The Look of Love

The Look of Love

NEW YEAR’S EVE

The offer seemed almost too good to be true. Round-trip airfare to Los Angeles and an all-expenses-paid stay at one of the most luxurious spas in the country. But there was a catch: Piper Donovan had to make another wedding cake.

Distracted from selecting her ensemble for the party she was going to that night, Piper pushed aside the dresses, skirts, and tops strewn all over her bed. She lay down on the soft comforter, crossed her long, thin legs and scrolled her BlackBerry to where she could reread the Facebook message.

SAW THE CAKE YOU MADE FOR GLENNA BROOKS. WOULD LOVE IT IF YOU WOULD DO ONE FOR MY WEDDING ON JANUARY 15. WE’LL PAY FOR YOUR PLANE TICKET, PUT YOU UP FOR THE WEEK AT ELYSIUM, PROVIDE YOU WITH A CAR AND DRIVER, AND, OF COURSE, PAY FOR THE CAKE. LET ME KNOW ASAP IF YOU ARE INTERESTED!

Jillian Abernathy. The name was vaguely familiar.

Piper studied the photo that accompanied the message. An attractive young couple beamed from the screen. The woman was pretty and blond, and she had a dazzling white smile. The handsome man, with his arm around her, had dark hair, and his teeth were even more blinding. Clicking on the picture led to Jillian Abernathy’s Facebook profile. Her info page revealed that Jillian was engaged to Ben Dixon, M.D., and that she worked as the director of the Elysium Spa.

Piper wondered where Jillian had first seen the three-tiered, star-festooned cake she’d designed for soap-opera star Glenna Brooks. There were photos of it all over the Internet, and it was featured in the current issues of People, Soap Opera Weekly, and the National Enquirer, along with other pictures from the wedding and accompanying text explaining the disasters that had befallen co-workers of the bride and groom in the weeks leading up to the ceremony. Piper had posted pictures of her creation on her own Facebook fan page, and the response had been overwhelming. She was proud of her first wedding cake and stunned by the attention it had been receiving since the Christmas Eve nuptials. She hadn’t expected to be making another so quickly—or all by herself. She’d had her mother as a safety net while she worked on Glenna’s cake.

Piper was dying to tell her mother, but Terri Donovan was still at the bakery and wouldn’t be home for a few hours. Piper stared at the freshly painted, cloyingly pink walls of her room in her parents’ house and considered the offer. She’d been living home again for just a month, yet the idea of getting away for a while was appealing. She loved her parents—she did—but there was something wrong about being twenty-seven years old and having to answer to them. Piper knew that Terri and Vin Donovan were making a concerted effort not to smother her, but they were failing miserably. It was inevitable: Piper was their only daughter, their baby, and they still found her every move fascinating.

From the book THE LOOK OF LOVE: A Piper Donovan Mystery by Mary Jane Clark. Copyright © 2012 by Mary Jane Clark. Reprinted by permission of William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.