“I was trying to decide if it was really as bad as I thought. You know, working my way up to a confirming bite. But also figuring out the best words to describe it. Gross just doesn’t seem to do it justice. I mean, how many times has that been frozen and refrozen?”
Maria swept the plate with the offending cheesecake away. “I’ll take care of this. You still want something? I’ll bring you a flan, I know that’s good. We make that here.” She left with an expression of extreme distaste as she stared at the rancid piece of cheesecake.
“You’re all dolled up. What’s up?” Les asked.
“Nothing, and I’m just not in work clothes. I mean, you aren’t in your black and white chef pants.”
“Point taken. Where are your friends?”
Tori shrugged. “Erin had to work and Ali said she would be right back thirty minutes ago. I have no clue where she went.”
“Fall in the toilet?” Les chuckled.
Butterflies flitted in Tori’s stomach when he grinned at her.
She shook her head. “I checked. And I can’t call her, ’cause her phone is in the bag.” Tori pointed at the offending property she felt obligated to monitor. “To be honest, I’m ready to leave. What about you?”
Maria appeared again and slid a plate with a glistening flan onto the table between Tori and Les. She placed napkins and two spoons down. “I promise you this isn’t gross, and I made sure it’s not on your bill.” She reached over and picked up the plate of cold nachos before leaving.
“Thanks.” Tori reached for a spoon.
Les was already scooping a serving of the creamy dessert into his mouth.
“I’m ready to bounce, too. We were hanging with some chicks earlier, but they left, mi primos already took off, and this place is dead tonight. Thought I’d come over and—”
She closed her eyes and experienced the flan as it played across her tongue. Les stopped talking, but Tori didn’t care. She hated that she knew he was in her booth because there was no one left for him to talk to in the bar. She didn’t particularly want to know about some chick he didn’t manage to successfully hook up with.
Actually, it made her a little happy. This way he did come and talk to her, even if it was a crappy reason.
More importantly, why hadn’t she ordered this before? She breathed in and noticed the perfection of the caramelized sugars as they mingled with the rich custard. She may have hummed in satisfaction. This more than made up for that painful attempt at cheesecake and almost consoled her over being stuck with Ali’s bag. She was going to need a second bite to get past being Les’s fallback.
Tori watched as the spoon cut into the dessert, scooping up a mouthful of confectionary delight. She closed her eyes as she slid the spoon back between her lips. She savored the moment of perfect happiness. No matter what else was going on in her life, right now the flan seemed to take all of her pain away.
Les cleared his throat. “You enjoying that?”
Tori blinked up at him. Yes, this moment was bliss, a perfect dessert, Les looking at her with those fathomless dark eyes of his, his mouth twitched up into an amused grin.
Tori felt like purring. “I am. It’s really good. You’re the professional. What do you think?”
“It’s good, but I don’t think I got nearly as much out of it as you did,” he said with a chuckle.
The dessert was small, and between the two of them they finished in a few bites.
“You need a ride?” Les asked.
Tori shook her head. “I’m walking, but I can’t go anywhere until Ali comes back. I can’t leave her shit here, and I really don’t feel like paying for her drinks.”
“Where is she?”
“Like I said, I don’t know. She took off a while ago.”
Les managed to grab Maria’s attention again. He asked if she had seen Tori’s friend.
Maria pulled a check from her pad and paused. “Oh, she’s out on the patio smoking,” she answered.
Les took the check from Maria and handed her several bills.
She looked at the money in her hand. “You need change?”
Les shook his head.
“Wait, she’s been outside this whole time? I could have left.” But she was glad she hadn’t because Les, and flan. “Maria,” she called after the waitress as she was leaving, “Can I get my check?”
Maria looked confused and pointed at Les. “He just paid me.”
“Oh, okay.” Tori turned her attention to Les. “How much do I owe you?”
“Nothing. You shared your dessert with me, so call it even.”
“I can’t let you do that.”
“You aren’t letting me. C’mon. I’ll walk you home.”
Tori huffed, grabbed her bag, and scooted out of the booth to follow Les. She wasn’t about to let this opportunity slide by her.
Once she exited the front door, she walked along the patio until she saw Ali, sucking on a cigarette and curled up in some tourist’s lap. “Hey Ali, don’t forget your purse when you leave.”
“You just left it? You could have brought it out to me,” Ali grumbled.
“I didn’t know where you were. You could have told me where you went.” Tori shook her head. “Look, I’m headed home. Your bag is back at the booth.”
Ali rolled her eyes, and Tori just shrugged it off. Ali was always doing shit like this. “See you later, okay?”
Ali jumped out of the man’s lap , stumbled over to Tori, and leaned over the railing separating the sidewalk from the patio to give Tori an air kiss to the cheek. “See ya later, sweetie, and thanks. Didn’t mean to ditch you like that. This guy is really hot. I think his name is Scott.” She turned and yelled back to him. “Scott, wave hi to Tori.”
Tori coughed and waved in return. The guy was good looking and was just Ali’s type, buff and temporary.
“Good, that’s his name. Okay, I’ll see ya later.” Ali tottered back to Scott.
Tori caught up with Les, who stood waiting by the front door.
“You all good?” he asked.
Not really, but she didn’t need to share that she hated it when Ali treated her like a purse babysitter or that everyone seemed to prefer to do anything instead of hang out with her. She just nodded and set off down the street.
“You walk home a lot, or was she your ride?” Les had his hands shoved down into his jeans pockets.
“She was my ride, and I end up walking a lot.”
“Why do you put up with that?”
Tori shrugged. “I know it’s gonna happen, so it’s not like it’s a surprise. Besides I live downtown, barely a mile away.”
“Is it safe for you to walk home alone at night?”
“No less safe than getting in a car with a tipsy driver. Look, most anybody out this late is in a car, not out walking. And if they are, they are walking their dogs or out for a jog. It’s probably as safe as any other time of day,” Tori explained.
“So where do you live?” Les asked.
Tori pointed north and a little to the left. Her insides did a little happy dance. She needed tell Sam that Les walked her home. “Just up here. I’m in a back apart—”
A loud honking cut Tori off. A bright red convertible, clearly a rental, pulled to an awkward stop alongside the curb. “Hey, Les, you still interested in partying?”
The blonde who leaned out of the passenger’s side was lean and tan and falling out of her spaghetti strap ruffled tank top. It was too cold to be wearing a tank top without a jacket. The other woman behind the wheel was dressed similarly. Tourists, thinking California was perpetually beach weather. Tourists who looked like every other women she had ever seen Les with: shiny hair, big eyes, boobs.
“Becky and Emma, right?” Les halted next to the car.
Tori’s stomach sank. She knew exactly what was about to happen, as if she was a psychic. She didn’t need to be clairvoyant to know that Les would jump in the car to leave with these two.
“Tori, you’re good from here, right
?”
Bingo. She should go buy a lottery ticket. She gave Les a weak wave and concealed her huff. Can’t be mad at a dog for being a dog, can you? She should have expected it, just as she’d known Ali would go home with some guy with a neck thicker than his IQ.
Les fell into the back seat, and the passenger chick tossed her arms up in the air and shouted, “Woo hoo!” as the car pulled away from the curb.
“Woo fucking hoo,” Tori muttered as she watched them drive off. She couldn’t keep doing this to herself. Setting herself up for a fall. She needed to do something nice for herself. She remembered seeing a notice for social dance lessons and open floor on the front door of the Barre and Tap School of Dance.
She walked the extra few blocks to check. Yep, right there, the school’s schedule.
Thursday nights eight o’clock. Show up fifteen minutes early to learn the dance steps. Hanging out at the bar at Carnita Joe’s wasn’t doing her any favors. She wasn’t meeting new people, and Ali and Erin preferred the Spigot anyway. Tori couldn’t go there anymore, she just couldn’t. It was bad enough having to deal with Josh at work, and she didn’t want to deal with him on her own time, and on his home turf.
***
Les leaned over and piped a tiny carrot on top of the thick white frosting. It looked like a little orange dick. Once the green was added, it would look like a carrot.
The table in front of him was covered in personal sized cakes. As soon as he finished piping the frosting design on all of them, he would complete the decoration with sprigs of crystalized mint leaves. That reminded him. He was going to need more mint. He would ask Tori next time she showed up.
He smiled and began humming. He didn’t realize the tune was the R&B funk classic Brick House, until he started singing out loud.
Next to him, the tall aluminum baker’s rack spun. Marc DeLuca, hotel owner and therefore Les’s big-boss, stepped out from behind it. He obviously had filched something from the rack.
“These eclairs are almost as good as my wife’s,” Marc admitted
“Only almost?” Les teased. He knew they were as good as or better than Marc’s wife Lexi’s standard creations.
Marc picked up a dessert plate from another shelf on the rack. He scooped a spoon full of cake into his mouth and moaned. “Lexi makes the best rum cake, I swear.”
Les set down the piping bag. “Your taste buds need to be checked, boss-man. That rum cake is mine.”
“Do you use my wife’s recipe?” Marc cocked an eyebrow at him. “Because I had one of these the other day out of her display case.”
“Nope, I trade her. The eclair that you claimed as almost as good as hers is hers, and the rum cake you filched from her stock is mine.” There was no reason to compete, and with the boss’s wife, a renowned pastry chef, right next door, why not arrange to work together? With Chef’s signature on the order form, Les had worked out an equitable trade with the hotel’s neighbor at The Sweet and Savory Bistro. He delivered rum cakes with enough proof to make someone think about handing over their keys, and in exchange he received trays upon trays of chocolate eclairs and cream puffs.
“Crap, don’t tell her that. Lexi would make me sleep on the couch for a week.”
“Mum’s the word. So, can I leverage this for a raise?” Les chuckled as he returned to piping orange semi-phallic veggies.
Marc was silent for a moment, and then he also chuckled. “For a second I thought you weren’t joking. No raise, but I can probably finagle a paid day off. I have an in with your boss.”
“Sounds reasonable.” Les nodded as Marc left.
Lost in placement of his mint leaves, Les started singing Brick House again.
A low curse came from the back door followed with an “uff” and other sounds that accompanied the carrying of large delivery trays.
Tori lugged the bushel of tomatoes through the back door to the kitchen. She left it on the trestle table and headed back to the van.
Les leaned against the half wall and watched her wrangle her load.
“Hey, Tori.”
She sidestepped as Karen entered, her hair in tight coils of bright colors, held up in a pony tail on top of her head. When she smiled back at him, he couldn’t help but smile more broadly.
Had he noticed that her eyes twinkled like that before?
“What’s with the crazy hair?” He nodded, indicating her cascade of curled ribbons.
She reached up and touched her head. Her eyes went wide, and she flushed a light pink under her freckles.
“Oh crap. I forgot to take those out.” She left her hand resting on top of her hair style.
“Tell everyone it was on purpose. They kind of look like those extension things mi primas put in their hair for parties.”
“Then pretend that’s what I told you. How’s that cheesecake coming along?”
“Someone I know didn’t get me enough lavender to make more than a few sample batches,” Les teased.
He felt like a goon the second he saw Tori’s face. She really did feel bad about that. “But hey, she’s promised to get me all the lavender I can handle as soon as her contact’s crop blooms.”
“I’m sorry about that. So many growers in this area presell,” Tori tried to explain.
“I didn’t mean to poke at a sore spot. I’ve been busy doing production runs. I’ll have time to experiment and make samples next week. Chef wants a full seasonal shift. Time to phase out the heavier cakes for lighter options.”
Karen appeared silently behind Tori and tugged on her shirt.
“I’m gonna have to head out,” Tori said. “I’ll see you later.”
“Wait.” Les stopped her. “I need more mint. Is that you? Or are you just veg and flowers?”
“That’s us. I’ll make sure you get some. And I’ll make sure that slacker lavender supplier of yours delivers. I really want to try that cheesecake.”
Her hair bounced in springy coils as she left. She was wearing jeans again. Her backside was mighty mighty.
Chapter 6
Sara DeLuca, teacher and owner of the Barre and Tap School of Dance, clicked the small remote in her hand and the music began.
Tori loved the way old fashioned big-band music made her want to dance. She wanted to step and kick and know exactly where to put her feet so that she didn’t injure her dancing partner.
Oh yeah, there was that. She also wanted a dancing partner.
Maybe that would happen later. For now she stood to the side and slightly behind Sara and mimicked the steps. All of the newbies to the Thursday night open floor social followed the teacher’s foot placements for the first fifteen to twenty minutes before they broke into dance partners, while the more comfortable students were already partnered up. That was to say, ChiChi and her cronies Pricilla and Lucinda, and ChiChi’s husband Charles.
Tori was painfully aware she was the only new person tonight, and from the look of who else had come, she’d been the only new person for quite a while. There was a distinct age gap between herself, Sara, her husband Trey, and the geriatric set.
And there were only two men, Trey and Charles. From the expression on Charles’s face, Tori wouldn’t be surprised if he only danced with his wife.
Well, she would make the most of tonight. The music was fun, she was expanding her horizons, and more importantly, she wasn’t home alone after Ali and Erin had announced they had a big change of plans for the weekend, that did not include Tori.
Tori didn’t really want her brain to drift into thinking about how she still didn’t have any real friends here. No, not going there. And two three, step four, turn. She directed her focus at Sara’s feet. They barely appeared to be moving, with soft side steps. Oh, a waltz. Tori chided herself for not having picked up on the one social dance she actually knew.
The music changed, and Sara stepped out of her husbands arms and faced Tori. “You ready? I’ll lead.”
The next thing Tori knew she was smiling awkwardly into the other woman’s face. T
here wasn’t enough room between them to watch her feet.
Sara kept a quiet count going. “Pause and on the left, the other left. Good two three, step two three.”
Remarkably enough, Tori felt like she was dancing. They swung around the dance floor for two more songs before Sara left her for another partner.
To Tori’s surprise, Sara began dancing with Charles. So he did dance with other women.
Considering the majority of dancers this evening were older, the music never whipped up into the frenetic horns and drums Tori was pretty certain she had heard a time or two with big band jazz.
She found herself laughing and dancing with ChiChi as her partner. Fortunately the other woman took lead. Tori knew she wasn’t accomplished enough of a dancer for the reversal of steps required to lead since she was still wrapping her head around back back slide together.
“You’re doing well,” ChiChi encouraged.
“Thank you, oh, and I never did thank you for allowing Peaz’n’Karrit’s Farm to donate compost for the rose garden.”
“The Guild appreciated the offer. The garden smells much better this year.” ChiChi smiled.
She had the opportunity to dance with Trey, Sara’s ridiculously handsome husband and ChiChi’s grandson. He was good. Smooth and unflappable. He made Tori almost believe she knew what she was doing.
When Sara called the last number, Tori decide to sit it out. With an odd number of dancers she had been incredibly lucky to dance as much as she had, especially since there were three women without partners, and two of them couldn’t lead.
This had been nice, but Tori didn’t think she would be back. She was odd man out and threw off the others who clearly had a groove going.
The song ended, and everyone applauded, as if there was a real band to thank.
Lucinda patted Tori on the forearm, “You will come back, won’t you?”
“You were really picking the moves up by the end of the hour,” Sara added.
Tori shrugged. “I’ll think about it. It was a lot of fun.”
Charles helped ChiChi on with her coat. She said, “Come back and bring a friend.”
St. Helena Vineyard Series_Sweet Satisfaction Page 4
