The first time I saw the man who would be my husband, I was in the middle of an empty studio, pacing back and forth as I waited impatiently. My client was due any minute, and the cake I’d ordered with a delivery time of over an hour ago still hadn’t shown up. A cake smash photoshoot isn’t really worth much if there isn’t a cake to be smashed, after all. Luckily, just as I was about to tear out my ash blonde hair, the studio door opened a crack and I rushed over. Standing there, powdered sugar dusting his cheeks and a swipe of pink frosting in his stubble, was my wayward baker.

“You’re not Henry,” I blurted out, then clapped both hands over my mouth.

The strange baker chuckled, apparently amused that I’d been expecting the bakery’s owner – Henry – sixty years old, and jowls to the floor.

“What gave it away?” he laughed. “The lack of bald spot, or the disappearing beer gut?”

“Henry’s never late,” I tease.

“Unfortunately when Henry sold me the bakery, he transferred all the business but forgot to pass over the appointment books. I only just found the slip with these details on it this morning. My sincerest apologies.”

His blue eyes gazed into mine, and I couldn’t tear my glance from his.

“It’s fine,” I reply. “And thank you for making it on such short notice...”

“Jude,” he finished. “My name is Jude.”

“Beatrix,” I replied. “But everyone knows me as Bea.”

“Bumble? Honey?”

“Exactly,” I laughed. “Thus the name of my studio.”

I gestured to the wall behind me – a meadow was painted in the foreground, and a shining golden vinyl wall sticker took over the top half, reading Honeybea Photography.

“I specialize in newborn photography,” I explain. “But I do anything to do with kids. Birthday parties, baptisms, cake smash...”

“Thus the cake,” he replied.

“And the cutesy name.”

Just then, the client rushed in, a shrieking toddler on her hip festooned in the biggest, glitteriest tutu I had ever seen a tiny human wear.

“The cake,” Jude said with a smile, and pushed the box towards me. “Thanks again,” I said gratefully, and turned towards my client.

A moment later I heard was the studio door slam shut, and when I turned, I found one of the bakery’s new business cards taped to my desk.

“Lord of the Pies,” I muttered under my breath, stifling a laugh. “So Jude Orwell not only bakes, but apparently he also makes awful puns.”

And then the bejeweled toddler started shrieking once more, so I turned my attention to the job at hand.

I saw Jude again the next day. I stopped by the bakery and was surprised to see all the awnings out front had been repainted a soft mint colour, and Lord of the Pies was scrawled across it. When I opened the door, a bell jangled and Jude emerged from the back, dusting his hands on a floury apron.

“Bea,” he smiled. “What can I do for you today?”

“I just had to stop by and let you know how much I appreciated the pun,” I said with a smile.

“I was going to go with Life of Pie, but couldn’t go past a classic boys killing each other on an island reference.”

“It was a good choice. I’m sure all of the many fans of classic literature are very impressed.”

“Are there many of those in a small town such as this?”

“Just me. And now you,” I smiled. “And maybe a couple more.”

We flirted over caramel slice and rhubarb pies and gingerbread cookies for twenty minutes, and then he ushered me out back and we sat with cups of hot chocolate and split a chocolate chip cookie as twenty minutes because forty, and forty became an hour, and afternoon tea rolled into dinner.

Time passed just as easily the more we got to know each other. We picnicked in the park, where Jude carved our names into a tree trunk “Beatrix Paloma + Jude Zachary 4eva” inside a cartoon heart. We went to see terrible movies and threw popcorn at the screen, making out like lovesick teenagers in the back row. We drove to the beach in the middle of the night and ran in and out of the waves, kissing madly. We spent days in bed – sustained by cookies, and coffee, and kisses.

Jude proposed in Autumn, two years after we’d first met and eighteen months after we’d moved in together. I’d known he was going to do it – his usually steady hands got the shakes, and I could see the fluster in his eyes. I didn’t, however, expect him to propose in the middle of a rainstorm. We were on our way home from a baptism – I’d photographed and Jude had provided the cake. When we got home, I opened the car door and made a stupid joke about this being God’s way of tricking us into getting ourselves baptised – water pouring down over the both of us. Jude stared at me, laughed loudly, and then pulled me to him, kissing me thoroughly. And then he knelt down in a puddle, pulled out a diamond ring, and asked me to be his wife.

We planned our wedding quickly – we were still only relatively young, I was 25 and he was 27, but we saw no point in wasting time. Merging our business colours, we had a mint and gold themed wedding – polka dots and bow ties and pastel flowers everywhere. My cream lace dress was tea-length, and I wore fresh flowers in my hair, and walked down the aisle to Ed Sheeran. Jude was in a gray suit, with a mint bow tie, and his blue eyes shining under the perennially messy chocolate coloured hair I’d grown to adore.

We danced the night away, before switching out lace and suits for nothing at all once we were safe in the privacy of our own little home. We left the next day for our honeymoon in Paris – the home of beautiful pastries, and somewhere I’d wanted to photograph since I was just a little girl.

Together, we returned home full of carbohydrates, happiness, and a tiny surprise in the form of a baby girl, growing slowly in my belly. The town was just as we left it, and we settled back into our regular life in the tiny town of Winthrop, Washington. Weeks passed and I blamed every pair of tight jeans on the bread, and the fact that I’d married the world’s most delectable baker. Jude seemed to have his thoughts together a little more though, and came home with a brown paper package from the pharmacy. I peed on the stick, expecting to be able to laugh at him when a big fat negative sign appeared, and was absolutely floored when instead a pink plus sign came out of nowhere and threw me off track. I cried, and cried, and Jude kissed me, and kissed me some more, and somehow we ended up undressed on the floor of the bathroom. That was how we got into this predicament in the first place, I suppose.

Once I got a little more used to the news, I read every book I could from the local library, and employed a midwife as the nearest hospital was over an hours drive away. Our baby girl was born in the very early hours of a Saturday morning, after a fast and furious labour. Our midwife arrived with only just enough time to snap on a pair of gloves and catch our beautiful girl as she made her appearance.

We named her Anastasia Lulu – a call back to her French birthplace, and a princessy name to stand her in good stead for the rest of her life. With a head full of blonde hair and bright blue eyes, she was the spitting image of me as a baby. We settled into life, just us three, fairly quickly and despite a lack of sleep, I was happier than I had been in years. People popped by the bakery hoping to catch a glimpse of Annie, tucked up in her babycarrier as I wandered around out back while Jude baked. My photography business fell a little by the wayside, but my skills were in more demand than ever before. Every single thing Annie did warranted photographic evidence, and soon we filled every album in the house with her adorable face.

The years passed at super speed, and Annie’s fifth birthday loomed in front of us. This year, just like for the past three, she begged for a baby brother. Instead, we bought her a cat. We adopted her from the local pet rescue, and named her Blanche as soon as she got home and ruined one of Jude’s blancmanges, sitting on the kitchen bench. Annie and Blanche were a pair of trouble makers, and the cat certainly filled in Annie’s need for company. It didn’t, however, feel the hole in my heart that I started feeling once Annie stopped asking for a brother.

It took three months for me to work up the courage to ask Jude about trying for another baby, and he grinned and only replied that he’d been waiting for me to bring it up. He threw away my pills that very night, and we set about making another baby. As easy as it had been last time, this time was destined to be trickier. It took almost two years before we conceived, and just before Annie’s eighth birthday, we welcomed our second daughter into our life. Born once again at home, but speedier than the first, Jude caught her in his own hands as the midwife sped to our house. Eleanor Thisbe, given a name as whimsical as her big sister, was the opposite in almost every way. Quiet, dark-haired, and a daddy’s girl from the start, Nora was our old soul. Annie doted on her, and as Nora began to toddle, the two were often found holding hands in the backyard and both sporting those ridiculously large, glittery tutus I’d scoffed at years before. Childless me knew nothing about little girl happiness, not really.

And so life continued in Winthrop, Washington. Photographs were taken, cats ruined desserts, my husband continued coming up with his awful baking puns, and our girls grew and bloomed with happiness. That’s life, as I know it.