Always the Baker, Never the Bride (15 page)

“Just in case, what?”

“In case my battery goes dead on my car, and someone is nice enough to give me a ride home and buy me dinner and I need to provide dessert.”

“That’s what I call thinking ahead,” he teased. “Can I have them? The cookies?”

“Not without the tea,” she replied with a mock-serious shaking of her head. “It’s tea and cookies, or nothing at all.”

“Emma Rae Travis. Are you really giving your employer an ultimatum?”

“I know,” she said with a shrug. “I know. Fire me if you will, but there are no cookies without tea in this house.”

Jackson mulled that over, then finally asked, “What kind of tea?”

“I’ll surprise you.”

While Jackson cleared the dinner plates, Emma filled a stainless-steel kettle with water and placed it over a low gas flame on the stove. When the cookies finally arrived at the table, they were accompanied by two heavy stoneware mugs of something that smelled of spicy fruit and cream.

Jackson scrunched his nose and looked up at Emma. “Fruit tea? Are you kidding me with this?”

“Cinnamon plum,” she replied. “Just try it.”

He reluctantly took a sip from the cup. It wasn’t terrible, but it sure wasn’t as appealing as a cup of black coffee might be with one of those cookies on the plate across from him.

“Milk in it?” he asked her.

“Cream. It’s the English way.”

“I’m American. Can I have coffee now?”

“You may not. Drink your tea, or there is no cookie for you.”

“I had a schoolteacher like you once.”

“Then you probably know better than to argue with me.”

Jackson laughed as she offered him the plate.

“Just one,” she said, smacking his hand lightly when he reached for the second cookie. “Don’t be a piglet.”

Emma’s Famous Cinnamon Sugar Cookies

Outer mixture: ½ cup granulated sugar and 3 tablespoons cinnamon

Sift the flour, salt, and baking soda into a bowl.
In a separate bowl, mix the butter, sugar, and brown sugar until creamy.
Add the egg and vanilla.
Add the dry flour mixture slowly and continue to mix thoroughly.
Break the dough into three or four sections, rolling each into a log about two inches thick.
Wrap them in wax paper and refrigerate overnight (or for at least 3-4 hours).
The next day, mix the cinnamon and sugar together, and roll each log in it.
Cut the logs into quarter-inch slices and place on an ungreased cookie sheet.
Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes.

9

A
dmit it! You’re obsessed with hazelnut!”

“I am not.”

“You are!”

Emma rubbed both cheeks with her hands. She hadn’t laughed so hard, or for so long, in years. Leaning back against the cushions they’d pulled down from the sofa, she stretched her legs out on the carpeted floor and clutched her stomach.

“Stop it. I can’t laugh anymore,” she pleaded, then she proved herself wrong with a bumpy string of laughter.

Jackson’s long legs were extended alongside hers, crossed at the ankle, his feet resting on the shoes he’d removed hours before. Sitting beside him there on the floor in front of the fireplace, Emma wondered for the first time all evening what time it had gotten to be.

“12:30 a.m.,” she said out loud. “I can’t believe it’s after midnight.”

“It can’t be,” he replied, looking at his watch, and then groaned. “Emma, I’m so sorry. I had no intention of staying this late.”

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not,” he said, pushing upward, then placing his stocking feet into his shoes. “You were half asleep when you left work at seven-thirty, and now I’m sitting here talking your ear off at twelve-thirty.”

“Honestly, it’s fine,” she reassured him. “I enjoyed it.”

“Really?” he asked with a sort of curious, vulnerable curve of a smile.

“Really. I haven’t laughed this much in I don’t know when.”

“I’m not sure I ever have,” he commented, then he sighed. “Definitely not since I lost Desi.”

Emma stood up and began gathering Jackson’s belongings: his tie from the back of the sofa, his suit jacket from the dining room chair, his overcoat from the pewter hook near the front door.

“I think it’s sweet the way you call her that,” she said. “Pardon?”

“Desiree. How you call her Desi.”

“Oh.” His smile was laced with equal measures of happy nostalgia and sour regret. “She hated it at first. But it always seemed to fit.”

“I didn’t know her,” Emma remarked, “but it does seem to fit. It’s very sweet.”

“Sweet,” he said with a sigh. “There’s something I don’t think I’ve ever been called.”

Emma’s heart began to pound as she watched him slip into his jacket. “I find that hard to believe.”

“Oh, believe it,” he replied, sliding into his overcoat. “There’s nothing sweet about me, Emma Rae.”

“You just look at yourself and the world around you through eyes of … disappointment,” she told him, straightening the folded collar of his coat. “So you can’t see what the rest of us see.”

When she released the collar and pulled back her hand, Jackson’s eyes caught hold of hers in one of those invisible grips that were starting to become somewhat familiar to Emma. Once again, she tried, but she couldn’t look away from him, and so she just stood there, tied to him, the green of her eyes swimming around in the gold-flecked brown of his.

“Thank you for the chotchke.”

Jackson’s sudden smile beamed. “Chu chee. You’re welcome.”

For a fragmented moment, she was convinced that a kiss was about to follow. Her pulse raced, her heart pounded, her palms began to perspire. And against her better judgment, when Jackson moved closer to her, she pursed her lips in preparation.

“See you in the morning,” he said suddenly, breaking the spell by planting a platonic sort of peck on her forehead, stifled by a thick fringe of bangs. It made a sort of thud as he did it. “I’ll pick you up at eight.”

“Okay.”

“Thanks for everything,” he told her. “Even the tea?”

“Well, not so much for the tea. But the cookies and conversation were first-rate. G’night.”

She watched him head down the stairs and out into the bitter cold.

“Good night, Jackson.”

Emma closed and bolted the door, then slipped the chain into place. Instead of turning out the lights and heading straight to bed, she grabbed the chenille throw from the back of the sofa and wrapped it around her shoulders as she plunked down into her father’s easy chair and sighed. Outside the bay window, Jackson’s taillights flashed and then disappeared around the corner of her street.

Emma folded her legs beneath her and stared at the last glowing embers in the fireplace. With opposition pressing in against her efforts not to sit there and replay every word, every inflection, every sparkle in Jackson Drake’s gorgeous eyes, Emma lost the battle and surrendered to warm, smile-inducing thoughts of him. Oh, she knew how ridiculous it was; how utterly pointless and possibly even dangerous. But did she stop herself and send herself to bed?

Curling into the chair like a cat near a hearth, Emma closed her eyes and purred softly. When she’d turned over the key and her car just clicked, Emma had expected the worst: a long wait for the auto club, numb fingers and a runny nose from the cold. Instead, a handsome rescuer had appeared, and she’d been given the unplanned opportunity to know Jackson on a more personal level.

Emma had never been one for warm, gushy feelings, but there in the dim midnight rays streaming through the window of her apartment, she had to admit there was a bit of a marshmallow forming around her heart. In fact, in retrospect, the whole evening with Jackson had taken on the feeling of an unexpected gift dropped right in her path, and if a girl couldn’t get a little mushy about that, well …

Really now, Emma Rae. Get over yourself.

Ah, there she was. The real Emma had at last stood up inside her.

What took you so long?

The sarcastic, cynical Emma had finally arrived; the one who knew that fluffy visions and starry-eyed notions about broad-shouldered rescuers and happily ever afters were best confined to romance novels and Jennifer Aniston movies.

“Better late than never,” she muttered, and she tossed the chenille blanket aside, unfolded from the chair and trudged off to bed.

“It’s not even eight in the morning,” Emma growled as she looked out the window and jumped at another blast of Jackson’s car horn. “Oh, man! My neighbors are going to love me.”

She snapped the lock on the front door and slipped into her coat, hurrying down the stairs.

“You’re early,” she managed to say, one of her gloves flopping out from between clenched teeth.

Jackson glanced at the clock on the dash. “I said eight.”

“Yes,” she replied, pulling the door shut and fussing with the seatbelt. “It’s not eight yet.”

“It’s seven forty-six.”

“That’s not eight.”

She noticed a slight roll of the eyes.

“Tea with cream and sweetener,” he mumbled, and he shifted gears and eased out into traffic. “Beg your pardon?”

“I stopped for coffee,” he said with a nod toward the two paper cups tilted against the dash. “I got you tea with cream and sweetener.”

“Oh!” she popped, grabbing the cup with the string hanging from it. “Thank you. You’re forgiven.”

“Forgiven,” he repeated. “For what?”

“For being early.”

“I’m not early.”

“Is it eight o’clock yet?” she asked. She sniffed the steam from the cup and sighed. “No. It is not. That means you’re early.”

She thought she sensed a response making its way out of him, but instead he focused on the road ahead in silence.

This is sure a different guy from the one who left my house last night.

“A lot going on today,” he grumbled a few minutes later.