Heartbreak Cake (7 page)

“What in the hell are you doing?”

Rebecca stands in the doorway of my kitchen, mouth gaped open and Maggie strapped in a baby Bjorn looking like a grumpy baby kangaroo.

“I’m baking,” I say and sprinkle flour on my oversized butcher block table, taking a deep belly breath before pinning down the pastry dough as if it were my opponent in an Ultimate Fighting Championship match.

Slap, roll, punch, slap, roll, punch, slap, roll, punch.

“That, my friend, is the understatement of the year.” Rebecca walks through the kitchen eyeing the layered cakes and dozens of cookies lying on the counter. “Are those your spicy gingersnaps,” she asks.

“Yep, there’s also peanut butter crunch, chocolate chip with walnuts and dried cherries, pumpkin toffee thins, and sugar cookies with candied rose petals,” I recite while rolling out another sheet of pastry dough. “Up next, lemon bars.”

Rebecca picks up a ginger snap from the group and takes a prim nibble before handing it to Maggie who begins to chomp happily on it.

“Mmmm. I do love when you are in crisis mode. They always come with such wonderful goodies.” Rebecca reaches for another cookie, but I smack her hand away with the tip of my rolling pin.

“Excuse me, but that’s not very nice. And who let you in anyway? I didn’t hear you knock.”

“Ouch! That really hurt, Indira.” She rubs her hand and glares at me. “You’ve got so many here. Don’t be a cookie scrooge.”

“Answer me.”

“Alright. Don’t be mad, but I made a key for myself when I was cat-sitting last year.” She has the decency to look embarrassed.

“Without asking me?”

“It was for emergencies. Like this.”

“What emergency? I’m baking.”

“You are wearing the same outfit you had on when we went to brunch three days ago. You haven’t gone to work. Pedro told me about Valentina’s neighborly visit, and in case you haven’t noticed your kitchen looks like there was an explosion at the damn Keebler elf tree house. There is nothing okay about this scene.”

“Fine, fine. I am not okay.” I say, tearing up, letting one huge drop plop right onto the ball of dough I’m gripping fiercely with my hands. “Cookies make me feel good,” I whisper. “It’s like I’m getting a brown sugar bear hug.”

“If you want a hug, you come to a friend, not a cookie.” Rebecca walks over and wraps her arms around me, giving me a tight hug. “You’re going to make it through this. I know it doesn’t feel like it right now.”

“She knows about the affair, and she either has some kind of proof or is willing to bluff to make sure I am nowhere near Josh or Eloise. And that’s a direct quote, Rebecca, before you start asking me a dozen questions. She wants me out of her hair.”

“She’s nuts. You have a life here. A business. What does she think, you’re just going to pack up and start new elsewhere?” Rebecca pushes away from the counter and starts to pace in the same way she does when she’s working on a legal case. “I wouldn’t worry about Mrs. Italy. You know she doesn’t want the world to know her life is imperfect. It’s bad PR.”

I pick up a warm chocolate chip with walnuts and take a bite. I can taste the sea salt I had added to the recipe and it was the perfect balance to the dark chocolate chips.

“You know what the worst of it is? I can’t even promise her that I won’t see Josh or talk to him. We work in the same field, I see him all over town, and people talk about him and Crystal Cove all the time. I can’t escape him, and I’m not sure I want to.”

“You better find a way, because Valentina is not messing around here. She wants you to back off, and I think you really should. It’s time. Who made that guy so important, anyways? He’s not. I wish you could see how amazing your life is without him. So what if Mr. Wonderful turned out to be a total jerk?”

Rebecca smiles, puts her hands on my shoulders, and gives me her best closing argument lawyer look.

“Josh is married. And he isn’t done being married. Because if he was, he wouldn’t drag you into his mess. And this is a huge mess. And to be frank, I would never have pegged you for a home-wrecking hussy.”

“Give me your key. You are so fired from being my friend. And don’t you dare touch another cookie.”

“Someone has to tell you the truth,” she says, but then gives me a gentle smile. “Look, you can do this. Dust the flour off yourself and start over.”

I can’t help but love her for trying to make me laugh right now, as much as it hurts to hear the truth.

“Get out there! Meet new people, take up a hobby, get on the Food Network or go back to Europe and visit Bea. You’ve been talking about that for years! Do anything but sit here and mope and moan about some guy who is making you an option, not a priority.”

“I’m pretty sure I saw that saying on a bumper sticker.”

“I think I did, too, but damn it’s a good message. And if I were you, I’d get started on a new life. It’s not like he’s hiding out and being sad. He’s living his life and starting a new one.”

Rebecca snaps her mouth shut quickly, and I crook my head questioningly at her when she starts poking around the kitchen nervously.

“You got any coffee?” she asks with her head buried in the spice cupboard.

“Becca?”

“What?” she says turning toward me, but keeping her eyes shifty.

“You know how transparent you are when you’re lying to someone other than a jury.”

“Yeah,” she says sulking.

“Well, tell me what you know because I am going to find out anyway. So it’s better to hear it from a friend. Especially a good friend who broke into my house with a key she didn’t get permission to make, which I’m sure violates some kind of law. Are you still on non-speaking terms with the Police Chief?”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Try me.”

“How dare you blackmail me.”

“Just spill it already.” I wave my rolling pin at her.

“Oh God. I promised Richard I would try not to tell you. But how can I not?” Rebecca rubs her eyes and then looks straight at me. “Valentina went in to see Richard yesterday. Turns out, she’s pregnant.”

She covers her ears and closes her eyes, waiting for my reaction. But I have no words.

“How many months?” I finally ask. My voice is quiet, so I say it again for Rebecca to hear me. “How many months?”

“Four months. She came in asking to switch from Dr. Merritt, but he’s going to refer her to someone else and just tell her he can’t take any new patients.”

“You told Richard,” I moan and lay my head down on the floured counter. “I’m so embarrassed.”

“I had to! But don’t fear, I gave him the long version, so he wouldn’t just think you were trolloping around with someone else’s husband.”

“Thanks for being so sensitive.” I roll my eyes. “You think she knows we’re friends?”

Rebecca clucks. “I wouldn’t put it past her that she purposely came to see him just so I would find out.”

“I don’t care,” I say quietly.

Anger bubbles in my stomach as I realize that Josh has known for months and didn’t say anything to me. In fact, we went to look at apartments a few weeks back. We put our names on a waiting list for a new loft building on Ocean Boulevard in downtown Long Beach. He was throwing me crumbs to keep me on the trail, but he had no intention of ever following up on any of his promises.

And now he wants me to step aside, discreetly, quietly, and as if I never existed.

“What are you thinking?” Rebecca searches my face. “Don’t go
Fatal Attraction
on me. You will regret it. Just let this go. The sooner you do, the sooner you will be done with this.”

“I’m not having a Glenn Close meltdown,” I say. “Just a regular meltdown. No animals will be endangered in my baking”

“Comforting to hear.” Rebecca holds a knife in her hand poised mid-slice in front of the chocolate cake. “I’m sorry, but my manners are done here. I’m having a piece. I can’t just stand here anymore and stare at all this stuff.”

“Go ahead.” I dust the flour and pluck pieces of pastry dough out of my hair. “Cut me a slice, I need some chocolate.”

“That a girl. When the world hands you lemons, eat cake.”

***

Seated in an oversized wicker chair in the hotel lobby of Crystal Cove Resort, I stare through the floor to ceiling windows that look out onto the ocean that sparkles with the early afternoon sun. A glass of iced tea served in a sea green crystal goblet quietly appears on the end table. The server meets my eyes, and I smile to let him know I won’t need anything else.

When it comes to luxury, Crystal Cove is the cashmere sweater of hotels: simple, expensive, warm, and undeniably elegant. As I sit comfortably in my chair, I start to count the number of surfers bobbing in the middle of the ocean paddling on their boards, waiting for a good wave. All of them shirtless, glistening, and sleek like wet seals.

“Twelve,” says Noah who comes up from behind me, startling me.

“Twelve?”

“There are twelve surfers out there, and I know all of their names,” Noah gives me a charming smile.

“How did you know I was counting?”

“You were whispering and pointing,” he says wryly. “Oh great. It’s like I got caught adding with my fingers and toes.”

Noah is just as cute as I remembered, if not more so, seeing as he is in his chef whites that are pressed and laundered, nary a crease to be found. He looks polished, professional and perfect. It’s the Crystal Cove way.

When I worked here, I loved the structure, the grandeur, and the methodical way things were done to make a guest feel pampered. Afternoon tea was an event. Napkins were delivered on a silver platter, and there wasn’t a request too small or big that we didn’t try to accommodate.

“It’s the details,” Simon used to tell me over and over again when I would get annoyed for being reprimanded for microscopic spots of chocolate on a pure white plate or when a nearly perfect pie was tossed out for being a shade above golden.

“We bring people the comfort of perfection. Something no one gets in the rest of their life. We create the illusion that perfection can exist. This is why we can charge five dollars for a can of coke—because we serve it in crystal glass and set it down on expensive linen. Every detail does count.”

His constant nagging made me a better pastry chef, and even now in my homey bakeshop where imperfections are part of the charm, there actually isn’t a detail that Pedro and I don’t miss. Now we just decide what we will and won’t allow, and we always think about Simon whenever we both have an obsessive compulsive moment.

Noah takes a seat in the chair facing me, and I cross and uncross my legs nervously, hoping I am coming off as put together as I think I look. I’ve got my favorite comfy jeans on, the ones that show off my long lean legs, small heeled boots, and a well-worn t-shirt that I actually paid hundreds of dollars for just so I can achieve the look of not trying too hard while actually trying really hard.

“Did Pedro tell you I stopped by yesterday? He said you were testing recipes at home all week.”

I catch a look of appraisal from him and flush warmly at his attention. With his messy hair and glasses, he fits the role of adorable scholarly chef. One of the one’s who rides an old motorcycle and carries a dog-eared paperback of
My Life in France
by Julia Child.

“He did,” I say. “He also told me you came in asking for our lavender honey biscuits.” I set a small box in his hands. “Sorry we were out, but here you go. A baker’s dozen.”

Noah rips open the box like a kid at a birthday party and inhales the scent of butter and lavender. “They’re still warm. That’s a beautiful thing. I didn’t know you delivered.”

“I don’t. Consider it a welcome to the neighborhood gift. Plus, I do have a favor to ask of you,” I say with a sly smile and pull out another box from my purse. “A slice of a
Tres Leches
cake I am working on for a wedding in three weeks. I’d like your professional feedback.”

“That’s not a favor.” He opens the box and moans. “Sinful.”

“But wait a minute, that’s not the favor,” I say. “I’m trying to first ply you with baked goods.”

“It’s working.”

“I actually have a proposal for you.”

“Is it indecent?” he jokes with a mischievous smile. “Could be. You still interested?” I lean into my chair and take in the heady feeling of flirting with someone other than Josh and enjoying it.

This won’t be so hard after all.

“I’m intrigued.” Noah flashes his sexy dimples at me and reaches for my hand. “How about you join me for lunch and tell me all about it.”

Chapter 7