by Libby Klein
“What is your heart telling you?”
“That everyone is going to get hurt.”
“I don’t care about everyone. I just care about you. What do you want?”
“I don’t know yet. I don’t want to decide right now.”
Gia pulled me into his arms. “Then don’t. Wait until you are sure.”
“What if I never know?”
Gia laughed softly, and I felt his breath against my forehead. “You will.”
I pulled back and looked into his smiling eyes. A rush of heat flew up to my cheeks. There was a part of me that loved this attention. Two men were fighting over me. I was both exhilarated and ashamed of myself for being exhilarated. “How long will you wait?”
He grinned. “I don’t see a ring on your finger, so there’s still time to make you mine.”
I returned his smile. “So, you won’t give up until I’m engaged?”
Gia brought his face close and brushed his lips against mine. “Bella, I won’t give up until you’re married.”
Chapter Three
I left Gia with four dozen muffins and another little piece of my heart and walked home with my third latte of the morning. I contemplated the many ways my life would change if I entered into a committed relationship with Tim. I mean, it wasn’t a marriage proposal. It was a let’s-give-it-ago-by-officially-dating proposal. A proposal to finally see what might have been with my first love, Tim. The one whose heart I recklessly broke twenty-five years ago. If I screwed it up this time, there would be no coming back. What was my heart telling me? It was telling me to run far, far away and hide out in the woods with some cookie-baking elves. Tim’s Kia was parked in front of Aunt Ginny’s house. He was early.
I wiped my boots on the mat at the front door so long I shaved off a layer of the soles and finally had to go in.
Tim was standing on the other side of the door in his striped chef pants and a black T-shirt with a bouquet of lavender roses. He gave me a big grin, then saw the La Dolce Vita cup in my hands and his grin shrank half a size. “Hey, gorgeous. I wanted to surprise you.” He leaned down and gave me a quick kiss. “I didn’t realize you’d be with him this morning.” His eyes slid to the coffee cup again.
I took the roses in one hand and slipped my coffee cup down on the key table behind him with the other. “I’m just getting back from making the gluten-free muffins.” I started to shrug out of my coat when Aunt Ginny breezed into the foyer.
“Welcome home. I told Tim he didn’t have to wait in here. He was welcome to come into the kitchen with me, but he wanted to meet you at the door.” Aunt Ginny took the roses. “I’ll put these in water so you two can talk.” She started toward the kitchen, but not before searching my face for clues as to what I was going to say.
Tim smiled down at me. He spied something behind me and his eyes lit up. “Wow.” He walked over to a wooden bird hanging on the wall in the sitting room. “You still have that?”
Memories flew at me like dandelion seeds on the wind. “That was my ninth-grade shop project.”
“Okay.” Tim took it off its peg. “Don’t you mean this was my project?”
I laughed and tried to get it away from him. “Hey, I got that B fair and square.”
He held it out of my reach. “Because I carved it for you after class. You were trying to fake an illness to get out of it.”
“Who needs wood-carving skills in real life?”
“Dwarfs, clog makers, whittlers,” he teased me.
“Professional whittlers? Really?”
Tim turned it around. “Look, I secretly signed it.” He pointed to a tiny heart hidden in the bird’s feathers.
“I never noticed that before.”
“I knew even then that I wanted you to be my girlfriend.”
My throat closed up, and Tim put the carved bird back on its hook. He shot off across the foyer into the library. “Remember when we played that epic, four-hour game of Monopoly?”
“I remember you tried to get me to pay my rent on your Park Place hotel by taking my shirt off.”
Tim grinned. “Oh yeah. And that’s when your grandmother decided to do her crocheting in here with us.”
We both laughed, then gave birth to a moment of awkward silence.
Tim gestured to the fireplace. “You want me to light a fire?”
“Sure.” I sat on the couch and took a couple of deep breaths to calm my nerves. Figaro peeked around the corner to see what was going on. His ears pinned to his head at the sight of Tim. A hand appeared and nudged Figaro into the room. Subtle. I wondered if Aunt Ginny had bugged his collar.
Tim joined me on the couch and we watched the fire dance over the kindling until the logs roared to life. “I’m sorry if I put you on the spot yesterday.”
“I definitely didn’t see it coming.” Gigi didn’t see it either. She had flames shooting out of her eyes when Tim said he wasn’t interested in her that way.
Tim took my hand in his. “I know things didn’t work out when we were teenagers, but I never stopped loving you. I thought about you every day.”
“I’ve always loved you too . . .” I didn’t get to finish because we were interrupted when a gray ball thudded onto the couch. Figaro turned so his backside was in Tim’s face and gave me a long meow.
“Figaro!”
Tim gathered Figaro’s tail out of his mouth and looked around to catch my eye.
Fig was insistent. “Merrrroww.”
I scooped the gray pouf into my lap, but instead of settling down, he repositioned himself between Tim and me.
Tim struggled to get a cat hair out of his mouth. “What were you saying . . . before . . .”
“I’m sorry. I was just going to say that I–I’ve always loved you too . . . but . . .”
Figaro lifted his back leg to do some detail work in Tim’s direction.
Tim’s eyebrows shot up. “I see you went for the full neutering. Good choice.”
I grabbed Fig around the middle and pulled him to me. “I am so sorry. He’s not normally . . . actually, he’s always like this. I’m just sorry you have to be on the receiving end of it.” I placed Figaro on the floor at my feet. He narrowed his eyes and flicked his tail at me.
I pointed at him to behave.
He flopped over.
Tim shifted in his seat and wiped his palms back and forth over his legs. “You’ve always loved me, but . . . ?”
“Well . . . I’ve been gone a long time and . . .”
Figaro mistakenly assumed Tim was baiting him and pounced, rapid-fire batting Tim’s hands.
Tim pulled his hands away. “Ahh! Stop it!”
Figaro bolted around the back of the couch to regroup. This was not going well.
I put my hand on Tim’s arm. “It’s just that I don’t think I’m ready . . .”
Tim’s eyes lost their sparkle and he ran his hand through his hair and sighed. “I don’t want you to be pressured, Mack. It’s not like I was asking you to marry me or anything.”
“Oh no, of course I didn’t think that . . .”
He crossed his arms over his chest and gave a mirthless laugh. “Heck no. We’ve only been reacquainted for a few weeks really. Much too soon for any kind of long-term commitment.”
“Oh. I thought . . . When you told Gigi that you were only interested in me . . .”
Tim’s face blossomed pink up to his ears and he looked at the fire. “Oh, that? Well, what I meant was . . . you know. As a chef.”
“As a chef?”
Figaro was doing figure eights against Tim’s black pants. Every couple of swipes he would stop and inspect his work to see how much gray fur he’d left behind matching the narrow stripes.
Tim cleared his throat. “Yeah. Um, why don’t you come to work for me? As my full-time pastry chef.”
I felt my heart slide two inches lower in my ribs. Tim wasn’t asking me to be his girlfriend. I should have been relieved, and yet I wasn’t as elated as I’d expected. I felt the heat r
ise to my face. What is wrong with me? “You weren’t looking for a relationship?”
Tim grinned. “I am if you are.” He leaned in and put a hand on my leg. “I want to be with you.” He turned my chin up and kissed me. He searched my eyes for a moment, then dropped my chin. “But it’s not like I’m looking to get engaged. Let’s just keep things loose for now.”
There was something in the way his eyes shifted to the side that made me wonder if he was backpedaling. How is he going to pay me to be a full-time pastry chef? He’s barely in the black as it is. That was the whole reason we did that cockamamie Restaurant Week competition. “What exactly would you want me to do as your pastry chef?”
Tim thought for a minute. “Well . . . you and I would work very closely together to plan the menu. You’d need to come in very early to make the desserts and be finished before the line comes in to get lunch prepped.”
“Would you be there with me?”
“Ah . . . no. Not every day. I usually come in after prep and work from lunch to around ten. I don’t get off until around two a.m. in the summer.”
“So, I wouldn’t really see you.”
Tim took my hand in his. “That’s the biz, babe. That’s what we’d be doing if we had our own restaurant.”
That doesn’t sound like fun at all. “Well, I’d love to make your desserts, but I don’t think I can keep that schedule plus my commitment to La Dolce Vita.”
Tim dropped my hand. “Oh, you’re still planning on doing that?”
“Well, yeah. I’ve promised to make Gia’s baked goods first. Plus, I have the B&B to run. We only have the occasional weekend booking right now, but in a couple of months I think we’ll be full when the season officially starts.”
Tim nodded and chewed his bottom lip.
Figaro swatted at Tim’s shoelace. I tried to nudge him away, but he bit my foot.
Tim smiled wistfully. “We always planned to run our own place together, remember?”
“I didn’t have to take care of Aunt Ginny in that dream.”
“I’ll tell you what.” He perked up. “What if you make the desserts here at home? You have a certified kitchen. You could make a few things each week and bring them in when we run low. That way we could still work together, and if you get too busy to make a few muffins for Gia”—he practically choked on his name—“maybe then it would be time to let him find someone else and you and I can make it a permanent thing.”
“We can make what a permanent thing?”
Tim smiled. “Everything.” He gave me another kiss that lingered until we heard a throat clear from just outside the door.
I sat up straight and Tim stood up. Both of his shoelaces were untied, and Figaro had mysteriously disappeared.
Tim leaned down to tie his shoes. “What do you say? Want to come work for me, Mack?”
I let out an obvious sigh of relief like an open pressure cooker valve. I had no idea when I was going to find the time to make Tim’s desserts, Gia’s allergy-friendly baked goods, and run my bed-and-breakfast. I had made plans with Tim many years ago to run our own restaurant. Of course, that promise had come with a diamond engagement ring, a joint checking account, and fringe bedroom benefits. I’d blindly jumped into situations in the past, and some of them had changed the course of my whole life. I didn’t want to make that mistake again. I wasn’t ready to make any life-altering decisions, but Tim was offering me time to figure out my heart, and that was good enough.
“Deal.” I tucked myself into his arms and hugged him.
We walked to the front door, and Aunt Ginny tried to make herself look busy examining a picture of an old lady cutting a pear that had been hanging in the foyer for fifty years. “Oh, are you two all finished with your talk already?”
I cut my eyes at Aunt Ginny and gave her a look that I was on to her. She blinked and returned giant eyes of innocence.
Tim smiled at me. “For now.”
“Good.” She took a sip of her coffee and looked over the rim at me. “You guys are so young. You know I hate to see you get all jumbled up in drama over relationship stuff.”
Tim gave me a quick kiss. “I’ll call you later.” He opened the door and had to take a step back.
Huddled in the doorway were three fleecy-haired old biddies. Aunt Ginny’s lifelong besties, Mrs. Dodson, Mrs. Davis, and Mother Gibson. They were silent, but their bright eyes were all atwitter.
Mrs. Dodson double tapped her cane on the porch. “Ginny, he’s back!”
Aunt Ginny turned pale. Her eyes fluttered, and the coffee cup dropped from her hands and shattered.
Chapter Four
“Aunt Ginny, you’re shaking.” I rubbed her hands with mine to be sure she wasn’t going to pass out or have a stroke.
Figaro rushed to sniff out what had been in that coffee cup while the ladies tut-tutted and shook their heads in a show of support. Tim gave me a subtle head nod and slipped out while I led Aunt Ginny to a tufted chair in the sitting room to compose herself.
Aunt Ginny fiddled with the locket around her neck and stared off into her memories. “I can’t believe it. After all this time.”
I got the broom and dustpan out of the hall closet. “After all this time what?”
Mrs. Davis took a hankie out of her purse and passed it to Aunt Ginny. “Word on the street is, he’s here to stay.”
I picked through the larger pieces of pottery and tossed them into the wastebasket. “Who’s here to stay?”
Aunt Ginny waved her hand like she was swatting a mosquito. “Pshh. We’ll see. He’s probably having a contract dispute.”
I swept the fragments into the dustpan. “Contract dispute about what?”
Mother Gibson patted Aunt Ginny on the shoulder. “You know how he is. He always thought he was a hotshot.”
I emptied the dustpan into the wastebasket. “Who’s a hotshot?”
Aunt Ginny shook her head. “Yeah, but he really is now. Four Tonys.”
I shot to my feet. “Ladies! Who are we talking about?”
Four sets of sharp eyes snapped to me. Mrs. Dodson gave me a love-suffers-long kind of look. “Ginny’s first boyfriend, Royce Hansen.”
Aunt Ginny woke from her haze with a roll of her eyes. “That’s not true. My first boyfriend was Duffy Collins and he was an idiot. With Royce it was love at first sight.”
I recalled Aunt Ginny’s words just before Tim left. “So, all this drama is over a man?” I gave Aunt Ginny a sarcastic look and she had the decency to blush. “I’ll go make us some coffee.”
Aunt Ginny called weakly after me, “Thank you, honey.”
“And bring some cookies!” Mrs. Davis hollered. “You can’t gripe about an ex-boyfriend properly without cookies.”
I went to the kitchen to boil water for the commiseration session. So, Aunt Ginny had a high school boyfriend she hasn’t seen in years. And, apparently, he’s a Broadway actor. Unless four Tonys means something else to her generation. I’d better find that out before I say anything. I placed a bunch of Easy Peanut Butter cookies on a tray with all the necessary accouterment and willed the water to boil faster. Gossip was happening in the next room and I didn’t want to miss it. I had grown up in this house and this was the first I’d ever heard about a long-lost first love. I poured the almost-boiling water over the freshly ground coffee, set the timer for four minutes, and took it with me as I crept back to the front parlor to join the circle.
Mrs. Davis, the giggliest of the biddies, with pink hair, was asking Aunt Ginny if she’d kept up with Royce’s career.
Aunt Ginny played with the zipper on her track suit jacket. “I have a couple of newspaper articles. Nothing much.”
The ebony-skinned Mother Gibson was usually the voice of reason. “I thought you subscribed to Variety so you could keep track of his shows.”
Aunt Ginny pinked around the neck. “Is it a crime to enjoy the theater?”
Mrs. Dodson, the most proper and dignified of the crew, gave Aunt Ginny a penetrati
ng gaze down her nose. “I thought you had an entire scrapbook devoted to his publicity shots.”
Aunt Ginny shifted in her chair. “Well, I have to keep them somewhere, don’t I?!”
I realized something just then. “Is that why you get the Broadway Buzz newsletter?”
Aunt Ginny pursed her lips and shot a couple of daggers my way. The timer went off and she jumped a mile.
I gave her a sheepish grin. “Coffee’s ready.”
Aunt Ginny took a cup from me. “I don’t know why I’m so nervous. He probably won’t even remember me.”
Mother Gibson and Mrs. Davis rolled their eyes at each other.
I passed around the plate of cookies and took a seat on the piano bench. “How did you meet Royce?”
Mrs. Davis put two cookies on a napkin on her lap. “They met in high school.”
“They were sweethearts right from the start. Inseparable.” Mother Gibson took three cookies, then asked for Mrs. Davis to pass the Splenda. “Don’t want my blood sugar to be too high.”
“We were not inseparable,” Aunt Ginny defended.
“Oh, you were too. We all saw you,” Mrs. Davis retorted. “Pass me the cream.”
Aunt Ginny crossed her arms in front of her and tried to disappear into the chair.
Mrs. Dodson stirred her coffee and tapped her spoon three times on the side of her cup. “At least until Moira got her claws into him.”
“Ooh, who’s Moira?”
Aunt Ginny took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Moira Finklebaum.” The words ground out like gravel. “Although she goes by Blanche Carrigan now.”
All three ladies said, “Pshh,” shook their heads, and took a sip of their coffees.
Aunt Ginny shrugged her shoulders. “If you must know, Royce and I were going steady, and I thought we were going to get married when we graduated. He had pinned me at the Christmas dance our senior year.”
Oh God, does that mean what it sounds like?
“Get that look off your face. It means I wore his high school fraternity pin. You kids today have promise rings.”
“I don’t think we do.”
Mrs. Davis leaned toward me. “Royce was in every play that Cape May High did in our four years. H.M.S Pinafore, Porgy and Bess, what were the others?”
