On Any Given Sundae (17 page)

“We can have semi-finalist voting at each
table, with the four winners competing for the grand prize at the
end,” she said.

Bright lady.

So that was how they announced it and, soon,
the chaos was quartered.

No doubt about it, though—it was still
chaos.

***

Elizabeth served up gobs of ice cream and
watched as the citizens with last names beginning with the letters
A through F devoured the toppings and debated the taste of each. At
her table, it was a race to the death between candied pineapple
bits and crushed chocolate-covered cherries. Gretchen waved at her
holding up a box of Cracker Jacks, which apparently had taken the
lead at her G through M table.

Nick had his hands full with the N through S
bunch, a couple of whom were in an all-out war over the merits of
cashews versus pecans. And Jacques had the T through Z clan, who
were rather subdued by comparison. Then again, maybe that was
because there were fewer of them.

She watched as Rob deftly handled most of the
social chitchat as well as wielded that dreaded microphone. He was
so at ease speaking in public—it was amazing. So unlike her. Not
that this was much of a great revelation, considering their
longstanding history. She’d known how different the two of them
were ever since she was five.

Lance Burk sauntered up to her table and
plopped a plastic bag of chocolate-covered somethings on one
corner.

“If you guys are wild about those chocolate
cherries, you’ve gotta give these here a try,” he told the group.
“Hand me a bowl of that ice cream, Lizzy.”

No courtesies from Lance. No please or, when
she gave him a bowl, no thank you. But what did she expect? This
was the same guy who’d stopped speaking to his own father because
he didn’t get the specific car he’d wanted for graduation. And he’d
never been nice to her in his life.

“Mmm. Crunchy,” one avid taster declared
before moving on to the sliced star fruit.

“What
are
these?” asked another,
gingerly holding up one of the chocolate blobs between her
fingers.

“Try ‘em, you’ll like ‘em,” Lance said.

Not the kind of forthcoming response
Elizabeth wanted to hear. She went over and picked up Lance’s bag
to get a closer look.

“Oh, here. Let me feed you one.” Lance
snatched the bag out of her hand and waved a chocolate something in
front of her mouth. His spidery fingers rolling the “treat” back
and forth.

“N-No th-thanks,” she said, taking a step
back.

He laughed. “What a timid little wallflower
you are, Lizzy Daniels. Gabinarri is even more of a fool than I
thought.”

Rob Gabinarri, she had learned, was far from
being a fool, so Lance was, once again, pointing out how
incompatible she and Rob were. Everyone, even a jerk like Lance,
knew she wasn’t up to Rob’s usual girlfriend standard.

But now wasn’t the time to get thrown off
course by her own insecurities. Everyone at her table wanted to try
the topping Lance brought in, but she had a bad feeling about it.
When he put the bag on the table again, she snitched a sample.

She turned it over in her palm and broke it
in half. As she studied the inside, the pit of her stomach dropped
to her toes. Although well concealed in considerable chocolate,
Lance’s topping bag was entirely filled with insects.

She pulled the bag off the table.

“Hey, Frizzy Lizzy! What d’ya think you’re
doing?” Lance marched over to her and tried to yank it back, but
she resisted.

“Don’t eat these,” she told her crowd.
“They’re c-c-crickets.”

A few people gasped, a couple of them
coughed, one gagged and went behind a tree, but most started
yelping and flinging the chocolate-covered crickets off their ice
cream and onto the grass. Several just tossed away their entire
bowls and began complaining. The other groups stopped eating to
watch her table’s total upheaval.

Lance laughed.

Rob came striding over. “What’s the problem
here?”

An enraged lady in fuchsia was quick to fill
him in, agitated in equal parts by the fact that she had to throw
away perfectly good ice cream and that she was a vegetarian who’d
now eaten insect flesh.

“Why did you go and do that, Burk?” Rob asked
him. “This is a family-friendly event.”

Lance waved a rainbow-colored flier at him.
“It says right here—“ He pointed. “‘Bring your favorite topping to
share.’ That’s just what I did.”

“Get out of here,” Rob said in a low,
dangerous voice.

Lance raised his light eyebrows. “You can’t
kick me out of a public park. Besides, I didn’t do anything wrong.
I didn’t force anyone to try my favorite topping. It’s not my fault
if they didn’t like it.” He laughed again, daring Rob with his
insolence to make the next move.

“Leave now, or I’ll call the authorities,”
Rob said.

Lance shook his head and crossed his arms as
if rooting himself to the spot. “You’re a freakin’ idiot,
Gabinarri. This whole event is just a stupid stunt you’re using to
try to distract people from noticing what a failure you are. You
always played that same game on the field, too, so the fans
wouldn’t notice your poor form when you threw a long pass or how
you rarely scored any points in the final quarter.” He sneered.
“You haven’t changed a bit. Still more show than substance. Still
dumb as a rock.”

To Elizabeth’s horror, Rob didn’t answer him
back right away or put that Lance bastard in his place. He just
stared at him with the oddest expression. A yard away, Nick’s fists
were clenched, however, and despite not being much of a fighter,
she knew her Greek buddy wouldn’t hesitate to throw a left hook or
two if it came to blows.

It looked like Rob was thinking. Planning.
But something had to be done. And fast.

Before she could talk herself out of it, she
stepped up beside Rob and pried the microphone from his fingers.
Most of the Wilmington Bay residents were eavesdropping with
unabashed interest, so she had a ready audience. She flicked on the
mike, gulped some air and said a prayer to both Madonnas for wisdom
in using this thing.

“H-Hi everyone,” she said, the loudness of
her amplified voice making her want to cower under the red-, white-
and blue-covered table, but she pressed on. “I-If you haven’t cast
your vote y-yet for the semi-finalist round, pl-please do so now.
But, before we m-move onto the f-finals, I just wanted to say, on
behalf of all of us at Tutti-Frutti, how much w-we appreciate such
a fine group of people coming out for our special event
t-today.”

She paused to take a few long breaths and was
surprised when people started clapping. She glanced around at the
cheering crowd before noticing Lance’s fallen expression. She’d
deprived him of his spotlight. Well, good.

She felt a small smile rise on her lips. She
could do this. Yes, she really could. If she just pretended she was
talking to Rob alone, maybe she could trick herself out of this
fear for a minute. She fixed her eyes on him.

“I also w-want to add that, in Tutti-Frutti’s
long history, we’ve never had the p-privilege of having someone
like Rob Gabinarri on staff. He’s so clever. He’s always thinking
of ways to bring fun and entertainment to our little sweets shop.
F-For one thing, he brought us these amazing jugglers.” She pointed
toward the two men, who were quick to do a couple of terrific,
showy stunts involving back flips and flying beanbags. The crowd
went wild. Rob turned his attention away from Lance and stared at
her.

“And, of course, y-you all know that today’s
Topping Taste Test was Rob’s idea, too.” She paused for more
enthusiastic cheering. “So, thanks, Rob,” she said to him, her
voice echoing across the park.

“THANKS, ROB!” the crowd parroted back.

Rob waved his arm in response, but he didn’t
say a single word. He just kept looking between the gathered
taste-testers and her, seemingly surprised and very, very
uncharacteristically silent.

She couldn’t help it. She laughed. She
suddenly thought of about five thousand things she wanted to say to
the good people of Wilmington Bay, starting with how remarkable it
was to finally see Rob Gabinarri speechless.

But she didn’t. He shot her a questioning
look, and she responded by sending him a love letter with her eyes.
After a very long moment, he rewarded her with a blazing smile.

Maybe it was crazy but, at least for today,
she didn’t care that their relationship wouldn’t last the summer.
For the first time in over twenty years, she understood something
about the guy she’d once idolized: Rob also needed someone to
believe in him. And he needed it just as desperately as she
did.

Lance Burk stalked off, dragging a whining
Tara away, while the rest of them returned to their tasting and
voting.

“I—um—” Rob tried to say.

“We’ll talk later,” she promised him. He
nodded slowly and returned to tallying the ballots, the serious
expression never quite leaving his face, though.

Jacques slipped over to her. “Nice speech,
chéri
.”

“Thanks.”

“Tell me,” he said in her ear, “is he worth
it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Is he worth your heart of love,
ma petite
brioche?
Because that’s what’s happening to you, isn’t it?
You’re beginning to fall in love with that boy all over again?”

She looked into her dear friend’s kind eyes
and bit her lower lip. “Oh, Jacques. That’s the worst part. I never
stopped.”

CHAPTER TEN

Rob knew Elizabeth was falling in love with
him. She’d braved the microphone and public speaking for him, and
if that wasn’t a grand gesture of love for someone like her… Well,
this had to stop.

Although he’d only been biding his time
before punching out that idiot Burk, he owed her for standing up
for him. For putting herself out there in his defense. And the best
way he knew to reward her was to steer her clear of him.

The fireworks would be starting soon.

Team Tutti-Frutti closed up shop at dusk that
night to gather on a blanket under the canopy of stars, which would
soon be replaced by the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in
air and the mosquitoes buzzing everywhere else.

She sat no more than a foot in front of him,
the glow from the distant streetlights caressing her hair. He felt
his arm rise, lifting his hand toward the shimmering waves, but he
forced it back down. He had to pull away from her.

“Birthday torte?” Jacques said, passing
around a cookie tin stocked with his delectable apricot
concoctions. He blew Elizabeth a kiss and handed her a special one
with the number “28” on it.

“Thanks, Jacques,” she said. “Please tell me
I don’t have to wait until my birthday officially starts at
midnight to eat this gorgeous thing.”

The Frenchman grinned. “Enjoy,
mon
amie.”

When the tin reached him, Rob grabbed a torte
for each hand to keep himself from seizing Elizabeth instead.

Nick popped a big one in his mouth. “Mmm,
man, these are awesome.”

“Gretchen helped me with them,” Jacques said.
“You should see that woman brandish a pastry crimper. She’s
frightening. Comes snapping at you like a one-pincered
lobster.”

Gretchen retaliated by giving him a hard
shove. “Don’t forget, I’m going to do the tartlets with you, too.
You promised, and you’d better be nice about it or I’ll cut off
your supply of amaretto truffles.”

Jacques shuddered. “Cruel woman. Okay, you
win. We’ll do the tartlets in the next week or two and let you all
try them. They’re fairly safe. Only slight crimping is
involved.”

Gretchen made a comic face and the group
laughed. Rob smiled before remembering that pretty soon their
future plans wouldn’t include him. Sure, he wanted to return to
Chicago but, at the same time, there was a growing list of things
he’d miss about Wilmington Bay.

“Oh, you guys,” Elizabeth said. “Don’t
forget, Camden rescheduled. He’s now coming out on the fourteenth
to do the photographs, so leave that following weekend open. He’ll
probably be here Thursday through at least Saturday finishing the
shots. We’re going to need lots of good ones from all of you.” She
paused and grinned at him. “We’ll except for you, Rob. We won’t
make you bake us any desserts, but we’ll probably need you to
tackle most of the shop’s shifts alone during those days.”

“I can handle it,” he told her. “No problem.”
But, yeah, how could he not feel a little left out?

“Oooh! Sparklers,” Gretchen said to
Elizabeth. “Wanna get some?”

“Sure,” Elizabeth said. “How about you
guys?”

Nick shook his head. “Sissy stuff. You two
enjoy.”

So they went off together leaving Rob alone
with the other men for a few minutes. There was a long silence.

“So, about Elizabeth’s cookbook,” he began.
“Why is this project so important to her? You two know her writing
history better than I do.”

Well, that wasn’t entirely true. He was
trying to butter them up a bit. He’d always paid extra attention
when one of Elizabeth’s essays was read in class and, on the
infrequent occasion when she wrote a story for the school paper, he
always read it two or three times because the way she explained
things on the page was in the same voice she used when she spoke,
which was a rare occurrence back then. He liked “hearing her,” if
only on paper.

Jacques, of course, got right to the heart of
it. “She’s dedicating it to the memory of her mom. It’s Elizabeth’s
farewell offering and, in her mind, it has to be perfect. An
absolutely flawless project.”

“Yeah,” Nick said. “She was close to her dad,
too, but her mom was the one who taught her how to bake. I guess
Mrs. Daniels was a great lady, although I never met her.”

“I met her,” Rob said. “A few times, but it
was years ago, when we were still kids. She was always very nice to
me.”