Sweet Love

by Lauren Accardo

  “Hey,” she said, sidling up next to him.

  Something crackled between them, sparking like drops of water on a hot griddle. He’d been her best friend for as long as she could remember, and yet the air thickened between them lately in ways it never had before.

  Well. At least before they’d almost kissed.

  No. They hadn’t almost kissed. She’d been sun-drunk and happy after their day at the lake, and he’d offered to walk her home, and for the first time in their friendship she’d wondered, What if? She’d always pitied other women for falling so shamelessly at his feet, and then when he turned all that deep, soulful attention on her, she’d melted like caramel.

  “Get out of my way.” His voice teased as he reached around her to grab a coffee filter. The soft skin of his forearm brushed her elbow, and she inhaled sharply. Was she imagining things? Or did he go out of his way to touch her? She couldn’t remember what life had been like with him before that day at the lake.

  “Do you even know how to do that?” she asked. “Mr. Nespresso.”

  He raised a single eyebrow as he fit the filter into the machine and filled it with grounds. “You forget I worked that summer at McDonagh’s Bakery.”

  Laughter shot past her lips. “That’s right. The summer they had to shut down over an E. coli scare?”

  “That was totally unrelated.”

  She bit her lip as he flipped the Brew switch on the machine and wiped his hands on a dishrag.

  “Thank you for helping me,” she said. “You don’t have to hang around. I think the worst of the lunch rush is over.”

  “What are you talking about?” His beautiful face twisted. “I’m having a blast, and I’ve got nowhere else to be today. I’ll stick around. LaMotta called out again, didn’t he?”

  Her throat dried up. She tried—unsuccessfully—to stop seeing everything he did through the lens of the almost-kiss. Did he stay because he wanted to be around her? Or was it simpler than that? Nicole was always telling her that men rarely had some secret hidden agenda. Most meant what they said. And if that were true, Jared had nowhere else to be today and he actually enjoyed serving coffee to the grateful people of Pine Ridge.

  The lunch rush tapered off just as the early-dinner crowd amped up, and Jared remained. He wiped down tables, cleared plates, filled coffee mugs, and enhanced the mood in the diner threefold. Customers tipped more, complained less, and by the time Mila’s shift ended, she barely even noticed the dull ache in her heels and shins. She liked having him around. His presence made even the most grueling aspects of the job somehow manageable.

  Edith O’Hare’s daughter arrived to relieve Mila, and Mila grabbed her purse and coat from under the counter. Recipe testing awaited her, but the thought of imagining an inventive, delicious pie for the bake-off seemed nearly impossible. Her brain could barely calculate how she’d navigate herself back home, let alone dream up something cool enough to win a contest.

  “That was fun,” Jared said as he grabbed his own coat. They walked together to the door and into the dark, icy evening. Mila tugged the zipper of her coat past her chin and snuggled down into the depths of its warm down layers.

  “You want the job?” Mila said. “I’ll get Benny to fire Ethan in a heartbeat.”

  Jared laughed, an airy, noncommittal chuckle that let her know he’d sooner give himself a root canal. Working at the diner had never been Mila’s dream, but she didn’t mind the work. Jared had always been destined for greater things.

  “Where’s your car?” he asked, glancing around the parking lot.

  She exhaled a long audible breath that sailed out past puffed-up cheeks. “I couldn’t find my keys this morning, so I jogged here.”

  A grin spread across his lips as he shoved his hands into the pockets of his coat. “Why don’t you use that remote key finder I got you for Christmas?”

  Ah yes. The remote key finder. A plane flying over Pine Ridge with a Platonic banner would’ve been far subtler.

  “I lost the remote,” she said.

  He shook his head and combed his fingers through his hair. “Come on, I’ll walk you home.”

  “Or you could drive me,” she said.

  “My car’s at Sam’s shop,” he said. “Some muffler thing. I can’t pick it up till tomorrow.”

  They stood opposite each other in the parking lot, the purple glow of evening lighting his face and forcing her jaw to clench.

  He wanted to walk her home.

  Or did he? Her apartment was on the way to his house. Maybe it was a stroll of convenience?

  “All right,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  They fell into step beside each other, the crunch of shoes on gravel the only sound. Mila breathed deep, filling her lungs with fresh, sweet mountain air.

  “You feeling any better about the bake-off?” he said.

  “No.” She winced as the cynicism snaked out of her mouth on a single syllable.

  He huffed a laugh. “You’re a trip.”

  “I did some testing this morning,” she said. “It . . . didn’t go that well.”

  “That’s why you test, though, right? Get the mediocre shit out of the way to make room for the pure genius?”

  A smile curled onto her lips, and she stole a glance at his happy, open face. “If I have pure genius somewhere in me, I don’t know where it’s been hiding all these years.”

  “Hiding?” They rounded a bend in the road and diverted from the paved sidewalk, both deciding but neither voicing the decision to cut through the expansive lawn behind the community center.

  “Listen,” she said. “My pies are good. I’m just nervous I’ll be competing against professionals and get laughed out of the competition.”

  Crisp, frosty grass crunched under their feet as they trudged across the field, and the violet sky blurred into indigo. Mila’s breath formed crystallized clouds in front of her face. Early spring in Pine Ridge all but erased her memory of warm weather.

  “Hey.” He hooked a hand around her elbow and gently yanked her toward him. The glowing moon illuminated his long eyelashes.

  “What?” she said, fidgeting inside her coat. “It’s freezing.”

  “Listen to me.”

  Kiss me kiss me kiss me. She couldn’t fight the plea running through her mind. She loved him as a friend, as someone who knew her better than anyone, as someone who’d had her back from day one. But being alone with him dredged up something else these days. Something she couldn’t ignore.

  “You’re really freaking talented,” he said. “I don’t know what makes one pie better than another or why McDonagh’s pecan pie is good but yours finds its way into my dreams.”

  She bit back a laugh.

  “I’m not kidding,” he said. “I told you about that time I dreamed I was in math class—”

  “And I was your teacher, and the problem was about percentages and I was using a pecan pie to demonstrate?”

  “Exactly!” He flashed a half smile. His hand lingered on her elbow, the physical connection breathing new life into her tired limbs. “Your stuff is so good. Just give it a shot, all right? An honest shot. What do you have to lose?”

  She tucked her thumbnail between her teeth. She had plenty to lose. Don’t get your hopes up. What would her parents say when she didn’t get past the first round? How many years would they bring up her failure at the dinner table, laughing about the time she thought her humble little pies could compete against professional-quality baked goods?

  Jared’s breath whispered past his lips in an icy cloud. The faint bitter scent of diner coffee and grill grease emanated from his otherwise pristine coat, blending her worlds together. He’d eased the chaos of her day with his easy optimism. Maybe she could borrow a bit for the competition ahead of her.

  “My mom came to my apartment this morning,” she said. “I was just fi
nishing this chocolate-bacon-orange thing, and she gave me a big ole dose of her patented Bailey family cynicism.”

  His brow pinched as he retracted his hand, slipping it into his coat pocket. The air around her grew somehow colder the second he broke contact. “That explains it.”

  “She’s not wrong, you know?” She heard the words come out of her mouth and immediately wanted to take them back. She didn’t want to be another negative voice in the Bailey family chorus, and yet the mentality haunted her all the same. “There’s a fair chance I’ll fall flat on my face.”

  “Well, you should definitely not do it, then,” he said. “In fact, you should never try anything new. It’s the only guaranteed way to make sure you never fail.”

  She pursed her lips and glared at him. “Don’t be a jerk.”

  “I’m not.” He shrugged. “It’s the truth. There’s no guarantee of success. Ever. But man, it feels good when it works out.”

  A chill skittered across her skin, and her shoulders tensed in response. How did he really feel about her? What if they tried? What if they failed?

  She swallowed down the attraction tickling her periphery and looked up. Stars sprinkled across the blue velvet sky, the tiny, innumerable pricks of light like glittering grains of sand.

  “I feel sorry for people who can’t see the stars,” she said. “Can you imagine looking up and the night sky is just one big blur because of city lights or smog?”

  A long, defeated breath whistled past his lips. When she looked back at him, a shadow cast over his features. “I dunno,” he said. “There are other upsides to living in a city.”

  Her pulse sped up. He’d threatened to move away from Pine Ridge since the day he got his driver’s license. His imminent departure loomed over her like a black cloud.

  “Sure,” she said. “There are upsides to everything. But there’s something really special about being able to see the sky like this.”

  She looked up again, sensing his gaze on her. She imagined confessing her feelings, opening her mouth and letting all her complicated emotions pour out over him. And then she imagined the horror. The sympathetic grimace. He’d think her a fool.

  “Jesus, it’s cold out here,” she said. “We should go.”

  She turned toward her apartment building and headed home.

  * * *

  * * *

  The white-walled community center roared with a hundred voices, all clamoring to be heard over one another as the residents of Pine Ridge and beyond found empty folding chairs. People had come from as far as Albany and Rochester to enter the Pine Ridge Spring Bake-Off and to receive additional information from Indigo Hotels directly on what to expect.

  Mila shrugged off her coat as she settled into a second-row seat next to a couple of eager young women wearing University of Albany sweatshirts. She breathed deep, nerves twisting in her belly, and wondered about the level of expertise in the room. Would most of the entrants be college kids hoping for prize money? Experienced pastry chefs with professional training? Amateur bakers like Mila?

  “Yo.” She looked up to find a pink-cheeked, breathless Jared squeezed in between the college girls and the row of folding chairs in front of them. The girls went suddenly quiet, staring up at him with glassy eyes and timid smiles.

  Who could blame them?

  “What are you doing here?” Mila asked.

  “I had a showing this morning over on Grange, and I saw this mess while I was driving by. Came to see if you needed moral support.” He turned his attention on the college girls and flashed his million-dollar smile. One of them actually gasped. “Do you mind moving down a chair so I can sit next to my buddy here?”

  Mila’s side pinched as if someone had jabbed her with a tiny knife. Buddy.

  “Of course,” one of the girls said. They moved down a chair but never took their eyes off him.

  “Good grief.” Mila groaned as he settled into the chair. “You should try asking for a foot rub. I bet they’d do it.”

  “Maybe later. These shoes are a bitch to take off.” He winked, his hazel-green eyes sparkling in the fluorescent lights, and opened the informational pamphlet Indigo Hotels had handed out at the door.

  “Anything good in there?” she asked as he pored over the pamphlet.

  He wore his work clothes, a fitted black blazer over a crisp white shirt. Even in more casual outfits, he stood out among the casual Pine Ridge crowd, but dressed to sell property, he belonged on the cover of a Brooks Brothers catalog.

  “You talking about this pamphlet or my suit?”

  Heat rose to her cheeks, and he grinned, watching her squirm.

  “Ooh, damn, Mila. You really were checking me out, huh?”

  “Keep it up and your big head won’t fit through the door.” She turned over her shoulder as if searching for someone, but he could surely see right through her. No amount of salty retorts would cover up her burning face.

  He was her friend.

  Her friend who had filled out in the last few years, turning from a gangly teenager into a full-grown man right before her eyes.

  Nope. Not full-grown. Nothing grown about him. Just a friend.

  Just. A. Friend.

  “It says here,” Jared said, “the hotel will employ three hundred locals. From front office to housekeeping and everything in between. Pretty good, right?”

  He raised a hand to his ear and scratched the sharp angle of his jaw, revealing a fancy silver watch and the thick, powerful tendons in his wrist. Could a man’s wrist be sexy? The pressure between her legs screamed YES.

  She swallowed, trying and failing to moisten her throat. “Yeah. That’s great, actually.”

  “I wonder if, uh . . .” His eyes darkened, and his face turned serious. “Nah.”

  “Wonder if what?”

  “Nothing.” He lifted his gaze to the front of the room, and the moment passed. He didn’t do serious very often. She’d have liked to poke around in that intense thought and explore. “They’re gonna start.”

  “Hello!” A booming voice crackled through the loudspeakers, and the crowd slowly quieted, the squeak of chairs as bodies settled in echoing through the room. “Hello, everyone, and welcome.”

  At the front of the room, atop a rickety platform and behind a microphone, stood a man about Mila’s age clad in a crisp red-and-blue plaid shirt, dark jeans cuffed at the ankle, and expertly worn-in brown leather boots. With his hands on his hips, he grinned out at the sea of people in front of him.

  “Guy looks like an Instagram influencer,” Jared grumbled.

  She shifted her gaze to look at him. “What does that mean?”

  “Thank you so much for coming,” the man onstage continued, drowning out Jared’s reply. “I’m Vin Ortiz, head of marketing for Indigo Hotels, and I’m beyond thrilled to join you today and introduce you to the world of Indigo.”

  “Who names their kid Vin?” Jared said. “Like Vinny or Vincent but they got lazy and dropped the second syllable?”

  “Maybe his name is Vincent,” Mila said. “And Vin is a nickname.”

  “Even worse. He prefers to be called Vin.”

  Mila squinted at him. “What’s your deal with this guy?”

  Jared’s face fell, and he licked his lips. “What? Nothing. I’m just skeptical of this whole hotel thing.”

  She stared at him, waiting for the rest of it. A few days ago he’d been excited about the hotel coming into town, and just a few minutes ago he’d praised them for hiring locals. Suddenly the rep started talking and poof—he turned anti-Indigo?

  Vin Ortiz continued, laying out the hotel chain’s mission statement, along with details on the Adirondack property, which sat just twenty miles from Pine Ridge. After a quick rundown of employment opportunities within the company, Vin turned the conversation to the bake-off.

  “We couldn’t be
more excited to get our feet wet in this incredible area of the country by sponsoring the Pine Ridge Spring Bake-Off. We hear there are a ton of incredible pastry chefs nearby, and we can’t wait to taste what you’ve come up with.”

  Mila’s gut twisted. Incredible pastry chefs. Experienced bakers with degrees and finely tuned skills from working in professional kitchens and studying the greats. All she had were old cookbooks with splattered pages and a knack for knowing how to perfect crust.

  “Tomorrow,” Vin said, “official registration closes, and our monthlong competition timeline begins.”

  He went on to lay down the parameters and guidelines for the first round of the contest, including the stipulation that each contestant use New York–sourced ingredients for at least half the recipe.

  “Those lucky ten bakers who make it past round one,” Vin said, “will be invited to a private dinner at the brand-new Indigo Hotel Adirondack Park property, and then participate in the final bake-off during an all-weekend festival right here in Pine Ridge.”

  The room erupted in applause, and Vin raised his hands skyward, grinning wildly at the crowd like a preacher on a pulpit. “It’s amazing to hear that you’re all as excited about this as we are. And we appreciate your patience while we put the finishing touches on the property. We’d have loved to host both rounds of the competition at our spectacular new site in Adirondack Park, but we’re also grateful to share the hosting duties with the incomparable town of Pine Ridge.”

  Mila ran her suddenly damp palms down the legs of her jeans. Thank God both rounds weren’t at the massive new hotel. A little bit of familiarity by way of the Pine Ridge community center would go a long way in soothing her ever-increasing nerves.

  “Details of the final event will be announced in a few weeks,” Vin said. “But rest assured, Indigo Hotels puts on a spectacular party. The bake-off grand prize includes the winning recipe featured at every Indigo Hotel property across the country, fifty thousand dollars in prize money, and the title of Pine Ridge Baker of the Year.”