Second Time Around (17 page)

Ten minutes later, she returned to Paradise Found with her head held high and her industrial drill bit in hand. Anna, Cait, and Jamie were still camped out in the living room, eagerly awaiting her report.

“Well?” Cait prompted as soon as Brooke crossed the threshold.

“What’d he say?” Jamie demanded.

Brooke crumpled up the brown paper shopping bag. “Let me put it this way: I’m gonna have to find a new hardware store.”

She ignored all the questions and exclamations of outrage, retreated to her bedroom, and called the only person who could possibly assuage her burning sense of incompetence. “Hi, Professor Rutkin? It’s me again. Is this too late to call? … Oh good. … Yes, my science education is continuing apace. There are certain things in this world that I’m never going to understand, but I’ll figure out electrical circuitry or die trying. Do you think I might be able to drop by during your office hours tomorrow?”

O
oh, a retro fifties cocktail party sounds fabulous,” Anna said into her cell phone as she parked her car in the lot behind Pranza and gathered up her coat along with a trio of bags filled with refrigerated ingredients. “And honestly, there’s no need to apologize about the late notice. I have the whole night to bake in a professional kitchen. I’ll just run back to the grocery store and then get started. This is going to be fun. Don’t you worry, I’ll ferret out some outrageous old-school recipes.”

As she made her way past the dumpsters toward the restaurant’s back door, Anna sifted through her coat pocket
for the key and tried to allay her newest client’s concerns about “not wanting to hurt anybody’s feelings.”

“Absolutely. … No problem. … I’m the height of discretion. I won’t breathe a word of this to Trish Selway, believe me. … Right. Just give me your address and I’ll deliver everything tomorrow morning.”

Anna pushed the door open with her shoulder, clamped a pen cap between her teeth, and jotted down the customer’s contact information on her hand as she entered Pranza’s prep kitchen. “Seventeen Conifer Drive … fifth house on the left … red door. Okay, got it. I’ll give you a call if I have any other questions. Thanks so much for taking a chance on me, Mrs. Elquest. You won’t be sorry!”

She clicked off the phone and shook her head. Brooke hadn’t been kidding when she said there was only one baker in this tiny town. Every single person who had called Anna over the past week—and the inquiries had been increasing as word started to get out about the Thurwell anniversary cakes—had either started or finished the conversation with a variation of “Please don’t tell Trish Selway I called.”

The rubber mat beneath her feet shifted, and Anna whirled around to find herself inches away from Trish, whose surly scowl and flared nostrils indicated that she’d been eavesdropping.

Anna staggered back against the steel door of the massive walk-in refrigerator and struggled to regain her composure. Or at least the power of speech.

“Was that Belinda Elquest?” Trish’s eyes narrowed to tiny slits.

“What the hell are you still doing here?” Anna knelt down to retrieve the pen she’d dropped, but she didn’t take her gaze off the other woman.

“You said ‘Mrs. Elquest.’ I heard you.” Trish seized Anna’s hand and examined the address scribbled on her skin. “I can’t believe this.”

“
I
can’t believe you’re lying in wait for me again.” Anna snatched back her hand and stuffed it into her coat pocket. “The terms of our arrangement are crystal clear: From nine o’clock on, this kitchen is mine. Be gone.”

Trish ignored this and kept right on seething. “I don’t know who’s worse: you, for luring away my loyal clients, or Belinda, that two-faced traitor, for calling you. I made her high school graduation cake, her wedding cake, her baby shower cake. I gave my all for that chick—blood, sweat, and the best frickin’ buttercream of all time—and this is the thanks I get?”

“Did you ever stop to think that your attitude might have something to do with the mass desertion?” Anna said. “Besides, I don’t have to ‘lure’ anyone; I’m getting the orders because I’m the superior baker.”

Trish snorted. “You’re a hack!”

“Is that so? What was it Mrs. Elquest was saying about the dessert tray I did for the college reception? Oh yeah—she said I’m the confectionary equivalent of a ninja.” Anna flashed her most insincere smile. “On that note, I’m off to make a grocery run.”

“Good riddance.” Trish’s scowl deepened. She rubbed her forehead and produced a tiny blue foil packet from her shirt pocket.

Anna glanced at the label. “Is that ibuprofen?”

“Yeah. So? You planning on stealing that, too?”

“You can’t have ibuprofen.” The words were out of her mouth before Anna could stop them, a reflex honed from years of paging through
What to Expect When You’re Expecting
.
“Not if you’re pregnant. You can only have acetaminophen, and only in extreme cases.”

“Gee, the Bug and I really appreciate your concern,” Trish said with an exaggerated eye roll. “But maybe you should have thought of all that before you gave me a splitting headache, you snooty—”

Anna frowned. “Did you just refer to your unborn child as a bug?”

“Not just a bug,” Trish corrected. “
The
Bug.”

“That’s horrible!”

“Why? Haven’t you ever seen an ultrasound picture? It looks like a blurry little bug.”

“Well, you could at least call it something cute: the bean, the peanut, even the Gummi Bear.”

“Gag. When
you
get pregnant, you can use whatever vomitous little nickname floats your boat. But I’m sticking with the Bug. Mind your own business for once.”

“Fine.” Anna bristled. “Call the kid whatever you want. Ingest whatever you want. I have ingredients to buy and cakes to bake, and you better not be here when I get back, or I’ll call Seth and take your kitchen time along with what’s left of your client base.”

She pivoted on her heel, stalked back out into the alley, and let the heavy door swing shut behind her with a satisfying slam.

W
hen Anna returned from the grocery store forty-five minutes later, she was relieved to find the restaurant kitchen vacant and a whole night of baking-induced Zen stretching out before her. She plugged in her mp3 player’s portable speakers, queued up the
Pulp Fiction
soundtrack, and
prepared to improvise a sophisticated version of the first ’50s dessert on her catering list: Coca-Cola cake with buttercream frosting. The scent of sugar and cocoa and the familiar clatter of her metal measuring cups soothed her. So many things in her life had gone wrong lately, but a good recipe was always guaranteed to turn out well, provided you followed the directions.

After she measured out her dry ingredients and sifted together the flour, baking soda, and salt, she filled a white stoneware crock with room-temperature butter and locked the huge stainless steel bowl into the base of the industrial-grade Hobart mixer.

That’s when she realized that the mixer’s attachments were nowhere to be found. During Seth’s introductory tour of the kitchen, he’d mentioned that the mixer accessories were all stored in a metal drawer beneath the counter, but Anna searched and came up empty. Then she searched the drawers above and below—still nothing.

She was rooting through the contents of the condiment supply cartons, figuring that someone might have absent-mindedly stashed the beater attachment in there, when her phone rang again. Jonas’s name flashed up on caller ID. Again.

For the first time in days, she picked up. “Hello?”

“Hi.” He sounded a bit startled. “Finally. I was about to call our mobile provider and ask if you’d canceled your service.”

“No,” she said shortly. “I’ve been busy.”

“You’ve been avoiding me.”

“You’re the one who took off for another continent,” she pointed out.

“I didn’t have a choice, Anna. I have. To work.” She could practically hear him gritting his teeth.

She forced herself to relax the muscles knotting in her neck and shoulders. “You know what? I don’t have time to fight with you right now. I have work to do. I have deadlines.”

“What’s up?” He sounded heartened by the prospect of problem solving.

She gave him a thirty-second summary of the night’s events. “… and honestly, what is the point of signing a lease and paying all that money to use this space if I’m going to be constantly harassed by the world’s bitterest townie and I can’t even count on having the proper equipment? This is bullshit, Jonas! Bullshit!”

“Calm down,” Jonas said. “You’re getting way too emotional.”

“Of course I’m emotional! I’m tired, I’m exasperated, I miss you, I have no idea what’s happening between us, I’ve got a client depending on me, and the clock is ticking, and—”

“Anna. Ease up.” His voice got slower and calmer, the aural equivalent of Xanax. “One thing at a time. Don’t freak out about what’s going to happen twelve hours from now. Just concentrate on what you’re baking tonight.”

“That’d be a lot easier to do if I could get my hands on the fucking mixer attachment!”

“Ohhh-kay. I hate to do this, but I’m going to remind you that you ovulated thirteen days ago.” He cleared his throat. “Which means that right now, you may be kind of, uh, irrational.”

She sucked in her breath. “I
know
you did not just play the PMS card.”

“Sorry, I take it back.” He waited a beat, and then,
mistaking her enraged silence for forgiveness, forged ahead. “But you asked what I would do in this situation, and I’m telling you, if it were me, I’d stop ranting and raving and start doing something productive. Starting with finding an alternative mixer.”

“Of course.” She threw up her hands. “It’s so simple. Why didn’t I think of that?”

“I’m picking up on your sarcasm.”

“Well, I’m picking up on your condescension. The whole point of leasing this space is so I have industrial-grade equipment. Where am I supposed to come up with another Hobart mixer in the middle of the night up here in the Adirondacks?”

“What about the one you brought from home?”

“Jonas, I’m supposed to be feeding fifty people. It’s going to take forever to do everything that needs to be done with a single-batch mixer.”

“All the more reason to get started right away.”

She closed her eyes and curled her fingers around the edge of the counter. “I’m so glad we had this talk.”

“Me, too.” She could hear faint strains of music in the background on his end of the line. “So I was thinking about you today,” he said.

“Oh?”

“Yeah. You’re going to ovulate again pretty soon.”

Anna’s eyes popped open.

“And we’re on different continents,” he continued, with what sounded like optimism.

“Where exactly are you going with this?” she asked.

“Well. Isn’t it kind of a relief?”

“Not to me. Why would you say that?”

“Because the pressure’s off.” He forced a chuckle. “We don’t have to, you know—”

“Have sex? Have a baby? Have a future?”

“Force anything.”

Anna picked up her measuring cups and held on to them tightly, until the rims dug into her palm and the thick metal walls began to warm against her skin.

“We’re spending time together because we want to,” Jonas continued. “Not because your basal body temperature dictates that we have to. See? Progress.”

Anna wanted to ask him a million questions. Most of all, she wanted to ask him when he had stopped thinking of her as the love of his life and started thinking of her as a problem to be handled.

How much of this is my fault? When did we stop listening to each other?

All she said was, “I’m glad you want to spend time with me. On separate continents.”

“That can’t stand in our way. We could have phone sex.”

That caught her off guard. “No, we can’t.”

“Not right now, obviously,” he said. “You’re on deadline. But once you finish up with everything there, you could call me back and we—”

Anna hung up on him, set the oven timer, and allowed herself exactly five minutes to sob into a linen napkin. She thought about their wedding night, when she had also wept, not from joy but because the emotional strain of spending a five-hour reception trying to head off conflicts between Jonas’s divorced parents and Anna’s divorced parents and a seemingly endless parade of easily offended step-relatives and in-laws had left them too drained to do anything but lie
motionless in the huge four-poster bed in their honeymoon suite.

“Families suck.” The down pillow under her head had rustled as she gazed at her brand-new husband. “Individually, everyone’s fine, but as a group, they suck.”

“Yeah, they do,” Jonas had agreed. He was still wearing his rented tuxedo, looking simultaneously suave and vulnerable. “But that’s the whole point of getting married, right? We get to start our own family. Speaking of which, we better get crackin’. How many kids did I promise you? Four? Five?”

“Let’s start with one.” She’d laughed. “Tomorrow. I don’t think I have the energy to try for a wedding night baby.”