Always the Baker, Never the Bride

by Sandra D. Bricker

  “Why am I not surprised?” Avery said with a chuckle. “Didn’t he play baseball in school?”

  “He sure did. I’m designing a sculpted wedding cake for them in the shape of a baseball glove.”

  “Please. No more.”

  “Oh, there’s more, Mother. The reception food?”

  “Chicken wings?”

  “Barbecue.”

  Avery began to chortle, and Emma could just picture her there, her hand to her slender throat, her dark brown hair pulled back into a perfect, elegant bun, her sparkling smile lighting up three or four rooms around her.

  “What a shame, sweetheart. No wedding barbecue for you. Are you heartbroken?”

  “Deep despair. When will I see you?”

  “Another week or so, I imagine. I’ll let you know. Perhaps you can give me a tour of your beautiful new hotel.”

  “It’s not my hotel, Mother,” Emma said with a laugh. “But I’d be happy to show you around.” Thinking better of that, she added, “Maybe on the weekend, when no one else is here.”

  “Why? Are you ashamed of me?”

  “No,” she replied, and it bounced on a nervous chuckle. “Of course not. Give me a call.”

  “I will. I love you, sweetheart.”

  “Love you too.”

  The weight of the situation began to press in, and Emma replayed her conversation with Jackson in spurts. Georgiann had wanted Avery to attend the opening; now Avery was coming to town right around the time of the opening.

  “Worlds colliding, baaaaaad,” Jackson had said.

  Emma popped her feet from the desk drawer to the floor and groaned. “Very, very bad,” she said out loud.

  “What’s bad?”

  Emma jerked her attention to the doorway, where Fee leaned on the jamb. “Huh?”

  “You said something was very, very bad. What is?”

  “Oh.” She dismissed her with the wave of her hand. “Nothing.”

  “Can we talk?”

  “Sure. Come on in. Is this bad news?”

  “I don’t think so,” Fee answered with a slight cringe.

  “Oh, no.”

  “Dude. Don’t get all bunged up. I just want to ask you something.”

  “So ask.”

  “You know how, when you meet someone and you’re really attracted to them, but maybe they might already be tagged by someone else?”

  Emma cocked her head slightly and grimaced. “No.”

  “Come on. Sure you do. Like if I’ve met someone, but you might already be, you know, attracted to them. I can’t just move in before I ask you about it. It’s part of the Girl Code.”

  “The Girl Code.” Emma wasn’t following.

  “Emma Rae. Is there anyone that you’re attracted to at the moment? Someone you wouldn’t want me, you know, going out with?”

  “No.”

  “There’s no one?”

  “No one.”

  Fee raised her eyebrows and stared at her until Emma’s skin started to feel tight.

  “Anyone … around this place?” Thud!

  “Fiona, I am not attracted to Jackson Drake!” she exclaimed. “I can’t believe you would even ask me that, or that you would—”

  Something began to dawn.

  “Wait a minute. Are you going to date Jackson, Fee?”

  “Good grief, no. Why? Are you?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes! Is that who you’re talking about?”

  “No,” Fee replied. “Then who?”

  “Peter.”

  Emma fell silent, scratched her head, then squinted her eyes at Fee. “You want to date Peter Riggs? My photographer friend?”

  “So much.”

  She wasn’t sure why the idea surprised her, but it really did. “Go for it.”

  “Honest?”

  “Yes. Go for it.”

  Fee stretched across the desk and squeezed Emma’s wrist. “Thank you!”

  “Uh, sure.”

  At the doorway, Fee turned back toward her and shot her a crooked little smile.

  “What?”

  “You and Jackson Drake,” she said as if she were trying it on for size. “Dude.”

  “Get out of here.”

  “Emma, he’s hot.”

  “He’s also our boss. Get out. Call Peter.”

  “I already did. He’s picking me up in an hour.”

  A glimpse of red drew Jackson’s attention as he stepped outside. Emma’s miniature car was parked out front and, to his surprise, he saw that she was seated behind the wheel, her head tilted back and her eyes closed. She jumped when he knocked on the window, then she rolled it down halfway.

  “Power nap?” he asked with a smile.

  “Dead battery,” she replied, and her warm breath steamed from her lips as it hit the cold night air. “I called the auto club an hour ago, but they haven’t shown up. I guess I drifted off.”

  “Come on,” he said with a nod. “I’ll give you a ride home.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing,” he interrupted. “We’ll leave your key under the back seat and lock all the doors except that one. I’ll have someone take care of this in the morning. It’s late and you’re exhausted. Let me drive you home.”

  She didn’t even try to talk him out of it; she just pushed open the door and climbed out of her car. “Thank you,” she said, twisting off the key and handing it to him. “I’m so tired.”

  “I hear you,” he groaned.

  She followed him around the curve of the driveway to where his car was parked, and she let out a long, appealing sigh once they were inside.

  “We should have heat in just a minute,” he promised after turning the ignition. “Have you had dinner?”

  “Dinner?” she replied. “What’s that?”

  Jackson unbuttoned his overcoat, then slipped his cell phone from the breast pocket of his jacket. “I just ordered takeout,” he told her. “I’ll add to it, and we can have dinner together at your place.”

  She appeared slightly taken aback, but she didn’t object.

  “Hi, Serena. It’s Jackson Drake again. Will you double that order I just placed? I’ll be there in fifteen minutes to pick it up.” Pressing the phone against his shoulder, he asked Emma, “You’re not a vegetarian or anything, are you?”

  “Nope. Full carnivore.”

  “Shrimp?”

  “Yum.”

  “Excellent.” He brought the cell back to his cheek and thanked the hostess before disconnecting the call. “So what’s on the menu?” she asked him. “Shrimp?”

  “Chu Chee.”

  “Oh. Do I like that?”

  “Yes, you do,” he replied, punctuating it with a wide grin. “It’s one of your favorites, in fact.”

  “Good to know,” she replied, her head bobbing in a slow nod.

  Emma was quiet on the drive over to the restaurant, and when Jackson returned to the running car with their dinner in hand, she was curled against the passenger window, sound asleep. He almost hated to open the door and wake her, but the sting of recent cooler temperatures made him do it anyway.

  He set the bag on the back seat and slid behind the wheel. As he shifted the car into gear, Emma’s green eyes fluttered open and she half-smiled at him.

  “Chotchke,” she muttered. “Smells good.”

  “Not Chotchke,” he chuckled. “That’s what my buddy’s Jewish mother keeps on her mantle. Chu Chee.”

  “Right.” She closed her eyes again as she asked him, “What is that, anyway?”

  “Shrimp,” he answered, and she nodded. “With snow peas, string beans and green pepper in coconut milk and red curry.”

  “Mm. You’re right,” she said without opening her eyes. “I do like it.”

  Jackson sent a grin in her general direction. “Emma?”

  “Mm?”

  “Where do you live?”

  After a moment’s processing, she sat straight up and giggled. “Oh, sorry.
Make a left at the light.”

  Emma’s building reminded Jackson of the tiny brownstone he and Desiree kept in Manhattan during their short time there. A string of six entrances, each of them with five brick steps leading to their leaded-glass doors; Emma’s was the one on the end.

  The interior was warm and inviting, more like a cozy library than a woman’s home, a startling contrast to the large, gold filigree heart hanging on the door by a paisley wired bow. He’d expected something different somehow. Ribbons and lace perhaps? Pastel colors and floral prints?

  No, he decided. Not that.

  But certainly not the rich color palette grounding sturdy-yet-comfortable furniture, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and a heavy stone fireplace.

  “Make yourself comfortable,” she told him. “I’ve got to do the insulin thing. Then I’ll get some plates and silverware.”

  Jackson watched her until she disappeared around the corner. He recalled a family friend who’d lost her eyesight to diabetes when he was just a kid. And he thought he remembered that his paternal grandfather had actually lost a leg because of diabetes that wasn’t kept under control. He didn’t know much more about the disease than that, but Emma appeared to have it well in hand. At least, there were no apparent signs of those beautiful eyes of hers going dark any time soon.

  The mantle was lined with framed photographs depicting an adolescence much less humiliating than one might expect to hear Emma tell of it. And there were graduation photos of embracing friends, Fee Bianchi in a costume of some kind, an erect, hair-laden sheepdog whose eyes were obscured by a mop of unruly white fur.

  An elegant woman gave a proper smile from a carved wooden frame at one corner, while an older gentleman with the disheveled appearance of a news bureau chief grimaced from the opposite end of the mantle.

  Probably her parents, Jackson decided, and the metaphoric placement of their photographs was in no way lost on him. Keeping them in separate corners.

  “Your father?” he asked her when Emma leaned across the small dining table off the kitchen, setting placemats with ivory china and frosted glasses.

  “Yes,” she said with a nod, then she stepped up beside him and peered at the photo with a tentative smile. “He’s one of a kind.”

  “Just like your mother?”

  Emma chuckled. “Avery Travis was the first like her, and the last of her species. Southern royalty meets old world elegance.”

  “They don’t sound so terrible,” he observed.

  “Not as long as they’re kept at a distance,” she revealed. “And as far apart as humanly possible.”

  Jackson laughed at that. “Maybe you could give me lessons on how to do that.”

  “For your sisters?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not possible,” she said on a giggle. “They’ve already united. They’re a force of nature now.”

  “You learn fast, Emma.”

  “I do, indeed. Come on over to the table and let’s have some of that Chotchke.”

  “Chu Chee.”

  “Right.”

  Jackson served two plates while Emma poured water for the both of them.

  “You keep glasses chilled and frosted?” he commented. “Just in case foreign dignitaries come to call?”

  “Or employers bearing Thai food.”

  His grin turned into a smirk as he tried to hold it back, but Emma returned it with a full, toothy smile that lit up the whole room.

  “You mentioned doing the insulin thing,” he remarked. “What does that involve?”

  “Oh. Taking my glucose level before every meal.”

  “That’s the pin-prick to the finger?”

  “Right. And then an injection of insulin if it’s necessary, which it wasn’t tonight.”

  “How long have you had it, Emma?”

  “Since high school,” she replied. “Sort of cruel irony for a baker, isn’t it? But let’s talk about something else, shall we?” Emma lifted her glass toward him. “To cars that start, and food that’s hot.”

  “And to keeping our family members in cages where they belong.”

  “Salut!” she exclaimed, and they both took swigs as they nodded.

  Dinner conversation ebbed and flowed, from shop talk to musings about the cold weather, from Jackson’s teenaged artist dreams to Emma’s days in culinary school. Even the silences were comfortable ones, and it occurred to Jackson that it had been a very long time since he’d shared one of his many, many takeout dinners with a companion.

  Emma Rae Travis, Jackson admitted to himself, was a really beautiful girl. If her resumé hadn’t betrayed her age, he’d never have thought she was older than her twenties; there was something so girlish about her with that sleek brown-and-golden streaked hair that she kept tied back in a ponytail or knotted in a messy loop at the top of her head most of the time. Except now, of course. Now it was hanging free across her shoulders, parted on one side and tucked neatly behind her ear. Emma’s clear porcelain skin was luminescent, and those glistening emerald eyes of hers always seemed to draw a dusting by the long fringe of bangs. Beautiful, he thought.

  “What?” she asked just then. “What are you thinking?”

  He popped a shrimp into his mouth and smiled as he chewed it, biding his time to find an answer.

  “Because you look like you’ve just had a serious revelation of some kind.”

  “Do I?” he asked, wiping his mouth with the paper napkin she’d folded beneath his fork.

  “Mm-hmm,” she nodded. “And I wouldn’t want you straining anything, so spill it.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really.”

  “I was thinking of a way to ask you whether you had some coffee.”

  He waited, hoping she bought it.

  “Nope,” she replied, leaning back into her chair. “Besides, the way you like it, thick and practically free-standing, well, it’s too late for that sort of caffeine, don’t you think?”

  He raised a brow and tilted into a partial smile. “Yes?”

  “How about you surrender a little and let me make you a cup of tea.”

  “Tea!” he exclaimed, and then laughed right out loud. “I’ll pass.”

  “Come on.” And then with an inviting smile, she added, “I have cinnamon sugar cookies.”

  “That, I’ll take.” With a second thought, he added, “But you’re diabetic. What are you doing with cinnamon sugar cookies in your house?”

  “There are only two,” she defended. “They’re Peter’s favorites. I made them as a thank-you for the fast turnaround on the photographs he took for us. I kept a couple because I like to keep something sweet in the house, just in case.”

  “Just in case, what?”

  “In case my battery goes dead on my car, and someone is nice enough to give me a ride home and buy me dinner and I need to provide dessert.”

  “That’s what I call thinking ahead,” he teased. “Can I have them? The cookies?”

  “Not without the tea,” she replied with a mock-serious shaking of her head. “It’s tea and cookies, or nothing at all.”

  “Emma Rae Travis. Are you really giving your employer an ultimatum?”

  “I know,” she said with a shrug. “I know. Fire me if you will, but there are no cookies without tea in this house.”

  Jackson mulled that over, then finally asked, “What kind of tea?”

  “I’ll surprise you.”

  While Jackson cleared the dinner plates, Emma filled a stainless-steel kettle with water and placed it over a low gas flame on the stove. When the cookies finally arrived at the table, they were accompanied by two heavy stoneware mugs of something that smelled of spicy fruit and cream.

  Jackson scrunched his nose and looked up at Emma. “Fruit tea? Are you kidding me with this?”

  “Cinnamon plum,” she replied. “Just try it.”

  He reluctantly took a sip from the cup. It wasn’t terrible, but it sure wasn’t as appealing as a cup of black coffee might be with one of th
ose cookies on the plate across from him.

  “Milk in it?” he asked her.

  “Cream. It’s the English way.”

  “I’m American. Can I have coffee now?”

  “You may not. Drink your tea, or there is no cookie for you.”

  “I had a schoolteacher like you once.”

  “Then you probably know better than to argue with me.”

  Jackson laughed as she offered him the plate.

  “Just one,” she said, smacking his hand lightly when he reached for the second cookie. “Don’t be a piglet.”

  Emma’s Famous Cinnamon Sugar Cookies

  1¼ cups flour

  ¼ teaspoon salt

  ¼ cup granulated sugar

  1 egg ¼ teaspoon baking soda

  ½ cup butter

  ¾ cup light brown sugar

  2 teaspoons vanilla extract

  Outer mixture: ½ cup granulated sugar and 3 tablespoons cinnamon

  Sift the flour, salt, and baking soda into a bowl.

  In a separate bowl, mix the butter, sugar, and brown sugar until creamy.

  Add the egg and vanilla.

  Add the dry flour mixture slowly and continue to mix thoroughly.

  Break the dough into three or four sections, rolling each into a log about two inches thick.

  Wrap them in wax paper and refrigerate overnight (or for at least 3-4 hours).

  The next day, mix the cinnamon and sugar together, and roll each log in it.

  Cut the logs into quarter-inch slices and place on an ungreased cookie sheet.

  Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes.

  9

  Admit it! You’re obsessed with hazelnut!”

  “I am not.”

  “You are!”

  Emma rubbed both cheeks with her hands. She hadn’t laughed so hard, or for so long, in years. Leaning back against the cushions they’d pulled down from the sofa, she stretched her legs out on the carpeted floor and clutched her stomach.

  “Stop it. I can’t laugh anymore,” she pleaded, then she proved herself wrong with a bumpy string of laughter.

  Jackson’s long legs were extended alongside hers, crossed at the ankle, his feet resting on the shoes he’d removed hours before. Sitting beside him there on the floor in front of the fireplace, Emma wondered for the first time all evening what time it had gotten to be.