by Linda Seed
“I … thank you.” She nodded a few times. “Thanks.” The plate began to tilt again, and Lacy grabbed it from Cassie before more cookies could fall overboard.
“I’ll just get this,” Lacy said.
Dylan looked from Cassie to Lacy to Brian and back again. “Who’s the stiff?” He motioned toward Brian.
“If you’re done ordering, could I maybe …” The guy in line behind Brian gestured hopefully toward the front spot.
“Oh. Right.” Brian paid for his order and stepped aside, trying to look nonchalant.
“I have to … do things.” Cassie gestured vaguely around her and retreated to the kitchen.
While Brian waited for his latte and his scone, he mingled with the crowd. Cassie’s and Lacy’s parents were there, along with her other sisters, her brother, her brothers-in-law, and a few nieces and nephews. Brian recognized a few of the Delaneys, including Ryan and Gen.
In addition, it seemed like half the town had come out to see what Cassie had done with the old Moonstone Mocha place. People stood around eating, drinking coffee, and chatting, musing about this piece of decor and the enticing flakiness of this or that baked good.
In the front and back gardens, people sat at tables or in Adirondack chairs in the shade of oaks and pines, eating and talking. The atmosphere was festive and fun.
Brian was genuinely impressed.
“You did it. You really did it,” he said when Cassie brought him his drink and his scone out in the back garden. He was standing near a burbling fountain while birds chirped in the trees overhead. The morning was perfect—clear and bright—as though Cassie had special-ordered it.
“I did it,” she agreed.
“Listen,” he began.
Cassie wiped her hands on her apron and cut him off. “I don’t have time for a fight,” she said. “I don’t know if that’s what we’re about to do—if we’re about to fight—but if it is, I can’t do it right now. I mean, I’m willing, but it’ll have to be later, because—”
“I didn’t come to fight.”
She nodded. “Okay. That’s good.”
“I came to congratulate you on your place. It’s really great. And I came to tell you that I’m back on the Central Coast for good.” He wanted to tell her she’d been right about his mother, right about everything, but it all stuck in his throat and he couldn’t manage to get the words out.
“You are? Really?”
“Yes. Really.”
“How’s your mother feeling?” She said it without rancor or sarcasm, and without any hint of judgment in her voice. And that had to have been hard, had to have taken some effort. He loved her for it.
“She’s …” He shrugged. “She seems to have improved significantly.” And then he thought, fuck it. “She made a miraculous comeback when I told her we’d had a fight and we might have broken up.”
Cassie had thought that when this moment came, when Brian told her she’d been right about Lisa, Cassie would relish saying she’d told him so. She’d thought her victory would feel good.
Instead, she saw the hurt in his eyes, heard him valiantly try to keep the pain out of his voice, and she felt like shit.
This wasn’t the time to gloat. This wasn’t the time for I told you so.
Instead, she put her hand on his arm and squeezed it a little. “Oh, Brian. Are you okay?”
He bobbed his head. “Yeah. Of course.”
But he wasn’t—she could see that.
“I want to talk about all of this,” she said. “I do. But right now …” She gestured toward the customers, toward the activity around her.
“I should have helped you. I said I would, but I didn’t.”
She tilted her head a little as she regarded him. “Right now I need someone to circulate with a plate of samples. Are you up for it?”
Cassie wasn’t ready to act like nothing bad had happened between herself and Brian. She wasn’t ready to pretend everything was okay.
But neither her compassion nor her practical side would allow her to make an issue of it right now.
He’d wanted to believe in his mother, and she’d hurt him—again. Cassie couldn’t bring herself to tear into him when the pain of that was still so raw.
And even if she had been inclined to tear into him, this was not the time. The grand opening was succeeding beyond her expectations, and she needed to give her attention and emotional energy to that.
“Are you okay? Is everything okay?” Lacy stage-whispered to Cassie in the kitchen as soon as they had a moment of semi-privacy.
“I’m fine,” Cassie assured her. “Are we out of the lemon–poppy seed muffins?”
“Yes, we’re out of them. And don’t change the subject.”
“I wasn’t changing the subject. Or, I was, but only because I really needed to know about the lemon–poppy seed muffins.”
“Cassie—”
“He had a thing happen with his mother, and now he knows she was playing him, and he’s sad, and … he and I have a lot to talk about, but I can’t do it now, so he’s passing around samples.”
Lacy tilted her head as she considered that. “Well, I can tell you that he’s not passing out any lemon–poppy seed muffins. Those things moved faster than the Space Shuttle.”
That night, Cassie went to Brian’s place so they could talk things out. But by the time she got there, she was too tired to talk. She stretched out on his sofa with her feet in his lap while he rubbed them.
Thor lay stretched out on the floor beside her, and she absently rubbed his head with her hand.
“Ooh, right there. That’s the spot.” She moaned with pleasure as Brian applied pressure to her right arch, moving his thumb in firm circles.
“You were on your feet a lot today,” he observed.
“I’m used to that, mostly, because of all the house-cleaning for Central Coast Escapes. And I spend a lot of time standing when I do an elaborate cake. But today I was at the bakery at four a.m. and I stayed until two hours after closing. I’m wrecked.”
“You starting to regret your career choices?”
“Oh, hell no. Today was the most fun I’ve had in a long time. Did you see how many people were there? I mean, I know a lot of it was curiosity—people wanted to see what was going on—but everybody seemed to love the food. A lot of them will come back.”
“They will.” He turned his attention to the ball of her foot, kneading and rubbing.
After a while, she brought up the thing they both knew they had to address.
“I didn’t think you were going to come.”
“I didn’t think I was, either,” he admitted.
“We both said things.…”
“We did.”
And just when she could have called him on the hurtful things he’d said to her and all of the ways he’d been wrong, she decided instead to let him keep that essential part of himself that was so at risk right now. She let him hold onto his pride.
“I’m glad you came,” she said. She sat up, reached out, and squeezed his arm. “It meant a lot for you to be there.”
“I’m glad I did, too.” He let go of her foot, leaned forward, took her face in his hands, and kissed her, his mouth caressing hers.
He shifted on the sofa to align his body with hers, and he lowered himself onto her, exploring the feel and the taste of her.
After that, they didn’t do any talking at all.
Brian knew he couldn’t avoid saying the words forever. They were festering inside him, and he needed to get them out.
When they were lying in his bed later, bathed in the moonlight slanting in through the window, he finally said them.
“My relationship with my mother is so dysfunctional, I wonder sometimes if I’m too fucked up to make things work with any woman. I wanted to think it was different with Lisa this time. Then, when I finally saw that she’d been lying to me—again—I just …”
“It hurt your confidence,” she said.
“Yeah. It did.”
�
��It’s not your fault.” She rolled onto her side to look at him. “I don’t know if anyone’s told you that, but her leaving when you were little? And then staying away and only coming around when she needs or wants something? None of that is your fault, Brian.”
He nodded. He cleared his throat and rubbed his eyes, and she knew he was trying not to cry. Her heart hurt for him.
“I know,” he said after a while. “And yeah, people have told me that. Ike. Ike’s mother. My father. But it still hurts like hell.”
She held him close and let him feel that she was strong enough, solid enough, for both of them.
“When you think about it,” she said, “you’ve got two chances to have a good family life. First with the one you’re born into. And then with the one you choose for yourself.”
“But the only example I’ve had is one that didn’t work. What if I can’t do any better than that? What if I’m like her?”
“You did have better examples. You had your father, who loved you and was there for you. And you had Ike’s family. You saw what a solid home life looked like. You can do it if you really want to.”
He ran one hand over her hair, smoothing it. “You really think so?”
“I really do.”
She hadn’t expected to be the first one to say it post-crisis, but he needed to hear it right now. And anyway, it was true.
“Brian?”
“Hmm?”
“I love you.”
“Cassie, I’m sorry I didn’t—”
She put a finger over his mouth to quiet him. “That’s not what you’re supposed to say right now.”
He grinned and kissed her deeply. “I love you too, Cassie.”
Chapter 38
Brian made up for lost time by creating a marketing plan for Cassie’s Cakery that was both comprehensive and inventive.
“Social media—that’s a no-brainer,” he told her late one afternoon after the bakery’s four p.m. closing time. “You’ve got to be on Facebook and Twitter, yeah. But Instagram and Pinterest are going to be your key media.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Because of the visuals. You need to put up something beautiful—could be a baked good, could be a scene from your garden—every day, or at least three times a week.”
Cassie saw the point of that, of course, but she was already swamped with work. When would she find the time?
“Anything else?” she asked.
“Of course. You need a website with online ordering. I can help you with that. And Cambria’s very community-oriented. You need to be involved. Sponsor the community fund-raisers. Offer desserts at cost for the Greenspace auction or the high school boosters annual reverse draw. That kind of thing. Not only is it good PR, it also gets everyone tasting your products.”
“Okay.” She nodded. “I can do that.”
“You need to get in touch with the local hotels,” he went on. “How many of them offer a free breakfast? Almost all of them, right? Your muffins and croissants need to be the centerpiece of every continental breakfast in town. And,” he said, “we need to do more videos. People on social media are more likely to watch a video than they are to read a static ad. But that’s just a small part of it. If we make you a YouTube personality, people are going to travel to Cambria just to visit your bakery.”
“They will?”
“Sure they will. And as far as the locals go, how many wedding cake orders did you get from the videos we did?”
“Four. And I’m still getting inquiries.”
“Well, there you go.”
They were sitting at the kitchen table in Cassie’s parents’ house, each of them with a cold beer. Nancy was puttering around the kitchen humming happily, excited that Cassie had started bringing her boyfriend around.
Nancy put a basket of tortilla chips and a bowl of salsa on the table. “Here you go, you two.” She squeezed Brian’s shoulder—she actually squeezed his shoulder.
Cassie imagined that Nancy was already counting the new grandchildren she might have.
“Thanks, Mom,” Cassie said.
They ate and drank as Cassie pondered her future.
“The grand opening was huge,” she said. “I mean, I thought it might go okay, but … I had no idea. I’m going to have to hire at least two more people, especially for the summer tourist season. Three, if I get orders from hotels, like you mentioned.”
“You’re going to need even more than that if you want to spend the bulk of your time on wedding cakes,” Nancy said.
“She’s right,” Brian put in.
“I knew I liked you,” Nancy quipped.
Cassie sat back in her chair and sighed happily. “This thing really might work.”
“Of course it’s going to work,” Brian said.
“Now if I only had several more hours in a day,” Cassie added.
“Listen.” Brian set his beer down on the table and leaned forward. “Now that the repairs on my house are done, I’m putting it on the market. You think you could use some of those limited hours to look at real estate with me? I’d like your perspective.”
Cassie blinked a few times in surprise. “You’re selling your house? When did that happen?”
He shrugged. “I’ve been planning it for a while. I mentioned it when we met, remember? That’s how I found out about the termites and the mold—I was getting it ready to sell. It’s an old house, and it’s a money pit. I need something more up to date.”
“Okay.” Cassie nodded. “Were you going to look in San Luis Obispo?”
“I was thinking Cambria.”
“You were?”
“Sure. Why not?”
Nancy hummed a little louder, and the song was slightly more jaunty than before Brian’s announcement.
“I’d love to help you look, but I’m pretty busy,” Cassie said.
“You’ll make time,” Nancy told her.
They took a Monday—a day when the bakery was closed—and toured properties with Brian’s Realtor. Cassie noted, with some puzzlement, that Brian seemed to be interested in houses larger than the one he currently had, even though it was just him and Thor.
“Do you like the kitchen in this one?” he asked, walking around amid the granite countertops and the sleek maple cabinetry.
“It’s nice. Spacious. Good appliances. But you don’t cook.”
“Maybe you’ll want to use it sometimes,” he said. “Like you did at Otter Bluff.”
Maybe she would. After all, she still lived in the Airstream, and the kitchen there was still more suited to a Barbie Dreamhouse.
“I guess I might,” she acknowledged.
“And how about the rest of the place?”
Cassie considered it. Three bedrooms. A big, open-concept great room with a stone fireplace. Two-car garage, three bathrooms, all recently renovated. A sliver of ocean view through the treetops.
It was a lovely house—one that, if she were being perfectly honest, made her heart hum.
“I love it,” she told him. “But isn’t it a little big for one person and a dog?”
“What if it were more than one person?” He raised his eyebrows in question.
“Are you planning to get a roommate?” Cassie, God help her, still didn’t see where he was going with this, even though she should have.
“Well … I was kind of hoping you’d be my roommate. And my bedmate. And my … you know. Life mate. If you’re up for it.”
Her jaw dropped, and she gaped at him.
“Are you … Brian, are you asking me to marry you?”
“Would you say yes to that?”
“I … Oh, God. I don’t know.” Her heart hammered in her chest, and her knees were suddenly weak.
“If you don’t know, then that doesn’t have to be what I’m asking. We could just move in together. And then … we’ll see.”
“We’ll see,” she repeated.
“Yes.”
She stepped away from him to clear her head, and she wandered thr
ough the house with him trailing behind. Suddenly, she could see it. She could see herself and Brian in this house, sharing a bed, sharing a life. She could see her big family gathering in the great room at Christmas or Thanksgiving, with Ike and Benny there, too. She could see Thor running around in the yard, chasing squirrels.
She could see all of it, and she wanted it.
“Okay.” She turned to him.
“Okay, what?”
“Okay, I’ll be your roommate. And your bedmate. And then … we’ll see.”
He pulled her into his arms and kissed her just as the Realtor walked in from outside. She’d stepped out to give them privacy, but it hadn’t turned out to be quite enough privacy.
“Oh. Ha, ha. Sorry,” she said.
“You want to help me write up an offer?” Brian asked her.
Epilogue
Ike and Benny got married in spring, and of course, Cassie made their wedding cake.
The cake was a four-tiered rustic design with a semi-naked application of frosting that showed hints of the layers underneath. Buttercream cabbage roses in a dusky pink cascaded down the front and pooled at the base.
Cassie had baked the cake not at Cassie’s Cakery, but in the kitchen of the house she shared with Brian in the Top of the World neighborhood. This cake wasn’t business, it was personal, so that seemed more appropriate.
The ceremony was held in the garden at Cambria Pines Lodge, with Ike and Benny exchanging vows in a gazebo beneath a canopy of climbing vines. They’d talked about doing it in Los Angeles, but Benny’s family was here, and so were many of Ike’s friends. Ike’s family had to travel north from San Diego, but most of them relished the opportunity to spend a long weekend in Cambria.
Brian was the best man, of course, and Benny had three maids of honor: her three sisters. She’d been unable to choose among them.
Cassie couldn’t take her eyes off Brian during the ceremony, even though she was supposed to be focusing on the bride and groom.
Brian looked good in a tux, but that wasn’t what she found so compelling. It was the way he glowed with happiness for his best friend, the way he couldn’t seem to wipe the big, goofy smile off his face.