by Rhonda Bowen
The guys continued trading barbs and teasing Hayden. Sydney watched as he took it all in stride. Despite the jokes, she could tell that the players really respected Hayden and that made her respect him. When they finally moved to leave after ordering seconds and in some cases thirds, Sydney couldn’t believe that almost forty minutes had passed.
“Sydney, pleasure to meet you, hope you’ll make it to the next game,” Brian said with a grin as he followed the guys toward the exit.
“Yeah, Dub always has tickets,” Sean added. “Make sure he gets you a couple.”
“Thanks, guys.” Sydney waved to them as they left.
Hayden relaxed back in the booth and let out a sigh as he watched the guys leave.
“Too much to handle, Dub?” Sydney teased.
He grinned. “Sometimes. But I love those guys. I just met them, but they’re like family—even when they’re giving me hell.”
“Well, they sure made my evening,” Sydney said, shifting in the booth so she could face him.
“Only them?” Hayden asked with a raised eyebrow.
Sydney smiled coyly. “It was the package.”
His eyes sparkled at hers. “Thanks for hanging with me. After the Blakes’s party and you not showing up last night, I thought I didn’t have a chance.”
Sydney raised an eyebrow. “Who said you do?”
“Oh, I’m pretty sure I do.” He grinned slyly.
“I don’t remember saying anything to suggest that,” Sydney said in mock seriousness.
“Please, you were all over me during dessert,” Hayden said. “Rubbing your shoulder up against me, caressing my hand . . .”
“I was passing you a napkin!”
“. . . rubbing your leg against mine.”
“I needed to get out of the booth.”
“Always putting your hands on me . . .”
“I was not,” Sydney said, slapping him playfully.
“See, you did it again.” He shook his head. “You can’t keep your hands off me, can you?”
Sydney folded her arms and tried to glare at him, but ended up smiling.
“You are terrible, you know that?” she said.
She shook her head as she let her eyes take in the whole Hayden package. He was beautiful. And not just because of the whole lose-your-breath-gorgeous thing he had going on. It was something else. He was different from the boy she had known years ago. Different in ways that made it harder for her to ignore her growing attraction to him. And she was tired of trying.
What was the worst that could happen anyway?
“OK, fine, maybe you have a chance,” she said, leaning back in the booth beside him.
“Good,” he said, handing her his phone. “’Cause I’m not waiting another week to see you again. Next time without the six-foot chaperones.”
“How’s this weekend?” she asked, as she put her number into his phone and handed it back to him.
He slipped it into his pocket and turned to meet her eyes. “How’s tomorrow?”
She grinned. “That works, too.”
“Good, I’ll text you the details,” he said, standing up. He smiled at her as he backed away. “And this time, please show up.”
She laughed. That was not something he had to worry about. Not at all.
Chapter 7
“We’re taking the subway?”
The sun glinted off his caramel-colored face as he grinned. “Yup.”
Sydney stopped in the middle of the downtown sidewalk in front of Decadent. “Why?”
“Why not?” He grabbed her hand and pulled her forward. “It’s a beautiful day. The sun is shining, the air is full of smog. What more could a city girl want?”
“Four wheels and central cooling,” Sydney said. “Is this why you told me to wear comfortable shoes?”
“I promise you’ll have fun,” Hayden said as they walked side by side toward the entrance to the underground. “I got us day passes so we can go wherever we want.”
“You know, if you don’t have a car it’s OK. We could have taken mine. I’m not one of those judgmental sisters. I can work with a brother.”
Hayden laughed. “I have a car. It’s parked in your spot behind Decadent.”
“Then why aren’t we driving?”
He stopped walking and turned to look her dead in the eye.
“Because I would rather look at you than look at traffic.”
Sydney’s heart took a pause, then continued beating.
A smile stole onto her lips and she turned her face away slightly so he couldn’t tell how much his words had affected her.
“OK,” she said after a moment. “That’s a pretty good reason, Dub.”
He smirked. “I thought so, too, Nini.”
The fifteen-minute ride that she remembered from her days of commuting to university seemed like only a few moments with Hayden. The more time she spent with him, the more she felt like the carefree teenager she’d been so many years ago. It was almost as if only a couple of days had passed between then and now, instead of a number of years.
“OK, so I think we’re here,” Hayden said as they came out of the College subway station exit to the street.
“You think?” Sydney asked teasingly. She watched as Hayden scratched his head and looked around at the pedestrian-heavy street. She had never seen a man look so good, when he was so totally lost. Actually she had never seen a man look so good, period. Well, there was Boris Kodjoe, but she had never met him in person, so he didn’t count.
“No,” Hayden said, a little more confidently. “I’m sure. This is it.”
Sydney looked up and down the street at the tightly packed structures, which ranged in style from nineteenth century to postmodern and which housed an equally eclectic mix of shops and establishments. “What exactly is it?”
He grabbed her hand again and led her around the corner to College Street. Sydney’s mouth fell open. There were people everywhere. They poured off the sidewalk into the road like a river, circling around the white tents that lined both sides of the street for as far as she could see. She suddenly noticed the sound of music that had been so faint before. It set the tempo for the movement of the crowd as they made their way unhindered by cars through the usually gridlocked downtown street.
“What is this?” Sydney asked, keeping her hold on Hayden’s hand as he led her past the barricades where the vehicular traffic stopped and festival traffic began.
“This is Taste of Little Italy,” he said, leaning close to her ear. “Every Italian dish you can think of is somewhere in the next seven blocks.”
Sydney scrunched up her face and stopped short. “Italian?”
The jubilant expression on Hayden’s face fell like a brick into the ocean.
“Don’t tell me.” Weariness saturated his voice. “You hate Italian food.”
He wiped his hand over his face and looked away and she heard him mumble something with the words “stupid” and “idiot.” Sydney covered her mouth.
“I’m sorry,” he said, dropping his hands to his sides, his face contorted by regret. “I shouldn’t have assumed. I should have asked. . . .”
Before he could finish, she burst into laughter.
“Come on, Sydney, it’s not that funny.” Hayden stuck his hands into his pockets. “I said I was sorry. . . .”
Sydney shook her head and struggled to speak through her laughter. “Your face . . . you looked like . . . like I told you your dog died.... It was priceless.”
“What?”
Sydney wiped her eyes and straightened up. “I think we have a bit of a misunderstanding. I love Italian,” she said. “I just wanted to get you back for ambushing me last night.”
Hayden looked up at the sky and closed his eyes. When he looked back down at Sydney, he was chuckling.
“You are something else,” he said, shaking his head. “What am I going to do with you?”
She grinned and slipped her arm into his. “How about feed me?”
&nb
sp; They took their time weaving through the crowd on College Street. Sydney was sure they tasted something at almost every stand. Some of them twice.
“Wow, Nini, you still inhale food like a garbage disposal,” Hayden said with a chuckle.
Sydney’s eyes widened, but her mouth was full of a beef sausage covered in everything and so she opted to punch him in the arm instead. He only laughed at her effort at injuring him.
“At least I chew my food, instead of swallowing it whole,” she retorted when she had swallowed.
“Hey, we all appreciate food in our own way.” He draped an arm carelessly around her shoulders. “Admit it, being out with me wasn’t as terrible as you thought it would be.”
Sydney had never thought being out with him would be terrible. In fact, her fear of how completely unterrible it would be was what had kept her hesitating. But she would never admit that to him.
“I don’t know about that, Mr. Windsor. Since we’ve been here, all you’ve done is insult me and laugh at me. . . .”
“. . . and buy you whatever you want, and carry your girly purse so you could hold more food, and tell you you’re beautiful even with mustard all over your face.”
He wiped a bit of something off the tip of her nose. Sydney smiled up at him and caught the warmth behind the teasing in his eyes.
“So you think I’m beautiful, eh,” she said with a grin.
He shook his head and smiled. “You already know that.”
She leaned into his side as they continued walking. “OK, maybe you’re not too bad for company.”
His laugh echoed through the cool night air and got lost somewhere in the dusk that surrounded the thinning crowd. All the streetlights were on now, and a few vendors had turned on the decorative lights attached to their stalls. Sydney noticed that the sound of the music was mostly behind them, and they were almost at the end of the area designated for the festival. As they turned around to make the trek back up to where they started, Sydney was aware of her own reluctance for the evening to be over. Judging by Hayden’s own unhurried pace, she suspected the feeling went both ways.
“When was the last time you were down here?” he asked, breaking the lull of comfortable silence that had fallen between them.
Sydney looked up thoughtfully.
“I don’t know,” she said after a moment. “It’s been a while. We’ve delivered a few catering jobs around here, but I can’t remember the last time I’ve actually walked on this street in this area.”
He nodded. “It sure is different from how I remember it.”
Sydney looked up at him curiously. “You mean since you left Toronto?”
He looked down at her for a long moment.
“Come here.” He grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the sidewalk. She followed him wordlessly for a few steps until he stopped in front of a storefront halfway between the end of the festival and the subway entrance.
He nodded toward the tiny bar in front of them.
“You remember this?”
Sydney stepped forward toward the busy pub. The front had been redone in new colors, and the sign overhead read COLLEGE STREET BAR, but Sydney remembered when it read DECADENT. This was the exact spot where Leroy’s bakery had first been more than twenty years ago.
“You remember,” she whispered, turning back to look at Hayden. His hands were stuck casually in his pockets as he observed her. He looked more serious than he had all night.
“Of course I remember,” he said easily. “This place felt like home to me more than anywhere else in the world.”
He leaned back against a nearby light post.
“I always knew what to expect when I was here. There would always be cream soda in the refrigerator. Uncle Leroy would always have a slice of sweet potato pie for me and there would always be a seat under the ash tree out back that was all mine.”
Sydney shook her head. “That ash tree. Mom begged dad to cut it down. She was so sure it was going to fall on one of us, it was so old.”
Hayden laughed. “No way was Uncle Leroy going to cut that down.”
“I know,” Sydney said. “In the summer he used to string a hammock between the trunk of that tree and the back wall of the shop. If he cut it down where would the hammock go?”
They both laughed as they remembered Sydney’s dad.
“I was at the funeral, you know,” Hayden said after a moment. “I saw you and your sisters.... I wanted to go over, but it had been so long. I should have said something.... I’m sorry. . . .”
“It’s OK.” Sydney waved away his remorse with a flick of her wrist.
“No, it’s not,” Hayden said, stepping closer, peering into her eyes. “Uncle Leroy was like family to me. And I should have been there for you.”
He pulled her close into an embrace and Sydney wished he hadn’t, because it was like all his love for her father seeped into her and unlocked the part of her heart that had sealed up her affection for Leroy. Memories of her dad suffocated her and she gasped for breath. She pulled away from him and stepped back. His bewildered expression only made her take another step back.
“I . . . I’m s-sorry,” she stuttered.
His brow furrowed at his eyes flitted over her face with concern. “Are you OK?”
She blinked and looked away from him, sticking her hands in her pockets. “I’m fine.”
“Are you su—”
“Let’s just go, OK?” She began walking away without waiting for him to respond.
She soon heard his steps behind her and moments later, he was falling in step beside her. She could feel him glance over at her every few moments, but she hoped he wouldn’t ask her about what had just happened, because she couldn’t explain. She was still having trouble herself understanding how she felt about her father. Feelings of love, emptiness, betrayal, and guilt had clashed for so long that she found it easier to lock them away than deal with them. That was why she didn’t want to go down this memory lane with Hayden.
She took a deep breath and then another, hoping that the cool air that filled her lungs would clear the tension in her chest. But it was Hayden’s hand on hers that eventually did the trick. He didn’t say anything, he didn’t look at her, but the sure strength of his fingers around hers was enough.
“So seeing that I just bought you half the Italian food in Toronto, think I can score a free slice of red velvet cake?” he asked as they headed toward the subway.
Sydney shook her head and smiled. “Always looking for freebies, aren’t you, Dub.”
“Hey, at least I’m consistent,” he said with a grin.
“Hmm,” Sydney said, smirking at him. “Too bad your free-throw average for the Celtics wasn’t.”
“Oooh!” Hayden groaned and grabbed his chest. “Straight to the heart.”
“Don’t worry,” Sydney said, smiling sweetly. “I’m sure a slice of red velvet will heal the pain.”
His loud, heavy laugh rumbled through her, and for a while again, Sydney was able to forget how complicated her life really was.
“Where do you think you’re coming from this time of the night?”
“Yes, where have you been?”
Sydney closed the front door behind her and slipped off her shoes.
“Out,” Sydney said, as she walked the short distance into the living room, where her sisters were sitting on the couch watching television.
“Out?” JJ raised an eyebrow. “Is that all you have to say? It’s 10:15 on a work night, missy.”
Sydney smiled contentedly before dropping down on the couch beside JJ. “Yes, that’s all.”
“Out with Mr. NBA,” Lissandra said from the armchair where she was painting her toenails. “Where ya’ll been for the past four hours? I don’t know any dinner that lasts that long.”
“Depends where you’re eating,” Sydney said with a grin. “We went downtown for Taste of Little Italy.”
“The food festival?” Lissandra glanced up. “Well, he certainly found the way to your
heart.”
“When are we gonna get to see him again anyway?” JJ asked. “It’s been forever since he’s been in Toronto. I’ve almost forgotten what he looks like.”
“So Google him.” Sydney stretched out her legs on the coffee table. “That should jog your memory.”
“Come on,” JJ whined. “Lissandra got to see him.”
“I know,” Sydney said. “And look what happened. She bartered my parking spot for game tickets.”
“Hey!” Lissandra said, looking up from her toes again. “Everything worked out for everybody in the end, didn’t it?”
Sydney rolled her eyes.
“OK, have it your way,” JJ said. She yawned as she stood up. “Just be careful, though. Fame changes people. He may not be the same guy you remember. And who knows what secrets are lurking in the years since we last saw him.”
“OK, Mom, I’ll be careful,” Sydney said mockingly. She watched incredulously as her sister headed toward the stairs. “Are you going to bed?”
“Yup,” JJ said, her foot already on the first step. “I’m really tired.”
“Tired, eh,” Lissandra muttered. Sydney nudged Lissandra’s chair and gave her a warning look when she looked up.
“Yes, tired. I do work all day,” JJ said.
Lissandra looked like she would say something, but Sydney cut her off.
“Good night, JJ.”
“Good night, all,” JJ said, already halfway up the stairs.
Sydney flipped the station to the Food Network. “So what you guys been up to all evening anyway?”
“Talking about Decadent,” Lissandra said. She pursed her lips. “Dean came over.”
Sydney turned to look at her sister. “What did he say?”
“He was looking for you,” Lissandra said. She capped the bottle of nail polish and sat up. “He wants the money, Sydney.”
Sydney raked her hands through her hair. “I know. . . .”
“No, I don’t think you do,” Lissandra said. “He wants all the money. You told him what the restaurant was worth and now all he can see are dollar signs. He came over here talking about he and Sheree want to get a place of their own and move out of the guesthouse, and he and Sheree want to start a fund for their child. Why the heck do they need to start a fund for kids they don’t have?”