Stone considered the description. “Not bad,” he told her, nodding.
Danni cocked her head. “The description, or the pie?” she asked.
When she tilted her head like that, it made him want to sink his hands into her hair, frame her face and then discover what her lips tasted like.
“Both,” he answered without pausing to think about it.
“Good, because I made a couple for you to take home with you—for you, Virginia and my young assistant here,” Danni added, looking over toward Ginny and drawing the little girl into her inner circle.
For her part, Stone noticed, his daughter was far too busy eating to interrupt or insert her two cents into the conversation. Whatever secret ingredient the woman had put into the pie, it appeared to have a subduing effect on his daughter.
He could really get used to that.
“Just what’s in this thing?” He nodded toward the almost-consumed potpie before him.
She thought of what she’d put in. “Diced chicken breasts, peas, carrots, corn, green beans, some broth mixed with flour, pepper, salt and a little parmesan cheese—why?”
That sounded almost painfully ordinary. There had to be something more. “What else?”
She didn’t quite understand what he was trying to get her to say. She could only work with what she knew: the truth as it existed in this case.
“Nothing. It’s all poured into a pie crust and covered with another crust, then baked.”
He still found it hard to believe—not that the ingredients she’d just quoted had turned into an exceptionally tasty meal. The woman seemed to have a tight lock on the ability to make almost anything taste mouthwatering. What he found almost impossible to believe was that there wasn’t something “extra” done to it before she put the potpies into the oven.
“What else did you think was in there?” she asked, curious to hear his answer.
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said and followed it up with pure speculation. “Extract of valerian root, a dose of tryptophan, something like that.”
She looked at him, a little confused. Did he think she was trying to knock his daughter out, send her to slumber land until he was finished working? Just what sort of a person did he think she was?
“Why would I use something like that? This is supposed to be a potpie, not a sleeping aid.”
“I wasn’t thinking of sleeping, I was thinking more along the lines of tranquilizing,” he corrected, subtly indicating his daughter with his eyes. “The last time I saw Ginny that still, she had a hundred and three fever and an upper-respiratory infection. Come to think of it, Virginia fed her chicken soup then.”
“Chicken soup’s supposed to have some medicinal properties,” she told him. “But otherwise—the similarities in behavior are purely coincidental—maybe she just responds to good food.” She smiled fondly at Ginny, watching her eat her potpie as if there would be nothing in the refrigerator for her to eat tomorrow. “She likes the epicurean experience.”
“What’s epi—epi—that word you just used,” Ginny finally said in subdued frustration. “What’s it mean?” she asked.
“It means that while you’re eating, you focus on just that experience and nothing else,” Danni explained to the little girl. “It also means that you know good food when you sample it,” she concluded affectionately, giving the wiggling little girl a quick hug before releasing her again.
Ginny’s eyes sparkled. “Yeah!” she responded with feeling. “And that was real good.”
Danni noticed with pleasure that both father and daughter had done more than justice to their meals. All that remained were empty, miniature-size pie tins.
“Who’s ready for dessert?” Danni asked, pretending to look around for takers.
“I am!” Ginny declared, raising her hand and waving it above her head just in case Danni hadn’t noticed it.
“Well, by golly, it certainly does look like you are,” Danni commented to the little girl, then stole a glance in Stone’s direction. The man hadn’t left behind so much as a crumb.
At least none that could be seen.
It gave her a warm glow inside. Seeing someone enjoy one of the meals she’d prepared always did that, and this time, even more so.
“But you’re not,” Stone pointed out, looking at the pie tin on her plate. “You didn’t finish your meal. Something we should know about?”
The second he asked, he realized that it sounded as if he was teasing her. Something he hadn’t engaged in since Eva had left his life.
Maybe there was something in the pie, he thought, something that took down his guard, or if not took down then definitely soften.
“Only that I’m a habitually slow eater, especially when I have guests,” Danni said by way of a confession. “I get too caught up in watching their reaction to the meal I made to remember to eat it myself.”
Danni rose from the small, circular table, taking both of their dishes, and putting them neatly down into the kitchen sink. She then took her plate and left it on the counter. She still had more than half the potpie left to eat.
“I’ll have this for dinner later,” she told him.
That done, she took the chocolate pecan pie from the back of the stove where it was cooling and brought it to the table. She placed it in the middle, then got three dessert plates, which she distributed, placing one at each place setting, before she went to get a knife.
“I believe this is the first pecan pie your daughter’s ever made,” she told Stone, then asked for verification of her facts, not from him but from Ginny. “Am I right, Ginny?”
The little girl bobbed her head up and down vigorously, her curls flying to and fro about her face. “Uh-huh. The first. I never baked-ed a pie before today,” she said with pride.
“Well, you did such a good job, I would have never guessed,” Danni told her. “It just looks delicious. Don’t you think so?” she asked, turning to Stone for back-up.
Danni knew firsthand how much a father’s praise meant to a daughter. She still missed hearing her own father’s enthusiastic encouragement.
Her father had been supportive of her right from the start, giving her heartfelt compliments even in the beginning, when her efforts were a great deal less than stellar. Sam Everett always made a point of telling her how much he enjoyed what she made, even when she had trouble choking it down herself.
It definitely made her want to do better next time. Made her want to be worthy of the praise her father gave her.
Even though she finally found her niche and hit a high plateau, she still strove very hard to do better “next time.”
“Delicious,” Stone echoed, nodding his head and looking right at Ginny.
Ginny looked as if she were bursting with pride. “I’ll cut you a piece, Daddy, so you can taste it,” Ginny volunteered. She started to reach for the knife Danni had set down.
Rather than chide her or pull the knife away before she could get it, Danni went with what she felt was an ego-saving approach.
“Oh, you’ve worked hard enough today,” she told Ginny, deftly putting her hand over the knife before Ginny could wrap her fingers around it. “Why don’t you let me serve you a piece?” she offered.
With that, Danni cut a healthy-sized sliver of pie and placed it on Ginny’s plate, then cut a slightly wider piece and served it to Ginny’s father.
A third sliver, more the size of what she’d just given Ginny, found its way to her plate.
Since both father and daughter were waiting on her, Danni proclaimed, “Okay, people, dig in.” And three forks almost simultaneously sank into their own individual mound of pecans, brown sugar, two kinds of corn syrup and a few things Danni liked to refer to as her “secret” ingredients.
From beneath hooded eyes, Danni watched her guests’ reaction to her latest version of crushed chocolate pecan pie.
While she was fairly confident that they would enjoy what they were eating, that wasn’t why she was watching them. She just never t
ired of the look of pleasure that passed over people’s faces when they first sampled something that she had made. It was like receiving a merit reward for a job well done and she was the first to admit—without shame—that she thrived on that sort of feedback. For her, it wasn’t rooted in insecurity. The reason she liked it was because she had a desire for affirmation and reinforcement.
“Didn’t Ginny do an absolutely outstanding job?” Danni asked the girl’s father.
He didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he looked at her for a long moment, then slanted a glance toward his daughter. Ginny was beaming from ear to ear, obviously pleased with herself and pleased with what she was eating. Moreover, from the look of it, his daughter was also half in love with this woman she had just met. This woman had a gift not just for cooking and baking, but for calming down overenergized little girls.
Hell of an asset to have, he couldn’t help thinking, looking at Danni again.
“Yes,” he said, “she did a very excellent job,” he said, pausing briefly to glance over the woman whose house he was contracted to remodel before turning back toward his daughter.
In his estimation, Ginny looked as if she were ready to walk on air at any given moment. Thanks to Danni. The woman was extremely good with children.
“Maybe I can cook other things,” Ginny said hopefully, looking at Danni as she nibbled on her lower lip, the way she always did when she was holding her breath over something.
“Maybe you can,” Danni readily agreed. “The next time I’m off and your dad brings you along when he comes to work on the house, you and I can put our heads together and come up with another lunch.”
Ginny watched her very thoughtfully. “Does it hurt?” she asked.
“Does what hurt?” Danni asked.
“Putting our heads together. Does it hurt? And do we have to keep them that way when we’re cooking?” she asked with concern.
She could have eaten her up, Danni thought. “No, sweetie, it’s just an expression. We don’t really have to put our heads together. As a matter of fact, we’ll probably get more done if we don’t.”
Ginny instantly clapped her hands together, ready to sign on. “Tomorrow?” she asked hopefully, her expressive big blue eyes dancing about.
“I’m afraid I’ll be busy tomorrow—I have a job,” she explained to the little girl. “But we can make arrangements for a next time,” she promised. She saw Ginny’s face fall a few degrees, as if she felt “next time” would never happen.
She didn’t want the little girl to feel that way. She would have all the time in the world to experience disappointment. It shouldn’t have to be at the age of four, she reasoned.
“Sometimes I get off early,” she told Ginny, lowering her voice as if she was sharing some sort of state secret. “When I do, I’ll call you and if you come over with your dad, you and I could make dinner.”
Ginny turned her laser-beam eyes on her father. “Can we, Daddy? Can we?” Ginny begged.
“We’ll see,” he told her.
“We’ll see yes, Daddy. We’ll see yes,” Ginny pleaded because she knew that when her father said the phrase, “we’ll see,” it usually meant no in the long run.
He looked at Danni then, not sure if he felt overwhelmed or just in awe of her methods.
“You were right,” he told her.
Danni wasn’t sure just what he was referring to. They’d found themselves on opposite sides of a few issues. “About what?”
“When you told me to bring Ginny with me because you were good with kids,” he told her. “If anything, you didn’t do yourself justice.”
Danni laughed, more pleased than she thought she would have been to hear his praise.
“It’s not a matter of being good with kids really. It’s just a matter of being good with short people. That’s what kids really are, you know. Just short people on their way to becoming tall people.” She looked at Ginny with a warm smile. “What do you say to helping me pack up a few potpies and the rest of this chocolate pecan pie so that your dad can take it home and you two can have the rest of this later on tonight?”
Ginny needed no further convincing. Danni had had her with the phrase: “What do you say to—”
Ginny’s response was a resounding “Sure!”
Stone had a feeling that if this woman with the hundred-watt smile and killer legs had asked his daughter to come slay dragons with her, she would have gotten the same response.
He wasn’t doing remodeling for a celebrity chef, Stone thought, he was remodeling the living quarters of a sorceress.
A damn sexy sorceress.
Which meant, among other things, that he was going to have to watch his step.
Chapter Eight
“I like her, Daddy. Do you like her?” Ginny asked some time later as they were driving home from Danni’s house.
They had lingered awhile longer, after their hostess had packed up the extra potpies, along with what was left of the chocolate pecan pie, to take home with them. They had stayed predominantly to help with clean-up after the impromptu meal.
Stone had to admit that he was pretty stunned when it was Ginny, not Danni, who had come up with the suggestion to clean up.
And he was even more stunned when his daughter dove into said cleanup eagerly, especially since this was the child who couldn’t be coaxed into cleaning her room and required excessive bribery to pick up her toys off the family room floor.
Eagerly, but slowly, he noted her pace. When he commented on her abbreviated speed, she’d looked at him with her doelike eyes and said, “If I’m too fast, then I’m not doing it well.”
She had parroted back a sentiment that he had once expressed to her.
His daughter was clearly up to something.
The suspicion rose again now, with the question she’d just put to him. The one he hadn’t answered yet.
“Well, do you, Daddy?” Ginny pressed.
Most of the time, when his pint-size woman-in-training asked a question, it was just sufficient for him to grunt or make some sort of noise that passed for a reply and she, in typical female fashion, just continued with her monologue. Rarely, if ever, did Ginny require an actual verbal response.
This was different.
After having asked her question, she obviously wanted some kind of input from him. Most likely, if he was any kind of judge of voice tones, Ginny was looking for him to agree with her and say that he liked the woman.
So, to bring an end to this, Stone told him daughter, “Yes, she’s nice.”
He hadn’t expected Ginny to seize the word and all but run with it.
“Very, very nice,” she declared with feeling. “I think Danni’s the nicest lady I ever met.”
This seemed to be getting a little out of hand, Stone thought. “Nicer than Aunt Virginia?” he asked Ginny, curious now to hear how his daughter would respond.
Ginny started to say “Yes,” then stopped. He could almost hear her thinking.
“Not nicer,” she finally said. “But she’s just as nice as Aunt Virginia.”
Well, at least Ginny’s loyalty was still intact, he thought, somewhat amused. He quickly reviewed the day’s events as he knew them. Granted he’d been working a good deal of the time that she had spent with Danni. Maybe something had happened when he wasn’t around that had created this feeling about the woman. If so, he wanted to know just what had happened.
“Why are you so impressed with her?” Stone asked his daughter.
“’Cause,” Ginny responded. No other words followed in the single word’s wake. That alone was highly unusual.
The light up ahead at the major intersection was red. Stone eased to a stop behind a blue van with a dented bumper and took the opportunity to glance into the rearview mirror.
Securely strapped into her car seat, Ginny was waving her feet back and forth like a metronome set on triple time, a sure sign that she was agitated or exceedingly excited about something.
He was right. Someth
ing was definitely up with his daughter, but he hadn’t a clue what it was. Whatever it was, it had something to do with Danni Everett.
Was Ginny acting like this because, in a vague sort of way, Danni bore a slight resemblance to her mother, to Eva? Did some part of Ginny remember her mother and was responding to this new woman on that level?
No, Stone decided in the next moment, he was reading far too much into this. She’d been just a baby when Eva died.
The Smartcar behind him beeped. The high-pitched sound registered just as he saw that the light had turned green and the dented van that had been in front of him was now halfway down the next street. He took his foot off the brake and pressed down on the accelerator again.
There was probably a far simpler explanation for what was going on. Ginny was probably just responding to Danni because the woman had displayed an interest in her and had had Ginny “help” her make both the main dish and the dessert.
That was something a mother might do—and something he knew that Virginia had never done with Ginny. Virginia, God bless her, was good at a lot of things, but anything that involved preparing a meal was completely out of his sister’s realm of expertise. Virginia’s talent for cooking began and ended with dialing the phone for takeout.
So helping in the kitchen was an entirely new experience for Ginny, one that, from the bits and pieces of dialogue he had picked up at the table, made his daughter feel quite proud of herself. There was no underestimating the value of something like that, he thought.
Consequently, Ginny was associating that feeling of well-being and pride with Danni, which was why she was so high on the woman.
So, rather than try to explore any different reasons behind Ginny’s sudden and strong attachment to Danni Everett, he opted to go along with his daughter’s enthusiastic pronouncement—and hope that was the end of it.
“She is pretty nice, isn’t she?”
He didn’t think he’d ever seen Ginny beam as hard as she did this time around.
Wish Upon a Matchmaker Page 8