Just Desserts (4 page)

“I usually like three weeks' notice for a job like this.”

“An extra twenty-five percent.”

“Listen, I'm not trying to bump up the price. We're a small outfit and that's a lot of work. I don't want to promise something I can't deliver.” She gestured toward the kitchen. “Like the carrot cake the Cumberland County real estate agents expect to dig into a few hours from now. I have to get back in there.”

“We're talking major exposure,” Finn Rafferty said. He was pushing hard. “Photographers from
InStyle
and
People
.
Entertainment Tonight
will be sending over a film crew. It's going to put you on the map.”

She was a big fan of the style and entertainment magazines. She devoured the splashy multipage spreads featuring celebrity weddings and showers and bar mitzvahs, searching for details about the cakes and cookies and desserts. Those magazines, and their TV counterparts, had made superstars out of unknown bakers with a single well-timed story or photo.

Hayley Maitland Goldstein, cake decorator to the stars.

It had a nice ring to it.

So why was she standing there dithering like she couldn't make up her mind if the job was worth her time. She was a decisive, ambitious woman. She should have reeled in this commission before Finn Rafferty found somebody else.

“Do it, Mom!”

She turned around and saw Lizzie standing in the doorway, watching them with her big, curious eyes. It figured this was the one time the kid didn't gallop down the steps like a Clydesdale. “How long have you been standing there?”

“Long enough. This is your Cinderella moment! You can't let it slip away.”

“This is my daughter, Lizzie,” she said to Finn, who for some reason looked like he had seen a ghost. “Clearly I made the mistake of raising her with a mind of her own.”

“Do you know how much it costs to advertise in
InStyle
?” her daughter demanded. “More than we make in a month! We could pay off the kitchen supplies account and lay in plenty of fondant and chocolate paste and get the big oven repaired and—”

Hayley raised her hand to stop Lizzie before it got even more embarrassing than it already was. “I thought you were going over to Michie's to do her taxes.”

“She cancelled. She said she still can't find her W-2s.”

She glanced at Finn Rafferty, who was clearly trying to figure out what was going on. So much for a Cinderella moment. She could see the glass coach turning back into a pumpkin right before her eyes.

Sometimes reality truly was a bitch.

“Like I said, this is my daughter, Lizzie. She's fourteen years old and she knows more about running a business than I do at almost forty. If you give Lizzie the job specs, she'll run up a proposal in less time than it would take you to drink a cup of coffee and split a deep-dish apple pie with your friend Anton. She handles contracts, billing, and balancing the checkbook for everyone in our family.” She paused for breath. “Yes, it's unorthodox but that's the way it is. And if any or all of this makes you uncomfortable, you can still have coffee and deep-dish apple and we'll say good-bye.”

She looked at Finn.

Finn looked at Lizzie.

Lizzie looked at both of them.

“Draw up a proposal, Lizzie,” Finn said, “and let's get this thing moving.”

“That's the fourth time,” Lizzie said as she tapped away at the computer.

“Fourth time what?” Finn asked, swiveling around to face the teenage wunderkind.

“You keep turning around to stare at my mom.”

“No, I don't.” He hadn't had time to build up to staring. Every time he turned Hayley's way, she had caught him looking at her and he had to pretend he was checking the clock.

“Yes, you do, and now you're staring at me.”

“I'm not staring,” Finn said. “I'm trying to read over your shoulder.”

“I don't think so,” Lizzie said. “You'd have to stand behind me to read over my shoulder. You're staring at my face.”

“Sorry.”

“If you're looking for a family resemblance, you might as well quit now. There isn't one,” she said matter-of-factly as she resumed her rapid-fire typing. “That's why you were staring, right? In case you're wondering, I don't look like my father either.”

“I think you look a lot like your mother.”

“Nope.” She peered at the screen, then fiddled with the touchpad. “I don't look much like anyone in the family. I'm a genetic anomaly.”

No, you're not, Lizzie. You don't know it yet, but you look just like your grandfather.
From the huge, sleepy-lidded blue-green eyes to the stubborn chin to the slightly off-kilter smile, she was a Stiles through and through.

He couldn't remember ever feeling like a bigger bastard than he did right now. There were things you shouldn't know about people. And you definitely shouldn't know those things before the people had the chance to find out for themselves.

Laughter floated toward them from the center of the kitchen where Anton, scrubbed and draped in a white cotton apron and plastic food-service gloves, worked with Hayley at the bench. She really did know how to make magic with cake and frosting: two rectangular layers of carrot cake were turning into a modern-day Colonial house right before his eyes.

Unfortunately, the other thing happening right before his eyes was a whole lot less than magical.

Anton, usually not big on taking direction, had settled happily into the secondary position, doing whatever she told him, the moment she told him to do it.

And Hayley, the same woman who had practically made him take a lie detector test before she agreed to accept the job, was all relaxed and easy with Anton, a bald-headed, leather-wearing, tattooed rocker she had known for less than an hour.

He wouldn't have figured Anton was her type.

Which begged the question: what was her type…and why wasn't he on the short list?

Not that it mattered. He wasn't there on a social call. He was there because Tommy asked him to be there.

“That cake's okay,” Lizzie said, following his gaze and fortunately misinterpreting the intent. “But you should see the swans she did for a wedding last year.” She paused. “Unless you're looking at my mom again.”

“That's a great cake,” he said, sidestepping the issue. “Where'd your mom learn how to do that?”

Lizzie shrugged. “She's been working here since forever. Grandpa Goldstein pulled her off the counter and into the kitchen when she was a senior in high school.”
Tap-tap-tap
on the keyboard. “She took art classes when I was little. The rest she figured out on her own.”

“Are you going to follow in her footsteps?”

“I like working in the store but I'm going to be a scientist like my grandmother.”

“Which discipline?” Like he didn't have Jane's CV memorized.

“Oceanographer,” Lizzie said with obvious pride. “She gives lectures all around the world.” She looked up from the screen. “I need your name for the proposal.”

“I'm Finn Rafferty, but I'm not your customer. Tommy Stiles is.”

“Which one of you is the famous guy?”

He could hear Hayley's horrified gasp across the room. Apparently Mrs. Goldstein had been listening…

“Elizabeth! Tell Mr. Rafferty you're kidding.”

Lizzie's brow furrowed. “I'm not kidding. I just wanted to know which one of them is famous.”

Anton's laugh rang out. “Good thing Tom's back in the Hamptons.”

“Is he an actor?” Lizzie asked, fingers poised on the keyboard.

“Tommy Stiles and the After Life,” Hayley said.

Finn could hear the “d'oh!” in her voice.

“Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,” Finn offered.

Lizzie shrugged her fourteen-year-old shoulders again.

“Mucho multiplatinum, multigold,” Anton volunteered.

Click-click-click. Pause. Click-click-click.

“The old guy with the highlights!” Lizzie crowed. “I thought he was dead.”

The bakery kitchen erupted into loud groans.

“Don't look at me,” Hayley protested, waving her hands in the air. “Her father loved disco.”

He couldn't remember the last time he heard Anton laugh so loud or so long. “The child needs to sit down and listen to what rock is supposed to sound like. Tommy is one of the greats.”

“‘Break Me,'” Finn said, listing Tommy's greatest hits. “‘Your Place or Heaven,' ‘Fear of Falling'—”

“‘Fire Fight'!” Hayley and Anton said simultaneously, then slapped plastic-wrapped hands in the air over the carrot cake.

Lizzie rolled her eyes. “Okay, okay!” she said in good-natured defeat. “I get it. He's super-amazing and everyone but me knows it. That's cool.”

I like this kid,
Finn thought as the printer churned out a copy of the proposal. She was smart, funny, easygoing, so much like her grandfather Tommy that it almost made the puzzles of DNA clear to him. Until a few minutes ago, Lizzie Goldstein hadn't known Tommy Stiles existed. She had no frame of reference she could use to model herself after him. She was her own self and that self was a smaller, feminine version of the grandfather she had never met.

He locked eyes across the room with Anton. The drummer saw it too, which meant Finn would have to do some explaining on the long drive back out to Long Island. He couldn't deny what was right there in front of them. He wasn't sure he wanted to.

“It's our standard form,” Lizzie was saying as she pushed the legal-sized page toward him. “Basic stuff about deposits, cancellation penalties, payment options.”

“Great,” he said. “I'll take a look.”

“I mean, I know you're a lawyer and everything, but I do a thorough job. You won't find anything.”

“Then you won't mind if I take a look.” The kid had self-confidence, that much was certain.

He scanned the paragraphs, ran the numbers in his head, then reread the entire thing slowly, word for word.

“You were right,” he said. “This is textbook-perfect stuff. I know paralegals who couldn't get it this right.”

She beamed at the praise. “Thanks. I told you it was good.”

“Except for one thing.”

“But I'm sure—”

He crossed out a price quote and replaced it with another, higher one.

She took a close look at his change. “You raised the price!? Nobody raises the price!”

“I offered your mother extra for short notice when we were negotiating.”

“She didn't tell me that.”

She maintained eye contact like a first-class litigator pleading her case in front of the Supremes.

“She forgot,” he said, “but I didn't.”

“Are you going to sign?” she asked, unable to mask the excitement in her voice. “I mean, like now? Tonight?”

“I'm going to sign.”

“You don't have to take it back for the famous guy to countersign?”

“I can sign for him.”

She looked like a kid who still believed in Santa Claus and he felt like the Grinch Who Stole Christmas. Would she still look that happy when she found out Tommy was her grandfather and this whole thing had been nothing more than a convenient way to check them all out before breaking the news?

“Yo!” Anton bellowed. “We need a drum roll here.” He started pounding out a rolling beat on the marble slab he had been working on.

Lizzie leaped to her feet. “Let me see!” The mini-mogul morphed back into a skinny fourteen-year-old right before Finn's eyes.

Hayley looked triumphant. Her smile was wide and, Finn suddenly realized, every bit as lopsided as her father's. Except she didn't know that. She didn't know half the things he knew, half the things she would find out as this whole story unfolded.

There was a guarded quality to her that Lizzie didn't share. He had only done a basic LexisNexis search, but he had seen enough about her ex-husband to understand why she had erected fences around herself and the ones she loved.

There were no fences around Tommy's heart. The only reason he cared about protecting his assets was for the sake of his children. Guarding his heart was something he had never learned to do.

In a perfect world, they would meet and the bond would spring to life between them in the space of a heartbeat. Tommy would open his arms to his long-lost daughter and she would fall into them, no questions asked.

A father-and-child reunion that would erase thirty-eight years of questions?

Not a chance in hell.

 

What was going on? Finn Rafferty wouldn't stop looking at her.

She wouldn't have known that except for the fact that she kept looking over at him and getting caught. She had tried to conceal it by pretending she was keeping an eye on her daughter but the man had radar.

He probably had a few questions and she didn't blame him. Asking a fourteen-year-old to negotiate the deal for you was probably not the way things were done out there in tony East Hampton.

South Jersey must seem like another planet to him.

Which, following that line of thought, made her an alien.

That would explain a lot.

“So what do you think?” she asked when he finally joined them at the work bench. “This is a basic design, per the client's request, but I'll use some of the same techniques on the drum set for your party next week.”

“Looks good.”

“That's the best you can do?”

“It looks very good.”

Even Anton groaned.

If she had been in his shoes, she would have been watching the process every step of the way, hanging on every shingle and shutter. Now that the deal was all but signed, he acted like the finished product was irrelevant.

“C'mon, man.” Anton sounded exasperated. “Open your eyes. This is a work of art.”

“Anton set the windows in place,” she explained as Rafferty deigned to take a closer look. “We use finely spun sugar baked in the oven for the panes of glass.”

Nothing.

Not even a grunt.

Anton, beaming like a proud father, pointed out various details that seemed to float right over his boss's head. Or was he Anton's boss? They seemed more like friends. The whole relationship was muddled to her.

Trish had been right when she said Anton was a rock star. He was the After Life's drummer, a position he'd held for the past fourteen years. Before joining up with Tommy Stiles, he had played backup for a veritable Who's Who of rock royalty. He was currently separated from his first and only wife and living in a guesthouse on Tommy's Long Island property. To hear him tell it, Stiles was a combination of Rod Stewart and Mother Teresa, a generous, warm-hearted free spirit who would give you the Versace off his back if you needed it.

“Nobody's that perfect,” she had said as she carefully urged the sugar paste deck into position at the back of the carrot cake house. “Tell me he pulls the wings off flies or likes to lie around in his Jockeys eating pork rinds and watching NASCAR.”

“He does like NASCAR,” Anton had admitted, laughing, “but, believe it or not, he's one of the good guys.”

She didn't believe it. You didn't get to be that famous for that long by being a good guy. Her ex-husband wasn't even famous and he hadn't managed to make it out of his twenties with his good-guy credentials intact.

Not that it was any of her business. She was decorating a cake for the man, not marrying him. Although if she remembered her celebrity gossip correctly, Stiles was a big fan of marriage and had an army of ex-wives and lovers and children scattered on two continents to prove it.

Classic male menopause, she thought. The aging stud who started up a new young family every time he felt his testosterone level getting lower. Not exactly her idea of a great role model.

A man like that spent his twenties and thirties building a career, making a name for himself, forgetting the fact that he had a wife and children back home who made his freedom possible. Sooner or later the marriage (or marriages) broke up, and our hero found himself a new woman, and next thing you knew he had himself a new wife and a new family and a full-color spread in
People
filled with quotes like “I love being a dad” and “You bet I change diapers.”