. “He was a legend.”

  “She’s right,” Lissandra said with her mouth full. “He was NBA bound . . . from the start . . . everyone knew it.” She swallowed. “Which is why I didn’t get his fixation with you.”

  Sydney raised an eyebrow. “What am I? Dog meat?”

  Lissandra waved away the comment with her spoon. “You know what I mean.”

  “Well, whatever it was, it’s all in the past,” Sydney said, wiping her fingers on her napkin.

  “Not entirely in the past,” Lissandra said, reaching for the container with the masala. “My guess is that Indian wasn’t the only thing you were really craving tonight.”

  Sydney grabbed the container before Lissandra could reach it and put the cover on.

  “Either way, it worked out for you and your stomach, didn’t it,” Sydney said dryly.

  Lissandra scowled and reached for the mutter paneer, but JJ moved it out of her reach as well.

  “It’s after eleven thirty, Lissandra,” JJ said, ignoring her sister’s scowl as she covered the leftovers. “Your size twelve-going-on-twenty behind will thank me tomorrow.”

  “Don’t count on it,” Lissandra said, getting up and grabbing a piece of naan before her sisters could get in her way. “You’re lucky I love your trifling little selves.”

  “We love you, too,” Sydney called after her grouchy sister as Lissandra headed toward the stairs.

  “Guess it would be too much to expect her to help clean up,” JJ said as she wiped the counter.

  “Please, JJ,” Sydney said with a laugh as she rinsed the dishes in the sink. “You know better than that.”

  JJ tossed the washcloth in the sink and leaned back against the counter to watch her sister finish up.

  “So was it weird when you saw him?” JJ’s voice dropped to a conspiratorial tone and her eyes sparkled. “Does he look as good as he used to when he was playing for the Celtics?”

  “No and yes,” Sydney said with a chuckle. “He was exactly the same guy who used to come around to Decadent with his dad when we were kids.”

  “Oh, this is great,” JJ voice went up an octave as she clapped her hands together. “So is he back in Toronto? Are you going to see him again?”

  “I don’t know.” Sydney rolled her eyes. “I barely spoke to him for five minutes. Like I said, I literally ran into him.”

  JJ grinned and slipped out of the kitchen. “Well, he must have made some impact. ’Cause I haven’t seen you smile this much since you got that do-everything Vita-mix blender your last birthday.”

  Sydney tossed a dishcloth at her sister, but JJ only laughed and dodged it as she escaped from the kitchen. Sydney shook her head. She should have known better than to discuss Hayden with her sisters. True, she and Hayden had never dated, but there had always been something going on between the two of them and everyone had known it.

  It shouldn’t have been a surprise, though, since Hayden was just like his father, Dalton Windsor, and Sydney was just like Leroy, and Dalton and Leroy had been lifelong friends. Sydney had been told that it was a friendship that began the day Dalton sold Leroy the tiny bakery that would later become Decadent. Even when Leroy transformed Decadent from the small bakery on College Street to the larger gourmet dessert shop on Queen Street, Dalton was there. And wherever Dalton was, Hayden was, until he got drafted into the NBA after high school. Then he was nothing more than a memory.

  The memories of her childhood years around the bakery with Hayden were still fresh in Sydney’s mind, but she resisted the temptation to make that trip into the past.

  Drying her hands on a kitchen towel, Sydney glanced around the clean kitchen before pouring herself a glass of water to take upstairs with her. She was just about to hit the light switch at the bottom of the stairs when a picture on an end table beside the couch caught her eye. The glass slipped from her fingers, sloshing water all over her feet, when Sydney caught sight of the happy bride and groom. She picked up the photo to confirm that the familiar man in the picture was exactly who she thought it was and her head instantly began to pound.

  She thought seeing Hayden
again was going to be the biggest surprise of the evening. She thought wrong.

  Chapter 3

  “Dean’s what?”

  “Married.” JJ opened the refrigerator door and pulled out yogurt. “As in tied the knot.”

  Sydney dropped the yogurt onto the table with a thud that seemed to reflect the weight of the shocking news that preceded it.

  Lissandra’s eyes looked like they would fall out of her head. “Shut up!”

  “It’s true. I saw the ring myself,” JJ said from the other side of the dining table. “Looked like about half a carat.”

  “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me this last night,” Sydney said. Her hand with the knife paused mid-slice through a shiny red apple. She missed one family dinner at her mother’s house and she missed everything. Her only brother, Dean—her twenty-one-year-old brother—had gone and gotten himself married, and no one had known about it. Even though she had seen the picture the night before, it hadn’t seemed real until JJ said the words.

  “Oh, it’s real,” JJ said, stirring the yogurt absently. “Dean came home from college with more than just a degree.”

  “Shut up,” Lissandra said again, this time banging the table for emphasis.

  “Did any of you even know this girl?” Sydney had abandoned the apple with the knife still stuck in it and was standing beside JJ, hands on her hips. “I didn’t even know he had a serious girlfriend.”

  “I did,” Zelia said, bringing a plate with toast to the table. “I met her when he came home for a visit a couple months ago. They’ve been together for a while—hence the frequent visits home.”

  Sydney looked at Zelia for a long minute. Her younger sister’s blasé attitude to the news of Dean’s wedding wasn’t lost on Sydney. She suspected that Zelia may have had more time to process the information than she was letting on.

  At twenty-two, Zelia was Sydney’s second-youngest sister and the closest to Dean. Though she lived with their mother, Zelia spent an inordinate amount of time at Sydney’s house. The arrangement worked to Zelia’s advantage as she was undoubtedly the most well-informed member of the family.

  “Well, he sure did a good job of hiding her from all of us,” JJ said. “Not even Mom knew who she was.”

  Zelia shrugged. “They weren’t that serious. At least that’s what I thought. They definitely weren’t even engaged, let alone married.”

  Sydney let out a deep sigh as she poured hot water onto a tea bag in her own mug. “Great. Dean goes and does something dumb again and we have to get him out of it. Again.”

  “What do you mean ‘we’?” Lissandra said. “Dean’s not a teenager anymore. We can’t exactly order him to unmarry Miss what’s her face.”

  “Her name’s actually Sheree,” Zelia corrected.

  “Whatever.” Lissandra shot an annoyed look at her younger sister.

  “Well, we can’t just do nothing,” Sydney said, throwing up her hands before dropping them to her side. “This is not just about Dean anymore. He’s twenty-one now.”

  A wave of silence washed over the table as the four sisters stopped eating and looked at each other.

  “Has he said anything yet?” JJ asked after a moment, her eyes on Sydney.

  Sydney dug her fingers into her hair. “It doesn’t matter. Dad’s will was specific. Once he reaches twenty-one, Dean is eligible to exercise his ownership rights over Decadent. Add that to the fact that he’s finished school and unemployed. . . .”

  “Let’s not jump to conclusions,” JJ said, finally taking a spoonful of yogurt. “He just graduated a month ago. He hasn’t even moved back to Toronto yet. He’s probably not even thinking about the shop. And even if he was, he knows you’ve been running it since daddy died. I don’t think he’s going to interfere.”

  “And wasn’t he doing some music program anyway?” Lissandra asked, dishing some fruit onto her own plate.

  “It’s a dual degree, audio production and business management,” Sydney said.

  Zelia cleared her throat. “Uh, yeah, it’s not so dual anymore.”

  “What?” Sydney and JJ said.

  “He kinda dropped the business management part.” Zelia kept her eyes on the piece of toast she was meticulously cutting up. “The music program was really intense. It was hard for him to keep up with both. . . .”

  “In other words, he was failing his business courses,” Sydney said dryly.

  Lissandra shook her head as she spooned sugar into her glass of orange juice. “I warned ya’ll. I told ya’ll he was gonna waste that money. Daddy was wrong to pay for Dean’s tuition like that. He shoulda made his behind pay for it with loans and elbow grease like the rest of us. Bet he wouldn’t be failing nothin’ if it was coming out of his own pocket.”

  “With all that good English you just used, it sounds like you failed something,” Zelia muttered.

  “Don’t start on me, Miss unfinished degree,” Lissandra growled, pointing her spoon at Zelia. “At least Dean’s done. You been at school almost six years now and still ain’t finished your four-year degree.”

  “It’s only been five years and you know I switched majors. . . .”

  “Maybe you need to switch brains. . . .”

  “OK, ladies, break it up,” Sydney said. “All of us are going to have to switch jobs if we don’t figure out this thing with Dean and Decadent.”

  “I still think you’re overreacting. Dean’s not going to change anything anytime soon.” JJ wiped her mouth with a napkin and stood. “But I’ll leave that to you and Lissandra. I’ve got a dress shop to run.”

  Sydney absently watched JJ leave the room to gather her things before she headed out to the dress shop she ran with their mother.

  “Don’t worry about it, Syd,” Zelia said drawing Sydney’s attention back to the table. “I’ll talk to Dean and see what he’s thinking.”

  “No, that’s OK,” Sydney said. “I’m gonna arrange something with him myself. I think I should be the one to bring it up.”

  “You sure?” Zelia asked. Sydney could see the worried expression in her younger sister’s eyes.

  “Yeah.” Sydney waved away her sister’s concern. “It’s no big deal. JJ’s probably right anyway.”

  “Zelia! You coming or what?” JJ asked as she walked back through the dining area toward the front door. “You know mom doesn’t like opening up the shop on her own.”

  “Yeah, I’m coming,” Zelia called back. She threw Sydney another sympathetic look before dashing off behind JJ.

  Moments later Sydney heard the front door close, followed by the sound of a car engine, which soon faded. She turned to look at Lissandra.

  Lissandra took a sip of her juice. “You know this Dean thing is gonna be a mess, right?”

  “Oh yeah,” Sydney said. “Without a doubt.”

  The mess was waiting for Sydney by the time she got to work.

  Though it was only after ten, the shop was already open for business. While catering special events was the bulk of Decadent’s business, they still provided a menu of specialty drinks, desserts, and sandwiches for walk-ins from ten in the morning until ten at night. They were no Starbucks, but they had their share of the lunch crowd around midday, and an even greater share of the couples and first-date crowd in the evening.

  “Good morning, Sydney,” Wendy said brightly as Sydney entered Decadent through the back door near the kitchen.

  Sydney slipped off the sunglasses that shielded her eyes from the bright mid-morning sun. The city famous for its cold winters was holding on to the summer sunshine and warmth as far into fall as possible. Sydney hadn’t even had to wear a light jacket to work that morning.

  “Morning, Wendy,” Sydney said, smiling at the plump, olive-skinned woman who worked the early shift for Decadent. “How’s the morning going?”

  “Good, but not as good as last night apparently,” Wendy said as she used a box cutter to split open the top box on a pile in front of her. “The phone has been ringing off the hook all mornin
g.”

  Sydney grinned and grabbed a pile of menus. “Oh yeah?”

  “Yes.” Wendy grabbed a handful herself and followed Sydney to the front of the shop. “At first I was answering and taking messages. But there were so many that after a while I figured I might as well let it go to voice mail if I want to get anything done.”

  Wendy was about to say something more when the front door to Decadent opened and a sharply dressed woman carrying a purse almost twice her size breezed through the door. She looked around, unsure for a moment, then smiled when her eyes met Sydney’s and Wendy’s.

  “Welcome to Decadent. Can I help you?” Wendy asked with a bright smile.

  “Yes.” The woman stepped forward. “I’m looking for Sydney Isaacs.”

  “That’s me,” Sydney said, handing the menus to Wendy before stepping forward. “What can I do for you?”

  “I need to order a cake.”

  Sydney glanced at Wendy, who shrugged before busying herself with the menus.

  “Sure.” Sydney motioned to a table nearby. “Why don’t you have a seat? Wendy will get you something to drink while I grab a few things. I’ll be right back.”

  “OK.” The woman slipped into a chair by a table for two and was on her BlackBerry before Sydney even left the room.

  By the time Sydney had grabbed her order binder and iPad and returned to the table, Wendy had served the woman tea and left a cup of peppermint for Sydney.

  “So I’m not sure what you know about me, but I probably should introduce myself formally,” Sydney said with a small laugh. “I’m Sydney Isaacs and I’m one of the pastry chefs here at Decadent. I have one other chef and a team that works with me and we do everything from dessert orders for events to simple cakes to wedding and other specialty cakes.”

  “Yes, I was told that you are one of the city’s hidden gems,” the woman said with a grin. “I’m Charlotte Grisby from Kline and Grisby Events.”

  “Nice to meet you, Charlotte.” Sydney shook the woman’s hand.

  “I am sorry to just show up without an appointment or anything, but I was hoping if I came early I might be able to meet you in person,” Charlotte said.