Petite Madeleine: Drew's Story (Meadows Shore Book 3) (2 page)

“Yia-yia
and Pappouli,” she smiled. “Happy, stubborn, and in their nineties now. Tell me about your family. How are those gorgeous brothers of yours?”

“I thought I was the gorgeous one.”

“The most gorgeous,” she said, before her smile faded. She’d allowed herself to be lulled into an easy banter. Back to the way things used to be, but clearly not where she wanted to be anymore.

“My brothers are doing well. Mark and Luke are lawyers, one in private practice, and the other works for the government. I’ll let you guess who does what,” he smiled. “Jake’s the stud quarterback for the Hawks, Will was elected to my dad’s old senate seat, and—hang on to your hat—Cole’s getting married.”

“No!”

He nodded, grinning. “Yup.”

“Cole Harrington married. I bet there are women weeping all over Boston.”

He laughed. “Her name is Alexa. She’s perfect for him, stole his heart when he wasn’t looking. Poor bastard, he’s totally whipped.”

“I’m so happy for him! How about Vovó and the Clayton girls?”

“My grandmother had bypass surgery in the fall, but she’s doing great now, stronger than ever. Sophie had a baby last summer. Her name is Lily,” he said with a soft smile, thinking about his adorable little niece.

“I bet Sophie’s an incredible mom.

He nodded. “My cousins are all doing great. Little Juliana is about to become a lawyer. But enough about them, I want to hear all about you.”

“There’s not much to tell. I’ve never been a very exciting woman.”

“I don’t remember it quite like that.”

She looked away again, and he knew she was remembering, just like he’d been remembering. Thousands of memories flooding the circuits, making it difficult to think straight, difficult to even breathe.

“The bakery’s my baby. It takes up all my time and then some. I’m hoping one day to turn it into a tearoom, a real tearoom, but I’ll need to find a bigger space. For now,” she smiled, “it’s perfect for me.”

“Lola’s. Where’d you come up with the name?”

“It just seemed right.”

He nodded. “I ran by here yesterday morning, and the line was out the door.”

She beamed, and the gold flecks in her eyes shimmered. “We won a baking contest that came with some publicity, and the place has been packed ever since.”

“An award?”

She shrugged. “What’s that thing Reece always says? ‘There’s no accounting for taste,’” she said, summoning her haughtiest British accent. The pretentious one her friend Reece used with abandon, to add some bite, or to emphasize the ridiculous and the absurd.

“Reece.” He chuckled and shook his head. “Do you still keep in touch with her?”

“Mm-hm. We talk almost every day. She’s having a torrid affair with an Aussie sailor. It might be serious. He’s an irreverent daredevil—it’s a match made in heaven.”

“How about you, anyone special in your life?” He tried to sound casual, while bracing himself for bad news.

“There are lots of special people in my life, but I’m not dating anyone right now.”

I’m not dating anyone right now
. He quietly let out a long, steady stream of air. There was a glimmer of hope, something for him to hang on to.

“So how does it feel to be the youngest general manager in all of sports?”

“You follow Boston sports?”

“Of course not,” she scoffed making his lips curl. “But I read the newspaper. It was in all the papers.”

“That title’s no longer mine. You know how it is, turn around and some young whippersnapper comes along and steals it right out from under you. Drew Harrington, the youngest GM in all of sports. Let’s grab a cold one and sit back, see how long it’ll take him to wet his pants and destroy the team,” he chuckled. “I was only too happy to give up that particular title.”

“A lot of pressure.”

He shrugged. “I love my job. What could make a guy happier than working for the team you followed your whole life? I got lucky. After I emerged from the black hole I’d climbed into, I took a job with the Blues’ grounds crew. It was exactly what I needed, demanding physical labor around a place and a game I loved. It gave me time to get some badly needed help, and finish school.”

“Where did you finish?”

“Harvard.”

“Slumming?”

He threw his head back and laughed. “Spoken like a true Brown alum.”

“Forever true.”

“Cass … you saved me. I was in a downward spiral straight into hell. I’ve never had a chance to thank you. Although I’m not sure how you can ever thank someone for saving your life.”

“I didn’t do anything.” She shook her head. “I tried, but nothing I did seemed to help.”

“You were twenty—barely—and you had your head on straight enough to ask for help. I was so broken, there’s no way you could have fixed me.”

She took a deep breath, and on exhale her entire body seemed to relax. “I’m so glad it turned out well.”

“Mostly well. But I lost something valuable, priceless, along the way.” He found her eyes and held on for dear life, until she cut the tether.

“It was great to see you, and I’ve enjoyed catching up, but I’ve got to get to the bank before it closes.”

“I’ve got to get back to the ballpark, too, before they think I’ve been abducted by an overzealous Orioles’ fan.”

He brushed his finger over the top of her hand. “Have dinner with me tonight. I feel like we hit on just a few of the high notes. There’s so much more left to say.”

“I’m up before dawn to bake, so I don’t normally go out during the week.”

“I’ll even go somewhere that serves stuffed zucchini blossoms. Come on, how can you resist watching me eat delicate flowers? I’m sitting here shriveling just talking about it. You can take a picture of me munching on one, and send it to my brothers.”

The corners of her mouth curled up softly, but the sad, faraway look in her eyes told a different story. “Call me after the game. Let’s see how late it is and…”

He didn’t bother to wait until she finished before pulling out his phone. “What’s your number?”

She surprised him by taking the phone from his hand and punching in the security code. He couldn’t believe he’d allowed her to take it from him, just like that. The phone held all his secrets, but more importantly, it held all the team’s. He never let anyone touch it.

“You remember my password?”

“Who could forget the date you hit your first home run? It was a grand slam. Your coach even let you get sprinkles on your ice cream cone after the game.”

His heart swelled.

She handed him back his phone. “Drew, if we have dinner, it’s just dinner, okay?”

No, it’s not okay with me, but I don’t think I’ve got a damn choice.
“Of course.”

“Good luck tonight.”

He should have invited her to the game. They could have gone to dinner right from the ballpark. Now she had some wiggle room, an opportunity to blow him off. He pushed the thought out of his head, and walked the rest of the way to Camden Yards with a bounce in his step.

Cassie. He’d found Cassie, and she wasn’t wearing a ring.

When she woke up this morning, Drew Harrington was the very last person on earth she expected to run into. The fantasies she’d harbored for years about casually bumping into him had petered out long ago. Well, maybe not long ago, but it had certainly been awhile.

She’d followed his career in the papers, and his personal life in the tabloids, grateful for any tidbit. It was pathetic, but at least she’d stopped googling him daily.

Her heart had brimmed with pride the day he was hired as the Blues’ general manager. She imagined him bursting with joy, his deep blue eyes bright and sparkling while he met the Boston press corps. An impossible grin, too big to wipe off his face, and that gorgeous dimple in the left corner of his mouth, getting deeper by the second. The one she’d dipped her tongue in, time and time again.

Even his harshest critics gushed about his talents that day. The whizz kid who always had a baseball in hand, a pair of drumsticks tucked behind one ear, and a beautiful woman on his arm.

There’d been a time, long, long ago, in a city not so far away, where he’d been happy to have her, only her, on his arm. But that was before his parents died, before he stopped going to class and became best friends with a bong. Before she’d found him passed out, facedown in vomit, and called his cousin Sophie. Before he left Brown…

And before her life as a sheltered princess took a wrong turn off Fairy Tale Boulevard and veered onto Hard Knocks Drive with all its bumps and bruises. It seemed like a lifetime ago. Some days, it seemed so distant, so alien, like it must have been someone else’s charmed life.

One day she was at his house enjoying dinner with his family and playing in the pool, and a few days later she stood sandwiched between her parents at the funeral home, waiting to pay their respects. Four caskets lined up at the front of the enormous parlor, holding the remains of Senator and Mrs. Harrington, and Ambassador and Mrs. Clayton. Avó Angelina clasping a rosary in one hand and an embroidered handkerchief in the other. Both Angelina’s daughters and their husbands, gone from this world. The parents to her eleven grandchildren, who stood shoulder to shoulder at her side.

When she reached Drew, there was barely a flicker of recognition in his eyes. His arms went around her like a robot, stiff and automatic. He nodded and said
thank you for coming
, like she was a distant acquaintance, rather than the woman who had shared herself intimately with him for nearly three years.

She sat between her parents for hours while a never-ending sea of mourners passed through the line. Sophie standing near her grandmother, translating and making introductions, often comforting rather than being comforted. Cole stood next to her, and the others in a line by birth order.

The boys in charcoal suits with pressed white shirts and somber ties. The girls in simple black dresses with tearstained faces devoid of makeup. The only color was the red that rimmed their sunken eyes.

The difference between the cousins was that the girls hugged with their entire beings, and allowed themselves the comfort of tears, while the boys stood stiff, empty carcasses with hollow eyes, like zombies inhabiting a horror movie.

No one stood more stiffly than Drew. Normally personable and engaging, he looked through every person who offered condolences, and repeated the same phrase again and again,
thank you for coming
.

The wake began at two in the afternoon, and at eight o’clock that evening, when her parents dragged her from the room, there was still a line out the door and a long queue of cars waiting to enter the parking lot.

“He looks awful,” she said to her mother on the way to the car. “I’ve never seen him like that. He barely acknowledged me. I expected him to be sad, maybe even angry. But he looked empty. Like all the life’s been sucked from his body.”

“I don’t think he’s gotten to anger yet, Cassia. I think he’s lost. Sometimes the brain shuts itself off because the pain is too much to bear. He needs some time.”

He barely acknowledged me.
Funny she’d thought of herself in his darkest hour, because when disaster fell at her doorstep, the last thing she considered was herself.

She took a slow, deep breath, letting her fingers graze her left breast. There would be no dinner tonight. Not with him. Tempting as it was, she wouldn’t go there. Couldn’t go there. The look of horror on his face when he heard her story would be too much for her soul to bear. His strong features twisted and contorted, not knowing what to say to her. No one ever knew what to say.

She wanted him to remember her the way she’d been when he held her in his arms after loving her—whole and unscarred.

* * *

“Hey, it’s me,” he said into the phone.

“Sorry about the game.”

“You’re probably an Orioles’ fan,” he muttered.

“Yankees, still, always. My loyalty doesn’t waver, but I am partial to any team who puts them in a better playoff position.”

“Well that certainly describes the Blues tonight,” he groaned. “How about some dinner?”

“It’s late. I can’t tonight.”

“It would certainly improve my mood. It’s the least you can do after we put your team in a better position to play into October.”

“You don’t fool me. It’s the first week of the season, far too early to know who’ll still be playing in the fall. You’re not too down to go out?”

While the Orioles whacked one ball after another off the Blues’ young pitcher, it had barely registered with him. All he could think about was Cassie. There would be plenty of time tomorrow to think about tonight’s shellacking. “Didn’t you just say it’s early in the season? How about dinner?”

“It’s too late for me tonight. Maybe next time the Blues are in town.”

“That won’t be until the middle of the summer. I can’t wait that long, Cassie. And anyway, you’ll hate it.”

“I’ll hate it?”

“Yup, because I have your phone number now, and I’ll pester you until I drive you crazy.”

She didn’t answer right away, and he expected her to turn him down. He was already preparing to plead his case, when she surprised him. “Tomorrow, the game’s earlier. It won’t end quite so late.”

His spirits soared. “Crabs and blueberry pie on Fenwick Island?”

“Nope. Zucchini blossoms. I know just the place.”

He chuckled. She was having dinner with him, that’s all that mattered. Those zucchini blossoms could be stuffed with gizzards for all he cared.

* * *

When the team was on the road, Drew spent a lot of time in hotel rooms. It had never bothered him. He fell into bed exhausted from traveling, and the long days and nights at the ballpark. Sleep usually came quickly. But tonight the bed was too hard, and the room was too hot for sleep. Cassie was just across town, yet he missed her more than ever. She’d looked like an angel today, a gift from the gods.

When he finally drifted off
, he was sitting in his freshman seminar at Brown, Greek Mythology, gawking at the hot brunette walking toward him wearing a bright pink tank top and a little skirt that swished against her thighs. She had on flip-flops, and her shiny, painted toenails matched her shirt and made his blood flow south. Pulling his gaze up, he followed the skinny straps from her otherwise bare shoulders to where her nipples strained under the stretchy pink fabric. The whisper-thin straps made no pretense that she was wearing a bra. From the way his body was reacting, hot pink might just be his new favorite color.

“Is anyone sitting here?” she asked, gesturing to the seat near him.

“No,” he choked out, coughing to clear the frog that had settled in his throat. Completely tongue-tied, but wanting desperately to talk to her, he channeled his older brothers, and leaned coolly back in the chair with his legs stretched well beyond the desk. “What’s in the box?”

“Cupcakes.”

“Cupcakes?”
Damn
. The seminar was a class, but it was also their freshman advisory. Or, as his brother Mark referred to it, a support group for dorks who don’t have a clue about life away from Mommy and Daddy. Hmmm, was he was supposed to have brought food today? Had he already blown the first assignment?

“It’s my birthday. I made cupcakes,” she said, as though she could read his mind.

Her voice was lyrical, without a hint of guile. And he wondered if she was two French fries short of a Happy Meal, bringing cupcakes to class on her birthday like a second grader, or if she just had big balls and didn’t care what people thought of her. By the time class ended that afternoon, he didn’t really care which it was. She was hands down the most incredible creature he’d ever set eyes on, and he wanted to know her better.

There were a dozen students in the advisory group that afternoon, and the professor asked each one to introduce themselves. She went first.

“I’m Cassia Anteros, but almost everyone calls me Cassie. I’m from New York, but I live in Keeney now. Today’s my birthday,’’ she smiled, “and I brought cupcakes and iced tea to share. I hope you’ll help me celebrate.”

“Anteros. The god of unrequited love. Cupid’s brother and the son of Aphrodite and Ares. By all means, Cassie, let’s have your cupcakes. And tea,” Professor Stamoulis said with a twinkle in his eyes.

Everyone in the group was mesmerized by her. The guys because she was hot and brought food, and the girls because she was genuinely nice and didn’t flirt. She acted like she didn’t know she was beautiful, handing out iced tea and cupcakes, serving them like she was a mere mortal instead of a descendant of the gods.

The cupcakes were frosted with pale lavender icing, and decorated with white and purple sprinkles. They were big, chocolate treats with a fudgy center that melted on his tongue.

It was just what everyone needed after the excesses of a long orientation week. Although they’d be loath to admit it, they were all a little homesick, and tired of the responsibilities that came with free-flowing alcohol, and unsupervised nights filled with the unrelenting pressure to have a fresh, warm body in their bed every night, or to be that fresh warm body. The cupcakes made them feel like carefree kids again, and they had Cassie and her quiet confidence to thank for the welcome reprieve.

He hung around after class, pretending to help her clean up, hoping she might throw him a crumb or two, but she didn’t, and he was too unsure of himself to take the initiative.

The next day, when he strolled into freshman English, she was there. It was turning out to be his week. No cupcakes, but a different kind of treat: her lean, tanned legs in white denim shorts that hugged her tight, round ass. She smiled up at him through long, dark lashes while he slid into the empty seat beside her.

And their friendship began.

The first assignment in English class was to choose a critique partner for the semester. “Want to work together?” she asked when they left the building after class.

“Sure.”
He tried to appear smooth, not too interested. After watching his three older brothers do it hundreds of times, he knew just how to pull off that cool external façade. But inside, his heart was tap dancing on his chest wall.

The final assignment of the semester had been to take a scene from a novel they’d studied in class, write a paper, and accompany it with some creative element. They chose
In Search of Lost Time
, and their creative piece would be to recreate Proust’s miniature cakes. To make the petite madeleines so tasty, so memorable, that everyone who ate them would be left with a lasting impression on their subconscious.

It was her idea, and he’d readily agreed—what could be bad about cake? Problem was, he didn’t know a pot from a pan.

Fortunately, she loved to bake, so she made the madeleines, and he carried the ingredients from the grocery store, washed dishes, and eagerly sampled every new batch.

One evening, while he was sprawled on the counter of her dorm kitchen, studying for an economics exam, she cried, “I think this is it!” Her excitement woke him from the boring theory he’d been trying to make sense of. And when she leaned over the counter to offer him a taste, he grabbed her wrist and pushed it away, tasting her instead. The kiss had been more than three months in coming, long, long overdue.

He fed on her, gently at first, but when she parted her lips for him, he dragged her up on the counter, where they explored every crevice of each other’s mouths until the resident assistant interrupted them.

“Hey, what are you two doing?” she chastised. “That’s unsanitary! This is a communal kitchen. Take it somewhere else.”

And they did.

She gave him her virginity that night, in a bed that smelled of almonds and honey. He hadn’t had all that much experience either, but he tried to make it special for her.

He had five female cousins who’d grown up next door, whose virtue he and his brothers protected with their very lives, so he fully understood the gift she freely gave him, and did his best to be worthy of it.

The alarm blared
, jolting him out of his favorite dream. He was foggy, with a raging hard-on begging for attention. Stretching his arms toward the ceiling, he wondered for a minute if seeing her at the bakery yesterday had all been part of the dream. He shook his head. It had been real, and she looked exactly like she had the last time he saw her. Maybe her hair was a little shorter, and her breasts a little rounder, but otherwise the same.