by Maya Rodale, Caroline Linden, Miranda Neville, Katharine Ashe
He ran one hand over his head, ruffling his hair and raising the wave. “One of the refrigerators died, all the desserts for tonight’s rehearsal dinner went bad, and the wedding planner—also a nice person—is in a bind. I know you have a bunch of cakes in the cooler, and I thought maybe you would be willing to help her out.”
So he hadn’t come down today because he’d been busy chatting with the wedding planner. And he hadn’t said one word about yesterday, or asked how she was, or made any sign there was anything at all between them. He wanted her to bail out the same wedding party that had clogged the road, ruined her peace and quiet, and led to random people getting naked on her patio. How did a woman respond to that?
Archer obviously realized he’d gone wrong. “Shit. You’d never know I talk to people for a living. Well—will you just meet her for a minute? I swear to God if you don’t want to do it, you don’t have to, and I’ll send her back up to the hotel.”
Natalie lifted one shoulder. “Fine.”
He gave her a reassuring smile and loped back out of the garden. He’d obviously brought the wedding planner with him—taking things a bit for granted, she thought sourly. But when he came back a moment later, there were two people with him, a woman with thick bangs cut in her shiny dark hair and a tall man with sharply angular features that managed to be handsome despite being so pronounced.
“Thank you,” declared the woman fervently before anyone else could speak. She rushed forward, hand outstretched. “Arwen Kilpatrick. I’m thrilled to meet you—your mother is a visionary and a genius. What she does at Cuisine du Jude is simply amazing.”
This made Natalie smile. She shook the woman’s hand. “She is. I’m Natalie Corcoran.”
The tall man also put out his hand. “Harry Compton,” he said in crisp English tones. “I own Brampton House.”
She shook his hand, too, although with less enthusiasm. He was responsible for all the traffic on the road, after all. “Hi.”
“I hope Archer explained what happened. One of my refrigerators died sometime overnight and everything spoiled—ten cakes from one of the best bakeries in London. The buttercream is in puddles.” Arwen took a deep breath. “If you could help in any way, I would be prostrate with gratitude. Money is no object, either. I am desperate, and Archer said he thought he’d died and gone to heaven when he tasted your baking.” A glimmer of a smile crossed her face. “I expect Judith Corcoran’s daughter must have milk and honey in her veins.”
Natalie’s reserve was thawing. “Not quite.” She glanced at Archer, who looked guarded but hopeful. She remembered it was his client getting married; saving the day would be as much a win for him as it would be for Arwen. “Before you write a blank check, why don’t you taste? I do have a bunch of cakes in the cooler, but they may not be what you want.”
“Cake is what I want,” said Arwen. Mr. Compton choked on a laugh.
“I made these this week, but they’ve all been sampled,” Natalie warned as she led the way to the cooler. She hit the switch for the lights and pulled out a tray of chocolate cakes, all missing one thin wedge. “I couldn’t bear to throw them out yet. What’s your pleasure—chocolate?”
“They all look divine.”
No baker could fail to respond to the look of greedy joy on Arwen’s face. Natalie turned to Archer. “Would you mind getting some plates and forks?”
They tasted milk chocolate, dark chocolate, and chocolate with cherry filling. Natalie went deeper into the cooler and got out the vanilla cakes, some with coconut, some with strawberries, and one with marbled chocolate and cream cheese frosting. These were almost frozen, but came to freshness in a few minutes when cut into half-inch slices.
“Oh my God, I can die happy right now,” moaned Arwen, taking another tiny bite.
“I still have lemon cake and two strawberry tortes,” Natalie offered.
Arwen shook her head and put down her plate. “I don’t need to taste any more. I want the lot; will you sell them to me?”
“All right.” She thought the woman would hug her. “And please give a credit to Cuisine du Jude, and maybe mention there’s a forthcoming cookbook with all these recipes.”
Arwen laughed. “Done! You have saved my skin. I’ll send a van down to pick them all up at five o’clock; is that okay? If the Next Gordon Ramsey squawks about giving me a refrigerator then, I will kill him with my bare hands.”
“Which one will be the bride’s cake, darling?” Harry Compton has mostly focused on tasting, but now he reached out—to Natalie’s surprise—and smoothed away a stray bit of frosting from Arwen’s mouth.
The wedding planner seemed to tilt in his direction as his thumb lingered on her lip, then caught herself. She sighed. “I can’t worry about that. We’ll just have to do without.” She caught Natalie’s raised eyebrows. “I had a special cake for the bride and groom’s table, covered with fondant and real flowers. It’s in the waste bin now.”
“I could make one of those,” Natalie heard herself say. “It would be tight on time, but I could probably do it…”
Arwen stared at her, perfectly still. “I would give you my firstborn baby if you could replace that cake.”
“No thank you,” said Natalie wryly. “I might need some help, though…”
“At your service.” Archer winked at her. It was the first time he’d spoken since she brought out the coconut cake. “If you think I’ll do.”
Slowly, she smiled. “Let’s give it a try.”
Arwen and Mr. Compton left, promising to send the van and anything she needed from the caterer’s supplies up at the hotel. Archer waved good-bye from the kitchen door, then closed it.
Natalie smiled, tucking up her hair. “Ready to be my slave?”
He caught her around the waist and kissed her, hot and intense and dizzying. “Yes,” he said in a rough voice. “But first we have to bake a cake.”
She toyed with a button on his shirt. “I missed you this morning.” It just popped out before she could tell her brain not to admit it.
“I missed you too. Stupid fucking work kept me up last night.” He backed her up against the pantry door and kissed her again. Her knees went weak and she clung to his neck, reveling in the weight of his body pressing hers hard against the wood. His hands ran down her waist, over her hips, and back up. She felt high as a kite, feverishly hot and giddy with excitement. He missed her. “You taste like coconut,” he breathed, flattening his hand on the small of her back. “I love coconut.”
“Better than chocolate?” She tugged his head back so she could run her tongue down his neck. He growled and leaned more heavily against her. Natalie shifted, moving her hips against his magnificent erection. How they were going to bake a cake now was beyond her.
“Whatever you taste like is my favorite.” His mouth returned to hers, his tongue plunging deep, and Natalie forgot about cakes of any flavor.
“Okay.” When he finally lifted his head and pressed his forehead to hers, his heart thundered against her palm, spread on his chest to hold his shirt. “Okay. How long does it take to make a cake?”
“A while…” Almost against her will, she started to tick through the steps in her mind. “Four to five hours, I think.”
He exhaled. “Then this will have to wait.” His hand, cupped around her butt, squeezed, and he slowly let her go. “Ready to bake?”
She was ready to tear off her clothes and throw caution to the wind, along with her panties. Hell, they probably wouldn’t be the first people to have sex on these counters. But she had promised Arwen she would make the damn cake, and Archer had said only wait, meaning they were going to pick back up where they left off, so she let him back away and reached for her apron. “If we must.”
For someone who claimed not to cook, Archer was at home in the kitchen. He rolled up his sleeves and followed her every direction. Thankfully Natalie had thrown a pair of square pans into the many boxes of baking supplies she’d shipped from home, so she set him to lining those wit
h parchment and buttering everything. She swept aside all the cookie notes and busied herself with butter, sugar, and eggs as she mentally planned the cake. She still had fresh strawberries in the refrigerator, and a half-gallon of thick English cream to make a filling between the layers. There was no fondant in the kitchen, but she could make a rich buttercream frosting and slick it as smooth as glass. A quick piping of a lacy pattern with tinted frosting would finish the cake, and if Arwen had clean fresh flowers at Brampton House, she could add a few at the last moment.
Natalie had spent many hours baking with her mother, where naturally she fell into the junior role. Now that she was shoulder to shoulder with Archer, though, she realized how much she’d changed in the six weeks she’d spent in England. It felt right to be in charge, to direct every step of the creation—her creation, not a copy of her mother’s work. Judy didn’t even do wedding cakes, but Natalie was making one up on the fly. And it was fun.
When Archer dropped an egg on the floor and swore, she only laughed. When she caught him licking the empty bowl while she spread batter into the waiting pans, she flicked flour at him. When he lobbed a dollop of batter back at her and it landed on her cheek, she protested until he pinned her against the dishwasher and licked it off with soft, gentle kisses. She’d barely set the timer for the cakes before he lifted her to sit on the counter and went back to kissing her. Natalie closed her eyes to the messy kitchen and curled her legs around his waist to hold him closer.
“When are you going home?” he whispered some time later, nuzzling her ear.
“Hmm?” She had her hand inside his unbuttoned shirt, mesmerized by the feel of his skin, so hot and firm against her fingers.
“Home.” He nipped her earlobe. “To Boston.”
Home to Boston. To her parents. To the Jude. To her brother, and the feud still simmering between them. Her fingers slowed to a stop.
“I’m leaving on Sunday,” Archer went on. “But I want to see you again—soon, and often. How much more cookbook do you have to write?”
Only quick breads and biscuits, she realized. She’d gone through meats and seafood, vegetables, salads, pasta, and now dessert. Amaryllis would be coming home in a month, putting an end to her stay anyway. Soon she’d have to pack up her pans, and her pride, and go back to face her family. “I don’t know when I’m going home,” she murmured.
Archer pulled back, finally picking up her mood change. He took her face in his hands and studied her. “Why not?”
“I guess I’m not looking forward to it.”
He just waited. Natalie sighed, letting her head tilt into his hand, so warm and strong and comforting. She’d liked his hands from the start. “I left because I lost my temper and poured soup on my brother, in front of a restaurant full of people. I haven’t been there since, because… Well, because I acted like a crazy bitch and I know it.”
“Do you want to go back?”
She blinked. “I do! Of course I do!” Although… Did she? Now she was used to being in charge of the kitchen. If her dad was recovering, her mother would come back to Cuisine du Jude, and as much as Natalie loved cooking with her mother… “I think I do.”
Archer was quiet for a minute. Inanely, Natalie felt grateful; the men in her family were used to filling any silence, overriding any uncertainty, always ready with their advice whether welcome or not. “You know,” he finally said, “if you wanted to open your own place, I know some investors…”
“My own place!” She scoffed. “What would I do with my own place?” Besides desserts and breads. She may have bragged about being able to disembowel a whole turkey, but her favorite thing was baking, from crackers and scones to cookies and—as of today—wedding cake.
Archer lifted one shoulder. “If you go into wedding cakes, Arwen would probably throw a ton of business your way. She offered you her firstborn child, after all.”
Natalie laughed, and then she thought about it. A bakery? Without effort, plans started sprouting in her mind. It would get her away from Paul, yet offer the brand expansion he wanted. She would have her own kitchen, make her own menu, try her own experiments, but with ties to the Jude. And it would work well with her cookbook, provided she could find a publisher. Those were her recipes, no longer her mother’s. The cookbook had begun as a face-saving project, but had gradually become something she really cared about. The fact that it was now associated with meeting Archer only made it better.
“You could think about it.” Archer gave her a slight smile. “I may be useless in the kitchen, but I do know how to form a company.”
She wound her arms around his neck. “You are definitely not useless in the kitchen.”
While the cakes cooled, she set him to cutting the strawberries into thin slices so she could make the whipped cream filling, flavored with framboise and vanilla. Archer leaned his head over the mixer and inhaled deeply, sighing in pleasure. “This has been the best damn vacation of all time.”
She laughed. “And you spent most of it working on the patio!”
He fed her a heart-shaped strawberry slice. “That should tell you how awesome the other parts have been, to outweigh thirty-five hours of work.”
The afternoon sped by. As she split the cakes and filled them, they talked about what would be involved in setting up a Cuisine du Jude bakery, legally. Archer told her it could be structured so that she was the head of the bakery division and somewhat independent of Paul. Thinking of herself as head of a business made Natalie shake her head, but now the idea had grown roots. As she spread the buttercream over the cake, stacking the layers and smoothing away loose crumbs, the bakery took shape in her mind.
The van arrived while she was piping the last few swirls of pale violet icing, and she felt a thrill of pride as the caterers boxed up her work and carried it away almost reverently. Archer caught her behind the kitchen door as the caterers loaded the van. “I’d better go back and shower,” he said. There was flour in his hair and he had buttercream all over his shirt. “I’m coming back later.”
Natalie slid her hands around his waist. “I thought I’d go oversee the dessert course. Just in the kitchen. Maybe you can walk me home.”
“You bet,” he growled, and kissed her hard before following the caterers.
A loopy grin stuck to her face, she watched him go, waving once as he leaned out the window and blew her a kiss. The van pulled away, and she went back into the house to clean up, both herself and her kitchen.
But she stood over the batter-spotted counter and reached for her phone instead. She tapped on her brother’s contact, and their last round of texts came up on the screen. I don’t think you can replicate what Mom & Dad do in LA or Chicago, she’d said. Not trying to replicate, Nat. Build and grow, Paul had replied. How can you build a brand without doing more of the same? she’d asked. More of similar, not the same, was his answer.
Two days after that exchange she’d poured soup on him.
It would be lunchtime in Boston. Paul was probably at the restaurant. She could picture him walking through the dining room making sure everything was set, opening umbrellas on the dining patio if the weather was nice, helping restock the bar or even clean up a mess in the kitchen. He was there as much as she was, because he loved the Jude as much as she did—in slightly different ways, but no less dearly. She took a deep breath and typed out a new text. What would you think of a Jude bakery location? For a moment her finger hovered over the Send button, then she resolutely tapped it. It was the first thing she’d said to her brother in two months. Maybe she should have spoken to her parents first. Maybe she should have slept on it. Maybe—
The phone buzzed in her hand. Possibility. Where?
Boston area, she typed back. Run by me.
She almost held her breath, waiting to see what he would say to that last bit. Their mother had ceded most business control to their father, but Natalie wasn’t willing to do the same with her brother. If she started a bakery, it would have to be her shop, not run at Paul’
s, or even Dad’s, direction.
Only baked goods or serving lunch as well?
She let out a shaky breath. The peace offering had been accepted. Lunch possible if the Jude will supply meats/soups/etc.
The next reply came almost at once. That could work. Discuss when you get back?
Natalie grinned as she typed Sure. Then she quickly texted her mother about the exchange, feeling as if she’d just shed a huge weight. The fight had cast a dark cloud over her whole family. Her parents would be so happy to put an end to it, they’d probably be waiting at the airport with balloons.
She glanced out the window, at the green hill sloping up beyond the garden, hiding Brampton House from her sight. She had her first event tonight—under her own name, not just Cuisine du Jude’s—and Archer was going to walk her home. She ran upstairs to shower and change.
Chapter Ten
The cocktail hour was well underway when Archer reached the reception. He took a beer and wandered about, restless without Natalie. She was coming up to the house, she’d said; was she here already? It would be rude to leave the party, but he had nothing to say to anyone else.
The dinner was a smashing success, as far as he could tell. When the guests sat down in the Gold Saloon, at each place was a small, hand-lettered card announcing that the dessert tonight had been provided by Natalie Corcoran of Cuisine du Jude of Wellesley, Massachusetts. From the murmur of amazement that went around the tables, Archer guessed the restaurant’s fame had spread far and wide. He wished Natalie could hear it, then decided he could just tell her about it later. Knowing what was coming made the rest of the meal—excellent otherwise—seem endless. He managed to get through it by chatting with a few programmers at his table, including the amorous Rupert and his girlfriend. They took some good-natured teasing about their romantic activities, which didn’t seem to bother either of them in the slightest.
When dessert was finally served, the guests grew a bit quieter. Mr. Delancey opened the doors, and a parade of catering staff wheeled in elegant dessert trolleys. Each held a gleaming tower of fine china plates bearing slices of cake, arranged to showcase the variety of options. And at the end of the train came Natalie, pushing a trolley with the special bridal cake they had made together, now adorned with deep purple roses. Even in a plain black skirt and white shirt, like all the other servers, she was gorgeous. Archer found himself grinning like an idiot as she went past all the other tables to the head one, where Jane and Duke sat with their immediate family. If the expression on Jane’s face didn’t convince Natalie that she could make it as a bakery owner, nothing would.
