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Serena slammed the phone down and slumped back in the couch in a huff. She’d never been rude to her father before but this situation called for it. She sat with her arms folded tightly across her chest, teeth biting into her bottom lip. What did she know about budgets? Where would she even start? Her father was putting her through hell. She would never forgive him.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Serena bit her lower lip and frowned as she stared down at the framed portrait. She lifted her index finger to her lips and began to nibble absently at the nail then, realizing what she was doing, she dropped her hand guiltily and slid it into the back pocket of her jeans. When was she going to get rid of that awful childhood habit? Whenever she was nervous or deep in thought she always reverted to that one habit she found so hard to break. She was twenty-one, for goodness sake. Time to put down such childish behavior.
She sighed and walked away from the bed then went to stare out the bedroom window of the apartment. It was a hell of a thing, being broke. For the first time in her life she knew what it was like to want something badly and not have the money to get it. She’d seen an exquisite gold watch at Diamante’s and had wanted it for her grandmother’s seventy-fifth birthday but with a little over two hundred dollars available on her credit card how could she? And there was that small matter of her personal expenses. The little that was left on the card would have to serve her till pay day. With gasoline prices skyrocketing she had no idea how she would make the money serve that long.
The long and short of it was she had no money to buy Grandma Sylvie a birthday present. And so she’d turned to her long-time hobby. Instead of buying a gift she’d dug through a box of old photos and found one of her grandmother when she was ten years younger, laughing and happy with her husband of over forty years. Serena’s grandfather, still handsome in his senior years, was holding her in a tender embrace and he was smiling down at her with a love that was undeniable.
Serena stared at that photo for a long time. She knew the grief Grandma Sylvie had suffered when Grandpa Harris died of pneumonia at the age of sixty-seven. She’d married her childhood sweetheart and had never returned the interest of any other man. She missed him immensely, and she missed the love they shared. Serena wanted to recapture that love for her grandma, even if only on paper. And so she began to draw.
It took most of her Saturday morning but she didn’t mind. Serena sketched the photo, creating an eighteen by twenty-four inch replica in charcoal, and then she pulled out the elegant gilt-edged picture frame she’d found at the discount store. Gently, she placed the picture inside and as it lay on the bed in its frame she ran loving fingers over the faces of her grandparents. Then she went to the closet to get wrapping paper and a bow.
After she’d wrapped the gift she propped it against the side of her mahogany chest of drawers then headed out to the kitchen to tackle the second half of her project. Today she was going to bake a cake. No matter that she’d never baked a thing in her life, she was going to do this for her beloved grandmother and nothing was going to stop her. Now that she’d created one project with her own hands she was eager to do more. She’d downloaded the recipe from the internet and it looked as easy as ever.
Smiling and humming to herself Serena laid the printed page on the kitchen counter and checked the list of items she’d need. She opened the fridge and the cupboards and started gathering all the ingredients. When everything was laid out she put on her frilly white apron and giggled. She looked like Betty Crocker. Now if only the look would enhance her skills as a baker. No matter, she was ready to take the plunge. Yellow sponge cake, here we come.
******
Roman shuffled through the papers on his desk. Where the hell was it? He could have sworn he’d left it on the pile in the middle of his desk. He sat back in the chair and frowned, trying to remember. Serena had handed him the file then slipped back out, spending less than ten seconds in his office. After he’d stopped admiring her cute little tush in tailored black pants he’d dropped the file back onto the desk and he’d gone back to what he’d been working on. Now where had it gone since then?
He got up and went over to the file cabinet, checked on top, checked inside. All clear. He walked over to the credenza and opened it to check all the files inside. Had Serena come in later that day and taken the file back? Beginning to get annoyed he walked out of his office and headed down to the sixth floor. There he checked her desk and the cabinet in her cubicle. No file. And there was no one to ask. It was Saturday and he was the only one working in the building. He normally encouraged his employees to use weekends for family and relaxation. He frowned on people working overtime unless absolutely necessary. As far as he was concerned if you weren’t a good enough time manager to get your work done during the weekdays then some improvement was needed.
Just thinking about it made him smile to himself. Today he was the guilty party. He had a good excuse, though. This week he had been back and forth between New York and Toronto and so he just hadn’t had the time to sit still long enough to review the file. But now he needed it in order to get ready for his meeting on Monday morning. Now how the heck was he going to prepare without that file?
He had no alternative. He had to call Serena. He felt a twinge of discomfort at having to disturb her on the weekend but he knew she would understand. Back at his office he flipped through the employee directory then dialed Serena’s home number. She picked up on the fifth ring.
“Hello?” Her voice sounded breathless as if she’d been running.
“Serena, this is Roman. I’m sorry to disturb you but I need the MacGyver file. Did you take it back from my office?”
“No, I didn’t,” she began then she paused. “I remember Theresa saying she wanted to add a couple of documents to the file, though. Maybe you could check her office?”
“Thanks a lot, Serena. And again, I apologize for disturbing you on a Saturday.”
“That’s okay,” she said then she gasped. “Oh, my God. Smoke!”
Roman heard the clatter of the phone as she dropped the receiver and then he heard what sounded like the banging of pots and pans. What in the blazes was going on? “Serena. Are you okay?” He was shouting into the phone but obviously she couldn’t hear him. All he could do was clutch the receiver and wait. Something was going on, he had no idea what, and he hated feeling helpless. But what else could he do? He was too far away to do anything.
Finally, after what seemed like ages, Serena came back to the phone. “I’m sorry, it was…I burned my cake,” she wailed into the phone.
“Your what?”
“My cake,” she yelled, her voice full of frustration. “I was trying to bake a cake for my grandmother and the whole thing burned. It’s all black and hard and it’s still smoking.”
Roman almost had to bite his lip to keep from laughing out loud. Serena Van Buren baking a cake? He was having a hard time picturing it. The high society girl in apron and oven mitts looking like the picture-perfect housewife from the magazines of the nineteen sixties. No way, not this spoiled rich girl.
“What am I going to do now? Today is my grandma’s birthday and I was planning to go over and take her a cake. Now I messed up everything.”
To Roman’s surprise Serena began to sob. It was like a dam of frustration had broken inside her. The sobbing got louder and was punctuated with hiccups.
Roman would not have believed it if he hadn’t been on the phone with the girl. Fiery Serena breaking down over a cake? She could easily order a hundred cakes. What was making her so emotional? “It’s not the end of the world,” he said, trying to soothe her. “It’s only a cake.”
“It’s not only a cake,” she retorted. “It’s my cake, the cake I was making for my grandmother. It was supposed to be special.” She sniffed and took a couple of deep breaths, apparently trying to calm herself. “I followed the recipe to the letter. I don’t know what went wrong. I didn’t exceed the time on the packaging. The cake was only in the oven like twenty minutes.”
“And what was the temperature setting on the oven?”
“The temperature what?”
“Okay. I think we’ve found the key to your problem.” Roman shook his head then chuckled. “You probably had the temperature setting way too high and that’s why you burned your cake.”
Serena heaved a sigh. “Why can’t I do anything right? What am I going to do now? I wish somebody had taught me about these things.”
For a moment there was silence and Roman could just imagine her biting her bottom lip as she seemed to do when she was deep in thought. She was obviously at a loss when it came to domestic matters and why shouldn’t she be? He was sure she hadn’t had to cook anything in her life. And now she had taken it up on herself to bake a cake for her grandmother by herself. He could only admire her for that.
