Free All Stories Are Love Stories by Elizabeth Percer

of luck, her not insignificant talents, and the Culinary Institute of America degree she’d earned in record time after her daughter died and she found herself too shattered to do anything but work.
    Dale knew when he married her that she had been in love with another man. In fact, if she hadn’t been, she might never have taken him up on his proposal. If she hadn’t loved Max so much and hadn’t been so desperate to leave him, she might not have been so willing to flee the city and take a chance on marriage with a man she did not know very well but who promised her a new life, stability for the baby she was carrying.
    Yet even though Dale had offered love, the sort of steady, protective love she’d probably have been better off with, she hadn’t been able to receive it. Her sense of love had been indelibly shaped by the impressions she’d made with Max, and as good as Dale’s offer of love was, and as much as she wanted to accept it, it was a poor fit. And not only for her. She knew Dale wanted to believe that love could be managed just like money or property, but Vashti knew it couldn’t. She knew after Max, and was only more convinced after the brief, bittersweet joy of their daughter’s life. She knew rumors abounded that people made practical choices in love, but she’d never met anyone who had. Love was a disease, not a controlled substance. Though maybe it was a rare disease, at least when children weren’t involved. Maybe the degree of unqualified adoration she’d had with Max was doomed to consume everything in its path from the start. Sometimes she wondered if it had ever existed, or if it might have been a trick of the mind or the heart.
    She could hear the continual ringing of the bell on the door in the other room, so many insistent lovers coming into the bakery, a daylong line of them demanding sugar and sweetness, their right, their fill of the kind of food that matched the kind of love they either hoped they had or yearned for: an immediate, overwhelming, heady connection.
    â€œVashti.” Her boss at the door startled her.
    She looked up. “I know, I know. I’ll leave when this dough is done.”
    â€œI can finish that.” Jesse elbowed in close enough that the good, warm smell of him was even stronger than the breaddough’s. He was wearing a “Kiss Me, I’m Irish” T-shirt and a white apron with hearts on it tied around his waist. Somehow the combination of these two things served only to emphasize his biceps. She stepped chastely to the side.
    He smiled at her, his deft hands already taking over. “The offer still stands, you know.”
    Vashti nodded. “Actually,” she said, “I have plans. But thanks.”
    She read the skepticism on his face, but he was too sweet to speak it aloud. God, was she that obvious? If only she were the type of girl who could play games, who could lure and trap and shift and dodge her way suavely through the pitfalls of love. She plunged her arms up to her elbows in a stream of warm water, washing up for good, letting the water grow hot on her skin, suddenly angry and frustrated with herself. She didn’t deserve this, this kind, handsome boss looking away while she lied to his face, shutting out the very person responsible for the wonderful job she’d only imagined she might one day have. She was so good at shunning available men, she might as well throw in the towel now. Go home. Go to bed. Die alone.
    â€œBut if they fall through, you’ll come, right?”
    She turned off the water. Her back was to him, so they couldn’t see each other’s face. She looked up, sighing at the wall. What was wrong with her? Maybe anyone actually available was the problem, proximity as deal breaker.
    â€œHeck, bring him with you! The more, the merrier.”
    She nodded, drying off, then tried to smile at him, tried to express her gratitude at his kindness, his interest