TUESDAY: A Double Shot (Hookup Café Book 2)

by Fifi Flowers

  Agreeing to a time to meet up, I made up a couple lattes, and drove over to her little cake shop. Parked in the back, I rang the bell on a gateway that led to a side door off a fenced patio area that she used for special functions or tastings on a nice sunny day. Several of her celebrity clients preferred to arrive through the back parking area to avoid paparazzi. I liked it because it was usually hard to find parking and she was allotted three additional for her shop.

  Buzzing me in, I pulled the gate and walked in to see her icing a couple red velvet cupcakes to go with our coffee. Yum! “Hi, Mom,” I said kissing her warm cheek.

  “Hey, my baby girl. Grab a couple napkins and let’s sit outside.” Doing as she said, I watched her plate our sweet treats and follow me out to a bistro table with two floral padded chairs next to a gurgling water fountain that had gold fish swimming in the bottom. It really was a relaxing spot.

  “What’s on your mind? You look stressed.” She jumped right in knowing that something was up.

  Not wanting to beat around the bush too much, but not quite ready to accuse her of lying to me for years, I told her about the offers I was receiving from a property management team and a real estate agent. She knew that from the moment I received the cottage that people were trying to get their hands on it. And I had to say that the latest offer laid out on the table was just too good to refuse. In fact, it was the other reason to talk to my mother. I didn’t want her to disapprove of my accepting it. It had been a place that her sister loved immensely and lived in for years—longer than my lifetime.

  “Do you think Aunt Moreen would be upset with me? Selling her home. They upped the offer by five hundred thousand dollars. It was on a handwritten notice left on my doorstep this morning.”

  “I have to say that two-point-five million dollars for that place is a lot of money. She may have taken that too. Although I don’t know. It had sentimental value to her…” Her voice trailed off, painfully, if I wasn’t mistaken. I knew it had been difficult losing her sister, much too young.

  “Well… I… I was a bit taken back by some wording on a new set of documents for her music royalties that arrived in the mail too. They made it sound like… like I was her…” My voice was cracking and I felt like I was on the verge of tears for so many reasons. Learning you were someone else. Belonged to someone else was a difficult thing to discover… uncover. Wanting to know and not.

  “…Daughter?” The word seemed to simply slip from my mother’s lips. It made me question if she was relieved.

  “Yes,” I said softly, nodding my head.

  “I wondered when this would come up. I was afraid when you were younger that you would be taken from me. The older you got I was more afraid of what it would do to you. I talked to Mo about telling you a few times and then when she got sick, she… she begged me not to tell you when I suggested that we tell you together. She wanted to leave the earth peacefully knowing that you loved her, that she was the beloved aunt. She didn’t want you to hate her. She loved you, Marzi, more than you can ever, ever imagine.”

  Tears were streaming down both of our faces as she went on to tell me the true story of me and her own tragedy. I knew I had a sister that hadn’t survived for more than a few hours in the hospital after being born, but I didn’t know that we were born only days apart. Thankfully, my father had talked my mother out of a backyard birth as my hippie grandparents had encouraged their other daughter, Sunny, to do when she delivered my cousin Pansie.

  Moreen apparently was in love with Travis, the original property owner, since she was a teenage girl. They first met when they were at the wrong age for there to be any physical romance between them. Years later when she was over eighteen and graduated from high school, they ran into each other—sparks flew and there was no stopping them from consummating their relationship. Unfortunately, their time together grew to a close when she went off to college and he shipped off with the Navy. While he was home on leave, he caught wind that Moreen was engaged to be married from an unreliable source that wanted to get her hooks in Travis.

  Through that misunderstanding, Travis in a drunken stupor bedded a nasty woman named Delfina with her own agenda. She had always liked him and his social standing which included money and a big, beautiful inherited family-home on Coronado Island. By the time Moreen had returned from college five years later, unattached, Travis had married a pregnant Delfina and had a son, a daughter, and another one on the way. Moreen was devastated and Travis more so when he learned that she still wanted him and that she had never been engaged to anyone. But being a good, honorable family man, he stayed with Delfina even after finding out that she had deceived him. He, however, did not stay faithful to her and she looked the other way when he moved Moreen into the guesthouse at the back of the property. Moreen only agreed as long as she paid rent which she did, but he only put it into an investment account for her.

  When Moreen found herself pregnant she told Travis that she was going off to work on her master’s degree and would write to him when she could. She never told him about the baby and went off to live with her sister, Linny, who was also pregnant at the time. When Linny, my mother, went into labor things didn’t go well; her baby girl Rose didn’t live and she was forced to undergo a partial hysterectomy which would keep her from ever having more children. Moreen decided then that her sister’s loss was the solution to her own dilemma and so after I was born a week and a half later, my parents took me home to the baby nursery they had prepared for their own child.

  “Mo asked that she be able to name you and I agreed as she filled out the papers for your birth certificate. She picked Marzipan because you were the sweetest treat ever to her and Rose after the baby I had just lost. Legal or not, she put down your father’s name and mine on the documents.” My mother paused to take a drink of coffee and cleared her throat. “She came home with us for a few days, encouraged me to breastfeed you so we bonded. I still had milk in my breasts… in fact, they leaked when you cried. Mo said that was a good sign.”

  My mother said that things moved along and Moreen returned to the cottage and her life as usual taking up with Travis again more carefully, never to find herself in a family way. He always suspected that I was his, but never put Moreen on the spot and just treasured the moments that I was around. Apparently, she took care of me from time to time—eventually looking after Pansie and I on summer breaks at her cottage.

  “I remember those good times tooling around in Cherry, her 1979 red convertible Volkswagen super beetle.” We both smiled for the first time since we had started our conversation. “That was the only item that Pansie and I disputed with Aunt Moreen’s will.” I laughed. “She has sworn me to keep it forever or give it to her if I ever tire of it… fat chance!”

  After Travis died, Moreen learned about all of her new found wealth and had the same attorney draw up her own will. Little did she know how important that move would be when she fell sick in the following year and joined Travis in heaven. My mother said that she died from a broken heart rather than the cancer that had been detected too late in the game. Whatever it was she had made sure that she had her estate in order including a nice sum to Pansie—all of the rent Moreen had paid out had turned huge profits on the stock market. For me, the cottage and all of her royalties from songwriting after my grandfather stepped in over a few disputes—still in litigation.

  “You know Mo received her first royalty check when she was twelve years old. She was brilliant. She had a real gift for words. She was the only one of us that ever learned to play the guitar. My father tried to get all of us to play an instrument but Sunny and I were more interested in cooking and baking with our mother.”

  “Funny! I’m more like you. Aunt Moreen tried to teach Pansie and I to play her guitar but we chanted ‘cookies, cookies,’ until she sighed and gave in. I have great memories of her as my aunt and I loved her… but… you’re my mother.” More tears spilled from both of our eyes. “I love you.”

  “I love you
too, Marzipan Rose.” She reached out and grasped my hand sitting on the table, playing with a napkin. “Now… let’s stop this crying. I have a couple coming in an hour, I can’t have puffy eyes and blotchy skin. I trust you to do the right thing and know that Mo would back your decision. She gave things to you with no stipulations. She just wanted to give you everything she could.”

  I nodded, picked up the napkin to wipe under my eyes, and then listened to my mother’s ideas about a cake she was designing that required my marzipan figurines. She truly fascinated me, knowing how to make me feel better with words about sweet treats—something she had done all of my life.

  Chapter Five…

  Up early, I was running through my usual morning rituals of baking in the café kitchen, bright eyed and cheerful after speaking with my mother. I had finally gotten a good night’s sleep after replaying everything that had been said and revealed to me yesterday. I love my aunt and I harbor no bad thoughts toward her. What she had done for my mother was selfless and kind. It had been a good situation for me and she had been around me, always spent time with me. She did not abandon me and gave me all that she had that meant something to her. I was happy with my decision to sell the property, and hearing that Pansie was moving in with her man, I would have a place to stay until her lease ran out. Things were going to move along smoothly I was certain until there was a knock at the side door.

  Looking through the peephole, I was surprised to see my delivery man. Opening it, I saw that he appeared even more handsome than ever wearing what looked like high-fashion, designer clothing.

  “Why are you wearing your Sunday-best to deliver supplies to me? And better question, why are you doing it on a Friday?”

  “I heard that you were running low and needed to double up on items and that you were going to pop into a grocery store this afternoon to get the items you ran out of…”

  “…so you took it upon yourself to bring them to me?”

  He bit his lip. Nervous wasn’t even the word for his body language and facial expressions as he remained silent as if he was searching for a reasonable explanation.

  “What’s going on?” I looked more closely at his appearance and out the door to his vehicle parked in the alley. “What’s with the Range Rover? Where’s your delivery truck? Those shoes are Ferragamo, that’s a tailored shirt… Oh my God,” I said lifting his wrist, “That watch costs five hundred thousand dollars. I’ve seen the nine-time French Open champion, Rafael Nadal, wearing one.” I looked more intently at him. “Who are you? I have a feeling your name isn’t even Mike.”

  “It’s not. It’s Avery.”

  “Avery?! I have been calling you Mike for weeks!” My voice was high and thank goodness it was still early enough that no one had begun to arrive. “You’ve been fucking me for weeks…”

  “… and I have been so happy that you only screamed ‘oh God’ instead of Mike. I think I might’ve had to punch him when I saw him if you did.”

  “Are you married? Do you have a family? Kids?” I was jumping to conclusions right away. “Do you curl up with them and watch the reality baking shows that you told me you like? Am I just your dirty little secret, side-fuck?”

  “Nothing like that. I’ve asked you out practically every Tuesday since we met. You keep telling me that you don’t want a relationship or any complications. That what we had was enough. That you were too tired and busy for anything more.” He moved to me and cupped my face with his soft hands—not delivery man hands—and looked into my eyes. “It’s not enough. It’s never been enough. I’m not married. I own the restaurant supply company… and I’ve fallen in love with you.”

  “You can’t just say things like that. People don’t fucking do that. Blurt out.”

  “I meant it. So will you please go out with me? Give me a chance?” Damn! He looked so fucking, unbelievably gorgeous. How could I possibly deny giving him what he wanted?

  “Okay, pizza and we go see a movie.” I shrugged.

  “No, I want to talk to you, not hide in a theatre, and be told to be quiet.”

  “There is a lot to do in a dark theatre that doesn’t involve talking.”

  “I want to see all of you in the light.”

  “You have seen all of me. I have not seen all of you naked. Maybe we just skip to the good part… the end.” I grinned at him shaking his head and rubbing his sexy, slightly stubbled chin—I hadn’t noticed before.

  “There will be no ends for us, only beginnings.”

  “Oh, I will have to tell Pansie that you can be poetic too.” I laughed, he didn’t.

  “We’re going on a date-date. I’ll pick you up, take you to dinner and then take you home and present you with a lot of good night kisses that last til morning.”

  “Ohh. That sounds pretty good but I’ll meet you somewhere.”

  “Do you have a husband and kids that I don’t know about?”

  “No, but I am out of the way and my house is being… is going through a phase… transition.” There was no way that I was having Mr. Money-Bags pick me up from my tiny shack. He’d instantly think I was a gold digger. I didn’t know where he lived, but I pictured a large stately house. Wherever… whatever, I was standing my ground.

  “Okay. I don’t like the idea but I’m willing to go along with it so that you give me a chance to take you out. So meet me in the lobby of the Hyatt Hotel by seven p.m.”

  “A hotel? How convenient!” I raised an eyebrow in his direction.

  “It might be if you play your cards right.” He smiled with a little cocky attitude I had never been privy to in our sweet early morning rushes to pleasure.

  Doing as he asked, I went home to shower, shave, and put on a sexy dress with high—but comfortable—heels. Then I drove back over the dreaded bridge to the location he had selected. After turning my car over to the valet, I entered the spectacular lobby to find an even better site. Avery stood on highly polished marble floors beneath high ceilings lit with large crystal chandeliers and flanked by rich wood paneled walls highlighting beautiful landscape paintings. Handsome as ever he waited for me dressed in a similar outfit from earlier. Damn! I thought he looked good in his delivery shirt but this new look of his was even better. His open collar hinting at a muscular chest had me wanting to open a few more buttons and lick him. But it appeared that he was a man on a mission as he quickly had us turned and heading back out the door I had just walked through.

  Guided by his firm hand on my lower back to a car waiting, the driver took us down a few blocks to the Gaslamp Quarter. Lacking reservations at one place, Avery suggested that we sample appetizers and desserts anywhere that sounded appealing. Loving the idea, we wandered the streets scanning menus outside of different places for yummy items that enticed us to walk in for a taste. What a treat! That way of eating could easily be my favorite way to dine in the future… maybe the only way. One thing that was rather fun, was that we stumbled upon a place that served my fancy marzipan accented mini cakes.

  And not only was the food and drink great on our quest for deliciousness, but so were the conversations that were focused on topics more about him than me. Before he had been so hush hush so that I didn’t catch on that he owned the restaurant supply biz which he took over from his father. He told me that his father decided he wanted to live with his new much-younger wife in the Florida Keys.

  “My parents divorced when I was a little boy—maybe toddler age… four—I don’t remember them being together much. She was off making money and my father was fine with her making money it kept his parents off his back thinking he had married a gold digging Vegas showgirl. But he didn’t like her fame—his parents still think my mother is trash—and people wanting to take photos with her everywhere they went and being asked to take the picture. My mother always said she didn’t care what my father’s parents said, because she had the last laugh all the way to the bank.”

  “You too have a mother in the public-eye?”

  “Yep.” A sly smile turned up
on his handsome face. “Ever heard of Lola Loren?”

  “Of course! You’d have to live under a rock not to know her. She’s like the newer version of Brigitte Bardot. Sex goddess…”

  “… Okay let’s not go there. She is my mother.” I laughed and apologized.

  Finally, I was finding out about him for a change. It was nice to know a bit about his background. Especially so since mine had taken some drastic turns in the last few weeks. What I thought was my family history had changed so much. I was beginning to realize that my strained relationship with my father might have been for a reason. It had me questioning if he resented me in some way because I wasn’t his flesh and blood. And my biological father had always been so nice to me. I remember Travis taking Pansie and me, along with his two daughters, to the Coronado Hotel to get ice cream sundaes and sitting so we could watch the ocean. I can’t remember my father ever doing anything alone with me or even with my cousin along, but I never felt like he didn’t love me. Listening to Avery’s family stories, I realized that, apparently, nobody’s family is perfect.

  Done with our family background trivia, we moved on to have a bit of fun with less talking as we entered loud music filled bars. Another plus to his dating skills was his dance moves; nothing embarrassing at all in his movements, the man had rhythm. He was looking better and better as the night waged on. His taste in music was likable as well and we ended up staying at one place to watch a live band that had a familiar backup singer on stage—our shy-ish server Evie. I knew that she had a good voice because she was always humming or quietly singing along to music in the café and she even ran the open-mic on Wednesday nights, but she had yet to take to the stage herself. It seemed that background singing was her thing. Not wanting to startle her or let on that I saw her, we slipped out and headed up to a rooftop bar for a nightcap before heading back to my car… or maybe a hotel room – I was hoping for the latter.