Teresa Hill – Countdown to the Perfect Wedding (страница 2)
What he’d hoped would be a small, family-only affair had turned into an extravaganza, and Victoria, normally the epitome of calm and grace under pressure, now seemed like a woman trying to steer the Titanic through a vast, bottomless ocean, fraught with all sorts of confusion and peril.
It was a little disconcerting, but not overly so. Tate had always heard weddings made just about everyone crazy. It would all be over soon, and he and Victoria could get on with having a life together, which he expected to be nothing but smooth sailing—two intelligent, hardworking people with the same goals, same values, who’d known and respected each other for years. How could they go wrong?
Tate checked himself for any twinge of impending nerves, happy to find none. He was even whistling a bit, striding down the back hall when the most amazing smell hit him.
Tangy, citrusy…lemons, he decided.
Something sweet, too.
Lemons, sugar no doubt and…some kind of berries? He groaned, it smelled so good.
Someone preparing food for the wedding, he supposed, and yet, he didn’t remember anything that smelled that good at the various tasting menus they’d sampled, at Victoria’s insistence.
He lingered in the hallway, thinking if he couldn’t get a bit of that sweet lemony thing right now, who could? After all, he was the groom. So he turned around and headed into the big, open gourmet kitchen, finding a slender young woman clad in a starched white apron, her copper-colored hair tied back in a braid, testing the firmness of a plate of lemon bars she’d just pulled from the oven. That luscious smell was even more irresistible here in the kitchen.
A boy of maybe seven sat on a high stool beside her, pouting for all he was worth. “One?” he asked. “Come on, Mom. Just one?”
“Max, you already had two from the earlier batch. Any more and you’ll be sick, and I can’t have you sick this weekend, because I can’t take care of you and cook for all these people.”
“But—”
“No.” She didn’t let him get out another word, as she slid her lemon bars one by one onto a waiting cooling rack. “Now stay here, and guard these for me. I just used the last of the powdered sugar, and I have to search the pantry for more.”
The boy pouted mightily but held his tongue.
Tate waited until the cook disappeared into the butler’s pantry and the even bigger pantry closet in back of that and then strolled into the kitchen, saying, “Wow, that smells amazing.”
The kid looked up and frowned. “Yeah.”
Just then, from deep inside the pantry, Tate heard a woman’s voice call out, “Tell me you’re not eating those, Max? Because I counted them already. I’ll know if you do.”
The boy sighed and looked resigned to following that order. “I’m not.”
“Just not fair, is it?” Tate said quietly to the boy.
The kid shook his head. Judging by his expression, he was trying to convince Tate he was a poor, abused child, left to starve among all this bounty.
Tate finally got a good look at the things. Lemon, indeed, and something pinkish mixed in. “Lemon and strawberry?” he guessed.
“I dunno. They just taste really good.”
“I’m sure,” Tate agreed, sniffing again. “Raspberry. That’s what it is, isn’t it? Do you remember?”
“I think so,” Max said, looking none too sure of himself. “Mom calls ’em sugar daddies.”
“Oh.” Tate nodded. Interesting name. “Because she’s going to sprinkle powdered sugar on top of them?”
“’Cause of Leo,” Max said.
Surely the kid didn’t mean what Tate was thinking? “So, Leo is…your dad?”
“No.” Max shook his head. “A friend of mine and my mom’s. She cooked for him and stuff, and he liked her a lot.”
“Oh.” Tate didn’t dare ask another thing.
“She got to go to cooking school ’cause of it,” Max said, obviously a talker. “She always wanted to go to cooking school. And I get to go to school, too, someday. I mean, I didn’t really want to, but Leo left me some money for that, too. Not cooking school, but…the big place? You know?”
“College?” Tate tried.
Max nodded. “I guess I have to go.”
“So…Leo was a good guy, I guess,” Tate said, at a complete loss as to what else to say to the kid about that particular arrangement.
“You ever have a sugar daddy?” Max asked.
Tate grinned, couldn’t help it. It was like trying to have two completely different conversations at once. The kid was talking about his mom’s dessert, wasn’t he?
“No,” Tate said. “I haven’t had the pleasure.”
“They’re the best thing my mom cooks,” Max confided. “And she didn’t even have to go to cooking school to learn to make them. She already knew.”
“Wow,” Tate said.
Max leaned in close and whispered, “She won’t give me another one, ’cause she thinks I’ll get sick if I have one more. But I won’t, really. Maybe she’ll give you one, and you can…you know…share with me?”
Tate loved it. What a little schemer. Life would never be dull with this one around. He reached out and ruffled the kid’s hair, thick and dark reddish brown and just getting to the unruly stage where it really needed to be trimmed.
“I’ll do my best,” Tate promised.
“So, did you ever have the other kind of sugar daddy?” Max continued.
“Other kind?”
Max nodded. “Like Leo?”
Tate cleared his throat to stall for time. “I…I don’t think so.”
“Know why mom called him that?”
“No, Max, I don’t,” he said carefully.
“’Cause he was so sweet, and he was like a dad. He took care of us.”
“Oh.” Tate nodded, thinking that was about as good of a G-rated explanation as he could think of. “Well, I’m glad for you. And your mom.”
From their hiding place in the dining room, ears pressed to the wall shared with the kitchen, Eleanor groaned softly, throwing a horrified look to her friends and companions in meddling, Kathleen and Gladdy.
“Sugar daddy? Tate’s going to think Amy’s just awful!”
Kathleen, Leo’s loving widow, sighed and admitted, “Okay, so it’s not going particularly well at the moment.”
“Well? It’s a disaster!” Eleanor exclaimed.
“Not completely,” Gladdy pointed out. “I mean, your godson is surely not going to think we brought Amy here to fix her up with him. Not from what he just heard from our dear Max.”
“No, he’ll think she’s a gold digger! A kept woman, looking for her next sugar daddy to take over where Leo left off!” Eleanor could have cried right then and there.
The wedding was less than ninety-six hours away.
“Just give it a moment,” Kathleen said, calm as could be. “See what happens. Your godson barely knows Amy, but he’s clearly interested in her cooking and quite taken with Max.”
“Why would he even want to know her now?”
“For the lemon bars, if nothing else,” Gladdy said, sounding absolutely sure of herself.
Eleanor sighed, feeling doubtful about the whole mess, but stayed where she was, her ear pressed once again against the wall.
Amy found the powdered sugar, finally, but only after climbing on a rolling ladder that slid from one end of the tall pantry wall to the other and nearly climbing onto the top shelf to reach into the back and get it.
This was the most amazing pantry she’d ever seen. And the kitchen was a chef’s dream.
She climbed back down the ladder, powdered sugar in hand, her nerves still zinging from the first moment she’d seen the house—mansion was a better word, castle not far from her thoughts when she’d first seen the giant, weathered stone building—and realized what she’d gotten herself into.
She didn’t have the experience for this, having literally just graduated from her single year of cooking school last week. She’d gotten hardly any prep time at all, because she’d come in at the last minute, filling in for the unfortunate Adolfo. And just for fun, she hadn’t been able to find a sitter with so little notice, so she’d had to bring Max. Eleanor swore that one of the three nannies expected to accompany various invited relatives would be happy to watch over Max, and that there was another seven-year-old boy coming for the long weekend wedding, so he’d have a built-in playmate, too.