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her wineglass, a soft blush dusting her cheeks.
    “Perhaps it hasn’t been quite as long as that,” she said, taking a sip of the ’03 Bordeaux.
    She was an enigma. A beautiful one, but an enigma all the same. He was still trying to figure out his attraction to her. She was so different from the flashy women he usually dated, but he’d be damned if he hadn’t thought about her at least a thousand times today.
    Maybe it was the mysterious air about her. So often, the women he dated left nothing to the imagination, both physically and personality-wise. Lorraine was like a puzzle, gradually revealing delicate pieces of herself.
    Except for one obvious piece.
    “So, now that I’ve convinced you to join me for dinner, what would it take to convince you to tell me your last name?”
    Her alluring smile lit up her eyes. “My last name? I didn’t know it was such an interesting subject.”
    “It wasn’t until it proved so hard to uncover. You only listed your first name on the cake order form. You paid for it in cash. Why the big mystery, Lorraine? Are you in the witness protection program or something?”
    “Perhaps I go by a single name, as Madonna and Beyoncé do.”
    “So you’re secretly a singer?”
    She shook her head and, with a laugh, said, “I can’t sing a note.”
    Maybe not, but her laughter was musical. It traveled along his nerve endings, its soothing, melodic effect causing his skin to pebble. Damn, the woman was giving him goose bumps. This kind of stuff did not happen to him.
    “I do have a last name,” she finally said, setting her wineglass on the linen tablecloth. “But it comes with, shall we say, baggage?”
    “I know how that is,” Carter said with a nod.
    She tilted her head to the side, understanding dawning in those sympathetic brown eyes. “Yes, I can see that you do. Being a scion of one of Chicago’s most elite families comes with a lot of responsibility, doesn’t it? And scrutiny.”
    “I get my fair share,” Carter said. “And anything I do reflects on the bakery. I won’t deny that there’s pressure there. I’ve got enough negativity that I have to fight in my family. I don’t want to be the one who does something that harms the reputation of Lillian’s.”
    “My goodness.” She let out a deep breath. “We’re more alike than I first realized.”
    “Does that mean you really do have a last name?” he asked. “Because I know I have one.”
    “Would you please stop?” She laughed. “Just Lorraine shall do for now.”
    “Fine, I’ll call you Just Lorraine,” he teased. “How did you end up with a name like Lorraine, anyway?” Carter grimaced at the callousness of his question. “I’m sorry. That didn’t sound as rude in my head.”
    She laughed again, the sound still musical. “I’m not offended. I know it’s old-fashioned. It’s a family name,” she explained. “My grandmother’s.”
    “I think that name may contribute to this illusion that you’re not fun. How about I call you Rainey?”
    “My mother would fall away in a dead faint.”
    “What? You’ve never had a nickname?”
    She shook her head.
    “You mean to tell me that when you were five years old and wrote on the walls with crayons, your mother actually called you Lorraine? Not Rainey, or Lainey, or Pumpkin?”
    “Pumpkin?” She laughed even harder. “No, it has always been Lorraine. And if Mother was really upset, it was Lorraine Elise.”
    “Uh-oh, the first and middle name treatment. I’ve been there. Nearly got myself kicked out of the house a few times.”
    Her eyes widened. “Your parents threatened to kick you out of the house?”
    “Two households,” Carter said. “Spent half the time with Dad and the other half with Mom, but I wreaked havoc equally on both.”
    “I went through a rebellious phase,” Lorraine said, poking at the duck confit with her fork. “I discovered a taste for sneaking out. The coup de grâce occurred when I borrowed one of the cars and went