Free An Officer and His Gentleman by Ryan Field Page B

shower. He wanted to wear them in public, too; it made him feel naughty and sexy. Wearing the pants, he could feel Brody against his naked body when he smiled and talked to customers who never would have imagined he'd actually been with a man as hot and sexy and wonderful as Brody.
    On Sundays he liked to prepare something extra special for the customers. So he designed an original recipe, in only a matter of minutes, for decadent chocolate pound cakes baked in tube pans, with luscious red raspberries and large chunks of dark chocolate. The secret that made this pound cake stand out from all others was that he prepared a special raspberry glaze that had to be applied to the cake as soon as it came from the oven. He actually poured it over the hot cakes while they were still in the baking pans so they would absorb the sweet glaze completely. Most people would have thought a cake is just a cake; they would have said, just mix it all together and shove it into the oven. But that's not how Chance thought. A cake was a work of love; it had to taste rich and soft and have the right amount of sweetness, and the finished product had to shine and gleam, like a brand-new car you couldn't wait to drive. He even coated each raspberry with dark cocoa so they wouldn't sink to the bottom of the pans while the cakes were baking. But more than that, each slice had to have at least four berries and four chunks of chocolate.
    When Dan came down a few minutes before eight, the cakes were wrapped and displayed in the wooden bowl in three different ways. There were whole cakes priced at twenty-five dollars each, there were half-cakes for twelvefifty, and there were individually wrapped slices of cake priced at four dollars each for customers like Mrs. Dolan, who thought buying an entire cake was a waste for someone alone. They were wrapped in clear plastic, and the polish from the glaze and the way they had risen to perfect rounds on top almost made them look artificial. Dan picked up a slice and stared at the price, then shook his head and mumbled something incoherent. But he didn't argue with Chance that morning because he knew anything made of chocolate would be sold out before the end of the day. But he did say, "If the whole cakes don't sell, cut them all up into slices and sell them like that. We make more money that way."
    Chance nodded, but he knew the whole cakes would sell, too. A lot of the customers entertained weekend family or friends on Sundays and they liked being able to buy a whole cake for dessert. Betty Shack had purchased one of his lemon blueberry pound cakes once on a Sunday for her family, and she'd whispered to Chance, as if she knew a state secret, "I'm going to lie and tell them I baked it myself." Then she'd clutched her bamboo purse and laughed. He'd smiled and whispered to her, "Go ahead. If anyone asks, I'll tell them you made it yourself. I'll swear to it." She'd smiled and tapped him on the arm—she liked being naughty, too.
    "I'm going out to the barn to see if those squirrels came back last night," Dan said. He was on his way out the back door, crossing past the checkout area. But he stopped short and stared at Chance's sweatpants. "What's with the baggy pants, you ?"
    Chance felt his face flush. He looked down at the sweatpants and said, "All my jeans are in the laundry and I won't have time to wash them until tomorrow." It hadn't occurred to him that Dan would notice the pants. He never commented on what he wore.
    The old man shrugged his shoulders. "They don't even fit. It looks like you don't even have an ass. I don't like them." Then he raised his hands and cupped them, as if he were holding an invisible watermelon. "I like to watch that ass when you walk around and now I have nothing to see."
    "Don't worry," Chance said, "My ass will be back tomorrow."
By three o'clock that afternoon, all that remained of the cakes in the wooden bowl were three individual slices. One woman on her way back to the city bought