Love Finds You in Hershey, Pennsylvania (12 page)

He’d gone to help Kylie prepare for the day and to give her the birthday present he’d purchased—a
Beauty and the Beast
tiara just like Belle wore, with slippers to match. These had thrilled Kylie far more than the Cook and Serve Playset Sadie had presented her.

How did Jasper do it? He was a far better parent than she was, it seemed, and Kylie wasn’t even his daughter. Although she could have been, for all intents and purposes. Even now, bored with her playmates, she had approached Jasper and was raising her arms, crying, “Lift Kylie! Lift!”

He hoisted her up without a break in his conversation with Dmitri and stood patiently as Kylie wrapped her Belle tiara in his hair.

Sadie turned from the scene with a sigh and went inside to check on the cake. It sat in sugary perfection on the counter, layers of thick yellow icing shining in mouthwatering decadence. Sadie looked into Belle’s face on the cake’s surface and critically assessed whether she had gotten the pretty young princess’s features just right.

“You’re the lucky one, you know,” she told Belle. “He may have started out a beast, but you managed to turn him into a prince with love and a rose. How many girls can claim that?”

Belle smiled up at her with sweet grace such as Sadie couldn’t comprehend. She began to position the candles and was just preparing to light the five of them when the doorbell rang. She tossed a glance over her shoulder toward the front hall.

Everyone had arrived ages ago, all munchkins present and accounted for. Who could possibly be standing at her door right now?

Leaving Belle unattended, Sadie headed for the foyer. She didn’t really have any expectations as she swung the front door open, but the person who stood before her certainly would not have been at the top of her list of anticipated arrivals.

“Mac.” Her voice came out flat and unyielding, and the doubt that washed through his eyes told her what she sounded like.

“Now’s not a good time,” she said.

He swallowed hard, and she watched as his neck muscles tensed to force it down.

“I…” He stopped.

“What?”

He was holding something in his hands, she noticed. A package. A present. It was rectangular and wrapped with bright yellow paper. Kylie’s favorite color. There was a white bow on top, the cheap kind that you buy already pre-sticky from a grocery store. Something about the sight of that roughly wrapped package pierced straight to Sadie’s soul.

Mac had never brought her a present like that. Not once.

She stared at it and found no will to move or speak, not to offer Mac inside nor to shoo him away. They stood for several moments like that, the clock on the foyer table chirping mechanically.

Tick, tick, tick.

“Hey.”

Sadie jerked in surprise at the sound of Jasper’s voice behind her.

“Glad you could come, Mac.”

Jasper somehow managed to move her stiff form from the doorway in order to allow Mac entry. Sadie was still too stunned to react and found herself shifting where Jasper directed her. Mac took a couple steps inside, his shoulders sagging with relief.

“The party’s out in the yard.” Jasper gestured with his thumb pointing to the back of the house. “We’re just getting ready to bring out the cake.”

Mac nodded and followed Jasper’s directions. Sadie’s motor functions seemed to stall for a moment and then kick in at high gear.

“Wait—Kylie!” she called, but Mac had already moved beyond earshot.

Jasper grabbed her outstretched hand and held it against his chest. “Let him go, Sadie. It’ll be all right.”

She snatched her hand away. “What were you thinking? Kylie doesn’t remember him. If a strange man shows up…”

“She’ll know who he is.”

Sadie’s eyes grew stormy. “What do you mean—she’ll know who he is?”

“Hasn’t she ever asked you about him? Because she asks me all the time.”

Sadie’s jaw dropped a little. “She does?”

“Yeah. She does.”

“Oh.”

“It can’t hurt anything, right? It’s already been a red-letter day for her.”

Sadie gulped. “Maybe…” She stared in the direction Mac had gone.

“So how ‘bout that cake?” Jasper prompted her.

“Right. The cake.”

She turned toward the kitchen.

Moments later Sadie and Jasper emerged from the house, a glowing rectangle of silky golden confection balanced between them. Every minute of effort became worth it when Sadie saw Kylie’s face light as bright as the candles that burned. She had been standing by Mac—and Sadie didn’t fail to notice that Kylie’s hand had been holding his—when they entered with the cake.

Now she left him to race over, her eyes wide with childish delight.

“Cake, Mommy! It’s Kylie’s cake!”

“Hang on, baby—wait till Mommy and Jasper set it down.”

Kylie scampered impatiently at the fringes as Jasper and Sadie placed the cake in the middle of the table. Kylie’s friends gathered round, mouths salivating, and stared at the delectable object before them.

Sadie swelled with pride. It
was
rather impressive. Homemade vanilla batter baked to a fluffy gold and covered with a layer of thick, sweet (and very yellow, as per Kylie’s request) icing. The detail on it was stunning, with several ruffles of royal blue lacing the sides and an elaborate swirl of thin blue curls coursing across the background. And then there was Belle, in all her regal glory, her golden dress glittering and her mouth temptingly red with a halo of “H
APPY
B
IRTHDAY
, K
YLIE
” circling her head.

“Mommy,” Kylie breathed, “it’s so pretty.”

Sadie nearly burst with satisfaction. “Make a wish and blow out the candles, sweetheart.”

Kylie scrunched her eyes very tight for a long moment, and when she opened them, she did a funny thing. Rather than blow out the candles right away, she looked at Jasper. Sadie’s gaze flicked to him, but he was staring back at Kylie without any indication that he understood what the little girl’s intensity meant.

After a second, Kylie turned back to her cake and puffed with enough breath to extinguish fifty candles instead of five. Sadie clapped with the children and decided that Kylie’s odd stare meant nothing— she’d probably imagined it anyway.

After allowing Kylie a moment more to gaze longingly at Belle, Jasper began to cut the cake, with Kylie’s instruction. No one could have a piece with even a centimeter of Belle on it. Belle was all for her. Fortunately, the others were perfectly content with the blue netting and ruffles, and everyone was served with remarkable ease.

Leave it to Jasper—the only man Sadie knew who could serve cake to kindergartners without any fuss.

At last the children were served and sat in a sugared haze, gorging their tiny bodies on sweet delight. Sadie tried not to think about that dye permanently staining their young little systems. They were so achingly innocent, and Kylie sat in their center, stuffing a layer of Belle’s dress into her mouth and smearing yellow icing across her chin.

Sadie felt an intense wish to hold her there forever and keep the other birthdays at bay. To hold time still, at least for a little while— that’s what Sadie would have wished, had she been blowing out her own candles that day.

Leaving the scene with a dull ache in her chest, she joined Jasper, Dmitri, and Mac where they sat inhaling their own large pieces of cake.

“Looks like I did
something
right, didn’t I?”

“It’s fabulous!” Dmitri gushed. “How did you do it?”

This was where things became difficult. The truth was, she hadn’t made the cake. She’d only
decorated
it. But she couldn’t admit the truth to Dmitri—she couldn’t even really admit it to herself. The truth was…Sadie Spencer, restaurateur and professionally trained chef, could not create desserts. Not to save her life. It had been a skill she’d always coveted and never possessed.

Desserts were Sadie’s Achilles’ heel. Not that she could tell that to Dmitri. Not her arch-nemesis—the man who was even now secretly plotting to steal into the empty building across the street and renovate it as his own. She’d rather bring back Kylie’s lipstick phase than reveal that critical bit of information to her competition.

So instead of admitting the truth—that she’d asked Karl, her head chef at Suncatchers, to do the baking, she simply smiled with forced cheerfulness and answered Dmitri’s question by saying, “I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”

Ha. Take that, Mr. Russian Entrepreneur. I can compete with you
any
day.

Jasper, oblivious to her intentions, stabbed a large chunk of fluffy white cake and announced, “She’s just kidding. Sadie can’t bake a dessert to save her life. She had one of her staff from Suncatchers
whip this up—like she does all the desserts at the restaurant.”

If ever Sadie had wanted to throttle her best friend within an inch of his life, this was that moment. She attempted to maintain a pleasant exterior while her eyes shot sparks at him. When Jasper finally turned to catch her eye, he blanched under her fiery gaze and gulped the rest of his cake down quickly.

“I
did
do all the decorating,” she defended through clenched teeth.

Jasper held up a hand. “Now, no one’s disputing your decorating talent, Sadie. You can make a dessert
look
better than Martha Stewart does.”

Jasper wasn’t smoothing things over very well. Apparently Mac could see that, for he tried jumping in to rescue him.

“I was in your restaurant the other night. Tried a bunch of dishes on the menu. Every single one was delicious.”

Although she was still offended by Jasper’s remarks, her heart involuntarily warmed by knowing Mac had gone to her restaurant and tried several of the items. But she was still feeling defensive.

“Not only did I do all the decorating, but
I
was the one who suggested to Karl that for the batter, he use half cake flour and half peanut flour, to give it that special something.” She felt a rush of triumph at this pronouncement…until Dmitri uttered a choking, strangled sound.

All eyes shifted to where he sat, halfway through his cake with another bite stretched toward his mouth. In the span of seconds, he had turned as pale as the inside of an eggshell.

“Dmitri?” The sight of him sent a stab of fear through her heart. “What is it?”

“D–did you say…the cake has…
peanuts
…in it?”

Sadie felt bands of perspiration circling her forehead. “Uh…yeah. It’s a trick I learned in culinary school—”

Dmitri gasped as the cake he’d been holding dropped from his fingers.

“Dmitri! What is it?!” He was really starting to scare her now.

He gagged out the words as his fingers went to his throat. “I have a serious allergy to peanuts.”

Sadie’s heart stopped beating for what seemed like a full ten seconds. Her hand flew to her lips as she and Dmitri locked eyes. It was Jasper—calm, stable Jasper—who took charge of the situation and asked the vital questions.

“Do you have an epinephrine shot?”

Dmitri nodded, wheezing with visible effort. “Car. Glove compartment.” He dug into his Dockers for the keys and passed them off to Jasper, who hurried around the side of the house. By the time he raced back to the group with an EpiPen in hand, a cluster of children had gathered around Dmitri, watching with wide-eyed fascination as he struggled for every breath. Mac had his hand on Dmitri’s shoulder, speaking to him in soothing tones. Sadie held the kids at bay, trying to give Dmitri room and air.

Jasper pulled the cap of the shot and helped Dmitri stick it into his outer thigh. The boys gasped with awe, whispering, “Cool…,” while the girls wrinkled their noses in disgust.

Dmitri’s breathing slowly regulated, and by agonizing centimeters, Sadie felt herself reach a state of semi-calm. Once the initial danger was past, Jasper announced that they should probably take Dmitri to Hershey Medical Center in case a second attack should occur.

“We can take my car,” he said. “Mac, can you help Sadie call the parents so they can come and get their kids and take them home?”

Mac nodded as Jasper reached into his jeans pocket to retrieve his car keys. Sadie stared at Jasper while her best friend went as white as Dmitri had been moments before. His hands moved from one pocket to the other and then up and down as he patted his torso.

“They’re not here,” he whispered. “My keys are gone.”

Sadie and Jasper’s gazes met, and they immediately turned to look for Kylie. The last thing they needed was for her to decide that her fifth birthday had liberated her enough to attempt driving once more.

But she sat with the rest of her friends, eyeing Dmitri’s wan exterior with wonder.

Sadie lifted her up from the group and looked into her eyes.

“Where are Jasper’s keys, Kylie? Did you take them?”

Kylie suddenly clammed up, her gaze shifting back and forth but not meeting Sadie’s eyes. Jasper took over.

“I won’t be mad, Kylie, honest—but I need to have my keys. Where did you put them?”

She gulped, not buying it.

“
Kylie
.” Sadie and Jasper spoke in unison.

Kylie bit her lip. “The volcano ate them.”

Sadie groaned.

“Here.” Mac waved his key ring. “Take my truck, Jasper.”

Jasper grabbed the keys and helped Dmitri out of the backyard. As he shuffled the Russian around the side of the house, he glanced back over his shoulder and waved at Sadie.

He mouthed, “Don’t worry.”

Sadie wanted to burst into tears.

Great
.