I was ready to end the spectacle, so I took in a deep breath and prepared to use every bit of power my lungs could muster to blow out those thirty massive candles in one fell swoop. But just as I released the pressure of air, Lindy Mason called out from the hallway.
“Hey, everyone. Montana’s here.”
Kevin turned his 6’9” frame toward the door—and my cake went with him.
“Happy birthday, Cadie!” scattered voices called out as they left me in favor of Joe Montana, who was on The Field for an interview. An interview that they’d been waiting months for—but that only about eight of them were actually required to be present for. The others were just going as fans who happened to get paid to gawk at their heroes.
“Sorry, McCaffrey,” Kevin said as he shrugged and handed me the cake.
“Et tu, Kevin Lamont?”
He smiled and winked as he said, “Next time, don’t have your birthday on a day a legend is scheduled to be in the studio.” And then he ran out after everyone else.
Perfect.
I held the ridiculously large cake in my arms and tried to figure out how to get down. I had learned not to wear skirts to work, but unfortunately I still insisted on wearing heels.
“Now what?” I asked, of absolutely no one.
I sighed and looked at the chair next to the desk. I wouldn’t be able to see where I was stepping, due to the sheer magnitude of the cake, so stepping down onto the chair was out. I decided instead to squat down and place the cake on the desk, but the combination of the weight of the cake and balancing on heels made me very wobbly. I felt myself losing my grip on the cake as I teetered forward—the cake that still burned with the light and heat of three decades’ worth of candles.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” a voice called out from behind me.
Before I knew what was happening, he had one arm around my waist and the other under my cake. He gently lowered the cake onto the desk and then looped his arm under my knees. Pretty instantly I was back on the ground, on my feet, but there was a brief second when he was carrying me in a manner of which I knew Charlotte, Emily, and Anne would all approve.
“Sorry about that,” I muttered, the heat of my cheeks undeniable, even before I had looked at him. And then I did look at him.
He was taller than me, but not as tall as most of the guys from The Field, who regularly made me feel like a Hobbit. No, he was just the perfect amount of tall. Okay . . . probably not an athlete. Although he was fit and muscular. At least not a star athlete. A golfer, maybe? His face drew me in—with its crinkly eyes and perfectly shaped mouth. But it was also just the tiniest bit . . . goofy. His nose was a little too big, as were his ears, and while he was handsome—without question—he was also blatantly imperfect. So probably not an on-air personality.
“Um, is your cake from Madame Tussaud’s bakery?” His eyes darted with humor back and forth from my eyes to the cake.
“What?” I turned to face the cake on the desk, and my mouth and eyes flew open as I took in the sight of candles, which had become nothing more than melted wax nubs barely standing between the fire and the frosting. “Oh my goodness!” I exclaimed, and then I huffed and puffed—and hardly made a dent.
“These must be those hard-to-extinguish candles,” he astutely observed as he began huffing and puffing alongside me.
I wheezed. “You think?”
“Just a hunch.” He shrugged, and I laughed.
We kept blowing, and the sparks kept reigniting. We could have doused the flames, or suffocated them, but that didn’t seem to occur to us just then. All we knew to do was use all the air our lungs could generate, over and over again. Finally—one by one—sparks faded, as there was nothing left but little bits of wick swallowed by extremely waxy frosting.