by Cathryn Fox
Kayley comes back in and answers the phone when it rings, and she takes today’s orders as Patrick pays for his chocolates. The bell over the door jingles. I glance up quickly, some small part of me hoping Brody is back. But he’s not. It’s just a few customers.
“Enjoy those chocolates,” I say to Patrick as he heads out into the early morning sunshine. The day passes quickly, more customers coming in than I’d expected. By the time lunch rolls around, I run up and grab Miss Mabel and take her for a walk. I scan the street for signs of Brody’s car, but it’s nowhere to be found. I glance at the ski hill and ignore the strange sensations in my gut—I don’t want to think about how cagey he was earlier—and hope he’s having a good time with his buddy, Declan. We make our way to Coffee Klatch.
I push open the door, and Miss Mabel goes crazy with the smells, but you know what she doesn’t do? Jump or pull or try to steal anyone’s treats.
“Good girl,” I say and give her a pat on the head.
Mabel waves to us from behind the counter. “Hey stranger. I haven’t seen much of you lately.”
“Been crazy busy.”
She eyes me. “Yes, you do have a flush on your face from all that work.”
Oh, God. I am not going to discuss my sex life with her. We’ve talked about a lot, and she’s been there for me since I’ve moved here, but sex talk is crossing a line.
“Brody has been doing a great job with Miss Mabel.”
“He really has. He’s been helping me with a lot of things.”
“I bet he has,” she says with a grin on her face. “He seems really nice.”
“He is nice.” Nice, and sweet and good with his hands, and mouth… Oh boy.
“You okay?” Mabel asks.
“Yeah, sure why.”
“Oh, no reason. You drifted for a bit there.”
She has the sweet, but know-it-all smile on her face. “Just thinking about all the orders I need to get out. Which means I’d better hurry. Could I grab a couple ham and cheese sandwiches and a couple coffees?”
“Sure thing, and we can’t forget Miss Mabel’s treat. What’s the sense in living if we can’t have a treat every now and then?”
I just nod, even though I suspect she’s talking about Brody, and it’s true, he’s been a real treat, a big fat snack, in so many ways. I pay for our purchases, and head back outside. In the loft, I give Miss Mabel her treat, and try hard not to think about the treat who’s been in my bed and how our time is coming to an end.
I hurry back downstairs, and after Kayley and I quickly eat, we get to work. I didn’t call in any part time workers, thinking these last couple days would be slower, and while the afternoon dragged on, probably because I’m anxious to meet up with Brody, we were rather busy. I check the clock for the hundredth time, and wonder what Brody might like to do about dinner. He’ll be ravenous after a day on the slopes, I’m sure. With only a half hour left, in saunters Declan and I glance past him, searching for Brody.
“Hey,” I say to him. “How was skiing?”
He angles his head. “Skiing?”
I stiffen, but quickly try to brush off my alarm by waving my hand and saying, “Oh, nothing. I thought you and Brody were skiing today.”
He goes still, and his brow furrows, like he’s trying to figure out if he was supposed to be covering for his buddy. He pulls his phone from his pocket. “He did text me first thing this morning. I messaged him back that I was busy, and that was it. I guess he must have gone by himself. Yeah, I’m sure he did.”
“Can I get something for you?” I ask and plaster on my best smile, like my insides are not on a roller coaster ride, wondering what Brody is doing and why he doesn’t want me to know he’s doing it. The truth is, though, he can do what he wants. He doesn’t owe me an explanation and doesn’t have to clear any of his actions with me first.
“I want to get a box of chocolate nips for my mother.”
“She does love them.”
He nods and I grab a box and place the delicate pieces of chocolate in. As he pays for it, my mind goes to Patrick. While I’d liked to tell him that Patrick is interested in Nikki, I’m not sure it’s my place. I think it’s best if Brody talk to him.
After he pays, he heads out, and my gaze follows him, looking for signs of Brody’s car. Soon enough, Patrick is back, and after he leaves, Kayley follows him out and I close the shop. My feet hurt by the time I head to the stairs leading to my loft and delicious—familiar—scents reach my nostrils.
What is going on?
I hurry up the stairs and when I open the door and find Brody standing over my stove, Mabel at his feet as he wipes his hands on one of my old aprons. My heart soars.
“What did you do?”
He spins, his eyes wide and Mabel’s tail wags as she comes running to me. I pet her and Brody’s gaze flies to the clock. “You’re done early.” He looks flustered, and a bit panicky.
I step up to him, and try to see around his body, but he blocks me. “What are you making?”
“Stop it. It’s a surprise.”
I catch scent of my favorite dishes from home, and the pieces of the puzzle start to fit together. “Brody, did you video chat with my parents this morning to find out what my favorite foods were?”
“Maybe,” he says, non-committal. “Maybe not.”
That’s what he was doing with my tablet. How incredibly sneaky and sweet of him. I throw my arms around his shoulders. “This…this is what you’ve been up to all day? Ohmigod, I can’t believe it.”
He picks me up, and kisses the top of my head. “Wait, what did you think I was up to?”
He sets me down and glances at me. “I thought you were skiing with Declan, but then he showed up at the shop.”
“If you must know. I drove to three towns to find the perfect fondue pot and get the ingredients to make you this meal. Now why don’t you sit down and I’ll pour you a glass of wine.”
My heart thumps hard in my chest as I take a seat, and call Mabel over, but she’s not about to leave Brody’s side, not when he keeps feeding her cheese. “Why did you go through all this trouble?”
“It’s no trouble at all, and I could tell how much you missed your family and I thought if you can’t go to them, I could at least bring a piece of home to you.”
“Brody, you’re so—”
“Sweet, I know, I know.” He gives me a playful wink. “Just doing what any good boyfriend would do.”
“I don’t know about that,” I say as he hands me a glass of merlot.
“If a guy isn’t doing things like this for you, Josie, maybe he’s not the guy.”
I chuckle, but it holds no humor, because I’m not sure there’s a guy out there who could compare to Brody, who is only pretending to be my boyfriend. He sets the fondue pot on top of the brass holder, a candle lit underneath, and puts a tray of cubed bread beside it.
“Carbs, mmm, my favorite.”
He removes his apron, and takes a sip of wine, and I watch him, realizing I could simply stare at him all day long and never get bored. He sits, and pokes the bread cube with the skewer, coats it in cheese and brings it to my mouth. I take a hearty bite and moan as my eyes roll back in my head.
“I haven’t had this in so long, Brody. It’s so good.”
“If you moan like that again,” he begins through clenched teeth. “I’ll be abandoning this whole surprise and taking you straight to your bed.”
I laugh at that. “While I like the idea of that, you spent too much time and effort for us to let this go to waste.” I lean into him. “But when we’re done, I promise to moan for you just like that, if you want.”
He briefly closes his eyes. “I want. I want a lot, and you know, I think tonight I might just break the world record for the fastest eater.” I laugh as he jumps up and plates saffron risotto with shrimp. “Your mom said this is traditionally served with luganighe, or as we like to call it here, sausage.” He grins. “But I couldn’t find any traditional luganighe
and she said you liked it with shrimp, so prawns it is.”
“It’s perfect.”
“You might want to save judgment until you try. This was my first time making risotto.”
I slide my fork into the dish and take a generous bite. Unable to help myself, I moan around the delicious flavors, and Brody’s growl mingles with the sounds.
“Oops sorry,” I murmur, not at all sorry. It’s fun to torture him, to know I can turn him on from a simple sound. I take another forkful and bite into it, another moan filling the air, and Brody’s eyes narrow in on me.
“You’re definitely going to pay for that.”
I grin, because I can’t wait.
13
Brody
One day until Christmas Eve:
* * *
The last few days with Josie have been the happiest days of my life. When we weren’t in bed together, we were snowmobiling, sledding, enjoying the Farmacy, working to fulfill chocolate orders, or sitting around the tree, watching Christmas movies, where tears might or might not have surfaced. I grin at her now as we finish eating leftovers at her small kitchen table, and I can’t remember what my life was like before she came into it.
Light from the tree in the living room bounces off the walls and adds a shimmer of warmth and coziness to her kitchen as Josie takes her last bite of leftover risotto and exhales, a small smile on her face. She tugs on her yoga pants. “If I keep eating like this, I’m going to roll into the new year.”
I laugh at that. “Stop it, you’re perfect.”
Her smile falls, and her brows pinch together, her mood doing a complete one-eighty. “Brody, when do you leave?”
“We were thinking the day after Christmas, but I’m thinking I might stay a bit longer.”
“Really?” Her eyes light up.
“It depends,” I say and set my spoon down.
She toys with her napkin. “On what?”
“If you let me kiss you when the ball drops.”
“You can kiss me,” she says, her voice low, almost a whisper as another change comes over her. She pushes back in her chair, and I don’t just feel the physical distance, I feel the emotional one as well. Is she trying to put a chasm between us so she doesn’t get hurt? Or is she just not ready to commit to more with me? The fact is, we’ve grown close, extremely close in a short period of time, and even though she’s been happy—has been living again—the fact of the matter is, I have to leave. I’ve never been into long distance relationships before. Heck, I’ve never been into relationships. I want things now that I’ve never wanted before.
“Josie?”
She wipes her mouth with a napkin, her dark eyes wide when they meet mine. “Yeah.”
“Can I ask you something?”
Her lips tighten, and she inches back in the chair more, and I know it’s my imagination, but the temperature in the room seems to have dropped a few degrees. “Sure.”
“Do you…um….us.” I take a breath to pull myself together. “What are you doing tomorrow, for Christmas Eve?”
“Oh,” she says, a measure of relief in her voice. What, was she worried I was going to ask for more, and she wasn’t ready to give it? She said she wanted to start living life again, but that doesn’t mean she’s ready to give her heart to another man. It could very well still, and always, belong to her late husband.
She waves her hand toward her stove. “I was just going to bake, and sit around the tree.”
“Do you think maybe you’d like to go to Declan’s with me? His parents put on a big Christmas Eve dinner every year. I’m expected to be there, but I don’t want to go unless you go with me.”
A smile touches her mouth, and she inches back toward the table. “I think that would be nice.” She picks up her plate. “What should I bring?”
“Damn, I never thought of that. I’ll have to make a quick trip to the stores tomorrow to pick something up.”
There’s a new twinkle in her eyes when she smiles at me. “I have a better idea.”
“Oh?”
She sets her dish in the sink, and I put mine in with it. “Come with me.” Without putting our winter coats on, she leads me to her door, but I quickly realize we’re not going outside, we’re going to her store downstairs. It’s quiet this time of night, all the shoppers are home, and the staff finished their workday.
“You’re thinking a box of chocolates or something.”
“Or something,” she jokes, and takes me to the back room, where the big machines are set up and all the magic happens. “I thought we could make a batch of fresh bark. It’s my favorite, and I thought maybe you’d like to see the process.”
“Yeah, I would.”
“You sure it won’t bore you?”
“Nothing you do can bore me, Josie.” She smiles, but I’m not lying. I’m really interested in what she does, and it’s easy to tell how much she likes it by the way she lights up whenever she walks into her ‘lab.’ “But you’ll have to watch our next game.”
“I already planned on it. Now I have someone else to watch besides Declan.” My chest expands at the thoughts of her watching me, as she moves around the room, pointing out her massive amount of equipment. I listen intently, amazed by her knowledge and fascinated as she explains the process for the different kinds of chocolates she makes.
“For the bark, we have to use tempered chocolate, which I have here, otherwise the bark won’t have a smooth glossy sheen and a crisp snap, and tempered chocolate won’t turn dull and fuzzy if stored for a while.”
“Tempered?”
She ties an apron around her waist and rolls up the sleeves on her sweater. “When chocolate is melted, the molecules of fat separate. Tempering brings them back together, and if done properly, you get a network of stable crystals. That’s what makes it glossy, with a crisp snap.”
I scratch my head. “I didn’t realize I was going to get a science lesson. Can you say that again, using shorter sentences and smaller words?”
She laughs at me. “How about I show you instead?” She grins at me, throwing my words back at me, and my body reacts, wanting her in my arms again.
“You know I do prefer show over tell.”
Grinning, she fills a pot with water and puts a bowl over it. “Today, we’re only going to melt it, and this is how I like to do it, so it doesn’t burn.”
“I didn’t even know you could burn chocolate.”
“Grab me those bars over there,” she says, and points. I walk over to a table, and lift the parchment paper to find rows and rows of chocolate. The rich cocoa scent fills my senses. “Can’t we just eat this?” I break off a couple bars of chocolate and hand them to her.
“Trust me, the bark will be much better.” She gestures with a nod as she turns the stove on and puts the bark in the bowl. “Go over to that fridge, and pick out the ingredients you might want in your bark.”
I open the fridge to find peanuts, coconut, cranberries, peppermint and every kind of candy under the sun. “I think I’ve just died and gone to heaven.” I grab a mixture and carry it to her. “Can we put all this stuff into one batch? Wait. Do we have any popcorn left? I bet the sweet and salty would be amazing.”
Her jaw drops. “Are you kidding me?”
“About what?”
“Popcorn is my number one favorite thing to add to the chocolate. I don’t have it on the shelves because it doesn’t store well, but I make it for myself sometimes.”
“It’s almost like I know you.”
She angles her head and eyes me suspiciously. “How did you know that?”
“I didn’t.”
“Did you ask my parents?”
“No, I just thought it would be delicious.” She goes quiet for a second, lost in thought as she stirs.
“Hey, was it something I said?”
She shakes herself from whatever it was she was thinking. “Why don’t you run upstairs and nuke a bag of popcorn for our bark which we can eat during movie time.”
&
nbsp; My heart jumps. I love that our evenings have become our movie time. “I’m on it.” I hurry upstairs, greet a happy Mabel, who quickly begins to drool over the popping corn. I give her a handful and hurry back downstairs.
“All set,” I say and shove a mouthful of popcorn into my mouth.
“Perfect time. Here, you stir.” She holds the spoon up for me.
“I think we’ll do peppermint bark for the Bradbury family. It’s one of my biggest selling items this year. I can barely keep it on the shelf.”
I take the wooden spoon from her and for a moment our hands touch, linger, and despite the physical distance she seemed to put between us earlier, neither of us are in a hurry to move.
“Get stirring before it clumps.”
“Right.” I drag my hand from hers, and stir the chocolate as she takes her new phone from her pocket and puts on some Christmas music. I want to tell her about her phone, but what good could come from that now? We’ve been having so much fun, and I don’t want to do anything to ruin that. None of that helps with the guilt lingering in my gut, though.
She hums along to the music as she puts the candy cane between parchment paper and breaks it apart. I continue to stir as she holds a piece of candy out to me. “Open.” I do as she asks, and she places a big piece on my tongue.
“Delicious. Did you make the candy cane, too?”
“Of course, I do. Other than the nuts and some of the packaged candy in the fridge, everything is homemade.”
“You’re a woman of many talents.” She smiles at the compliment and leans over me to check the chocolate.
“Looking good.” She dips a spoon in to taste it. “Almost there.”
“What’s next?”
She runs her hand over a big marble tabletop. “Once that’s melted, I’ll get you to pour the chocolate out onto the table, but you’ll have to work fast. It needs to be smoothed out when it’s still warm.”
“I have a better idea. You’re the chocolatier, how about you work your magic and I’ll watch.” Truthfully, I like learning new things, but it’s more fun watching her. In fact, I would watch this woman all day and night and never be bored.
