Sweet Love

by Lauren Accardo

  His chin dropped. He couldn’t hide his surprise. “Regretted it? Hell. No. What did I do to make you think that?”

  “Nothing.”

  He searched his memory for any boneheaded remarks he may have made in bed. Had he cracked a joke? Had he teased her about something? He’d been waiting for sex to change everything about their relationship, but all it had done was make him care for her even more.

  She exhaled. “You didn’t have to do anything specific. We’re friends. Best friends. And after we slept together, we didn’t even really discuss it. In the deep, dark depths of my cynical mind, I sort of thought, Well, that’s it. One and done.”

  His jaw ticked. “Is that what you want?”

  “No!” Her eyes widened until he could see the whites all the way around her sparkling amber irises. “That’s not what I want at all.”

  “Well, good.” He dipped his chin and caught her lips with his, her body relaxing under his hands. When he pulled away, he let his lips linger over hers. “That’s not what I want, either. And that’s not how I felt last night. I’m sorry if you wanted to talk and I missed the cue.”

  “I’m sorry I’m asking you to pick up on cues.”

  “Uh-uh,” he said. “Don’t be sorry. It’s something I should’ve been doing as your friend all along. And this whole more than friends thing is new. And kinda weird.”

  She nodded, and her tiny jeweled nose stud caught the sun. “Very weird.”

  “Just talk to me, okay? Don’t let me wonder.” He traced his thumb along her jaw. “If I wonder, then I start talking to those guys, and I get the worst advice ever.”

  “Don’t forget Denny is a friend of Vin’s, so I’d take everything he says with a giant grain of salt.”

  “Oh man, that’s right. But Denny’s a good guy. Vin is . . .”

  She shook her head, a smile playing on her lips. “A dick.”

  “You have every right to kick him in the nuts.”

  “As long as he’s got anything to do with the bake-off,” she said, “I will show restraint.”

  Had Jared been in earshot of their conversation, he’d have had trouble defining the word restraint. “All right, Saint Mila.”

  She ran her hands down the front of his sweater, pausing as she reached his belt. When she looked back up, something sinister glittered in her eyes. “Gosh. What can I do to get you to stop thinking of me like that?”

  His limbs went suddenly numb. “I’m sorry it took me twenty-five years to see this side of you.”

  As her hands left his body, he shivered.

  “You should get back inside,” she said. “You’re always running outside without a coat on.”

  “You’re always making me chase you.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Well. Maybe not anymore.”

  His chest swelled. Maybe this could work.

  “Hey,” she said. “Why don’t you come to my parents’ for dinner tomorrow night? They haven’t seen you in a while, and my mom’s been on my ass about it.”

  “Yeah, of course. What’s for dessert, though?”

  He’d meant it as a joke about her always showing up to places with pie. The smile that curled onto her lips shoved his mind and his groin in a very different direction.

  She licked her bottom lip and then reached for the car door handle. “Guess you’ll find out.”

  chapter fourteen

  Mila slammed the car door shut behind her and curled her shoulders against the chilly evening air. She sent a silent prayer into the sky, begging the weather gods to be on her side for the Spring Festival. While the bake-off would be held in the newly finished ballroom at Indigo Hotels Adirondack Park, the rest of the festival featured events outdoors at Nicole’s family farm. It wouldn’t be a Spring Festival in Pine Ridge without the mingled scents of freshly popped kettle corn and cut grass, the sounds of delighted children as they won carnival games, and the vibrant yellows, reds, and purples of Williams Farm’s famous tulip beds.

  If the weather didn’t cooperate, they’d be forced to shrink everything into the barn and nix the outdoor components that made the weekend so special. No amount of crepe paper or silk flowers could match the colorful, apple-blossom-scented splendor of Williams Farm in the warm sunshine.

  She hurried up her parents’ front walk, refusing to take this April cold as a sign, and pushed through the front door. The rich, spicy scent of baked sweet potatoes blended with the heady aroma of garlic and sizzling meat, wrapping around her like an old blanket.

  “Lee Lee?” her father called from the kitchen.

  “Are you joking me?” Mila peered over her father’s shoulder, her eyes widening as she caught sight of the perfectly marbled rib-eye steaks waiting to be seared on Dad’s prized grill pan. “What’s the occasion?”

  “You said Jared was coming,” Caryl said, scurrying in from the living room.

  Mila wrapped an arm around her mother’s shoulder as she sprinkled salt onto the raw meat, kissing Caryl’s warm, powdery cheek. With three grown adults huddled into the postage-stamp-size kitchen, there was barely room for the food. But the kitchen drew people in, and Mila felt most at home in that particular room of the house.

  When Caryl moved to Pine Ridge with Lloyd in the early eighties, she didn’t know cumin from paprika. Along with a few tips from Aunt Georgie, Mila had essentially taught herself to cook and, over the years, shared a few tips and tricks with her mother. Caryl absorbed them despite her best efforts.

  “Jared’s been here for dinner a hundred times,” Mila said. “I recall rib eyes being served maybe twice. And one of those was the night we celebrated Nicole’s engagement.”

  Caryl replaced the box of salt in the cupboard and wiped her hands on a dishrag. Her eyes flitted over Mila and then rested on the pie plate in her hands. “What’s today’s kooky flavor?”

  “Brown-butter vanilla custard with graham cracker crust. I don’t know if it’s any good.” Mila slid the pie plate onto the cluttered counter and shrugged off her coat. The tinfoil-covered pie mocked her. She’d spent all day testing fillings. Nothing tasted right. Spicy cherry was lethal cough syrup. Chocolate ganache with homemade crisped rice cereal was twice the effort for half the quality of what came in the box at the supermarket. Pecan coconut was a bad protein bar.

  The contest date loomed large on her calendar, and with every passing day, the pressure on her chest grew. Why had she entered this stupid contest in the first place? She knew her pies were good. She didn’t need a public humiliation to prove otherwise.

  “Well, we’ll find out, won’t we?” Caryl said. “What time is Jared coming? I can’t let the steaks sit out too much longer or they’ll spoil.”

  Mila released a tight breath. Even her mother’s anxiety over the food set her on edge. When Aunt Georgie was alive, she’d stand hunched over the stove, calmly stirring and peppering and salting, waiting patiently for one of the few dishes in her arsenal to reach perfection. Everyone knew not to rush her, and everyone knew the cold leftovers in the fridge later that night would taste even better than the original.

  Her mother’s cooking, on the other hand, seemed to inherit the tension she infused into it as she cooked. Tasty but tough. Nothing like Aunt Georgie’s practiced, methodical dishes.

  “You keep the heat in this house at sixty degrees,” Mila said. “They won’t spoil. Plus the longer they sit with the salt, the better.”

  “I know you’re not trying to tell me how to cook in my own kitchen,” Caryl snapped. Her mouth bunched; her hands firmly planted on her full hips.

  “No, ma’am.” A few years ago, the words would’ve sounded like an apology. Tonight they bordered on sarcasm.

  “Lee Lee,” her father said, handing her a full glass of cherry-red wine. “Why don’t we go into the other room and let your mother finish up here?”

  The hair on the back of
Mila’s neck stood on end, and she followed her father the short distance into the living room. Despite being only a few feet away from the stove, she released a deep breath in the partial privacy.

  “I think I could own a Michelin-starred restaurant and she still wouldn’t believe I can cook.”

  Lloyd’s smile widened as he shook his head and leaned back in his recliner. His legs stretched far beyond the footrest. When Mila was a kid, she’d hide under that footrest and pretend she lived in a cave guarded by a giant.

  “I can’t wait until you have kids,” he said. “And you have a headstrong daughter who comes into your kitchen and tells you she knows better. I sincerely hope I’m alive to see the day.”

  “Oh, please.” Mila rolled her eyes and sipped her wine. The bright, fruity flavor swished across her tongue and coated her throat, relaxing her frazzled nerves. “I’ll encourage my daughter to know more than I do. I’ll welcome it.”

  Lloyd laughed, his affectionate gaze landing on his younger daughter. “All right, Lee.”

  “I’m serious. Why wouldn’t I want my daughter to be smarter than me? To be more ambitious, to have bigger goals in life?”

  The smile faded from her father’s face. “You think your mother doesn’t want that for you?”

  “I know she doesn’t. I just can’t figure out why.”

  The front door burst open, bringing a fresh blast of cold air along with Nicole and Calvin and their heated conversation about the pros and cons of fixing up their old SUV. Mila’s conversation with her father halted abruptly.

  It was just as well. They’d had that discussion more than once, and Mila had yet to have her mind changed. As far as she could tell, Lloyd would defend his wife to the death. No matter what.

  “Happy Sunday,” Nicole said, wrapping an arm around Mila’s shoulders and kissing her cheek. When she pulled back, her eyes narrowed. “Are you wearing makeup?”

  Mila’s heart leaped into overdrive. “What? No?”

  Nicole’s full eyebrows pinched in the middle, and she nearly poked Mila’s nose with her own. “You are, too. What are you wearing makeup for? You have a hot date after this?”

  “Nic!” Calvin called from the kitchen. “Mrs. Bailey is making steaks!”

  Mila would’ve thought it a physical impossibility, but Nicole’s brow tightened even further. “Is someone coming for dinner? A guy? Are you bringing a date to dinner?”

  “Are you warped?” Mila tugged out of Nicole’s death grip and settled back into the couch, snatching her glass of wine from the side table and sipping gratefully. “It’s just Jared.”

  “Jared, huh?” Nicole’s gaze met Lloyd’s, and she crossed her arms over her chest. “Steaks and makeup for Jared?”

  “I didn’t ask her to make steaks.”

  The people in her life could sniff out a hint of drama like a shark sniffed out blood in the water.

  “You smell different, too.” Nicole stared at Mila as if trying to solve the world’s greatest mystery. “Are you wearing new perfume?”

  “Cut the girl a break,” Lloyd interjected. “There’s wine in the kitchen, Nicole. Go ahead and pour yourself a big glass.”

  Nicole’s face softened, and she squeezed Mila’s hand. “Sorry. Sorry. I’m leaving you alone now.”

  Mila’s heart thumped in her chest like the world’s tiniest bass drum. Earlier, she’d debated putting on makeup for this very reason. She knew Nicole would call her out. But the thought of sitting next to Jared at the dinner table looking like plain old Mila, the Mila she’d been before their night at Indigo, made her eyeball twitch. She needed to be new Mila. Cute Mila. Mila 2.0.

  She took another sip of wine. And another. She held the glass in her vibrating fingertips. Not enough wine in the world.

  When she’d invited Jared to her parents’ house it had seemed mundane. He’d been here a hundred times. But as the hour approached, she realized in one night everything had changed. And she’d have to be around her friends and family pretending it hadn’t.

  As Mila stood up from the couch for a refill and to see what snacks she could pick on in the kitchen, a loud rap on the front door startled her to attention.

  “Hello!” Jared had been inside a thousand times over the years, only knocking when he was a little boy and his mother told him it was rude to just barge into people’s homes. At some point in the past ten years, he’d stopped believing the Bailey house wasn’t his home.

  Mila peered down the front hallway in time to see him run a hand over his hair, sniffing against the cold. He tugged the scarf from around his throat, revealing the square jawline and taut, strong lines of his neck. With one deft hand he tossed his coat onto the coatrack and stole a glance at himself in the entryway mirror.

  As he pressed his lips together and wrinkled his nose, Mila grinned. He was nervous. Usually he’d bound into the house with abandon, Caryl calling after him to leave his shoes at the door. He’d hug Lloyd like he’d been born a Bailey, not a Kirkland, and he’d poke fun at Mila before the scent of cold outside air had left his skin.

  Tonight, he paused. He ran a hand across his mouth, straightened his crisp button-down shirt. Preparing.

  “You gonna come in, or you want us to serve your dinner in the front hall?” Mila called out.

  His head snapped to the left, a smile creeping slowly across his curvy lips. She wanted to kiss him. Bad. Anticipation seeped into her veins as she realized she couldn’t so much as touch him tonight without tipping off everyone in the room.

  “I don’t want your mom to yell at me for getting her floor wet,” he said. With great care, he unlaced and tugged off his boots, holding her gaze as he went. Her cheeks burned with the same fiery passion simmering in her gut, the sensation threatening to set her whole world ablaze.

  Check yourself. She swallowed down the emotion churning inside. There was a time and a place. Sunday night at her parents’ house was neither.

  “That’s right,” Caryl called out from the kitchen. “Don’t you dare get snow and salt on my floors.”

  Mila stood at the end of the hallway, blocking his entry into the living room. He made his way slowly toward her, his green eyes saying all the things his mouth wasn’t allowed to. She hadn’t meant to tease him, but the way he cocked his head, the way his jaw ticked, she knew she’d done something like it.

  Just before their bodies met, he raised a single eyebrow and, much too loudly, said, “ ’Sup, girl?”

  He squeezed between her body and the wall to slink into the living room and crush Nicole in a hug. Had her two best friends discussed what happened? Was Mila so transparent that Nicole smelled the dalliance from a mile away? She hated lying, hated keeping things from anyone who mattered to her. She’d have to tell Nicole.

  Eventually.

  As Jared settled into the house like a long-lost cousin, Mila stood in the doorway trembling. In just a few short days, he’d gone from her bro-y best friend to a man who could decimate her with a single smirk.

  Jared lowered himself onto the couch, chatting amiably with her father, and Mila retreated to the kitchen to refill her empty wineglass. She snagged the open bottle of cabernet from the counter and within seconds, Nicole pressed up next to her. Even the confines of the tiny kitchen wouldn’t force her that close.

  “Gosh, Nic,” Mila said. “Thirsty?”

  “I’m not interested in the wine.”

  Mila paused mid-pour. She knew when she turned to look at Nicole, there would be a devious gleam in those all-knowing eyes, a smirk on her lips. She didn’t want to have to face yet what Nicole seemed to already know.

  “Okay, well, you know where the beer is.” Mila set down the wine bottle and avoided Nicole’s stare, hoping to avoid the awkward conversation for at least another hour.

  “Lee,” Nicole said, her voice lowering as she leaned closer to Mila, “please don’t fo
rget that I am the one and only person in the world who knows that half your parents’ liquor bottles are filled with water, and who knows how loose my lips might get after a couple of glasses of wine.”

  Mila tried her best to summon a threatening stare, but a smile was the best she could do. She and Nicole had slowly but surely dipped into her parents’ liquor cabinet the summer after their senior year of high school, and Caryl and Lloyd didn’t drink enough to notice.

  “You wouldn’t dare.” Mila pinched Nicole’s wrist, and Nicole grabbed Mila’s hand in return.

  “Don’t test me. Come on.” She dragged Mila out of the kitchen and into Mila’s old bedroom.

  Mila’s eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness, the chilly air settling over her. The room was never properly heated, an addition added somewhere over the years when the previous owner realized they had too many babies and not enough bedrooms.

  “It’s like she’s always waiting for you to move back in,” Nicole said.

  The room lived firmly in the early aughts, partially redecorated after Mila’s older sisters had moved out, and complete with powder-pink comforters on the twin and bunk beds, Panic! At The Disco posters on the walls, and a butterfly lamp on the sticker-covered desk. Mila and her sisters had been scolded for the first few heart-shaped Valentine’s Day stickers they’d affixed to the drawers, but Caryl soon gave up, and Mila added her own punk-rock touch once the room became hers. Now it was a living testament to the years the Bailey sisters occupied the room.

  “Maybe you and I will have daughters and they’ll want to have sleepovers here,” Nicole said.

  Something in Mila’s chest stirred, warming like chocolate in a pan. She saw two little girls, separated by a few years based on Nicole and Calvin’s family aspirations, giggling to each other across the nubby blue carpet while Caryl warned them from the kitchen that they better be quiet and get some sleep or there’d be hell to pay. One of the little girls had Nicole’s sharp tongue and Calvin’s dimples, the other had Jared’s mischievous streak and Mila’s eyes.

  Mila used to think her mother’s jokes about future generations occupying her old bedroom were foolish. But maybe they weren’t so silly after all.