Devil's Food Cake Murder (Hannah Swensen, #14)(24)

The band began to play. The party had officially begun. Hannah felt an unsettling pang as Norman took Doctor Bev into his arms. She smiled up at him as he led her gracefully across the floor and he looked down at her with obvious affection.

It was more than a little pang. Hannah felt rotten to the core. She was having great difficulty keeping the pleasant expression on her face as she watched Norman and Doctor Bev dance. It reminded her of the first romantic dance at a wedding reception when the groom took his new bride in his arms and they danced for the first time as husband and wife.

“Hannah?”

A voice started her out of her unhappy contemplation, and Hannah tore her eyes away from what appeared to all the world like a happy couple. “Mike,” she greeted him, glad for the interruption.

“Come on, Hannah. Let’s dance.”

Mike held out his hand and Hannah took it. Dancing with Mike should keep her from dwelling on Norman and Doctor Bev. She knew from experience that it was impossible to think about anyone else when she was in Mike’s arms.

Mike’s sexy charisma worked like a charm the moment she began to dance, and her mind settled down into a purring idle. Hannah was so grateful to Mike for rescuing her from her unwanted spectator role that she snuggled a little closer into his arms and smiled up at him exactly the way that Doctor Bev had smiled up at Norman.

As their dance went on, Hannah was dimly aware that other couples had joined them on the area set aside as a dance floor. The song that the small band had been playing when they’d begun to dance had ended and the band had segued into another romantic tune. They’d played only a few bars before Mike stopped dancing and Hannah realized that someone else had tapped him on the shoulder to cut in.

It was Norman, and Hannah followed polite convention and stepped into his arms. Doctor Bev did the same with Mike, and the two couples separated. “Having fun?” Norman asked her.

“Fun,” Hannah repeated, hoping that he would take that for assent.

“Good. I think Bev’s enjoying herself, too. Most of our patients are here. Your mother even showed up. She told me she might be too busy working on her new outline, but she’s here.”

Hannah felt a rush of affection for her mother. Delores had come up with the perfect excuse, but she’d shown up to support Hannah. She was even on the dance floor with Doc Knight. As Hannah spotted them, Delores gave her the high sign. That meant her mother thought she was handling the situation well. It was probably a good thing Delores didn’t know how close Hannah had come to losing it when Doctor Bev had stepped into Norman’s arms.

Luckily, there was no shortage of partners. The men in Lake Eden liked to dance. It wasn’t like some dances in other places like the Eagle, a sleazy, country-western bar and dance place in the country that everyone called a dive. There the men who didn’t have dates for the evening would arrive ten minutes before the last call for drinks. They’d survey the unattached women, ask one of them to dance, buy her one drink at last call, and then attempt to arrange an after-hours date that wouldn’t cost them a dime.

Hannah stayed until after the refreshments were served and the birthday gifts were opened. The trifle recipe Sally had given her was a huge success, but that was little consolation. She said goodnight and happy birthday to Doctor Bev, and pleaded an early morning at The Cookie Jar to escape after two hours of smiling so constantly that her face felt as if it might crack.

Once Hannah pushed open the door of the community center and stepped out into the subzero temperature, she gave such a big sigh of relief that her breath came out in a volleyball-sized cloud of vapor. At least that was over. She could hardly wait to get home, have a steaming cup of hot chocolate laced with at least a dozen miniature marshmallows, pet Moishe until her blood pressure returned to normal, and go to bed.

“Hannah?”

Hannah came close to groaning as she recognized Norman’s voice. She really didn’t feel like talking to Norman right now. She actually considered pretending not to hear him, but it was a still and silent night, and Norman knew she didn’t have a hearing problem. She told herself that she had maintained so far and she could maintain a bit longer. And then she turned around.

“Hi, Norman,” she said, pasting the same smile on her face again. “Aren’t you cold without a coat?”

“No. I wanted to catch you before you left, Hannah. I really appreciate you going the extra mile for Bev’s party. I was going to buy a cake because I know you’re busy with Valentine’s Day coming up and all. But then Mike said he’d asked you if you’d bake something and you said you’d make the dessert.”

“Right,” Hannah responded, hoping he wasn’t going to offer to pay her for the work she’d done.

“That trifle was so good, Bev said she’d like to learn how to make it. Unfortunately, she’s not a very good cook. Her talents in the kitchen are pretty much on a par with your sister Andrea’s.”

“She’s that bad?”

“Right after she moved here, she made cupcakes from a mix. They turned out like hockey pucks.”

Hannah’s smile turned a bit more genuine. She was so glad that there was something Doctor Bev couldn’t do, she decided to be generous. “Maybe her oven isn’t calibrated correctly.”

“It was my oven, and I know that works just fine.”

Hannah’s heart sank. Doctor Bev was using Norman’s oven, the one Hannah had chosen for the house they’d designed together. She reminded herself that it wasn’t really her oven, not if she didn’t marry Norman and live in their beautiful house.