Sweet Curves
Aria Cole
ARIA COLEMILA CRAWFORD
Sugary sweet and sinfully delicious.
Those are the words running on repeat in Sawyer Dixon’s head when he sees Katie Wilder for the first time in five years.
As the owner of Sweet Curves Bakery, Katie spends her days making other people’s big days perfect with zero time leftover for a life of her own. When she wanders through the doors of Rise Fitness after-hours one night, she’s only looking to shed a few pounds before her sister’s wedding day--what she finds though--is a face she could never forget.
Sawyer Dixon: former high school heartthrob, owner or RISE fitness, and determined to ruin her life, one squat at a time. For him, Katie’s always been the girl that got away and now that little miss sweet, and curvy just walked back into his life, he cares less about keeping his cool and more about keeping her in his life--forever.
Katie
“These fancy balls are going to be the death of me.” I dotted a tiny pearl of creamy white confection next to its neighbor--perfectly round, perfectly formed, perfectly sweet.
I sighed, my mouth watering as I thought about the special recipe I’d used to create this masterpiece. It took talent to make tiny pearls of white sugar hold their form, look good in photos, and taste amazing.
But these sugar pearls, I knew they tasted good. They were just a bitch to line up in a perfect little row.
My relationship with food could be summed up in two words: permanently complicated.
And then everything changed with one phone call.
“Katie, you have a call.” Laura, my hostess, poked her head in. I peeked mineup to look at her, my hair tied back and a net in place to protect the current masterpiece I was working on. A seven-tier cake for Kovington McMaster, a senator. It was for his daughter’s sweet sixteen and it had to be perfect. Every single pearl of sugar. That family did not look very forgiving, especially the high-maintenance wife that reminded me of my own mother dearest.
“Can you take a message? I need to finish this up.” I added some fall leaves, making the cake a vision of perfection. Shades of white with autumn marzipan leaves, hand-shaped and decorated in detail.
“I would, but… she sounds like a deranged Scarlett O’Hara. I’m actually a little scared of her.” I froze and felt my nerves go on high alert, something that I’d been familiar with my entire life. Something that always happened right before I spoke to my mother.
“Fine. Can you just bring me the phone?” Laura cradled the phone in between my ear and shoulder as I continued to work, knowing that the only thing I could do to maintain my calm was to have my hands working on something I loved while my ears were forced to listen to her shrill, judgmental voice.
“Katherine! Hello, it’s your mother.”
“I know.” I deadpanned.
“Did you hear from your sister? Well, I’m sure you will if you haven’t already, but she’s getting married and wants you to make the cake. I mean, I wanted Paterson’s, they’ve been doing the wedding cakes in these parts for generations, but she said she wants one of your modern designs.”
Modern designs. She talks about my work like I’m some girl making pastries for her school dance fundraiser. I’ve made cakes for the White House, but whatever.
“So the wedding is June 25th. She wants a marble cake with a white icing, and please don’t add any of those tacky designs to it. Simple and elegant. We aren’t like those actors you make cakes for. Those are so gaudy.”
My brain hurt so badly that I thought my head might actually explode...
“Ok, that’s it, dear. Oh wait, one more thing. Please make sure you lose a few pounds for the pictures. It’s not very flattering when we all look so slim and you look like, well you. Kiss, kiss. Talk soon. Bye.” She hung up and I looked down, a smushed leaf bleeding through my fingers, a victim of my rage. The woman was fucking unbelievable.
“Mike, I need you to take over!” I yelled for my assistant before I stormed into my office, slamming the door violently behind me. Pacing up and down the floor, trying to let my rage boil off but instead I found myself getting more and more irate. It was sad that still, after all this time, the women could make me feel like a fat, insecure fifteen-year-old.
I picked up the phone and dialed my sister.
“Hello?” she answered, her voice thick with a sweetness that I knew was fake and so completely annoying.
“Elizabeth. What the fuck?”
“Katherine, it’s lovely to hear from you. I was just going to call you. So I’m getting married…”
“I know, our mother has already called me.”
“Well, that is unfortunate. I really wanted to talk to you myself and see if you wanted to make the cake for us.”
“She already ordered me to make it. You’re telling me this close to the date? I’m so busy right now.”
“Well, Kevin only just asked me to marry him. We’re just excited to start our lives together, so we aren’t doing anything outlandish. Just some family and a few close friends. But you know how I love your cakes, and it would mean the world to me.”
She didn’t love my cakes, she just wanted to brag about having one of my cakes. It didn’t really look very good if your sister was a famous baker and your wedding cake was made by someone else. My entire life these two had cared nothing about me, my own sister often the cause of my pain and ridicule growing up. She’d even hit on the only guy I’d ever been interested in one time.
So really, I should have said no to her wedding cake request. I should have told them both to go to hell, but the truth was, every single time they made me feel so small, they made me feel so powerless...they made me want to do anything to finally win their approval.
And so I said yes.
I hung up the phone with my heart and a thousand unsaid words in my throat.
I was two-years-old when I was introduced to the art of baking by my grandmother, who was my most favorite person ever. When my parents dropped my sister and me at my granny’s house to leave for some cruise or European holiday, I would stand at my Granny’s knee and bake, mixing and pouring while my siblings would be off playing. I spent all of my adolescence learning everything I could learn beside my Granny, starting from the best cookie recipe and graduating to elaborate cake decorating.
She was the reason I’d opened Sweet Curves Bakery.
I’d received some amazing job offers when I graduated from the Culinary Institute. I turned out to be a pretty good chef too, but my heart was still in the art of dessert making. So I opened Sweet Curves, a small shop in a nice up and coming, hipster neighborhood.
At first it was a struggle, competing with large, established businesses in such a metropolitan city, but then one day it all changed when Connie Miller--the Oscar winning actress-- dropped in to the bakery in order to escape a paparazzi. I let her in, locking the door behind her, eliminating his access into the shop. She was shaking so badly that I sat her down and poured her a cup of Granny’s cocoa and gave her a slice of my lemon cake, something simple that always made me think of home.