Free Taste of Romance by Darlene Panzera Page A

Nathaniel whispered. “The Cupcake Bandit should be here any minute.”
    “Do you think he saw us cross the parking lot and climb the column?” Kim asked.
    Nathaniel shook his head. “We were here over an hour early, he doesn’t know me, and
     I doubt he’d recognize you.”
    Kim glanced down at the black leather motorcycle jacket Nathaniel had given her to
     hide her white work shirt. The jacket was about five sizes too big, but she didn’t
     care. It smelled like him—like warm summer rain and happiness.
    “We can see if he takes the cupcakes, but we’ll never climb down fast enough to catch
     him,” Nathaniel told her.
    “That’s okay,” Kim said, looking down at the people wandering around on the lawn below.
     “I don’t want to confront him. I just want to see who it is.”
    There were 164 steps to the top of the Astoria Column on Coxcomb Hill, where a square,
     railed platform let viewers oversee not only the site’s thirty acres, but the entire
     region. Kim loved the historic frontier banded murals circling the column that Italian
     immigrant artist Attilo Pusterla had created using a technique combining painting
     and plaster carving.
    “It’s like the top of a lighthouse,” Nathaniel commented. “And just as windy. The
     view reminds me of Sweden, with all the green valleys and waterways in between.”
    Kim swung her gaze from the huge cargo ships traveling under the massive steel truss
     Astoria−Megler Bridge on her right, around the piers lining the tip of Astoria, and
     followed Youngs Bay around to the flats of green, with trees and subtle rolling hills
     in the distance.
    “My home city of Göteborg is a lot like Astoria,” he continued. “Your town sits on
     the mouth of the Columbia River where it meets the Pacific Ocean, and mine sits on
     the mouth of Göta älv, which flows into the North Sea. Also, like Astoria, Göteborg
     is a thriving fishing community. I think you’d like it there.”
    Was he asking her to go to Sweden? Nathaniel turned toward her, and her pulsed raced.
     What was she supposed to say?
    “There are many art galleries in Sweden,” he told her, his eyes sparkling. “Including
     the Göteborg Museum of Art.”
    “And rose gardens?” she prompted, loving the sound of his accent as he talked.
    “ Ja, before I came here, I worked in the rose garden in Trädgårdsföreningen park, with
     four thousand roses of nineteen hundred species.” He grinned. “A lot more to smell
     than in my backyard.”
    Kim smiled at his teasing and took another glance at the stone bench to make sure
     the cupcake box was still there. It was.
    “No wonder you want to go back,” she replied.
    “I want to go lots of places,” Nathaniel said, smiling down at her. “But I’ve discovered
     it’s more fun traveling with someone than traveling alone.”
    Kim stared at him for several long seconds, wishing she could travel the world with
     him, pack her hobo bag and her paintbrushes, and fly off to other countries, immerse
     herself in other cultures, and capture their essence on canvas. But her gut clenched
     into a tight ball at the thought of the airplane flights a dream like that would require.
    Avoiding Nathaniel’s expectant gaze, she lifted the binoculars to her eyes. No thief
     on the horizon.
    “I dated an Irish guy in college,” she said, her voice raw. “After graduation he asked
     me to fly off to Ireland with him. But I thought of my mother, crashing in the wilds
     of Idaho with my aunt and uncle in their plane, and I . . . I couldn’t go. He left
     me behind and flew off without me.”
    Nathaniel nodded, as if he understood her dilemma. “I dated a girl in college who
     asked me to stay. She didn’t have the spirit of adventure in her and asked me to give
     up mine. I couldn’t do it. Giving up who you are and who you are meant to be, giving
     up on your dreams, is a fate worse than—”
    He looked at her and broke off before finishing, but Kim knew what he