by Libby Klein
She had foam in her eyebrow and caramel on the bridge of her nose, but she was a genius.
Sawyer frowned at the empty cup and threw it in the trash can behind her. “Did you tell Tim you’re rejecting him for the second time around?”
Oof. It was the very reason I’d agonized over admitting I was in love with Gia in the first place. What kind of terrible person throws a man aside twice? Tim had practically proposed marriage—again. And once again I was meeting his proposal with a breakup for another man. I was a walking country music song. Even if things didn’t work out with Gia, Tim would never forgive me. I wasn’t sure I would ever forgive me. Maybe Gia being married was the karma I deserved. Momma was right. I am the Whore of Babylon.
“Poppy.” Sawyer was staring at me with raised eyebrows. “When do you talk to Tim?”
“This afternoon.”
“Why so soon? You’re not exactly in a rush anymore.”
“I don’t want to string him along when he could be happy with someone else.”
“Like Gigi.”
“If Tim ends up with Gigi after everything she’s put us through, I will lose my flipping mind.”
Sawyer let out a deep sigh, then held her hand up to the barista. “Another round for Swanson and Potsie!”
CHAPTER 4
I’d tried to get Tim to meet me someplace neutral so we could talk away from Chuck and Juan and the kitchen staff. This was going to be hard enough without having the entire line be my audience. No matter how many suggestions I threw out there, Tim was too busy to get away. It had to be Maxine’s. The giant, wooden Gigi crab glared smugly as I pulled into the parking lot, gloating that she’d always known this day was coming.
Tim was waiting for me at the back door. “Here she is.” He leaned down and kissed me. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get away, babe. It’s Friday afternoon and we have a decent amount of reservations for tonight. The South Jersey Dining Guide has brought in so much business, I may need to hire another chef. We’re just starting the dinner prep.”
My throat closed up and I felt the noose tighten. I looked around the kitchen, all chrome and white subway tiles. Steam poured from stockpots, Troy was peeling potatoes, and the room smelled of caramelized garlic and onions. This was the quiet before the dinner storm. Chuck and Juan were currently in a competition to see how far they could toss a shrimp between two sauté pans without dropping it. Tyler was elbow deep in a bucket of blue crabs getting tonight’s special ready. He waved a crab at me. “Hey Poppy!”
Tim put his hand on my back. “Come on, let’s go to my office before these idiots do something I have to yell at them for.”
I smiled to myself as I followed Tim down the tight hall to the little room where he planned menus and kept receipts and employee records. He moved a pizza box off the second chair for me to sit down. I picked up a pink, fuzzy scarf and handed it to him. He tossed it on the desk. “That’s probably Linda’s. So, what’s going on with you? You sounded like this was pretty important.”
I swallowed hard and opened my mouth, willing the words to come out on their own. The office door opened, and Chuck stuck his head in with a cappuccino. “For Chef Poppy.”
“Aww, Chuck, you didn’t have to . . .”
Tim made a face at Chuck. “Will you get out of here?”
Chuck slinked back out the door. “I’m goin’.”
Tim yelled after him, “There better not be shrimp on my floor.” Tim rolled his eyes at the door. “Sorry. What were you saying?”
I sipped my cappuccino, and it seared my throat like lava. That was fine. I deserved a first-degree burn. I put the cup on the edge of Tim’s desk and folded my hands back in my lap. “Well. You know you’ve been asking me to make a commitment.”
Tim’s door flew open and hit the back of my chair. I pitched forward, and Linda stuck her head in. “Oh, sorry, Poppy. I didn’t know you were here. Chef, we just got a ten res for seven over OpenTable. Where do you want me to put them?”
Tim closed his eyes. “Oh crap. Move that four res to thirteen and set up twenty-six through twenty-eight and give them the fixed menu. I can’t have that large of a group order the blue crabs. I don’t have enough.”
Linda shut the door behind her, and Tim stood up. “I’m sorry, babe. Can we speed this up? Tonight just tipped from comfortable to hustle and we’ll still have walk-ins.”
I stood up and tried to step behind the chair. “You know what . . . let’s do this another time.”
Tim was looking at a chart on his desk and only half listening to me. He looked through me. “Can this wait until after work? I think I have to call Laura in tonight after all.”
“Of course. Maybe we should talk when you have some time off.”
I had my hand on the doorknob when Tim reached for my arm. “No. I’m sorry. You came all this way. Now is good. Besides, I’m probably not going to have any time off until October. Unless you want to spend the night and we can talk later.” Tim gave me a seductive grin.
I swallowed hard. “I should come back. Maybe after-hours.”
“Mack. Will you just spit it out already?”
I shook my head to myself. There was no way around it. It would have to be his way or not at all. “Okay. You know how we’ve both changed a lot since high school?”
Tim shrugged. “Yeah, I guess. So . . .”
“I just . . . we aren’t the same people anymore. Not really.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about you and me and our relationship.”
He smiled at me. “What’s going on? You know I love you.”
A fat tear welled up in my eye. “I will always love you too, but I think you’re in love with a memory of how we used to be and that isn’t enough to make a relationship work. When I’m with you it’s like I’m seventeen again. All the memories and feelings come rushing back. But somehow we’ve grown in ways that don’t click anymore.”
“How don’t we click? I’m the same person, Poppy.”
“You’re amazing, but you have to admit . . . when we’re together there’s something missing. Unless we’re discussing food or cooking or old times, we have nothing to talk about. I’ve tried to get it back. I thought working here with you would get it back, but it’s not happening. I just don’t think it will work for us. Not in the long run. You deserve more.”
Emotions rolled over Tim’s face. Shock, confusion, hurt, sadness, then anger. The red crept up from his chef whites to his blond hair and his eyes flashed fire before losing all emotion. “Are you kidding me, Mack? Are you really doing this to me again?”
“I’m so sorry.”
Tim was leaning down against his desk and he was yelling now. “No! You don’t get to say you’re sorry. Not again!” Tim turned his back to me, and I wasn’t sure if we were finished or not. Then he spun to face me again. “Everyone warned me not to trust you again. You don’t know what you want. Why am I never enough for you?”
“It’s not you. We want different things in life. You’re married to Maxine’s.” Oh god, both of my men are married. Cape May sucks.
Tim flung his hand out and swiped the papers off his desk. “You are a part of Maxine’s. Don’t you get that?”
I wiped my eyes. “But Tim, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. I’m not. Maxine’s isn’t my dream. I have Aunt Ginny and the B&B. My life is not on the same course as yours. I think you still see who I was in high school, when we both wanted this more than anything else. I’m not there anymore. You work eighty hours a week. If we were together, I’d never see you. Resentment would grow between us. If we tried to force this, before long we’d both be miserable. I never want us to lose our friendship.”
Tim was clenching his jaw so tight his cheek was quivering. “I knew you spending so much time with Gia was a bad idea. Somehow, I thought you’d be able to see that I was the one who’s always loved you, and you’d make the right choice. You’ll regret this, Poppy. And there is no coming back this
time. We’re done.”
“Please, Tim, I don’t want to leave things like this.”
He looked down his nose at me and laughed bitterly. “What? Do you think we’ll be friends? Maybe the three of us will have dinner sometime? I have enough friends. Friends who don’t stab me in the back every time I begin to trust them again. And I don’t need your desserts either. Pastry chefs are a dime a dozen in this town. You’re done here. If I owe you anything, I’ll send a check to the coffee shop.”
I nodded. A rattlesnake had curled up in my belly and was striking my insides to the beat of my heart. I turned my back to keep Tim from seeing me cry. I reached for the door handle and tried to muster my dignity. I just had to get down the hall and through the kitchen.
It wasn’t meant to be. The relationship or the dignity. As soon as I crossed the threshold of the kitchen, Tim yelled after me, “You made the wrong choice! Now you’re going to regret it. When the day comes that you get tired of him, watch your back! That’s not a family you want to cross.”
I looked up into the faces of the kitchen chefs. They’d heard everything. Juan’s shoulders slumped. Chuck gave me a sad finger wave. I knew it was the last time I’d stand here as one of them. My dream of being a restaurant chef had breathed its last breath, but this time it felt right. This time it was on my terms. My heart would eventually heal from Tim’s words. If anything, today reinforced that I’d made the right choice. I’d rather be alone than be together and unhappy. I stepped out the kitchen door and the clamshells crunched beneath my feet. I breathed in the salty air. This pain would pass. I just had to keep moving forward.
And the first thing I was going to do was find out why no one warned me about Gia.
CHAPTER 5
“Do you want me to tell Gia you took off with a sexy Canadian?” Aunt Ginny took the pan of leftover blueberry cheesecake French toast to the kitchen table. She plunged her fork into the middle of the casserole. “There was a bunch of them in Speedos at that Polar Bear Plunge over the weekend. It’s a good cover story.”
“What? No. Why would I do that?”
“Why would anybody do that? There’s not enough peppermint schnapps in the world to get me to jump in the ocean in my altogether in March.”
I stared at Aunt Ginny and shook my head. I was going to need more coffee for this conversation. I picked up the French press and the last little bit sloshed around. “No. Why tell Gia I took off?”
Aunt Ginny hoisted her coffee cup over her head. “Well, you haven’t so much as said boo to him. He’s going to think you skipped town. Wouldn’t you rather he thinks you took up with another man than that you slinked away with your tail between your legs because he broke your heart?”
I filled her cup and started the kettle to make a fresh pot. “I don’t want him to think either. It’s only been three days. Besides, I’m going to the coffee shop today to make some muffins.”
Aunt Ginny snorted. “Three days is long enough for a man to go from sign the divorce papers to how do you unhook this girdle?”
“Well, if that’s how he feels about it, Alexandra can have him. I’m not running after any man whose love is divided. Either you want me or you don’t. Sawyer suggested I take the weekend to think about things and I agreed. So, I put us in a time-out.”
Aunt Ginny dug around the casserole to get to the cheesecake layer. “That figures. This has Sawyer’s fingerprints all over it. I remember when my ex, Morris, wanted to take a time-out.”
“Morris? Which husband was Morris?”
She waved my question off. “I wasn’t married to that one . . . don’t focus on that. What’s important is that he found all his clothes in paper bags covered with the word ‘cheater’ written in red lipstick sitting in the driveway when he came home from the dog track.”
“I’m not trying to punish Gia. I just need some time to get my emotions under control.”
Aunt Ginny snickered. “Delilah’s Revenge. That was the name of the lipstick. I think it was Avon. I wonder if they still make that color. It went really well with my leather catsuit. Why don’t they come to the house anymore?”
“Are you listening to me?”
Aunt Ginny poured a stream of syrup over the edge of the casserole. “What?”
“I said, Sawyer has had lots of experience with this kind of thing after being married to Kurt for fifteen years.”
Aunt Ginny gave me the look that she usually reserved for teenagers bagging groceries at the Acme. “He cheated on her repeatedly throughout their marriage. She didn’t need a time-out, she needed arsenic and an alibi.”
I rolled my eyes. This is why we had to get rid of the Echo. If that thing ever reported Aunt Ginny’s conversation to the authorities, she’d be hauled out of here in a wagon. I made a fresh pot of coffee and changed the subject. “Listen, I was thinking about what Mrs. Buckley said last weekend about the afternoon tea she had at the Chambers Mansion.”
Figaro trotted into the room with his flat nose in the air, trying his best to get a sniff.
Aunt Ginny held her fork down to him. “There’s no bacon today, but you can have some syrup. Was Mrs. Buckley the one with the mole or the one in the brown eyelash sweater that made her look like Snuffleupagus?”
“Snuffleupagus. She went on and on about that tea, and I was thinking we could do that here.”
“You want to serve potted ham sandwiches and Mint Milanos to rich ladies?”
“Well, I was thinking we could do it a little nicer than what she described. John and I had afternoon tea at The Savoy in London once, and I still wake up craving those scones. Why don’t we try it out for Easter weekend? It’s still a month away, so I have time to advertise in all the papers. There’s a beauty expo coming to Convention Hall the same weekend, so there will be lots of tourists in town.”
Aunt Ginny’s eyebrows disappeared into her side-swept red bangs with platinum roots. “You do have more time now that the ingrate fired you from making his desserts. What’d you have in mind?”
“I don’t know. Definitely scones with clotted cream and strawberry jam. And maybe some hot cross buns for Easter.”
“What about putting your chicken salad inside the hot cross buns?”
I grabbed my laptop and moved to join Aunt Ginny at the table to take notes. “I love that idea. We should make Grandma Emmy’s egg salad, and every tea needs cucumber cream cheese sandwiches.”
“I had a cheddar chutney in the Catskills one summer that I’d love to get you the recipe for.” Aunt Ginny tapped her coffee cup. “You know, I think you should do some dry runs of these sandwiches before we present them at afternoon tea. Just to be sure they pass muster.”
I looked up from my laptop where I was typing out an idea for a dessert sandwich. “You do, huh? You afraid I might mess them up?”
“You know . . . you can be cocky when you’re full of yourself.... It pays to be prepared. Why don’t you practice at the coffee shop? Maybe you can ask the mother for some family recipes.”
“Like biscotti and amaretti?”
“I was thinking about Al Capone’s secret spaghetti sauce.”
I stifled a laugh and choked on my exasperation. “You think I should ask Gia if he’s in the Mafia just because they’re Italian? Isn’t that racial profiling?”
Aunt Ginny got up to put the French toast back in the fridge and patted my hand. “Of course not, honey. We don’t judge people in this house based on their skin color or ethnic roots. You know that.”
“That’s a relief.”
“I think you should ask him because everyone in town says his family is in the mob.”
CHAPTER 6
I paced back and forth in the alley, tapping a dirge on my tote bag. All the bravado I’d gained from my weekend time-out evaporated the minute the back door to La Dolce Vita was in sight. I’d taken special care with my hair and makeup this morning, just in case any resurfaced wives would be there. I put on a turquoise sweater dress I’d bought because Sawyer’s eyes po
pped when she saw me come out of the dressing room in it. She said it made me look like Jessica Rabbit at a PTA meeting. Just because I wasn’t getting in between Gia and Alex, I still had my pride. If I was going down, I was going down wearing heels and smoky eyeliner.
I deserved to feel good about myself whether I had a man or not. For all I knew, my efforts were in vain. Especially after Aunt Ginny’s supportive discussion on how easy it was for a man to move on and why a woman needs an exit strategy. I could barely swallow my coffee after that rally.
I grabbed the doorknob, took a breath, let it out to the count of five, and cranked it open. Gia appeared instantly from his little office. How had he gotten better-looking in three days? I’d never seen him in tailored khakis before. His dress shirt was a sharp cornflower blue, the same color as his eyes, and they were searching my face for signs of forgiveness. I feel like I swallowed a beehive.
“I wasn’t sure I would see you again.”
I took off my coat and my insides turned to melted chocolate when I saw his eyes roll over me. “I’m angry, and hurt, but I still made a commitment to bake for you.”
Gia stepped toward me and I put my hand up to stop him. I had something I wanted to say and I needed to get it out fast. “You should have told me you were still married before you kissed me on Henry’s birthday. And you should never have asked me to make a commitment to you when you weren’t able to make a commitment back.”
He ran his hand across his chin. “You are right, I should have told you. I have not always been free with information, but I promise to do better . . . for us.” Gia’s eyes burned into mine. “Do you forgive me?”
Looking into his eyes was like being mesmerized by the snake in The Jungle Book. What are we talking about? “Yes. I mean no. I don’t know. I’m trying to forgive you, but I can’t just turn off how I feel.”
