Take a Chance (13 page)

“One,” said Daisy and Aidan.

“When I take away this egg,” Jem said and cracked the final egg into the bowl. “What do I have left?”

“Me!” said Aidan.

Daisy giggled. Jem grinned. This was going to be fun.

Close to half an hour later the bench was dusted with flour from Aidan’s sifting and splattered with egg from when Daisy lifted the beater out of the bowl before turning it off. Jem wondered whether it had been a good idea after all to have their help as she surveyed the mess. As far as she could see the biggest benefit was that she knew what they were up to.  Beside her, Aidan sneezed into the cake mixture.

T
he oven heat will kill any bugs.

I hope.

Jem skimmed her eyes over the bench looking for inspiration and found it in a packet of chocolate chips.

“You have both been such a big help to me and the cake is ready to go into the oven now,” she told Daisy and Jeremy.

“Can I put it in the oven?” Daisy asked.

“No. The oven is too hot for children to touch so that will have to be my job.”

Jem removed two small plastic containers Jess used to store baby food in from a cupboard. She sprinkled the bottom of both with chocolate chips and gave them to the children.

“This is to thank you for all your help. I’ll even let you take them into the family room to eat as you watch a movie.”

She could barely hide her relief when both children thanked her and took the small cups of chocolate chips and went into the family room.

Jess poured the mixture into a lined cake tin and slid it into the oven as the familiar theme to Toy Story came to her ears.

That will hopefully keep them busy while I try and get as much done as I can here
, she thought as she checked her list.

When Eben returned with Jeremy and the groceries it was to find
Jem in the kitchen peering out the rain splattered window at the rapidly rising marquee.

“
They work fast,” he observed. “What happened to the personal supervision?”

“They were worried I could get injured and it’s wet,” Jem replied.

“You mean you were in the way and they asked you to go,” Eben interpreted.

“They didn’t say it like that,” Jem said primly.

Eben laughed and hugged her to him.

“Is the circus coming?” Jeremy asked excitedly after seeing the marquee going up on the back lawn
through the family room sliding doors.

“No, it’s for a work presentation,” Jem told him.

When Jeremy looked blankly at her she added “It’s like a big meeting but there will be too many people to fit in the house.”

“Awww,” Jeremy began,
then a thought occurred to him. “Can we play inside it?”

“Not while everything is being set up or while things are packed away but afterwards you can.”

“Yes!” shouted Jeremy and he pumped his arm then ran off to tell Daisy the good news.

The oven buzzer went just as Aidan marched into the kitchen holding out his little cup for a refill.

“I get it!” he said and pushed the button to stop the timer buzzing and tried to open the oven door.

“I’ll do it. You mustn’t touch th
e oven or anything in it as the cake’s hot and you will burn your fingers,” Eben said as he picked up Aidan and dropped him a safe distance away.

He folded the tea towel up and used it to lift out
the chocolate mud cake. Aidan waited for him to put the tray down on a chopping board on the bench. He pulled the kitchen stool over, climbed it and promptly stuck his tongue on the side of the cake tin. He screamed and Jem looked up from her task to see what the noise was about.

“I don’t believe it,” said Eben and Jem.

Eben picked up Aidan, poured a glass of water with his free hand and held it to Aidan’s mouth. Aidan stuck his tongue into it.

“Swish it around your mouth, like this,” Eben said and took a sip to show him what to do.

Aidan copied him and swallowed the water so Eben gave him more and set the glass on the bench. He gave Aidan a hug.

“That was a silly thing to do,” he chided mildly. “When I said don’t touch I meant every part of your body, not just your hands.”

He gave Aidan another hug. “You won’t do that again in a hurry, will you?”

Aidan shook his head.

Jem slid a knife around the edge of the cake tin then inverted the tin over a wire rack. She gave the tin a little shake as she lifted it. The cake plopped cleanly onto the rack and she carefully peeled off the paper stuck to the base. Steam rose from the exposed cake and two pairs of hungry eyes watched her every move. She took the apron off over her head and put it on the bench.

“If it’s a
lright with you I’ll visit Jess and ice the cake when I get back.”

“
That’s a good idea. We can’t start setting up until they’ve finished putting up the marquee. While you are gone I can start dinner to have it ready for when you return.”

“Okay.”

Eben gave her a brief kiss and put Aidan down.

“Keep that thought in mind the next time I ask you a question.”

Bemused, Jem gathered her shoulder bag and trench coat and headed for the car.

On the return home a couple of hours later, Jem felt pleased by her sister’s progress.
Jess had stayed awake for some of her visit and had managed to hold a short conversation. She had stayed until the nurse gave Jess medication for pain relief that would also make her sleepy.

As
she rounded the curve in the driveway Jem saw that the van carrying the marquee had been replaced by an old, battered, blue Toyota Celica parked in front of the house.

T
he sound of laughter from the kitchen wafted down the hallway as Jem opened the internal door from the garage. Reaching the kitchen doorway she saw an open wine bottle on the kitchen bench which Cherie was leaning against with a half full glass of wine in one hand. In her other hand was a beer can she was tipping to Eben’s mouth.

Jem wasn’t prepared for the jealousy that surged inside her. Holding back the atavistic urge to slap Cherie away she instead put on a polite smile as
Daisy ran through the kitchen squealing, chased by Jeremy.

“
Don’t run inside,” Jem warned, resulting in Jeremy and Daisy slowing to trot as they brushed past her and disappeared into the hallway.

Upon hearing Jem’s voice,
Cherie put down the drinks and looked pleased to see her.

I’ll let her live
, Jem thought.

“Hi, stranger.
Eben said you were at the hospital. How is your sister doing?” Cherie asked as she filled an empty wine glass that had been out of sight behind her.

“She’s now awake for short periods but is still a bit groggy.
The consultant says the signs are good that she won’t have any permanent neurological damage,” Jem told her, accepting the wine.

“
That’s great news,” Cherie said.

“You bet.
Now we don’t have to worry about Jason swimming back from Fiji,” Jem joked.

She took a sip of the
merlot and placed the glass on the bench.

“Is that your car out front?” she asked.

“No, it’s my nephew’s,” Cherie said. “He wanted to borrow mine to impress his girlfriend. He’s just turned eighteen and it’s their first date.”             

“What do you drive?” Eben asked
with interest.

“An eight
year old Toyota Corolla but it’s obviously more impressive than that old bomb he has. My sister and brother-in-law wouldn’t let him use their BMW,” she added.

“You’re very trusting
to lend your car to a teenager,” Eben said.

“Not that trusting,” Cherie said as she pulled out a folded up metal coat
hanger out of her purse. “This is the key to this car. I threatened to wrap it around his neck if there was even the tiniest scratch on my car when he returned it.”

“That’s a good
incentive,” Jem said, belatedly noticing that Eben’s hands were in a mixing bowl.

What are you two up to?”
she asked.

Cherie tapped her phone which was sitting on
the bench beside her purse. “I’m here to help you set up the marquee. I left you several messages to warn you about the latest hassles but Eben tells me that Mark has already shared the news.”

Jem extracted her phone from her shoulder bag and winced when she saw the battery was dead. She pulled out the charger and plugged it in the first socket she found.

“I thought I’d come and help set up as much as possible tonight seeing as I have to go to work tomorrow to finish off those brochures,” Cherie continued. “I would have been here earlier but the motorway traffic was dreadful.”

“As for me, you’ve caught me out, red handed as it were,” Eben said and wiped his fingers on a cloth, turning it pink. “I had hoped to have the rhubarb and apple crumble in the oven before you all got home.”

They both watched as he scraped pink crumble onto the fruit mixture in a pyrex dish already partly covered by a wedge of bright yellow crumble and another of green crumble.

“Why is the crumble bit different colours?” Jem asked.

“Food colouring,” Eben told her and held up the palm of one hand to show a red streak probably caused by getting the lid off the food dye. “I thought the kids would be more willing to eat it if it looked unnatural.”

“That reminds me,” said Jem. “What happened to that cake I made before I left?”

“I put it in the serving container,” Eben said and pointed to a large inverted square, plastic container pushed to one side of the bench.

Jem reached forward to lift the base off the lid.

“Some crumbs fell off it,” Eben warned.

She pulled the base away and was unsurprised to see that close to quarter of the cake was missing.

“That’s more than some crumbs,” she observed.

“I had to neaten the sides up,” Eben explained.

“You couldn’t have waited until I had iced it?”

“It smelled so good and I didn’t know how long you would be,” Eben said.

Jem sighed and put the lid back on the cake.

The oven timer started beeping and
he reached over to turn it off. With the tea towel folded he removed a roasting dish of spicy wedges and an oven tray covered with small pizzas. Then he put the rhubarb crumble in the oven, adjusted the temperature and reset the oven timer.

“You have been busy,” Jem remarked. She pulled open the top drawer and removed knives and forks in case the children decided to eat in a civilised manner.

“What can I do to help?” Cherie asked.

“You can set out the place mats and coasters,” Jem said and handed her the cutlery. “You’ll find them in the second drawer of the sideboard in the dining room.”

Cherie took the cutlery and disappeared across the hallway to the dining room.

“You two seemed pretty friendly when we arrived,” Jem remarked as she pulled the plates out of a cupboard.
“Not at all like you’d just met.”

Eben dipped a wedge into a pot of sour cream he’d removed from the fridge.

“She’s an easy person to get to know. I like her,” he said and popped the wedge in Jem’s mouth.

The wedge was hot and Jem huffed around the sides of it as it sat between her teeth so she wouldn’t burn her mouth. Because she was holding the plates and couldn’t remove the wedge she tried glaring at Eben but he saw the sparkle in her eyes and knew she was only trying it on.

“Has anyone ever told you how cute you look when you’re angry?” Eben asked and dropped the pizza cutter on the oven tray.

He reached over, took the plates from her hands and set them on the bench. Before she could remove the wedge his mouth swooped on hers and nibbled away the part of the wedge poking out of her mouth. When he got to her lips she swallowed and he stopped, leaned back and smiled.

Jem waved her hands in front of her mouth.

“That was hot!”

“You’re telling me,” said Cherie from the doorway. “If I smoked I’d need a cigarette about now.”

Eben’s smile turned into a smirk and Jem felt her face flushing.

It’s the wine.

“I’ll call the kids to the table,” she said weakly and left the kitchen to go looking for them.

Not surprisingly the children ate everything offered to them, even the brightly coloured rhubarb crumble. Jem was impressed. Even more so by the pleasant light hearted banter over the meal which included Cherie. She had never seen the children so well behaved.

Please let them behave like this tomorrow night.

When everyone had finished eating she realised that tonight was the first time she would not have to race off to the hospital straight after dinner leaving Eben to clean up and get the children ready for bed. She felt it was her turn to supervise their baths. When she pointed that out Eben disagreed and said she needed all the time she could get to set things up. He didn’t mind relegating the dishes to her though.

Once the dishwasher was on Cherie got
out a sheet of paper from her bag and smoothed it on the bench.

“According to my master plan I think we should put the floor down first,” she said.

“What about the power cables?” Jem asked. “Wouldn’t it be easier to set up the lights and run the wires under the flooring?

“That’s true. Let’s do that first.”

“There are a lot of tables in the garage,” Jem commented. “Did
Duh
-boss decide to order something of everything because he couldn’t make a decision?”

“No. He and Mark decided that since we’re getting people out on a Saturday night we’d have to supply a three course dinner to make it worth our clients’ while to attend.
Because they weren’t sure how many would actually show Mark thought it would be a good idea to invite extra people.”

“I can’t see that going horribly wrong, can you?” Jem asked.
“What about the numbers for catering?”

Cherie snorted.

“Theirs is not to wonder why but make it so I want to die,” she misquoted. “Needless to say, it’ll be on my head if there isn’t enough food.”

Cherie turned the paper over to show Jem the final menu.

Jem read the selected menu in surprise then handed it back to Cherie.

“This looks
rather diverse,” she observed politely.

“
Duh-
boss finally settled on most of what Mark suggested although the option of burritos was all Celeste’s idea.”

Celeste had been Nate’s secretary
until their affair became public and Nate choose her over his second wife, Mandy. His decision had been made easier by the fact that Mandy had thrown all his clothes on the driveway and changed the locks on the house after finding out.

Celeste had immediately moved into Nate’s city penthouse and now spent her days being a kept woman which seemed to involve giving Nate tonics and spending as much of his money as she could.

Mandy had also once been Nate’s secretary, a fact Celeste was well aware of, so she was determined not to be replaced in the same fashion. She insisted that since Nate wasn’t in the office that often it would be better to give any work he wanted done to Cherie who was Martha’s executive assistant.

If that hadn’t been enough to get Cherie’s back up, Celeste took it upon
herself to interfere with things at her whim, hence the burritos.

Jem and Cherie’s
conversation was interrupted by Eben calling out “Nudey streaker!” from the top of the stairs.

A moment later Jeremy ran naked into the kitchen with his pyjamas tucked under one arm. Jem stopped him.

“What’s going on?”

“Uncle Eben’s trying to get me dressed,” said Jeremy.

“What’s wrong with that?” asked Cherie.

“He’s trying to stick my pyjama pants on my head. I’m too old for that stuff,” he said indignantly.

“Go and get dressed in the family room. Then upstairs to brush your teeth,” said Jem.

Jeremy left, his dignity somewhat assuaged.

“Never a dull moment here,” Cherie observed.

“You have no idea,” said Jem
as she turned on the outdoor lights.

The patio by the family room
immediately lit up and the white panels of the marquee brightened beside it.

“It looks like a giant meringue has gone splat in my sister’s garden,” Jem said.

“As long as it is a tasteful splat,” Cherie said as she picked up her coat and gloves from the barstool. “That’s all that matters.”

Jem lef
t the room to retrieve her coat and returned wearing it and holding two torches in her gloved hands.

“
Do you think we’ll see much of the inside of the marquee with them?” Cherie asked as she accepted a torch.

“We’ll
find out in a minute,” Jem said.

The rain
was steady as they slipped out the family room glass sliding door and hurried across the tiled patio towards the marquee opening.

“Great,
we get to spend more time getting saturated,” Cherie muttered as Jem crouched to struggle with the knot in the cord holding the door flap together. “Haven’t these people heard of zips?”

Jem
moved to one side so she wasn’t working in the shadows of the patio lights and managed to get the knot undone. She hurriedly unlaced the door flaps and as soon as the last eyelet was unthreaded they pushed their way in. The door flapped shut behind them and they flicked their torches on.

Cherie waved her torch around the interior of the tent.

“It’s a bit like the Tardis in here, much bigger inside than you’d think,” Cherie murmured.

Her torch beam lit up a puff of warm breath from Jem’s mouth.

“The Tardis in Antarctica,” she added.

Jem’s torch landed on something poking under the tent side.

“Jess’s Daphne bush,” Jem groaned as she squelched her way to the side of the tent and started poking the delicate branches back outside. “This is the first one she’s had that has lasted more than six months. Those guys should’ve taken more care.”

She t
rained her torch around the perimeter of the tent and was relieved to see no other plant casualties. Jem looked back at Cherie to see her walking through the wet grass without having her heels sink into the ground.

“How do you do that?” she asked, waving the torch over Cherie’s feet.

“This is nothing after learning to walk on water,” Cherie told her “but I wouldn’t mind borrowing some gumboots if there are some spare ones around.”