Free The Battered Body by J. B. Stanley Page B

isn’t over, buddy.”
    After getting dressed, James packed his lunch, poured coffee into a travel mug, and tried to ignore the covered cake plate resting in the middle of the kitchen table.
    “I don’t see you. I do not see you,” James spoke to the white ceramic dome that seemed to call to him from across the room. “I’m not even thinking of all those layers of sweet, buttery, and incredibly smooth chocolate icing or about how moist and springy the cake—” he cut himself off. “Nope. Not interested.”
    After shoving an apple into his lunch bag, James shrugged his coat on and cast a second glance at the cake plate. I wonder how much is left , he thought.
    Unable to stop himself, he lifted up the cover several inches, revealing the remaining wedge of fudge layer cake. A whiff of chocolate scent floated beneath his eager nostrils.
    “I’m not even going to eat one of the chocolate curls sitting there in that bed of chocolate frosting. That’s how much willpower I’ve got.” He inhaled deeply, and his mouth filled with saliva in anticipation of receiving an exquisite morsel of Paulette’s dessert. “Well, maybe just a few crumbs …” James heard the weakness in his voice, but could not tear his eyes away from the hunk of cake.
    “Who you talkin’ to, boy?” Jackson asked gruffly as he entered the kitchen in an old bathrobe.
    James slammed the lid back on the cake plate and stood up guiltily. “No one. I’m … I’m off to the library. Are you planning to work on a painting of Paulette’s hands today?”
    “Yep. Soon as I polish off that leftover cake for breakfast.” He patted his flat stomach as James watched on with envy. “I reckon it’ll help inspire me, ’cause I’m gonna show her frostin’ this very cake in the paintin’. I liked how she angled her wrist just so to get it on there all nice and smooth.”
    James wished his father luck, and after gazing longingly once more at the cake plate, he headed off to work. Instead of driving to the library, however, he swung into a parking spot in front of the Sweet Tooth, the town’s bakery.
    Megan and Amelia Flowers, the mother/daughter team who kept the townsfolks’ bellies filled with homemade breads, cookies, and pastries, were bent over the display window, smoothing a sheet of red velvet fabric across the bottom ledge.
    “Good morning, Professor,” Megan greeted James briefly, and then she stood erect and put her hands on her narrow hips. “I had the pleasure of meeting your newest family member yesterday.”
    “Uh-oh,” James moaned softly, and then he frowned. “Why would Paulette come in here? She does her own baking.”
    “For a croissant to go with her latte ,” Amelia answered, her full lips turning into a practiced pout. “But she told my mom that our croissant wasn’t flaky enough and bought a baguette instead. She didn’t like that much either. Said it was only supposed to be crusty on the outside , not inside and out.”
    “I’m sorry.” James tugged on his scarf, which suddenly felt too tight. “Paulette can be really impolite, and she seems determined to offend everyone in Quincy’s Gap.”
    Megan picked up a large box wrapped in red and green foil and stuffed with wax paper, and she began to fill it with candy-cane-shaped loaves of egg bread. Megan had ingeniously dyed half of the dough red and left the other its natural shade of whitish-yellow, so that when braided, the bread looked striped, just like the sugary version of a candy cane.
    “She didn’t stop her criticism with my breads either.” Megan continued crossly. “She made her shrinking violet of an assistant buy three of my cakes—whole ones, mind you—and then they left, no doubt so that our visiting celebrity could hold that girl down and force-feed her slices of my cake. I thought I was rid of them, but twenty minutes later they were back! That TV cake baker was chock full of suggestions on how to improve my recipes!” Megan furiously sifted