Bridget polished glasses, as if nothing was wrong. Isabella and Sofia emerged and slid into their places. Isabella began to eat her treat as if she’d not knocked a girl down over one. After carefully taking in Jack and Bridget, Sofia set to work on hers, unusually quiet.
“Isabella,” Bridget called. “Good thing that I made up an extra batch of bun dough today. From what I hear, we’ll be busy tonight making up a pan for your class tomorrow. Jack, could you tell her so there’s no misunderstanding?”
“Let me get this straight first. Everyone will get one? How many are there?”
“Twenty-four, twenty-five...and the teacher.”
“Don’t forget the principal. And the janitor.”
She ignored his sarcasm. “Perfect. We’ll do two pans, to be sure. And we’ll make an extra big one for the girl from today so she won’t need to feel jealous anymore.”
Isabella listened to Jack’s translation and frowned. “She was...jealous?”
“Of course,” Bridge explained. “People drive from miles around to buy these buns.”
“Except for the ones who came today,” Jack interjected, still shaking his head over Bridge’s decision to give every single one of their breakfast customers a free minicinni as an unspoken apology for her aunt’s crime. He hadn’t been able to persuade her that everyone would understand it wasn’t her fault and that they might not even blame Penny—hadn’t she herself said that anyone who met the girls would understand?—that if they didn’t, a couple mouthfuls of sugary bread wasn’t going to cut it. Not a single customer mentioned the newspaper article, as he’d predicted.
Bridge had credited the minicinnis. And here she was falling back on them again to get Isabella out of trouble. “The principal only asked for an apology from Isabella to the girl involved,” he said.
“Which she’ll also get.”
“You are already stretched to the breaking point between the restaurant and the Crates campaign. You are not responsible for Isabella. I am.”
“Then why did you tell me?”
Because he’d come to see Bridge as a parent-partner. He wasn’t prepared to have that conversation with her yet, so he said, “People tell other people their problems so that they can find a good way to solve them. Not to pawn them off.”
Bridge looked over at the girls licking the last bit of gooey icing off their fingers. “I can’t,” she whispered. “Not when it comes to those two. My head knows they’re yours, but my heart—I think I fell in love with them the minute I saw them.”
Music to his ears. Stadium-filled, sold-out, wild music, but...she didn’t get how worn out she was becoming. If she was dead set on taking care of his girls, then the least he could do was treat her right.
He’d win the bet this weekend, one way or another. Two dates where he could treat her with the same attention she gave to his kids, a classroom, the town’s poor.
No minicinnis involved.
* * *
“COOKIE OR CARROT?” Jack said to the girls that night as they slipped and slid like seals in their bubble bath. Said in English, he found it a fun way to build their vocabulary and to learn more about them.
“Cookie,” said Sofia and Isabella together.
“Milk or juice?”
“Juice,” Sofia said.
Isabella hesitated, then said, “Milk.”
“Hamburger or hot dog?”
“Hot dog!” said Sofia. Hot lunch at her school had been hot dogs and they were now number one on her list of favorite foods.
“Hamburger,” Isabella said with a shake of her head at Sofia.
Her definitiveness caught Jack’s interest. “Why?”
“Hot dogs come with ketchup and mustard. Hamburgers are meat and cheese and tomato and—” she gave him the word in Spanish for which he translated “—and lettuce. Hamburgers are more food.”
“But hot dogs taste better,” Sofia argued.
“Taste doesn’t fill you up,” Isabella said.
Sofia seemed crushed by her sister’s logic.
“Chocolate ice cream or chocolate cake?” There. At least Isabella would have to choose something totally fun.
Sofia waffled back and forth but Isabella’s answer came quick. “Chocolate cake. Because,” she said in anticipation of Jack’s question, “I can save it for later, if I’m full.”
Sofia swished water at her sister. “You are never full.”
That was the truth. Despite the stuffed freezers at the house and the extra food at the restaurant, Isabella still cleaned off her plate like a starving dog.
“Hey, smells like peaches and cream in here,” Bridget said from the bathroom doorway. She looked like peaches and cream in a faded orange sweatshirt. “Book story or Bridgie story?”
Jack and Bridget had figured out that if she didn’t come along, the girls would stay in the tub until, as he’d warned them, the water turned to ice and they’d be stuck there until spring thaw. After a sisterly debate that ended with Jack putting them on a countdown, book story won out. Next there was the issue of which Christmas book of the two Bridge held up.
“The girl and the singing insect,” Sofia said, shooting from the tub, water droplets flying. She hopped from the tub and Jack caught her up in a towel.
“The mouse sister and the big bed with the small blanket,” Isabella said. “It’s longer.”
A huge advantage that Sofia agreed to.
“I’d choose the same, girls,” Jack said, rubbing down Sofia. “Anything to spend a minute longer with Bridge.”
“More like anything to put off lights-out,” Bridget said. “I’ll meet you in the bedroom, girls.”
That cue was like a starting gun for them, as they raced through teeth brushing and getting into pajamas to cuddle down with their new favorite person. And his long-time favorite.
Since they were reading a book tonight, they all had to squeeze close together to see the pictures amid the heap of toys, books, clothes and girl-related detritus. He really ought to sort through it all, which became too apparent when Bridge finished reading and returned the hardcover to the stack of library books on the bedside table and they all cascaded to the floor.
“Here,” Bridget said, “I can move a bunch of Auntie Penny’s stuff—” she picked up three ceramic figurines of cats, a flashlight and a bottle of lotion “—and put it in the drawer.”
She opened it and froze. She turned around to look at Jack and then Isabella.
“What?” He flipped himself over the bed to see. Inside the drawer were a sandwich bag of sunflower seeds, another of unshelled peanuts, two juice boxes, two granola bars, a sandwich bag of raisins and a jar of green olives.
“Is this yours, Isabella?” Jack said.
She looked equal parts guilty and resolved. She gave a single nod.
Bridget gently closed the drawer and Jack followed her lead. “Okay,” he said. “Just so we know and don’t take it. Okay?”
She nodded again.
“I’ll take the knickknacks to my—Deidre’s room,” Bridget said, as if Isabella’s hoarding was as normal as pie. “Good night, girls.”
“Good night, Bridgie,” Sofia said. Isabella’s quiet reply came a couple of beats later.
“Is Bridgie angry at me?” Isabella whispered as Jack kissed her good-night.
“No, no.”
“She’ll still give me cinnamon buns?”
“Yes,” Jack said. “For as long as you want.” He had an idea. “Me or Bridgie’s cinnamon buns?”
“You,” Sofia said. “I guess.”
“You,” Isabella said. Jack’s ego swelled. “Because if you brought us to Bridgie’s cinnamon buns, then you can bring us more food.” And deflated.
CHAPTER TEN
BRIDGET HAD FORGOTTEN how much mind space a date with Jack occupied. Having lost the bet by a lousy
twelve bucks on Saturday night, she set the skating date with him for Tuesday. Since then, she’d checked the weather half a dozen times a day to make sure the expected temperature didn’t dip beyond the already chilly minus seventeen degrees Celsius. She sneaked two portions of the specialty hot chocolate from the house to the restaurant. She got her skates sharpened. She’d debated if she should wear her snow pants or go with leggings underneath her jeans. She splurged on a pink toque with fleece lining and matching gloves, justifying it as a Christmas present to herself.
At least she was keeping her excitement to herself. Jack blabbed to everyone.
“Mel,” he said, pouring him his dark roast on Monday, “you’re the guy to talk to about getting a good deal. How might I go about getting a pair of used skates by Tuesday at eight thirty in the evening?”
Loud enough for the whole restaurant to hear. Marlene, at the next table, perked right up. “That’s awfully specific,” she said. “What happens then?”
“Funny you should ask. Bridget and I are going skating on the lake,” he said, topping her cup without her prompting.
“You mean doing laps as a kind of sponsored thing for the Brigade?” News about the Brigade had spread through the town like spring cracks on the lake ice.
“Nope. Just me and Bridget.” At the counter packaging up a dozen holiday buns for Daphne, Bridget felt all eyes turn to her.
“Say, Jack,” she said, “should we have the town run an announcement on their highway road-alert signs?”
“I think that’s a lovely idea,” Daphne said hurriedly. “The skating, not the signs. Mel and I were out there yesterday with all the nieces and nephews. It was just lovely.”
“Lovely? Wobbling around on blades in the frozen dark?” Marlene shrank under Daphne’s quelling stare. “All right, all right. Lovely, it is.”
And if the restaurant crowd wasn’t bad enough, home life was even more excruciating.
“Just so you know,” Jack had announced during Sunday supper, when they were trying to figure out who would decorate the Sandersons’ tree outside and who would bake Elsie McPherson her family recipe for molasses cookies, “that Bridget is unavailable Tuesday evening.”
“Uh, okay,” Krista said, with a questioning lift to her voice.
“Good. I just wanted to get that out there.” He grinned at Bridget, leaving her to explain or, worse, suffer through his shameless telling.
“Yeah, okay,” she said. “We’re going out skating Tuesday night. Down at the lake, after you girls are in bed. For an hour.”
“Or two,” Jack amended. “We might go out for hot chocolate afterward.”
“Hot chocolate,” Sofia said dreamily. “Can I come?”
“No,” Isabella said. “We’re going to be in bed.”
“That’s right,” Jack said, his grin still in place. “Just me and Bridget.” His voice dropped as if they were the only ones there at the table, without her whole entire family staring, their forks suspended.
Bridget said, “We won’t be skating alone. Other people will be there. Tons.”
“Well,” Deidre said, “then we need to schedule for someone to be here while they’re out.”
“I can stay here,” Mara said, “and wrap presents for the Giffords.”
“Oh,” said Krista, “that reminds me to bring back ribbon from the shop. Rebekah said I can have ten yards of whatever I want. What kind should I get?”
Answering that question took the rest of supper, during which Jack thankfully made no further comment.
That didn’t stop Krista and Mara. They crept upstairs the second the house fell quiet and burrowed under the covers on either side of Bridget. “So it’s a date, then,” Krista said into her ear.
“Shush. He can hear.”
“I’m whispering.”
“He can hear what customers are thinking, he can hear you.”
That didn’t stop Mara. “Are you and Jack getting back together?” she whispered into Bridget’s other ear.
“No,” Bridget said. “We’re going skating because I lost a bet with him at work. He earned more tips than me.”
Krista said, “I don’t believe that.”
Mara looked skeptical, too.
“I think you purposely blew it,” Krista said, “because you wanted to go on a date with him but didn’t want to admit it.”
Exactly what Jack claimed, which didn’t surprise her. That Krista thought so suggested there might be truth behind it. Or at least, a willingness on her part to lose. She hadn’t thrown the bet, but neither could she bring herself to care that she had lost. Quite the opposite. “Think what you want.”
Krista never had a problem doing that. “You two should get back together. It’s been twelve years, you guys have clearly been holding out for one another and, let’s face it, you’re not getting any younger.”
“I’m thirty-one, not fifty-one. Just because I am the oldest of us, doesn’t mean that I’m old, period.”
“It would be nice,” Mara mused. “You’re the missing piece for Jack and his girls. You’d turn them into a family.”
And that was the problem. Her sisters and Deidre all seemed to think it highly convenient for her and Jack to become romantic partners because, hey, they were partners in everything else. Once upon a time only their love joined them together. Now it was something that happened on a weekday evening for an hour or two.
Somehow they’d become the stereotypical married-with-kids couple without the courtship, proposal, wedding or honeymoon years.
And, yes, love was more than moonlight and roses, but well, a little romance helped.
* * *
AS JACK TIED A SKATE, the lace broke.
“Didn’t Mel say the laces needed replacing?” Bridget was already making figure eights in front of where he was sitting. Raring to join her, he’d hauled on the laces too hard.
“I thought they’d last one time,” Jack said. “Maybe I can tie a knot and relace them. You go and skate while I do this.” He’d already seen her look longingly at the soaring Christmas tree, with its multicolored lights, in the center of the skating area.
Instead, she sat beside him on the bench and examined his skate under the beam of one of the floodlights staged around the skating area. “Jack, it’s totally shot. It’ll break again if you retie it.”
“I’ll go out on my boots,” he said. No way was he giving up on his date with Bridget. She was wearing the cutest pink toque and matching gloves, and underneath her coat a pink sweater peeked out. He’d see the rest later when they had hot chocolate. She knew he liked her best in pink. Though really he’d take her in any color, but in high school she’d nagged him into picking a color, and so he’d settled on the one she happened to be wearing at the time.
“You tell everyone about going out with me, and then you don’t have proper equipment,” she scolded, untying her skates.
“Go do your thing. I can watch.”
“I fully intend to. And, no, you’re not going to walk and watch. That’s creepy.”
She brought out a Swiss Army knife. Jack experienced a happy shock. “Is that the one I gave you back in high school?”
“Could be,” she said and cut off part of her lace. She handed it to him. “Use this.”
“But now we’ve got two broken laces,” he said. “What are you going to do?”
“I wrapped lace around my ankle three times it was so long. I’ll rethread and be good to go.”
He sat with her lace. She’d wrecked her own lace to fix his, to make it so they could still have this time together.
Bent over relacing, she glanced at him. “What’s the matter? Hurry up.”
He evened the laces, his and hers together, tied a knot and started to do up his skate. He saw they were at roughly the same spot. “Race you.”
In answer she worked fast
er. He bit back a grin and leaned in to give her a run for her money. Her blades hit the ice while he still fumbled with his final knot.
“I let you win,” he said. “Like you let me win double or nothing, so you could go skating with me.”
“And why would you let me win now?”
“Because I’m a gentleman.”
She snorted. “Because all your years away have turned your fingers into little, fragile, tropic-loving stumps of their former polar greatness.”
Thirteen years in hot, dry or wet countries had definitely done a number on his skating skills. “This is not,” he said, his legs wobbling and splaying like a newborn giraffe’s, “like riding a bike.”
Bridget did a neat crossover in front of him, her blade slicing the ice.
“Show-off,” he grumbled, not caring if she broke into an Olympic routine of spins and sowcows, or whatever that word was. All the more reason to watch her.
“Ah, you poor thing.” She stretched out her hands to him. “C’mon. Hang on and we’ll do this together.”
He grabbed hold of her hands. He’d baby-step all night long if it meant keeping her close. At the Christmas tree, she tipped back her head, the floodlights and the thousand pinpoints of colored light casting her face in a warm glow. “Guess how many lights there are.”
“I dunno. Do you?”
“Yes, but I want you to guess.”
“I hate to jump to conclusions. Let’s count.”
“Yeah, because we’ve nothing better to do.”
“We don’t.” His words came out scratchy and low, because suddenly he couldn’t manage to speak in a normal voice.
“Jack—” she said warningly. But she didn’t pull away from his hand.
“One, two—”
“Six thousand, two hundred,” she blurted. “I read it in the paper. Apparently, there’s a really bored public-works employee who calculated by the number of strands how many there are.”
“I was just counting off the seconds it would take before you said something.”
She growled in annoyance and snatched away her hand. Thinking quickly, he slipped and slid, then clutched at her coat sleeve, pulling them back together.
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