summer jobs at a big-chain hotel, working long shifts to put some decent money in the bank.
Lee was a rather private person. Even though the rest of the Cherry family was close at hand, they hadn’t met Tucker, either, until he and Lee were practically engaged.
Mom, Dad and Mary Jane all adored him, apparently, and were incredibly happy and excited about the wedding.
“He was so wonderful about Lee’s accident,” Mom had been gushing at regular intervals during the twenty-four hours since Daisy’s arrival home, the same way she’d gushed in phone calls and emails while Daisy was in Paris. “He was there by her hospital bed for days on end. She said she couldn’t have gotten through the pain without him.” Burns hurt a lot, as Daisy knew from her own experience of minor ones in restaurant kitchens. “He never once made her feel it was her fault. He really talked her around on that, because she was beating herself up for being careless with that hot oil in the fryer.”
Daisy wasn’t sure yet how she was going to feel about Tucker Reid. He stood there while Lee went on talking for just a little too long about how great it was to have all three Cherry sisters together again, and how much had changed over the past year, and how happy she was about absolutely everything.
He gave a tiny nod occasionally, but that was about it, and Daisy decided it was time to extract herself from the whole situation. There was something about the way he was holding himself that wasn’t right, something about the look in his narrowed blue eyes, but she didn’t have time to think about that. She’d promised to show off her new French dessert-making skills tonight—no, of course she wasn’t too tired!—and there was a lot to do in the kitchen.
“Mom, I need to get started on the peach tart and the raspberry dacquoise,” she said. “Or I’ll crash from jet lag before I’m done.”
She undraped the gorgeously patterned and very Parisian fringed silk scarf from around her neck and shoulders and tossed out her hair, itching to get to work.
Mmm, it felt so good to be home, and yet to know herself a little changed from the person she had been the last time she was here. She’d learned so much about fashion and taste and grace and creativity in Paris. She’d spent hours browsing boutiques and galleries and food markets, people watching at pavement cafés, window-shopping, dreaming.
Even though dessert-making was her main creative outlet and her planned profession, she loved to draw, as well, and she’d filled a stack of sketch pads with rapid-fire impressions of Paris and its people. She hadn’t wasted a second of the trip.
She felt as if she was bursting with life, bursting with the love of it, its beauty and variety and vibrancy. Lee had the reputation in the Cherry family of being the most energetic of the three girls, but Daisy had decided this wasn’t true.
Lee might be incredibly athletic and outdoorsy, just as her fiancé was, but there were other kinds of energy. The energy of her own creativity sizzled inside Daisy, and right now she couldn’t wait to get started on those luscious desserts.
On her way to the kitchen, she glanced back at the bridal couple, still a little thrown by her first meeting with her future brother-in-law—by how little he’d given her, by the fact that she had so little to go on in finding out who he was. Lee was looking up at him and she wasn’t smiling and animated anymore. Tucker stood awkwardly, his head tilted in his fiancée’s direction, but his eyes were elsewhere, restless.
They landed on Daisy for a tiny moment and she felt too warm suddenly. What was that about? Why was he looking at her now, when he hadn’t met her eyes once during their greeting and awkward first conversation? What was wrong with the man?
Or is it something wrong with me?
Everyone was so happy about the wedding. It would be horrible if she didn’t get along with her sister’s husband!
Present Day
In the end, of course, Daisy’s feelings about Lee’s groom hadn’t mattered. The wedding had never taken place. Mom had nagged her a little about the “strong silent type” comment. “You’re not suggesting he’s not smart enough for her, are you?”
“No, of course not.”
“He’s cautious, that’s all. Sensible, and reserved. And responsible. He thinks before he speaks.”
“It’s fine, Mom.”
“When you get to know him...”
But she never had gotten to know him. Lee and Tucker had announced their decision to call off their wedding just a few days before the scheduled event, both of them looking a little wrung out and sad, but with some relief in the mix at the same time.
For a moment during the announcement, they’d held hands, but then they’d dropped the contact with two awkward movements that somehow hadn’t matched—a sign that the right connection wasn’t there, it seemed.
Less than a week later, Daisy had flown out to California, lured by the sudden chance of a three-month internship with an internationally known pastry chef. From then on, far too busy with her fifteen-hour days in a hectic professional kitchen, she’d taken the whole thing at face value whenever she thought back on it.
A mutual decision, announced while standing side by side.
The strong silent type wasn’t what Lee wanted, after all.
Now, after what Mary Jane had said this morning, Daisy wondered how much more there’d been to the situation that she hadn’t seen at the time.
It was an uncomfortable feeling, like a nagging itch in a place she couldn’t reach to scratch. Her phone began to ring. She grabbed it quickly and found it was Lee. “Sorry I missed you. What’s up?”
“You sound breathless,” Daisy said, relieved to hear her sister’s voice. It would be good to get this settled before she talked to Tucker himself.
“Just got back from a five-mile run,” Lee said.
“You didn’t have to call me back before you’ve even got your breathing back to normal.” Except that already it almost was. Lee was incredibly fit.
And although convenient, the timing of her call was a little awkward. “I’m good,” she said. “Now, shoot, Daze.”
Daisy picked her words carefully. “Look, I’m here at Reid Landscaping...”
“Oh. Wow. You mean Tucker’s company?”
“That’s right.”
“You’re thinking of contracting him for the work at Spruce Bay?”
“Yes, only Mary Jane...has doubts.”
“Because of me?” Lee had a habit of getting right to the point.
“That’s right,” she said again, aware that Jackie could overhear.
“That’s ridiculous!”
“Well, yes, I thought so, but I wanted to check with you.”
“And you’ve checked, and I’m good, so go ahead.”
Daisy
