practiced. I clung onto you most of the night.”
“And I thought you were just trying to feel my manly biceps.”
Despite herself, she giggled.
“It was a really nice thing for you to do,” she said. “To take the boss’ dateless daughter to her senior prom. I don’t think I thanked you. Of course, it didn’t occur to me until later that it probably wasn’t your idea.”
“It wasn’t,” he confessed. “I didn’t date girls like you.”
“Girls like me?”
“Smart,” he said. “Sweet.”
Not quite as smart as anyone had thought.
“I bet you still don’t,” she said wryly.
“I’m more the superficial type.”
He made her laugh. It was as simple as that.
“So,” he said, leaning forward and looking at her intently, “tell me how you have passed the last years. For some reason, I would have pictured you the type who would be happily married by now. Two children. A golden-retriever puppy and an apple tree in the front yard.”
Happily-ever-after.
She could feel that same emotion claw at her throat. It was exactly the life she had wanted, the dream that had made her so vulnerable.
He had her pegged. Well, you didn’t rise as fast in the business world as he did without an ability to read people with some accuracy.
There was no sense denying it even if it was not in vogue.
“That is my type. Exactly,” she said. She heard the catch in her voice, the pure wistfulness of it.
“It’s what you come from, too. I can see that you would gravitate back to that. Your family was so...”
He hesitated, lost for words.
“Perfect,” she said, finishing his thought.
“That’s certainly how it seemed to me. Coming from one that was less than perfect, I looked at the decency of your dad and the way he treated you and your mom, and it did seem like an ideal world.”
One she had tried to replicate way too soon after the passing of her father, with a kind of desperation to be loved like that again, to create that family unit.
It was only now, years after her miscarriage, that she was beginning to tiptoe back into the world of dating, looking again to the dream of happily-ever-after. So far, it had been a disaster.
“Are you, Bree? Happy?”
She hesitated a moment too long, and his brow furrowed at her.
“Tell me,” he commanded.
Ridiculous that she would tell him about her happiness, or lack there of. He had worked for her father a long time ago, and somehow been persuaded to take the hopeless daughter to her prom. They were hardly friends. Barely acquaintances.
“Deliriously,” she lied brightly. “My little company builds a bit each day. It’s fun and it’s rewarding.”
“Hmmm,” he said, a trifle skeptically. “Tell me, Bree, what do you do for fun?”
The question caught her off guard. She could feel herself fumbling for an answer. What could she say? Especially to someone like him, who moved in the sophisticated circles of wealth and power?
She couldn’t very well say that she had all the Harry Potter books and reread them regularly, with her ancient cat, Oliver, leaving drool pools on her lap. That after Chelsea, seamstress extraordinaire, had showed her how, she had individually quilted each of the cookies on her aprons. That she was addicted to home-renovation shows, especially ones hosted by couples, who had everything, it seemed, that she had ever dreamed of. That she trolled Pinterest features about homes: welcome signs, and window boxes, and baby rooms.
It would sound pathetic.
Was it pathetic?
“My business takes an inordinate amount of time,” she said when her silence had become way too long.
“So you don’t have fun?”
“Maybe I consider developing new cookie recipes fun!”
“Look, my business takes a lot of time, too. But I still make time for fun things.”
Just then a man came over and squatted on the floor beside her. He stuck out his hand. “Miss Evans? I’m the manager here. Mr. Wallace leads me to understand you have a line of cookies. We’d love to try them. Have you got a minute?”
She looked over the manager’s shoulder at Brand. He was smiling. He nodded encouragingly at her.
“Yes, I have a minute,” she said. The manager got up and sat beside her. She started to tell him about Kookies.
When she looked over at Brand, he was gone. The love seat across from her was empty.
No goodbye.
But at least he hadn’t stuck her with the bill.
Fifteen minutes later, she left Perks. They were going to give Kookies a trial term of six months.
She walked back to the concert hall. Outside the door, before going in, Bree debated only for a full five seconds before she pulled out Brand’s business card with his phone number and called him.
“Hello?”
She had been expecting it to go to voice mail, since she thought he was probably now in the front row for the Crystal Silvers performance. But there was no background noise.
“I was expecting to leave a message,” she said.
“Bree. What an unexpected pleasure.”
“I was rehearsing my message!”
“Okay, just pretend this is my voice mail.”
“All right. Hello, Brand. Thank you for a pleasant evening and for buying me coffee. I wanted you to know Perks is going to try my cookies for a trial period.”
“Excellent!”
“Voice mail does not respond,” she reminded him primly.
“Oh, yeah. Forgive me. Continue.”
She took a deep breath. “Thank you, but you didn’t have to use your influence for me.”
“Of course I didn’t have to. But what exactly would be the point of having influence if you didn’t use it to help others?”
And then he was gone, no goodbye again. She contemplated the kind of man that would make a statement like that.
This
