On Any Given Sundae (20 page)

Her cell phone rang.

She and Jacques glanced at each other before
she answered it. Camden.

“W-What’s going on?” she said. “Where are
you?”

There was a torrent of “Sorry, sorry
darlings” and an almost convincing “I’ll really, really make it up
to you.” Elizabeth felt her temper rise.

“Camden,
where
are you?”

He moaned on the other end of the line.
“Annabelle and I missed our flight out of Banff. We—we were kind
of—um—busy in the private lounge and didn’t hear the last boarding
call. There’s not another Midwestern-bound flight until late
tomorrow, and by the time I get out there it’ll be too late to do
everything we need to get done. Please, please forgive me. I’ve got
another break later in the month, can I still come out then?”

She sighed. Ten days ago she wouldn’t have
understood this type of mindless passion. The kind of desire that
obliterated all other responsibilities and left her feeling
vulnerable to its tempest. Ten days was a lifetime ago.

“Okay, we’ll reschedule,” she heard her voice
say with surprising calm. “But remember the deadline is August
first.” Camden blessed her and hung up.

“
Merde.”
Jacques sliced a
picture-perfect éclair in half and stuffed one part in his mouth.
He waved the other at her dispiritedly. She took it.

Yet, despite her disappointment, she could
think of only one thing, and it ran like tickertape through her
brain:
I get to spend more time with Rob this weekend! More,
more, more!

Yep. She’d made up for twenty-eight years of
sexual restraint by turning into a nymphomaniac over the course of
ten days. Nice.

“Let’s go to Tutti-Frutti and console
ourselves with ice cream and a couple of caramel-pecan rolls,” she
suggested.

Jacques complied immediately.

On the street outside the sweets shop,
Jacques ran into an acquaintance and chatted with him for a minute.
Elizabeth knew she could go inside if she wanted to but, instead,
she decided to mill around, enjoy the summer sunshine, smell the
roses. She peeked in the shop’s window, though, which was empty
except for two elderly couples and a middle-aged lady, all of whom
had already been served. Then she noticed Rob and Gretchen.

They were standing behind the counter, close
to each other. Leaning in.
Very
close to each other, she
clarified. A lump, belonging to an emotion she didn’t like, lodged
itself in her throat.

Gretchen—tall, blond, beautiful Gretchen—put
her hand on his shoulder and whispered something in his ear. He
laughed and looked at her as though her blue eyes made starlight
dim by comparison.

Then Rob motioned her close again with a
come-hither gesture Elizabeth thought he used only with
her
.
He whispered a response back in Gretchen’s ear. She, in turn,
clasped her hand over her mouth, as if to hold in the hilarity, and
her cheeks flushed. Even across the shop and through the
fingerprint-smudged window Elizabeth could tell flirting when she
saw it.

She heard a gasp behind her.

She looked over her shoulder to see Jacques,
the color draining from his face, staring at the giddy couple
inside Tutti-Frutti. He gave her a horrified look.

Oh, what a perfect little fool she’d been.
She’d been trying so hard to ignore the obvious—that a man like Rob
Gabinarri wasn’t for her—but she went ahead and fell in love with
him anyway. Idiot.

Consciously, unconsciously, the guy attracted
attention from other women. He couldn’t help it. No matter what he
whispered to her in the middle of the night, when he thought she
wasn’t watching him during the day, he could freely give in to
those natural flirtatious impulses of his. And, eventually, when
the novelty of being with her wore off, wouldn’t he choose someone
beautiful and confident like Gretchen over someone plain and
fretful like her?

Elizabeth closed her eyes. Of course he
would.

There was no way she could face them now. Not
any of them.

Not Rob, whose opportunity to cheat would
always be plentiful, whether or not he ever planned to act on
it.

Not Gretchen, whose betrayal was surely
unintentional. Elizabeth doubted her friend even realized she was
next in line for Rob’s attention. But Elizabeth knew no one escaped
his magnetism unscathed, so it still hurt to see her with him.

Not even Jacques, whose empathy had him
turning several shades of sickly pale.

She race-walked down the block and back to
her car. She got in, drove as far as the park, found a shady spot
and killed the ignition. Then she sobbed nonstop for forty
minutes.

***

Elizabeth was acting weird as hell tonight.
Rob figured she must still be pissed at Camden for canceling the
photo shoot at the last minute. But Jacques, who Rob had thought
was warming up to him again after the Fourth of July, was back to
being very, very chilly, which made no sense at all. Those moody
Frenchmen.

Nick was off in his own world most of the
time, no doubt dreaming of some gay hockey-playing fantasy lover
who could down a shot of ouzo without clutching his stomach and
grimacing at the potency.

Only Gretchen was being her normal self. When
he’d asked her for details about Elizabeth’s experience as a
cookbook writer this morning, she’d told him sidesplitting stories
of some of Elizabeth’s earliest recipe attempts. Customers with
delicate sensibilities were in the shop, so they had to keep their
voices down…her tales involved proclaiming several very descriptive
swear words, which Gretchen claimed Elizabeth hadn’t used since.
But Rob laughed and laughed just imagining his sweet woman letting
loose with a range of profanities a Green Beret might find
offensive.

He just loved those contradictions in her.
She usually surprised him and challenged him as a result. But here
they were at dinner and, try as he might, he still couldn’t figure
why she could act with perfect pleasantness toward every member of
his family and, yet, give him the cold shoulder. Even Tony noticed
the change.

“You two get into a fight?” Tony whispered to
him.

“Not that I’m aware of.”

His brother winced. “Oooh. Those are the
worst kind. Hey, man, take my advice and just apologize now.”

“For what?” he said. “I didn’t do
anything.”

“Yeah, you did. You just don’t know it yet.
Nip it in the bud and say you’re sorry. It’s easier that way.
Really. Trust me on this.”

But games like that made Rob mad, so he
ignored his brother’s wise counsel, only to regret it on the car
ride home.

“You need to keep your eyes on the road,” she
informed him when he leaned over to kiss her at a stoplight.

“O-
kay
.” He snapped back to the
driver’s seat and stared straight ahead until the light changed and
he could floor the accelerator. A Porsche can go damn fast.

“S-Slow down,” she hissed, crossing her arms
and looking all irritated.

What was this? Driving 101?

He didn’t slow down.

“Rob, what do you think you’re doing?”

He slammed on the brakes and pulled over to
the side of the road. He shoved the car into park with a force that
probably wouldn’t be looked upon too favorably by the
manufacturers.

“What the hell do you think
you’re
doing?” he said, none too quietly. “What is up with you tonight? I
did not do anything wrong, and I’m not going to apologize. So
there
.” Okay, well that last part came across as kind of
childish, but he really wasn’t in the mood to care much.

Her green eyes narrowed. Her lovely lips
tightened. Her soft hands clenched together so hard he worried a
few of her fingers might get dislocated.

“I saw you flirting with Gretchen this
morning.” Her words were pointed, precise, as accusatory as they
came and without a stutter anywhere. “She is my friend, you know,
and if you’re leading her on or—”

“You think there’s something going on between
me and
Gretchen?”
WHAT? “Hell, Elizabeth, she’s the only one
of you guys who isn’t acting like a nutcase today.”

Oooh, she didn’t like that comment.
Whoops.

She snatched at the handle of the passenger
door and began to pull it open.

“Would you just wait a minute?” He tugged at
the hem of her blouse to keep her in the car.

Oooh, she didn’t like that move either, and
he was rewarded with a glare that could freeze water in Aruba.

“Why should I wait?” she said.

“Because this is ridiculous! There is
nothing—I repeat,
nothing
—going on between me and your best
friend. Gretchen’s fun to talk to, that’s all. She tells goofy
stories and they make me laugh.”

Oooh, man, was he ever striking out tonight.
Now she looked hurt and he remembered—too late, of course—that she
was sensitive to the whole speaking thing. Not that he ever thought
of her as having a speech impediment anymore. And the two of them
talked constantly. How could she forget that? How could she act
like an insecure seventh grader?

Women were these crazy-making beings, which
reminded him of why he’d stayed clear of them in the first
place.

“Please drive me home,” she commanded.

“Fine.” He put the car back into gear and got
them the hell out of there. Not that it helped any. A change in
location didn’t change her attitude toward him.

“I’m still very angry with you,” she said
primly when they reached her apartment complex. “I’d rather you
didn’t come up tonight.”

As if!
“You don’t have to worry,
sweetheart. I could use a good night’s sleep for a change.” He
heard—and cringed at—the bitterness in his own voice.

Clearly, she heard it, too. Something in her
expression telegraphed both fresh pain and confusion.

“I’m s-sure you’ll have plenty of restful
n-nights soon…back in Chicago.” Her tone was sad, regretful
even.

If he’d have stopped right there and
apologized for losing his temper—and let her apologize, as he
sensed she probably wanted to—he could’ve gone up to her place with
her and they could’ve made love and their kisses would’ve removed
the stingers they’d thoughtlessly inflicted on each other.

But, dumb-ass that he was, he didn’t stop
there and apologize for his part in letting this silly battle
escalate—even though she was wrong about the flirting. Oh, no.

Instead he said the genius line, “My nights
in Chicago aren’t restful at all. I’ve been taking it easy up
here.”

The fury in her eyes told him he’d better get
used to Tony’s sofa sleeper again. The hurt on her face told him
that they were now paying the price for a relationship that
should’ve never happened in the first place. He could see her
practically computing the hours until she could watch him leave the
city limits of Wilmington Bay—and leave her alone.

***

Tony cocked an eyebrow at him when he
returned to his brother’s house that night after a ten-day
absence.

“I told you, you should’ve apologized. No
questions asked,” Tony said.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Ah-huh.” Tony flung some sheets and blankets
at him. “I believe you. Really.”

Something in his head exploded. “Women are
crazy
.”

Tony nodded like a freaking TV shrink.
“Yep.”

“They get these damn fool ideas into their
heads about something and they won’t listen to logic or to reason
or to anything that remotely makes sense.”

“Sounds familiar.”

“And I was
not
flirting with
Gretchen.”

Tony laughed. “Oh, boy.”

“I am really pissed off.” He massaged his
temples with his fingers and collapsed onto the sofa sleeper.

His brother slapped his shoulder on his way
out of the room. “Love does that to you,” Mr. Family Man said.

“Dammit,” Rob said back.

And, just for the record, he did not have a
restful night.

***

Elizabeth knew Jacques didn’t own much
black—it didn’t suit his coloring—but, whatever he’d collected in
mourning colors, he was wearing all of it the next day.

“I haven’t been much of a friend lately, have
I?” she said to him in the early-morning, pre-opening-shift hours
at Tutti-Frutti. She enjoyed coming up here before the crowds. It
was peaceful, and she needed that these days. She’d be long gone
before Rob and Gretchen waltzed in at ten.

She leaned against the counter and finished
filling out the order forms she had to complete. Then she handed
Jacques one of the blueberry muffins she baked oh-so-late last
night when she was
not
with Rob.

“I’ve been pretty self-absorbed with my own
bizarre life, and I’m sorry,” she told him. “I know something’s
bothering you. Do you want to talk about it?”

He took a deep breath then a big bite of
muffin. “Mmm,” he said without enthusiasm.

She smiled slightly. “Are they that bad?”

His brow wrinkled. “Well,
chéri
, let’s
just say they aren’t your best effort.”

“I was mad when I made them. And sad.
And…well, I don’t know.”

“Just as it was in that film
Like Water
for Chocolate
. How the family’s reactions to the foods the
heroine served depended on her emotions when she cooked them.” He
sighed. Jacques was a longtime fan of foreign flicks that played at
independent artsy theaters.

Of course, in this case, he was probably
drawing an accurate comparison.

She snatched the muffin plate away. “Better
not eat these then. I don’t want you suffering through my reactions
from last night.”

“Rob—he’s a short-term thing, yes?” He looked
up at her with big worried eyes.

She hated to admit it, but she couldn’t lie
to her good friend. “I suppose so.”