Just One Kiss

by Isabel Sharpe

  She nodded demurely, hiding how he moved her. “Yes, Daddy, I promise.”

  He chuckled and lifted their clasped hands to one side and over their heads, locking them together. “Okay, wise-ass, now I’m going to spank you.”

  “Are you promising, too?” She batted her eyes, giddy at having someone to confide in. No, giddy at having Seth to confide in, even if he was the last person she should turn to. Look what sharing her secret burden had accomplished in college? She and Seth had been alone in the private world of her tragedy, an intimate world that had bonded them, eventually into love.

  Well…she’d called it love; Seth never made it half that far.

  He turned them in a slow circle, locking his eyes on hers.

  Bonnie would have to be on extra double guard to make sure that didn’t happen again. She didn’t think she could survive finding and losing him a second time.

  “So…” Seth lifted their arms back to neutral, continued the slow jitterbug. “Now that we’ve solved all your problems, what do you think about coming up to my place for a celebratory drink?”

  “Said the spider to the fly.”

  “C’mon, Bonnie, I’m not going to hit on you when you’re miserable and vulnerable.”

  “No?”

  “No. Absolutely not.” He shook his head emphatically. “I’ll cheer you up, then I’ll hit on you.”

  “Oh, that’s comforting.” Bonnie dropped his hands and pushed him away, hiding laughter.

  “I’ll behave like a Boy Scout. No, a eunuch.” He moved toward her front door and held out his hand. “No risk, just a friendly drink.”

  He continued to extend his hand. “Come with me?”

  Bonnie hesitated. He’d been right that she was miserable and vulnerable, and here he was, Prince Charming, offering to lead her up the steps to his castle on feet of clay. Offering to pour her a magic potion he promised would make everything better.

  If she were reading this fairy tale, she’d be yelling at the heroine not to be an idiot, to run, fast and far, shack up with the first dwarf or beast or ogre she found. Anyone but this guy.

  On the other hand, Seth had promised to be a gentleman. Bonnie did trust him that far. And the alternative was going back to her cold, empty apartment to listen to the rain and think about how she might not be able to afford the place for long.

  She took his hand. “One drink. Maybe we can brainstorm some ideas for—”

  “Not tonight. You won’t starve this week, I won’t let you. And you need some fun in your life right now, a break from responsibility. I want to do that for you, just for a few days.”

  “Hey.” She pulled her hand away. “This started with one drink. Now you’re taking me over for a few days?”

  “And then the brainwashing begins.” He did a credible impression of a movie villain’s laugh. “Soon you will be completely in my power.”

  “Oh, please.” Bonnie glared in disdain, thinking brainwashing would be way too little, way too late. She might as well admit she was already in Seth’s power, had been since the first time he kissed her, six years earlier.

  And despite what she’d told herself and everyone else about her feelings and her future, she might as well admit right now that she probably always would be.

  15

  “WHOA. WHO dressed you this morning?” Daniel held a carton of milk over his coffee, ready to pour.

  “Like it?” Jake modeled his skinny vest, tie and shirt combination.

  “You look sharp. Completely different.” He acknowledged Jake’s glare with a grin. “What’s the occasion?”

  “I met a girl. A woman, actually.”

  “A woman. Well.” Daniel put his hands on his hips, regarding his roommate with amusement. This sounded as serious as Jake looked. “Is that where you’ve been every night recently?”

  “Yup.” He poured himself orange juice and gulped it.

  “Why have you been coming home every night?”

  “We haven’t gotten to that.”

  Daniel’s eyebrow shot up. When Jake “met” a woman, it meant he’d spent the night with her. “You’re slipping.”

  He rubbed his finger absently over a splash of juice on the counter. “She’s different. Special. I have this feeling about her, I don’t know.”

  “Yeah?” Daniel knew. He’d had a feeling about Angela the second he’d laid eyes on her. And because of her he’d been awake too much of the previous three nights, about as miserable as he’d been the first time walking into her bakery to buy cupcakes for Kate’s birthday. Seemed a lifetime ago. Given his rebirth since he met Angela, it nearly was. “Where are you going tonight?”

  “She hangs at the Purple Café on Tuesdays.”

  “Classy woman then.” He put the milk back into the refrigerator.

  “Very.” Jake poured himself a cup of coffee looking more nervous than Daniel had ever seen him. “Probably too classy for me. I’m not sure how to handle this. I talk to her, we have a good time, but she won’t go out with me.”

  “Wait…what?” Daniel put down his mug without taking a sip. “You’ve seen her practically every night and none of them have been dates? What are you doing, stalking her around the city?”

  “Uhhh…” He shrugged, tugging at his tie. “Pretty much.”

  Daniel was flabbergasted. “This strikes you as a good idea?”

  “She’s going to cave. I feel it. I know it. And as long as I feel that, I’m not giving up until she says yes. Even if I have to be pathetic.”

  Daniel had no idea what to say to that. The idea that Jake would crawl to a woman… He didn’t know whether to offer congratulations or sympathy.

  “I have to go, man. Early meeting.” Jake held his fist up for a bump.

  “Yeah. Okay. Good luck tonight.” Shaking his head, Daniel took his coffee into his bedroom, where he’d laid out his clothes. Jake caught, finally, by a woman who didn’t want him.

  Unfortunately at this moment, Daniel knew how that felt.

  He turned away from his new wall decoration, bought with Angela’s teasing about his colorless room in mind. The vintage poster showed automaker Peugot’s lion mascot holding a bicycle in his mouth. Reddish orange, blue, yellow…Angela gave the place even more color, just by walking into it.

  Daniel sighed and started dressing for work. He’d screwed up by not talking to Angela about passing along her cookies to Larry. He’d just felt so strongly those were her best shot, and he’d wanted to surprise her with the success she dreamed about, even if it wasn’t exactly in the form she originally planned. Life changed. Dreams changed. You rolled with the punches or stood still and got a serious shiner. You lost beautiful Kate and while stumbling along the brutal path away from her, found Angela. You struck out with éclairs and tried cupcakes.

  He should have been tougher when Larry childishly refused to try the second batch of samples. But his boss had been in a foul mood— “Haven’t we been through this? Didn’t I give you an answer already? She doesn’t cut it.” He was not swayed by Daniel’s assertion that this was a different level of baking altogether. “You’ll have to impress your girlfriend some other way.”

  So Daniel, with a solid chance to be Angela’s knight in shining armor, at the first sign of trouble, had turned tail and run. Look at Jake still going after this woman every night with no success in sight.

  Coffee cup rinsed in the kitchen, he went into the bathroom to brush his teeth. Jake wasn’t giving up. Kate wouldn’t have given up. And she wouldn’t have let Daniel give up, either.

  He wasn’t going to. Angela had brought him out of grief and into new strength. In return, he wasn’t going to sit back and let her sabotage herself by thinking she wasn’t good enough to be special, by thinking her ex and his snotty family had been right about her all along. She was incredibly special, and if Daniel couldn’t prove that to her, then he didn’t deserve to have her in his life.

  Teeth brushed, he went into the kitchen and loaded up the goodies Jake had bou
ght the week before, kept in his freezer, enough for an army of Larrys, and headed downstairs for his car.

  At work, he went straight to the break room, laid out the cookies, cupcakes, brownies, cinnamon rolls, scones and muffins, after refreshing them in the microwave, on platters he found in underneath cabinets. Then he went back to his desk and waited.

  Not long. Within the hour there was a steady stream in and out of the break room as word spread to other departments. Moans of ecstasy, exclamations of bliss. Oh, my god. These are so-o-o good. And over and over again, Who brought these? Where are they from? How can we get more?

  Grinning like a smug crocodile, Daniel got to his feet and went out into the main office area. Nearly every desk had a cookie, muffin, cinnamon roll or scone on it. A few people still lingered in the break room, loading up on seconds.

  As if summoned by the sugar gods, Larry came out of his office, staring intently at a sheaf of papers. He looked up. Frowned. Gazed around the office, which gradually quieted. “What the hell is going on? Whose birthday? Why wasn’t I told?”

  Chuckling, Daniel swiped an enormous chocolate-chunk macadamia from Rebecca’s desk and brought it over to his boss.

  “Here you go, Larry. Have a cookie on me.”

  * * *

  “CAN I HELP YOU?” Angela forced a smile at the middle-aged woman at her counter, feeling as if she’d been put through a washing machine. Agitated, spun in circles, nearly drowned. She’d hardly slept all weekend, going over the argument with Daniel, sometimes furious that he’d betrayed her, sometimes wondering what she wasn’t seeing, what part of this was her fault, how she could have misinterpreted the crisis. Because he was so…not like Tom.

  The customer ordered a box of assorted pastries, to take home for dinner. In a stroke of bitter irony, the éclairs and fruit tarts had been selling well that day. What was that supposed to mean? That Daniel was wrong? That there was plenty of passion left in her passion-fruit mousse cake? She wished she had a more objective way of telling.

  The customer paid and left the shop, which stayed empty behind her, as it often did after lunch, before students started coming in for afternoon snacks followed by the post-work crowd buying breads for dinner or breakfast items for the following morning.

  Angela sighed and wiped down the counter, got out glass cleaner and started in on the smudges that exploring little fingers and careless big ones had left on her cases. She was supposed to give the lemon-rosemary Madeleine recipe another go today, but she couldn’t summon much energy or enthusiasm.

  All she wanted was to have Daniel back the way things were before last Friday, they way he was when he embodied all her fantasies of what a relationship could be.

  But she supposed that was juvenile. The odds of finding her perfect match on the first try after her divorce were minuscule. And no one was going to be perfect anyway. Or if there was a perfect match out there somewhere, chances were he was already married, or lived in the mountains of North Carolina or the swamps of Florida or the shores of Tripoli, and she’d never, ever find him.

  Daniel had a right to his opinion, and he had every right to tell her that opinion as well. But she also had a right, which was to be with someone who’d share her vision as well as her body. Next time, with the next guy, she wasn’t going to hop into his bed until she was sure of him, of them, of the type of man he was. She’d learned that lesson well.

  The next guy. God, she couldn’t stand thinking about it. Or him. In fact, she didn’t even like him. Even in the short time she’d known Daniel, he’d crept into her fantasies about the future. There wasn’t room for this other guy. He was horrible in comparison. He smelled bad. He picked his teeth at dinner.

  He wasn’t Daniel.

  She was doomed. Doomed to moon over a man who wasn’t right for her for the rest of her life.

  “Hey.” In another sickening coincidence, at that moment Bonnie, lifelong mooner after a man not right for her, dragged herself into the bakery, looking particularly pale and thin, especially since she was wearing black jeans and a gray shirt, nothing like her customary colorful plumage. Even her hair looked tired. “I need fat and sugar.”

  “I agree.” Angela went back behind the counter. “You’re not eating enough and you look miserable. Here.”

  “Thanks.” Bonnie took the small stack of walnut chocolate-chunk cookies and slumped onto a stool by the counter where Angela’s pots of coffee stood.

  “You going to tell me what’s wrong?”

  “You go first. I might look miserable, but you look like hell.”

  “Why thank you.” Angela grimaced, not even able to laugh at the joke. “Man trouble. You?”

  “Man trouble.” She took a big bite of cookie.

  “Seth?”

  “Seth.” She pointed to Angela. “Daniel?”

  Angela sighed. “Daniel.”

  “Why do we do this to ourselves?”

  “I don’t know. So the species survives?”

  “Not with the sex I’m getting. Or rather not getting.”

  “That’s actually good.” Angela retrieved her cleaner and rag and put them behind the counter. “If you were sleeping with him you’d get your heart smashed even worse.”

  “I know. But at least I’d be getting laid.” She sighed nearly as long and painfully as Angela had. “What did Daniel do?”

  “Hi, ladies.” Scott strode in, ready to start his working day, his metal-ware sparkling, black hair freshly combed. “What’s going on?”

  “Oh. Nothing. Hi, Scott.” Angela made a stab at smiling.

  “We’re plotting the eradication of your gender.” Bonnie glared at him maniacally. “One odious specimen at a time.”

  “Ah…” Scott backed toward the kitchen. “I’ll, um, just get out of your way, then.”

  Bonnie grinned in satisfaction as he disappeared. “Nothing like a little hate to brighten up your day.”

  “Nice, Bonnie. He’s probably climbing out a window and we’ll never see him again.”

  “He’ll be back.” She slumped onto the counter, letting her head loll onto her arm. “Tell me what Daniel is doing. Or not doing.”

  “Not doing. He isn’t—” Angela’s cell rang; she forwarded bakery calls while she was alone in the store, so she wouldn’t have to run back to her office. “Hang on. I need to get this. Hello, A Taste of All Pleasures, this is Angela speaking.”

  “Angela, this is Tracy Baguerra, Larry Kaiser’s secretary over at Slatewood International.”

  “Slatewood. Yes, of course, hello.” She opened her eyes wide at Bonnie, who opened hers even wider back. “How can I help you?”

  “Larry would like to hire you for our Spring Fling party, on May twenty-eighth.”

  “Oh, wonderful. Thank you, very much.” She flashed a thumbs up at Bonnie, spirits rising halfway to normal for the first time in days. Slatewood wanted her after all. Had Larry’s niece gotten another gig? Wow. Angela’s new line would finally be getting air time. “Do you need more of my pastry samples for—”

  “Sorry, I wasn’t clear. His niece does the pastry for us.”

  “Ah.” Angela’s smile clouded. Across the room so did Bonnie’s. “Then what do you need from me?”

  She guessed the answer before it came.

  “We need to cut our costs this year, so we’d like to serve cookies alongside the pastries, maybe some of those cinnamon rolls, if you can make them smaller. We’ll have about two hundred people.”

  They wanted cookies. Because cookies were cheap. Larry hadn’t tried hers, why bother? Anyone could make them.

  “Of course.” She wanted to hang up the phone. She wanted to tell the woman to go to hell and hang up the phone. But of course that was silly. Business was business and she was in no position to spit on a company like Slatewood. Daniel was probably right. This was better than nothing. “That is great, thank you.”

  “If you could email us a list of available options and pricing that would be very helpful.”

&n
bsp; “Yes. Right away. I will.” She wrote down the woman’s name and address and hung up the phone. “Well…”

  “I couldn’t tell, was that good news or bad?”

  “I can’t tell, either, Bonnie.” She put her hands to her hot cheeks. “I’m so confused right now.”

  “You’re in good company at least.” She took another mournful bite of cookie. “What are you confused about, specifically?”

  “Slatewood wants the boss’s niece for pastry, me for cookies. I feel as if I’m the only person excited about my new line. Marjorie’s not, Tom’s not, Daniel’s definitely not, and now Slatewood isn’t, either.”

  Bonnie frowned, pressing her lips together. “Have you tasted the pastry this niece makes?”

  “No.” She brightened. That could help.

  “We’re going.” Bonnie pointed to Angela’s kitchen. “Tell Scott to mind the store. We’ll ingest some serious calories, and see what the fuss is about. Maybe that will give you some answers.”

  Ten minutes later, they’d climbed into Bonnie’s Ford Fiesta and were on their way to Nell’s bakery on 4th Avenue, a few blocks from the water, Angela nervous as hell. She couldn’t help feeling as if coming face-to-face with this woman’s pastries would be a self-defining moment.

  If only she could get rid of the certainty she’d end up having to define herself as a failure.

  Nell’s was located on the ground floor of the Greymont Hotel, a white stone building flying colorful flags. The bakery storefront was mostly glass, its beautiful logo centered in gold on either side of the door. Inside, white round tables with black iron chairs set a continental look. Behind, gleaming cases of glass and gold held row upon row of colorful, perfect pastries, cakes, rolls, cookies and breads, each neatly lined, each with a silver holder and laminated tag naming and describing the item. Triangular lemon mousse cakes decorated with tiny matching macaroons, pistachio bûches de Noël, glistening with chocolate, growing perfect marzipan mushrooms dusted with cocoa powder. Napoleons, croissants, brioche with shining topknots, all presented in a variety of flavors. Petits fours topped with delicate chocolate cutouts, fruit tarts shining with jelly glaze, éclairs in a variety of sizes, some with what looked like gold dust scattered over the chocolate topping.