Love, Laughter, and Happily Ever Afters Collection (Eight Fun, Romantic Novels by Eight Bestselling Authors)

by Violet Duke

  “Saw your signs for the Topping Taste Test,” the taller of the two said. “Are you in need of any entertainment?”

  “You two have some free time? On the Fourth of July? Man, this must be my lucky day.”

  “We’ve got a gig tonight,” the other guy said. “But we did all our daytime gigs over the weekend. It’s great when the Fourth falls on a Monday.”

  “Hey, if you’re willing to be there, I’m more than willing to accept the offer,” he said. “You two were probably the biggest hit Tutti-Frutti has had in forty years. We’d be honored for you to be part of the event.”

  “Are the terms the same?” the tall juggler asked with a grin.

  Rob laughed. “Oh, you’ll get all the free pastries, candy or ice cream you can eat, all right, with whatever toppings tickle your fancy. But I’ll also throw in a monetary bonus on the side this time, too, for every hour you’re out there. You both deserve it.”

  And damned if those jugglers didn’t help him figure out how to pack up that freezer in under five minutes.

  When they arrived at Wilmington Bay’s Town Park, Jacques and Gretchen had already managed to set up the majority of the decorations. The picnic tables were covered with patriotic-themed tablecloths, there were red, white and blue carnation centerpieces (courtesy of their florist pal, who was a regular customer) and the voting sheets for “Best Topping” were stacked neatly next to a tin of miniature pencils and a giant ballot box.

  “Looking good, you guys,” he told his coworkers, parking the portable freezer next to the head table. He handed the container filled with ice-cream-shaped beanbags to the jugglers, who immediately flipped on their music and began practicing. “Where are Nick and Elizabeth?”

  “Nick’s picking up the plastic bowls and spoons,” Gretchen explained. “And Elizabeth wanted to bring in some helium balloons for the kids.”

  He smiled. That sounded like her.

  The music and the flying beanies were already drawing a crowd, despite the fact that the Topping Taste Test wasn’t set to begin for a half hour. Rob’s palms itched with excitement. This was going to be a wild day.

  Thirty minutes later, he amended this thought: It was going to be a very wild and wacky and probably totally out-of-control day. And Elizabeth wasn’t pleased.

  “I still don’t understand what you’re trying to prove by doing this,” she hissed at him as citizens of Wilmington Bay reveled in the loud rhythmic music and prepared to show and tell their favorite toppings.

  He gently stroked her smooth shoulder, trying for the reassurance pat. “This’ll bring in business.” He pulled out a cordless microphone to do the announcing and watched as her complexion turned almost as green as her eyes.

  “T-Tutti-F-Frutti was already a s-s-successful shop. N-Not that I don’t think it’s great th-that you’re taking such an interest in im-improving it but, c’mon, Rob. C-Couldn’t you have aimed f-for something l-lower k-key?”

  Her stuttering was back full force with him after weeks of nearly perfect speech. He tried to catch her eye, but she was staring at the mike as if it might jump out of his hand and bite her. He hid it behind his back and made her continue.

  “T-This is more like spring b-break in Fort Lauderdale than Fourth of July in W-W-Wisconsin.”

  He glanced around. Sure enough, there were women in bikini tops wiggling every part of their bodies to the hip-hop beat, men flinging Frisbees back and forth, open coolers, kids and dogs running rampant…and Tara Welles snaking toward them through the crowd, dressed in a skimpy red top and cutoff jeans. Hell, maybe Elizabeth had a point after all. This may not have been the best idea.

  “I’ve g-got to g-go,” Elizabeth told him, even though she hadn’t seen Tara yet. “I n-need to finish s-setting up.” She pointed toward his arms, which camouflaged the mike. “K-Keep that th-thing away from m-me please.”

  “Anything you say, babe.” And, for Tara’s viewing benefit, he kissed Elizabeth, intense and slow, before letting her run off. Tara was on him in a heartbeat.

  “You know, Rob,” she said, flicking her blond hair away from her face and trying to project a coy look, “I’ve got to give you credit. I didn’t think you’d be able to handle being with Lizzy Daniels for this long.”

  “Why’s that? You don’t think I’m up to the intellectual challenge?”

  Tara looked confused. “Well, Lizzy is smart, I suppose. She’s always had that, but—”

  “But what?” He didn’t need to have another vote of no confidence in his ability to handle Elizabeth’s brilliant mind. He knew he wasn’t at her level. Constant reminders hurt.

  “I guess I’m just surprised you’d be so blinded by someone like her. The two of us talked at Hauser’s that one night.”

  “You did?”

  Tara gave a bored sigh. “Well, yeah. Lizzy knows she’s not really your type. You two just don’t seem quite right. Together, I mean. Separately, of course, you’re fine. Well, you are. She’s in a different sphere altogether.”

  Light years ahead of him, Tara meant. A dumb jock like him couldn’t hold the interest of a woman like Elizabeth Daniels. Not for long.

  “Look, I’ve got to do some work right now,” he told her.

  She took three quick steps forward and put her palm on his forearm. “Do you need any help, Rob?”

  “Uh, no, thanks.”

  He looked up and caught Lance Burk glowering at them from halfway across the park.

  “Maybe I’ll see you later then?” she said.

  Later. Much, much later. “Yep. Enjoy the Topping Taste Test.”

  He sprinted away from her and up to his place at the head table. He checked his watch—time to start—and clicked on the microphone.

  “Hello, Everyone! Welcome to Wilmington Bay’s First Annual Topping Taste Test.”

  Everyone cheered like maniacs and one guy tossed his Frisbee high into the air as a form of enthusiastic salute. Someone else’s golden retriever ran after it, barking happily while everybody stopped to watch.

  Rob laughed. Community stuff like this was what made Wisconsin life so endearing. Sometimes the simplest things were what made him smile the most.

  Tony was in the crowd, Maria-Louisa and the kids in tow. His brother caught his eye and grinned. It was like him saying, “Welcome Home, big brother.”

  His Mama was there, too. She looked so proud of him. For all his Windy City accomplishments, this was the one thing—besides his wedding—that he knew she’d dreamed of seeing: Him in the Wilmington Bay spotlight again…which, he had to admit, felt pretty good right now. But he also knew how easily it could become suffocating. How quickly he could be categorized and dismissed. He’d worked for a decade to shed that “dumb jock” label, but look how fast it came back?

  He held up the mike and waved at the crowd. Finally, they became silent.

  “Okay, folks, this is what’s going to happen,” he told them. “Pretty soon we’re going to call up all the people who brought out their favorite toppings for the Taste Test. Everyone who wants to will taste them on free scoops of Tutti-Frutti ice cream, we’ll vote on them and we’ll award the winner with a prize. Now, let’s hear a shout out from everybody who brought in a topping for your friends and neighbors to try.”

  A roar went up around him. Whoa. He was going to have to divide this clan into smaller groups. No way could all of them come up at once.

  Elizabeth whispered frantically in his ear about separating the crowd alphabetically, with each of them—Gretchen, Nick, Jacques and herself—taking a table with about a fourth of the alphabet and leaving Rob to be emcee.

&
nbsp; “We can have semi-finalist voting at each table, with the four winners competing for the grand prize at the end,” she said.

  Bright lady.

  So that was how they announced it and, soon, the chaos was quartered.

  No doubt about it, though—it was still chaos.

  *

  ELIZABETH SERVED UP gobs of ice cream and watched as the citizens with last names beginning with the letters A through F devoured the toppings and debated the taste of each. At her table, it was a race to the death between candied pineapple bits and crushed chocolate-covered cherries. Gretchen waved at her holding up a box of Cracker Jacks, which apparently had taken the lead at her G through M table.

  Nick had his hands full with the N through S bunch, a couple of whom were in an all-out war over the merits of cashews versus pecans. And Jacques had the T through Z clan, who were rather subdued by comparison. Then again, maybe that was because there were fewer of them.

  She watched as Rob deftly handled most of the social chitchat as well as wielded that dreaded microphone. He was so at ease speaking in public—it was amazing. So unlike her. Not that this was much of a great revelation, considering their longstanding history. She’d known how different the two of them were ever since she was five.

  Lance Burk sauntered up to her table and plopped a plastic bag of chocolate-covered somethings on one corner.

  “If you guys are wild about those chocolate cherries, you’ve gotta give these here a try,” he told the group. “Hand me a bowl of that ice cream, Lizzy.”

  No courtesies from Lance. No please or, when she gave him a bowl, no thank you. But what did she expect? This was the same guy who’d stopped speaking to his own father because he didn’t get the specific car he’d wanted for graduation. And he’d never been nice to her in his life.

  “Mmm. Crunchy,” one avid taster declared before moving on to the sliced star fruit.

  “What are these?” asked another, gingerly holding up one of the chocolate blobs between her fingers.

  “Try ‘em, you’ll like ‘em,” Lance said.

  Not the kind of forthcoming response Elizabeth wanted to hear. She went over and picked up Lance’s bag to get a closer look.

  “Oh, here. Let me feed you one.” Lance snatched the bag out of her hand and waved a chocolate something in front of her mouth. His spidery fingers rolling the “treat” back and forth.

  “N-No th-thanks,” she said, taking a step back.

  He laughed. “What a timid little wallflower you are, Lizzy Daniels. Gabinarri is even more of a fool than I thought.”

  Rob Gabinarri, she had learned, was far from being a fool, so Lance was, once again, pointing out how incompatible she and Rob were. Everyone, even a jerk like Lance, knew she wasn’t up to Rob’s usual girlfriend standard.

  But now wasn’t the time to get thrown off course by her own insecurities. Everyone at her table wanted to try the topping Lance brought in, but she had a bad feeling about it. When he put the bag on the table again, she snitched a sample.

  She turned it over in her palm and broke it in half. As she studied the inside, the pit of her stomach dropped to her toes. Although well concealed in considerable chocolate, Lance’s topping bag was entirely filled with insects.

  She pulled the bag off the table.

  “Hey, Frizzy Lizzy! What d’ya think you’re doing?” Lance marched over to her and tried to yank it back, but she resisted.

  “Don’t eat these,” she told her crowd. “They’re c-c-crickets.”

  A few people gasped, a couple of them coughed, one gagged and went behind a tree, but most started yelping and flinging the chocolate-covered crickets off their ice cream and onto the grass. Several just tossed away their entire bowls and began complaining. The other groups stopped eating to watch her table’s total upheaval.

  Lance laughed.

  Rob came striding over. “What’s the problem here?”

  An enraged lady in fuchsia was quick to fill him in, agitated in equal parts by the fact that she had to throw away perfectly good ice cream and that she was a vegetarian who’d now eaten insect flesh.

  “Why did you go and do that, Burk?” Rob asked him. “This is a family-friendly event.”

  Lance waved a rainbow-colored flier at him. “It says right here—“ He pointed. “‘Bring your favorite topping to share.’ That’s just what I did.”

  “Get out of here,” Rob said in a low, dangerous voice.

  Lance raised his light eyebrows. “You can’t kick me out of a public park. Besides, I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t force anyone to try my favorite topping. It’s not my fault if they didn’t like it.” He laughed again, daring Rob with his insolence to make the next move.

  “Leave now, or I’ll call the authorities,” Rob said.

  Lance shook his head and crossed his arms as if rooting himself to the spot. “You’re a freakin’ idiot, Gabinarri. This whole event is just a stupid stunt you’re using to try to distract people from noticing what a failure you are. You always played that same game on the field, too, so the fans wouldn’t notice your poor form when you threw a long pass or how you rarely scored any points in the final quarter.” His eyes narrowed. “You haven’t changed a bit. Still more show than substance. Still dumb as a rock.”

  To Elizabeth’s horror, Rob didn’t answer him back right away or put that Lance bastard in his place. He just stared at him with the oddest expression. A yard away, Nick’s fists were clenched, however, and despite not being much of a fighter, she knew her Greek buddy wouldn’t hesitate to throw a left hook or two if it came to blows.

  It looked like Rob was thinking. Planning. But something had to be done. And fast.

  Before she could talk herself out of it, she stepped up beside Rob and pried the microphone from his fingers. Most of the Wilmington Bay residents were eavesdropping with unabashed interest, so she had a ready audience. She flicked on the mike, gulped some air and said a prayer to both Madonnas for wisdom in using this thing.

  “H-Hi everyone,” she said, the loudness of her amplified voice making her want to cower under the red-white-and-blue-covered table, but she pressed on. “I-If you haven’t cast your vote y-yet for the semi-finalist round, pl-please do so now. But, before we m-move onto the f-finals, I just wanted to say, on behalf of all of us at Tutti-Frutti, how much w-we appreciate such a fine group of people coming out for our special event t-today.”

  She paused to take a few long breaths and was surprised when people started clapping. She glanced around at the cheering crowd before noticing Lance’s fallen expression. She’d deprived him of his spotlight. Well, good.

  She felt a small smile rise on her lips. She could do this. Yes, she really could. If she just pretended she was talking to Rob alone, maybe she could trick herself out of this fear for a minute. She fixed her eyes on him.

  “I also w-want to add that, in Tutti-Frutti’s long history, we’ve never had the p-privilege of having someone like Rob Gabinarri on staff. He’s so clever. He’s always thinking of ways to bring fun and entertainment to our little sweets shop. F-For one thing, he brought us these amazing jugglers.” She pointed toward the two men, who were quick to do a couple of terrific, showy stunts involving back flips and flying beanbags. The crowd went wild. Rob turned his attention away from Lance and stared at her.

  “And, of course, y-you all know that today’s Topping Taste Test was Rob’s idea, too.” She paused for more enthusiastic cheering. “So, thanks, Rob,” she said to him, her voice echoing across the park.

  “THANKS, ROB!” the crowd parroted back.

  Rob waved his arm in response, but he didn’t say a single word. He just kept looking between the gathered taste-tes
ters and her, seemingly surprised and very, very uncharacteristically silent.

  She couldn’t help it. She laughed. She suddenly thought of about five thousand things she wanted to say to the good people of Wilmington Bay, starting with how remarkable it was to finally see Rob Gabinarri speechless.

  But she didn’t. He shot her a questioning look, and she responded by sending him a love letter with her eyes. After a very long moment, he rewarded her with a blazing smile.

  Maybe it was crazy but, at least for today, she didn’t care that their relationship wouldn’t last the summer. For the first time in over twenty years, she understood something about the guy she’d once idolized: Rob also needed someone to believe in him. And he needed it just as desperately as she did.

  Lance Burk stalked off, dragging a whining Tara away, while the rest of them returned to their tasting and voting.

  “I—um—” Rob tried to say.

  “We’ll talk later,” she promised him. He nodded slowly and returned to tallying the ballots, the serious expression never quite leaving his face, though.

  Jacques slipped over to her. “Nice speech, chéri.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Tell me,” he said in her ear, “is he worth it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Is he worth your heart of love, ma petite brioche? Because that’s what’s happening to you, isn’t it? You’re beginning to fall in love with that boy all over again?”

  She looked into her dear friend’s kind eyes and bit her lower lip. “Oh, Jacques. That’s the worst part. I never stopped.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  ROB KNEW ELIZABETH was falling in love with him. She’d braved the microphone and public speaking for him, and if that wasn’t a grand gesture of love for someone like her… Well, this had to stop.

  Although he’d only been biding his time before punching out that idiot Burk, he owed her for standing up for him. For putting herself out there in his defense. And the best way he knew to reward her was to steer her clear of him.