Icing on the Cake
Laura Castoro

www.mirabooks.co.uk

For Drake Anthony, the newest member of the Castoro clan.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A big thanks to Scott McGehee, owner of

Boulevard Bread Company in Little Rock, Arkansas.

And a special thanks to his night crew, who let me in

on the secret life of bread making. After watching their

intensive efforts, I’ll never complain about the

cost of a loaf of artisan bread again!

Chapter 1

The Pritikin diet almost killed me. Then along came Atkins, followed by the Stillman, Scarsdale, Hollywood, ketogenic and Zone diets. The South Beach was almost my coup de grâce. I’ve fought the good fight with all. I’m a baker.

Bread is the staff of life. Who could resist the warm yeasty fragrance of something loving in the oven? Plenty, to tell by sales at the No-Bagel Emporium during the no-carb years. After years of denying themselves steaks and chops, butter and cheese, the diet nation was ready to indulge in fat, as long as no flour was involved. But the mass hysteria couldn’t last. The craze has fizzled. It’s just a matter of time before bread is king again.

Yet New Jersey is not Manhattan. New ideas, even bad-diet fads, take a while to catch on and twice as long to fade out.

The morning rush, make that amble, has slowed as a well-toned woman in a workout camisole and low-rise pants gazes longingly at my bread racks. Then she sucks in her lower lip. She said she just came in for bottled water but I sense a weakness.

Shameless panderer that I am, I lure undecided customers with generous samples. Yesterday it was palm-size ciabatta slices spread with violet-flower honey. Today it’s raspberry-almond butter spread upon chocolate sourdough.

“We were meant for bread,” I whisper over my countertop like a desperate lover. “Try it.”

She shakes her head, clutching her Nina Bucci workout bag to her chest. “I really shouldn’t.”

“Just a taste.” I push the tray an inch closer to her. “If you’re going to sin, do it for the best of reasons.”

“I suppose one nibble can’t hurt.” She looks quickly left and right in my all-but-empty store, then reaches out and snatches up the smallest cube and pops it in her mouth.

I know what to expect, the sudden widening of her eyes, the slight catch of her breath, and then that little moan of animal satisfaction. I nod and smile. “I’ll just pop a loaf in a bag for you. Pay now and pick it up on the way back from working out.”

Before she can think better of her seduction I turn to bag a loaf, only a little ashamed of myself. I’ve become a pimp, and my madam is un petit pain.

Let me explain. I’m a bread addict. My grandparents owned the Bagel Emporium in Upper Montclair, New Jersey, for fifty years. They bought it from a Jewish couple from Hoboken, who were some of the first to emigrate to the new state of Israel in 1949. Five years ago Grandpa Horace decided they were too old to carry on and left the business to me, their only grandchild, and moved to Phoenix. It was a case of perfect timing. My career in advertising with my now ex, Ted, had begun to bore me to tears. I didn’t have to think twice. I’m a Jersey girl, albeit one with a degree from a Swiss finishing school. Practicality is bred into my genes. The way I see it something that engages the five senses, makes arm-toning exercises an option and produces one of life’s oldest culinary delights is a win-win situation.

Okay, Ted hated the idea. He said that in leaving advertising for an industry requiring physical labor I was “Opting out of an upper-middle-class career for a trade with all the cachet of cosmetology.”

I consider his attitude bias. He has gluten sensitivity, which makes him swell with gas. Not a deadly reaction, just a very uncomfortable one. The sight of a floury kitchen counter is enough to send him reeling backward.

“Thanks.” My customer smiles shyly at me as she pockets her change. “I hope Rodrigo doesn’t smell chocolate bread on my breath.”

“My pleasure.” I offer her a Pez from my Snoopy dispenser. “This will keep it our little secret.”

Ted’s opinion aside, I was born to make bread. I compensate by making the best bread in the tri-state area. I have plaques on the wall that attest to the fact.

We’re an artisan bakery, which is small enough so that each worker knows the whole process of making bread, and two or three of us can make enough batches to supply the daily requirements of the store.

From the beginning, we flourished.

The location was ideal, situated on the first floor of a three-story building whose second floor is home to Five-0, a lifestyle magazine for the woman of a certain age. The third floor houses Rodrigo’s Body Salon, which caters to suburbanites with cellulite issues. Between them and street traffic, the Bagel Emporium had a readymade clientele of boomer women who no longer thought two lettuce leaves make a lunch, and health acolytes who reasoned they had earned a little sumthin’ after burning two cinnamon buns’ worth of calories. Burn two, eat one. It was a calculation they could live with, and I knew I could live on.

Within weeks of ownership, I invested in two used industrial mixers and a brand-new stone deck oven, and branched out from bagels to my personal passion: leaven bread. We make the basics like baguettes, ciabatta, pagnotta, whole wheat, rye and sourdough. But I love to experiment. Custom orders for chocolate-cherry pumpernickel and piñon-nut queso blanco con mango whole wheat garnered so many requests they quickly became store staples along with gourmet delights like bittersweet chocolate croissants, bourbon pecan cinnamon rolls and focaccia pizzas. Friends call my creations the haute couture of bread-making. Business was so good after the first year that I dropped bagels altogether, a decision appreciated by the deli down the block. Regulars nicknamed us the No-Bagel Emporium, and it stuck. Then disaster struck. Noodles, pasta and bread became the pariahs of modern life.

The bakery is definitely on the road to recovery but the bills accrued while it was on life support sucked up all my discretionary savings. The bread is better than ever, but once lost, one’s clientele is difficult to lure back. We’re a broken habit.

I glance around my store. Like me, it’s neat but showing its age. Once I wore Albert Nippon and Ferragamos. Now I dress from the Gap sale rack. The No-Bagel Emporium needs a makeover to attract new attention. But there’s already a lien on the bakery. Guess we’ll both have to make do for now.

I check the front windows for the passing of a perspective customer. The bump bump vibrations of the body-pump class sound track that filters into my shop means my customer base is focused for the moment on burning calories, not consuming them.

To console my disappointment that there is no line around the block waiting to get in there’s always the case for a cinnamon roll. One bite is all it takes to produce a smile. Its syrupy, crunchy texture cannot be bested anywhere in the tri-state area. I know because we won a taste test four years ago.

Just as I’m adjusting my mouth for the first bite, the door opens and in comes the skinniest eight-year-old I’ve ever seen. “Hey, Dupree.”

“Hey, Miz T. You got a job for me today?”

I look around until I spy a broom. “Want to sweep the front?”

He nods but sticks out his lip. “When am I gonna get a real job?”

“Sweeping is a real job.” Dupree is an entrepreneur. His parents could buy my store but Dupree likes to earn his own money, which he doesn’t waste on things like sweet rolls. So I have to think up excuses to fatten him up a bit.

“Before you start I have something else I need you to do for me.” I put my cinnamon roll on a napkin and push it toward him. “I think Shemar is slipping. Tell me if you think this cinnamon roll is up to his usual standard.”

Serious as any adult, Dupree takes it, eyeballs it and then takes a big bite.

“You need some milk, to get the full flavor experience.” I pull a half-pint carton out of my case and offer it to him with a straw.

“It’s good.” He cranks his head to one side. “Only, needs a little more cin’mon.”

“I’ll tell Shemar. Finish it, anyway, because you know I don’t like wastefulness. I’ll give you a dollar as my consultant, and your choice of a loaf when you’re done sweeping.” Wish I could pay him but I don’t want child services coming after me for violating child labor laws.

Coffee cup in hand, I scoop up the mail and head for a booth. An ominous-looking envelope from my flour distributor sits on top.

I love the tone of dunning letters.

“We are sure you have overlooked…If not rectified in thirty days we will be forced…If the remit has been mailed please ignore…”

They manage to make you feel delinquent, a failure and possibly a good egg all in the same paragraph. Oh, and very afraid for your credit record.

I scan quickly through the advertisements and catalogs, until an industry magazine with the cover line AWAKE from the No-Carb Nightmare catches my eye.

I mumble as I read it until Celia taps me on the shoulder. “You okay, Liz?”

“Listen to this. The cover article says the low-carb craze peaked last year. Yet on the very next page there’s a piece about making low-carb bread. Instead of backing us up, the industry is still trying to cover every angle.”

Celia smiles, which emphasizes the Kewpie doll contours of her face. “Those articles are written months in advance. Everyone knows bread is back.”

I nod. “You’re right. Got to think positively. Business will pick up after people sample our wares at the Fine Arts and Crafts Show. That’s only a month away.”

“So is the wedding.” My blank look must give away the need for a prompt because Celia adds, “My friend Jenna’s wedding?”

“Oh, yeah.” How could I forget the topic of every other conversation with Celia since the invitation arrived two weeks ago?

Celia pats her twice-pregnant tummy. “Can you tell I’m working out with Rodrigo twice a week?”

“Absolutely.”

Celia Martin is a former Wall Street analyst who quit three years ago because she had fertility issues to resolve. They resolved as two sets of twins born sixteen months apart. Yet even the most dedicated mommy needs a little time off. Luckily, Celia’s husband has one of those boring-sounding careers in insurance financing that earns obscene amounts of money. Thanks to him, and her two live-in nannies, she can slum two mornings a week for me, ordering and pairing cheeses with our specialty breads. Twice a month, she goes into the city to get her hair done, and pick up our custom orders from Murray’s Cheese Shop in Greenwich Village.

Working for the No-Bagel Emporium isn’t usually an ego issue for Celia. But when a girlfriend from her “firmest” years is a partner in some disgustingly attractive IPO stock-optioned company, it’s hard to say “cheese specialist” in the same top that fashion. According to Celia, Jenna was one of those friends who would steal your boyfriend and then still manage to keep your friendship by making you feel she’s done you a service by freeing you up to find “someone worthy of you.” Now, that’s just Machiavellian. No wonder the upcoming wedding has Celia feeling the need to measure up to the world she left behind. She has, by my count, bought and taken back five outfits.

“Why don’t we knock off early?” Celia waggles her perfectly arched brows at me. “Shemar can take care of the lunch crowd. Let’s go get manicures and pedicures. My treat.”

I don’t hesitate on the issue of if she can afford it. But I’m in debt up to my no-longer-waxed eyebrows.

I duck my head. “You go. I really need to stay and help out.”

“It’s not a pity bribe,” she says, reading my mind. “Think of it as girlfriend therapy. You’re doing it not to embarrass me.”

And just like that, we’re out the door, after a quick reminder to Shemar, my baker and right hand. “Don’t forget to bag up the leftovers for pickup by the soup kitchens.”

One thing a bakery like ours simply can’t do is compete with itself by selling day-old bread. It’s quite frightening the number of customers who can’t tell the difference.

“What do you mean, let’s get tanned, too?”

Celia offers me a glib smile as she maneuvers her SUV into a parking space before a strip mall tanning salon in West Orange.

“The entire time I was trying to decide between dresses the salesgirls kept saying any of the dresses would look hot if I had a tan.”

“You have to be able to tan to tan, Celia. You don’t tan.”

Her Irish porcelain skin turns strawberry. “Spray tanning doesn’t activate a body’s melanin, just changes the outmost layer of skin, so even I can tan. If I start now, I will be able to squeeze in several sessions before the wedding. Let’s try it. With your olive skin tone, you’d turn JLo honey-gold.”

“Not me. I don’t do chemical things to my body unless under a doctor’s orders.”

Celia gives me her mommy’s-disappointed-in-baby glance. “Liz, life is about the decisions we make to live passionately or passively. Where’s your passion?”

Okay, I know what this is about. Celia is like Noah, and thinks the world should be paired up. “I’m seeing someone, remember?”

“You are, to put it in your own words, nondating Harrison Buckley.”

She’s right. That relationship could be said to be living passively. Really should do something about that. When I have time.

I glance down at my feet and smile. We’ve had our toes and nails done. Celia got tips and a French manicure and pedicure. I work in dough and prefer natural short nails. However, my toes are the color of watermelon slices. The glue-on “seeds” were optional. If that’s not living dangerously I don’t know what is.

“A-hem!”

“What?”

“Tan? Now?” Celia points to a banner in the window of the tanning salon.

Change your outside to love your inside.

“I hope no one paid money for that slogan.”

One minute later Celia and I are standing in the reception area of the South Beach Day Spa and Tanning Salon. Nearby a row of girls who look young enough to be cutting class flip through teen magazines and chat. Behind the wall of glass bricks flanking the reception area, colorful shapes move through a fogged kaleidoscope.

“Did you say Mrs. Tal-bot?” The receptionist’s eyes couldn’t be wider.

I nod.

She cuts her eyes to a young woman standing nearby, who is also openly staring at me, then says, “O-kaaaay.” She pushes a button and announces, “There are a Mrs. Talbot and a Mrs. Duffy here for spray tanning appointments.”

I wonder only briefly what that was about. Too nervous to sit I survey the menu of services on the wall that includes manicures, pedicures, facials and wraps. And, of course, tanning options.

I’m just wondering what sort of “options” there are to tanning when Celia says, “Oh, that’s what I want.” She points to a menu item: Double Hot-Action Dark Tanning.

“You’re a beginner, Celia. Think Gwyneth Paltrow and Julianne Moore.”

But she’s not listening. She’s picks up a flyer and reads. “Hot Action, also known as Tropical Heat, Skin Stimulation and Tingle, uses a combination of ingredients to increase the microcirculation of the skin, which increases blood flow. The hot-action lotion uses tan-extending walnut oil to produce an instant, Intense glow.”

“Intense glow? That doesn’t even sound normal, let alone safe.”

She flashes me a grin. “We’re not here for safe. We’re here for that outside to match our adventurous insides.”

“You obviously haven’t seen the unadventurous inside of my wallet.”

“My treat!”

Before I can form another way to say N-O, a young woman, this one in a shrink-to-fit tropical-blue smock that barely covers the tops of her bronzed thighs says to me, “I’m your hostess, Lili. Follow me, please.”

She pauses in a hallway of doors and says to Celia, “Did you bring a swimsuit?”

Celia nods and produces one from the depths of a purse the size of Pennsylvania. Since the twins were born, all her purses are the size of Pennsylvania.

“You may change out of your day clothing in here into a robe and shower cap. In the shower stalls you’ll find exfoliating cleanser to use to help prepare your skin. Dry yourself really well before you put on your suit and goggles.”

When she turns to me a big fat grin stretches my face. “I can’t tan because I didn’t bring a swimsuit. Or goggles.”

“We provide goggles. You have the option of going into the spray booth in the nude.”

“Not in this lifetime.”

She gives me a quick up and down. Her expression says she agrees that my shelf life for public nudity has expired. “We have disposable paper suits available, for a small fee.”

“She’ll take it.” Celia dares me to contradict her.

In spite of my anxiety about the paint job to come, I’m enjoying the idea of more pampering. Ask any woman of any age from any walk of life: self-affirmation can be most easily accomplished by a pampered hour consumed by such things as toenail length and shades of polish.

Five minutes later Celia and I are standing in a mint-green dressing room area, having exfoliated from chin to heels, putting on our suits. The locker room is a room away, and the cubbies provided for dressing don’t have curtains for privacy. I guess the thinking is if you’re vain/proud enough to tan it, you’d want to show off what you’re working with.

“What do you think?” Celia’s swimsuit bra top is a good fit. The low-waist boxer briefs make the most of her ample hips but hold in only part of her tummy. She puts a hand on the pooched-out leftovers. “Baby-making fat. I’m thinking lipo next year, after I lose another ten pounds. Good idea?”

“Maybe.” At the moment I have worse problems.

Who decided a halter top made from what seems to be quilted paper towels could contain a real woman? One breast keeps sliding out of its triangle section while the weight of the other tests the elastic bandeau meant to stop it from slipping out underneath. The panties? It barely covers the lawful essentials. My cheeks are on their own.

Our hostess sticks her head in the door. “Okay, first one ready?”

Before I can answer, Celia’s out the door. As I fiddle with the strings that claim to adjust hip exposure, the door swings back open and two young women enter.

One glance over my shoulder reveals a pair of deeply tanned but un-sun-kissed babes in micro bikinis, the kind you only see in ads for Australian beaches or Brazilian wax jobs. They are also wearing shower caps and heels.

One holds out a slender arm to the other. “Does this look like a Brazilian tan to you?”

Her whole body is the color of maple furniture; who can tell? But I turn quickly away. They weren’t speaking to me.

I hear her companion reply, “You look a bit toasty around the edges.”

The first one sighs. “They say it will take several hours for the full effect. Still, I expected, well, you know. More.”

The way she says this, I visualize beluga on toast triangles, chilled Dom, an ocean view and live violins.

I sidestep back into one of the dressing cubicles, hoping they will just ignore me. Now, not only do I feel sallow-complexioned and under-exfoliated, even my pedicure screams amateur. I’m a self-made woman in this spa-day world.

“Oh, look, a newbie,” says one of them in a stage whisper. The reason that must be so crystal clear is because my pale June-moon posterior is turned to her.

Moving closer to me, she says, “Hi there. You will want to go slow the first time in a tanning bed. You’re really untan.”

“Thanks,” I mumble without turning around. “But I’m getting a spray job.”

“Should you tell her?” murmurs the other one. “About the, you know, uneven affects spray tans can have on aging skin. How it streaks in sagging areas?”

“No, that wouldn’t be kind.” Muffled giggles accompany this as they drift into cubicles to change out of their suits. “But I’ve seen what inconsistent coverage can do. The poor woman looked like she had a disease.”

I suspect I’m being baited, even if they are whispering, but the partition blocks the nasty look I toss in their direction.

After a moment of silence one says, “Have you bought your wardrobe for Santa Fe?”

“Not everything. It’s so hard to shop now that I’m between sizes. I saw these really cute capris at Bloomies.” Big sigh. “But they were a size four, and positively bagged in the crotch. To make up for my bad mood, I bought two pairs of Michael Kors sandals, a gold-leather flat and wedgies with turquoise stones up the front.”

“Oh m’god! I saw those. They cost a fortune.”

“That’s right. But I earn it.” There’s a muffled exchange and more giggles. “Teddy just loves my new abs.”

“Ten days at a spa in New Mexico. You’re so fricking lucky, Brandi!”

My head jerks up. Teddy? Brandi! “Oh…my…God!”

I step backward out of my cubicle just as she does, and find myself looking dazedly at a face and body that accelerates my heart. It’s…. it’s…her!

Her gaze widens, as if I’m the one who needs help because I’m gaping at her standing there in the nude. “You know, I’m sure I’ve seen you somewhere before.”

That’s when I remember I’m wearing a shower cap and goggles. I hurriedly snatch off both, which is a mistake. My breasts heave and then drop, breaking the paper halter strings, so that they flop out over the top.

I reach back and grab for modesty’s sake one of the paper towelettes they gave us to dry off with. As I do, I hear a rip. The crotch of my bikini bottom pops, leaving me with two narrow triangles flapping free, fore and aft.

“Well, well. Liz.” Brandi’s lips twitch as her gaze flicks up and down my torso with mortifying interest in my wayward flesh. “It’s always…interesting to see you.”

“I—er, yeah,” I manage but she’s on the move.

“Got to run,” she says as she sashays her tiny bronze butt toward the lockers.

“Who was that?” I hear her buddy ask as they disappear around the corner. I miss the reply. But I don’t really need to hear it.

I strip off the remains of my wrecked suit with shaking hands. Of all the bad-luck, unnecessary things to happen!

I’m back in my own bra and panties when Celia reappears, which adds a second shock to the day. She looks like something that should be served up with clarified butter and lemon wedges.

“Holy cow! Celia, are you okay?”

“She’s fine. She’s just had a reaction to the tanning booster,” Lili says calmly.

Celia doesn’t look calm. She’s vibrating as if she’s got one of her new fingernail tips caught in an electric socket. “The hot-action cream said it gave maximum tanning results in the shortest possible time. I—I wanted to look—look.”

I turn to our hostess. “I thought she was going to be painted bronze. Cherry-red is not a tanning color.”

“It’s temporary,” Lili assures us with the perfect composure of a salon hostess accustomed to dealing with victims of a disastrous tanning job. “It will wear off.”

“She can’t go out in public like this,” I protest. “She looks like a frankfurter.”

“In twenty-four hours, she will look normal again.”

“Tanless?” Celia questions in alarm.

“No, just not so—”

“Boiled?” I suggest.

Lili purses her lips. “She’s not burned. Our hot-action creams simulate the same kind of heat you get from deep-heat muscle creams. Mrs. Duffy just has what we call an overt reaction. The overstimulation of blood vessels will wear off.”

I turn to Celia. “Get in the shower and wash that stuff off.”

“No!” both Celia and our hostess protest.

“She’ll lose the benefits of the spray-on tanning,” Lili explains.

“And now, because of my reaction, it will be two weeks before I can come back!” Celia’s wail touches my heart. But my brain is busy reliving humiliations of my own.

She has just reappeared, wearing a blouse knotted high under her breasts and low-rider cuffed cropped jeans that expose a long lean bronze torso with a multicolor tattooed garland centered two inches below her navel.

Lili rushes up to her to gush, “Was everything satisfactory, Mrs. Talbot?”

She shrugs. “I’m not sure. I’ll let you know.”

“Of course, Mrs. Talbot. If there’s anything I can do for you, just let me know.”

I straighten my spine as she passes. I’m in my best underwire now. It’s safe to thrust.

The corners of her mouth lift only in the corners. “I recommend next time you bring your own suit. They have designs that can work miracles with those little problem areas. Bye now.”

If I wasn’t holding in my stomach I would say something really vile.

Instead, I let her walk out the door, unchallenged.

Finally, Celia senses something is wrong. It must be the stricken look on my face. “Who was that?”

“Brandi with a ™ over the i Talbot. The husband-snatching chickie-babe who stole my husband!”

Chapter 2

“’Night, Miz T.”

“Good night, DeVon. Desharee.” I step aside as two-thirds of the night crew troops out the front door of No-Bagel Emporium. DeVon wears camouflage and Desharee’s in skintight jeans and a cropped tee. Neither smiles but I don’t expect it. Generation Z projects a permanent bad mood. I can no longer afford trained staff so we recruit for on-the-job educating. DeVon and Desharee are two of my high school work-study-program students.

Bakers are a breed unto themselves. There are rivalries and rituals among my crew that I don’t need or try to understand. Even so, I can’t keep back a big sigh when spying the ricotta tub on the counter that acts as our “fine” box. The crew is young so we fine a quarter per cuss word to keep things polite. My grandfather didn’t believe in cussing. Must be the only male to grow to manhood in New Jersey and not cuss. So we’ve kept the tradition alive in his honor. Today there’s a five dollar bill sticking out of the ricotta tub.

“You don’t need to know about the Lincoln, Miz T.”

Shemar has poked his head out from the back. “We were breaking it down for the new guy last night. It’s all good.” He makes that sideways-fist-to-the-chest move.

But I’m unconvinced. The night shift is the heart of a bakery, when the mixing and proofing and shaping and baking are done. The proof of success is in the product.

I lift out one of the loaves of sourdough stacked in racks for the morning rush and inspect it. It’s lightly brown, the crust texture thick and craggy. One stroke of a bread knife and the still-warm yeast aroma of fresh bread rises into my nostrils. Got to be in the top three of my favorite smells. I’m an olfactory person. The right smell can send me straight into ecstasy. Whatever occurred last night, Shemar got the job done.

“Would I lie to you, Miz T?”

I look up over my shoulder with a sheepish grin to see Shemar carrying a rack of pastries. “So what was the problem?”

“The fool didn’t feed Ma before he left last night.”

I blanch. “Is she okay?”

“True that. After I was done, he won’t ever forget again.”

Even so, I rush into the back and over to a large plastic tub that contains nothing less than our secret formula for bread-making. Lifting the lid, I lean in and inhale, reassured by its vague brewery aroma.

Every artisan bakery has its own Ma, or bread starter for the uninitiated. The fermentation processes caused by microbes that occur naturally in the environment give each bakery’s Ma and the bread made from it its unique flavor and proofing properties. The rivalry among bakers over their batches of Ma is legendary.

I learned not to say Ma contains “bacteria” after a class of first graders on a field trip to a bakery stampeded out shouting, “The bread’s got a disease!”

With a gloved hand I lift a glob of Ma to test its resilience. Like any living thing Ma must be fed or it will die. We put in fresh flour and stir it several times a day. Our Ma is five years old, and counting.

“You want a chocolate croissant?”

My empty stomach growls in expectation of a backslide in my resolve to lose a few. I loooove Shemar’s chocolate croissants but, “No, thanks.”

He crosses his arms high on his chest and leans back on a slant, giving me a smirk. “Watching your shape?”

I roll my eyes but smile. “How’s Shorty doing?”

Shemar pats our oldest mixer. “Shaking her rump like she’s in a 50 Cent video. Sounds like the gears are chewing on themselves. You are going to order a new mixer, right?”

“Soon.”

Last night I tried to find a younger less-used mixer for sale online. But unless eBay is giving them away, I’m several thousand dollars short of a deal. Plus we need new tables and chairs, a better line of credit, and a new—Sigh.

“What can I do you for, Miz T?”

“Not a thing. I’m just going out front to mainline coffee until time to open.”

“So then, I’m going roll on out of here. See ya!”

Shemar heads the night crew and is the only formally trained baker and pastry chef I have. With his cornrows and FUBU styling, he looks more like a hip-hop star than a baker. Desharee once compared him to D’Angelo. He is all laid-back sultry male. He’s also a dedicated baker with a work ethic of which Trump would approve. Shemar could earn a higher wage in a larger operation but he tells me he’s happy here.

The fact that the staff relates to Shemar makes my life easier. The fact he can get my deliveries to arrive on time makes him invaluable. This is New Jersey, and it seems every transaction has a back end. Sometimes he comes to work suspiciously mellow but I give him great leeway, and he gives give me bread fit for Trump Towers.

As I straighten up a stack of long slim baguettes as part of my morning inventory of breads, I’m reminded how he saved me from falling flat on my face when I went to take part in a Career Day program at a local high school last spring.

When it was my turn for a pitch I could tell by the rise of voices talking over me that I was going to lose out to the more sexy jobs like video store attendant, where slipping a free DVD to a pretty girl looked like a better opportunity for teen mating rituals.

Fortunately, Shemar interrupted my little speech and said, “Let me hit this, Miz T.”

He plucked a long baguette from our display and stepped forward, a calm and smooth presence. Then suddenly he went into hip-hop mode. “Yo, yo, I’ma break it down for you. The boss lady, Miz T, she got a job situation with real po-ten-tial. You feeling me?” Without raising his voice he brought silence to the room.

He held up the baguette. “Making good bread with a hard crust and tender center is like making love. You gotta have the touch, aw-ite.” As he spoke he ran a hand suggestively down its long length. The way he fondled that bread had me glancing nervously at a nearby knot of teachers.

Girls giggled and made yum yum sounds while the guys punched one another and grinned.

“You a baker, you can rest easy in your crib all day, get your party on in the evening, and still be steady stackin’ ends at night. But you got to have the will to learn the skills.”

Afterward, the faculty adviser told me the school frowns on using sex to advance one’s career opportunities. But we had made an impression.

The next afternoon two young men and a young woman in a work-study program showed up at my bakery door. Over the next few days, a dozen more potential employees slouched through my door. Word on the street was we were conducting some sort of kinky sex class. A few stayed when they found out we really did make bread.

Satisfied that we are ready to open, I return to the front where I spy Mrs. Morshheimer tapping on my window, as usual, In hopes that I’ll open early. I smile but shake my head, and point to my watch. I have ten minutes and I need another cup of coffee.

I reach for a copy of Shape that a customer left behind yesterday. As soon as my eyes fall on the bikini-clad cover model I regret my choice. There was a copy of Newsweek nearby, but it’s too late.

Nothing can long block my mind from replaying the gotcha moment of her and me in the altogether naked nude.

Well, there was that string about my waist from the ripped paper panties. There now, and I thought she’d seen it all.

Until four days ago, the babe who stole my life was little more than a dim Baywatch silhouette. All I’d ever seen of her were quick glimpses because Ted has had enough sense to keep us out of the same room. Now I know up close and personal a few of the dimensions that ruined my marriage. And, boy, does she have my number!

How will I ever erase the image of her from my envious, small-minded mind?

Was I ever that slim, that firm, that everything?

They must be implants. Ted always bragged that I was a good size.

Yeah, right. Ted probably paid for them.

Get a grip! Lots of women get implants, normal, nice, non-husband stealing women.

Even so, I hate her.

It wouldn’t matter if she were ten years older instead of twelve years younger. I’d hate her if she were shorter or taller, fifty pounds overweight, or skinnier than Kate Moss at sixteen. The truth is, when your husband leaves you for another woman, you hate the woman. Period.

If that’s not modern maturity, at least it’s honest.

Sure, I’d glimpsed her a few times, most notably in shopaholic ecstasy in Short Hills Mall in the months right after my divorce, and her marriage. Once I spotted her perusing bags at Anya Hindmarch, formerly my favorite handbag store that I can not now afford. Then there she was at the launch of Burberry Brit Red at Bloomies. Personally, I thought she’d only be interested in fragrance named after Britney or JLO. Another time, while window shopping, I spied her selecting triangle thongs at Dolce & Gabbana. And at Jimmie Choos—well, you get the idea. Oh, and once I saw her buy a tie for Ted at Bernini’s and knew he must have a big event coming up because I started him on that habit of a new Bernini tie for special occasions.

In fact, the more I saw of her living what had been my life, the angrier I became. That kind of emotion can motivate a person out of bed and through many a miserable day. I didn’t realize how corrosive it was to my psyche until I scared myself straight.

It happened one dark night of the soul. I had just had my card refused for insufficient funds at a drive-thru ATM when I spied her, on foot, crossing the all but empty parking lot and…

Let’s just say I realized I could end up with a number on my chest, cramped accommodations in unpleasant company, and one hell of a wardrobe crisis if I didn’t go cold turkey on her.

I never told anyone about that night. As far as I know, she told no one about what I’d almost done. That is probably what kept me out of jail.

Looking back I can’t believe I’m capable of that kind of rage. The kind that makes the blood pump so hard and fast your veins burn and cold sweat drops the size of bumblebees pop out. Right after that I had my first panic attack. The doctor murmured something about rage turned inward and the need to get a life.

So I stopped even thinking about her. I don’t even mention her. Ever. For four years, it’s a plan that was working. Why mess with it?

A flip of my wrist and the magazine lands in the trash bin.

Mrs. Morshheimer is still leaving nose prints on my front window. And I’m supposed to meet one half of my twin daughters for lunch in SoHo.

Just before ten-thirty, I make a quick tally. We’re average for the week. That’s recent weeks. I’d like to stay and hustle the lunch crowd. But I promised Sarah, and she said it’s important.

Chapter 3

The trendy restaurant on Seventh Avenue is full of lunch hour patrons. Sarah and I are stuck in a back corner at a narrow natural wood bar, teetering on stools half the width of my rear. I’m sure I’m instantly recognizable as a member of the Bridge and Tunnel crowd, suburbanites who come into Manhattan for shopping or entertainment.

For instance, Manhattanites wave off baskets of fragrant rolls as if they were being asked to partake of boiled eel eyes. One woman’s unlined face draws tight in the corners as she refuses a basket, but her nostrils quiver from a whiff of the oven browning she denies. The frantic voice in her head may be telling her how virtuous she is, how strong-willed, how disciplined. But it’s costing her.

When our waitress approaches I nod vigorously and she places the wire breadbasket draped in white between my daughter and me.

Even so, I’m already contemplating asking for carryout before our orders arrive. At least it would cut short this “kindly meant but really I don’t have the time to argue with my eldest child” lunch. It turns out this is a health intervention of sorts.

Sarah is ten minutes older than her twin Riley, but sometimes she seems ten years older. The genetic code split right down the middle with my girls. A performance artist who uses her family as her canvas, Riley inherited the Blake family temperament, which I’m told is a quite helpful state of mind for an artist. My mother has it. Sarah and I, no. Riley, oh yeah! For the past four years most of her Sturm und Drang has been directed at her decamped father.

Sarah got all the practical, disciplined, standards coding. Everything, from her thermal reconditioned straight hair to her dove-gray suit with tasteful pin to her kitten heels, screams reserved and rational. She has managed to find a rationale for being friendly, if not friends, with Brandi while Riley’s hatred for Brandi puts my dislike in perspective. Sometimes I think Sarah is trying to make up for her twin’s lack of self-control. But we all have issues, right? This no-nonsense approach works well for her career as a paralegal. But her brand of practicality also stops her from achieving her full potential. After one smack-down with the New York bar, Sarah decided that her law degree didn’t require that she practice law. I think that she just lost her nerve, but a mother doesn’t say that to a grown child. However, at the moment, she’s lecturing me as if I’m her child.

“You need a vacation, Mom.” That’s her punch line.

“Vacation? I’m working the night shift starting tonight because my new baker walked out after a fight with Shemar over the flour-to-water ratio for making ciabatta in August. I don’t have time for a nap. Forget a vacation.”

“That is exactly why you need one. When is the last time you took time off?”

I take a deep breath. Sarah and Riley both live and work in the city so I don’t see my girls that often. I don’t want to argue. No point in mentioning my spa day. The face Sarah made when she saw my watermelon toes was priceless. “I was in Phoenix two years ago.”

“That was for Grandpa Fred’s bypass surgery.”

I reach for a plump roll, perfectly formed and weighty enough to be genuine yeast bread, and place it on my plate. “What about the weekend in Kauai three years ago?”

“Didn’t you go there as part of the New Jersey independent bakers association to broker a supply deal for macadamia nuts?”

“For my Hawaiian bread.” I nod, happy to be reminded of a past culinary victory. “The secret is the bananas. Not the—” Sarah’s frown cuts short my recipe revelation. “Okay. I’ve got it. Not long ago I spent a few days in Savannah. And before you say it was business I want you to know I took a whole day to sightsee.”

“Mom, that was four years ago and you were scoping out relocation sites in case you went into merger with that Savannah frozen-dough plant.” Sarah reaches out to touch my arm. “I’m sorry if it’s still a sore subject.”

“Just because they backed out on the deal without even a discussion? Of course not.”

Out of habit I break the roll open with a thumb through the crust, expecting a moist but lightly risen center. Instead it’s damply dense. Clearly, it baked at too high a temperature and without enough moisture.

Disappointed, I lay it aside. “Okay, so I don’t do down time well. What’s the issue?”

“Let’s see. Health? Mental regeneration? Health? Refreshment of the soul? Health? A social life? Health?”

“Enough with the health. My doctor says I’m fine.”

“Really? When was the last time you saw a doctor?”

I look up as a waiter puts my order before me, hoping to avoid the trap I dug myself by mentioning my doctor. I’ve canceled my yearly checkup three times in a row. With my small-business insurance, I need to be deathly ill to be covered.

“Look, sweetie. I do appreciate your concern but I’m doing fine.”

“What’s this you’re eating, Mom?” Sarah picks up half of my sandwich and lifts a brow. “Is that pork?”

“It’s an Italian roast pork panini with organic basil pesto. Organic, get it?”

She shudders delicately and puts it down. “At your age, pork should be a rare indulgence, not a midweek lunch.”

I hunker down in my chair as she forks the first portion of her field greens salad. “I don’t eat this sort of thing often. This just sounded good and—”

“—I’m tired and wanted to give myself a little pick-me-up,” she finishes for me. “I know that speech, Mom. You’ve used it all my life. For chocolate. For ice cream.” Sarah shakes her head. “You’re in need of far too many pick-me-ups lately.”

I gaze longingly at the lovely pork sandwich I was relishing, get instead a mental picture of myself in paper-towel bikini, and put it down. “Fine. No pork.” I snap my fingers to gain the attention of the waitress nearby. “Bring me a field greens salad. No dressing.” I turn back to Sarah. “Happy now?”

Sarah reaches to squeeze my hand. “You don’t have to tell me. I know it’s got to be hard, with Dad and Brandi announcing that they’re trying to have a baby.”

“Baby! Baby?”

Now it’s Sarah’s turn to look stricken. “I thought you knew. Oh, Mom, Brandi called me last week. She’s always wanted a child…. Oh, damn!”

“No, it’s fine.” I reach for my pork sandwich, the indulgence of which has just been justified by Sarah’s revelation. “What’s the big deal, right?”

Sarah leans forward. “I’m so sorry, Mom. She said Dad would call you before they left for their vacation in New Mexico. I should have broached the news more gently.”

I wonder if news of this sort has a gentle approach.

A sudden too-tight sensation of warmth flames up inside me. Fricking great! A hot-flash reminder that I’m rapidly leaving the baby-maker category she’s snugly in the middle of.

As I reach for my water I notice Sarah chewing her lip. “How upset are you?”

She shrugs. “I’m grown. What’s another family member, more or less?”

“And Riley?”

“Riley’s being Riley.”

Which means Riley is furious. So, on to the next bit of family news. “Dating anyone?”

“Sort of.” Sarah frowns but says nothing as I pick up my sandwich again. “He’s a commodities dealer for the state of Montana.” Her shy smile says volumes that I’m not suppose to comment on. “At the moment he’s in Great Falls for a grain growers meeting.”

“Interesting. And Riley?”

Sarah rolls her eyes.

Unlike her sister, who vets men as if she were trying to buy a condo on the Upper East Side, Riley’s man-radar tracks exclusively for Mr. Wrong. No matter their backgrounds, the men in Riley’s life are inevitably the same: emotionally unavailable, self-centered and generally relationship-phobic. She says nice men are boring. I say relationships shouldn’t have to end with dramatic statements like “Come near me again and I’ll set your hair on fire!” That one was aimed at a Goth high school boyfriend with skin the color of an altar candle and black hair that looked like an untwisted wick.

I tell her there are other types of men out there. I hope she will eventually discover this the way she discovered that a pierced tongue wasn’t worth the cost of repairing the shattered enamel of her teeth.

“What’s wrong with Riley’s new man?”

“He’s an ex-con.”

I inhale for a big whaaaat? But the exhale never comes. In fact, the involuntary inhale seems to have sucked in more than a breath. That bite of pork panini has gone down the tube, my breathing tube to be exact.

A bit of pandemonium ensues while I’m slapped on the back by my daughter and then the nearest male waiter subjects me to the very undignified Heimlich. Thankfully the sandwich dislodges after only one try, and I’m left gasping and red-faced but generally okay.

Wiping my streaming eyes, I take my seat and then manage to rasp out, “I guess you were right about pork being a killer.”

Sarah nods, her smile only at half power, and reaches for her ringing phone.

“Hello?” Her expression goes strange, her face gray, in response to whatever she hears.

Instantly, I know it’s not good. Without a word she jerks the phone from her ear and holds it out to me. “Oh, Mom!”

I take it, certain it’s Riley in some sort of jam, again.

But it’s her, Brandi with a ™ over the i, hysterical on the other end of a lousy-reception cell phone call.

“It’s Ted—Oh, God! He like—fell!” That’s all I hear before the connection is lost.

Ted’s funeral was yesterday. I went. I owed him that much. And my girls needed me. Riley and Sarah each clutched an arm so tight the circulation all but stopped in my fingers. She was there, of course, the center of all the attention in a broad-brim hat and veil as she sobbed softly into a monogrammed handkerchief during the service. We were relegated to bystander status. This, when you think of it, Is our fate since the divorce. We are part of the past life of a passed life.

We didn’t really exchange words with her. Okay, I admit that I did find myself saying something extremely awkward like “Sorry for your loss, I mean our loss,” as we left the funeral home chapel. I didn’t wait for her reply.

It’s tragic when someone you love dies young. It’s less tragic when that someone is someone you once loved but generally got over before the ink was dry on the divorce papers. It is less than heartbreaking when that someone left you for another woman, a woman he had secretly been seeing for months and married the day after the divorce was final. And yet…

I had just started working for a PR firm in the city when I met Ted. He wanted to open his own advertising firm in northern New Jersey. Did I want to join him as a partner, business and otherwise? Maybe not the most romantic proposal in the world but it sounded stable, ordinary, something I could manage. Falling in love has always seemed overrated to me. All that Hollywood heavy-breathing exploding fireworks stuff is marketing make-believe. I should know. I first made my living in advertising.

At first we were a good team. Ted was a natural-born salesman. I was good with ideas he often took credit for. I was also good with getting things done. Ted could sell but he couldn’t make accounts balance or manage a staff. Yet give him a good pitch and he would knock it out of the park at a fashionable lunch spot, at an even more expensive dinner, or on a prohibitively steep greens-fee golf course. The unglamorous job of running the office and drafting ideas was mine. Five years into it, we were a big success. After fifteen years we were a major force in northern New Jersey advertising. But I wasn’t happy, in the marriage or the business. If I drifted into an affair of the heart, it was with bread. Being wrist-deep in dough makes me happier than anything in my life besides my girls. I can be creative and eat it, too. But Ted took the more conventional approach to adultery.

The wife seldom knows what prompts her husband to stray. The unfaithful male usually just makes life so miserable that it’s the wife who finally files for divorce. Not so for me. I didn’t know she existed until Ted left with the uncharacteristic preemptive strike of filing first. How ugly was that? There are corporate dissolutions with less toxic vapor trails than our divorce.

I’ll never forget Ted telling a judge that it was I who’d really opted out of our marriage by leaving advertising, and causing him to lose business. “Liz lost her nerve, her drive, her ambition. She gave up.”

What, was he nuts? At the time, General Mills was dangling a contract before No-Bagel Emporium for producing frozen artisan dough. That was my doing and he knew it. Ted was always about money and more money. He threatened to sue for his share of “my” bakery if I didn’t give up my interest in “his” company. His attorney claimed my leaving had cost the company. Business had fallen off so precipitously after I left that Ted was still recovering. Add to that, I’d borrowed from Talbot Advertising to pay for my new oven and mixers, while Ted had had to hire both an idea person and an office manager to replace me.

I didn’t have the time or interest to invest further in the kind of ownership fight that might scare off General Mills. I might have been good at advertising but I didn’t love it like he did. I was about to make it big on my own, and I didn’t want him along for the ride. Ted got the firm and I kept my thriving bakery.

Looking back, my choice seems like a lousy bargain. Or am I just bitter because the General Mills deal fell through?

So, how do I feel about Ted’s death?

I never wished Ted dead. Even in my worst dark days when I thought revenge had its uses, I never wished for his demise. Bankruptcy maybe, until I realized that with Sarah and Riley in high school and college ahead, I needed all the financial help I could get. Then there was that wish that all his hair might fall out overnight. Juvenile. But I can honestly say I hadn’t given Ted an ungenerous thought in years—okay, months.

I did notice with a certain satisfaction that he never looked all that healthy after we divorced. Happier, perhaps, but never healthier. He was heading for a fall. I just didn’t know how literally he’d take one.

Ted was afraid of heights. Even a quick rise in an elevator gave him the willies. He would never have gone near a ledge in all the time I knew him. But for her he went on a mountain bike trail ride in New Mexico, made the mistake of peering over the rim into the arroyo below, lost his balance and took a half gainer over the edge.

Some might say Ted had it coming. I think, wow, you just never know.

Chapter 4

It’s been a strange month. Ted’s death threw me, for all the usual reasons, and then some. You gain a new respect for life when one is snatched away by careless happenstance.

For instance, I’ve been driving a careful five miles under the speed limit. My response to the blare of car horns and ugly looks from fellow drivers is simply to smile and wave, as they are evidence of my very vital life. I always stopped for squirrels crossing the road. Now I stop, get out and shepherd them to the other curb. Live and let live, right?

I’ve made a few other changes. Pork paninis are behind me. And I decided to take a few risks.

I went to the bank this morning, with thoughts of expanding my credit line for equipment replacement and refurbishing.

“Your income has increased in recent months,” my account manager began, which seemed to be encouraging. “However…”

This is when I knew that what followed wasn’t going to make me smile.

So my Monday morning has begun with a fizzle.

As I am entering the bakery, it’s scant balm to my pride to see that racks of ciabatta and sourdough are emptier than usual at 10:30 a.m. You can’t exactly use photos of bread racks as evidence of improved sales.

“So, how did it go?” Celia asks as I slide behind the counter.

My neck warms. “Just because I was a few days late with a couple of mortgage payments last year I’m a ‘risk factor.’ Try back in six months was my consolation prize.”

“Oh.” Emotion registers in Celia’s fair skin as if she’s a mood ring. This mood isn’t a good sign.

I glance about to be certain we aren’t ignoring a customer, then grab Celia by the arm and pull her back into the corner. “Okay. What is it?”

“A couple of things. But first, just so you know,” Celia glances back toward the front then whispers, “we didn’t get a flour delivery today. Our check bounced. Shemar called and did everything but promise them his firstborn. We’re just going to have to find another way to pay the bill.”

We didn’t get a delivery? Our check bounced? I have the most loyal staff in the world. And so, of course, I swell with tears.

“There, there, Liz.” Celia pats my back but doesn’t offer a shoulder to cry on for she’s in a floury apron and I’m wearing my only decent suit, a Dana Buchman, so the bank wouldn’t think I’m as desperate as I am. “It’s going to be all right.”

“No, it won’t.”

“Yes, it will—”

“No, it won’t.”

“It will.”

“Won’t!” I sound like a hormonal fifteen-year-old.

“What’s up with Miz T?” Shemar frowns as he notices us huddled in the corner. “You’re not sweating the delivery?” He scowls at Celia. “Didn’t you tell her?”

“I was trying to.” Celia reaches out and pats my cheek.

“Tell me what?”

“I paid for it.” Celia flushes a natural pink.

An employee paid my bill? I feel worm high.

“It’s all good, Miz T.” Desharee has joined us.

Celia nods. “There’s even better news. When I went into the city this morning to pick up our cheese shipment at Murray’s I decided that we should stock up on an a couple of extra items for the Fine Arts and Crafts Show this weekend.”

She reaches into the cheese case and pulls out a piece that looks, with its rough moonlike surface and a bright orange interior, like a slice of cantaloupe. “This is two-year-old Mimolette! It’s rare to get a piece this old.”

Rare translates as expensive. “We can’t afford this now, Celia.”

“We can if our display snags us the attention we deserve.” Celia beams like a Girl Scout who’s earned a new merit badge.

“That funky cheese will catch attention. No doubt.” Shemar waves off the strong smell with a hand.

Desharee scrunches up her face and backs off. “Looks like maggots been at it.”

“Actually, cheese mites do make the rind craggy. But the cheese has a sweet, dense, caramelized taste that matches perfectly with a microbrewery dark lager or chocolate malt, and slices of our eight-grain country loaf.” Celia is in expert mode. “I also picked up wedges of Hoch Ybrig and Pont l’Eveque. No food scout will bypass us with these on the shelf.”

“That’s a long shot.” I can’t keep the sour grapes mood out of my tone.

“No, It isn’t.” Celia beams. “I heard talk at Murray’s that food scouts will definitely be checking out vendors at the local fairs this weekend!”

Desharee turns to me. “What’s a food scout?”

“Consultants that major food companies hire to evaluate new food products in the field.” Desharee give me a “speak English” look. “It’s like when professional sports teams send out scouts to check out a high school pitcher or college quarterback for possible recruitment.”

Desharee’s usually bad-mood expression brightens. “Straight up?”

Celia nods. “Haven’t you heard? Liz almost had a deal with General Mills four years ago. She was going to be famous.”

“Actually,” I say dryly, “they were going to hire a celeb to front the line.”

“Celebrity endorsements? I’m all over that!” Shemar flashes me a really sexy grin.

“Why not?” Celia says with an enthusiasm ungrounded by experience.

Another chance at the big time! My mind boggles with possibility. I know better. I really do. I’ve been burned. But there’s something about a dream lost. It’s the sexiest thought on the planet: what might have been.

While I’m daydreaming Celia gives Desharee a short history lesson in food franchising.

“This is how franchising starts. The modern potato chip originated in a restaurant in Saratoga Springs, New York. Cracker Jacks first showed up at the Columbian Exposition at Chicago. And the Hidden Valley Guest Ranch near Santa Barbara, California, originated Valley Ranch. Oh, and Dave started Wendy’s.”

“What about KFC?” Shemar folds his arms together. “That old dude in the lame white suit started that?”

“Yes. So you see it’s completely possible for our little bakery to hit the big time.” Celia is nothing if not a positive thinker.

“Aw-ite!” Shemar snatches up a ciabatta, slaps the flat side of the rounded loaf against one buttock and starts rotating a bump and grind like a hottie in a video. “We def-initely calling our new item the JLO Loaf.”

I burst out with laughter. Then we all start boogying around, as if it’s a done deal.

Okay, so maybe we’re thinking too big. While the Fine Arts and Crafts at Anderson Park is a great fair, Naomi’s rhubarb pie isn’t likely to become the next Stouffer’s frozen pie. Still, I’ve been approached by corporate before. So, why couldn’t I…?

“Liz, there is something else.”

Celia’s suddenly somber face pricks my elation. “You got another of those registered letters from Dunlap, McDougal and Feinstein.”

She reaches under the counter and pulls out a slick plastic envelope. “This time they sent it by private courier.”

“Thanks.” I take it gingerly, as if it might be contaminated.

This isn’t the first letter I’ve received from Ted’s attorneys since his demise. Sarah and Riley got them, too, and say it concerns the reading of Ted’s will. I can’t bring myself to open any of them. The firm handled Ted’s side of the divorce. Probably I’m being pressured to sign some papers returning my share of Ted’s IRAs when I’m fifty-nine and a half, or something equally depressing.

When Celia and Shemar and Desharee have moved discreetly away, possibly with thoughts that I might open it, I toss the package aside. Sarah and Riley are attending the reading of their dad’s will today. They can tell me what I need to know.

A while later the notes of “She Works Hard for the Money,” playing on my cell phone interrupt me mid-preparation of a special order for heart-shaped scones. The readout says Sarah. “Hi, sweetie.”

“Mom, where are you?”

“Where would you expect me to be at this time of day?”

“At the reading of Dad’s will.”

“I told you there’s no need for me to be there.”

“Dad’s attorney thinks there is. He’s refusing to read the will until you arrive.”

This I need like another hole in my head. “I’m really kind of busy. Tell him I said to go ahead without me.”

There’s a pause, then Riley’s voice comes on line. “Mom, get over here now!”

“Jeez! Okay. I’m coming.”

I give three seconds’ thought to changing out of my baker’s white back into the Dana Buchman I carefully hung out of harm’s way, but why bother? I am what I am. If this is so bloody important, what does it matter what I look like?

Chapter 5

“I’m glad you could join us, Mrs. Talbot.”

The attorney of record, Lionel Dunlap, and I face each other across the conference table in the law offices of Dunlap, McDougal and Feinstein. He doesn’t glance at his watch but he doesn’t have to. Sarah has already told me that I’ve held up the proceedings by a billable top-attorney hour. Wonder who’s paying?

Maybe I should have rethought my optional Dana Buchman. Every other person present seems to have realized the sartorial significance of the moment.

On my right, Sarah, prim and serious as her tweed business suit and tortoiseshell glasses, clutches my hand. At my left elbow sits Riley in a man’s pin-striped seersucker suit sans shirt. The flexible dancer’s leg folded against her chest puts considerable strain on the one button holding closed the jacket. A colorful batik fabric snugly wraps her head. I hope my urban Amazon aka vegan counter-culture purist hasn’t shaved her head, again.

To one side and a little behind, she sits between two men-in-black-Halston attorneys. So far, we’ve avoided making eye contact. That’s because she’s wearing, yup, a mafiarina-style mourning veil. Yet her widow-black Carrie Bradshaw-goes-Goth micro sheath exposes enough leg to distract even me. If possible, she’s even tanner, with deep red undertones. Swinging from the toes of her crossed leg is a Moschino black-heeled sandal with a crystal-encrusted suede-flower ornament. The pair would pay my flour bill.

“Shall we begin?” Lionel is an old-school lawyerly type, In an impeccable custom-made suit, terribly expensive and understated. Doubtless he would never wear anything as vulgar as a designer label. “For the record the date is Monday, September12. The last will and testimony of Edward Duncan Talbot…”

I’m still at a loss as to why my attendance is such a big deal. Surely, Ted left everything to her and our girls. If he did leave me anything, it’s probably something completely useless like a case of eight-track cartridges. Hmm. Collectors’ items could be sold on eBay for cash. If that’s why she brought in the former law review, to stop me from owning the Bee Gees and K.C. and Sunshine Boys, she can have them.

My attention swings back to old Lionel just as he reads aloud, “…I devise and bequeath to Elizabeth Jeanne Talbot all goods and possessions…”

My first thought is, of course he left everything to his wife. Elizabeth Jeanne Talbot? “Me?”

“Oh, Mom!” whispers Sarah.

“Holy crap!” echoes Riley.

“What!” she gasps, and jumps out of her chair like a goldfish jerked out of her bowl.

“This is, of course, a mistake,” begins one of her attorneys as the other snags his client by the elbow to draw her back into her chair, “one, unfortunately, not uncommon in instances of divorce and remarriage.”

“Teddy would never do that to me. He made another will.” She points at Lionel. “Tell them.”

Lionel nods slowly. “While it is true, Mrs. Talbot—”

“For the record, I’m Mrs. Talbot, too.” I may be in shock but I’ve watched enough episodes of Judge Judy to know that if you don’t protest these little items at the time, they can come back to bite you in the ass. “The Elizabeth Jeanne Talbot referred to in the will, that’s me.”

I can’t see the expression behind her veil but I can hear it in her voice. “But you’re not Teddy’s wife, I am!”

Sarah grips my arm. “Mom, what does this mean?”

I lean toward her to murmur, “Who the heck knows?”

Lionel waits to see if there will be another volley before saying, “As I was saying, while it is true this office apprised Mr. Talbot repeatedly of his need to alter his will after his second marriage he never in fact signed the new document.”

“What does that mean?” We all hear her whisper to her attorneys. After the more subdued whispers of counsel she wails, “But how could Teddy do that to me?”

I can answer her question, though I wouldn’t dream of it.

“Dad didn’t like the idea of wills,” Sarah offers.

“What exactly do you mean, Miss Talbot?” Her attorney looks like a tiger that has scented prey. “Do you have knowledge that your father was coerced into signing this will?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Riley snarls. A tigress in her own right.

Reluctantly I decide to weigh in on the topic.

“I’m surprised but not shocked that Ted didn’t make a new will. This will is the result of the one and only time I could drag him to an attorney to make one. We’d just been in an accident. We escaped with a few cuts and bruises, but a totaled vehicle. It brought home to us the fact that the girls were just eight years old and would require legal guardianship if something happened to us.”

“There! That’s proof that Teddy would want his family, his new family, taken care of,” she says to no one in particular.

Not looking her way I say, “Ted viewed having a will as tantamount to signing a death sentence.” I’ve read that this is not an uncommon reaction even among smart, upwardly mobile men. “Mr. Dunlap can confirm that Ted paced like a caged bear the entire time.”

Lionel nods his head. “He was a very impatient man.” Of course, Lionel did present us with enough estate-planning and trust options to rival the choices on a Starbucks menu.

But I’m happy to take his side and give him a big smile. “As I remember it, Ted cut the conversation off by saying, ‘Just give us the stripped-down, vanilla, no frills version. I die, Liz gets it all. She drops dead, it’s mine. We both die—Jesus H. Christ! Liz’s mother, Sally, gets guardianship of our girls. Okay?’”

Again, Lionel nods.

One attorney for her says, “Mr. Talbot may not have crossed all the t’s and dotted all the i’s, but certainly his intent was clear in his decision to have a new will drawn up.”

“Mr. Talbot might be forgiven for thinking that the courts would understand when he named his wife he meant whichever wife held the title at the moment,” says the other.

“Which-ever?” Riley snarls. “You make my father sound like a serial bigamist.”

I lay a soothing hand on her forearm, then again engage old Lionel’s gaze and smile. “There is no mention of a ‘wife.’ I am named in the will as sole beneficiary.”

Lionel smiles back. For a member of the firm who dug my financial hellhole during the divorce, he seems almost amused by this turn of events. “It is not the usual wording for a will. I pointed that out to both of you at the time. Naming a beneficiary without a designation of the relationship can prove legally difficult should one’s situation in life alter at a later date. However, as I have said, this is a legitimate will in accordance with New Jersey law.”

Her mouthpiece says, “New Jersey law provides for a widowed spouse in ways that cannot be circumvented by any will.”

Lionel’s expression sobers. “Quite right. Mrs. Brandi Talbot is entitled to a significant share of the deceased’s estate. Providing there are no other documents to supersede it, such as a prenuptial agreement.”

She gasps. “Teddy would never have asked me to sign anything like that.”

“You mean my mother will have to share?” Riley demands, as if it’s her and not me who has come into this dizzying windfall of unexpected possibility.

“In a word, yes. Possibly as much as a fifty-fifty share.”

“Share?” She tosses back her veil. Her face is flushed, her eyes tight, and her mouth thinned by anger. “You were Teddy’s attorney. Do something!”

Lionel says dryly, “Without evidence of the possibility of tampering, duress or diminished capacity on the part of the signer, a lawfully executed will should stand up in court, aside from the aforementioned widow’s portion.”

While watching her squirm has been fun, the last thing I need around my neck is another millstone business. “What if I refuse the bequest?”

Lionel leans back and steeples his fingers. “If I may, Mrs. Talbot, I would strongly caution you to consider every possible ramification for your long-term future. The Talbot estate is estimated to be worth in excess of fourteen million dollars.”

Now it’s my turn to gasp. “Fourteen mill-ion?”

Lionel picks up a bound folder. “This is a recently complied list of assets of Mr. Talbot’s estate.”

When I don’t reach for it Sarah whispers, “Know thy enemy, Mom.”

This feels like an invasion of privacy to which this Mrs. Talbot is no longer privileged. Scan it only for the essentials, I tell myself.

Okay, Talbot Advertising is estimated to be worth thirteen million. I knew Ted was doing well after the bobble in profit caused by my leaving the firm. But, this well? Jeez!

For one wild moment I envision myself rolling in a king-size bed full of crisp green dollar bills, feeling as flush as Demi Moore in Indecent Proposal.

The next, I feel the sting of a hundred paper cuts from those bills. This can’t possibly be real. No court is going to give me Ted’s company. The buzzing in my head is not, I realize, caused by evaporating euphoria but the next line of words swimming before my eyes.

“Well hell!” Ted had a second retirement fund the size of which my lawyer suspected but could never discover. Worth one point three million. Mental note to me: never hire cheap when it comes to divorce.

“A time-share in Vail?” I look up at my girls. “Did you know about this?”

They look off in different directions.

“That’s in my name,” she answers smugly, then leans in and whispers to one of her attorneys.

He nods then addresses Lionel. “The Vail property is in Mrs. Talbot’s name as sole proprietor.” He slips some paperwork onto Lionel’s desk. “In addition, you have before you paperwork to prove she is the sole owner of her house and its contents, two cars and a string of tanning salons.”

“What tanning salons?” I glance at her hard-body bronzed thighs with new understanding. That day with Celia at the tanning salon. Oh, no. That was her tanning salon!

She smirks. “Teddy said he wanted to invest his portion of the divorce settlement in something people could actually benefit from. So I suggested tanning salons.”

My vision blurs. So, Ted took his portion of the divorce and invested it for her?

“The hell he did!” I toss the papers as if they’d suddenly burst into flame. “He—I…the bastard! What kind of—of—?”

“Mom, you’re stuttering,” Sarah points out unhelpfully.

“Don’t let this weird you out, Mom,” Riley adds in solidarity.

I swing my head toward Riley but I can’t focus on her face. My eyeballs are jumping as if I have a tic in both at the same time. “I’m fine. Perfectly fine.”

When I’ve subsided into my chair Lionel says, “Mrs. Brandi Talbot claims the aforementioned items seem to be in order. Therefore, the estate mentioned in the will would seem to include only Talbot Advertising and Mr. Talbot’s retirement fund. His insurance has been left in trust to his daughters.”

“How much?” I ask this after a second’s hesitation because I know my girls are reluctant to.

“The insurance in is the amount of one million dollars to be held in trust until Ms. Sarah and Ms. Riley Talbot reach the age of twenty-five.”

“Holy shit!” Riley says this in an unusually subdued voice.

“I would suggest,” Lionel says, “that both Mrs. Elizabeth Talbot and Mrs. Brandi Talbot seek counsel, who will look for a solution that will keep this out of the courts.”

“You’re advising arbitration?” Sarah is taking notes. My daughters have assumed the sisterhood alternative to her suited sharks.

“It would behoove both parties to consider it.” Lionel is one cool customer. “A protracted legal battle will tie up assets on all sides for the foreseeable future. An equitable agreement reached before the will is filed for probate would greatly simplify matters.”

“Like hell!” She folds her arms under her rib cage, drawing attention to what money can buy. “My attorneys say I should fight this.”

The other man in black, who until now has been mostly silent, speaks. “There’s every possibility that there will be a second claimant against Mr. Talbot’s will.”

The hair on my head snaps to attention. Oh, that’s right! She and Ted…

My gaze tracks down her front to where her dress wraps like cellophane about her torso. It’s been two months since…could it be?

Unflappable Lionel says, “You have informed these offices of Mrs. Brandi Talbot’s potential for procreation.” Who, but an attorney, talks like this? “The real question is—”

“Are you pregnant?” Riley, who has been hunkered down in her chair like a military combatant, springs to her feet and approaches her. “Well, are you?”

She dips her head. “Possibly. It’s still too soon to know.” She lifts eyes swimming in tears. “It’s what your father wanted. We were talking about it the day—”

It’s a good performance. I am maybe the only one in the room who doesn’t believe for a second she’s pregnant. There are tests accurate to within days of conception. Yet I wouldn’t put it past her to do something sneaky underhanded drastic.

But that’s not the reason I suddenly feel threatened. I don’t want anything to do with any of this. I don’t need—who am I kidding? Who doesn’t need half of thirteen million? I need any piece of it I can get. No! What I need is to get out of here and think. Think? What’s there to think about? I won’t know until I get a chance to do it.

I rocket to my feet, little puffs of flour escaping the folds of my baker’s duds. “If you will excuse me I need to find the ladies’.”

“Me, too. Me, too,” my girls echo, popping up from their chairs.

“I’m going to sue. I can sue, right?” she asks as I head out the door.

Sweet as they are, I don’t need daughterly advice just now. I bypass the ladies’ and step into the elevator. Events of this magnitude require consult with a higher power.

As the door closes I hear my daughters, caught short on the other side of the closing door, chorus, “Mom? Where are you going?”

“To Olympus.”

Chapter 6

“Liz, darling! Isn’t this a nice surprise?” Sally busses both my cheeks. “But whatever are you doing here?”

She means how dare you, darling, show up at my apartment on the Upper East Side, and not telephone first. But, kiss, kiss, of course, I love you.

“I need to talk, Sally. Can I come in for a minute?”

She gives me a Carol Channing smile. “For you, darling, I have all the time in the world.” This means, she’s alone. “Come in, come in.”

Sally Blake reminds most people of Jackie O. At five-foot-nine-and-one-half inches with thick dark hair and a willowy figure, she has the same square face, at once formidable and vulnerable. The same strong brows, as if the artist became too generous with his charcoal. A wide, pretty mouth proclaims her ultrafeminine and yet positively patrician. That’s where the similarities to Jackie O end. Sally is as driven as Ethel Merman, with the same larger-than-life persona.

Oh, Sally is my mother.

From the crib I was taught to call her Sally because in 1958, nice girls didn’t have babies out of wedlock. Certainly a potential Rockette didn’t.

“Taking dance classes in the city,” I was much later told was the official explanation when Sally went to a maiden aunt in Baltimore to have me. Meanwhile my grandmother, a taxi dancer during the Depression, announced that she and Grandpa Horace had decided to adopt. Sally dubbed me Liz Taylor Blake, in the hope that a famous name would inspire me to become famous. My grandmother, who saw the drawbacks to such a moniker, made sure I was legally named Elizabeth Jeanne Blake.

Three years later “big sister” Sally was high-kicking in the most famous chorus line in the world, the Radio City Rockettes, while I was learning to tell when a bagel was done.

I don’t come to Sally for maternal comfort. I come for worldly advice. She’s the ultraglamorous older sister who swoops in occasionally with dazzling tales of her globetrotting adventures yet willingly listens to my “what I did at the bakery today” type life stories.

She leads me through the maze of boxes and furnishings into a room with a panoramic view of Central Park. She moves when the mood strikes, sometimes as often as every year. Sally says a smart woman doesn’t hang about Radio City Music Hall in a leotard and heels without finding ways to network. When the time came to segue from the stage into a different glamour profession, she had backers lined up. Today she owns a boutique Manhattan real estate agency. Successful, are you kidding?

When she pauses before a grouping of beige suede sofa units that could sleep three, her wide-legged stance opens the side slit in her Oscar de la Renta tweed pencil skirt. Who can blame her for showing off? Looking more than a decade younger than her sixty-three years, Sally can still high-kick a hat off a man’s head.

“What do you think of my new pied-à-terre?”

I give the room’s view a drop jaw gaze. What can I say? “It’s spectacular.”

“I’m undecided. Tony likes it.”

Tony Khare is Sally’s lover. They met five years ago when she sold him his first Manhattan condo. An Oxford-educated Indo-Englishman, Tony made scads of money long before it was news that American industry was outsourcing to places like New Delhi and Bombay. Tony is darkly gorgeous with that witty yet ineffable English reserve that’s a perfect foil for Sally’s old-fashioned glamour. The fact that he is twelve years her junior bothers neither of them.

“Look at you,” she says just as I’m thinking, let’s not. We may have the same thick dark hair but mine tends to frizz, and I am shorter with a not-so-willowy frame. You don’t try to emulate a mother like Sally Blake. You only envy and adore.

“You look wonderful, as always. What are you doing?”

“Pilates.” Sally runs a palm across her drum tight midriff. “You should try it. Customers would flock to the antioxidant properties of your spinach and tomato focaccia if they thought it gave your skin a refreshed glow.”

“It wouldn’t be true.”

“Darling. Success is about selling the sizzle, not the steak.”

For about three seconds I actually think about this approach, which just goes to show how desperate I am for new customers.

“I’ll just ring for sherry. No, something more festive. “When her Brazilian housekeeper appears, Sally announces, “Gimlets, Ines!”

She waves me into a herringbone-stenciled leather side chair. “Tell me all about your life. Is it thrilling?”

“Let’s see. I’m still parenting two grown daughters. I own a business trying to claw its way back into public consciousness. Oh, and I rent and have a business mortgage I can barely meet.”

“So then, sell and relocate.”

Sally always says sell the bakery. It’s the only thing she and Ted agreed about, ever. But relocate? That’s new. “Where would I go?”

“Miami?”

“Too hot.”

“Tampa.”

“Ditto. You know I blotch in tropical heat zones.”

“There’s no humidity in Tucson, or Santa Fe. Or Denver?”

“Altitude makes my head feel like the lid’s on too tight.”

Sally sighs and subsides onto her sofa. “I did try to help. Remember that, when you and the cat are moldering away.”

“Can we discuss something else?”

“Certainly. What did Ted the Bastard leave you?” Though Sally has followed the family tradition of no cussing, since the divorce she always refers to Ted as if ‘the Bastard’ is part of his legal name.

I fiddle with the metal tip of the drawstring to my pants. “Why would you expect him to leave me anything?”

“The bastard stole you blind. If you’d have let me hire a real divorce attorney…” Sally’s expression completes her thought. She’s swimming in money and would gladly share an end of her pool with me, if I hadn’t inherited her stubborn determination to live on my own terms. Even if it kills me. “Why wouldn’t he leave you something if he cashed out first?”

“He had a new wife maybe?” I throw up my hands. “Oh, I don’t know why I’m being coy. It’s still so un-fricking-believable! Ted forgot to update his will. The one he had leaves everything to me.”

Sally’s brows peak in interest. “How much?”

I take a deep breath and say the words quickly. “Fourteen million.”

“Darling!” Sally claps in delight. “You’re set.”

“Not quite. The will leaves Talbot Advertising to me plus one million and change in insurance to the girls. So, she’s suing.”

Not even Botox injections can keep faint frown lines from forming on Sally’s face. “He left nothing to the slut?”

“Technically no. There were things already in her name, like the house, some cars, a few tanning salons—”

“A few what?”

“Don’t ask. But the will itself leaves her nothing.”

“How absolutely delicious!” Sally’s smile is wicked. “Yes, yes, Ines, put the drinks here.” She pats the place in front of her for her maid, in a black-and-white uniform, to lay out refreshments. She blows Ines a kiss then gives a little finger wave of dismissal.

She passes a gimlet to me then clinks her glass to mine. “To you, darling! Take the money and run!”

I can’t drink to that. I can’t even explain what I’m feeling. So I start with the least logical emotion. “I don’t need charity from a man who walked out on our marriage.”

“What charity? This is vindication. Ted saw the error of his way in leaving you and Mr. Can’t Admit I’m Wrong used his departure to make it up to you.”

“Sally, this was an accident, like a clerical error. He screwed her by mistake.”

“You bet his screwing her was a mistake! And now she’s going to pay for it. It’s karma, dearest.”

Sally believes in karma, kismet, ouija boards and pretty much anything else that will give a girl a psychic edge. “Ted created bad karma by cheating on you. So then forgetting to rewrite his will was the unpleasant ripening of the karma he created.”

“How about being sued by my ex-husband’s widow? This sounds like an improvement in my karma?”

Sally makes a moue. “Darling, I never criticize. Yet I’ve never understood how you thought marrying Ted young validated your need for independence. It should have been a starter marriage. If such things had been in fashion in my day, it would have saved so much fuss and bother.”

“What bother? You said you never wanted to marry my father.”

She shrugs. “If I’d known we were only practicing being married, I might have for your sake, knowing the relationship wouldn’t outlive the sex. Of course, the sex was spectacular. But who knew at fifteen how rare that would turn out to be?”

“Too much information, Sally.”

She gives me a strange look. “I’ve never understood how I reared a prude.”

“Overcompensation.”

“So then, dearest, listen to the voice of wanton reason.” Sally drains her glass. “Take what Ted’s will gives you. If not for yourself, then do it for every wife who’s ever been dumped by her husband for the other woman.”

“So it’s as if I won the payback lottery?”

“But that’s perfect!” Sally sits forward. “I know just how to capitalize on this! I’ll call my friend in booking at Good Morning America. She’s always looking for human interest stories from the American heartland.”

“I’m only in New Jersey. Besides—”

“Oh, and I might be able to pull a favor and get you a small mention, as my little sister, in Vanity Fair. Well, maybe not, since you’re not celebrity status with anyone but me.” She blows me a kiss.

“Can we table this discussion for now?”

“Certainly.” Sally tosses a throw pillow, which probably cost more than my phone bill, onto the floor and curls her legs up on the sofa. “So, what else is new in your life? Is there a wonderful man in it?”

The only topic that interests Sally as much as money is men. I hesitate only a second. “Harrison is fine.”

“Oh, dear. Not the car salesman?”

“He owns two Lexus dealerships. That’s a little different.”

She shrugs. “Is he at least entertaining in bed?”

“It isn’t that kind of relationship.” I avoid her eye while trying not to think of my one-time sex act with Harrison. Micro-expressions are Sally’s specialty.

“If he doesn’t set your hair on fire, Liz, what’s the point?”

“You’re right. I’m going to stop seeing him, when I have time to explain.”

“Darling, no! Never, ever explain. That will only cause an argument, which will make you feel bad. Remember karma. Cut him cleanly from your life. No calls, no notes, no regret. Why do you have such difficulty with men? You never learned it from me.”

That’s an understatement. “Do you know what my earliest memory of you is?”

Sally lifts a hand of protest. “Don’t tell me if it’s the reason you’re in therapy.”

“I’ve never been in therapy.”

“Really? Good for you. Tell me.”

“Grandma and I were waiting for you in a cab outside Radio City Music Hall. You came out still in full makeup, wearing a skimpy Santa suit with spangled tights and silver shoes. Following you was this good-looking man in a cashmere topcoat.” Sally taught me to recognize quality materials when other girls were learning their shapes and colors. “He was shouting, ‘Why? Why?’ You simply closed the door and told the driver to take off.”

Sally blinks. “I don’t recall.”

“Why should you? It must have happened many times. But I remember because no man has ever looked at me with the yearning I saw on that man’s face as we pulled away from the curb.”

“My, aren’t we feeling sorry for ourselves today. At your age I was fielding three suitors at a time.” Sally leans forward, as if to impart a secret. “The only reason you’re not living the life you want is because you don’t demand it. What have I always said?”

“There will always be the next great opportunity, the next great adventure, and the next great man.” And this is why I come to Sally. She sees no roadblocks. Why should she? Life and love have always been willing to batter down her door.

We chat a little longer, wherein she gives me legal pointers about contesting a lawsuit and offers the services of her own attorney, which I promise to think about. Then she announces that she has an appointment and, really, I must come again when she has time to plan and we’ll do tea at the St. Regis.

Once on the sidewalk I am reminded that, while Sally is high on life and it on her, I live on the ground level where a sudden chilly rain can blow in and soak a person who didn’t think to bring an umbrella.

As I stand under the apartment awning shivering while I wait for the doorman to flag down a taxi, I wonder what sort of cosmic jokester thought it would be fun to dangle solvency before me with only one stipulation: that I deal with her.

Maybe it is the karma I deserve.

I should have been happy in my twenties and thirties being a striving career woman who worries about calories, checks her bank account obsessively because she can’t pass up purchasing that “have to have” wardrobe item, and fields her share of disappointments in love and life.

But I am Sally’s child, and whenever she swept into my middle-class upbringing, contrary to what she says, she had expectations.

Being destined to be somebody is a burden, especially if it’s someone else’s version of your life. A plan like that needs the raw material of some kind of talent. When I grew up, Madonna had not yet made an art of doing nothing well, spectacularly.

When I was sixteen Sally coaxed her gentleman friend of the moment into footing the bill for me to attend a Swiss finishing school, Surval Mont-Fleuri on Lake Geneva. For eighteen months I lived with seventy-five nice but lonely girls from six continents who only had in common their parents/guardians desire that they become the ne plus ultra of international hostesses. The course load was surprisingly heavy: forty-two hours a week of French and German, International Etiquette, Protocol, Savoir-Vivre, PR, Floral Art and Table Decoration, Enology, etc. My electives were cooking and pastry classes. And I fell in love, with baking, again.

When I graduated, and to show off my education, Sally arranged for me to prepare a seven-course meal for my benefactor and his select friends. At the end of the very successful evening, Sally said, “Just think what she’ll be able to accomplish after a term at the Sorbonne.”

But I’d had enough of formal education and said that if another sojourn in Europe was required I’d just as soon it was at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris.

My patron said he hadn’t spent twenty thousand—a considerable sum in those days—on somebody else’s little sister just so she could become a pastry chef.

Sally, bless her, came right back at him and said that was because he was too bourgeois to appreciate truly excellent cuisine. And, by the way, the “pasty chef” had inventoried his wine cellar and said it was execrable.

There was a howling fight. Shortly thereafter, Sally left for Paris. I stayed home and went to Rutgers. Then married, because Ted asked me.

Looking back, I can admit marrying Ted was a quick fix of stability. Women do that, knowing all the while that they are making a mistake, like choosing an inexpensive fun fur over a full-length mink because it looks so “right now” when waiting to have the money for the real thing that would have kept them warmer and remained timelessly chic.

What if by marrying Ted my karma is permanently skewed?

That would be so sad.

As I enter the miracle of a rainy-day cab, my heart begins to pound in my ears. And I’m holding my breath. Panic attack?

“Oh, no,” I moan, and stretch out flat on the back seat of the taxi.

“Lady, you okay?” I hear the driver ask nervously.

“Okay.” Breathe, I command myself, just breathe.

The last time this happened I was a year past the divorce and trying to cope with being completely on my own. I went to see my doctor. He said that stress can have that affect on an otherwise healthy person.

“Can’t you just give me a pill?” I asked.

“I could, but it won’t help what you’re suffering from.”

“What’s that?

He smiled kindly. “In layman’s terms, lack of a personal life. You’re a healthy woman with needs. Go out and get a life.”

Feeling the smothering sensation subside, I sit up.

The cabbie spares me a glance. “You need me to swing by an emergency room?”

“No, no thanks.”

What I need is a few spectacular moments in my life. Sally’s right. From now on, forget the steak. I’ll take the sizzle!

Once inside Penn Station, I remember to turn on my cell. Sally detests interruption by modern conveniences. I scroll through to see Sarah and Riley have each called three times, Celia twice, oh, and Harrison once.

Oh, joy! His message reminds me of what I’d forgotten. We have a date for dinner tonight.

I’ve been avoiding him since we mistakenly tumbled into bed together.

So then, this is the perfect opportunity to break things off. A chance to change my karma!

Chapter 7

“I understand that you need your space, Liz. Still, I hoped after our last time together, we’d reached a new level of understanding.” Harrison tries to take my hand, which I avoid by reaching for my glass of Shiraz. “I’d hoped you’d let me be the one you come to when you need someone to turn to.”

“That’s nice, Harrison.” Oh, brother! What’s a woman supposed to do with a man whose idea of romance is reciting lyrics from an eighties Carpenters’ song?

Deprived of my hand he leans in to capture my gaze with his. The effect of this soulful glance makes him look slightly cross-eyed. “How about we drive down to Cape May for the weekend?”

There it is! It’s the reason I’m as tense as he is nervous. He means when are we going to have sex again?

The answer is never. Not ever.

If it had been great sex I doubt I’d remember he tooted between thrusts.

Why hadn’t I listened to my gut, which told me never bed a man as an “oh well, what the hell” response. I have only myself to blame.

“This is the weekend of the Fine Arts and Crafts Show. I have a booth to manage.” I look around in hopes of spying a waiter.

Thankfully our waiter was waiting for a cue and comes over to take our orders.

I don’t usually eat red meat but we’re at Luigi’s Trattoria, Harrison’s favorite restaurant. Frankly, It’s so-so. The marinara sauce is too tomato-y and lacks a “fresh” herb flavor. The pastas have a thick, cling-to-the-teeth gummy texture that is not what’s meant by al dente. So I order the porterhouse, medium rare. There’s only so much a cook can do to a steak.

Sarah says I’m too critical. Riley says I have an “elitist foodie bias against the proletarian need for basic food consumption.” I remind her that basic consumption includes chemically enhanced beef and chicken, and potatoes deep-fried in trans-fatty oils.

When the waiter’s done Harrison scrapes back his chair and rises. “Excuse me. I need to water the petunia.”

I smile but think jeez.

Sally’s right. “Car dealer” has a certain slippery-snake-oil-salesman image. But Harrison’s not just another guy on the lot with the pompadour and picket-fence smile. He’s “The Negotiator,” the owner of a pair of northern New Jersey Lexus dealerships.

I was still working with Ted at Talbot Advertising when we came up with that slogan. Come to think of it, I came up with it. It’s been one of Talbot Advertising’s most successful slogans. It lifted Harrison out of the field of in-your-face car ads and gave him a profile with his targeted audience. I should have left the relationship at that.

A few months ago when I went in to get my car serviced, he came out to talk to me. It was easy enough to slip into the conversation that he divorced a year after I did and that neither of us was seeing anyone. When the bill came it was marked paid.

Now, I’m not one to knock free service but I was uncomfortable with the implication. I told him so when I handed him a check written for the full amount.

He said I was the first woman to turn down the offer. He went on to say that his high-profile business sometimes interferes with his love life. He was looking for someone who didn’t want anything from him.

I told him his explanation of the “bill paid” test could be seen as bragging, paranoia or just plain manipulative. Anyway, I didn’t like being tested without my consent.

There was an awkward pause before he asked if I’d consider accompanying him to a Rotary Club dinner the following evening.

I said yes.

There is something appalling about being single after a long marriage. It’s like rising from your seat at the end of Act III, only to realize there’s another play starting that you hadn’t anticipated. The first three acts had such symmetry: career, marriage and children. To find that the next act of your life has put you back in the prologue of a whole other play is disconcerting and frightening. I felt the need to push on to the opening of a new Act I. That explains my seeing Harrison Buckley.

Oh, we’ve had a pleasant time. I call him to escort me to a Friends of the Library fund-raiser and he calls for things like the Better Business Bureau or Kiwanis functions. But there’s no spark.

At twenty I was clueless. At forty-six my libido’s stronger. Not so surprising then that in a weak moment, a couple of days after Ted’s demise, Harrison found me rather distraught and one thing led to another in a way that never should have been.

Until that night whenever we had the rare one-on-one dinner, we ended up talking about our respective businesses over dessert.

Yes! That’s when I’ll break the news to him, over dessert. I’ll say that this was never meant to be a romance. We agreed we were just friends. We both deserve a chance at more.

Yeah. That sounds good, nonjudgmental and positive.

Hungry and edgy, I stare balefully at a basket of rolls, bulk manufactured like the kind sold in grocery stores. Even the breadsticks come in individual cellophane sleeves.

“Here we are.” I glance up to see Harrison’s back. Our meals arrive right after him.

“Now, that looks good.” He eyes my steak in a way I don’t want him eyeing me.

I slide my knife into the meat and peel back a bloodred center—no, the interior looks like it’s fresh from the cow.

“Is something the matter?” the waiter inquires with dutiful concern. After I explain that the cook didn’t do enough with this steak, he whisks away my plate.

“Here you are.” Harrison holds out to me a forkful of fettuccini con pancetta.

I smile and shake my head, wishing I didn’t have to wait for dessert. Sally would have sent him on his way months ago, thinking that he was just about the luckiest fella on the planet to have even known her.

I’m going to botch this. I can just feel it.

Harrison has stopped eating to stare at me not eating.

“I’ve been racking my brain, Liz, trying to decide on the right approach. A man can’t just pitch a deal if the offer isn’t right. You know what I mean?”

He’s talking business before the dessert? His dealership must be in trouble.

He puts down his fork and spoon for twirling and wipes his mouth very carefully, drawing my attention to the fact that there is a thin sheen of sweat on his upper lip.

What’s going on?

He pats his left breast pocket and begins to smile, only it’s a “lips peeled back from dry teeth” kind of sheepish grin. “So, Liz, I’ve put together a package I think you’re going to like. You don’t have to make a decision now. Take it home, think it over. Terms are still negotiable.”

Oh, Lord! He’s trying to sell me a new car.

He stands up, the scrape of his chair enough to alert our waiter. “So here goes.”

As he goes down on one knee, I have time to notice bits of minutiae. For instance, the red-and-green tweed carpet is actually a houndstooth pattern. He’s wearing brown corduroy trousers in August. There’s a splash of tomato sauce an inch long on his yellow silk tie. He’s missed shaving a small patch of whiskers on the underside of his right jaw. A sweat stain wicks down the collar of his shirt. And why is he on a knee? Did he drop a contact?

Murmurs alert me to the fact that I’m not the only one staring. Harrison’s actions have drawn the eye of patrons who wouldn’t have glanced up if a waiter had tripped with a full tray.

There’s something primal about a man going down on one knee in public. It’s a rare moment of masculine vulnerability on public display. Like a Hail Mary Pass, it’s fraught with the possibility of sweet triumph, or humiliation and miscalculation likely to end in crushing defeat.

Holy crap! It can’t be—

A ring! He’s thrust it before me, nestled in dark green velvet in a box sprung open on what must be two and a half, maybe three carats.

“—Not a deal-breaker. Terms are negotiable. But you’re a sweet deal I won’t let get…”

“No, no! Put that away!” I whisper as I reach out and snap the lid shut.

I must be looking at him as if he’s offered me the finger instead of a ring because he flushes a deep red as he jerks the box back and shoves it into his pocket.

The whiplash of patrons looking away sends shockwaves of silent sympathy toward the poor bastard who couldn’t close the deal.

“Oh, Harrison, I’m so sorry.” I reach for his hand, which is clammy. “I didn’t mean to react that way. It’s just, you took me by surprise.”

He doesn’t even look at me. He fumbles with his fork as sweat runs in rivulets from his brow. “Obviously, it wasn’t a pleasant surprise.”

“I apologize. I do. But a ring? It was the la—least—something I didn’t expect. We’ve known each other such a short time.”

He looks up and if possible I feel even worse as the red-faced humiliation I’ve caused stares back at me. “Fifteen months, Liz. Nearly a year and a half of our lives has gone into this relationship.”

“So much?” Good grief! Time flies when you’re not having fun.

“But this wasn’t that kind of a real relationship, Harrison. I had no idea you thought it was.”

He glares at me. “We’re sleeping together.”

“Did. Once. It was a mistake.” He flinches like a dog struck on the nose with a rolled newspaper.

Dear God! What happened to my no fault/no foul speech?

“I mean, we agreed, we were just keeping each other occupied. Casually. This was never a romance and…and we both deserve a chance at more.”

He pauses with a forkful of pasta near his mouth. “You’re seeing someone else?”

“No. I wouldn’t…” Well, maybe I would, if there was someone else. “I’m not seeing anyone else, but we should. That’s the point. You should, and I should. Okay?”

Instead of answering he just stuffs his mouth with pasta, and I guess I should be grateful.

We ride home in a silence only mortal enemies could appreciate after I insisted on paying for a steak I couldn’t eat.

I go in, pour myself a well-aged Scotch, knock it back like it was cheap bourbon, and then go to bed, facedown in my dress.

About 2:00 a.m. I awaken unable to breathe. My dress has twisted so tightly around my waist it feels like a tourniquet.

I rise, dress for bed and return to a slumber where, in my dreams, farts instead of words issue from Harrison’s mouth.

“Liz! Have I got something to show you!”

It’s rare that Celia arrives early enough to open. Obviously something else has brought her in today because she goes right over to the TV-VCR perched above the counter and pops in a tape. Occasionally we watch a movie after hours as we clean up.

“I’m not always out of the shower in time to catch the local weather report so I tape and replay it while I dress. I’m so glad I did this morning.” Celia picks up the remote and points. “Now watch.”

For a few seconds the jerky movements of fast-forward animate the screen and then under the direction of Celia’s thumb, It pauses and starts again in Play mode. There is our local weather guy chatting with the co-anchors of the show.

“For all of you who’ve ever wondered about the hype at North Jersey Lexus, I’ve got a scoop. Yes, an eyewitness account of my very own. It seems not even the famed Negotiator can close every deal, even if it’s diamond-clad. Stay tuned—”

“Oh…my…God!” I turn in horror to Celia.

“So it’s true?” Celia’s Betty Boop face goes all wide-eyed with surprise. “Harrison proposed to you?”

“Er, sort of. But how did they hear about that?” I look back at the screen. “And why is it on TV?”

Celia shushes me, fast-forwards the tape through the commercials, hits Play again.

“Harrison ‘The Negotiator’ Buckley is well known to Jerseyites as the man who will not take ‘No deal’ for an answer. Well, old Harrison, car dealer par excellence, was certainly off his game last night. While dining at a local establishment…”

I turn away, feeling woozy. Who knew the local weather guy was at the restaurant last night, or that he’d make my proposal—no, refusal—the topic of his water cooler spot on the morning news?

“—So go by and give Harrison a break. ’Cause some little lady broke his heart.”

“Your old man proposed?” Shemar has come out from the back. “And you shut him down in public. Ouch! Now, that’s cold.”

“He wasn’t my old man. And I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I’m only saying, Miz T, you could be driving the hoopty of your choice off his lot, chilling and thrilling at this very moment.”

I turn to Celia. “Isn’t there a law against invasion of privacy?”

“John calls it a reasonable expectation of privacy.” Celia’s husband has twice qualified for Jeopardy and is waiting for the call. “He says Harrison proposed in a public place. He could have no reasonable expectation of privacy.”

“What about me? I was totally blindsided. Don’t I have a right to privacy?”

“Least that chump weatherman didn’t catch the 411 on you, Miz T,” Shemar offers as consolation.

I clutch at this realization. I wasn’t named. No one will know it was me. So, maybe no real harm was done, except to Harrison. Poor Harrison! He’s going to be in all alone in the spotlight of shame.

That fantasy lasts as long as it takes for the door to open.

“Who’s Miss Picky this morning?” Mrs. Morshheimer actually simpers as she comes up to me. “I thought he was just right for you.” She pats my arm. “At a certain point in life a girl can be too particular. Security and companionship are better in the long run.”

She leans in really close to whisper. “The s-e-x never lasts.” She looks up at me with a little shake of her head.

Great. Just great!

Chapter 8

Who marries on a Friday? This is a mercy wedding. At least my attendance is.

With the Fine Arts and Crafts Show opening tomorrow I should be at the bakery taking care of a hundred last-minute details. But I promised Celia. And this is Jenna Harris’s wedding.

Jenna Harris is, by Celia’s account, a whippet-size baby-blonde, the ethereal kind found only in Manhattan. Celia is “baby’s mum” blond, meaning she’s often too busy to keep the roots touched up. If Botticelli drew her she’d be one of the Three Graces of ample hip and stomach curves. But a bigger psychological barrier is that Celia and John eloped while Jenna’s wedding is rumored to be the wedding of the season—even if it is being held in New Jersey. I say there’s something fishy in that, but what do I know?

“You look lovely,” I assure her for the fourth time. She’s wearing a champagne silk dupioni sheath. “I can tell you’ve lost weight.”

“And you. Sexy, sexy!” Celia seems as delighted as if she were speaking of herself.

What I’ve lost is my appetite. Hiring a lawyer I can’t afford to fight for my share of Ted’s will has me chewing my nails to the quick. Reason aside, I don’t really want any part of Ted’s estate. But I just can’t stand the idea of handing everything over to her! How juvenile is that?

“I like your hair lifted back off your face,” Celia continues. “Has anyone ever told you you look a bit like Jackie O?”

“No.” Embarrassed, I turn away. Sally looks like Jackie O. I look, well, like not Jackie.

If I’m looking at all sexy it’s the shoes. Periodically, Sally cleans out her closet and sends me pairs of last season’s got-to-have shoes. Shoe size is the only size we share. Lucky me! The right pair of shoes can make even a simple black sheath look couture. Tonight I’m wearing Jimmy Choo sandals with curvy red patent leather hole-punched straps. Sex on a stem!

The black tie wedding is being held in one of the swanky hotels in the area. A block-long white Hummer limo blocks the curved entrance while double-parked guests wait for valets. I park myself. In my pennies-count world, I can’t afford to show off.

When we finally break free of the crush entering the prenuptial cocktail area of the reception hall, Celia has parallel frown lines between her brows. Already set high, her envy meter is rising.

The theme of the wedding is “Under the Sea.” The tones are champagne and mother-of-pearl pink with traces of silver. From tabletops spilling over with shells and pearls to a ceiling artfully draped to resemble ocean currents, the room is a stage set of seascape luxe. Granted, it’s not as gaudy/tacky as it will sound when I describe it to Riley and Sarah, but my job tonight is to be biased on Celia’s behalf. And Celia’s turning an envious shade of green. Of course, it could be that she’s holding her stomach in too tight.

“Would you look at all this?” I hope I sound faintly disapproving. “Who but a cruise ship still does conch shell ice sculptures?”

“Jenna took the Michael C. Fina wedding workshop course.” Celia sounds positively subdued. “She must have made an A.”

“And he made a bundle. Anyone can buy inspiration. She bought too much.”

Celia gives me a funny look. “Don’t you like it?”

I look around with a sigh of so what. “Honestly? It’s as if Tiffany did The Little Mermaid in platinum and pearls.”

A bubble of laughter escapes Celia and she steers me over to a diorama of the bridal place setting. The elaborately scrolled and painted pieces of Butterfly Garden bone china by Versa are presented as works of art. “John had a cow when I told him how much a setting costs. Oh, but it is gorgeous.”

“Plates that decorative make it hard to tell when you have finished eating. And notice the size and weight of her silver. Elderly relatives will never be able to lift those forks to their mouths.”

Celia giggles again. “I had no idea you could be so catty.”

A waiter with tray approaches. “Have a Blue Bird or Abyssina martini.”

Celia grabs the pretty blue drink with narrow strips of orange peel curling over the rim. After a sip she smiles. “Yum!”

“Gin, Monin Orgeat and blue Curaçao,” the waiter offers in explanation.

I wrinkle my nose. “Nothing called a martini should be blue.”

“You might prefer the Abyssinia,” the waiter says. “It’s cognac, crème de cacao and grapefruit juice.”

“Have a lot of requests for that sort of thing?”

He shrugs. “It’s the bride’s selection.”

Celia looks at me. “I can’t wait to see what the appetizer plaza has to offer.”

I nod. If Celia’s ready to move on from sucked-in abs to self-indulgent grazing, my job, for the moment, is done.

I opt for the nearest bar station where I order a real martini. My limit is one before the wedding. Nothing gets me tight faster than a good martini. That tingling at the tip of my nose signals stop before all sense of decorum is lost.

There’s a side galley for those with the preceremony munchies. At one stop hapi-coated sushi chefs make bite-size delicacies. After a tasting, we depart for tables laden with mini crab cakes, tiny beef Wellingtons and bite-size ham biscuits with béchamel sauce. My personal favorite is the lobster ceviche served in a silver conch shell. Heaven!

Finally Celia glances at her watch. “When are we going be seated?”

That question is being murmured in variation all around us when the doors are thrown open on a room with rows of velvet chairs and a wedding canopy at the far end. The throng rushes through to vie for the best seats.

As I would follow, Celia catches me by the elbow. “I wonder what that’s about.”

I follow the jerk of her head and spot a bridesmaid in a platinum silk chamois fishtail gown. She’s waving to get our attention as she swims toward us.

She doesn’t even introduce herself, just whispers, “Which of you is Celia Hart?”

“I am, was Celia Hart,” Celia answers. “Now Celia Martin.”

“Thank God!” She grabs Celia by the arm. “Jenna’s locked herself in the dressing room and says she won’t talk to anyone but you. Hurry!”

Celia must be doing marathon girlfriend counseling. It’s been half an hour since the groom’s mother announced that the wedding is off. After that, the hotel bar seemed a better location to wait than standing around at a celebration gone fractious. As I slipped out I overheard a guest refer to the bride as a “schizoid drama queen.” No doubt from the groom’s side of the aisle.

I’m gratified that my strapless black sheath with illusion yoke has earned me a few glances of approval. Possibly it’s the Jimmie Choos. But I’m not interested in fending off upscale barflies. With a soda and lime in hand I chat up the bartender, Mitch, though he isn’t above asking snoopy questions about the wedding. I’ve tried to divert him by talking about my favorite topic, bread, but he keeps coming back to the wedding.

“What’d you wager they spent on that shindig?”

“What do you think of the idea of pomegranate seed bread?” I respond. “I can’t decide, does it sound like breakfast bread, dessert bread or a cheese-and-wine bread? I suppose it depends on how sweet it is, and whether or not there’s a glaze.”

“The kitchen staff has a pool going. My bet is three hundred thou.”

Talk about a one-track mind.

“Excuse me,” the man to my right says. “Are you here for a wedding?”

He sat down a few minutes ago, leaving a stool between us. I don’t glance at him but I suppose there’s no reason to be rude. He could be another stranded wedding guest. “Yes, the wedding that wasn’t.”

“Really? Tough break. So who called it off?”

I look over with every intention of telling him to mind his own business. But whatever I was about to say takes flight as I’m left just looking.

He’s dressed in sport coat and open collar, definitely not a wedding guest. The rest of his assets click off in my mind: high forehead, cropped dark hair, bold nose and jaw set off by deep copper skin that no bottle, spray, oil or butter produced. Yet it’s not his mature urbane looks that shut down my annoyance. It’s his city-block smile. It’s a smile of recognition, the kind you get from a long-ago friend who’s eager for you to place him.

But I don’t know him. Trust me, I would remember. The expectant look in his dark eyes only reminds me that I’m a single woman in a nice dress with time on her hands. So, um, what did he ask me?

“I’m here as moral support for a friend of a friend of the bride.”

That smile widens a notch. “What kind of support does a friend of a friend of the bride give?”

The female response is a finicky business. One gorgeous male can leave a woman cold while the next average guy can have her crossing her legs and running a hand suggestively through her hair. I’m doing both before I realize it.

Not that I’d call him average. Actually, he’s a really big guy. Like professional-athlete big. And he’s talking to me. So why not keep the conversation going? The subject was? Oh yes, friendship.

“Oh, the usual. ‘You’re so lucky to be married to a great guy, and have two sets of twins, and a job with flexible hours. Look how long it took your boyfriend-stealing girlfriend to find a man to marry, even if he is a zillionaire.’ As it turns out, she’s had a change of heart about the zillionaire.”

He nods, then says, “Excuse me,” and pulls out his cell phone. “Hey. Yeah, I’m waiting in the bar.”

I turn away, surprisingly disappointed. Of course he’s waiting for someone. She’s probably running late, to ratchet up his anticipation.

Mitch catches my eye, and I know he knows what I’m thinking. “I’m ready for that martini now.”

“Try a perfect martini.” He’s talking to me again.

“What’s your definition of perfect?” I say coolly.

He smiles and, yep, the eyes have it, deep-set and long-lashed. Girlfriend better hurry up. This is not a man who should be left waiting. “Four parts good gin, one part Chambery dry and one part Noilly Prat sweet, shaken with ice.”

“Sounds interesting. But aren’t you waiting for someone?”

He shakes his head. “Not anymore.”

“You recover quickly.”

“It wasn’t a date. It was business.”

“Sure it was.”

He shoots me a knowing grin. “About that martini?”

“I’m paying,” I say quickly. Hope it won’t cost more than the twenty I stuck in my evening bag.

“Wait until you taste it.” The deep grooves around his mouth become dimple trenches. “So, what do you do?”

“I’m a baker. I bake bread.”

I watch closely for signs of a shift in his interest. Much as I hate to admit it, that “blue collar” comment from Ted has proved true for some.

“Why bread?”

“You know how some people crave chocolate? And others live for the next good vintage? Bread does it for me. A good loaf can satisfy all the senses.” I stop, chagrined. “I know. I’m talking about a food most people use as bookends for meat and cheese.”

“Not at all.” He leans an arm on the bar and says, “Tell me more.”

“Okay, but remember, you asked.” Suddenly I want to sound fascinating, entertaining and sexy as hell.

“First off there’s the form of the classic loaf to seduce the eye. Some are round and firm, others long and lightly ridged.” I make the appropriate hand gestures. Shemar has rubbed off on me!

“The crust is paramount. Personally, a rich medium brown really does it for me.” He smiles and I smile, and feel my pulse kick up a notch.

“What else?”

“There’s how a loaf feels when you slip a knife through it, or tear it open. A good brioche or roll will open like a flower when you pull it part. A well-proofed loaf will fall open in firm slices before a blade.”

He props his jaw on his fist. “Go on.”

“The aroma of bread still warm from the oven.” I close my eyes briefly in remembered delight. “It’s one of my all-time favorite smells.”

“Three senses down, you’ve got two to go.”

“Okay, I love the tantalizing taste as a slice of bread reveals its nature as sourdough or poolish-based. Oh, and the crunch it makes when you take a bite.”

He looks amused. “I never thought of something as simple as bread delivering an orgasmic experience.”

What the heck? I lean close and touch his arm. “There are those who suspect that it was a pomegranate not an apple Eve plucked from the Garden of Eden. Imagine the possibilities of the pomegranate-seed loaf I’m working on.”

As he chuckles, I look over at the drink set before me and frown. “There’s fruit in my martini.”

“You’re a passionate and adventurous woman. Consider the possibilities of the cherry.”

He snags the cherry in my glass by the stem and jerks it out. “Observe the color—red. The texture—smooth. The shape—round.” He pops the cherry between his nice lips and rolls it around with the slow-motion deliberation, and then he chews as if he’s relishing every bite. “The texture is crisp, the taste sweet yet with a touch of…je nais c’est quoi.”

When he’s done I point and say, “You left the lemon rind.”

He reaches out with two fingers, as if to dredge my drink, but I move it out of his reach. “Okay, you win. I’ll taste it.” I close my eyes and take a sip.

“Well?”

“It’s all right.” It’s great! Of course, his demonstration with the cherry has me thinking more about what kissing him would taste like. A second more considering sip brings out the blend of flavors. “Very smooth.”

“To the perfect evening!” We clink glasses.

Might as well get the preliminaries over with. “Married or divorced?”

“Divorced.” He shakes his head. “That sounded bitter. I’m not. Make that not anymore.”

“You don’t have to explain. I’ve been there.”

“Was yours acrimonious?”

I pick up my glass. “What’s your definition of acrimonious?”

“Did it include defamation of character or destruction of property?” His tone is light. “Were weapons involved?”

I contemplate the slightly oiled surface of my martini with a small smile. “What’s your definition of weapons?”

His change of expression cracks me up. “Just kidding. So, what do you do?”

“Does it matter?”

“Actually, I couldn’t care less.” I finish off my perfect martini in two large swallows.

“Want to try another combination?” He points at my glass. “Or do you prefer more of the same?”

I meet his gaze and it’s like looking over the edge of a high cliff. Is this the next great man? If so, “More of the same please.”

“My pleasure and my treat.”

After that we chat about nothing in particular. He’s so easy to talk with. He tells a long story about his visit to a gin distillery. I listen only enough to make the occasional “Really?” or “You’re kidding” interjections. I’d rather admire the way his ears lie against his skull. And imagine how much fun it would be to follow with a finger the wave of his hairline from the temple to where it swoops up over an ear and then slips razor-edge perfect down the column of his neck. Something about the smooth, hairless slope of his nape makes me weak-kneed.

When I reach out and touch his wrist to emphasize a point, he flips his hand over and captures my fingertips and gives them a quick squeeze. Our gazes meet and hold just long enough.

“Have you considered broadening your business?” he asks after the third set of drinks arrives. I’ve been regaling him with tales of the No-Bagel Emporium.

“Only every other day.”

“What’s stopping you?”

“Lack of capital. Lack of investors. Lack of distribution mechanism.”

“Ever think about doing a deal with a corporation for distribution?”

I make a face. “Tried that.”

“What happened?”

“Low-carb mania.”

I rest my chin on my hand, only inches from where his rests, and am delighted by how daring so simple an act seems. The slight tingling in the tip of my nose signals that we’re kissably close. Or, I’ve reached my martini limit.

He twists on his stool to fully face me. The result is my knees become nestled between his spread legs and I find it a little harder to keep my expression bland. “Is your product any good?”

“I’d match my bread against any bakery in the tri-state area.”

He laughs and it’s the most seductive thing. I feel this out-of-character-but-urgent desire to put my arms about his neck, and French-kiss him until we melt into a puddle on the floor.

A little perplexed by the force of my emotions, I look away from him. The truth is if I could have wild anonymous monkey sex with this man right this minute, I’d go for it.

I look up guiltily. “Did I just say something?”

He shakes his head. “But I’d give a dollar to hear what you’re thinking.”

Our gazes meet and I watch his pupils expand with the force of the desire in my expression. He’s going to say something, do something, I just know it.

Instead he picks up my glass and waggles it at the bartender. “I’m going to buy you one more, and then we’re going to say good night.”

I glance toward the door. Has the girlfriend arrived, after all? I don’t see anyone in particular, but then things have taken on a warm fuzzy glow. When I turn back he’s staring at me, and it hits me. I want this guy. “Why break up a nice evening?” I hope I don’t sound as giddy as I feel.

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