Back for Seconds (11 page)

“So how was school?” Joely asked.

Kari shrugged. School was school. She hated the new one she was forced to attend, something for which she’d normally rake her mother across the coals. Joely had unwittingly, or unthinkingly, disrupted her entire world by withdrawing her from her old school, where she had reigned supreme as a Queen Bee, popular and beloved by her many friends. In her new school, that spot was already taken by Emma McClure. She had already instructed all her flunkies to regard the new girl with snarky disdain, which made all these stupid changes even harder to make. The last week had been especially hellish. Kari had tried out for a musical as part of her drama class, but Emma got the lead role Kari had coveted. “Don’t worry, Kari,” she had said, deliberately mispronouncing her name. “You can be my understudy,” the preening teen had told her with a big, fake smile that only made Kari hate her even more.

But Joely’s work was so delicate that Kari didn’t want to mess up the process by spreading her misery like she was wont to do. She could yell at her later, preferably when it would sting the most. “Okay, I guess.”

“Make any new friends?”

Kari hesitated for a brief moment, thinking about Emma with a slight curl of her lip. Finally she said, “I’ve met a guy.”

Joely was surprised by the admission. Her daughter rarely let her in to her innermost thoughts like that. “Yeah? What’s he like?”

Kari leaned on her elbow on the table, wearing a silly smile. “He’s gorgeous. And smart. And funny. I don’t think he knows I exist though.”

Joely empathized. “Been there. Have you talked to him?”

Kari nodded. “Yeah. I mean, he knows who I am and he’s nice enough. But I don’t think he takes me seriously. He’s older,” she added softly, watching her mother’s face, who barely registered the comment, probably assuming she meant a sophomore. “How do you get a boy to like you?”

Joely wanted to snort at the irony. If she were with anyone but her kids, she might have said, ‘Ask someone whose husband didn’t just cheat on her with a twenty-something floozy.’  Instead she chimed in with Mom-advice. “You shouldn’t have to do anything, Kari. Just be yourself and the right boy will love you.”

Kari rolled her eyes. That advice was useless to her. She was an idiot to bring it up. Her mother would never understand. “Yeah, I guess,” she said, just to close the topic of conversation.

Joely sensed her shutting off. “At least you don’t have to spend your afternoons at the restaurant anymore. Maybe you can join some after-school program or something, get to know him as a friend, find some common ground.”

That was exactly what Kari hoped to do. “Actually, I wanted to talk to you about that. I think I want to keep my job at the restaurant.”

Joely was so stunned by the admission she stopped what she was doing immediately to blink in disbelief at her daughter. Thanks to the privileged life that she had always led, Kari had always been a little more entitled than other girls her age, certainly more than Joely herself had been at fifteen. Needless to say it shocked her silly that the girl who wouldn’t clean a toilet without a major hissy fit would gladly hang around the restaurant, picking up after complete strangers. “Really?”

“Yeah. I mean, it’s fun to hang out with Grandma and Granny Faye. I haven’t had a whole lot of time to do that before. They’ve always been so busy.”

“Running a business takes a lot of time and energy,” Joely murmured as she returned to her task. She herself hadn’t realized exactly how much until her cookie adventure began. She had newfound respect for both of them herself.

“Plus, you know, it pays. That way I don’t have to come to you or Dad for stuff.”

Joely peered at her daughter across the table. That last little bit was curious. Kari Morgan had never had a problem asking for anything, and even less of a problem demanding her needs were met. Wanting to be more self-sufficient felt like such a huge step towards maturity that Joely wouldn’t have been able to say no to the unexpected request, even had she wanted to. “Sounds good to me. You’ll have to run it through your grandma though.”

“I already talked to Xander,” Kari said, feeling a little possessive when she said his name.

Joely’s hand grew still for a moment. “You did? What’d he say?”

“He said that he’d see what he could do. I mean, it makes sense, you know? I’m up there all the time anyway. Might as well put me on the payroll.”

“If you can work and maintain your grades, I see no problem with it.” Joely slid the cookie across to Kari. Kari glanced down at it, instantly intimidated that she would have to add anything to the picture perfect cookie. She would have hated to mess it up after all the hard work her mother put into getting it just right. She said as much to Joely.

“I don’t think I should do this. What if I mess it up?”

Joely smiled as she grabbed another plain cookie. “That’s the great thing about mistakes. Even if you can’t undo them, you can always start over.”

By six-thirty, Nash emerged from his gamer coma to see about dinner. The kitchen was still a disaster so Joely broke down and ordered pizza delivery, which was always a big hit with her kids. After dinner they all sat together at the kitchen table in a makeshift assembly line. Hannah placed the cookies carefully in plastic wrap, while Nash tied ribbons on each and every one.

It was nearly nine o’clock by the time they finished their task. They created twelve perfect postcard cookies for Texas, with one greeting card cookie thrown in for good measure. The rest of the cookies were shaped like giant cheerful suns, which she decorated in bright orange, yellow and white icings. Some cookies had smiley faces in the center, others had little messages she painstakingly painted on with a steady hand and a tiny brush. With Kari’s magic touch with lettering, they were a perfect blend of the both of them. Honestly they were Joely’s favorite cookies of all that she had done.

The kids all retired to the family room to watch a movie while Joely packed up the goodies to take them to the restaurant. She wanted them there when business opened the next day.

More specifically, she wanted one cookie on Xander’s desk when he walked in his office. She placed the greeting card there and smiled at the message he would come into work to find. “
Thinking of you
,” it said.

And she was. She totally was. So much so, in fact, that she tossed and turned all night long, wondering how he’d react to his special greeting.

She was dropping Kari off to school when her phone chimed in her purse. She waited till Kari had exited the car and disappeared into the crowd of children walking toward the entrance of the high school before snatching her phone to see who it was. Her heart raced as she glanced down at the message. “
Loved the card
,” it read, which was frustratingly vague. She was just about to put her phone back in her purse when it chimed again. “
And ditto
.”

She held her phone to her chest with a dreamy smile.

As if she wasn’t busy enough making the dozens of cookies, tiny pies and pastries she needed to sell every day, that week was the first one where she met with a client to finalize details for a customized order. At Xander’s request, they set up the meeting in his office, with him sitting in on the meeting as the informal consultant. She didn’t know who she was dressing to impress as she got ready that Wednesday afternoon.

It was another mod-inspired design harkening to a 1950s homemaker. It was a sleeveless sunny yellow number, gathered at the waist, flared at the knee, and covered with big bold polka dots. She tied her hair back with a matching yellow headband, which highlighted her new bangs. Though the whole look was retro chic, it made her feel younger and sexier. She might have been insecure about showing extra skin, given the extra pounds she carried, but it had been a dress that he had picked out.  She had to believe that he would have known how she’d look in the darned thing and made his ever so brilliant marketing/branding decision accordingly.

He wore an appreciative look on his face when she entered his office about fifteen minutes before their client was due to arrive. It made her flush as his eyes scanned the way the dress hugged her body. “You look lovely,” he murmured. She stopped next to the chairs across from him as he rounded the desk to greet her with a gentle touch on her arm and a warm, lingering kiss on her cheek. Their eyes met and held, which made her gulp down a fresh new batch of butterflies.

“I’m nervous,” she squeaked.

He chuckled softly, which gave her a delicious chill all the way through her body. “Well, you look beautiful. Every inch the successful baking maven.”

It was her turn to laugh as she sat in the chair. He took his place behind the desk. The nervous tapping of her foot drew his attention to the folder in her lap. “What’s that?”

She was even more embarrassed. “It’s a proposal,” she said as she handed it to him. “They want cookies for a baby shower and I’ve been working on different ideas. I included some photos of samples, along with drawings of what I’d like to do for the whole dozen, so that everyone gets their own individual cookie. There are photos from the Internet, cookie designs for teddy bears and pacifiers, all the extras I could serve with the customized cookies. It comes to about three or four dozen. I also included the cost analysis in the back, to give them an idea what they’re paying for.”

He smiled as he flipped the clear folder over, removing the plastic binding and taking that last page from her proposal. “That’s the first question they’ll ask you. And that’s the last question you should answer.” He glanced over her figures. “Besides, you sold yourself short. You have about six hours of work here. This comes out to,” he said as he consulted his adding machine, “about sixteen dollars an hour.”

“No good?” she asked.

“No good,” he confirmed. “How many cookies are you going to make? Twenty-four custom and twenty-four regular?” She nodded and again he did the math. “If you charged $3 a cookie, which is reasonable given the individual prices you fetch here, that comes to nearly $150. In other words $25 an hour, which was what I was thinking you should charge anyway.”

“Get out of here,” she scoffed. “No one is going to pay $150 for four dozen cookies.”

He leaned across the cookies. “You’re not selling cookies, Joely. You’re selling memories. You’re selling something that people will be talking about for decades to come. These are special.
You
are special. Isn’t it time that you get what you’re worth?”

His eyes were so intense as he stared at her that she had to look away. “I still think it’s too much,” she argued.

He sighed. “Fine. We’ll meet in the middle then and hope that the volume makes up for the difference. But going forward I’d like to see you ask for what you’re worth.”

His voice was stern as he stared at her. She shrank back a little against the chair and didn’t move again until her client arrived. It was a friend of Lillian’s, a neighbor from Old Elmwood, whose husband was a CEO at a local bank. Money was not her focus as she browsed the portfolio, increasingly excited to be one of the first in her group to offer personalized party cookies from Joely and
Back for Seconds
. She was full of ideas that Joely scribbled on a notepad. When they were done, she didn’t even balk at the pricy cost of the cookies. “I honestly expected them to be more,” she said as she wrote her check for the deposit.

After sending her a pointed look, Xander noted it on his notepad computer, along with the date for the event. “What can I say?” he teased the older lady with his most winning smile. “We give you a break on the first order to keep you coming back for more.”

They all shared a laugh about that before Xander walked their customer to the door. He waited until after she left to say anything. He closed the door so that they could have some privacy. “See?” he told her as he went back to his desk. “You undersold yourself. Bad precedence to set, Joely, but I get the feeling that has been a bad habit for you for a very long time.”

He was annoyed at her, which made her annoyed with him. “Thanks,” she said in the snarkiest way possible. He didn’t seem to care.

“You’re welcome.” He pulled a portfolio of his own from the top drawer of his desk. He handed it to her. She was stunned silent as she flipped through the professionally produced pages that included the new name of her company on the front, in a stylish logo, along with the photo he had taken at her mother’s kitchen, where she sat atop the island countertop. The second page was her bio, which talked up her role as a mother and homemaker. “
Now on her own, Joely’s passion for cooking has opened a brand new era of her life where she can support the family she loves by doing what has always fulfilled her, heart and soul. Once you taste the love in each and every bite, you too will be coming Back for Seconds
.”

The pages that followed featured all of the designs she had produced thus far, complete with descriptions and pricing. Depending on the design, he wanted to charge anywhere from $25 to $50 a dozen. “You’re delusional,” she told him.

“Oh yeah?” he asked as he referred to his desktop computer. He typed something before turning the monitor around to show her. It was an Internet search on the cost of hand-painted cookies, which were priced much like Xander’s portfolio. “This is where I picture you by the end of the year,” he said. “There’s nothing that these people are doing that you haven’t done or couldn’t do. You set the price, Joely. You determine your value. Trust the guy who sees how your wares fly out the door on a daily basis. This
is
what you’re worth. Your time. Your talent.” His voice softened. “You.”

She didn’t know what to say. He put the portfolio back in his desk. “Have you eaten?”

“What?”

“Lunch,” he clarified. “Have you eaten?” She shook her head and he smiled wide. “I have a brilliant idea,” he told her before he hopped out of his chair and disappeared down the hall.

Within the hour, they carried a bag of takeout from the restaurant through the entrance of the Abilene Zoo, a popular tourist spot for their area. She sent him a puzzled look. “Really?”

“Of course really,” he responded as he led her further into the zoo. They dodged colorful peacocks that roamed free amidst the visitors as they passed the Wetlands exhibit, which included real alligators. She delighted in all the beautiful animals they passed, the majestic lions, the playful monkeys and the quizzical elephants. They walked across the historic, 50-year-old bridge that took them over the giraffes, whose long tongues swiped for any discarded goodies from enchanted guests.

They finally reached the pier that jutted out over Nelson Lake. They sat on the benches and he pulled out a couple of sandwiches that Granny Faye had packed for them, along with the homemade chips that were light and crispy. She was positively ravenous after that nerve-wracking meeting, so she was halfway through the sandwich before she wanted to speak.

“Why the zoo?” she finally asked as she came up for air.

“As one of your hometown’s most popular attractions, the more appropriate question is why
not
the zoo?” She laughed and he grinned at her. “Honestly, I love it here. I come at least once a month. I bought a membership when I first moved here and it’s always felt like a second home. I love being out in the sunshine, communing with nature, as it were.”

She nodded. She had always loved the zoo as well. “I need to bring the kids out here more often,” she murmured softly. He smiled.

“Let’s. We’ll make a day of it. How about this weekend?”

She shook her head. “Russell has the kids this weekend,” she said. There was raw emotion in her voice, which Xander noted quietly. It was clear that she was lost without her kids. It was like she didn’t have an identity without them.

He tactfully changed the subject. “Truth be told I had another agenda bringing you here.” Her breath caught and held as she waited. “I thought we could do some press photos out and around Abilene, since Lillian’s Place is so ingrained in the city’s history. I’m a big believer in cross promotion, and let’s face it. Abilene is part of who you are.”

After seeing how wrong she’d been about the pricing, she decided not to put up too much of a fight. But she felt even more awkward taking these ridiculous photos out in public than she had in the privacy of her mother’s kitchen. She was stiff and uncomfortable, which showed in the photo. He walked over to the rail where she stood. “What’s wrong?”

She shrugged as she looked away. “I’m just not comfortable in front of a camera.”

“Why not?”

Her eyes met his. It was hard to explain to someone so young and so obviously attractive that after she had kids, she slipped easily into invisibility. Her body had changed, which had displeased Russell and he hardly made a secret of it. After a while she cut herself out of the photos altogether, preferring to focus her attention on more interesting subjects – like her kids. Apparently Russell had gotten so used to her absence in these photos that picking their annual Christmas photo became more and more of a chore year after year. He’d go through a dozen proofs before he found one he liked enough to send to all his peers. Joely knew that was because of her. Looking back it was easy to see that she was the blight on his otherwise perfect life.

Her phobia of having her photos taken only got worse after that.

The longer Xander stared at her, the more exposed she felt. Like he could see right through her, and read her very thoughts. His voice was soft when he spoke. “You’ve been allowing other people to undercut your value for a long, long time, haven’t you Joely?” His hand lifted away her flyaway bangs that caught on the gentle breeze coming off the lake. “No one can mark you down unless you agree. Don’t agree.”

She snickered. “You can’t possibly understand. Look at you.”

He mulled that over for a long moment. Finally he said, “What are you doing Friday night?”

His question startled her. “What? Why?”

He touched her arm, trailing goosebumps after his gentle fingers. “Let’s meet for drinks at the Ranch.”

She shook her head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Why not?”

She was quickly tiring of his uncomfortable questions. “I’m still married for one,” she snapped.

He grabbed her left hand, lifting it up to inspect her bare third finger. “I don’t see any rings on these fingers.” His potent eyes met hers.

She trembled and cursed the slight curl of his lips that indicated he had felt it. “You’re too young.”

He stepped closer and she very nearly stepped back. Despite the thirteen-year age difference, he was very much a man. “You may have a point,” he said softly as he studied her face. “But maybe there’s a way we could level the playing field.”

She swallowed hard. “How’s that?”

He took her hand in his, brushing his thumb rhythmically against her sensitive palm. She very nearly groaned out loud. “Age is about power, right? The deck is stacked in favor of the older person, who has wisdom and experience to seduce someone young and naïve.” For some reason Joely thought about Jena. Her throat tightened until it felt like she was swallowing rocks.

“So what do you suggest?”

He closed the small gap between them. “You let go of the power.”

Again she shuddered. She had no idea what he meant by that, and was both terrified and exhilarated. “How do I know I can trust you?”

“You don’t,” he said in a voice so soft and so smooth that her knees nearly buckled. “But that’s how you build trust, isn’t it? You have to go out on faith.”

Her deep brown eyes were wide as she stared into his handsome face. “How do I do that?”

He grinned as he caressed the side of her face with the back of his other hand. “Meet me at The Ranch ten o’clock Friday night. I’ll send over a dress that I want you to wear, something to show you how sexy you still are.”

It had been so long since any man had said that to her. She desperately wanted to believe that was true. She found herself nodding, though she knew that it was insane to consider dating this man. As rebound guys go, though, he wasn’t half bad.

He even decided to cut her a break on the new photo session. They called it a day and walked toward the exit of the zoo hand in hand.