He watched her now over the rim of his coffee cup. “I called several times after your dad died. I spoke to your mother. Did she tell you?”
“Yes, she said you had called and asked after me.”
“One day I called and the number was out of service. I dropped by the house and it was empty. For sale, if I recall.”
Bree took a sip of her drink, and let the spicy aroma fill her nostrils and warm the back of her throat before she replied. “I left for college. My mother felt lonely in the house, so she sold it quite quickly. Then she remarried and moved to San Francisco.”
“Is she happy?”
“Yes, very.” She did not say it seemed her mother had moved on to happiness with unseemly swiftness. Bree had felt so abandoned. Of course, there was nothing like feeling abandoned to leave a young woman looking for love in all the wrong places.
“What did you take? In college?”
Heartbreak 101.
“I took a culinary program. I’m afraid I didn’t finish.”
He cocked his head at her. “That doesn’t seem like you, somehow.”
She cocked her head back at him. “Doesn’t it?” she asked, deliberately unforthcoming, and letting him know that really, he knew very little about her, past or present.
“In some ways, you are very changed,” he told her.
For a moment, she felt panicked, as if the sad ending of the pregnancy that had forced her to leave school was written all over her. She hoped her face was schooled into calmness, and she made herself release her stranglehold on her mug.
He still made her nervous.
“Your confidence in high heels for one thing.”
Relief swept through her at his amused reference to her clumsiness on the night of the prom.
“Oh, geez, you must have had bruises on your arm the next day. I should have practiced. I clung onto you most of the night.”
“And I thought you were just trying to feel my manly biceps.”
Despite herself, she giggled.
“It was a really nice thing for you to do,” she said. “To take the boss’ dateless daughter to her senior prom. I don’t think I thanked you. Of course, it didn’t occur to me until later that it probably wasn’t your idea.”
“It wasn’t,” he confessed. “I didn’t date girls like you.”
“Girls like me?”
“Smart,” he said. “Sweet.”
Not quite as smart as anyone had thought.
“I bet you still don’t,” she said wryly.
“I’m more the superficial type.”
He made her laugh. It was as simple as that.
“So,” he said, leaning forward and looking at her intently, “tell me how you have passed the last years. For some reason, I would have pictured you the type who would be happily married by now. Two children. A golden-retriever puppy and an apple tree in the front yard.”
Happily-ever-after.
She could feel that same emotion claw at her throat. It was exactly the life she had wanted, the dream that had made her so vulnerable.
He had her pegged. Well, you didn’t rise as fast in the business world as he did without an ability to read people with some accuracy.
There was no sense denying it even if it was not in vogue.
“That is my type. Exactly,” she said. She heard the catch in her voice, the pure wistfulness of it.
“It’s what you come from, too. I can see that you would gravitate back to that. Your family was so...”
He hesitated, lost for words.
“Perfect,” she said, finishing his thought.
“That’s certainly how it seemed to me. Coming from one that was less than perfect, I looked at the decency of your dad and the way he treated you and your mom, and it did seem like an ideal world.”
One she had tried to replicate way too soon after the passing of her father, with a kind of desperation to be loved like that again, to create that family unit.
It was only now, years after her miscarriage, that she was beginning to tiptoe back into the world of dating, looking again to the dream of happily-ever-after. So far, it had been a disaster.
“Are you, Bree? Happy?”
She hesitated a moment too long, and his brow furrowed at her.
“Tell me,” he commanded.
Ridiculous that she would tell him about her happiness, or lack there of. He had worked for her father a long time ago, and somehow been persuaded to take the hopeless daughter to her prom. They were hardly friends. Barely acquaintances.
“Deliriously,” she lied brightly. “My little company builds a bit each day. It’s fun and it’s rewarding.”
“Hmmm,” he said, a trifle skeptically. “Tell me, Bree, what do you do for fun?”
The question caught her off guard. She could feel herself fumbling for an answer. What could she say? Especially to someone like him, who moved in the sophisticated circles of wealth and power?
She couldn’t very well say that she had all the Harry Potter books and reread them regularly, with her ancient cat, Oliver, leaving drool pools on her lap. That after Chelsea, seamstress extraordinaire, had showed her how, she had individually quilted each of the cookies on her aprons. That she was addicted to home-renovation shows, especially ones hosted by couples, who had everything, it seemed, that she had ever dreamed of. That she trolled Pinterest features about homes: welcome signs, and window boxes, and baby rooms.
It would sound pathetic.
Was it pathetic?
“My business takes an inordinate amount of time,” she said when her silence had become way too long.
“So you don’t have fun?”
“Maybe I consider developing new cookie recipes fun!”
“Look, my business takes a lot of time, too. But I still make time for fun things.”
Just then a man came over and squatted on the floor beside her. He stuck out his hand. “Miss Evans? I’m the manager here. Mr. Wallace leads me to understand you have a line of cookies. We’d love to try them. Have you got a minute?”
She looked over the manager’s shoulder at Brand. He was smiling. He nodded encouragingly at her.
“Yes, I have a minute,” she said. The manager got up and sat beside her. She started to tell him about Kookies.
When she looked over at Brand, he was gone. The love seat across from her was empty.
No goodbye.
But at least he hadn’t stuck her with the bill.
Fifteen minutes later, she left Perks. They were going to give Kookies a trial term of six months.
She walked back to the concert hall. Outside the door, before going in, Bree debated only for a full five seconds before she pulled out Brand’s business card with his phone number and called him.
“Hello?”
She had been expecting it to go to voice mail, since she thought he was probably now in the front row for the Crystal Silvers performance. But there was no background noise.
“I was expecting to leave