The Sweetness of Her Love: A Christian Romance (Fostered by Love Book 2) Read online

  “I’m sure they’ll all be delighted,” James said as he got to his feet. He reached for his black coat that was draped over the back of the chair next to him. “Thank you for your time. I look forward to seeing what you come up with.”

  Erin stood up and tucked her notebook and tablet into the crook of her arm then held out her hand. When James took it, she gave a firm shake. “Give my love to your grandmother.”

  “I will,” James said as he shrugged into his coat. He picked up the box of goodies and said goodbye before heading out of the shop.

  Erin watched him get into his shiny black Escalade and pull away from the curb. Still unable to believe her interaction with the man, she really hoped that Joanna Dawson never asked her what she thought of her grandson, because aside from his looks, Erin would be hard pressed to find something positive to say about him.

  She would have liked to go into Noella’s office to spill it all to her, but a sudden rush of customers demanded her attention.

  CHAPTER TWO

  James used his car’s Bluetooth to call his grandmother. He knew she was waiting to hear how his meeting with her favorite baker had gone.

  “Hello, sweetie.” For an almost ninety-year-old woman, her voice came through strong over his car’s speaker system. “How did things go?”

  “Very well,” James said, figuring that since he had achieved the ultimate goal of placing the order for the cake, it wasn’t a lie.

  “I hope you were nice to her,” his grandmother said.

  “I’m nice to everyone.” James pulled a U-turn and headed back down Main St. toward his downtown office.

  “No, actually, my dear, you’re not. You’re a lawyer.”

  He tried to take offense at her comment, but she knew him too well. There were some perfectly nice lawyers out there, but he knew that he wasn’t necessarily one of them. Probably the only people who thought he was nice were Nana, his closest friends, and his clients. And even some of them didn’t like him too much when he spoke his mind about certain things.

  “I just want to be able to still buy my favorite cupcakes there. So tell me you made a favorable impression.”

  James hesitated. He might hedge the truth, but he tried not to outright lie to her. At the end of the day, she was the one person whose respect he wanted above all others.

  “Oh, James.” The disappointment was clear in her voice. “What did you do?”

  “I made the mistake of assuming you tried to get her to go out with me.”

  His grandmother chuckled. “I did think about it for two seconds. Though I have mentioned you to her, I decided not to push to get her to go on a date with you.”

  “And why’s that? You seem to be willing to set me up with any girl who has a pulse.”

  “I’m a bit more discerning than that,” she said. “I also require them to be younger than me.”

  “Wow. I appreciate your discernment.” James let sarcasm drip from his words. “So given that Erin Kirkland meets both those requirements, how did she not make the grade?”

  “Oh, honey, it wasn’t her that didn’t make the grade. It was you.” His grandmother said it so matter-of-factly that it took a moment for her words to sink in.

  “It was me?” Frowning, James steered around a slow car.

  “Yes, actually. She’s too good for you.”

  “Well, don’t hold back, Nana. Tell me how you really feel.”

  “I always do. She is a real sweetheart, and she deserves a man who will love and dote on her. Let’s be honest, darling, the only person—aside from me and Kaylee—you dote on, is yourself.”

  Someone must have dumped a dose of brutal honesty into Nana’s morning tea because the woman wasn’t pulling any of her punches with him today. And sadly, she wasn’t wrong. Between his job and his personality, he really wasn’t cut out for giving too many people priority in his life. Strangely enough, his grandmother’s comments kind of made him wonder what it would take in her eyes to be the type of man who would be worthy of a woman like Erin.

  Which was stupid because he didn’t want to be in a long-term relationship with any woman, so why would he want to be worthy of one? James scowled as he turned into the parking garage of his office building. Was his grandmother trying reverse psychology on him? That had to be the only reason why a thought like that would even cross his mind.

  “I’m going to have to go, Nana. I’ve reached the office.” James pulled into his parking stall and sat for a minute so he could finish saying goodbye to her. “I’ll give you a call later.”

  After she’d hung up, James stared at the bakery box on the passenger seat for a moment before picking it up. He climbed out, retrieved his briefcase and laptop bag from the back seat, and headed for the elevator that would take him to his eighth-floor office. As he rode up, he kept replaying the conversations of the morning over and over in his mind.

  While he would be the first to admit that he could be a not-so-nice person, James was usually nice to people who hadn’t ticked him off. To find out that Nana didn’t think he was good enough for someone still kind of stung. As his grandmother, she should have always thought the world of him. Women were supposed to not be good enough for him, not the other way around.

  He was intelligent. He was successful, and he had the career, nice apartment, car, and bank account to prove it. And if the women he hung around with were to be believed, he was also good looking, not to mention charming. He could be loving and doting if he wanted to be.

  Couldn’t he?

  James left the elevator and pulled open the glass door that led into the set of offices that belonged to his family law practice.

  “What’s got a frown on that mug so early in the day?”

  James glanced over to see his partner leaning against the door jamb to his office. Donovan Sterling, or Van as he was known to his friends, had been his best friend since sixth grade, and they’d gone on to become lawyers together, both specializing in family law.

  “I’ll tell you about it later. Do you have plans for dinner?” James came to a stop beside their secretary’s desk. He set the bakery box down and opened it up. Though he’d told Erin he didn’t care much for sweets, he was determined to find out exactly what it was that Nana loved so much about her baking. He pulled out a chocolate cupcake then nodded to the box. “Help yourself, Sarah. These are made at my grandmother’s favorite bakery.”

  “Oh, are those from A Spoonful of Sugar? They have so many wonderful things. I love their macarons.” She peered into the box with such longing that James thought she was going to start drooling. “I follow them on social media, and I swear it takes everything in me to not climb in my car on my lunch hour to go buy one of everything they posted a picture of. It’s gotten even worse now with the holiday season. I told Eddie to never mind buying me boxes of chocolate, just get me gift cards to that place.”

  James arched an eyebrow at the woman’s effusive response. Seemed that Erin had more than one person eating out of her hand. “Well, I have my one cupcake, so you two can have the rest.”

  He headed toward his office but heard Sarah call out to remind him of his next appointment. Thankfully, he had an hour before they arrived. Enough time to eat the cupcake and put the morning behind him.

  “So your grandmother told you that you weren’t good enough for her little baker?” Van said as he cut his steak at the restaurant where they’d met for dinner later on that night. “What’s she like?”

  “My grandmother?” James asked, as much to give his friend a hard time as to give himself a few minutes to come up with an answer.

  “Yeah, James. Tell me all about the woman I’ve known almost my whole life.” Van gave him a droll look. “Take two, man. Any more deflecting and I’m going to start reading things into it.”

  James didn’t want Van to do that because he might actually not be that far off base.

  “Is she hot?” Van asked just before putting a bite of steak in his mouth.

  As he thoug
ht back to the meeting, he wasn’t sure he’d call Erin hot but there was definitely something about her. He recalled the first time he’d seen her. The long, soft blonde hair that had curled around her shoulders. The open, friendly look on her face with sparkling blue-green eyes.

  It kinda sucked to think that he was the reason that her expression had been closed off and her eyes had sparkled a whole lot less by the end of their meeting. Maybe his grandmother was on to something…

  “So?” Van prompted. “Hot? Not hot?”

  “She has more of a girl-next-door look to her. I guess that can be hot if that’s the look you go for.”

  Van chuckled. “I would have to say that it’s not the look you go for so that would mean she’s not hot.”

  James definitely felt that wasn’t the most correct assumption, but he wasn’t about to clue his best friend into that little tidbit just yet. That was partly because he knew that Van would use that as ammunition for sure, but the main reason was that he wasn’t quite sure himself what to make of the whole situation. And it wasn’t just the one with Erin, his grandmother’s little revelation had kind of shaken him. There wasn’t much that could do that, but if anyone could, it would be his grandmother. But why wouldn’t she have just said something to him if that’s how she felt?

  “I’m beginning to think that I’m going to have to take a trip to A Spoonful of Sugar to meet this woman Nana doesn’t think is good enough for her favorite grandson.”

  James pushed his plate away and leaned back. “I’m her only grandson.”

  “True, but you’re probably still her favorite grandchild.” Van lifted a hand to get the attention of their waitress.

  “I might have thought you were right if I hadn’t just had her tell me that I wasn’t good enough for someone.”

  Van asked the waitress for a cup of coffee—to which James added his order for one as well—before relaxing back in his side of the booth. “This is really bothering you, which I find rather surprising since you usually don’t care what people think about you.”

  “But this is Nana we’re talking about.” James shrugged. “She’s not just some random person I’ve come across in my daily life who has decided to dislike me because they found out I’m a lawyer. This woman knows me almost as well as you do, so this kind of…bugs me.”

  “Maybe you should look at it this way. If it keeps her from setting you up, hopefully she thinks you’re not good enough for anyone she meets from now on.”

  The waitress returned with their coffee, giving each of them a flirtatious smile. Normally James might have responded with some flirting himself, but right then, he couldn’t be bothered.

  Van, on the other hand, had no problem laying on the charm. James took a couple of swallows of his coffee while his friend chatted up the waitress. It was a usual occurrence, but right then it annoyed him.

  Shifting his gaze from them, James stared out the window next to their table. There was snow falling lightly, and the trees just outside the restaurant were draped with tiny white lights. It was certainly looking a lot like Christmas. For the most part, he didn’t have strong feelings one way or another about the holiday. Now that he was an adult, it wasn’t as stressful as it had been when he’d been a teenager with antagonistic divorced parents. These days, he could choose who and when he spent time with over the holidays. The only place he absolutely wanted to be was at Nana’s whenever she decided to celebrate Christmas.

  Van’s phone vibrated against the table where he’d laid it when they sat down. He picked it up and looked at the display before setting it back down again with a sigh. “I gotta head to my sister’s after this.”

  “What’s up with Missy?” James asked. Just as he and Van were close in age, Van’s younger sister, Melissa, and James’s sister, Kaylee, were only a year apart. James and Van often shared sister stories and bemoaned—at times—being an older brother. Though Van also had an older sister, which James was grateful he didn’t.

  “She’s having computer issues and is panicking that she’s not going to be able to get her vlog uploaded.”

  James laughed. “She probably just wants to be able to film you helping her out so you can be in her next one. You know that her comments explode when you’re on her vlog.”

  Van grinned. “Yeah. Not about to abandon my job, but it’s kind of fun to have a few minutes of small fame on YouTube.”

  They finished off their coffee then settled the bill—with Van leaving a more than ample tip—before heading out into the frosty night air.

  Van slapped him on the back. “I’ll see you on Monday, man. Hope you get over this issue with your grandmother and stop being so contemplative. It’s scary.”

  James just gave his friend an exasperated shake of his head. “We gotta grow up sometime.”

  “Maybe you do. I’m grown up during business hours, but after-hours, I’m not required to be that way.”

  James just shook his head, knowing that his friend’s words weren’t a true reflection of how he lived his life anymore. They might have been a couple of years ago, but somewhere along the line, Van had settled down and begun to look more to the future rather than just living in the moment.

  “Have a good weekend,” James said as they stopped beside Van’s sports car—the one sign that perhaps he hadn’t completely settled down. James had chosen to spend the money on a more practical—albeit expensive—vehicle, since he didn’t see the sense in buying a car that could get hung up on a snow bank for the six or so months it was winter in Winnipeg.

  As he got into his SUV, James decided that he was going to have to have another conversation with his grandmother at some point in the near future. Plus, he wanted to take another trip to the bakery to see if he could make a better impression on Erin Kirkland. Somehow it had become an obsession to make her like him. The way her expression had hardened and the sparkle had dimmed in her eyes gnawed at him.

  As he drove along the brightly decorated downtown streets to his apartment, James decided that he needed to do what he could to redeem himself with Erin.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Erin stared down at the sketch she’d done for Joanna Dawson’s cake. She frowned and flipped the page over to try something new. It was annoying that every time she started to sketch, she found herself thinking more about what would impress James Dawson rather than what Joanna would like. She really wasn’t happy that the man was taking up so much of her thoughts.

  Ever since he’d left on Friday, all Erin could think about was their time together. She still couldn’t believe how disappointed she’d been to discover that, in spite of his romance hero appearance, his personality had been anything but attractive. For some reason, she hadn’t been able to bring herself to share about the interaction with Noella. Thankfully, her best friend had been a little preoccupied all weekend with her own relationship issues and didn’t notice that Erin was also a tiny bit distracted.

  “Still not done with that?” Betsy asked as she approached the desk where Erin sat hunched over.

  “Here.” Erin handed her the book. “I’ve done three sketches so far.”

  Betsy sat down across from her and laid the book flat on the desk. She flipped back and forth between the three pages. Finally, she stopped on one of them, then picked up a pencil and added a few stokes to Erin’s design. It was one thing Erin really liked about Betsy. The woman wasn’t afraid to express her opinion when Erin invited her to do so.

  For this particular situation, Erin needed input from someone who was a little more objective about it.

  “We don’t have to only use lilies, do we?” Betsy asked as she glanced up from the sketch pad.

  “No. They are her favorites, but she really loves all types of flowers. We’ll do the daisies on the cupcakes.”

  “How about we have lilies on the top layer and have them spill over the edge and then add some orchids on the second level and then roses along the edges of the lower level. Keep the colors all pastel for the cake and then brigh
ter for the daisies.” Betsy pushed the sketch pad across the desk. “How does that look?”

  Erin studied the additions to her design and smiled. She was sure that Joanna would love it. “This is perfect. Now we have to see if her grandson will give us the green light for it.”

  Betsy got to her feet. “Well, if he doesn’t, he’s crazy and has no taste.”

  Erin grinned as her assistant walked away. A talented decorator who spoke her mind, Betsy also made Erin laugh on a regular basis. They worked well together, and the fact that Betsy was helping to take some of the baking and decorating weight off Erin was a bonus.

  Erin finished up the sketch, using some colored pencils she had to show the colors they were thinking about using. When she was confident it looked as good as she could get it, she pulled the paper from the notebook and got up to put it through the scanner. Once that was done, Erin decided that it was important to show him an actual flower, so she went and pulled out some fondant and gum paste to try a few different ideas. After she had everything assembled, she put her ear buds in, pulled up her playlist and went to work.

  After the lily was done to her satisfaction, Erin took a photo of it and then set it aside to dry. She probably wouldn’t use that flower for the cake since the date was so far away, but if James or Joanna wanted to see the real thing, she’d have it on hand.

  She took a few minutes to clean up her mess, then returned to her desk and typed up an email for James with the scan of the sketch and the picture of the flower attached. Saying a quick prayer as she pressed send, Erin hoped that the man would be happy with it because she wasn’t sure she could do anything better.

  All she could do now was to wait for his response.

  The following Thursday, Erin was bent over the large metal table in the kitchen area, cutting out petal shapes to make gum paste flowers for a wedding cake she and Betsy were working on for the weekend. She hummed along with the Christmas music that was playing through her earbuds as she worked, definitely in her happy place.