by Nora Roberts
“Again, it’ll be pretty quick. Fifteen minutes should do it.”
“Figure one forty-five for the grooms to be announced, buffet brunch, toasts. DJ announces first dance at two thirty. Cake cutting three thirty.”
“All the pastries are done for the dessert table. I’ll finish the cake by ten, and we’ll move it into the Ballroom. We’re providing the knife and server. The happy couple has requested the top layer be removed and boxed for them to take home.”
“Okay. Dancing continues at three forty until four fifteen. We’ll transfer the gifts, announce the last dance.We’re clear at four thirty. Any concerns? Potential disasters?”
“Not on my end. They’re both really cute and should photograph well.”
“They went with big, happy geranium boutonnieres to match the cake,” Emma added. “Pretty adorable.”
“They wrote the script for the ceremony themselves.” Parker tapped her file. “It’s incredibly sweet. We’re going to have a lot of crying. Laurel, anything on your end?”
“I just need the cake topper from Emma, and I’m good.”
“It’s done, and in the cooler. I’ll get it to you.”
“Then, we’re all good.”
“Not so fast.” Mac shot out a finger as Laurel started to rise. “Business completed, now let’s get personal.What’s the latest with Del?”
“There is no latest. I just saw you eight hours ago.”
“He didn’t call?” Emma wondered. “Leave you a message or anything?”
“He sent an e-mail with a list of potential movies for tonight.”
“Oh.” Emma struggled not to look deflated. “That’s considerate.”
“It’s practical,” Laurel corrected. “And it’s Del. It’s me. I’m not looking for charming little notes and sexy little messages.”
“They’re fun though,” Emma murmured. “Jack and I sent each other lots of sexy little e-mails. We still do.”
“What’re you wearing?” Mac demanded.
“I don’t know. It’s the movies. Something movieish.”
“But he’ll be dressed for the wedding,” Emma pointed out, “so you can’t be too casual.You should wear the blue top. The one with the scoop-neck that ties in the back. It looks great on you. With the white capris I wish I could wear but would make my legs look stumpy. And the kitten-heel slides.”
“Okay, thanks for dressing me.”
“Happy to help,” Emma said with a bright smile that acknowledged the sarcasm.
“We have a betting pool going,” Mac informed her. “Nobody figures you’ll last the full thirty before you get naked. Carter gives your willpower the most credit with twenty-four days.”
“You’re betting on when I’m going to have sex with Del?”
“Damn right.You’re disqualified,” she said when Laurel started to speak again. “Conflict of interest. I give you sixteen days, not because of willpower but stubbornness—in case that might influence you to help me add to my wedding fund.”
“Unfair, unfair,” Emma caroled.
“How much is in the pool?”
“We kicked in a hundred each.”
“Five hundred? Seriously?”
“Six, counting Mrs. G.”
“Man.”
“We started at ten dollars each.” Emma shrugged and chose a strawberry to nibble on. “But then Mac and Jack kept challenging each other. I had to make them stop when we hit a hundred. Parker’s keeping the bank.”
Laurel cocked a challenging eyebrow. “What if we have sex and don’t tell anyone?”
“Please.” Mac just rolled her eyes. “First, you’d never be able to keep it to yourself, and second, even if you did, we’d know.”
“I hate when you’re right. And nobody gave us the full thirty?”
“No one.”
“Okay, here’s the deal—and I should get some say since it’s my sex, potentially. I will not be disqualified. I put in a hundred, and if we get to the thirty, pot’s mine.”
Objections broke out, but Parker waved them off. “You know, that’s fair.”
“You know how competitive she is,” Mac complained. “She’ll hold out just to win the bet.”
“Then she’d have earned it. Get me the hundred, and I’ll add your bet.”
“You’re on.” Gleefully Laurel rubbed her hands together. “At long, long last, the sexual moratorium pays off. I’ve got a cake to frost.” She did a quick boogie at the door. “See you later, suckers.”
“We’ll see who’s the sucker,” Parker said after Laurel danced out. “Okay, ladies, let’s get to work.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
IT WAS STRANGE AND INTERESTING TO GO OUT WITH DEL AS A DATE rather than one of the group. Comfortable on many levels, Laurel discovered, which was probably good. Neither of them had to listen to the other’s life story, because they already knew each other’s life story.
Not the whole cake, she thought, but most of the layers. Which made it all the more fun to take samples of the filling.
She knew he’d served on the
Law Review at Yale, and played baseball as an undergraduate, just as she knew that law and sports were two of his passions. But she hadn’t known he’d made a deliberate choice over which to pursue as a career.
“I didn’t know you were serious about professional baseball.” The things you learned, Laurel reflected, on a third date.
“Deadly. And serious enough I kept it to myself, mostly.”
They strolled the park eating ice cream cones while the summer moonlight silvered the pond—an activity she believed to be the perfect cap to a casual dinner date.
“What was the tipping point?” she asked him.
“I wasn’t good enough.”
“How do you know? I saw you in action when you played at the Academy, and a couple times at Yale—and since at softball games.” With the faintest of frowns she studied his profile as they walked. “I may not consider baseball my religion like some people, but I get the game.You knew what you were doing.”
“Sure. And I was pretty good. Pretty good isn’t good enough. Maybe I could’ve been if I’d put everything into it. I talked to some scouts from the Yankees’ farm team.”
“Get out.” She shoved his arm. “Seriously? I never knew that. The Yankees scouted you? Why didn’t I know that?”
“I never told anybody. I had to decide. I could either be a really good lawyer or a decent ballplayer.”
She remembered watching him play since ... always, she realized. Without much effort, she pulled out a mental picture of him as a boy playing Little League.
God, he was cute.
“You loved baseball.”
“I still do. I just realized I didn’t love it enough to give it everything I had, and to give up everything else for it. So I wasn’t good enough.”
She understood that, yes, understood that very well. She wondered if she could’ve made the same sensible, rational choice to give up something she loved and wanted.
“Do you ever regret it?”
“Every summer. For about five minutes.” He draped an arm over her shoulders. “But you know, when I’m old and sitting on the rocker on the front porch, I get to tell my great-grandchildren how back in the day, the Yankees scouted me.”
She couldn’t quite build that image in her mind, but the idea of it made her smile. “They won’t believe you.”
“Sure they will. They’ll love me. And my pocketful of candy. What about you? One regret.”
“I probably have a lot more of them than you.”
“Why?”
“Because you—and Parker—always seem to know what direction you need and want to take. So let’s see.” She crunched into the sugar cone as she considered. “Okay. Sometimes I wonder how it would’ve been if I’d gone to France, stayed there. Run my own exclusive patisserie—while having many passionate affairs.”
“Naturally.”
“I’d design and bake for royalty and stars, and run my st
aff like dogs.
Allez, allez! Imbeciles! Merde!”
He laughed at her broad, undeniably Gallic gestures, and dodged her cone.
“I’d be a terror, and a genius, world-renowned, jetting off to exciting places to make birthday cakes for little princesses.”
“You’d hate that. Except for the cursing in French.”
More than full, she tossed what was left of her cone in the trash. “Probably, but it’s something I think about sometimes. Still, I’d be doing what I’m doing now at the core of it. I didn’t have to choose.”
“Sure you did. Solo or partnership, home or European adventure. That’s a big choice, too. You know, if you’d gone to France, you’d have pined away for us.”
God, that was so absolutely true. But keeping to her theme, she shook her head. “I’d have been too busy with my wild affairs and towering ego ride to pine. I’d have thought of you fondly from time to time, and swirled in occasionally from a trip to New York to dazzle you all with my European panache.”
“You have European panache.”
“Is that so?”
“Sometimes you mutter or swear in French when you’re working.”
She stopped, frowned. “I do?”
“Now and then, and with a perfect accent. It’s entertaining.”
“Why hasn’t anyone told me this before?”
He took her hand, linked fingers while they angled away from the pond. “Maybe because they figured you knew, since you were the one muttering and swearing.”
“That could be it.”
“And if you’d gone, you’d have thought about this, what you’re doing here now.”
“Yeah, I would. Still, other times I imagine I have a pretty bake shop in a small village in Tuscany, where it only rains at night and charming little children come in to beg for treats. It’s a pretty good deal.”
“And here we both are, still in Greenwich.”
“All in all, it’s a good place to be.”
“Right now?” He tipped her face up to kiss her. “It’s close to perfect.”
“This seems almost too easy,” she said as they walked back to the car.
“Why should it be hard?”
“I don’t know. I’m just naturally suspicious of too easy.” At the car she turned, leaned back against the door to look up at him. “When it’s going easy I know there’s a disaster waiting to fall on my head. It’s just around the corner, a piano being lowered out the window”
“So you walk around it.”
“What if you’re not looking up until—
snap—the cable breaks, then you’re splatted under the Steinway”
“Most of the time the cable doesn’t break.”
“Most of the time,” she agreed, tapping a finger on his chest. “It only takes once. So it’s better to keep looking up, just in case.”
Lifting a hand, he tucked her swing of hair behind her ear. “Then you can trip over the curb and break your neck.”
“That’s true. Disasters are everywhere.”
“Would you feel better if I started a fight?” He laid his hands on the car on either side of her, leaned in to brush his lips against hers. “Rough you up a little so it’s not so easy.”
“Depends on the roughing up.” She drew him down for a deeper kiss. “Twenty-four more days,” she murmured. “Maybe it’s not so easy after all.”
“Almost a week down.” He opened the door for her. “And an eight-hundred-dollar pool on the line.”
There was that, she thought as he walked around the car to get behind the wheel. He’d insisted on tossing a hundred of his in on the kitty. “Some would say our tribe’s a little too intimate when they start a pool on when we’ll have sex.”
“Those
some aren’t our tribe. And thinking of tribes, why don’t we gather ours for the Fourth?”
“Fourth of what—oh. July. God, it’s nearly here.”
“We could play some ball, eat some hot dogs, watch the fireworks in the park.You don’t have an event that day.”
“No events on the Fourth, no matter how much they beg or bribe. A Vows’ tradition. We have a day off.” She sighed it. “An entire day off, away from the kitchen. I can get behind that.”
“Good, because I already said something to Parker about the gathering of the tribe.”
“What if I’d said no?”
He flashed her a grin. “Then we’d have missed you.”
She narrowed her eyes at him, but her lips twitched. “I suppose I already have an assignment.”
“There might have been some mention of a suitably patriotic cake. And we thought we’d go over to Gantry’s after, for some music. ”
“I’m not designated driver. If I bake, I get to drink.”
“Reasonable. We’ll make Carter do it,” he decided and made her laugh. “We can all fit in Emma’s van.”
“That works for me.” It was all working for her, she thought as he turned in the drive.
She was going to have to keep a careful eye out for pianos.
SHE DECIDED TO GO WITH A FIREWORKS THEME, WHICH MEANT working with a lot of spun sugar. Probably silly to go to so much trouble for a park picnic with friends, she thought as she threw heated strands from her whisk to the wooden rack, but also fun.
She’d use the strands to form exploding fountains on the cake she’d already piped out in red, white, and blue. Some gum paste flags around the border, and you had a winner.
Enjoying herself, she began to form the fireworks with the sugar strands made pliable with just a touch of beeswax.
She stepped back to check the first formation, and nearly yelped when she saw a man in her doorway.
“Sorry. Sorry. I didn’t want to say anything when you were working. Afraid I’d screw you up. Nick Pelacinos, from the last-minute engagement party?”
“Sure.” He had a summer bouquet in his hand that made her think: uh-oh. “How are you?”
“Good. Your partner said I could come back, that you weren’t working, but ...”
“This isn’t for a job.”
“It ought to be.” He stepped closer. “Fun.”
“Yeah, it is. Spun sugar’s like a toy.”
“And your hands are full with it, so why don’t I just put these over here.” He crossed over to set the flowers out of the way.
“They’re beautiful.” Had she flirted with him? Yes. Sort of. “Thank you.”
“I have my grandmother’s recipe for the lathopita.”
“Oh, that’s great.”
“She gave me orders to deliver it in person.” He took a recipe card out of his pocket, laid it beside the bouquet. “And to bring you the flowers.”
“That’s awfully sweet of her.”
“She liked you.”
“I liked her, too. How about some coffee?”
“No, I’m fine. Her third order was for me to ask you out to dinner—which I’d intended to do anyway, but she likes to take credit.”
“Oh. And that’s sweet of both of you. But I’ve actually started seeing someone recently. Well, the seeing part is recent. Sort of.”
“My grandmother and I are disappointed.”
She smiled a little. “Can I still keep the recipe?”
“On the condition I can tell her you only turned me down because you’re madly in love with someone else.”
“That’s a deal.”
“And ...” He took out a pen, turned the recipe card over, and wrote something down. “My number. You’ll call me if things change.”
“You’ll be the first.” She took a strand of sugar from her rack, offered it. “Have a taste.”
“Nice. As consolation prizes go.”
They grinned at each other as Del walked in.
“Hi. Sorry, I didn’t know you were with a client.”
Awkward, Laurel thought. “Ah, Delaney Brown, Nick—”
“Pelacinos,” Del said. “It took me a minute.”
“Del, sure.” Nick held out
a hand for a shake. “It’s been a while. How are you?”
Or not awkward at all, Laurel decided as the two men settled in.
“I talked toTerri and Mike just a couple weeks ago. Are you in the market for a wedding cake?”
“Me? No. I have a cousin getting married here in a few months.”
“Nick’s grandmother’s visiting from Greece,” Laurel put in, in case they’d forgotten she was there. “We had a pre-event event so she could see the setup.”
“Right. I was by that night.”
“You should’ve joined the party. It was a good one.”
“I glanced in for a minute.You got Laurel on the dance floor.” Del glanced at her, deliberately. “Big night.”
She went back to her spun sugar. “I got a recipe from the matriarch out of it,” she said with a smile as sweet as her sugar. “That’s a major night for me.”
“I’d better get going. I’ll let my grandmother know I made the delivery.”
“Tell her how much I appreciate it, and I’ll try to do her proud at the wedding.”
“I will. Good to see you again, Laurel. Del.”
“I’ll walk you out. What’s your handicap now?” Del asked as they left the kitchen.
Laurel frowned after them until she realized Del was talking golf. With a shake of her head, she tossed more sugar. It wasn’t as if she’d wanted the moment to be awkward or tense. Jealousy was weak and self-absorbed and irritating.
But a little hint of it—like beeswax in spun sugar—couldn’t hurt.
Nick had asked her out, after all. He’d even left his number where she’d see it every time she took out the recipe for lathopita. Which had been very clever of him, now that she thought of it.
Of course, Del didn’t know that, but he could
infer it, couldn’t he? And so inferring be just a little irked or something instead of all “how’s it going, how’s the golf game?”
Men, she thought—or rather, men like Del—just didn’t get the subtle nuances of a relationship.
He came back in a few moments later. “That’s great,” he said nodding toward the cake as he opened a cupboard. “Want a glass of wine? I want a glass of wine.”