Spice. Robert A. Webster

asked the woman, “D’ ya think you’re tough?”

      The others around the gym looked and smiled.

      “Tough enough,” said Cake, taken aback by the abrupt woman, “I’m a bla...”

      His sentence cut short when she thumped him on the nose.

      Cake looked shocked as she again went to punch him. He blocked her shot, so she kicked his leg and stood back into an attacking stance.

      “The first lesson,” the woman said, “always be prepared.” She then launched a vicious assault, kicking and punching Cake, who, although blocking most of the attacks still got hit. Now angry, he retaliated, punching and kicking back at the woman, who blocked each strike and punched him again on the nose. Cake was becoming irate. The woman, noticing this, stood back, and smiled.

      “Yeah okay, you can join. But we need to work on your defence and karma; it was too easy to rile you into making mistakes.”

      Cake glared at the woman and looked at the other kickboxers, who were giggling as they watched the pair.

      “I’m Jade,” said the woman extending her hand. “I am the head instructor.”

      Cake, though feeling perturbed, said, “So you attack all new members, do you? What would happen if I couldn’t defend myself? Luckily I am a kickboxer.”

      Jade chuckled and replied, “I don’t attack everyone, only the cocksure ones, Mr Blackbelt.” She pointed to Cake’s bag and the large cotton embroidered badge, showing the Zendo logo on his black belt tied around the handle.

      Cake looked at his bag and then smiled at the woman.

      “Oh!” he stammered, feeling embarrassed. “My name’s Ben, but everybody calls me ‘Cake.’”

      After their initial contact, Cake and Jade hit it off. Cake found Jade intriguing, down to earth, and didn’t smell of cooking oil. Jade found Cake to be a kind, humble and attractive man. Everyone soon realised by the way they looked at each other and their lingering glances that the pair were falling for each other, and betting on which one would have the nerve to ask the other out. Although they had strong feelings for each other, they were both shy, neither realising how the other one felt.

      Cake couldn’t take his mind off Jade and the kickboxing sessions became the highlight of his week.

      The hair salon where Jade worked met at a nightclub for its Christmas party and Jade invited the kickboxers. Cake felt a little uneasy in the large nightclub. The party was the usual affair with people separated into their individual little groups. Jade could see that Cake looked uncomfortable and out of place, like a lost puppy. She left her group of hairdressing colleagues and went over to him. Cake stood alone with a bottle of Bacardi Breezer looking at the crowded dance floor.

      “Glad you could make it,” Jade shouted above the noise of the music.

      “Thanks for inviting me,”

      There was an awkward silence between the two as music blasted out. Neither knew what to say next and both stared at each other for several moments, until Jade asked, “You smell nice, what’s that you’ve got on?” referring to Cake’s aftershave.

      Cake looked thoughtful, smirked, and replied, “A hard, but I didn’t think you could smell it,” he laughed.

      Jade looked confused and then figured it out. That broke the ice and Jade giggled and said, “Well it would be a shame to waste a good hard.” She took the bottle from his hand and placed it on a table.

      “Let’s get out of here and go somewhere quieter,” she said, and suggested, “Let’s go to my place.”

      The couple walked hand in hand out of the nightclub, with the kickboxers cheering them on.

      Jade was a few years older than Cake, with brown wavy hair, brown eyes, and impish features. She resembled a smaller, muscular, Catherine Zeta-Jones. Cake marvelled at her feminine, well-defined body as they lay entwined, naked in each other’s arms on a cold Christmas morning in Jade’s single bed at her flat above the hair salon.

      Cake felt nauseous by the overpowering smell coming from the chemicals in the salon, which he also could smell on Jade, but thought she smelt a lot better than female cooks did.

      It was the first serious relationship for both of them. Cake and Jade became inseparable, spending all their free time together. Cake told Jade about his heightened olfactory senses, informing her he wasn’t being a cheeky twat by saying he couldn’t stay the night at the salon because it stank. The smell of ammonia in the hair dye made him retch.

      Although they both had good incomes, with the astronomical price of property in London, Cake entered baking competitions to make purchasing an apartment possible.

      The couple raised a sizeable deposit and took out a mortgage on a swanky apartment, midway between the Avalon and Jade’s salon in Knightsbridge.

      Madly in love, they enjoyed their life together; planning to marry when they both felt settled enough to start a family.

      However, for the time being, they were content living in the limelight of the Pâtissier Phenom, with Cake winning every competition he entered.

      Jade surprised Cake frequently. She was a successful hairstylist with a wicked sense of humour and a strange interest in horror, as Cake found out when she wrote a novel about a cocaine addict, who sniffed the ashes of an unknown disintegrated vampire and turned into Keith Richards, which she had published.

      Cake had now been working at the Avalon for three years, and built a top-class reputation. When the owners announced they had sold out for a massive profit to a corporation. Cake, remembering his experience with the Savoy, decided it was now time for him to move on and handed in his notice shortly before The Baker of the Year Award.

      Despite lucrative offers of employment from other top restaurants, and the Avalon’s offer of a generous pay increase. Cake, at the pinnacle of his profession, wanted to branch out with Jade and run a bakery business.

      Cake now felt happy knowing it would be the last time he would attend The Baker of the Year Award or any more awards ceremonies as only sponsored chefs from top restaurants and hotels could enter. Cake always felt uncomfortable and realised he looked awful in a suit with his stocky body balancing on thin spindly legs. Even though top class London tailors made his suits to measure, they hung off him as if a cack-handed blind person had made them. He’d always felt it unfair on his peers entering these competitions because of his heightened olfactory sense, perfect palate, and exceptional talent gave him an indisputable advantage over them. He now wanted to bring his flavours and delicacies from the South and its decadent clientele and make them available in the North. The couple had been together now for three years. They found premises in the Lincoln city centre and having it converted it into a bakery and pâtisserie, which had been Cake’s dream for a long time.

      Jade wanted to venture north with Cake and help him in his endeavour. Although content with her life in London and would miss the money and adulation given to her around London by being with her cooking superstar fiancé, she knew Cake was unhappy working in large hotels. Jade’s job paid well and with Cake’s high salary along with the prize money from competitions, and bonuses, and although having to pay a mortgage in London, they scraped enough money together to finance their Lincoln venture, which was almost complete. Jade regularly commuted to Lincoln to check the building’s progress. Cake was finishing his job at the Avalon in a few weeks’, when he and Jade would then move to the Northern city.

      The big day arrived when ‘CAKE’S Bakery & Pâtisserie’ opened its doors to the public. For Cake and Jade, it was now time to see if the fruits of their labour would pay off. They stood in the pâtisserie like proud parents waiting to show their new-born to the world.

      “The place smells wonderful,” said Jade and kissed Cake, who had been preparing and baking with his two bakers since 5:00 am, sending heavenly aromas drifting through the pâtisserie.

      Cake looked nervous