Just Desserts (30 page)

She wasn't sure if his eyes were wet with tears or if it was a trick of the lighting. She intended to blame the lighting for the telltale dampness in hers.

Even CeCe seemed sorry to see them go.

“Look how skinny you are,” CeCe said. “You work too hard. You should take a vacation.”

“I'm fine, CeCe,” she said, trying very hard not to roll her eyes. “I have my mother's metabolism.”

No point explaining to the Social Queen of Naples, Florida, that not everyone could afford to take a vacation. Or wanted to for that matter. She had missed the controlled chaos of Goldy's and she definitely missed her friends.

“I hope you don't mind if John, Fee, and I stay on a few more days,” Jane said. “I'm going to speak with the directors of the Oceanographic Institute in Montauk and see about mounting an exhibit to run concurrent with a series of lectures on the current state of Great South Bay. That will give you a chance to settle back in before we descend on you en masse.”

She knew her mother was enjoying every second of her stay at Tommy's wonderful beachfront mansion. The proximity to the ocean was incentive enough to linger, but Hayley had the feeling the seven-hundred-thread-count sheets on the guest beds didn't hurt.

“We don't have phones in the bathrooms,” she reminded her mother with a laugh. “I don't want you to be disappointed.”

“We'll be fine,” John said, placing a warm hand on her shoulder. “It's being with family that counts.”

She had already said good-bye to Willow, who was upstairs napping, and to Anton, who went off to have supper with his wife and kids a little while ago. Next week he planned to drive down to Lakeside and take a look at the possibilities available to him if Tommy's retirement plans panned out.

Anton had told her the whole ugly story while Finn was making his phone call to the police department. Lizzie had seen her father land a cowardly, vicious shot to Finn's jaw but she had also seen Finn turn away from a chance to even the score because it was the right thing to do. He had put Lizzie's needs before his own. He had allowed compassion to win out over satisfying his own ego. Not even Lizzie's father had been willing to do that.

And it scared her right down to the bone.

She had meant every word she'd said on the beach the other night. She owed Lizzie the very best life she could give to her, the very best of the world. Up until Finn she had believed that giving her daughter the best meant going it alone until Lizzie was on her own. It was one thing to risk your own heart when you fell in love with the wrong man. It was something else again to risk your daughter's heart as well.

But what if you met a man and fell suddenly, hopelessly in love and he wasn't the wrong man at all? What if he was honorable and kind and smart and funny and sexy and gorgeous and blind to the fact that your thighs were a day-care center for cellulite? What if he had shown more respect for your daughter today than her father had shown her in more years than you cared to count?

What if…?

 

Conversation slowed down a few miles west of Riverhead. By the time they hit the Southern State en route toward Brooklyn and the Verrazano, it was dead.

Okay, so it wasn't easy to be heard over the racket made by three hissing cats, a snoring dog, and a talkative parrot, but the acoustics were pretty good in the roomy Escalade. They could have managed.

Finn told himself it was because Lizzie was asleep in the backseat, safely buckled in between Rhoda and Mr. G. He told himself they were being considerate of the girl. He had never been big on self-deception but he was willing to make an exception this time. It beat facing the truth.

“We should've picked up some Chinese food before we left,” he said.

“That's okay,” she murmured, not turning away from the fascinating view of Staten Island whizzing past her window. “I'll make Lizzie some eggs.”

It was hard not to think about the last time he made this drive with his heart on his sleeve. He had had a million reasons why he shouldn't make that crazy drive down to Lakeside to see her and only one reason why he should: because there was nowhere else on earth he would rather be.

Something had clicked into place this afternoon, the last piece of the puzzle they called love. He got it. Really got it. It was more than great sex, great conversation, great laughs. It went deeper, all the way to the place inside your heart that you hid from the world, the place whose existence a man didn't always admit even to himself.

He loved her. He loved her daughter. He loved the man he was with them, the man he could be if they let him.

A new lover shouldn't know all the things he knew about her. He had believed the balance between them would level out once she learned that Tommy was her father and they could move beyond the past, but he had been wrong. There were other obstacles, ones that couldn't be overcome so easily. Michael Goldstein had hurt her. Not physically, but his selfish choices had left scars behind that might never go away.

He was in so far over his head that he couldn't see daylight. The only thing he knew for sure was that he loved her and wanted to build a future with her and with her daughter.

But he didn't know how to win her wary heart.

 

Lizzie woke up a few miles from home. She yawned, then laughed softly as Rhoda started licking her chin.

“Good timing,” Hayley said, taking the laughter as a good sign. “We'll be home in a couple of minutes.”

“I'm hungry. We should have brought home Chinese.”

“Since when are you such a big fan of Chinese food?”

“I was thinking about the shrimp from that place near Finn.”

She was surprised Finn didn't say anything about Lizzie's request but then he hadn't said a word for quite a few miles. Neither one of them had. The easy banter, the connection between them, had vanished somewhere between East Hampton and the turnpike. Silence was all that remained.

“The press is gone,” Finn observed as he pulled the Escalade into the alleyway behind her Buick. “That's good news.”

“Looks like it rained down here too,” Hayley said. “That probably helped scare them off.”

Lizzie shot her a look that could have curdled milk. Hayley ignored her.

Rhoda burst from the SUV like a gunshot. Finn helped Lizzie get Mr. G's cage out of the car while Hayley unlocked the back door to the bakery.

“Pets first,” Finn said, “then I'll get your bags.”

Rhoda bounded into the house ahead of everyone. Hayley and Lizzie maneuvered Mr. G and his cage up the narrow staircase while Finn unloaded three very angry cats and their carriers, then went back for the bags.

Five minutes later Rhoda was asleep on the sofa, the cats were claiming their litter boxes, Mr. G was exploring his domain, and Lizzie was in her room setting up her laptop.

Finn stood looking up at her from the bottom of the staircase.

She looked down at him from the landing.

They might as well have been on different planets.

She took a deep breath. It was now or never.

“Finn, why don't you—”

“I love you.” He hadn't meant to say it but damn it, there it was just the same.

For a second she forgot to breathe. “What did you say?”

“I love you.” He raised his hand and held it palm out. “You don't have to say anything. In fact, I don't want you to say anything. It's too soon. We're too new to each other. You have a daughter. I know all the reasons why we need to take this slow. That's fine. I'm okay with it. But I want you to know that I love you and I'm going to keep on loving you through more Chinese take-out dinners, more family squabbles, more weekends with CeCe, more Tommy Stiles Farewell Tours, more old wives and new wives, more babies, more muddy dogs and angry cats, two upcoming weddings, and at least fifty birthdays and Christmases and christenings and family reunions, and one day, in the middle of all that living, you'll wake up and realize you love me too.”

She couldn't think. She couldn't talk. She couldn't move. He loved her. He wanted to spend his life with her and Lizzie and the cats and the dog and the parrot and the bakery and the huge extended family and everything that came with it. All the things she had prayed for her entire life but never thought she would be lucky enough to find were hers for the asking if she could just find her voice.

Finn wasn't sure how long he waited for her to say something. Five years, maybe ten. Sometimes silence was an answer in itself. It was time to call it a day.

“Okay,” he said, turning toward the door. “I'm going. I'll give you a call.”

“Mom!” Lizzie's voice rang out from the top of the stairs. “Say something!”

“Do you like scrambled eggs?”

Finn stopped in his tracks, heart thudding hard against his ribs. “With chives?”

“I was thinking scallions.”

“Fresh coffee?”

“With cream.”

“So you're asking me to stay for supper?”

She took a deep breath, then plunged into this uncharted ocean called love. “
We're
asking you to stay.”

He saw Lizzie, smiling broadly, a few feet behind her mother and suddenly he knew everything would be all right.

Scrambled eggs today.
I love you
tomorrow.

It was only a matter of time.

East Hampton—Fifteen Months Later

“Mom!” Lizzie burst into the sun-splashed solarium like a late-summer hurricane. “They're threatening to start the ceremony without you.”

“Look at this!” Hayley crouched down and fiddled with a sugary blossom with the tip of her palette knife. “The gladioli are off center. I…just…need to—”

“Mom!” Lizzie's voice rose an octave. “I'm not kidding! You have to stop now!”

“You're right. I'm obsessing. I know I'm obsessing. It's just that it's a lot easier to worry about the cake instead of whether Aunt Fee found her glasses or if Lou from the dry cleaners will hit CeCe up for a fiver to hold her seat at the reception.” She looked over at her daughter and her heart rose up into her throat. “Oh, honey!” she breathed, the cake temporarily forgotten. “You're beautiful!”

Willow had spent months picking out just the right gowns for each of the attendants and she had done a spectacular job. Each dress was different and was meant to represent the personality of the woman wearing it. Hayley had worried that Willow's fashionista tendencies would lead to some odd choices but once again she had underestimated her. Lizzie's dress was a sunny lemon-yellow silk confection that suited the sixteen-year-old's good nature and her rapidly growing maturity. Lizzie had always been a very pretty girl but suddenly Hayley could see the beautiful young woman she was becoming.

Lizzie looked almost unbearably pleased as she twirled in front of Hayley. “Tracy said it makes me look eighteen.”

“Eighteen?” She pretended to shiver. “Time moves fast enough, honey. Don't push it along any faster.”

Lizzie, of course, gave her the same blank look Hayley had given her own mother years ago during a similar conversation and she knew the day would come when Lizzie's daughter delivered a variation on the theme.

But time really did move faster with every passing year. Wasn't it just yesterday when she had carried Lizzie everywhere in her Snugli? Once upon a time her worries had revolved around the transition to solid food and when to send the binky into permanent exile. Next year her baby would be heading off to college.

“Gladioli,” she muttered, in an attempt to stem the flow of tears threatening her mascara. “Nobody in her right mind would pick gladioli…What was I thinking…Daisies…peonies…anything but gladioli.” They were too tall, too fragile, they would fall over long before the cake-cutting ceremony. They weren't what a sane cake decorator would choose for the most important project of her life.

Lizzie reached out and grabbed for the palette knife but Hayley was too fast for her.

“Mom, you really have to let it go. The cake is amazing. If you keep messing around with it, you'll ruin it.”

“Hello,” Hayley said. “Have we met? Your mother's a worrier.” She stepped back again and examined the towering pyramid of vibrantly tinted sugar-paste flowers with a critical eye. Letting go had never come easily for her, whether it was a child, a cake, or a way of life. “I don't know about the ribbons. I think I should have triple braided them near the bottom.” Nobody on the East Coast did a triple braid. She would have knocked this assignment right out of the park.

“Too late now,” a familiar voice declared. “It's show-time.”

Tommy, resplendent in Armani, was standing in the doorway. Jane, fragile but still a force to be reckoned with, was at his side. She wore a vintage dress from the 1950s that reminded Hayley of something Katharine Hepburn might have worn if Hepburn had been an eighty-something professor of oceanography who once upon a time had a fling with a rock star.

“She's a perfectionist,” Tommy said to the mother of his first child. “She must get that from you.”

“And she's running late,” Jane said with a chuckle in her voice. “I know she gets that from you.”

Tommy looked over at Hayley. “Did you forget there's going to be a wedding on the beach in twenty minutes?”

“So I've heard,” Hayley said as a wave of love for those two very different people washed over her. “I'm almost finished here.”

“The cake is perfect,” Jane said. “Don't touch a thing!”

“That's what I told her,” Lizzie said. “It's her best ever but she's worried about the gladioli.”

Hayley cocked her head. “Anybody want to take credit for the worry gene?” She grinned at the theatrical silence. “Somehow I didn't think so.”

She finally put down her palette knife.

“That's my girl,” Tommy said. “Now let's get this show on the road.”

“Wait until you see the baby,” Jane said with an indulgent smile as she reached up and smoothed a lock of Hayley's hair. “Willow dressed her in that little outfit you knitted for her.”

Tommy beamed with fatherly pride. “She looks like a princess, doesn't she?”

“Amanda
is
a princess,” Hayley said. “She's the only munchkin I know of who has a Maserati and driver.”

“Your father likes to spoil his children,” Jane observed. “There's nothing wrong with that.”

Hayley and Lizzie exchanged amused looks. This from a woman who lived the life of the mind. Times were definitely changing.

“Where's John?” Hayley asked. Her mother and stepfather had rarely been seen apart since their wedding over a year ago.

“Waiting down on the beach with Finn and Anton and the guests.”

“Good luck finding him in that crowd from Lakeside.” Tommy shook his head in bemusement. “Didn't anyone stay home to mind the town?”

“I warned you.” Hayley put down her palette knife. “You can't stand up in a pizzeria and invite everyone to a wedding and expect them not to show up.”

Especially not if you were a rock star with a mansion in the Hamptons, a private jet, and a yacht that slept twelve.

Funny how quickly those things had stopped mattering to her. The fancy house, the cars, the shock of seeing a superstar rummaging in her fridge for a can of soda—in the blink of an eye it had all faded away until she saw only the man with the same blue-green eyes she saw in her mirror every morning.

Her father
.

She had lived for thirty-eight years without him, but now that he was part of her life, she couldn't quite remember how she had managed.

Everything Finn had said about him was true. Tommy Stiles was one of the good guys. If she let him, he would shower both her and Lizzie with everything their hearts desired. An updated kitchen for Goldy's, a separate shop for the cake-decorating side of the business, an Ivy League education for Lizzie. Fancy cars, designer clothes, all the trappings of celebrity with none of the work. Saying no wasn't always easy, especially when it came to Lizzie and all the things she wanted for her future. But she still believed that hard work and talent mattered and she knew that her father believed it too.

All of her protests, however, hadn't been enough to dissuade Tommy from surprising her with the most spectacular thirty-ninth birthday gift on the planet when he bought out Michael's share of Goldy's Bakery and presented Hayley with papers declaring her sole owner.

“For all the birthdays I missed through the years,” he had said over her protests.

“But I can't…I don't want—”

“I know,” he said, “and I respect that. What you do with Goldy's is up to you. All I did was help get Michael Goldstein out of the picture.”

Tommy's openhearted generosity had freed her from financial responsibility to her ex-husband and made it possible for her to plow a percentage of the growing profits into expanding the operation. Without the endless worry about what Michael would do next to undermine Goldy's, she had discovered a sense of joy in her work that she hadn't imagined possible and that joy was quickly translating into a new level of success.

Her tenderhearted daughter had derived great comfort from the fact that her father was financially solvent. Hayley, who was considerably less tenderhearted when it came to her ex-husband, derived comfort from the fact that at least for the moment he was living in the Bahamas and out of their lives. She still worried about what he would do when the money ran out but for now she was able to keep her anxiety to a reasonable level, a goal she hadn't attained since high school.

Not surprisingly, the publicity about her connection to Tommy had bumped up business at Goldy's. To her delight, most of the new customers quickly became regulars. Being Tommy Stiles's daughter had caught the public's attention, but nobody would pay thousands of dollars for an elaborate cake if the baker couldn't deliver the goods.

Six months ago
InStyle
featured her in a four-page spread about up-and-coming cake decorators. The phone rang off the hook for weeks after the issue hit the stands. Being named “Best in the Northeast” last month by the Food Network didn't hurt either. The phone was still ringing thanks to that one.

While the tabloids embraced her as the latest member of the Stiles clan, her siblings hadn't been too sure about the working-class single mother from South Jersey and, to be honest, she hadn't been overly impressed with the spoiled rich kids from East Hampton. Over time she developed a cordial relationship with her half sisters and half brothers, a warm one with their children, and an amused friendship with her grandmother CeCe.

To everyone's surprise but Hayley's, Willow had become a good friend. She enjoyed helping the new mother decode baby Amanda's signals and watching as Willow gained confidence in her new role. She had the feeling this marriage would be the one that finally lasted.

Despite their misgivings about Hayley, the extended Stiles clan had welcomed Lizzie into their circle immediately and without reservation. At a time when her daughter needed it most, these strangers who happened to be family opened their hearts to the girl and Hayley would be forever grateful. Family could break your heart but they could also heal your soul and that was exactly what they had done for Lizzie.

Lizzie had a tough time dealing with her father's treachery but she was a Maitland woman, which meant she was strong and smart and resilient and those attributes rose to the top like heavy cream. Hayley was proud of Lizzie for coming to terms with the way things were with Michael and accepting the fact that they were unlikely to change.

“We'd better make our way down to the beach,” Jane said to Lizzie. “I walk a little slower these days.”

Lizzie smiled at her grandmother and Hayley felt a burst of joy deep inside her heart. Thank God their estrangement had been short-lived. Their time with Jane was growing short and she wanted Lizzie to treasure every moment.

“Looks like it's just the two of us,” Tommy said as Lizzie and Jane left the room.

“Seems like,” Hayley said over the huge lump that had suddenly lodged in her throat. The moment had finally arrived.

“You look beautiful,” he said.

“Like a forty-year-old princess?” she teased.

“Like yourself,” he said. “Which is even better.”

She watched as he shot his cuffs twice then tugged at the hem of his perfectly tailored jacket.

“You're not nervous, are you, Tommy? I mean, this isn't your first time.”

So that was what a sheepish grin looked like. “I'm always nervous. There's something about walking your daughter down the aisle that shakes a man to his core no matter how many times he's done it.”

“And here I was counting on you for a little wedding-day advice.”

They locked eyes and started to laugh.

“You might want to rethink that, honey. I've made my share of mistakes.”

“I know,” she said. “And most of them were on the cover of
People
magazine.”

“At least I don't have to keep a scrapbook. The tabloids do it for me.” He considered her for a long moment. “How about you?”

“Everything's perfect,” she said, “and it's freaking me out. I keep waiting for something to go wrong and nothing has. That's not normal.” At least not for her.

“Perfect is good,” he said.

“On a cake,” she said. “In real life, it makes me nervous.”

“Do you love him?” Leave it to Tommy to cut right through to the heart of it.

Her breath caught in her throat. “So much it hurts.”

Tommy gave her one of those smiles that had launched a thousand magazine covers. “And I know he loves you.”

She had put Finn through his paces and he had proved his love every single time. Another guy might have thrown up his hands and walked out, but not Finn. Whether it was cheering Lizzie's soccer team, pitching in at the bakery, or making love, he was the best partner she could ever ask for.

“Yes,” she said, matching his smile with one of her own. “He loves me.”

Every time she raised the bar Finn met the challenge with compassion, understanding, and just enough of a rocker's edge to keep things interesting. But old habits were hard to break and she was still having trouble believing that silver linings didn't always hide big, dark clouds.