Christmas and Cannolis

by Peggy Jaeger

  And he didn’t disappoint.

  It made no difference we were in a crowded restaurant, surrounded by people eating, talking. We could have been a thousand miles away on a deserted island for all either of us cared.

  My toes curled in my boots and a delicious slice of pleasure shot up my spine when Connor’s mouth parted right before touching mine. A hot little wisp of his breath danced over me and filled me with his intent. Our lips touched, met, settled against one another. Connor slid his tongue along my bottom lip, and I opened for him, reveling in the taste of him.

  My free hand slid up his jacket, basking in the rich texture of the fabric, to skim across the column of his throat and settle against his cheek. His skin was smooth and clean-shaven, warm and velvety soft against my palm. Connor let go of my arm and slipped his hand down my back. With his fingers pressed against the dip in my spine, he pressed me in even closer. His tongue nipped and sipped at my own as his fingers fanned across my back and kneaded.

  Mio Dio.

  Who knew the small of your back was such an erogenous zone? He must have first-hand knowledge about a particularly sensitive nerve bundle in that region because my thighs started to tremble and a deep-seated liquid warmth, like warm butter melting over hot morning ciabatta rolls, spread throughout my system. A restlessness for more shunted through me from top to bottom, making me fidget and writhe for release. I think I moaned. Or maybe that was Connor. I wasn’t sure, but one thing I was sure of was that in all the time I’d been married, I’d never felt so turned on by a simple kiss before.

  Okay, well, it really wasn’t a simple kiss. More a life-changing event.

  The sound of a throat clearing hit me. Connor pulled back first, and it took a moment for my brain to tell my eyes to open and my mouth to close so I wouldn’t look like a freshly caught fish with a hook still in its mouth.

  When they finally did open, a pink-cheeked Connor was signing the bill the waiter had presented him with. That done, we were left alone again.

  Connor folded his hands in front of him on the table. My romantic little heart hoped it was because he couldn’t trust himself not to run them all over me.

  “I’m sorry about that,” he said after a moment, his gaze still on his hands. “I don’t make a habit of kissing women in public.”

  “Good to know.”

  When he lifted his head and glanced at me, his brows pulling down over his eyes, I smiled at him, hoping to get the same response back.

  I did. Connor took my hand and rubbed my knuckles with the pad of his thumb. His grin went crooked while he shook his head.

  “I’d like to continue this in private”—yes, please!—“but I’ve got another meeting I need to get to.”

  “I should be getting home, too. I need to check on the shop, since we’ve got such a busy two weeks ahead of us.”

  We both rose and walked to the front where the maître d’ gathered our things from the coat check. He gave Connor his and then helped me shrug into mine.

  Out on the sidewalk, the day hadn’t grown any warmer. I shivered as I slipped my gloves on.

  “Let me get you an Uber.” Connor pulled his phone from his coat.

  “No, I can take the train. It’s no problem.”

  “Already on its way,” he said, tucking the phone back into his pocket. “Three minutes.”

  I didn’t bother arguing, especially when Connor yanked me back into his arms. With his hands woven around my waist, we were chest to chest again, a position I was growing very comfortable with.

  “I realize I just said I don’t do this in public, but…” He kissed me again. “I can’t help it.”

  Don’t worry about it, I wanted to scream. Just keep on doing it.

  I think I might have actually said it out loud, because Connor’s massive shoulders started to shake and I could feel the smile pull across the lips attached to mine.

  He pulled back and grinned down at me, then laid his forehead against mine. “Regina.”

  My name had never sounded so beautiful before. Little pops of yearning, like the way dough snaps when it’s being fried, flashed down my insides at the sound of my name on his kissable lips.

  “Reggie,” I said. “I think you can break down and call me Reggie. Like I told your uncle, all my friends call me that. The only people who call me Regina are my parents, and it’s usually when I’ve done something wrong.”

  A sweet grin split his face. “I have trouble believing you’ve ever done anything wrong.”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  He kissed the tip of my nose and said, “Your car is here.”

  A black sedan pulled to the curb.

  “I’ll see you in a few days,” I told him before getting in. “Thank you again for…everything.”

  He leaned into the car and gave me a final kiss, quick and hard.

  As we pulled away from the curb I stared out the window at him. Connor stood, hands in his coat pockets, watching me as well.

  Chapter 5

  Regina’s tips for surviving in a big Italian family: 5. Accept that the men in your family will always think you need saving, whether you do or not.

  “I think this is one of the best ones you’ve ever done, Reggie,” Marianne said from behind me. “You should take a picture of it for the book you show customers.”

  “Already did,” I told her. I finished piping the last little row of green holly along the border of an elf’s hat and then stood back and viewed the structure.

  The cake was massive. Truly. It stood over four feet tall and was six feet wide. A complete Santa’s workshop with six cake elves and enough electronic tablets, and handheld game replicas to gift to a schoolroom of kids.

  I’d started working on it the moment I got back from my meltdown lunch with Connor. After all the cakes were baked and cooled, I’d begun principle construction with three of my decorators—Marianne and Kari among them because they were the best—and we’d cut, sliced, and stacked, then molded and smoothed each shape with fondant. After a day in the fridge so everything cooled and “glued” together, we’d started the actual piping of the cake pieces. Each elf had taken over six hours to complete, their faces molded from modeling chocolate and fondant to give each of them their own distinct look.

  “Whatever this guy is paying you for this cake,” Kari said as she finished attaching a row of blown “snow” made from confectioner’s sugar to the window of the toyshop, “isn’t enough.”

  “Let’s get it into the fridge for an hour. We don’t need to leave to deliver it until six,” I said. I’d worked down to the zero hour on this concoction, knowing I wanted each detail to be perfect for Connor.

  Connor.

  He’d been on my mind continuously these past five days. He’d texted me twice in the Uber and asked me to let him know when I was back at the bakery, safe and sound. I’d complied, telling him again how thankful I was that he’d rescued me.

  His cryptic response had been to tell me we’d rescued one another.

  He’d called me at least once a day to check up on me, usually at night after I was already tucked in bed, my hands stiff and exhausted from decorating the never-ending orders of holiday cakes and cookies all day long. The launch of the new client app, he’d told me, was taking up so much of his free time he never had a moment to call me during the day.

  I didn’t mind. There was something so personal, so…intimate about talking with him when everyone was gone for the day and probably snuggled into their own beds. Almost as if no one but the two of us were awake in the world. Just hearing his husky, tired voice did something to my insides. While he told me about his day, comically recalling how one of his techs had proposed to another of his employees by printing a life sized series of emojis set up in a puzzle form, or how frustrating a new client was being, demanding changes to a ready-to-launch app, I imagined him sitting across from me at the dinner table. I’d conjure images of him coming through the door to our home, sweeping me into his arms telling me ho
w much he missed me. Then showing me.

  I’ve never been that girl. The kind who fantasized about a man, eternal love, and the whole happily-ever-after thing. Not since the reality of my marriage failing and my daughter dying became my actual life. Nowadays, my fantasies circled around making payroll and possibly taking a few days’ vacation someday to Venice or Florence when I was secure enough in the knowledge that the bakery wouldn’t burn to the ground if I was away from it for more than a day and not managing every single thing that went on in it.

  But just hearing Connor share his day with me, thoughts of how it would be to have someone like him in my life, loving me and wanting to spend the rest of his life with me, gave me hope that it could actually happen.

  I’d never had a true courtship with my ex, Johnny, or even a meaningful conversation before we’d been forced to get married. He was guy I knew from school but not one I’d ever hung out with, or who knew my brothers or anyone connected to me. Johnny was opposite to my family in every way conceivable, and that’s why I’d gone after him like a house on fire. With the wisdom of age and tragedy, I’d come to see what I’d done as the ultimate rebellion against my overprotective parents and their archaic way of thinking about girls.

  And just look where that insurgence had landed me. A childless workaholic divorcee who hadn’t had a date since she was seventeen and had kissed two guys in her entire life, slept with just one. So when Connor took the time—his free time—to call me after a trying day just to check in and talk, I’ll admit it made me feel all kinds of special.

  “You gonna go with the boys to deliver it?” Kari asked.

  I nodded.

  “Bonus,” Marianne said. “You get to see tall, dark, and hunky again.” She wiggled her eyebrows at me, a suggestive grin tugging at her lips.

  While the two of them starting laughing and going back and forth with all their thoughts about Connor, their own boyfriends, and guys in general, I pushed the cake on its tray back into the storage refrigerator and then went out front to see how the display cases were doing with stock. Ten days before Christmas and my regular customers were starting to purchase all their treats for holiday visiting and house parties.

  I glanced around the crowded storefront when I came up the stairs. The display cabinets were being restocked, the line was snaked around the bakery’s interior and out the door, and the cash registers were making beautiful Christmas music with all the chiming as each sale was rung up. I didn’t see my mother in her usual spot behind the counter, so I did a quick eye roll through the place and found her. She was seated at one of the customer tables with my father, a cup of coffee in front of each of them. Pop was holding one of her hands as he was speaking.

  After fifty-plus years of marriage, my mother still stared at my father as if he hung the moon for her. I simply adore this. Who, in this day and age, can boast that their parents still love and honor each other after decades of family strife, deaths, crises, and war, and can gaze at one another as if they were teenagers finding first love?

  This is what fantasies are made of.

  “Hey, Pop.” I kissed the top of his head and pulled out the empty chair at their table. “What are you doing here?”

  “I was out making the rounds and I missed your mama, so I figured I’d come in and steal her away for a few minutes.”

  See? I love this.

  “You need me for somethin’, Regina Maria?” Ma asked.

  “Nope. Just checking on how everything’s going on up here before I have to leave for a delivery.”

  Her lips pressed together into a line, and she lowered her head to stare at me from under her eyelashes. Why I tend to forget she knows everything that goes on inside my shop, despite only working at the counter, never ceases to surprise me. Of course she knew what cake I was delivering today. She’d probably circled the date on her internal calendar as a reminder.

  Pop frowned when he noticed the look Ma was throwing my way. Fifty-plus years of staring across the breakfast table at your spouse every day can make you pretty attuned to the other’s expressions, and Pop had a black belt in reading Ma’s face.

  “This the big-ass Pearl’s Place order?” he asked me.

  And of course Ma had told him about it. Why would I ever think she wouldn’t share that?

  “Not specifically there. It’s for a fundraiser that will benefit it.”

  “So you don’t gotta actually deliver it to the hospice?”

  “No.”

  “Good. You should never even have to think about that place, much less go there, again. Gave you enough sad memories for a lifetime, bellissima figlia.”

  He reached over and grabbed my hand, squeezed it twice, and then glanced over at my mother.

  “I know, Pop. But it’s been six years. I’m—well, not over it. But I can handle the sadness now. Much better than I could when Angie…died.”

  At the word, my mother made the sign of the cross, kissed her palm, and then leaned over to kiss my cheek. Unexpected tears stung. I tried to blink them away before my parents could notice them, but that’s the thing about my parents: they’re both acutely tuned in to their children, despite the fact all five of us are adults.

  “You don’t have to deliver it, you know, Regina,” Ma said. “Nunzie and Alby are responsible. They can be counted on to do a good job.”

  “I know, Ma. But I’m okay to do this, I really am. Besides—” I stood and took a quick swipe at my eyes. “—it’s my bakery, and I’m the one who worked on the cake for the past five days. I want to see the expression on Con—uh, everyone’s faces, when I bring the cake in. The girls think it’s my best one yet, and I kinda agree.”

  “Every cake you do is a masterpiece,” Pop said, no small amount of pride in his voice. “If youse was around in the olden days, you woulda been one of them old-world masters, only not a master ’cause you’re a girl. But you know what I’m saying.”

  “I do, Pop, and thanks.” I kissed his cheek this time, then bent to do the same to my mother. “You two finish your visit. Drink your coffee. I’ve gotta get ready.”

  “You’re coming for supper after Mass tomorrow, si?”

  “Yeah, Ma. I’ll be there. I’ll bring some cookies for dessert.”

  “Bring a couple-a boxes,” Ma ordered. “And nothing special for your brothers this time. Let their wives bake for them if they want pies and stuff. They don’t do much of anything else aside from get their nails painted and shop. It’ll do them good to do something other than spend money.”

  Remember I told you that no one was ever going to be good enough for my mother? Proof of that, right here.

  I ran up to my apartment and did a quick check in the mirror. When I delivered cakes to events, I usually went directly from the workroom, apron on, my usual jeans and T-shirt under it. I wasn’t a guest and was never asked to stay and take part in the festivities. I figured that wouldn’t change with this delivery, but since I was going to be seeing Connor, even if it was for a scant few minutes, I didn’t want to look like something the family cat had hocked up after a night on the prowl. I ran a comb through my hair, then pulled it back into a much less wild-looking ponytail, swiped some concealer over the purple splotches under my eyes, and brushed my teeth. This was about as much as I ever did in the way of enhancement, and for the first time in maybe forever, it didn’t feel like enough.

  I’ve been gifted with my ancestors’ coloring, so my eyelashes are naturally black and I don’t need mascara to highlight them. My eyebrows could have done with a major rework, but I was always afraid to do it myself. Trixie, Penny, and my two other sisters-in-law, Carlotta and Ella, had volunteered to take me to their stylist, but all four of them had those plucked-to-one-thin-hair eyebrows that made them appear perpetually surprised, and I didn’t think that look would work on me. It didn’t on them, either, but I kept my opinion on that to myself.

  The one concession I did make was to shed my apron and don my professional chef/baker jacket. I’d had it embr
oidered with the shop’s name and an appliqué of a three tiered cake.

  Satisfied this was as good as I was going to get, I went back to the workroom and commandeered the moving of the cake tray into my delivery van.

  With my two nephews, Nunzio and Albert (Nunzie and Alby) we managed to get the cake secured into the back of the truck, Alby riding shotgun with it, while Nunzio and I sat up front with him at the wheel.

  Ten days before Christmas in Manhattan on a Saturday evening is not my favorite time of the day, year, or place to be driving. The one lucky thing I had on my side was the venue Connor had been able to book at the last minute was on the West Side—the same as my bakery—and only one mile south. It took us almost thirty minutes to drive the twenty blocks and one avenue, but I think that was a record in quick-time for us. Nunzie found the deliveries-only sign and parked the van at the back door. I sent Alby into the front to get the manager to let us in and show us where to bring the cake.

  “This place is nice,” Nunzie said, looking around as we wheeled the cart along the hallway. “Fancy. Think it’s pricey?”

  I shrugged. “Probably. Why?”

  “I wanna take Paula someplace nice for dinner. Classy, like.”

  Paula was Nunzie’s girlfriend. His parents were her parents’ best friends. These two had known one another since birth, been buddies on the playground, first crushes in grade school, and had exclusively been a couple since eighth grade. Nunzie had never kissed another girl. I knew this as a fact because he told me at least once a month.

  I took a good look at the furnishings in the main dining area as we were led past it to a separate space reserved for the party.

  “You may need to do some overtime, or take a second job, just to be able to pay the bill,” I told him.

  “Paula’s worth it,” he replied. “I’m thinking we may get engaged soon. She’s the first girl I ever kissed (see?), and she’s gonna be the last.”

  I wanted to tell him he was too young to make a decision like that. They both were. But I bit my tongue and held the thought. Who was I to give relationship advice? My Uncle Joey, Pop’s brother, has this saying he tugs out every now and again when we’re talking—okay, gossiping—about people at the dinner table: Sometimes you gotta let a person make their own mistakes before they realize what’s what.