Always the Baker, Never the Bride

by Sandra D. Bricker

  “Sure. Go ahead.”

  Emma rose from the couch and padded off toward the kitchen in bare feet, and she filled the stainless-steel kettle with water. When she turned back again to ignite the stove, she thumped into Jackson.

  “Oh! Sorry. I didn’t know you were—”

  He didn’t let her finish. He just wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her into him, angling his face and pressing his lips against hers. She was so surprised that she drew in a long, deep breath through her nose and then just held it there as the warmth of his kiss began to settle on her. Aware of a ticklish tingle to her lips, she pursed them a little more, pressing in.

  Suddenly the kettle that had been in her hand clanged to the floor. She jumped slightly at the noise, but neither of them was deterred. After a moment, Emma’s knees felt weak, and she slipped her arms around Jackson’s neck and leaned into him. Wiggling her toes against the bamboo flooring, she realized she could feel a crazy vibration all the way from her lips to her frosted pink toenails. She pushed away the notion of hopping up into his arms to continue the evolution of this very appealing development, instead allowing him to pull away gently. It was a natural ending, but one she wasn’t ready to face.

  When their lips had parted, Emma fell back against the green granite counter and held on to it with both hands. Her heart pounding, her breathing shallow, her head beginning to spin the way it did sometimes when her blood sugar dropped.

  “I probably shouldn’t have—”

  She silenced him mid-word with the wave of her hand. With her eyes closed, she shook her head from side to side. “Can you please not ruin this moment by saying what a mistake you just made? Can we please just enjoy it?”

  When she opened her eyes again, Jackson was grinning.

  “I was just going to say that I probably shouldn’t have surprised you,” he said, then he nodded toward the stream of water on the floor from the overturned kettle.

  “Oh.” She stared at it, feeling as if she’d been glued to the spot by its contents. “Right.”

  Jackson reached past her and produced a towel and leaned down to mop up some of the water while Emma grabbed the kettle and set it on the counter behind her. She kept her back to Jackson and clung to the edge of the counter with her eyes clamped shut.

  Don’t do it, she warned herself internally. Do NOT do it.

  But everything inside of her pushed and nudged and poked at her. All she wanted was to spin around, dive back into his arms, and kick that kiss up a notch from where they’d left off.

  Emma flew into the kitchen, leaving the door flapping behind her and squealing to a halt.

  Fee glanced up from kneading the batch of ivory fondant. “Hey, girl. Where’ve you been?”

  “I had to take my aunt back to Sandy Springs,” she replied, contorting her lips into what her mother used to call a “dried apricot imitation.”

  “Again? What’s up with—”

  “Fiona. Stop talking,” she snapped. “It’s my turn right now.”

  Fee looked up again, this time meeting her urgency in the gap between them. “What’s wrong?”

  Emma shifted from one foot to the other, then bit the corner of her lip.

  “Em. What is it? Something happened?”

  “Yes.”

  “Something bad?”

  “Yes.” Then she reconsidered. “No.”

  “Which is it?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  Fee rinsed her hands, and was drying them as she stalked right up to Emma and stared her down. “Spill.”

  Just as Emma started to speak, the kitchen door whooshed open and Norma walked in. Emma made a sort of whoosh of her own as she drew in a breath and snapped her mouth shut.

  “Emma, do you have time to meet with someone?”

  “I … uh … yes, of course. Who is it?”

  “A potential wedding customer and her mother. The bride has a very specific theme in mind, and I think it might help her to have your input on designing her cake. We’re in the salon.”

  The salon.

  It used to be a simple storage room, converted into a consultation room. Now it was The Salon. “Give me five minutes?”

  “Thank you.”

  Norma left the kitchen, and Emma waited a solid ten seconds before she even flinched. Then she turned toward Fee, invading every inch of her personal space.

  “Aunt Sophie came to the hotel last night,” she said softly, but at warp speed. “Jackson brought her to my place. I put her to bed in the guest room, I went into the kitchen to make some tea, I turned around and he was rightupinmyfacethisclose, and then he kissed me, Fee. It was fantastic, I couldn’t sleep thinking about it, and now I’m afraid to run into him for fear that I’ll humiliate myself and plaster him against the wall and lay another one on him. I’m going to go do a consult now, thanks for listening.”

  Fee didn’t have time to speak a single word before Emma spun around and exited the kitchen, leaving her friend in the dust of her confession. As she turned the corner and set her hand on the knob of the door, she heard Fee hoot with laughter from behind her in the kitchen.

  “Emma Rae Travis,” Norma said as she entered the room. “Meet Vivian Rochester, and her daughter Rachelle Rochester. Rachelle is going to be a spring bride.”

  “Congratulations,” Emma said, her smile quivering slightly.

  They all sat down, gathered around the desk where half a dozen magazine clippings were scattered. Rachelle pointed to them and tapped the desk with a nervous little rhythm.

  “It’s going to be a small ceremony,” she offered. “Fifty people or less. And we’d like to have it at sunrise on the roof of the hotel, and then bring them all down to the courtyard for a reception.”

  “Sunrise in the spring,” Emma considered.

  “Early May.”

  “So around … what is that? … seven o’clock in the morning?”

  “Something like that,” Norma confirmed. “They’d like a simple brunch afterward, perhaps some quiche, fresh fruit, maybe an omelet station.”

  “We’d like a wedding cake,” Rachelle interjected, “but nothing traditional; something a little more lighthearted, and of course appropriate for such an early time.”

  “Emma is one of the region’s premiere cake designers,” Norma told them. “She won the Passionate Palette Award just this year for her amazing crème brûlée wedding cake.”

  “We read about that in The Journal,” Vivian told them.

  “I just knew you’d come up with something unique,” Rachelle said with obvious hope brimming in her expressive dark eyes.

  “What do you think about not having a cake?” Emma suggested.

  “No cake?” Rachelle’s disappointment spilled over.

  “What I mean is instead of a cake, we could customize some cupcakes and set them up on a stand to make it take the shape of a wedding cake.”

  Rachelle gasped, and she turned to her mother with a smile that cracked with happy inspiration. “A cupcake wedding cake! I’ve seen pictures of those.”

  “We could choose several different spring flowers perhaps, and design and place them so that they resemble your bridal bouquet.” Emma glanced from the bride to her mother and back again. “Or we could—”

  “I love that idea!” Rachelle cried. “Mother, I love that idea.” Before Vivian could respond, Rachelle snatched one of the clippings from the desk and thrust it toward Emma. “This is what my bouquet will look like. They’re lilacs and hyacinth. Do you think you could do something with these?”

  “My assistant makes a beautiful hyacinth out of sugar,” Emma told her. “We can match the colors, and we’ll work on creating something for the lilacs.”

  Fee poked her head into the room at just that moment and, as soon as she caught Emma’s eye, she stated, “Sorry to interrupt. You have an important call.”

  “You go ahead, Emma,” Norma said. “We’ll finish up here, and then Emma will call you, probably in February, to talk about
the cake in more detail.”

  “Thank you so much,” Rachelle said, shaking Emma’s hand until her arm hurt.

  “It’s going to be beautiful,” Emma reassured her. “And having a sunrise wedding is very unique and symbolic of a new beginning. I love the idea.”

  “Thank you again.”

  Emma hurried around the corner, with expectations of hearing that Sophie had stowed away on a cruise ship or grabbed a flight to Bora Bora. She crossed the kitchen and skirted around her desk. But when she went to pick up the phone, she noticed that none of the lights were illuminated.

  “They hung up,” she told Fee, who was standing in the doorway.

  “There was no one on the phone.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I lied.”

  “Why?”

  “He kissed you? Sit down because I want every detail.”

  Susannah set a fresh cup of coffee down on the desk before quietly slipping back out again, leaving Jackson to continue his very important work.

  At least he thought it probably looked quite important. But that spreadsheet had been up on his laptop screen for hours and, with his back to the door and his face toward the credenza, he probably appeared to be completely engrossed in the figures entered there. But the truth was … Jackson couldn’t have cared less about that spreadsheet!

  He turned around and picked up the coffee and took a sip. Susannah never failed him. Every morning for the last however many years, she’d brought him two or three cups of perfectly blended black coffee. She was a genius about coffee. Not to mention the other thirteen thousand things she did for him every day. He couldn’t help wondering if such a genius also knew that he’d been sitting in his office for the last hour or more with his thoughts as far away from business as they could possibly be.

  Those lips of Emma’s haunted him. All the way through the night, into the morning, and up to that very moment, he’d thought of little else. Not just her lips either, if he admitted the whole truth. The way she’d dropped that water kettle to the floor, dove toward him and tossed her arms around his neck like a tightening noose of velvet! The feelings those actions resurrected in him had become almost foreign to him now, after the years without Desi in his arms. But there he’d been, his arms wrapped around Emma, their lips locked, their hearts pounding.

  Jackson leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. He could almost taste the heat of it again; he nearly felt her pulse hammering against him. It had been such a long, long time since those paralyzed reactions had been awakened. If it hadn’t been such an amazing feeling, he might actually sense a little guilt over it. He couldn’t help wondering what Desiree would think of him kissing another woman.

  Not just another woman, he corrected himself. Emma.

  What was it about her?

  Jackson swiveled his chair around to face his desk. He could hear Susannah’s fingers tapping on the keyboard on the other side of the doorway as he drank his coffee and sat there in silence. He wished he could talk to her about what he was feeling. Or talk to somebody, anyway.

  His nephew Miguel tripped across his thoughts just then, and he was suddenly right back there on Norma’s veranda, the night that Emma’s parents came to town.

  “…only You can fully know the pain and suffering he’s endured since the loss of his wife, and only You can comprehend the amount of grace that is needed to heal his heart.”

  Jackson recalled the heartfelt prayers of the young Latino man of God who had married his niece. He also remembered how those prayers had brought to mind his late wife’s advice.

  “Let Jesus heal you, Jackson,” Desiree had said. “Don’t harden your heart. He’ll bring you out of this toward someone new to love.”

  He let those words pedal around inside of him for a few minutes, then suppressed an inward groan.

  Love?

  Jackson didn’t love Emma. It was just basic animal attraction. Love. Bah!

  He’d already loved the woman he was meant to love. And now she was gone. He wasn’t going to replace her. Desi was irreplaceable.

  But he had to admit one thing, if only to himself.

  Adorable Emma Rae Travis sure can kiss.

  The Secret to Emma Rae Travis’s Award-Winning Crème Brûlée Wedding Cake

  Emma’s special sour cream cake recipe is used for the layers.

  Sugar syrup is created out of butter, dark brown sugar, and water.

  The syrup is spread into the bottom of the cake pans, and the sour cream cake batter is carefully spooned over it before baking.

  After baking, the pans are set atop wire racks for 15 minutes before the first layer is inverted onto the cake board.

  Layers are stacked with a special creamy vanilla and caramel filling.

  Each layer is inverted with the syrup side down.

  After the cake is constructed, it is frosted with a special icing made of whole egg butter cream and sugar syrup.

  The cake must be refrigerated overnight before further decorating is attempted.

  15

  Emma hadn’t seen much of Jackson for the first few days of that week. They were in the countdown toward Friday’s reception launching The Tanglewood to Atlanta’s upper crust as a premiere wedding and event destination hotel. As NASA might say, it was T-minus one day and counting.

  She took the stairs up to the fourth floor, pausing at each level to breathe deeply and compose herself in preparation for the meeting to come. She wondered how Jackson would react to her now, or if he would have any reaction at all. And more importantly, how would she feel when she saw him again for the first significant space of time following that unbelievable kiss?

  She’d spent far too much time drowning in the memory, lingering over the details of his soft lips, his strong arms, and his perfect height. He was just the right height for kissing a five-foot-eight-inch woman. It all fit together just the way it was supposed to.

  On the landing of the third floor, Emma giggled at the memory of kissing Danny Mahoney back in high school. They were exactly the same height, and so they came at one another like bookends. Noses pressed against noses, smacking arms as they fumbled for a comfortable embrace. It was like roller derby kissing.

  Stop thinking about kisses, she warned herself. This is a very important business meeting. Get yourself together.

  Several more deep breaths outside the office door … Okay. I’m ready.

  One step inside Susannah’s office, and the whirlwind of activity nearly blew her right back out into the hallway.

  “… hasn’t gotten the final menu to me yet, but I have the first draft from last week.”

  “We need a final menu. Get him on the phone.”

  “There are still twenty-seven outstanding invitations with no responses yet.”

  “Susannah, we’ll put you on that. Can you call those people and try to get a head count?”

  “Will do.”

  “What time will the florist arrive?”

  “Tomorrow morning at eleven.”

  “Oh, no. You’d better call them. We need them earlier than that.”

  Susannah, Madeline, Georgiann, Norma, and Jackson buzzed between the two offices, each of them carrying paperwork—Madeline’s on a clipboard—making notes and checking off items from several different lists.

  “Oh, good!” Madeline exclaimed when she spotted Emma standing in the doorway like a deer caught in the headlights of a bus full of hunters. “Emma’s here.”

  “I’ve made your tea already,” Susannah told her, shuffling her along into Jackson’s office. “We need to get started.”

  “This isn’t started?”

  Susannah didn’t respond, but her snicker and the pat to Emma’s arm answered for her.

  “Good morning,” Jackson said when she entered, but he didn’t look at her so it could have been a general greeting to signal the start of the meeting. “Does everyone have Susannah’s agenda?”

  Emma looked around, and everyone seemed to be holding a c
opy of it except her.

  “I don’t … No, I don’t seem to—”

  “Here. Have mine,” Norma said, and she handed over a single sheet of paper jammed with more words than white space.

  “Why don’t we start with the decorations,” Jackson said. “Georgiann?”

  “Florist will be changed to ten,” she responded with confidence. “The cleaners finished this morning. The linens have arrived. The china has been inventoried. We’ve added two hundred strands of lights to the courtyard and the ballroom and placed every available tea light in every available crystal holder.”

  “Staffing?”

  “Check!” Georgiann piped up. “Five bartenders, seventeen servers, and nine more to bus and wash dishes. Six valets, four housekeeping, and three desk clerks, including Philip.”

  Emma glanced at Norma, who whispered, “Manager.”

  “Silent auction update, George.”

  “There’s going to be an auction?” Emma whispered.

  “To benefit the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund,” Norma replied. “In memory of Desiree.”

  “—celebrity donations, and some gallery pieces. Oh, and the Atlanta Falcons have donated a sideline experience package where someone will get to watch a game from the sidelines at the Georgia Dome.”

  “What?” Emma asked. “I’m sorry, what was that?”

  Without hesitation, Jackson moved on. “Music.”

  Emma wondered if she stood a snowball’s chance of scoring that package. She loved the Falcons almost as much as she loved cake.

  “He arrives tomorrow morning.”

  “And his room is ready?”

  “A suite on the top floor.”

  “Whose room?” Emma whispered as she leaned over toward Norma.

  “Ben Colson.”

  Emma blinked hard, and then opened her eyes wide. “Ben Colson?”

  All eyes turned toward her, and Norma asked, “You didn’t know? Your mother was kind enough to—”

  “Wait. My mother knows Ben Colson?”