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farm team.”
“Get out.” She shoved his arm. “Seriously? I never knew that. The Yankees scouted you? Why didn’t I know that?”
“I never told anybody. I had to decide. I could either be a really good lawyer or a decent ballplayer.”
She remembered watching him play since ... always, she realized. Without much effort, she pulled out a mental picture of him as a boy playing Little League.
God, he was cute.
“You loved baseball.”
“I still do. I just realized I didn’t love it enough to give it everything I had, and to give up everything else for it. So I wasn’t good enough.”
She understood that, yes, understood that very well. She wondered if she could’ve made the same sensible, rational choice to give up something she loved and wanted.
“Do you ever regret it?”
“Every summer. For about five minutes.” He draped an arm over her shoulders. “But you know, when I’m old and sitting on the rocker on the front porch, I get to tell my great-grandchildren how back in the day, the Yankees scouted me.”
She couldn’t quite build that image in her mind, but the idea of it made her smile. “They won’t believe you.”
“Sure they will. They’ll love me. And my pocketful of candy. What about you? One regret.”
“I probably have a lot more of them than you.”
“Why?”
“Because you—and Parker—always seem to know what direction you need and want to take. So let’s see.” She crunched into the sugar cone as she considered. “Okay. Sometimes I wonder how it would’ve been if I’d gone to France, stayed there. Run my own exclusive patisserie—while having many passionate affairs.”
“Naturally.”
“I’d design and bake for royalty and stars, and run my staff like dogs.
Allez, allez! Imbeciles! Merde!”
He laughed at her broad, undeniably Gallic gestures, and dodged her cone.
“I’d be a terror, and a genius, world-renowned, jetting off to exciting places to make birthday cakes for little princesses.”
“You’d hate that. Except for the cursing in French.”
More than full, she tossed what was left of her cone in the trash. “Probably, but it’s something I think about sometimes. Still, I’d be doing what I’m doing now at the core of it. I didn’t have to choose.”
“Sure you did. Solo or partnership, home or European adventure. That’s a big choice, too. You know, if you’d gone to France, you’d have pined away for us.”
God, that was so absolutely true. But keeping to her theme, she shook her head. “I’d have been too busy with my wild affairs and towering ego ride to pine. I’d have thought of you fondly from time to time, and swirled in occasionally from a trip to New York to dazzle you all with my European panache.”
“You have European panache.”
“Is that so?”
“Sometimes you mutter or swear in French when you’re working.”
She stopped, frowned. “I do?”
“Now and then, and with a perfect accent. It’s entertaining.”
“Why hasn’t anyone told me this before?”
He took her hand, linked fingers while they angled away from the pond. “Maybe because they figured you knew, since you were the one muttering and swearing.”
“That could be it.”
“And if you’d gone, you’d have thought about this, what you’re doing here now.”
“Yeah, I would. Still, other times I imagine I have a pretty bake shop in a small village in Tuscany, where it only rains at night and charming little children come in to beg for treats. It’s a pretty good deal.”
“And here we both are, still in Greenwich.”
“All in all, it’s a good place to be.”
“Right now?” He tipped her face up to kiss her. “It’s close to perfect.”
“This seems almost too easy,” she said as they walked back to the car.
“Why should it be hard?”
“I don’t know. I’m just naturally suspicious of too easy.” At the car she turned, leaned back against the door to look up at him. “When it’s going easy I know there’s a disaster waiting to fall on my head. It’s just around the corner, a piano being lowered out the window”
“So you walk around it.”
“What if you’re not looking up until—
snap—the cable breaks, then you’re splatted under the Steinway”
“Most of the time the cable doesn’t break.”
“Most of the time,” she agreed, tapping a finger on his chest. “It only takes once. So it’s better to keep looking up, just in case.”
Lifting a hand, he tucked her swing of hair behind her ear. “Then you can trip over the curb and break your neck.”
“That’s true. Disasters are everywhere.”
“Would you feel better if I started a fight?” He laid his hands on the car on either side of her, leaned in to brush his lips against hers. “Rough you up a little so it’s not so easy.”
“Depends on the roughing up.” She drew him down for a deeper kiss. “Twenty-four more days,” she murmured. “Maybe it’s not so easy after all.”
“Almost a week down.” He opened the door for her. “And an eight-hundred-dollar pool on the line.”
There was that, she thought as he walked around the car to get behind the wheel. He’d insisted on tossing a hundred of his in on the kitty. “Some would say our tribe’s a little too intimate when they start a pool on when we’ll have sex.”
“Those
some aren’t our tribe. And thinking of tribes, why don’t we gather ours for the Fourth?”
“Fourth of what—oh. July. God, it’s nearly here.”
“We could play some ball, eat some hot dogs, watch the fireworks in the park.You don’t have an event that day.”
“No events on the Fourth, no matter how much they beg or bribe. A Vows’ tradition. We have a day off.” She sighed it. “An entire day off, away from the kitchen. I can get behind that.”
“Good, because I already said something to Parker about the gathering of the tribe.”
“What if I’d said no?”
He flashed her a grin. “Then we’d have missed you.”
She narrowed her eyes at him, but her lips twitched. “I suppose I already have an assignment.”
“There might have been some mention of a suitably patriotic cake. And we thought we’d go over to Gantry’s after, for some music. ”
“I’m not designated driver. If I bake, I get to drink.”
“Reasonable. We’ll make Carter do it,” he decided and made her laugh. “We can all fit in Emma’s van.”
“That works for me.” It was all working for her, she thought as he turned in the drive.
She was going to have to keep a careful eye out for pianos.
SHE DECIDED TO GO WITH A FIREWORKS THEME, WHICH MEANT working with a lot of spun sugar. Probably silly to go to so much trouble for a park picnic with friends, she thought as she threw heated strands from her whisk to the wooden rack, but also fun.
She’d use the strands to form exploding fountains on the cake she’d already piped out in red, white, and blue. Some gum paste flags around the border, and you had a winner.
Enjoying herself, she began to form the fireworks with the sugar strands made pliable with just a touch of beeswax.
She stepped back to check the first formation, and nearly yelped when she saw a man in her doorway.
“Sorry. Sorry. I didn’t want to say anything when you were working. Afraid I’d screw you up. Nick Pelacinos, from the last-minute engagement party?”
“Sure.” He had a summer bouquet in his hand that made her think: uh-oh. “How are you?”
“Good. Your partner said I could come back, that you weren’t working, but ...”
“This isn’t for a job.”
“It ought to be.” He stepped closer. “Fun.”
“Yeah, it is. Spun s
ugar’s like a toy.”
“And your hands are full with it, so why don’t I just put these over here.” He crossed over to set the flowers out of the way.
“They’re beautiful.” Had she flirted with him? Yes. Sort of. “Thank you.”
“I have my grandmother’s recipe for the lathopita.”
“Oh, that’s great.”
“She gave me orders to deliver it in person.” He took a recipe card out of his pocket, laid it beside the bouquet. “And to bring you the flowers.”
“That’s awfully sweet of her.”
“She liked you.”
“I liked her, too. How about some coffee?”
“No, I’m fine. Her third order was for me to ask you out to dinner—which I’d intended to do anyway, but she likes to take credit.”
“Oh. And that’s sweet of both of you. But I’ve actually started seeing someone recently. Well, the seeing part is recent. Sort of.”
