[Fontaines 01.0] The Sweet Taste of Sin Read online

  Which is why there’s absolutely no excuse when I end up getting caught in traffic and showing up at the facility almost forty-five minutes after our designated delivery time.

  I’m panicking by the time we roll up behind the facility’s service entrance, and my stomach is in knots as Jilly and I grab the pieces of our cake and dash inside. I’m not sure which scares me most—the possibility of screwing up this amazing opportunity Jack got me, or the possibility of still being here when Dante shows up.

  Don’t think about him, I tell myself. The party doesn’t officially start for another half hour. You can be in and out before then. Chances are, I’m getting myself worked up over nothing. Even if he shows up early, Dante’s going to be far too busy talking to the press and celebrating the premiere of his big movie to notice the cake, let alone the girl who brought it in.

  The ballroom is in chaos when Jilly and I get inside. People are rushing around, getting everything set up for what is sure to be the party of the summer. The place looks spectacular—it’s draped in golds and browns and shimmery taupes, decorated with fake ruins that somehow manage to evoke the bleak setting of the movie and look beautiful at the same time. Looks like my cake will fit right in.

  We get a glare and a few sharp words from the event planner for our tardiness, but fortunately he doesn’t appear to have the time or patience to give us a full lecture—or to try and kick us out. We’re quickly directed to the far end of the room, and we make our way through the decorators and waitstaff and security personnel to the large round table set aside for the cake. I glance around for Jack, but he doesn’t appear to be here yet. When I was going over delivery details with him yesterday, he mentioned that he was hoping to sit in on the screening, but I’m not sure if he managed it. We’ve both been too crazy today to talk.

  I always transport my tiered cakes in pieces and assemble them on-site. Jilly and I each have two tiers, and there’s a box of additional sugar décor still in the van.

  “Start assembling,” I tell Jilly. “I’ll go get the rest.” I’m starting to shift into business mode, and thankfully that helps calm my nerves a little. I’m already thinking through my attack plan for getting all of the decorations on the cake quickly.

  So I’m feeling a little better as I return to the van and grab the bin of sugar paste décor. And when I open the container and check on the tiny sculptures, I grow even more confident. I’ve made replicas of each of the film’s major characters, and these tiny figurines are sure to be the stars of the cake. I slide the lid back on the bin and return inside.

  On the way back to Jilly, however, I decide to swing by a kitchen or bathroom and grab some water. It’s not unusual for the delicate sugar paste pieces to break in the process of assembling, so I always like to have a little edible adhesive on hand. A few bits of sugar paste dissolved in water make a quick and effective glue. I always make up a batch when I assemble a cake, just in case.

  I don’t know my way around this particular facility, but it shouldn’t be too hard to find a sink. When I return through the service door, I glance around for a bathroom. Then I set off quickly down a hallway to the left, away from the main ballroom.

  Normally I’d stop and ask someone for directions, but most of the staff are busy in the ballroom, it would seem. I push open a few doors and glance down a couple of other hallways, but there’s mostly just storage back here.

  How can it be this hard to find a bathroom? I twist the bin in my arms so I can glance down at my watch. Twenty-three minutes until the party. Maybe I should just forgo the glue this time and cross my fingers that I don’t need to make any last-minute repairs.

  But just when I’m about to head back to the ballroom, I hear a voice. Good. Someone who might be able to point me in the right direction.

  I follow the voice down the hall to a door that’s slightly ajar. My arms are full with the bin of decorations, so rather than knock, I give the door a soft nudge with my hip. It swings open.

  And immediately, I realize I’ve made a terrible mistake.

  I didn’t stumble across a member of the staff, no—I stumbled across a couple. And I don’t mean a couple having a nice friendly chat about their relationship—I mean a couple deep in the throes of something that, if this were a movie, would most definitely be rated R. And moving quickly into NC-17 territory.

  We’re in a storage room, and most of the room is taken up by stacks of fancy rental chairs. The man is sitting in one of these chairs, leaning back against the pearly white plastic while the woman straddles him. Her beaded gown is pushed up around her hips, and her dark, glossy hair is falling from its elaborate updo as she throws her head back and moans. She writhes against him, her hips shifting in a dance I haven’t experienced in far, far too long. His hands grip her waist, digging into the fabric of her gown as if he wants to tear those thousands of little beads right off the fabric. Her hands are closed around his broad shoulders, and her fingers tighten as she quickens the undulations of her body. Another soft moan escapes her lips.

  And I’m frozen in place. Stunned. I know I should move, should run out of here before these two people realize that I’ve walked in on them, but I’m too shocked to do anything. My feet are rooted to the floor.

  The woman makes another sound of pleasure, and this time her head tilts a little further back, giving me a glimpse of the side of her face. A gasp catches in my throat as I recognize her—Emilia Torres. Star of Cataclysm: Earth. One half of Hollywood’s hottest—and recently engaged—couple. I can’t believe I walked in on her and Luca Fontaine going at it. The premiere must have gone very well.

  But as Emilia shifts again, I catch a glimpse of the man between her thighs and suddenly my world goes cold.

  It’s not Luca’s fingers digging into her waist. Not Luca’s hips rising to meet her. Not Luca’s golden-blond hair beneath her hands, not his lips hungrily devouring hers. This isn’t her fiancé. But it’s not some random guy either. It’s Luca’s brother, the last man on earth I want to see.

  Dante Fontaine, the Devil Himself.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The box of sugar decorations slips from my hands, crashing to the floor.

  Immediately the couple freezes. Emilia’s head jerks around, her dark eyes widening in shock, but it’s Dante’s gaze that locks on mine. The emotions flash quickly across his expression: surprise, annoyance, and then recognition. By the time he gets to that last one, my feet have come unglued from the floor, and I stumble backwards through the doorway.

  But I only make it two steps before I remember the sugar decorations. I curse and hurl myself back into the room, falling immediately to the floor and gathering them up as quickly as I can. I don’t dare look at the other two, but I hear the shifting of bodies and clothes as they rise and cover themselves.

  Thank God, I think. Half of me was afraid they’d just start going at it again, ignoring the crazy baker girl who interrupted them, and the very thought makes me want to be sick. I’m still in shock. Emilia and Dante. Emilia. And Dante.

  My Dante.

  Three years ago, he was everything to me. He woke things in me I’d never felt before. Just being near him made my body come alive, set all of my senses on fire. He captured my full attention.

  And he still does. He’s across the room and I feel like I’m suffocating. Like my body is on overload. I can’t breathe. My heart is pounding in my ears, drowning out everything else. Even my fingers feel stiff and clumsy as I grab the broken sugar paste figures and shove them back into their box.

  He’s here. Having sex with his brother’s fiancée. It’s bad enough running into him. But to catch him like this, catch him writhing against her…

  I wait for him to say my name. To acknowledge that he recognizes me. But there’s only silence—and the neck-tingling awareness of their eyes on me. There are a few bits of sugar paste still scattered around, but I don’t care. I clamber to my feet and escape as fast as I can. Their gazes burn into my back, and it’s a wonder my
body hasn’t burst into flames.

  My whole body is shaking as I dash down the hall, and I’m surprised I even make it back to the ballroom. I can’t stop seeing it. Can’t stop hearing her moans. His heavy breathing. The sound of their bodies moving together. The image of the two of them together plays over and over again in my head like a horror movie on repeat. I was afraid of running into him, but this… This is far worse than anything I could’ve imagined.

  We made love like that once, with him leaning back in a chair and me moving in his lap. Usually, he liked to be on top, but I was feeling naughty that night—and he was always eager to teach me new positions, inexperienced as I was. It took me a while to get the motion just right, to find my rhythm, but the memory of that night still makes me shiver. I still remember the hard pressure of his grip on my hips. Still remember the ache in the muscles of my inner thighs from straddling him. Still remember the feel of his lips against my neck.

  I’m shaking harder now, and my skin is too warm. I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut. But this is ridiculous—it’s been three years. Three years, and I’m falling apart at the sight of him with another woman. In fact, I think I’m going to be sick right into this box of decorations.

  Jilly frowns when she sees me. “What’s wrong?” Her eyes drop to the box in my hands. “Oh my God, what happened?”

  I’m so shaken that it takes me a moment to find my voice. “They fell.”

  She’s around the table in two steps. “Is anything salvageable?”

  I force myself to take a deep breath. We still have a job to do, I remind myself. I’m not going to ruin this opportunity for myself just because I walked into my own personal nightmare.

  “We’ll make it work,” I say.

  And we do. We find the unbroken pieces and stick the others together with royal icing. It’s not quite as strong as my usual sugar paste glue, but it will have to do. And I always make a few extra pieces of décor, so the situation isn’t completely dire. The result might not be the perfect cake that I planned, but it’s still pretty damn good.

  But even though the professional side of me has taken over again, my fingers still tremble as I put the final sugar figurine in its place. My mind is still flooded with images—of his gripping hands, of his eyes glazed with lust, of the two of them moving together—but I try to blink them away and focus on my cake. My entire body is on edge, and my eyes keep wandering toward the door. If he and Emilia walk in here before I can escape, I don’t know what I’ll do.

  “Looks amazing,” comes a low, familiar voice from behind me.

  I nearly jump out of my skin. I didn’t hear Jack come up.

  “It’s almost done,” I say.

  “They’re going to love it,” he says. His eyes flick from the cake up to my face, and a small furrow appears between his brows. “Don’t look so terrified, Ashlyn. It’s awesome.”

  I try to force a smile, but Jack knows me well enough to see right through it.

  “What’s going on?” he says. “You’re looking kind of green.”

  Jilly’s on the far side of the table, putting some final details on the cake with royal icing. I step closer to Jack and lower my voice so that only he can hear. “I saw him.”

  I don’t have to specify who he is. Jack’s eyes widen.

  “Really? I thought he’d still be at the screening. I rushed out of there the moment the credits started rolling.”

  “He must have sneaked out even earlier than that, because he’s here. Emilia too.” I start collecting the unused bits of sugar décor. My entire body feels hot again. I know this isn’t the place to discuss this—I know that I should be trying to push it out of my mind completely—but the next words pour out of my lips. “I saw them together.”

  It takes a moment for that to sink in. “You mean like…”

  “Together,” I repeat. “Having sex.”

  “Holy shit,” Jack says under his breath. “Where? What did you do?”

  “I dropped my decorations.”

  I didn’t think it was possible for Jack’s eyes to get any bigger, but I was wrong. “Did he see you?”

  I nod, too embarrassed to even speak. It’s too soon to be reliving this. I just want to crawl into a hole and die of humiliation.

  But Jack is not about to let me off the hook.

  “What did he say? What did he do? Did he recognize you?” His eyebrows snap together as a thought occurs to him. “Did they even stop?”

  “Yes, they stopped,” I hiss at him. “And I’m pretty sure he recognized me. But he didn’t say anything. Neither did she. They both just stood there while I scrambled to pick everything up.” I can only imagine what Dante must be thinking of me right now.

  “Shit,” Jack says again.

  Shit is right. And I can still see him kissing her, still see him thrusting…

  “You need a drink,” Jack says. “Do you want me to steal you something from the bar?”

  I shake my head. “I just need to get out of here.”

  Jack nods. “I don’t blame you.” He glances toward the far side of the room. “Brockman is beckoning me. Call me later.”

  I nod, but I know if I contact him later he’ll only want to continue this conversation, and I’m not sure I can relive this again. No, the only thing to do is to go home, drown myself in a bottle of tequila, and try to wipe every last trace of the Devil Himself from my mind.

  The Devil, though, is not so easily forgotten.

  No matter how much I drink that night, or how much I pour myself into my work the next day, I can’t get him out of my mind. Get them out of my mind. For Emilia is every bit a part of the images that haunt me as he is. Waking or sleeping, I can’t close my eyes without seeing the pair of them writhing together. Without their groans of pleasure ringing in my ears. Without the heat of humiliation flooding my skin yet again.

  It’s wrong, how much this hurts. How much it stings like betrayal—but that’s unfair, because it’s not like I expected him to be celibate all this time, even if I’ve been more or less a nun. But it brings up feelings that are a little too familiar, feelings that crept in slowly during those last few weeks of our relationship. Very pathetic feelings, I’ll be the first to admit. But I loved him so deeply, so intensely, and I always wondered why a huge celebrity like Dante Fontaine—a guy who could have any woman in the world—would choose me instead of some starlet or supermodel.

  In the end, he did choose a supermodel over me, which is why I walked away. Why in the weeks afterward, my heart stopped seeing him as the man of my dreams and instead saw him as the demon of my nightmares. Why catching him with Emilia, a gorgeous up-and-coming actress, hurts so damn much.

  I have every reason to hate him. So why does he still have the same overwhelming effect on me? Why did I spend half the night remembering the many nights we spent together, teaching and exploring each other beneath the sheets? Why did I wake up this morning expecting to see him in the armchair across from my bed, working on his latest script as the light of dawn crept in through the window? It’s been a long time since I awoke to that sight, and yet I can imagine every detail of it perfectly—his dark hair hanging across his brow as he bends his head over his notebook, his pen moving in a steady rhythm across the page, his gold-flecked chocolate eyes gleaming bright behind the dark-rimmed glasses he wears when he’s working.

  Just forget about him, I tell myself as I start the day’s tasks. Maybe the after-party incident is God’s way of telling me that it’s long past time to get on with my life. If this isn’t the closure I needed to remind me that Dante and I are over, then I’m not sure what is.

  But why did I have to see them? And why did I have to drop my decorations and then fumble around like an idiot on the floor? And why did it have to be Emilia?

  I think that’s part of what’s bothering me so much about this whole thing. I didn’t stumble across Dante hooking up with some random girl—I stumbled across him hooking up with his brother’s fiancée. Fiancée. Even
years ago, when the pain was freshest and deepest and I hated him with every fiber of my being, I never would have expected this of him. While I never met his brother Luca, I know they are close—know the entire Fontaine family is close—and this is the worst sort of betrayal. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it in graphic detail with my own eyes.

  At least I can comfort myself with the knowledge that I was right to dump him. I might be pathetic in many ways, but I was strong enough to trust my gut.

  And I’m also fortunate to have a job that allows me to take out my emotions through my work. No one has ever accused me of being cool-headed or unfeeling. But it helps to have therapy built right into my daily tasks. There’s nothing like working through angst with a batch of dough.

  Today, my therapist is puff pastry—carefully folded layers of dough and butter that have to be reworked every couple of hours. I throw it down on my workstation, enjoying the slap of the dough against the metal surface of my table. And then my fists get to work, pummeling all of my anger and confusion over Dante into the puff pastry.

  My movements are violent enough that they catch the attention of Mama Pat. Patricia DeCosta—or Mama Pat, as we call her—was the first person I hired when I opened the bakery. She is an empty nester who applied for the job after the last of her three children went off to college, and although she’d never worked in a bakery before, she showed more skill during the interview process than any of the bright-eyed, fresh-from-culinary-school applicants. And she’s been a miracle in the kitchen, able to conquer any recipe I throw at her. She’s also the oldest of all of us here at Ashlyn’s Bakeshop—about the age my mother would have been, if she and my father hadn’t died in a car wreck when I was nineteen—and over the past few years, she’s evolved into the “mother hen” of our little team.

  “Everything all right?” she asks, her eyebrow raised.