Page 21 of Cinnamon Baker Bear

“Yes. Events.” Now this was safer ground. “Corporate, mostly, these days. Conferences, launches, dinners. Anything where several hundred people need to be in the same place at the same time, and somebody has to make sure they all know where they’re going.”

“That sounds stressful.” He turned to look at her. “I get stressed if I have more than ten people in line at the counter.”

“It can be. Mostly it’s planning. Venues, food, transport, production, staff. Making sure everybody has what they need before they realize they need it.” Mara stepped around a patch of exposed roots. “I like making things work. Especially the part at the end where everything comes together, and my clients have no idea how many things nearly went wrong to get it there.”

“So things do go wrong.”

“Always.” She laughed. “I once had a speaker decide fifteen minutes before he was due onstage that he hated his chair. He couldn’t tell me what was wrong with it. It was just the wrong chair.”

“What did you do?”

“Found another chair, and a glass of water, then sat and talked to him as he drank it.”

Gabe laughed. “The chair was never the problem.”

“Exactly.” She shrugged. “He just needed to take a moment. And thankfully, experience had taught me how to cope with the situation so we got through it together.”

“I understand that better than you’d think,” Gabe began. “Ovens stop working, deliveries don’t show up, and people forget birthdays until the day before and come in looking desperate.”

“Do you rescue them?” she asked.

“I always try.” Gabe stepped over a root and glanced back at her. “A man came in near closing once because his daughter had been sick all week, and he’d forgotten it was his wife’s birthday. I stayed up all night making him a chocolate cake with pink frosting because those were her favorite things.”

“Did she like it?”

“He sent me a picture of them all eating it for breakfast.”

Mara smiled. Gabe seemed like the kind of man who would be good to have around when something went wrong, cake-related or otherwise.

Something red caught her eye. Mara stopped and bent to pick up a maple leaf lying near the edge of the path. It was almost perfect, bright red except for a brown mark near the stem.

Gabe stopped beside her. “Souvenir?”

“Yes. I have a memory box at home. Ticket stubs, matchbooks, leaves. There’s even a pebble in there that I carried halfway across the country in my coat pocket before I realized.” She turned the leaf carefully between her fingers.

“It’ll last longer if you press it.” Gabe leaned a little closer to look at it. “You need a Bear Creek leaf in the box.”

“Apparently I do.” Although she doubted she would need anything at all to help her remember this walk. With this baker.

Mara looked up. He was close enough now that she could see the flecks of copper in his eyes. There was no teasing in his face at all.

She slid the leaf carefully into her jacket pocket and made herself turn back to the path before the urge to reach for him became any harder to ignore. Behind her, she could feel him standing there a moment longer. Then he sighed, and his footsteps caught up with hers.

The trail eventually curved back toward the overlook, but Gabe took them along a narrower path off to the left.

“Where are we going now?” Mara asked.

“Lunch.”

“At last. Because I have worked up an appetite.”

“You’re going to need it,” Gabe teased as he led her to a small grassy clearing with a rough wooden bench near the edge and another gorgeous view across the valley.

“Oh, this is perfect.” Mara turned slowly, taking it in.

“I thought we could eat here.” Gabe set the basket on the bench.

Mara sat and slid the thermos bag off her shoulder while he unpacked two containers of small golden hand pies, bread, cheese, fruit, and cookies. She stared at the growing collection. “Gabe. This really is too much food.”