A Little Bakery Read online

  A Little Bakery

  A Guild Hunter Short Story

  By Nalini Singh

  Tía Catalina pressed a hand to the small of her back and rubbed. Her old bones were aching with how she’d been bent over icing the angel-wing alfajores that were the bakery’s holiday specialty.

  Such painstaking work it was to ensure the delicately-shaped cookies didn’t break, especially when it came time to sandwich them together with her special coconut-infused dulce de leche. It was her Lorenzo who’d come up with the idea all those years ago when they’d opened their little shop.

  Her eyes went to the framed photo of him that she kept at one end of her workbench at the back of the bakery. Oh, her Lorenzo had been a beautiful man. Dark eyes that laughed so easily, that thick black hair that had turned silver as he loved her through the decades, that skin bronzed by the sun. Was it any wonder she’d taken one look at him and decided that he wasn’t for her—no good would come of loving a man that pretty, she’d thought.

  She hadn’t been everyone’s tía or abuela then; she’d just been plain old Catalina with the wide hips and the curves that caught men’s eyes, her own eyes dark and her hair long enough to brush her behind. And hadn’t Lorenzo looked at her with such hunger that she’d felt justified in her dismissal of him as a serious prospect.

  But oh, how the man had courted her. With cakes made from scratch, and cookies of her favorite flowers, and a proposal when they were all alone so that she knew it was for her, not to show off. Her husband had been a show off and an outrageous flirt, it was true, but when it mattered, he’d been hers. Never had he strayed, her beautiful man. And to the end, he’d called her mi corazón. As if they were still young sweethearts and not silver-haired grandparents.

  Te amo, mi corazón.

  “Te amo, mi vida,” she said to the strong, loyal man who had gone before her to what awaited in the next life. Two years now, and she missed him each and every day.

  The only thing that made it bearable were her children and grandchildren, all with Lorenzo’s laughing eyes—except for Adriana, who had been contrary from the first and had been born with eyes of an even deeper brown that came from her mother’s side of the family. Not content with that, her grandchild had gone and been born with a tiny brown freckle in the white of her left eye that’d had them all worried, but the doctors said it was benign.

  Well, and didn’t those freckled eyes hold a wicked spark? And didn’t she hug her “tita” Catalina with such fierce affection? She might’ve been born with contrary eyes, but Lorenzo’s wild heart beat strongest in fourteen-year-old Adriana.

  “Tita!” Skinny brown arms wrapping around her from behind, squeezing tight. “Shall I open the doors?”

  Catalina smiled and patted the hand of her favorite grandchild. She shouldn’t have favorites, but how could she resist Lorenzo’s heart beating in this little one who had been birthed into her grandfather’s arms?

  Lorenzo had been alone with their María when she went into labor so suddenly, but though he was an old-fashioned man who didn’t much like it when his daughters began to show their legs in the pretty dresses that were the rage in their youth, he had been calm and patient and he had caught Adriana when she came out squalling and angry and impatient.

  María had told Catalina the whole story afterward, her eyes wet. “Papá was wonderful,” she’d said. “He kissed me on the forehead when I panicked, and he told me I was his strong girl who could do it. And he put Adriana on my chest with the biggest smile.”

  That was her Lorenzo. Such a heart he’d had, so much love inside it.

  “Sí,” she said to this grandchild of hers who missed Lorenzo as much as Catalina, and who was always in the bakery after school or in the weekends.

  “We’ll have a big line!” Adriana called back as she danced out of the room. “Everyone knows you make these cookies only once a year!”

  Catalina smiled and stretched out her back again. But when she went to pick up the tray of cookies, two big male hands replaced hers, the brush across her back familiar. But it still made her gasp, to look up into eyes of ancient gold and know that she stood next to an angel, his wings a piercing blue and his black hair dipped in blue.

  Then he smiled, his eyes dancing against skin kissed by the sun until it was gold of a paler shade than his eyes. “I’ve come to steal cookies,” said this angel who had lived hundreds of years, and would live hundreds more. Yet, when with him, she felt the elder, he had such a young soul.

  She patted his arm. “You know I always save you an entire tray.” This beautiful blue-winged angel had walked into their bakery for the first time two days after they opened, drawn by “the smell of deliciousness”.

  Well, Catalina’s heart had skipped a beat to be sure. Angels didn’t simply walk into little bakeries in Harlem. Especially angels who were seen often with the archangel himself, power rippling off their frame. Illium his name was, and he’d been hungry. And she’d fed him, hadn’t she? No one who came to Catalina’s house or her bakery left hungry.

  Lorenzo used to shake his head and say she’d give away all their profits, but he’d be right there with her, giving out food. But this angel, this Illium, he’d always paid—and he’d brought his friends. So that their little bakery became known for attracting New York’s angels, and they’d even done an article about the bakery in the paper!

  So many customers had found them after that. Big bakeries had offered her and Lorenzo unimaginable amounts of money to sell up, but it’d have been like selling their heart. What use would money be without it? It wasn’t as if they didn’t make more than enough to raise their brood.

  Their little bakery remained a little bakery, with a loyal clientele.

  “I just want to be sure,” Illium said solemnly, but his eyes continued to dance.

  She hit him lightly on a hard muscled forearm. “Shoo with you,” she said, her mind full of memories. Lorenzo and Illium, they’d been birds of a feather. Playful, beautiful men who had laughed together and even sat down and had a drink or shared a pie many times over the years.

  Leaning down, Illium kissed her on the cheek. “I’ll carry this out. It’s too heavy for you.”

  Catalina watched him walk out to the front, heard Adriana’s chatter, and wondered if her granddaughter understood that she stood in the presence of one of the most powerful beings in the city. Adriana had grown up talking to angels. Sometimes, she even haggled with them when they jokingly tried to get a better price on a piece of baking.

  “I’m going to be the Tower baker, Tita,” she’d said a year ago, face set mulishly. “Just watch me.”

  Well, Catalina would, but she had no doubts Adriana would make it to those hallowed halls. Her grandchild was a clever one and she was scared of no one. No vampire or angel would make her flinch.

  Returning to the kitchen, Illium carried out two more trays while Catalina tidied up. When he came inside the last time, he wrapped her up in the warmth of his arms and his wings. “What will I do when you are gone?” A hitch in his voice.

  She hugged him back, this angel who had seen her go from a lithe young woman to grandmother of a sprawling clan. “You’ll watch over my children and grandchildren, and you’ll make sure my wild Adriana doesn’t get into too much trouble.”

  Others might envy angels for their immortal lifetimes, but she’d seen such sorrow in Illium’s eyes when he came to Lorenzo’s funeral. He’d done her beloved Lorenzo the great honor of being a pallbearer. Catalina wouldn’t have asked—not of an angel, even when that angel was one who called her friend—but he’d asked her himself. And so he’d walked with their sons and daughters to lay her Lorenzo to rest.

  So sad he’d been, until she’d hugged him as she had her children and gr
andchildren. And she’d thought—ah, the price of immortality is to watch others go long before you into heaven’s arms. “One day, you’ll see Lorenzo again, and after it’s my time, I’ll be there too.” She didn’t know if angels believed in such things, but she believed it for Illium. “Perhaps after an eternity or two, but time doesn’t matter in the world beyond this one.”

  Releasing her from his embrace, his astonishing wings folding back with care so as not to break things in her small kitchen, Illium said, “I will hold you to that promise, Catalina.” He was the only one who still called her Catalina. Just Catalina. All her contemporaries were gone now, Illium alone the one who remembered the young woman she’d once been.

  Then he bent slightly and held out a hand. “Dance with me, mi amor. Let us make Lorenzo jealous one more time.”

  Laughing because oh, he was as wicked and wild as her Lorenzo had been, she put her hand in his and they danced, in this small bakery in Harlem filled with the scents of sugar and spice and colored by love.

  Copyright © 2020 by Nalini Singh

  Author’s Note: A special thank you to everyone on Twitter who helped me with my Spanish language questions. If I messed something up despite your help, my apologies!

  Timeline This story slots in before Angels’ Blood, the first book in the Guild Hunter series.

 

 

  Nalini Singh, A Little Bakery

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