by P. L. Harris
“It’s not every day my famous chef brother comes home to dinner. If I’d known this was a homecoming dinner, I would’ve made something more extravagant.”
My eyebrows rose of their own accord. Ivy cook something more extravagant? She didn’t even cook dinner tonight.
“I wanted to surprise you. When you told me you were engaged, I figured it was time to come home before you have kids.” He ate a forkful of the pasta. “I can’t let you and Claire corrupt my future niece or nephew.”
“Corrupt?” I frowned. “The way I see it...” I bit my tongue and tasted the metallic tang of blood.
“The way you see what?” Ivy asked, her long blonde hair swinging as she looked my way.
“Nothing.” I stretched for the serving spoon.
Travis turned the handle of the spoon my way. Our fingers brushed. Awareness shot down my arm. Even after all these years, my body still flared from his touch. I gazed at Travis’s lips. Why did they have to be so delicious?
Martin cleared his throat. I slopped a spoonful of pasta onto my plate and handed him the spoon with no awkward hand touching. I dug into my food. It was better to keep my mouth full of food rather than say anything to Travis again or gaze at his lips in longing.
“There won’t be kids yet,” Ivy said around a mouthful of food. “We’re not ready for babies.”
“It’s what all newlyweds say.” Travis waved his fork. “Before you know it, there’ll be one, then two, then three little mini Ivy’s and Martin’s running around.”
Martin tugged on his shirt collar again. “Ivy’s right. We’re not ready for kids.”
“Then why are you getting married?”
Martin’s mouth flapped. Could Travis be any blunter? Ivy swirled her pasta around her plate. Didn’t look like she would say anything either. Guess it was up to me.
“Because, Travis, when two people are in love, they get married. It doesn’t have to be about the white picket fence and two-point three kids, the dog and cat, the minivan and all that jazz.” My blood heated with my outburst.
Travis frowned. “Is that what you want, Claire?”
“What?” I spluttered. “Me?” I wanted it all. Everything I said. A husband, a family, a sense of belonging and being needed by those I loved and who loved me.
“Yes, you. You are engaged to Kevin.”
“Not anymore. I broke up with him.”
“Ivy didn’t mention your breakup. When did this happen?” He placed his fork on the table and eyeballed his sister in question.
Ivy rolled her shoulders.
“After Christmas last year.” I swallowed.
The Christmas Travis brought his French model girlfriend, Ninette, to Australia for a Christmas dinner with both families before our parents went caravanning. Travis and I usually avoided each other, but this time we couldn’t. Ninette was stunning in her beauty, smart, and as tall as Travis. A perfect match. I was jealous. So ridiculously jealous I’d broken my engagement to Kevin, knowing he deserved better from his future wife. More so after the way Travis and I helped Ivy in the kitchen with the cooking, where we’d talked and laughed like old times, and reconnected in a way I’d always wanted.
“About time you dumped the sleazeball.” He picked up his fork and ate more of his meal.
“Sleazeball?”
“Travis don’t,” Ivy muttered.
“What’s going on?” I swung my head back and forth between the two siblings.
“I walked in on him hitting on Ninette.”
“Kevin hit on Ninette?” My stomach dropped.
“Yes. Wasn’t the first time from what I hear.” He scraped the last of his pasta with his fork.
Humiliation scorched a trail through my body. I’d always known Kevin was a flirt, but I’d assumed it was harmless, his natural personality. He’d never cheat on me. Now I wasn’t sure.
I picked up my half-eaten plate and stood. “I’ll get dessert.” I fled to the kitchen.
The door opened and Ivy followed me into the kitchen, carrying the rest of the plates I’d left on the dinner table in my haste to escape.
“Are you okay?”
“Sure, why wouldn’t I be? I realised Kevin was a flirt.” I smoothed my damp palms down my lemon-yellow dress. “Tell me, did he cheat on me?”
“No,” Ivy said. “Wasn’t his flirting the reason you broke up with him?”
“Yeah, sure,” I said, moving to the lemon meringue pie. Let Ivy assume Kevin’s flirting was the reason and not my crush on her brother. How long did a crush last anyway?
I shoved through the door and carried the pie to the dinner table.
“Looks delicious, Ivy,” Martin said.
I placed the pie in the middle of the table and kept up the pretence Ivy was the one who’d baked the pie. I didn’t mind. She wanted to prove to Travis she could cook after the fiasco with Christmas dinner. Where Travis and I ended up in the kitchen, together, alone, and...
Ivy sliced pieces of pie for everyone.
“A perfect shortcrust pastry.” Travis lifted his plate and examined his piece of the pie. “You set the lemon custard filling to the right consistency, and it’s a good deep yellow. The meringue appears light and fluffy with the perfect amount of baking. Let’s see if your pie taste’s as good as it looks, Ivy.”
“Travis, we’re not in a restaurant. You’re not a food critic, or at work interviewing a chef for a job,” Ivy said.
Travis shrugged and slid his fork into the pie.
I held my breath. Funny how I longed for his approval. The lemon meringue pie disappeared into Travis’s mouth. Through his delicious lips. I couldn’t tear my gaze away. He licked a dab of white meringue from the corner of his lips. What I wouldn’t give to be the piece of meringue. Corn nuts, now I was jealous of meringue.
I shook my head and turned my attention to my piece of the pie.
“This is excellent, Ivy,” Travis said.
“Sure is,” I agreed. “Great job with dinner tonight.”
Travis’s lips twitched.
“Thanks.” Ivy tucked her hair behind her ear.
“Have you considered doing this as a profession?” Travis scraped his plate clean. “I need a pâtissier for my new restaurant.”
“Oh, no, definitely not. I love my job.” She squeezed Martin’s hand. “As depressing as work can be some days, there’s a certain privilege in providing care for cancer patients.”
“I’m proud of you, but there’ll always be an opening for you at my restaurant when you cook like this.”
Ivy eyeballed me. I tapped the corner of my lips, our code for keeping a secret. I wouldn’t tell Travis I was the one who cooked the pie. It would be Ivy’s and my little secret. Like Travis’s and my secret kiss. My lips were not letting those secrets spill to the other.
“How’s your girlfriend?” I asked, changing the subject, not because I wanted to know. It was the last thing I wanted to hear, Travis with his perfect model girlfriend.
“We broke up.” Travis waved his hand with a shooing motion.
Did he shoo his model girlfriend away? I ate more pie before I laughed because his words caused giddy happiness to take up residence in my heart. Travis was single.
“Didn’t want to do the long-distance relationship?” I asked.
“Actually, we broke up months ago, before New Year’s.”
“Ivy didn’t tell me.”
My heart stuttered. Stopped. Started beating with a frantic rhythm. Did our moment in the kitchen at Christmas mean something to Travis too? Or was I the only one who imagined there was more to it? With trembling fingers, I fumbled for my wineglass and knocked it over.
“Corn nuts. Sorry.” I jumped up and patted the table with the napkin, but I was too slow, and the red wine made a perilous path towards Travis’s lap. The liquid rolled and dripped from the edge of the table. I pressed my hand on Travis’s lap and dabbed at the mess. Dab dab. Dab dab. My hand worked overtime, eager to clean up my mistake.
&n
bsp; Travis grabbed my arm. His warm fingers tantalising around my frantic pulse. I paused and gazed into his eyes. It wouldn’t take much to...
Martin laughed. Ivy giggled.
“OMG!” Heat filled my face. What was I doing? Dabbing at Travis’s lap like a crazy person. A crazy infatuated person. I dropped the napkin on the table and slunk down in my seat. See? Dinner ruined.
“All right, you two,” Ivy said. “Out with it.”
I snapped my gaze to hers and avoided looking at Travis.
“What are you talking about?” Travis asked with forced laziness.
Ivy huffed. “I saw you two kiss.”
“We didn’t kiss at Christmas,” we said in unison.
Ivy’s mouth fell open, closed, opened. She gawked at me, then Travis, then back to me. Ivy narrowed her eyes the same way Travis did upon seeing me. She swung back to Travis. “I meant the year we had the lemonade stand. You two left to get more lemons, and you were gone so long I went looking and found you kissing.”
“Oh, that,” I whispered. So many emotions churned my stomach.
“Yes, that.” Ivy swung back to me. “Why didn’t you tell me? We’re best friends and tell each other everything.”
I gulped. “I couldn’t tell you. I didn’t want to lose you.”
Ivy leaned forward and squeezed my hand. “You’d never lose me.”
I turned my hand over and squeezed back. “I’m sorry, I should have told you.”
“Yes, you should have told me years ago when it happened.”
“Why are you bringing it up now?”
“Because I know you, and I know Travis. I’ve seen the looks you give each other. You’re both single and living in the same city again.” She smirked. “I figured it was time to clear the air before you sneak around behind my back.”
“I wouldn’t do that to you.” I shook my head.
“I know. That’s why I’m saying this here and now with you two in the same room. I can’t believe it took my engagement to get you two together. If you want to date, go for it. I won’t object. Unless.” She pointed a finger at Travis. “You break her heart.”
All heads swung his way.
“Me?” Travis stood.
“You ran off to culinary school in France after—” Ivy pointed to the pair of us.
“But I always intended to go.” Travis threw his napkin on the table and stalked into the kitchen.
Ivy pouted. “It’s a wonder he can walk with the stick up his—”
“I’ll talk to him.” I slid back my chair.
Ivy wriggled closer to Martin. He placed his arm around her shoulders and drew her into his embrace. I sighed. I wanted what they had. An undeniable love. Affection. Companionship. Everything that came with it.
Would Travis be the one to give me everything?
I entered the kitchen, but it was empty. Alarm speared through my veins. Where did Travis go? I opened the back door and glimpsed his figure moving towards the driveway. Was Travis leaving? When he’d only just returned. Did he not experience the same feelings around me as I did him? My stomach clamped in a hard knot.
I needed to know. Because if he didn’t, it was time I moved on with my life and stopped waiting for the impossible with Travis. No matter how good my memory of our kiss, and the length of my crush.
I ran after him. “Travis, wait.”
Halfway across the street, I caught him. My hand landed on his arm and he turned around.
“Where are you going?”
“I needed air. I needed to think. I wanted to sit under the lemon tree.” He waved his arm towards my house.
“Come on, then.” I let go of his arm and made my way to my house.
The sensor light flicked on and illuminated our path to the backyard. In the back garden sat the lemon tree with a string of sparkling fairy lights hanging in the branches.
The lemon tree.
The one we kissed under. Was Travis thinking of the kiss?
“This is new.” He sat on the velvety yellow cushions of the daybed under the lemon tree and reclined until he looked up at the smooth green leaves of the tree.
“The day bed was the first thing I added when I purchased the house from Mum and Dad.” I shuffled from foot to foot.
“I have so many memories under this lemon tree.”
“Me too.” I held a mountain of memories under the lemon tree, and the one that marked me forever was our kiss. But I wouldn’t stand here and wish for him to kiss me again. “I’ll leave you to your air and thinking.”
“Claire.” He sighed. “Sit down. We need to talk.”
Talk?
It never went well when someone said they wanted to talk. My palms sweated. I perched on the edge of the daybed and gripped the edge and waited for Travis to speak.
Travis closed his eyes. “You were so young.”
I understood what he meant. Our kiss. Did it mean he thought of our kiss too? A small spark of hope flared in my heart.
“Almost fifteen,” I whispered.
“I was almost eighteen. I shouldn’t have kissed you.”
“But you did.” I didn’t regret it. Our kiss was beautiful and perfect.
He opened his eyes. “I did. And—”
“And then you ignored me.” I folded my arms. My blood heating. “Then you kissed your ex-girlfriend behind the shed at school where I saw you.”
“I did it on purpose.”
“You did?” I squeezed my fingers into fists. I could punch him. No one would see. It was only him and me out here.
He sat up and leaned forward. “I couldn’t talk to you, I couldn’t lie and tell you our kiss meant nothing, and I wanted you to be happy. I’d already applied and was accepted to the culinary school in France. And you were so young...”
“I get it.” I stood. He was too much that close. His lips within kissing distance. Even with how stupid he was, I wanted to kiss him.
“Do you?” He stood with me.
I rolled my shoulders. I didn’t. I wanted to. But my feelings for Travis would never change.
“Claire Bear,” he whispered, taking my hands in his. “Last Christmas, coming home, seeing you again after all those years of avoiding you whenever I travelled home to Australia. I realised how wrong I was.”
“Wrong?” I stared at his hands wrapped around mine. His pale skin clashed with my tanned fingers, but it was perfect. The feel, the connection, the rapid beat of my heart through my veins with Travis touching me.
“I was wrong about all of it. You and me. The way I felt about you.” He swallowed. “Still feel.”
Crickets chirped somewhere in the garden. I couldn’t move. Didn’t want to. Afraid I’d shatter the moment I’d longed for if I did.
Travis lifted his hands with mine wrapped inside them still. With slowness, he turned our hands over and placed a soft kiss to the inside of my wrist. Tingles raced up my arm. He pried open my fingers and placed butterfly kisses to my palms. I sighed with every emotion I held for Travis, had held for him for a long time. His gaze snapped to mine. A question lingered in his coffee-coloured eyes.
I nodded my head. I forgave his stupidity. We were teenagers after all, and maybe he was right, we were so young. Now we were adults, living in the same city, nothing stopped us from seeing where our feelings for each other went.
Travis smiled. He stepped closer to me under the lemon tree.
Our lemon tree.
With gentleness, he drew me into his arms. Placed a hand to the side of my face and ran his thumb over my lips.
“I’ve dreamed of these lips,” he whispered.
“No more dreaming.” I threaded my fingers into his thick blond hair and tugged his head towards mine. “For either of us.”
He pressed his delicious lemon-flavoured lips to mine.
If I’d considered him the best kisser ever with our first kiss, then this one...my legs turned to jelly, stars burst behind my eyelids, and my heart pounded inside my chest, full of emotion. So full of lo
ve and happiness.
Travis lifted his head. “I know you made the lemon meringue pie, and my job offer stands.”
“You do? How?” I played with his hair.
“Ivy can’t even reheat a frozen meal. I hope Martin can cook.”
I laughed. “Who do you think made the linguine?”
Travis laughed with me.
“Thank you for the job offer but I love my job as a teacher.”
Travis pouted. “I hoped to spend time with you at work.”
I tugged his head closer. Happiness ran through every inch of my body. “I have a feeling we’ll spend lots of time together.”
Travis’s gaze lit with hunger.
He kissed me again.
And again.
And again.
Each kiss was the best kiss.
Ever.
Plus One
Alyce Caswell
Ben Chapman’s two-wheel-drive Hyundai rattled its discontent as he drove it over the bumpy dirt road, a turn-off he’d taken back near the small town’s pub about fifteen minutes ago. He glanced over his shoulder to check on the blocky Tupperware containers buckled into the backseat, as well as the ones jammed into the footwells. The passenger seat beside him hadn’t been spared either, but at least he’d been able to keep an eye on those containers during the drive up to the Hunter Valley.
His car was vibrating so hard he’d be surprised if the cupcakes weren’t reduced to dust by the time he reached the farm. Who the hell insisted on having their wedding out here? And who the hell insisted on hiring a baker who had only just opened his doors and didn’t have any other employees to run these cupcakes all the way out of Sydney?
Oh yeah. He knew exactly who the hell to blame.
Cursing, he turned onto another unsealed road. This one belonged to the farm — not that there was much difference between its driveway and the main road. He passed beneath an archway sporting a silver banner that declared Welcome to the Winters-Blakeney Wedding.
Ben resisted the urge to grimace.
The cause of all his problems was waiting for him on the elegant porch, leaning against one of the smooth white columns like he owned the place and hadn’t hired it out for a single night of celebration.
