Éclair and Present Danger (17 page)

L
ooking back, she probably shouldn't have lain down on her bed after finishing her talk with Mr. Nelson. If she hadn't, she wouldn't have had to hit the ground running the moment her alarm clock proclaimed it morning. And if she hadn't, she would have bypassed the moment of terror that came with the realization she was low on flour at a critical point in the baking process.

Still, she'd managed to develop a recipe that was sure to be a hit (last-minute flour run and all) and deliver her first Dump (Him) Cake to the Bryant Hall Dormitory at Silver Lake College by the requested noon arrival time. The fact that it was now one o'clock and she was taking her first bite of food since the subpar cinnamon crumb cake with Jay the previous night was beside the point.

Halfway through the sub sandwich Renee had mercifully made for Winnie upon her return from the campus, she looked up to find her friend staring at her with obvious amusement. “Is . . . some . . . thing . . . wrong?” Winnie asked between bites.

“I've never seen you eat so fast before.”

Winnie took another bite. “I've never . . . been this . . . hungry before.”

“I can see that.” Renee looked down at her own sandwich and placed half of it on Winnie's plate. “When was the last time you ate something?”

She considered the question, revisited her food intake over the past twenty-four hours, and then proceeded to answer. “You mean aside from two or three bites of a not-so-great cinnamon crumb cake at Beans last night? Breakfast. Yesterday.”

Drumming the fingers of her left hand on the table, Renee conceded the rest of her sandwich to Winnie with her right. “First, you're a nut. Second, you didn't tell me you were going to Beans . . .”

“It was a school night for Ty.” She took a moment to come up for air and then moved on to the first of Renee's sandwich halves. “Besides, I was there on someone else's invitation.”

The second the words were out she knew she'd made a mistake wording her response the way she did. And, sure enough, Renee's eyes widened, her brow arched, and a knowing smile pushed any lingering concern over Winnie's eating habits right out the door.

“So how was he?”

“He, who?” It was a rhetorical question, of course, but it bought her some time . . .

“He, who? Yeah, okay, go ahead and play coy. It's not like I'm your best friend or anything.” Renee pushed her empty plate to the side of the table to accommodate her elbows. “Details. Puh-lease . . .”

“Details? You mean, like the fact it
wasn't
Greg I met at Beans?”

Renee's brow arched still further. “The redhead that works with him? The one who's looking at the house across the street?”

She made a mental note to talk to Bridget and Mr. Nelson about that latest development and then shook her head. “Nope, not Chuck Rogers, either.”

Dropping her forearms all the way down, Renee drew back. “Wait. Did you enroll in one of those online dating sites?”

“Nope.”

“Then—”

“I delivered a Smart Cookie to him at his office yesterday.”

Renee's inhale was so loud even Lovey—in her noon-hour slumber—lifted her head and glared. “The business guy?”

“Business
teacher
,” she corrected as her thoughts traveled back to the previous morning and the most engaging man she'd ever met.

“The one with the teenage daughter?”

She set down her sandwich long enough to take a sip of her ice water and pull a potato chip from the open bag between them. “Caroline. She's sixteen.”

“And the woman he had this child with?” Renee prodded. “I take it he's no longer married to her?”

“Of course he's not. She took off when Caroline was five and hasn't been back since.”

This time, Renee's gasp was laced with more disgust than surprise. “You're kidding.”

“No. Seems this woman wanted to be a star in Hollywood.”

“Is she?”

She alternated between the chips and the second half of Renee's sandwich and recalled the part of her conversation with Jay that featured his ex-wife. “I think she might be.”

“Who? Who is it?”

“I didn't ask.” And she hadn't. It hadn't mattered. It still didn't. “He's a really nice guy, Renee. Smart. Funny. Real.”

Renee's expression turned dreamy. “Tell me more. Tell me everything.”

“Well, last night, after you left, he called and asked if I'd like to get some coffee with him sometime. He threw out a few possibilities, and it just made sense to do it then. So he dropped his daughter off at the dance studio next to the shop and waited there until I arrived.”

“Okay . . .”

“He asked about
me
, Renee . . . about where I live and what I like to do in my free time.”

“You bake and hang out with old people.”

She swallowed the last bite of sandwich and declared herself full. Then, rising to her feet, she wandered over to Lovey. “I told him that. Almost verbatim.”

“Yikes.”

“That's just it, Renee. There was no ‘yikes,' no fidgeting of his fingers, no looking at the clock wondering when he could escape.” She reached out to pet Lovey but pulled her hand back at the animal's responding hiss.

“Let her sniff your finger,” Renee instructed.

She waved aside the suggestion and moved to the next window. “It was like my choice of friends didn't matter. In fact, he wanted to hear about them all. So I told him and he actually
listened
. I even pinched myself under the table to make sure it was really happening.”

Renee left the table to come stand beside Winnie, the smile on her face impossible to miss. “I'm happy for you, Winnie. You deserve a great—wait . . . what's this guy look like?”

“He's got these gorgeous blue green eyes that sparkle and dance every time he smiles. And he smiles
a lot
.”

“Keep going . . .”

“His hair is light brown, but he has a hint of gray near his temples that is really quite flattering.”

“How old is this guy?” Renee asked.

“Late thirties, I think. Maybe forty, but definitely no older than that.”

Renee widened her lips and nodded, obviously trying
to imagine Jay based on Winnie's description. “Nice body?”

She paused at the question and tried to remember, but all she was able to relay was his height (maybe six feet to her own five-five) and weight (proportionate, with no sign of a beer gut) and follow it up with an emphatic, “He's perfect.”

“Do you think you'll see him again?”

“He said he wants to.” She turned from the window, did a little dance, and then threw her arms around Renee. “I like him. A lot. And I think he might like me, too.”

“How could he not?”

“I love you, Renee.” She planted a kiss on the side of Renee's cheek and then stepped back, her mind ready to function again now that her stomach had been fed. “Now, we need to get to work.”

“What work? We haven't gotten any new calls today.”

“Which is exactly why we need to get to work.” She headed back to the table, carried their lunch plates to the sink, and then handed the idea notebook to Renee. “We got two calls yesterday because of the article Bridget finagled for the weekend paper. And we got the call for this morning's delivery based on the customer having seen the ambulance in the campus parking lot yesterday. Word of mouth sells. So we need to get more of that out there.”

Renee reclaimed her seat, uncapped her pen, and waited for Winnie to continue.

“But we can't just sit back and wait for word of mouth to do everything. We'll be dead by the end of the week.”

“But three calls in the first two days is pretty good,” Renee argued. “We literally started yesterday.”

“True. But our profit from those three calls is probably less than thirty bucks total. I can't live on that and neither can you.”

Renee nibbled on the end of her pen and then pointed it at Winnie. “Can Bridget write another article?”

“She just did.”

“Maybe the girl who called us about the dump cake can write an article for the campus paper.”

Winnie snapped her fingers and then pointed at Renee's notebook. “Good! Write that down.”

“You could drive through downtown Silver Lake every night for a few weeks in the ambulance. Surely that would get people's curiosity up.”

“Good! Add that one, too.” She reached back, grabbed hold of her ponytail, and brought the tip around to the front. Brushing it slowly across her hand, she let her mind drift in a different direction. “Maybe we should put together a proposal that we can get out to a few of the local companies with a list of desserts we could deliver with motivational names. I mean, you hear about these companies who do team building and stuff like that. Seems to me they might also be inclined to send in some treats to boost morale, too. We just need to come up with some more cleverly named desserts and get them in front of the powers that be.”

“I like that.” Renee tapped the pen against her chin, only to pull it back and point it at Winnie. “What about getting some menus to the people who teach the prenatal classes at the hospital? Surely a mom who is weeks away from going into labor could use a little rescuing. Again, we need to come up with the names, but I could so see a new dad-to-be wanting to do something like that for his wife.”

“Excellent!” She gestured toward the notebook and then wandered around the table to Renee's side. “Hey, do you have Ty this weekend or is he with Bob?”

“Technically I have him, but he's going to some sort of game with Bob on Saturday, why?”

“I was thinking, maybe I could go on a baking frenzy. We'll invite Mr. Nelson and Bridget to join us, too, and have everyone throw out dessert names that we could use for pregnant women, or to boost employee morale, or whatever. Who knows, maybe we'll come up with some really good stuff.”

“You'll be there, right?” Renee asked.

“Of course.”

“Then I'm sure we'll get some good stuff. You're a dessert-naming genius.”

“You're the one who came up with Dump (Him) Cake,” Winnie reminded. “That was perfect for the girl today.”

Renee drew up her shoulders and pursed her lips proudly. “I did, didn't I?” Then, without waiting for confirmation, she picked up her pen and held it to the notebook. “I just thought of another way to spread the word. We could put up flyers about the Dessert Squad in some of the shopwindows downtown.”

“Like Batkas would let us do that . . .” She heard the sarcasm in her voice and knew it was born of experience. “C'mon, Renee, you know that guy would see the Dessert Squad as competition for his precious revitalization efforts.”

“The Emergency Dessert Squad is a new business,” Renee protested.

“Not one paying lease in any of his buildings . . .”

Renee's shoulders slumped, and she dropped her pen back to the table. “You're right. But”—again she picked up her pen, and again she prepared to write—“Batkas can't keep a lease-paying tenant from advertising us in their window, right?”

“Meaning?”

“Maybe Jack at the hardware store will put a flyer up in his window. And maybe Sherry at the gift shop will, too.”

It was certainly worth a shot. Even if the landlord took issue with it and made them take the flyers down, at least they would have been there for a little while . . .

“I would think that guy, Mark, who is moving into our old spot would put up a flyer for us, too. I mean, you were friends with his mom and stepdad.”

She reined in her mental side trip and stared at Renee. “What was that?”

“Mark—Bart and Ethel's son.” At Winnie's nod, Renee
continued. “He's leasing Delectable Delights. Well, not
Delectable Delights
, per se, but the space Delectable Delights was in until last week.”

“For what?” she snapped.

If Renee noticed Winnie's curtness, it had no impact. “A pool hall, believe it or not. Crazy, huh?”

“A pool hall?” She slid into the empty chair closest to Renee's. “How do you know this?”

“After Ty's baseball practice, I took him downtown to get some ice cream.” Renee held her free hand up in true crossing guard style. “I know, I know, I should have taken him home for dinner first. But I didn't.”

“Go on.”

“Ty wanted to see the old store and so we walked down the block with our ice cream to see it. I was expecting to see our counter and display case through the window, but it was gone. In fact, the only thing inside was a ladder and a couple of paint cans. And Mark, of course.” Renee ran her hand through her pixie haircut and scrunched her nose like she was trying to determine if she liked a particular smell. If Winnie didn't know better, she'd think Lovey had done something wrong. But since she did know better, she knew it just meant Renee was thinking. “Anyway, I guess he recognized me from being over here for all those late-night gab fests we used to have during the separation. At least that's all I can figure. Anyway, when he saw us looking in the window, he came out to say hi. I told him I was sorry about Bart, and he thanked me. Ty, of course, asked him why he was painting our old bakery, and that's when he told us about the pool hall. Said it was something he's always wanted to do.”