by JoAnn Ross
“What the hell are you doing?”
“What does it look like? I’m shopping.”
“For what? A chemistry experiment?”
“As it happens, I’m cooking dinner for Mac and Emma tonight.”
“Not with that, you’re not.” Maddy snatched the box from Annie’s hand and put it back on the shelf.
“I realize you’re a famous gourmet Culinary Institute of America–trained chef,” Annie said, taking the box down again and putting it into her cart. “But Emma is six years old. She doesn’t like oysters with bacon, or smoked salmon pizza, or truffle oil—”
“Truffle oil’s become dreadfully overdone,” Maddy countered. A bit huffily, Annie thought. “I only use it on the very rare occasion.”
“Fine. My point, and I do have one, is that six-year-old girls like macaroni and cheese.”
“Everyone likes mac and cheese. Especially if it’s done right. Which you’re going to do.” She took the box from the cart and put it back on the shelf again.
Then she took her cell phone out of her bag and dialed a number. “We’ve got a 911 situation,” she said. “Annie’s cooking for Mac and Emma. . . . Yeah. That’s pretty much what I thought.”
“I’m not that bad,” Annie complained. “I’m merely a novice home chef. Not a professional.”
“You’re a home defroster and microwaver,” Maddy corrected, then turned her attention back to her conversation. “You have to save her, and that poor child, by e-mailing me the ingredients for your chocolate lava cake. Then e-mail the instructions to Annie. . . . Great. Thanks.” She ended the call.
“While she’s getting your dessert ingredients to me, let’s start shopping.”
For the next ten minutes she bossed Annie around the store like a drill sergeant ordering an enlistee through boot camp. Though, having tasted Maddy’s lobster mac and cheese, Annie wasn’t exactly complaining.
“This is Gruyère,” she said, picking up a block of cheese. “It’s from Switzerland. It’s sweet but slightly salty, and really nicely creamy and nutty when it’s young. As this is. It becomes earthy and more complex when it ages, but for Emma’s palate, this will be perfect.
“It’s also one of the best melting cheeses. I use it in the restaurant’s mac and cheese, and to top my French onion soup and in what was called croque-monsieur on the menu when I was cooking in New York City, but is basically a grilled ham and cheese sandwich.
“And you need some extra-sharp Cheddar to balance it out.”
By the time Sedona had e-mailed the ingredients for what Maddy assured her was a cake even a six-year-old could make—which wasn’t the most complimentary thing she could have said, Annie thought—she’d filled her cart with ingredients, including a variety of spices that Maddy assured her Emma wouldn’t resist.
“On your way home, stop at Farraday’s. They just got some fresh lobster flown in from Maine. They also had some good slipper lobster. Just tell them what you’re doing and they’ll sell you what you need.”
“I am not murdering lobster. Especially for a six-year-old girl who won’t even appreciate it.”
Maddy rolled her eyes. “The lobster’s for the adult version. And they’ll take care of that for you and sell you the meat out of the shell.”
“I’m making two dishes?”
“Let me throw that question back at you. Is Midnight Mac worth a little extra work?”
Annie sighed. “You win.”
“Believe me,” Maddy said. “While man may think he lives by sex alone, he also has to eat. And if it isn’t true about the way to a man’s heart being through his stomach, then why did you cheat and ask me to cook the fried chicken and potato salad for your basket?”
“I hate it when you’re right,” Annie grumbled. She’d admittedly changed the menu from the crab sliders and slaw she’d intended to take out from the Crab Shack when she discovered that Mac was bidding on her basket.
“If you two are as serious as you looked last night, you really need to take one of my basic beginning cooking classes,” Maddy said. “If for no other reason than it’s kind of hard on a romance when you give the guy food poisoning.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Annie muttered.
“Don’t worry. You’ll be great,” Maddy assured her as she pushed the cart toward the bakery aisle, leaving Annie to follow.
• • •
The dinner, which turned out to be as manageable as both Sedona and Maddy had promised, was a hit. Emma, whose cast was almost entirely covered with princess stickers, had declared Maddy’s elevated mac and cheese the “bestest” she’d ever had.
Even Pirate had behaved. Although he’d meowed noisily while doing figure eights between Annie’s legs as she cut up the lobster for the adult version of the dinner, he’d spent most of the time curled up in Emma’s lap, purring like a small motor.
“Maybe we should get a cat, too, Daddy,” she suggested as Mac helped Annie clear the table—something Owen had always insisted Annie leave for the housekeeper or maid. “When we get a dog.”
“Let’s just start with the dog,” he replied. “Besides, a cat might decide to eat your goldfish.”
“Oh. I hadn’t thought of that.” She went back to petting Pirate.
“You’ve got me looking forward to that basket tomorrow even more,” he said as he put the plates into the dishwasher while Annie cleaned off the counter.
How was it that the simple act of cleaning up after dinner affected her nearly as much as last night’s prom date? Despite the back-and-forth between the houses, she was beginning to think of them as more of a couple than she and Owen had ever been.
“I have a confession to make.” She may have pulled off the mac and cheese and the lava cake, but no way was she not going to give credit where credit was due. Especially for something she would never, no matter how many lessons, be able to duplicate. “Maddy’s making the chicken.”
He shrugged and placed the soap packet in the dishwasher. “You do realize that I’m not buying that basket for the food,” he said. “From the beginning it’s been all about you. You could have put sliders from the Crab Shack in there and I would’ve been just as happy.”
She laughed at that. “That’s exactly what I was going to do.”
He cupped his hand at the back of her neck and leaned down and kissed her. “Great minds.”
She was kissing him back when Emma, who’d gone upstairs to the guest bedroom to retrieve some of the cat toys, returned to the kitchen.
“Is this your scrapbook?” she asked Annie, who, unnerved at looking up to see that her deepest secret had been discovered, dropped a glass, which shattered on the floor.
54
She’d gone as pale as the gardenias he had fastened on her wrist last night as she insisted on sweeping up the broken glass by herself. Annie was, he’d discovered, a woman with secrets.
When she’d called in with a fake name at the very beginning, he’d realized right away that she was holding something back, but not wanting to push her, he’d waited, hoping she would eventually care enough to share it with him. Which she had done this morning, when she’d told him about her inability to have children. That made him sad for her, but it didn’t change the way he felt about her.
Except to love her even more for what she’d been through. And to admire the strong, confident woman she’d become.
“Emma,” he said, using the dad voice he didn’t pull out very often and still felt more as if he were imitating his own father whenever he did, “where did you find that?”
“Pirate chased a ball into Annie’s bedroom,” she said. “It was on the table.”
Glancing over at this woman he’d come to love, Mac saw his daughter’s lie in Annie’s gray eyes.
“Emma . . . ,” he said softly but firmly. “You want to try that again?”
“Daddy,” she said on something perilously close to a whine. Her eyes filled with tears. But realizing that this was another of those damn
grown-up situations, he held firm.
He went over to her, took the album from her hands, and placed it on the cleared kitchen table. “The truth this time.” He looked up at Annie, who gave the faintest shake of her head. “And I promise, Annie’s not going to be mad at you.”
“I was just looking for more cat toys,” she said, her voice quivering on the edge of tears. Mac suspected that wasn’t the whole truth and nothing but the truth, but he decided it was close enough. For now.
“And?”
“And I looked in the bottom drawer of her dresser.”
The obvious place anyone would keep cat toys. Not.
“It’s okay.” Annie stepped in to help him out. “And yes, it’s an album I received when I was a little older than you.”
She sat down at the table, and patted her lap, inviting Emma to sit on it. Which, with a little sniffle that Mac found an overdramatic bid for sympathy, his daughter did.
“I was a foster child,” Annie said. “Do you know what that is?”
“Angel and Johnny were foster children,” she said with a nod. “They had to move around a lot. Even more than when you’re a military family.”
“That’s true. And they were lucky. They found their forever-after homes with Dr. Tiernan and her husband.”
Watching her carefully, Mac noticed that her hands were less than steady as she opened the album. “This is my third-grade school picture.”
Her wild curls had been somewhat tamed into two ponytails. Although he could see that tension he’d learned to recognize in her eyes, she was smiling, revealing a lost tooth.
“This was a very nice family.” Her voice clogged a little. With tears? She turned a page. “This is a trip we took here one summer. To Shelter Bay.”
She was wearing a brightly flowered swimsuit with a little ruffled skirt, her hair a wild mass of black curls around her head as she stood on the beach with another boy and girl. The boy looked a year or two older and the girl was probably Emma’s age. Except for the fact that they were blond and she was not, there’d been no way, looking at the photo, to tell that she hadn’t been a full birth member of the family.
“And this was Disneyland. I loved It’s a Small World.” She was sitting in a white boat at the front of the line, waiting to go through the ride, revealing a timeline gap from the coast trip, since her face was now beaming with a joy so bright it made Mac’s heart ache, knowing how this particular story had ended up.
“I love it, too,” Emma said, clapping her hands. “I love all those dancing and singing dolls.” Apparently forgetting she’d been on the verge of being in trouble for snooping in Annie’s dresser drawers, Emma began singing the song Mac feared would become an earworm for the rest of the night.
“I went through it three times,” Annie said, running her finger over the grinning little girl she’d once been. “And I’m still not sure I saw them all.”
“We can go back. Can’t we, Daddy?” Emma asked, looking up at Mac. “When my wrist gets all healed up, you and Annie and I can go to Disneyland and Annie can see any of the dolls she missed.”
“Good idea,” he agreed, wanting to take Annie in his arms and hold her tight, easing the pain he realized this must be causing her. Instead, he stayed leaning against the counter, his legs crossed at the ankles, looking far more casual than he felt.
Annie blinked. Twice. As if fighting back tears. Then taking a deep breath, she turned yet another page in the story that was her interrupted life.
“And this was at Christmas.”
“Oh, you look so pretty! I love your dress!” Emma sighed at the red velvet dress with the white satin collar and cuffs. Annie was, as she’d been in the other photos, included with the children. The only difference was that this time a man and a woman were in the picture as well, suggesting it had been a Christmas card photo.
What little girl, he thought, at eight years old, wouldn’t have believed that she’d found a home?
“Did you make this scrapbook all by yourself?” Emma asked, running her hands over the gilt paper.
“No. I’d never had one before. But my foster mother was a scrapbooker, and she made this for me to take with me when I moved to my next home.”
“She didn’t keep you?” Emma’s eyes widened with stunned disbelief. A disbelief Mac feared Annie had felt as well when the social worker had showed up, yet again, at the house she’d believed she had settled into.
“That wasn’t her job,” Annie said calmly. Watching her carefully, knowing her as he did, Mac saw a thin piece of glass about to shatter. “She told me that her job was to take care of children for a short time. That way she could have more than if she kept them forever.”
“I think it’s probably time to get you home so you can get ready for bed, pumpkin,” he told Emma.
Who, big surprise, ignored him.
“My mommy didn’t keep me, either,” she said with an amazing amount of empathy for a six-year-old. Mac couldn’t figure out whether to be proud of her or to start crying like a girl himself.
“But I have Daddy. And Grandpa. And Poppy.”
Before anyone could stop her, she turned the page, and what Mac saw tore at something elemental inside him. After leaving what she’d obviously believed would become her real family, Annie had continued the album.
“Emma,” he said. More firmly this time. “We need to go so you can get up early tomorrow for the parade.”
“No.” Annie shook her head again. “It’s okay.”
And so, Emma, engrossed in the process of the work, kept turning the pages, making comments on the papers Annie had used and the coloring she’d done. Even Mac, who knew nothing about crafts, could tell, from the increasing skill in the work, that the pages had been created over a period of years.
All the picture-perfect families depicted on the carefully laid-out pages were fictional ones, cut from magazines.
“So,” Annie said as Emma finally, after what seemed like hours, reached the last page, “that’s how I ended up owning a scrapbook store. So I could help other people keep their special memories. And the story of their lives.”
And their hopes and, in Annie’s case, unfulfilled dreams.
“I’m glad you did. Because now I’ll never forget all the fun adventures I had the day I broke my wrist.”
Emma looked up at Mac. “You need to take a picture,” she said. “Of the night Annie made me macaroni and cheese and I played with Pirate and we looked at her scrapbook.”
Even as he did as Emma asked, Mac knew he wouldn’t need a scrapbook to remember tonight. Because the story of Annie’s life would forever be burned into his mind.
And his heart.
55
Over the years, Annie had suffered from stress headaches. Although she’d done her best to hide it, one had struck the moment Emma came downstairs with that photo album she hadn’t looked at in years. Yet had never been able to throw away.
Because, she thought, as she sat in the dark, waiting for Mac to return from taking Emma home and putting her to bed, it had represented everything she’d ever wanted in the world.
She didn’t want to spend years in college and become a veterinarian, like Charity. Nor did she want to be a celebrity chef, like Maddy. Or even the sexiest baker on the planet, like Sedona. She didn’t want to arrest bad guys and send them up the river for life plus ten, like Kara could undoubtedly do without a blink of an eye, then go home and cook dinner for her family.
What Annie wanted, what she’d always wanted, was a family.
Seemingly everyone had them.
So why did it seem such an impossible dream for her?
As maniacs pounded away with jackhammers at her forehead, she went upstairs to the bathroom, where she turned the shower dial to hot, waiting for the water to warm in the energy-saving water heater Lucas had installed during the remodel of the house.
Although it took a little while for the water to warm up, the advantage was that, unlike an old-fashioned tank water hea
ter, in this one the hot water never ran out. From the intensity of the headache, she feared she would need a lot tonight.
Because Annie hated taking pain medication, Kara’s mother, a neurologist who was currently traveling the world with her husband for a world health organization, had suggested hammering the spot where the headache had centered with hot water for twenty to thirty minutes.
Annie had no idea why or how it worked, but it usually did.
Until tonight.
She was about to give up when there was a knock on the bathroom door.
“You decent?” Mac’s voice called out.
“I’m in the shower. And how did you get in here?”
“You didn’t lock the door. You’re going to have to be more careful,” he said as he entered the steamy bathroom. “Because Emma must have ruined Pirate for guard duty. The minute I walked in, he rolled over onto his back and demanded that I rub his stomach.”
He casually kicked off his shoes, unfastened the metal button on his jeans, and lowered the zipper. “I think he’s got identification issues, because that seems like a dog thing to do. . . .
“And have I ever told you how gorgeous you are?”
“Yes. And I hate to fall back on clichés, but I have a headache.”
“So why are you waiting for me in the shower?”
As he pulled off his shirt, revealing the mouthwatering six-pack that could have won him the cover on that Hunks of Shelter Bay calendar the mayor kept talking about creating for promotional purposes, Annie explained the short version of the headache shower cure.
“I’m not going to knock anything that gets you naked and wet,” he said, pulling back the steamed-up shower door. “But in case I haven’t mentioned it, I’m really good at relieving stress.”
He entered the cubicle, cupped her breast, and gave her one of those slow, deep kisses as the water washed over both of them.
