Sweeter Than Chocolate: Valentine's Day Anthology

by Gina Kincade

  “Hey, short stuff,” he said to Kaley.

  “Tommy,” she said, delighted, and threw her arms around his legs to hug him. He hugged her back unselfconsciously. He was obviously fond of her.

  He looked over her head at me. “Thomas Eakins,” he said, and then it clicked. He was the most high-profile attorney in the city, famous for his abrasive courtroom manner and his success rate going after employers who took advantage of their employees. He’d made his name with a multi-million-dollar settlement for one woman who’d used the money to start a competing company—she’d been considered so unimportant she hadn’t been asked to sign a non-compete document. Her former employer had gone out of business and she’d hired all his employees.

  “Attorney-at-law,” I said. “Nice to meet you. You know my cousin, Carys.”

  “Carys is my girl,” he said, which wasn’t exactly true. My cousin runs an employment agency and she introduced him to the partners of the law firm where he’s now the only male partner and one of their major rainmakers. On the surface, he would seem to be a terrible fit with his brash personality and cheerfully sexist attitude but that’s Carys’ talent. She knows how to find the perfect job for the right person, even if that job is a little out of the box.

  “This is Lily,” Kayley said. “She’s a witch.”

  I gave the girl a look. That was our secret.

  Her eyes got big and she put her hands over her mouth.

  Thomas appeared not to have heard what she said. He was looking over at the rack of chocolate tarts I’d laid out on the big farm table that was the centerpiece of the room.

  He reached for one of the tarts and popped it in his mouth.

  “Pretty good,” he said.

  My eyes narrowed. Pretty good?

  “Are you coming to the party on Friday?” Kayley asked him.

  “Wouldn’t miss it,” he said. “See you later,” he said to me.

  Not if I see you first, I thought.

  “How do you know Tommy,” I asked Kaley.

  “We live across the hall from his father.”

  “John?” I said. I’d never put the tenant together with the lawyer.

  Kaley pulled the pan of rolls from the oven and started transferring them to a cooling rack. “His dad’s sick so he’s living here for a while.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, not wanting to admit I’d heard the rumor from Jack.

  “Tommy’s really sad,” she said. “I heard him talking to my dad.”

  That surprised me. Thomas didn’t strike me as the kind of guy who had close friends, much less friends he’d open up to emotionally. Maybe there was more to him than met the eye. And maybe Kaley’s dad wasn’t as big an a-hole as I’d thought he might be. DEAT diet indeed.

  “I’m sorry I told him you’re a witch,” she said.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I don’t think he heard you say it.”

  As it turned out, I was wrong about that. Thomas Eakins didn’t miss much.

  Chapter Three: Cold Hands, Warm Heart

  There was a sudden cold snap in Seattle the night before Valentine’s Day, and when I arrived at the condo, there was still frost on the sidewalks and ice in the trees. The city looked like it was sugar coated and everyone was wondering if we were going to get a late snow like we had in the February of 2019, which was the snowiest it had been in the city for seventy years.

  It was so cold that Marvin, the weekday concierge, was wearing an overcoat on top of his usual coat and tie. He wished me a “Happy Valentine’s Day” and I made a point of coming down later with a thermos of hot chocolate and a plate of heart-shaped sugar cookies for him.

  “You know the way to a man’s heart,” he said as he took a big bite.

  If only.

  I was happy I had something to do this Valentine’s Day. No matter how happily single you are, the holiday seems to conspire to hit you in the face with your unattached status. The bouquets of red roses, the heart-shaped boxes of candy—the displays of teddy bears, which always seemed inexplicable to me. Seriously, stuffed animal reminders of childhood never really felt romantic to me. But then, perhaps I’d feel differently if I were being showered with the toys.

  Which I’m not.

  So, busy was good.

  The Galbraith anniversary party was going to be quite the shindig. The party was going to have three phases. In part one, I would serve a selection of hot and cold appetizers so that people who hadn’t had a chance to eat dinner wouldn’t go hungry while waiting for the heartier fare to be brought out. There would be separate food stations for different kinds of noshes—fried chicken biscuits and corn muffin ham sandwiches and sweet potato fritters and hush puppies at one station in honor of Mrs. Galbraith’s southern roots. There was a spread of artisanal cheeses and locally sourced breads with red, green, and black grapes and bowls of nuts. There were salmon and dilled cream cheese roll-ups and veggie wraps, pot stickers and tiny egg rolls with three kinds of dipping sauces. Cold appetizers included deviled eggs, Bruschetta with homemade olive tapenade, little redskin potatoes with dollops of caviar and sour cream, and small cups of salmon mouse, which cued the Monty Python jokes about not eating the salmon mousse.

  The second phase would be more formal. Guests would be offered bigger plates and their choices would include carving stations for roast beef, roast chicken and baked salmon. There would be steam trays of vegetable sides like Rosti potatoes, grilled spiced cauliflower, and green beans amandine. I had a large crockpot full of onion soup and another of fire-roasted tomato bisque.

  Just before midnight, I’d bring out the anniversary cake, a three-layer confection of white chocolate, bittersweet chocolate and raspberries that required more than a little magic to put together. It looked spectacular, if I do say so myself.

  I had made a lot of the food ahead of time but the afternoon of the party, I was still in the kitchen when Kaley wandered in after school clutching a homemade Valentine which she gave to me. It was a collage of food pictures framed in a heart, and heavy on the glitter and puffy ink pen lettering. I was touched. I hadn’t gotten a Valentine’s Day card since I was in junior high. “Thank you,” I said, impulsively hugging her, and I stuck the card to the door of the fridge with one of the little magnets someone had left there.

  “Can I help?” she asked hopefully.

  “Absolutely,” I said. “Would you cut up that loaf of French bread into cubes and then toast them?”

  “Sure,” she said, and rolled up her sleeves to get to work. After she toasted the bread cubes, I had her knead the chocolate sour cherry bread and put it aside to “rest” while I talked her through making a batch of sausage rolls.

  I was mentally running through a checklist of things I still had to do when I heard a familiar voice.

  “Hey,” my cousin Carys said as she popped her head into the kitchen. I waved my wooden spoon at her in greeting.

  “Hey, Carys. What brings you down here?”

  “I got a summons,” she said, meaning that Stella had requested her presence for some reason or another. It’s Stella’s world, we just live in it. And most of the time, we wouldn’t have it any other way.

  Carys came over to the table where a round of brie was waiting to be encased in pastry and baked. “Yum, baked brie. Is this for the party tonight?”

  “It is indeed.”

  Carys noticed Kaley. “Hi,” she said. “I’m Carys. Has Lily got you working as a sous chef?”

  The little girl blushed. “I’m just making sausage rolls,” she said. ‘It’s my grandparents’ party.”

  “She’s not just making sausage rolls,” I said. “When she’s done with that, she’s going to be making rumaki.”

  “But not with chicken livers,” Kaley said. “With dates.”

  “Good choice,” Carys said, because she hates chicken livers and would probably be a vegetarian if she didn’t like bacon so much.

  “I’ve never made rumaki,” Kaley said to Carys. “But
Lily says it’s easy.”

  “There’s always a first time for making anything,” I said. “That’s why I’m giving you the job.”

  Carys took a really good look at Kaley then and got kind of a dreamy look on her face. “You’re what, ten?” she asked.

  “Almost eleven,” Kaley said.

  “Okay, so when you graduate from high school, you need to enroll in the Culinary Institute of America down in San Francisco.”

  “Not Seattle Culinary Academy?” I said, just to mess with her. I knew Carys was doing that thing she does and seeing a job that didn’t yet exist that Kaley would be perfect for at some unspecified time in the future. Carys waved her hand at me, her signal for me to shut up.

  “But between now and then, you should take some jewelry making classes,” she added.

  Kaley looked confused. “Okay,” she said.

  “You’ll especially want to work with copper and enamel.” Carys saw Kaley’s skeptical look. ‘You bake the enamel on,” she said. “So it’s not that far off from cooking.”

  “Okay,” Kaley said again. I thought Carys might be finished, but then she had a last thought that really seemed random. “And get an associate degree in veterinary medicine,” she added.

  “Really?” I said.

  “Trust me,” she said to Kaley. Kaley nodded tentatively and returned to cutting up the bread. She froze as her stepmother walked into the kitchen.

  “I’ve been looking all over for you,” Sarah said, sounding annoyed, as usual.

  “I’m helping Lily,” Kaley said defensively.

  “Well, Lily’s going to have to get along without you. I need you to come upstairs so you can get ready for the party. She looked at Kaley’s stick-straight ponytail. “Mirielle is going to need extra time to curl your hair.”

  How much time could it take to stick some hot curlers into her hair, I wondered. It sounded like Sarah wanted Kaley out of the kitchen more than anything else. Kaley put the knife down on the bread board. “I’ll see you tonight,” I said to Kaley, who nodded sadly.

  “Excuse me,” Carys said to Sarah. “I know this is going to sound a little random, but would you have any interest in a job that combined your skill at numbers crunching with your love of dogs?”

  Sarah was so surprised; she didn’t even bother to ask how Carys knew she was good at bean counting and loved dogs. I was kind of surprised too. I rarely saw Carys in action and now I’d seen her doing her thing twice in one hour. It’s magic, of course, this skill at finding people the jobs that are their hearts’ desire, even if they don’t know they’re looking for one. But like my skill at sneaking magic into food, hers is not a talent that’s obviously supernatural. She can hide in plain sight behind the doors of her employment agency.

  Before Sarah could reply to her question, Carys rolled on as if she’d already said yes, she was interested in a position like that.

  “One of my clients runs a foundation that has a side interest in animal rescue,” she said. “They’re looking for someone who could take over their social media—posting adorable adoption videos on Instagram and Pinterest, that sort of thing—and manage fund raising for shelters all across the Pacific Northwest. They’d also want that person to organize charity events with celebrities and their pets.”

  “Ryan Gosling has a dog,” I said helpfully. “So does Peter Dinklage.”

  Not to be outdone in the celebrity trivia game, Carys added, “Will Smith and Ben Affleck do too.”

  Sarah paused at the doorway, looking intrigued. “The job would involve travel and meeting with veterinarians,” Carys said.

  ‘I want to be a veterinarian,” Kaley said softly. “And make yummy dog treats I can give out to my patients.”

  Carys beamed at her and nodded in approval. I looked at my cousin. Seriously? I mouthed.

  Seriously, she mouthed back. I wondered where the jewelry making came into the equation. Maybe Carys saw Kaley designing a line of jeweled dog collars or something.

  “Really?” Sarah said in answer to Kaley’s comment, looking down at her as if seeing her for the first time.

  “I love dogs,” Kaley said. “Cats too,” she added after a minute.

  “I didn’t know that,” Sarah said. I could tell she was re-evaluating the little girl. “I thought you were allergic to dogs.”

  “Mom was allergic,” Kaley said.

  “I wanted to be a vet when I was your age too,” Sarah said, and her voice was wistful.

  “What happened?” Kaley asked.

  Sarah looked sad. ‘My mother got sick and I dropped out of college to take care of her.”

  “Did she get well?” Kaley asked.

  “No,” she said. “She died like your mother.”

  “I’m sorry,” Kaley said sweetly. “You must miss her a lot.” I could see tears in Sarah’s eyes. Both she and Kaley seemed to have forgotten there were other people in the room.

  “I do miss her,” Sarah said. “A lot. No one understands,” she added. “Until they’ve gone through it themselves.”

  Kaley looked distressed. I knew she wanted to offer her stepmother some kind of comfort but was afraid Sarah would turn her down and break the fragile truce they seemed to have just forged. But Sarah surprised me. She looked over at the mound of dough in front of the little girl and asked, “What are you making?”

  “Sour cherry chocolate bread,” she said. “Because it’s Valentine’s Day.”

  “That sounds like it would be good toasted,” Sarah said musingly.

  Kaley brightened. “They have a toaster oven here,” she said. “If you want to try it.”

  “How long does it take to bake?” Sarah asked, and I could see she was stressed for time but trying to connect.

  “There’s a loaf already cooling in the pantry,” I announced. Kaley gave me the side-eye, but she’d been around me enough that she just rolled with it.

  Carys raised an eyebrow because she knew damn well there wasn’t a loaf of sour cherry chocolate bread in the pantry until I said there was.

  Kaley had already gone to the pantry and retrieved the round loaf.

  She picked up the large, serrated bread knife she’d been using to cut up the French bread and sliced off a large piece.

  “Could I have a piece too?” Carys asked.

  “Sure,” Kaley said and cut another piece. I wanted a piece too but the tray in the toaster oven wasn’t big enough for three slices, so I just watched as Kaley slid the tray into the toaster and hit a button.

  The smell of the toasting bread filled the room.

  “Would you like something to drink with your toast?” I asked Sarah. “Some coffee? Tea?”

  “Do you have any cold milk?”

  Kaley gave her a surprised look. And no wonder. The bread was already way off the DEAT plan, and I knew dairy was proscribed as well. “I don’t know,” she said and looked at me.

  “Whole milk, skim, no-fat and cashew and soy milk,” I said. “Whatever you want.”

  “Two-percent, please,” Sarah said to Kaley. There wasn’t any milk in the fridge, but there would be when Kaley opened it and it would be ice cold.

  As Kaley poured Sarah a glass of milk, I microwaved some herbal tea for Carys. She likes the Bengal Spice blend which always smells Christmassy to me. Sarah sat down at the table across from Carys. “Hi, I’m Sarah.”

  “Carys,” she replied. “I’m Lily’s cousin.”

  “And you’re a headhunter,” Sarah said.

  “I run a boutique employment agency.”

  “You don’t know anything about me. Why would you think I’d be good for the job you’re looking to fill?”

  “I have good instincts,” Carys said. “Are you free for an interview on Monday?”

  Sarah looked a little flustered. “I don’t know if I have time to update my resume—”

  “You won’t need a resume,” Carys said. “I’ve worked with this client for years. He trusts my judgment.”

  Carys broke off as Kale
y set down two plates with the toasted bread. “Butter?” Kaley asked.

  “Butter?” Sarah echoed, as if buttering toast was an alien concept.

  “I’ll get it,” Carys said, jumping up and heading for the refrigerator. On her way, she gave me a pat on the arm. “Good job,” she whispered.

  The bread was still warm enough that the cold butter melted on it. It smelled so good that I cut pieces for Kaley and me to toast while Carys and Sarah ate theirs.

  “This is really delicious,” Sarah said. “Not too sweet. You think your dad would like a slice?”