Bakin' Up A Storm: Construct Cakery

By Lissa Matthews

Shane Conner learned a few things when he was locked up; He never wanted to go back to jail, loyalty is everything, and he liked baking and decorating cakes.

Now that he's out and running his own high-end shop, Construct Cakery, the shots he calls are legal, the work he does with his hands is honest, and he's focused on becoming the best wedding cake designer in the country.

But then he meets a green-eyed pastry chef named Bethany, and suddenly nothing seems quite as important as making her his.

 

Bethany Carter's comfortable world was rocked by a chance sighting of dark tattoos on muscled arms moving through the bakery she worked in. Now, almost two years later, her obsessive fascination with the ex-con turned self-taught baker and owner of the hottest cake shop in the state hasn't diminished.

At. All.

So, with questions and feelings she needed answers to, she did what any level-headed, professional woman would do; Quit her job, packed up her life, and showed up at Shane's place in Savannah asking for a spot in his exclusive kitchen.

 

What follows is the stuff of fantasy… Instant lust. Instant love. Instant gratification. And everything blueberry lemon…

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lissa Matthews
• Release date: Jul 17, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393540496

Lissa Matthews

Coffee drinker extraordinaire, author Lissa Matthews lives and writes in North Carolina. When not at the keyboard with blue collar bad boys, race car drivers, cowboys, shifters, or pretty much any other hero that tickles her fancy, she can be found reading in the backyard on her swing, in the kitchen trying a new recipe she found on Pinterest, watching sports and movies with her family, or perfecting her nap ninja skills.

Book preview

1

Shane Conner shed the suit jacket, followed by the tie, and flipped open the top two buttons of his white dress shirt before he was even outside the building. Why did ties always feel like they were going to choke him? He hated the fuckers.

His meeting with his parole officer always took place after his meeting with his therapist. He’d wondered in the time he’d been meeting with both of them, if the order was wrong. Perhaps the therapist should come first so his parole officer would know if he needed to revoke Shane’s freedom because maybe he’d snapped and choked the mind doc for asking the same questions over and over again.

Savannah’s Bay Street was light on traffic at this hour. He liked the lazy walk to his cakery before the tourists and businesses really opened for the day. He took his time getting there in order to mentally prepare himself. For him, creativity was one of those things that needed space, that needed to wander around in his mind and body before making an appearance, but once it showed up? Once it whispered inside him? He was on like that, non-stop at a hundred miles a minute. He didn’t know any other way to be. Not now, anyway.

Before jail? Sure. He’d have sworn he didn’t have a creative bone in his body. After jail? He needed it like he needed air to breathe. That’s what boosting cars had been like for him, too. It wasn’t the cars that he’d been interested in, it was always the challenge of them. The more sophisticated, the better. One night, the wrong car picked him and he paid for it in a jail cell.

Now, though, he was no longer just skilled in boosting cars, in getting around security systems, in crime. He was skilled in something better, something that challenged him and drove him and gave him control of his own destiny again. Baking.

Shane crossed the street at a light and took a side road that was barely bigger than an alleyway and came out on the other side and continued making his way toward the unassuming strip mall where his business was located.

Construct Cakery.

He could’ve opened it in a nicer part of town, but he didn’t and he wouldn’t.

He could’ve done it to make it more appealing to his clientele, but he didn’t and he wouldn’t.

He could’ve made it an all-purpose bakery, with wedding cakes making up only a part of his business rather than all of his business, but he didn’t and he wouldn’t.

He had a plan and deviating from it wasn’t of interest to him. It drove him.

But so did the challenges of owning a business and mastering every decorating technique and skill needed to be the best in his field, not only in Savannah, not only in Georgia, or the Southeast. No, he wanted to be the best in the country and judging by the reviews, the backlog of orders, and the money rolling in, he was well on his way.

The doughnut shop, Hole in the Wall, was his favorite place to stop on these mornings and he pushed the door open. The smell of frying dough assaulted his senses and he moaned with pleasure.

Martin and his son, MJ, were the only people Shane cared to talk to most days. They were no nonsense. They didn’t ask stupid questions. They were his kind of people.

Shane! I was wondering if you were going to stop in.

As if I wouldn’t. Anything new I should try? The glass cases were filled to the brim with every kind of doughnut a man could want.

Everything new and everything regular. Plus a few more.

Shane laughed. I wouldn’t be able to do my work if I followed that advice.

But you would be happy.

No doubt about it. I’ll take a dozen of the usual and a dozen of whatever you decided to try out.

Brave man.

So, I’ve been told. Been told I’m a stupid one, too.

We are all stupid sometimes.

Some more than others, Shane thought. Has business been good?

It has. It is growing more and more every day. MJ has been posting pictures morning, noon, and night on social media, and with tourist season picking up, I’m hoping to have more and more business. The sooner we can pay off this loan, the better.

I hear you. His loan was shared with his business partner and friend, Shelley and the sooner they could pay it off, the happier he’d be.

Business had picked up in the last three or four months for the cakery, too. It was officially wedding season, though, wedding season had really become a year-round thing especially with the weather staying warmer longer.

There were always a few cancellations here and there, but never more than one every couple weeks because people would get cold feet and not go through with weddings. They had one just recently and Shane would be glad for the rare weekend off to sleep in, to run errands, to catch up on some reading.

It was cliché, he supposed, an ex-con reading rather than watching television. It was a habit he’d picked up in jail. He couldn’t stand daytime talk shows and he didn’t have the attention span for movies, though, how he had it for reading was a bit of a mystery, but nothing he ever really gave a lot of thought to.

Martin set two boxes on the counter and rang the order up. Shane lifted a brow at the price. Are you forgetting something? he asked.

Nope.

That’s two dozen, not one. You forget how to count?

Nah. But if you don’t like the new ones, I don’t want to be giving money back. Just easier to leave it off up front.

Shane pulled the money out of his wallet and set it down. This is to cover all of them. My people will eat them, or I’ll be having doughnuts for breakfast every day.

He grabbed the boxes and was out the door as Martin started to argue. Shane knew how hard the man worked and wasn’t interested in taking anything from him. The food business was too hard to make a profit in. Every little bit helped.

The rest of the walk to Construct Cakery passed in relative silence, save for the errant car horn. The scent of coffee roasting wafted through the air as Shane neared the bakery. A small coffee roaster had opened up in one of the old houses that lined the other side of the street from the strip mall Shane rented space in. A lot of those old houses were being