Just Like That (14 page)
The location. Right. His job had been to find a place for the party.
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Just Like That
“The center,” he answered. Sara was the Director of the David Bradford Youth Center, the youth center founded and named after their father. Sam and his sisters kept it going with the trust they’d established with David’s life insurance policy after he’d died.
“The center?” Sara repeated. “That’s not very original.”
“But it’s available, and it will be easy to come up with some reason for Ben to get her there tonight,” Sam said, thinking fast. “Besides, the kids would love to be a part of it.” This was just a small example of the way he often disappointed his sisters. He usually fixed it and they always forgave him. Still, it seemed that he had a hard time doing the right thing the first time.
“True,” Sara agreed. “You know, there’s a bunch here now. I’ll get some of them involved in making food, others can decorate, some of them will help with entertainment. They’re all so creative. This will be great!”
“We can come over and help,” Sam said, feeling guilty for not only forgetting the party today, but for forgetting it in general.
“We?” Sara asked, picking up on his slip instantly.
“The friend I’m with.”
“A woman?” his sister asked, in a tone that implied she fully expected the answer to be yes.
“Yes.”
“I don’t know, Sam. Is that appropriate, bringing one of your women to your sister’s birthday party?” He didn’t like the way she said “one of your women” like he had a collection. “She broke her wrist last night and she’s going stir crazy. It will be good for her.” Danika was looking at him like
he
was crazy.
“Oh.” Sara’s tone changed when she heard about the injury. “Well, then. Sure, bring her. What the heck?”
Sara would like Danika. The thing was, he didn’t want his sisters and friends meeting Danika like this. Or at all. They would all like her. Which would make this already tangled situation even messier.
But he had to be at the party and Danika couldn’t be left alone. She had to be bored and he wanted to be sure she didn’t do anything to endanger her hand.
And because if he left, she might not let him back in.
Then he’d have to break down her door, then get it repaired… It would all be much more of a hassle than taking her along to the party and fielding the questions.
Sam hung up and turned to Danika. “We’re going to a party.”
“A party you were supposed to help plan and forgot about?” she asked.
How had she figured that out? “We need to go down there and help.”
“Who’s the party for?”
“My sister, Jessica. It’s her birthday.”
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“I’m crashing your
sister’s
party?”
“She won’t care. She loves to meet new people. And there will be a ton of people there. Jessica is the nursing director of the ER and Ben, her husband, is a trauma surgeon so most of the hospital will be invited anyway. It’s fine.”
Danika’s eyes widened. “I know who your sister is.”
“Oh, good.”
“My sister works for your sister.”
He nodded.
“Carmen will probably be there.”
He hadn’t thought of that. “Probably.”
“I haven’t told her about my wrist.”
“Then maybe it’s better she find out in public where she can’t yell at you.” Danika raised an eyebrow. “Have you met Carmen? She has no qualms about doing pretty much anything in public.”
Sam laughed. That was a true read on her sister as far as he knew too. “At least there will be cake to cushion the blow.”
She sighed. “I can’t avoid telling her for two weeks anyway, I guess.”
“So go get dressed for a party,” he said, holding out his hand and pulling her to her feet. He didn’t let her go right away and in fact tugged her closer. “Unless you need help with your zippers.” She swallowed hard and her eyes flickered to his mouth. “Um…”
“We won’t make it to the party if we start that now.” He turned her and nudged her in the direction of her bedroom. “Let me know if you need me.”
Thankfully, his sister’s party would be casual, meaning the blue jeans and polo shirt he had on would be acceptable.
Five minutes later, Danika emerged, also in jeans—that made her butt look incredible—and a loose, gauzy purple blouse that had probably been the easiest thing to pull on with her cast.
He had no idea how she’d managed to hook her bra, but she did have one on and he knew asking would take them down a conversational path that would probably only end in frustration for him.
“Let’s go.”
She was showing up in a cast to a party for a woman she’d never met with a man she shouldn’t even be spending time with but who was essentially living with her. Temporarily. Danika found herself looking forward to the party anyway.
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They pulled up in front a building that looked like it had been part of a school at one time.
The David
Bradford Youth Center
.
“Bradford?” she asked, turning to Sam.
“Named after my dad,” he said softly. “He started it years ago and we named it for him after he died.”
“Oh.” She wanted to know everything. What had his dad been like? How old had Sam been when he died? How had he died? Was Sam okay? But asking those things was even more personal than asking if Sam liked white or chocolate cake better and she’d been biting her tongue on questions like that all day.
The less she knew about him, the less she could like him, and the less she’d miss him when this was all over with.
They stepped into the empty entryway and Danika greedily looked around, incredibly curious. She was a social worker, she reasoned. She was supposed to be interested in services and organizations that helped the community. It had nothing to do with the man beside her and his link to the place.
To the right was a hallway that appeared to lead to a number of offices. To the left was another short hallway that ended in a set of double doors. From the outside she had identified that end of the building as a school gymnasium. Sam headed in that direction.
The quiet and lack of company ended abruptly.
They’d stepped into a recreation room that filled the space between the entryway and the gym. It was a huge room with a twenty-foot ceiling and wide open space from wall to wall, filled with groupings of mismatched furniture, three ping-pong tables, two pool tables, four TVs—complete with game systems—
and various sized tables.
The wall straight ahead was painted bright yellow with black letters across it that read,
“When we
treat man as he is, we make him worse than he is; when we treat him as if he already were what he
potentially could be, we make him what he should be.” —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
.
“Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest,” —Mark Twain
, ran across the bright blue wall to the left and the wall to the right was a pale green and said,
“…to know even one life has
breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson.
The room was also filled with at least thirty teenagers and a variety of activities. Some of the kids were on ladders and chairs hanging balloons and streamers, others were bent over a long table, drawing and decorating a Happy Birthday sign. There was a group of about ten in one corner dressed in costumes and apparently practicing a skit.
A loud crash sounded off to the left, drawing their attention to the two swinging doors that had been propped open.
Sam headed in that direction, tugging Danika along. They stepped into the kitchen and into the argument in progress.
“T-S-P means tablespoon.”
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Erin Nicholas
“No way. That’s teaspoon.”
“Is a tablespoon bigger than a teaspoon?”
“Duh.”
“How many teaspoons are in a tablespoon?”
“Like, five.”
“Then put in a tablespoon and then we for sure have enough.”
“What’s up in here?” Sam interrupted.
The six girls encircling the center kitchen island turned to face them. They all wore aprons and were huddled around an open book with a plethora of baking utensils strewn about the countertop.
“Is T-S-P tablespoon or teaspoon?” one asked, clearly not shy or overly concerned with who Danika was or why she was there. In fact, the question seemed directed at her.
“Teaspoon,” Danika answered.
The girl shot a gloating grin to another.
“We don’t have a three-fourths cup,” the shortest girl, with curly brown hair said.
“No,” Danika agreed. “They don’t usually make those. You just use a half cup and a fourth cup.”
“Oh.”
They all bent their heads back over the book.
“Can I help?”
They looked up, then at one another, then shrugged. “Sure,” one said.
Another handed her a wooden spoon.
“This is Danika,” Sam said.
“Hi,” a couple of the girls answered. The rest were back to business.
“The recipe says baking cocoa.”
“All we have is this square stuff.”
One lifted a square to her mouth and bit in. A second later she wrinkled her nose, ran to the sink and spit it out. “Ugh. This is
not
right.”
“It is,” Danika said. “Baking cocoa isn’t sweet. And you can convert the amount of powder you need into how many squares to use.”
Six pairs of eyes looked at her again. “Come on in.” A girl with long blonde hair came over, took Danika’s good hand, not even blinking at the cast. “Welcome.”
“You okay?” Sam asked, looking worried.
“Completely fine,” she answered.
“I’m going to let Sara know I made it and see what else needs done.”
“Great.” Danika turned her smile to the girls around her. “Chocolate cake, I take it?” She was now front and center with the cookbook.
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“Cupcakes.”
“Sara thought this would be a good learning experience. Like cooking class.” The girl who spoke rolled her eyes.
“How’s it going so far?” Danika asked.
“Um.” The girls looked around the kitchen, which looked like it had been ransacked and everything from the cupboards and drawers dumped onto the countertops.
“You’re in luck,” Danika said. “I’m a great cook, a better baker and an excellent teacher. Even with one hand.”
The girls all smiled.
“One dozen cupcakes coming up.”
“Uh.”
The girls looked at one another. “A dozen is twelve, right?” the one with short black hair and a nose ring asked.
“Right.”
“We need like…” The girl paused.
“Ten dozen,” a blonde-and-pink-haired girl said.
“O-kay.” Danika processed that. Wow, that was a lot of cupcakes. “Then we better get started.” She glanced through the doorway to see that the sign-makers and streamer-hangers had finished and were now gathering around video games and the pool table. “Maybe some of the guys can come in and help frost. It’s going to take a while.”
“Those guys won’t help.”
“Why not?”
“They’re guys. They think the girls should cook,” the girl told her.
Danika blinked at her. “Then I think this cooking lesson could be a lesson in a lot more than mixing up cupcakes.”
“Yeah? Like what?”
“Like the fact that guys can bake just as well as girls. And that if they don’t change that attitude they’re going to need to be able to cook because no girls are going to be hanging out with them.”
“Whoo-hoo.”
“You got it.”
“That’s right.”
The reactions included high-fives, bumping hips and lots of grinning.
“Let’s just get this first batch of batter done and in the oven,” she said, indicating the bowl in front of her. “Then we’ll make a plan for getting some testosterone in this room.”
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She looked at the bowl. It looked like chocolate cake batter. Which was interesting considering they’d been unsure about the cocoa conversion and the measurements. “What still needs to go in?” The girls all looked around.
“Did you put in the eggs?” one asked.
“I think so,” another said.
“How many?”
“How many was I supposed to put in?”
“Two.”
“There are two egg shells here,” someone offered.
“Then I put in two,” the girl decided.
“I put the flour in.”
“I did the baking soda.”
“I did the cocoa.”
“Okay, okay,” Danika broke in. “Let’s just check it out.” She stirred the batter, thinking the consistency seemed about right. Then she dipped a finger in for a taste. “Oh.” She pursed her lips and tried to swallow but her body fought her. Finally she forced it down. “Nobody did sugar, I guess.” The girls looked a little deflated.
“That’s okay. We’ll just start over. And I think we need a process so we know everything goes in with a double check on the measurements.”
Within minutes they had divided up the bowls, pans, spoons and measuring cups and ingredients into a logical order. Danika figured it was better to just make ten batches. For one thing, it was probably easier than trying to mess with doubling or tripling recipes at this point. For another, it was a great way for the kids to get ten chances to practice.
“Now we just turn this into an assembly line and we’ll be ready to go.” They were also running short on time. “Let’s get some of the boys in here.”
“Good luck,” a girl snorted. “Unless there’s a football or video game involved they won’t be interested.”
Danika smiled at her. “How old are you all?”
“Fifteen.”
“Fourteen.”
“Sixteen, almost seventeen.”
“And I assume the boys are the same ages?”
“Pretty much.”
“I think there’s one thing boys your age are interested in that you didn’t mention.”
“What’s that?”
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