Chapter 5
When he walked into the bakery at noon Saturday, it smelled like butter cream and roses, which struck Reno as the most accurate possible reason for naming this place Buns ’N’ Roses.
The kitchen was set as a staging area for packing up everything that needed to be driven around the lake to the McAllister wedding, which was being held at the Valhalla Ski Resort’s very fancy hotel.
The five tiers of the wedding cake each sat on their own board for transport. Grace would assemble the cake on site, rather than try to drive the tall, tippy cake around and carry it into the venue without falling over.
The two largest layers already had thin wooden boards installed a bare millimeter above their frosted tops. The boards rested on dowels poked down through the layer of cake. Reno assumed these were necessary for the top tiers of the cake not to smush the bottom layers with their weight.
“Hey Grace,” he asked as she paused for a moment to study everything laid out on the cake table. “What do you call it when the top layers of a cake are too heavy and smush the bottom layers?”
She glanced up at him. “Technically, it’s called a structural failure.
Lots of bakers call it a cake blowout, but that makes me think of a diaper disaster, so I usually go with something else, like catastrophic smushing.
” She smiled at him, and he smiled back.
She was so beautiful when her face lit up like that his brain couldn’t form words. He just stared, transfixed.
She turned to the flower table to inventory everything there. She handed him a clipboard and told him to read down through the list one item at a time.
“Guest table centerpieces: 35,” he read.
Grace counted the rows of low bowls filled with red roses and white baby’s breath, and responded, “I made 36 just in case. Check.”
“Head table flowers,” he read off.
She quickly inspected three low, oblong arrangements of red roses, white hydrangeas, sprigs of lavender and eucalyptus. “Check.”
“Those are stunning, by the way,” he interjected.
She looked up surprised. “Thanks! The lavender was a last minute addition to give them a more delicate texture. And I added eucalyptus to balance the scent of the flowers. All three smell divine together.”
Her enthusiasm was contagious, and he strode over to sniff one of the arrangements.
“Whoa. That’s incredible.” The woody, slightly minty scent of the eucalyptus perfectly offset the sweetness of the roses and dusty warmth of the lavender.
“I didn’t know florists think about how a bouquet smells when they make it.
I thought you’d only concentrate on how it looks. ”
She shrugged. “A good florist makes a pretty bouquet. A great one makes a pretty bouquet that smells great, too.”
“Fair enough.” He looked down at the clipboard. “Cake table bouquet?”
“Check.”
“Groomsmen’s boutonnieres?”
“Check.”
“Bridesmaid bouquets?”
Grace scowled as she counted out eight bouquets standing in upside down cardboard boxes, their ribbon wrapped handles poked down through the box tops. “Check.”
“Don’t you like those?” he queried, catching her frown.
“They’re lovely. I just had to make an emergency extra one this week, and I had a dickens of a time getting extra white gardenias for it.
They’re not in season at this time of year and I had already special ordered just enough for seven bouquets.
Mary had to drive all the way to Bozeman to pick up a half-dozen more white gardenias on short notice. ”
“Brides. Can’t live with ‘em, can’t live without ‘em,” he commented dryly.
She laughed, and it sounded like silvery bells in a soft breeze.
The sweet sound sent a thrill of delight down his spine that only stopped in the vicinity of his toes.
How come he’d never heard her laugh like that before?
Thinking back, he realized he’d heard her chuckle fairly often, but never a startled, full-blown burst of laughter.
Clearly, he needed to make her do that again more often.
“Bridal bouquet?”
“Check.”
“Mothers’ corsages?”
“Check and check.”
“That’s it on this list,” he announced.
“Okay. Mary will be here any minute with the step van, and we’ll load all this up and get out of here.”
“Do you own a step van?” he asked.
“No. I borrowed Molly Vandyke’s step van today. She produces eggs, fresh greens, herbs, and mushrooms at her farm and has a step van to deliver them to grocery stores and restaurants all over the valley.”
On cue a vehicle rumbled up behind the bakery and Grace propped open the back door with the infamous brick, shooting a wry smile at Reno as she did so. He pitched in to help carry everything out to the van.
Grace came around the counter with a box of bridesmaid bouquets as he came in the back door.
He stepped aside to let her through, but the aisle behind the counter wasn’t built for two people.
Her shoulder brushed past his chest close enough that he could smell, very specifically, butter and yeast and something that wasn’t flowers.
Was that her perfume? It was fresh and green with a citrus note and utterly captivating.
Mary barged through the door, forcing Grace to stop right there, with her shoulder brushing against his shirt and her perfume filling his nostrils. He inhaled sharply. Then she inhaled sharply.
Mary moved on, and Grace paused for half a second longer than necessary before continuing past him. Then she disappeared outside, and the moment was over. But he suspected he wasn’t going to forget it for a long time.
With three of them working, they had the van loaded in a jiffy. Mary climbed in the driver’s seat, and Grace sat on the floor in the back beside the cakes. She looked out at him anxiously. “You’re sure you don’t want me to close the store today?”
“You showed me how to run the cash register, and it’s not rocket science to put food in bags and little boxes. I’m not going to attempt espressos, for which I thank you. That machine is impossible to comprehend but I can certainly pour coffee out of a pot. I’ll be fine.”
“The bakery usually closes at three, but I told all my regulars I was closing the shop at two o’clock today. So you only have to survive an hour-and-a-half.”
He nodded briskly.
“We should be back in about three hours,” she told him. “Call me if you have any problems with Lily.”
“We’ll be fine,” he replied jauntily. “What can go wrong in three hours with a four-year-old?”
A combination of amusement and alarm flashed through her gaze. “Lily.” She looked at her daughter who’d come to the bakery’s back door to stand beside him. “Mr. Reno is going to be at the front counter for a couple of hours while Mommy goes to the wedding. You’ll be his helper, okay?”
“’Kay.”
“And you’ll be on your best behavior, right?”
Reno caught the pint-sized shrug she gave her mother out of the corner of his eye.
“Lily Marie.”
“Fine. Best behavior.” Lily turned around and marched out of the kitchen with her chin at an imperious angle.
“How did I end up with such a dramatic child?” Grace muttered.
“She’s smart.”
“Don’t flatter her.”
“Wasn’t. Being smart comes with having lots of opinions. She’s just learning to express hers.”
Grace rolled her eyes. “And don’t let her eat herself sick on cookies.”
“I’ll set the cookie limit at two.”
“She negotiated me up to three.”
“Three, then. With prejudice. And Grace? You’re a pushover.”
She flashed him another one of those mesmerizing smiles of hers. “Thanks for doing this, Reno.”
“My pleasure, ma’am.”
As the van pulled away from the bakery, he picked up the brick and closed the back door, checking to make sure it latched properly.
Then he headed into the front room, where Celia handed over the register to him with a tired smile.
She was still weak from her bout of flu and had only come in for an hour to look after the shop while Grace and Mary prepped for today’s wedding.
Thankfully, the shop wasn’t too busy. A steady stream of customers trickled in, but there were never more than one or two in line. By about one thirty, the customers mostly stopped.
True to her word, Lily had curled up in a small bean bag in the corner behind the counter wearing a cute pink headset and happily watched movies on a tablet computer.
During a lull with no customers, he noticed a navy van drive past the shop.
He wouldn’t have paid attention to it, but it slowed way down as it approached and passed by.
When it cleared the shop, it sped up and drove out of sight.
But not before he noted the side windows were heavily tinted so he couldn’t see the driver, and there were no markings on the van’s side.
He caught a glimpse of Montana license plates but wasn’t able to read any of its numbers or letters.
Lily said from her bean bag. “Mr. Reno?”
“Yes, Ma’am?”
“Did you see a hawk outside?”
“I did not.”
“Sometimes there’s one on the lamppost.”
“Maybe it likes the smell of your mom’s pastries.”
“Hawks eat little kids who don’t behave.”
“I don’t believe that’s true. Who told you that?”
“My grandma.”
“Were you misbehaving?” he asked.
Lily tilted her head thoughtfully. “Probably.”
“I think she was trying to scare you into behaving.”
“May I draw now?” she asked.
“Of course, Munchkin. Your mommy already tore off a big piece of wrapping paper for you and showed me where your crayons are.” He set a stool beside the counter and lifted her onto it.
Reno sat down on his stool behind the counter, propped his bad leg on a second stool he’d dragged over and watched Lily’s pale blond curls as she bent over her drawing, concentrating. She really was an angelically beautiful child, all cream and pale pink with that almost white blond hair.
A rather chicken-like object took shape beneath her crayons. She added two sticks for legs and he couldn’t resist any longer and asked, “What are you drawing?”
“A hawk.”
“Nice.”
“With babies.”
“Where’s their nest?” he asked.