The Next Best Thing (Gideon's Cove #2)(42)

“Fred!” Parker cries. Fred’s enhanced head snaps around. “Fred, be my best friend and grab me a Jägermeister, okay? Lenny, you old fart, pay attention! The man needs to be served!”

“So. I take it Charley Spirito didn’t work out,” Ethan says. That little muscle under his eye twitches. “On to Prospect Number Two, huh?”

“It’s not exactly a date,” I repeat.

At that moment, Doral-Anne shoves her way into our little knot, right as Fred joins us, carefully holding a Jägermeister shot for Parker and two beers. He passes out the drinks. “Hello,” he says, offering his hand first to Doral-Anne, then to Ethan. “I’m Fred Busey, a friend of Lucy here.”

“A friend, huh?” Doral-Anne says, making a mocking face. At some point after the game, she knotted her T-shirt to give the world a view of her tattoo (an orange and green snake, which curls around her pierced navel, forked tongue darting…adorable). “Nice to meetcha. So, Ethan, if you wanna continue that conversation…”

“Doral-Anne, this is Parker Welles, my son’s mother,” Ethan says, politely ignoring her rudeness.

“Hi, how are you? You work at Starbucks, right?” Parker asks.

“I’m the manager,” Doral-Anne says.

“I’m there all the time,” Parker murmurs, then shoots a guilty look at me. “For coffee only, of course,” she adds.

“Well,” Fred says. “Shall we get a table for five?”

“Oh, we don’t want to interrupt your date,” Parker says. “You guys have fun. Eth, mind if I join you two?”

And so I sit with Fred, who is perfectly nice, seems to be an adoring father and whose hair paint seems to be running, as a black streak is slowly but surely making its way down his forehead.

“She sounds like a real cutey,” I say at the appropriate interval in the story of Fred’s daughter and her ballet recital.

We spend an endless hour chatting before I look at my watch, feign surprise at the hour and remind Fred that I have to get up at four and really need some sleep. Which is, of course, a lie. I’ll be up for hours.

“Listen,” he says, and I mentally fumble for an excuse to turn him down on a second date. “You’re awfully cute, Lucy, but I just don’t think there’s chemistry here.”

Angels bless you, Fred, I think. “You seem like a great guy,” I say honestly. “But, well…yes.”

“Not over your husband, eh?” he says kindly.

I swallow. “I think you’re right,” I agree. “Good luck with everything, Fred.”

I stop at the bar to remind Lenny to get Tommy Malloy’s keys, then leave. The cheerful noise of the bar dies within a half block of my walk home. If I could just cut through the dang cemetery, I’d be home in ten minutes. As it is, it will take thirty-two.

The bugs of late September have left or died, and the only sound is one brave little cricket and the ever-present sound of the waves shushing against the rocky shore two blocks away. I trail my fingers along the cemetery wall. “Hi, Dad,” I say at the appropriate spot. “Hope everything’s good in heaven.” The wind rustles the fading leaves above, and one or two drift down.

Maybe Fred’s right. Maybe I’m not ready. Maybe it’s my destiny to be a Black Widow, have Grinelda do my whiskers and channel my dead husband. I do want more, I really do…I’m just not sure I can get it.

At home, Fat Mikey winds his hefty self around my ankles. Stumbling over him, I then reach down and pick him up, rubbing my face against his. “Hello, you big brute,” I murmur. He tolerates me for a moment, honors me with a rusty purr, then jumps free.

With a sigh, I sit on the couch, which is directly in front of the rather fabulous plasma screen TV Ethan helped me pick out last year. I could play Guitar Hero, I guess, or challenge my computer to a game of Scrabble. I could go to bed…4:00 a.m. comes early, of course.

I look at the wedding picture that hangs on the wall, a lovely eight-by-ten candid. Jimmy and me, laughing. Our faces are in profile, both of us turned to look at Ethan, who’s not in the shot. His best man speech was funny as all get-out, and everyone had roared with laughter. Especially Jimmy. His laugh was one of the things I loved most about him, a low, dirty laugh that did things to my insides. He was larger than life, my Jimmy. The life of the party. The love of my life. Our marriage was more than just two people being together…it was everything I ever wanted.

I go into the kitchen and open my baking cabinet. Molten dark chocolate cake with a milk chocolate center? Or no, flip that…milk chocolate cake with dark mocha chocolate goo for the center. Yes. A shot of espresso, some almond paste in the ganache. I’ll call it Java Glory Cake.

The sounds of baking are the gentle music of my soul. I was born to be a baker. Bread has its own reward, but dessert is where I was meant to be. The clatter of the mixing bowls against the cool granite countertop, the crisp smack of the eggshells at the edge, the chirring of my whisk. And the colors! The lemony-yellow of well-beaten eggs, the seductive gloss of the bitter chocolate as it melts with the pale butter. The many shades of white…the matte of the flour, the purity of the baking powder, the cheerful gleam of the sugar. My vintage mixing bowls are also white, each one polka-dotted with a different color…green for the largest, then orange, then red, then robin’s egg blue. Ethan gave them to me for Christmas a few years ago. One of the best presents I ever got.