Just Desserts (2 page)

“Where is he?” he asked.

“With Jilly in the spa. He's getting highlights.”

“Better him than me,” Finn said, draining the bottle.

“Amen, brother. Why do you think I shave my head?”

Finn was still laughing when he walked into the huge space that served as salon, gym, and occasional day-care center.

Tommy was reclining in an uber-luxurious leather barber chair in front of a wall of perfectly lighted mirrors. Jilly, his stylist of many years, lifted one of her color brushes in greeting when she saw Finn.

His boss greeted him with the lopsided grin that had won him almost as many fans as his records. “Mission accomplished?” Prenups were part of the modern courtship ritual, like the Harry Winston diamond and the Reem Acra gown. They were a fact of life no sane adult who had achieved any measurable degree of success would ignore.

“They agreed that the claims on the list were all unfounded.”

“I take care of my own. I wouldn't let a child of mine go unrecognized,” Tommy said as Jilly the stylist tilted his head to the left. “A little more color up top, Jilly. I'm seeing a lot of gray these days.”

“Any more color and you'll be Donald Trump's long-lost brother.”

She and Tommy exchanged friendly banter while Finn tried to be patient.

“Listen,” he said finally, shifting the manila folder from his right hand to his left. “We need to talk.”

“Go ahead. Jilly knows all my secrets.”

“Not all of them,” Jilly said, “but I'm willing to learn.”

Finn smiled but said nothing. Tommy studied him for a second then met Jilly's eyes in the wall of mirrors. “Can we break for a few?”

Finn followed Tommy out onto the multilevel deck overlooking the ocean.

“It's probably nothing,” Finn said without preamble, “but Sloan's people did an additional background check and found someone.”

He handed Tommy the folder. “Her name was or is Jane Maitland. You were nineteen. She was forty. Sloan's people found an original birth certificate for a baby girl named Hayley that cites you as the father.” He gave him a condensed version of the discovery. “Jane is an oceanographer, a pretty renowned one, with two doctorates. She's teaching a course in Mumbai this year on the impact of climate change on coastlines throughout southeast Asia.”

Tommy peered closely at the grainy newspaper clipping photo of an austere, gray-haired academic. The caption read
“Respected oceanographer rings the global warming bell in Mumbai.”

Finn tried to imagine what the good doctor might have looked like almost forty years ago, but the best he could come up with was the image of an austere, brown-haired academic.

“Recognize her?”

Tommy shot him a look. “She's almost eighty.”

“She wasn't eighty when you—”

Tommy cut him off midsentence. “Not my type.”

The other thing Finn knew about Tommy was that all women were his type.

“What about the daughter? Do you have a photo?”

“If the other side has one, they didn't pass it along. She owns a bakery in South Jersey, halfway between Philly and Atlantic City.” She was building a name for herself by providing crazy expensive cakes for weddings, bar mitzvahs, and the occasional gubernatorial inauguration party.

Tommy looked up at him. “They're from New Jersey?”

“Maitland spent fifteen years at Princeton. The daughter was born in Kentucky.”

He could see recognition dawning.

“I grew up two miles from Princeton. You'd be surprised how many university types showed up at our gigs.”

“My father told me a little about the early days.” Jack Rafferty had grown up in the house next door to Tommy. Two working-class kids with big dreams that, except for one of them dying young, had almost all come true.

“We played a lot of small clubs between Princeton and New York. Springsteen owned the shore. We were out to claim the rest of the state. Thousands of people moved in and out of our circle during those years.” Tommy turned back toward the ocean. “She told me her name was Jean. I didn't understand half of what she said to me. We spent a weekend together. I never saw her again.”

And there it was. He waited a moment before he asked, “Your choice or hers?”

“Hers…mine.” He shrugged. “Both of ours. I tried to phone her but the number she'd given me was for a diner on Route One.”

“So you're saying it's possible.”

Another silence, even longer and more uncomfortable than the previous one.

“It's possible.”

“Lakeside?” Tommy asked.

“Between A.C. and Philly.”

“About a four-hour drive,” Tommy said. “If we leave in the morning, we can get there by noon.”

“You're kidding, right?”

“The hell I am. You tell me I might have a grown daughter I've never met and expect me to sit on my fat ass and do nothing? You know me better than that.”

Unfortunately Finn did. There were no half measures where Tommy was concerned. “Not a good idea, Tom. You have the rest of your family to consider.” He paused. “And there's Willow.”

“I'll say I need to check out the venue for the benefit next week in Atlantic City.”

“Why don't you let me do my job before you put yourself out there. Let's find out who we're dealing with.”

Tommy opened his mouth to argue the case then stopped. “Shit,” he said. “I'm doing satellites tomorrow morning for the benefit, print in the afternoon, and a sit-down with
Showbiz Extra
in the evening.”

“Okay,” Finn said, not quite managing to mask his deep sense of relief. “I'll call in a few favors. We should have a pretty good idea where we stand by the end of the week.”

Tommy said nothing.

“Are you going to tell Willow?” Finn asked.

“Not yet.” Tommy's fiancée was a twenty-four-year-old supermodel/high school dropout who was three months pregnant with his seventh child.

Or maybe his eighth.

“I need to meet Hayley Goldstein.”

“That could get messy, Tom.” Which pretty much guaranteed Finn the Best Understatement of the Millennium award. “She's lived thirty-eight years without you in her life. No guarantee she wants to meet you.”

He could see the wheels turning.

“You said she's a caterer. Hire her for the after-party.”

Nuclear warnings sounded inside Finn's head. “She's not a caterer, Tommy. She bakes cakes.” Fancy, expensive cakes for fancy, expensive people.

“So have her bake a cake for us.”

“Listen,” he said carefully, “I don't think this is a good idea. Let me run our own background check, see what I can find out, before we take the next step.”

“What does she bake, those fancy cakes like you see at weddings, right?”

The warnings reached DEFCON 3. “Right.”

“So tell her we want her to bake us a set of drums or a guitar.” He waved his hand in the air. “Whatever. The kids would love it and it would add a little something to her bottom line.”

“Tom, let's pull it back before we get crazy. She's a stranger. Her bottom line isn't your problem. Why don't you stay focused on next week's show and let me do my job.”

Jilly popped out onto the deck. “You have thirty seconds before those highlights seep into your brain, TS! Get in here now!”

“See what you can find out,” Tommy said as he headed toward the door. “I want this moving.”

It was Tommy's call. Not Finn's. If Tommy wanted to take the private jet and fly down to South Jersey and confront Hayley Maitland Goldstein with news that—assuming it was true—would turn her world upside down, then that was exactly what Tommy would do.

That was the thing about superstars. Even the nicest among them, which definitely included Tommy Stiles, got what they wanted when they wanted it.

Goldy's Bakery—Lakeside, New Jersey

Hayley Maitland Goldstein was fighting a losing battle with a sheet of rolled fondant when her daughter thundered down the back stairs and burst into the kitchen.

“You always did know how to make an entrance,” she said as Lizzie grabbed for one of the Linzer tortes cooling on a wire rack. “Good thing I don't have cheesecake in the ovens.” Her girl was five foot two and one hundred pounds and somehow she managed to sound like a herd of Clydes-dales in a beer commercial.

“Cheesecakes are Friday,” Lizzie said with a powdered-sugar grin. “This is Wednesday. I figured it was safe.”

“Nice to know that fancy school of yours teaches you the days of the week.” She tried hard not to think about how many cookies she had to sell to pay the quarterly tuition bill at Olympia Prep.

Lizzie, who had clearly decided not to worry about the bakery's profit margin at the moment, snagged another cookie. “I'm honor roll again this quarter.”

Hayley wanted to let out a whoop of excitement but Lizzie had reached the age where maternal enthusiasm was a source of deep humilation. She feigned a yawn instead. “Old news, kid. You've been honor roll since kindergarten.”

“I've spoiled you.” Lizzie split open the cookie and began to lick the raspberry jam from the center. “Maybe I should fail physics or throw a chem test so you'll appreciate me.”

“I don't recommend it,” she said with a stern glance in her daughter's direction. “The competition out there for scholarships is fierce.”

Lizzie rolled her eyes.

“I saw that,” Hayley said. “You have two and a half more years of high school, Elizabeth. This isn't the time to lose your focus.” Academic achievement was a family tradition, even if it had skipped Hayley's generation.

Lizzie's blue-green eyes twinkled. “I'm on the honor roll, Mom, not probation. Quit worrying.”

“I can't. It's what I do best.” She was a worrier. Always had been, always would be. She worried about her daughter, her former in-laws, her cousins, their cousins, her daughter's cousins, her daughter's friends, her daughter's friends' friends, her employees, their families, the weather, the state of the world, the state of her checking account. One night last month she even found herself worrying about Katie Couric's ratings, although Katie had yet to return the favor.

She glanced up at the clock. Maybe she'd better start worrying about the time. The Cumberland County Association of Female Realtors expected a fully decorated cake delivered to the Knights of Columbus Hall by seven p.m. and it was already almost three. Given the fact that the president of the association was the daughter of her former mother-in-law's best friend, she needed to get on it or there would be a lot of explaining to do. Connie Goldstein lived in Fort Lauderdale but her network reached far and wide.

“Don't talk,” she warned her daughter. “Don't breathe. I'm going to take another shot at this.”

“Since when do you have trouble with fondant? I can do fondant. You've been edgy all day. Aunt Fiona said—”

“Lizzie, please! Hang on to the commentary until I drape the cake.”

Rolled fondant was like edible vinyl flooring. It required a sure touch and seamless application or you might as well commission the Home Depot to do the job. She had worked a nice pale blue tint into the concoction and kneaded it until it screamed for mercy. All the fondant had to do now was cooperate.

She inhaled deeply, centered herself once more, then draped the sheet over the bottom tier of carrot cake.

“Okay,” she said on the exhale. “That's better.”

“Um, Mom? It's lumpy.”

“I'll pretend I didn't hear that.”

“The top,” Lizzie said, pointing with a half-eaten cookie. “It's all bubbly.”

“That's the bottom tier. Nobody but the baker sees the top of the bottom tier.”

“I thought you were a perfectionist.”

“A perfectionist on a deadline.” She grabbed a pair of clean shears and clipped the excess around the perimeter. “One down, one to go.”

“Let me do the next one.”

“I'm not paying five thousand a year so you can learn how to ice cakes.”

“I like to ice cakes.”

“No, you don't. You like to study.”

“I like to ice cakes too.” There was that sugary grin again. “It's a genetic thing.”

“You take after your grandmother, remember?” Hayley carefully lifted a new sheet of rolled fondant and laid it flat on a marble slab. “Go back upstairs and think lofty thoughts. I need to concentrate.”

“I'm letting my brain chill.”

“I love it when you talk like your grandmother.”

Lizzie wiped her sugary hands on her jeans. “Speaking of Grandma, she's coming home.”

“I know.” There went her concentration again. “Fortunately I still have time to hide my stash of
People
magazines.”

“Not really,” said Lizzie. “She's coming home next week.”

Hayley stopped what she was doing. “But she was supposed to be in India until after New Year's.” Her mother lived the higher life of the mind, which, in practical terms, meant lots of travel to lots of faraway places in search of knowledge, enlightenment, and government funding.

“She e-mailed us her new schedule,” Lizzie said. “I printed it out and left it on your desk.” Lizzie was the family computer expert who not only understood how computers functioned, but knew how to use them to the bakery's best advantage. Hayley was reasonably sure they were the only bakery in New Jersey with a website, a blog, and a mailing list.

“Why is Jane coming home early?” Her mother loved everything about the academic lecture circuit: the intellectual stimulation, the travel, the smells and sights and sounds of strange cities in faraway countries.

The same things that left her daughter stone cold.

Lizzie shrugged. “She didn't say.”

A cold blast of fear slammed into Hayley. “Oh God. You don't think—” She couldn't finish the sentence. Her mother's breast cancer had been in remission for seven years this time around, but the shadow of another recurrence was always there.

“She wants to know if she can stay with us until the sublet on her place runs out and she can move back in.”

“My mother wants to stay here with us?” It was easier to imagine Jane pole-dancing than living happily above the bakery.

“That's what she said.”

“Something's wrong.”

“Nothing's wrong, Mom.”

“I know your grandmother better than you do. Something's definitely wrong.”

“She's just coming home early. I think part of her lecture tour got cancelled.”

“If part of her tour got cancelled, she'd book herself a few new speaking gigs. The one thing she wouldn't do is come home early.” The concept of home didn't have the same meaning to Jane as it did to her daughter.

“Maybe she misses us.”

“Have you met your grandmother? She loves us, but we're not the center of her life.” She didn't mean to sound harsh but that was the reality of being the daughter of a renowned scientist. The work took precedence over everything else.

“Aunt Fiona said Meals On Wheels won't be delivering tomorrow so maybe we could bring her some mac and cheese or something.”

“We'll do better than that,” Hayley said. “I'll put a pot roast in the slow cooker in the morning. We'll bring her a feast with all the trimmings.”

Fiona was Jane's younger sister. Hayley had stayed with Fiona and her late husband during junior and senior year of high school. The fact that Aunt Fee deserved the Croix de Guerre wasn't lost on her.

“Ms. Hughes e-mailed the schedule for next month's mentor meetings. She also wants to know if you could take on two more boys from the vo-tech.”

“If they don't mind heavy lifting, tell her absolutely.”

“Ginger's driving down to Philly next week. She wants to know if you can get away for lunch.”

“I'll call her later.”

“Aunt Paula wants to know if you're bringing the circular needles to the knit-in at the Friends of the Library party on Friday.”

“Good thing you reminded me,” Hayley said. “I totally forgot.”

“Aunt Karen and Aunt Dianne IM'd. They said Aunt Paula's turned into a knitting nazi and they blame you.”

Paula, Karen, and Dianne were Hayley's best friends since high school. They were the backbone of Lakeside's Friends of the Library. The fact that a knit-in attracted more guests than anything book related wasn't lost on any of them.

Hayley laughed. “I'll take care of it later.”

“I paid the utility bill,” Lizzie said, “the prop tax, and the quarterlies. Do you want to pay the restaurant supply store in full or in two installments?”

“You decide,” Hayley said. Nothing like having a fourteen-year-old financial genius in the family.

“In full,” Lizzie said with assurance. “We don't need more bills hanging over our heads.”

“Amen to that.”

“Don't forget I'm having supper at Aunt Michelle's tonight. She wants me to run TurboTax on last year's returns.”

Hayley tried not to dwell on the fact that her former sister-in-law still hadn't filed her tax returns. “Stuffed peppers?”

“Aunt Michelle's gone veggie. They're stuffed with tofu.”

“I'll have nightmares all night,” Hayley said with a shiver. “I want you home by ten. Tell Michie she has to drive you. On second thought, I'll call and tell her myself.” She wanted to remind her former sister-in-law that she was scheduled to open the bakery on Saturday while Hayley and Lizzie went on Lakeside High School's mentoring program spring picnic.

“I can walk.”

“Not at ten o'clock at night, you can't.”

“Lakeside is one of the safest towns in New Jersey. I read the state demographics on safety and—”

“You're not walking home alone. If Michie doesn't want to drive you, call me and I'll pick you up.”

“I'm fourteen. I can—”

“No.”

Lizzie's jaw stiffened and Hayley had a quick flashback to a stubborn two-year-old pitching a fit on the floor of the produce department of ShopRite. Where had the years gone?

The dark cloud lifted as quickly as it had appeared and Lizzie promised she wouldn't walk home.

“Now scram,” Hayley ordered as her daughter grabbed another cookie, “or I'll have one hundred angry Cumberland County real estate agents screaming for my head tonight.”

Lizzie darted back upstairs and Hayley tried to center her thoughts for what seemed like the thousandth time that afternoon. Working with rolled fondant wasn't her favorite thing in the world, but it wasn't exactly making phyllo dough by hand either.

It shouldn't be a big deal but today it was. For some reason, everything had felt like a big deal today.

She had woken up feeling unsettled for no reason that she could figure out, as if something was looming just out of sight, waiting to pounce like a monster in one of the horror movies on late-night TV.

“Maybe Lizzie's right,” she mumbled as she manipulated the fondant into position on the next layer. She had turned worry into an Olympic event. Creative types were supposed to drift through life without a care. Where had she gone wrong?

She had a brilliant mother, a budding genius daughter, and a thriving business.

Why not relax and enjoy?

Other people were able to relax and enjoy at the drop of a hat. Her mother had been known to fall into a deep, rejuvenating sleep in the middle of turbulence over the Indian Ocean. Her daughter had an ability to live happily in the moment that would throw the Dalai Lama into a swoon of spiritual envy.

When life was running smoothly, Hayley worried that she wasn't worrying enough, at which point life usually gave her something to worry about.

Funny how it always seemed to work out that way.

It was probably fate's funny little way of paying her back for all the worry she'd caused Aunt Fee and Uncle Bernie when she was a teenager.

Trish and Rachel were up front manning the counter. Lizzie was upstairs thinking great thoughts. The family pets were all accounted for. She could spend a little time worrying about living under the same roof with her mother, her daughter, three cats, a dog, and a parrot, but that seemed excessive even to Hayley.

Murmuring a prayer to Elizabeth of Hungary, patron saint of bakers, she got back to work.

 

“I don't get it,” Anton said as Finn hung a left onto Lakeside's tree-lined Main Street. “Why don't you just ask one of the chefs at the hotel to make a fancy cake for the after-party?”