Chapter 4
four
K ristie’s doorbell rang, but the sound didn’t send her pulse skittering through her body. She’d save that for tomorrow night.
Tonight, she tossed her pot holders on her kitchen counter and headed for the front door, her cat brigade in tow. All three of them followed her everywhere when she was home, with her orange tabby cat, Bob, yowling with every step she took.
“It’s just Lennie,” she said, glancing down at Bob as he darted ahead of the other cats. “Or Jocelyn.” It wouldn’t be Harper, because out of the four of them, Harper always arrived last.
She opened the door, and Lennie stood there in all her brunette glory—complete with dark, shining eyes and hugging an old-fashioned ice cream maker.
Kristie stepped back, grinning. “Wow, come in.”
“It won’t take long, I swear.” Lennie stepped past Kristie, who hastened to close the door behind her to keep out the summer evening heat.
“I’m sure you’ll get it done before Harper arrives anyway,” Kristie said as she turned to follow her friend. Lennie had pulled her hair back into a ponytail, but it still hung all the way to her waist as she slid the ice cream maker onto the counter.
“I have the base done,” Harper said as she lifted the plastic bag she’d brought to the countertop too. “I just need that ice I left here a few months ago.” She exhaled, grinned at Kristie, and in all her enthusiasm, headed out to Kristie’s single-car garage.
She kept a small chest freezer there, and when the cowboys she worked for paid her in beef or venison, she kept it out there. “Should be there,” she called after Lennie. “Might be a solid block, but it should be there.”
She’d never brought ice cream to their dessert night before, but Lennie always seemed to push the boundaries. Her doorbell rang again, and Kristie turned toward the door as it opened.
Jocelyn toed her way in, stumbling slightly as she stepped up into the house and tried not to drop her immaculately decorated cake. Her dream was to be on a baking competition show one day, and she’d made it her life’s goal to know about and bake every kind of cake known to mankind.
Thus, Kristie and Lennie got to try a new cake recipe every single month at their first-Friday dessert night.
“What kind of cake is that?” It bore a beautiful, bright green exterior over a perfectly shaped dome.
A precise, pink rose sat on the top, and Kristie couldn’t help smiling at the beauty of it.
“It’s a princess cake,” Jocelyn said. “It’s got a great vanilla cake, some raspberry jam, stabilized whipped cream, covered in marzipan. It’s delicious—and beautiful when you cut into it.”
She brushed her dirty blonde fringy bangs out of her eyes and smiled at Kristie. “Hey, how are you?” She stepped over to Kristie and hugged her as Lennie banged her way back into the house, this time toting a bag of ice. “Are we going to get to go over your date tomorrow night?”
Kristie hugged her friend back, and then moved to get out the rock salt for Lennie. “I don’t know,” she said. “How can we go over something that hasn’t happened yet?”
“Because it’s Mission,” Jocelyn said. “And he finally asked you out.”
“You could do a fashion show.” Lennie popped the lid on her chocolate ice cream base. “I’m doing a trio of floats. Orange chocolate—like those sticks you get at Christmastime.” She poured the base into the container of the ice cream maker.
“Then I’m doing a hot chocolate float—and I don’t want to hear a word about how it’s summer and we can’t eat hot things.” She pierced Kristie with a fierce look, and Kristie held up both hands.
“Hey, I haven’t said a word.”
“I also don’t see your dessert, which means it’s in the fridge,” Lennie said without missing a beat.
“It’s hot outside,” Kristie said in her defense.
“And the last one is a bit odd, but it’ll be fine.”
“Define it,” Jocelyn said as Lennie poured ice cubes around the container, plugged in the ice cream maker and got it started.
She reached for the rock salt and started sprinkling it over the ice. “The last one is a virgin mojito float. It’s less lime and more mint, so it’s almost a peppermint chocolate float.”
Kristie met Jocelyn’s eyes, and she shrugged one shoulder. “At least it’ll be cold.”
“Do you have a mortar and pestle?” Lennie asked.
“You’ve asked me that question before,” Kristie said with a grin. “The answer is the same as last time—no.”
“Ugh, fine.” Lennie started opening cupboards, and Kristie simply watched the woman in all her whirlwind glory as she whipped through Kristie’s kitchen, looking for what she wanted to put together her trio of floats.
The ice cream maker churned away, and Kristie moved over to her fridge and opened it. She took out her passionfruit cheesecakes, the bright yellow-orange domes with the coconut macaroon crust bringing an instant smile to her face.
“Those look like summer on a plate,” Jocelyn said. She hip-bumped Kristie as she slid the tray next to her princess cake. “Did you end up using your grandmother’s cheesecake recipe?”
Kristie shook her head. “It was too wet. I had to put it all into a single pie tin, and I took it down the street to Kenneth.”
Jocelyn grinned at her. “I bet he didn’t mind.”
“Slurped it right up.” Kristie giggled with her friends while Lennie set out a two-liter bottle of orange soda, a box of hot chocolate packets, and an expensive-looking glass bottle of sparkling lime water.
She started chopping mint, and the scent of it filtered throughout the kitchen.
Kristie opened her silverware drawer and took out the small dessert spoons she’d bought specifically for tonight’s tiny cheesecakes.
She loved small things, and she peeled back the flap on the spoons, and then put one in each corner of the tray.
She’d made a dozen perfect cheesecakes, but she’d had to taste-test one of them, and she’d taken one to Kenneth Jorgenson down the block. That left her with two, and she hadn’t stopped thinking about presenting them to Mission for their post-first-date dessert tomorrow night.
The other eight sat on the tray for her girlfriends’ dessert night.
“What time is it?” Lennie asked, twisting to look at the clock on the microwave. “Where the devil is Harper?”
“Was she down in Littleton today?” Jocelyn asked.
“She has a lot of cases right now,” Kristie said. “But I don’t know.”
Harper worked as a children’s advocate, and she put a lot of miles on her car as she visited homes, conducted interviews with parents and children, and dealt with family issues in half the counties that made up the greater Denver metropolitan area.
Her phone chimed only half a second before Lennie’s did. Kristie picked up her device as Jocelyn’s did. “I bet this is her.”
Sure enough.
I got stuck in an after-hours meeting. I’m on the way! Don’t you dare have a bite without me!
Kristie smiled at the text, because it exuded Harper’s sunny personality. “You can put the ice cream in the freezer in the garage if you need to. I bet she’s still twenty minutes out.”
“Twenty minutes is generous.” Jocelyn turned away from the counter and headed around the end of the couch. She sank onto it with a groan, and Kristie left Lennie to finish up her dessert prep to join Jocelyn in the living room.
“So for real,” Jocelyn said. “What are you going to wear tomorrow night?”
Kristie sighed as she sat in her favorite recliner—a wide-seated dark blue chair with splashy red, yellow, and orange flowers. “I think I’m going to go with what makes me the most comfortable.”
“So blue,” Lennie said from the kitchen. “And your hair half-braided back. Right?”
Kristie met her eyes and could admit that she’d just described all the things that made Kristie feel beautiful. She reached up and pushed her hair behind her left ear, exactly the move Mission had done while they stood in the medical barn.
Her stomach swooped at the mere memory of the man’s feather-light touch. “I was thinking I’d curl my hair and leave it down, actually.”
“Leggings?” Jocelyn asked.
Kristine wrinkled her nose and shook her head. “Too hot. I’m going to wear a white pair of shorts and my flower Crocs that match that blue-and-white-striped blouse I got from the Amalfi Coast.”
She smiled just thinking about that trip. She’d taken it with Jocelyn, Harper, and Lennie, and it was a miracle Harper hadn’t been left at the cruise ship port in Madrid, to be perfectly honest.
“Oh, that blouse is my favorite,” Jocelyn said. “It’s the perfect first-date outfit.”
“White shorts?” Lennie asked as she came into the living room, wiping her hands on a towel. “Do you know what you’re doing on the date?”
Kristie looked up at her, her mind going blank. “Uh, dinner, I think.”
“Dinner takes an hour or two,” Lennie said as she perched on the arm of the couch. “It won’t even be dark when you finish up.” She watched Kristie. “Surely Mission will have something else planned.”
Kristie leaned back into the recliner. “He didn’t say anything but dinner.” And besides, she owned bleach. “I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
“Does he think you’re outdoorsy?” Jocelyn asked.
“I am outdoorsy,” Kristie said.
“So maybe it’s not a white-shorts and Crocs date,” Lennie said. Behind her, the ice cream maker started to chug along, the sound changing to a lower pitch. She jumped to her feet and hurried over to it, pulled the plug, and took the whole thing out into the garage.
Kristie looked at Jocelyn. “No white shorts and Crocs?”
“I think you should text him and find out if there’s more to this date than dinner.”
“Yeah,” Kristie agreed, but she didn’t want to do that. Thankfully, the front door opened, and Harper yelled for help.
Kristie jumped to her feet and went to greet the last part of their quartet. “Let me take that.” She took the heavy earthen-ware dish from Harper, who still wore her pencil skirt and blouse combo. She really had come straight from work.
“I just need to change,” she said, panting slightly. “I’m so sorry I’m late.”
“It’s fine,” Kristie said, gazing down into the pan. “Are these cowboy brownies?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Harper grinned at her and leaned in to press her cheek to Kristie’s. “I can’t wait to hear about your date. I hope you haven’t talked about it without me.”
“I haven’t been on the date yet,” Kristie said.
“Fashion show,” Lennie called as she returned from the garage, where she’d stowed the ice cream.
“I’m not doing a fashion show,” Kristie said. She gave Lennie a brief glare as she slid Harper’s cowboy brownies on the counter. She loved the chocolatey, coconutty, butterscotchy treats, and Kristie’s whole heart filled with love for her friends.
They’d met a few years ago in a community baking class they’d each signed up for.
Kristie could admit she’d taken the class to learn how to bake something for her boyfriend at the time.
Turned out, sugar and cream couldn’t change a toxic personality, and the relationship had ended only a month later.
But her friendships with Harper, Jocelyn, and Lennie had just begun. When the class had ended, they’d started getting together for lunches, and eventually their dessert night on the first Friday of the month had been born.
It helped that they were all single, though they’d all had a man in their life at one point or another in the past. Sometimes they brought dinner and ate before they feasted on desserts, but tonight, Kristie had eaten before her friends had come over.
“Let’s dessert up,” she said as Harper returned to the room. She too sported dark hair, and she scrubbed her fingers through her locks now that she’d released them from her tight ponytail.
“I am so tired.” She sank into the recliner where Kristie had been sitting. “I can’t even get my own desserts tonight.”
“Let’s do floats first,” Lennie said. “I’ll serve everyone.” She smiled at Kristie. “Go sit, Kris. Tell Harper about your first-date outfit, and then I have a story to tell over our float trio.”
“A story?” Jocelyn asked. “About what?”
Lennie grinned as she pulled tall, skinny glasses out of the bin she’d brought in at some point. “About this potbellied piglet I saw online.”
“No,” Kristie said. “Lennie, just no.”
“I have that pasture.”
Kristie shook her head, because Lennie had tried to raise animals before—and it had not gone well. Kristie had ended up taking the calf out to a farmer she knew, and he’d raised it to maturity. “No, Lennie. Sorry, but no. I’m not coming over every day to teach you how to feed a pig.”
“It’s summer. I could?—”
“But it won’t be summer forever,” Jocelyn said. “Once the school year starts, you won’t even remember to feed yourself.” She usually sided with Kristie on things, thankfully. She worked as a pediatric nurse and had only dated doctors in the past decade.
With that not working out, she’d branched over to an online dating app. She was the only one who’d tried that, and she hadn’t had much luck there either.
No wonder they were all so excited about her date with Mission.
And honestly, Kristie was too.
Maybe even more than bingeing on a quartet of the most delicious desserts she’d ever seen. Yes, an evening with the handsome, quiet cowboy would surely be better than dessert night with her friends.
Right?
A quaking in Kristie’s stomach told her that equal parts anxiety and excitement bubbled inside her, and she decided to quickly text Mission about the finer details of tomorrow night’s date, just to quell some of her nerves.
I was thinking we could get dinner and do the Summer Stroll. Is that doable?
She looked up from her phone just as Lennie said, “Okay, up first, we have a chocolate hot chocolate float.”
Kristie took hers, and once everyone had their knobbly mug of hot chocolate with a big scoop of chocolate ice cream in it, she said, “Mission is taking me to the Summer Stroll tomorrow night.”
A beat of silence filled the house, and then all four of them squealed.
“Did you tell him that’s your favorite thing ever?” Lennie demanded, her second float forgotten.
“I can’t wait to see a plethora of pictures,” Harper said.
“You can totally do that in white shorts and Crocs,” Jocelyn said.
Kristie simply couldn’t stop smiling, even though the orange soda-chocolate ice cream combo made her cringe, and the mint wasn’t enough to cover the lime in the virgin mocktail chocolate float.
The Summer Stroll.
How had Mission known?
He listens to you , she thought, something tiny and true ringing through her. But she couldn’t remember a single instance where she’d told him she absolutely loved the Summer Stroll in Ivory Peaks.