Chapter 6 - Gracie #2
“No,” Nicole said again, as if that settled it. “Absolutely not. Vetoed.”
“You don’t get a veto,” Gracie said, amused.
“I do today.” She abandoned the fries and leaned in, her dark eyes intense.
“Gracie, listen. Those two kids are the smartest little people I know. When they come up with something, it isn’t because they were bored.
They know stuff. They know their parents.
They know, well, pretty much everything and I, for one, think you should follow their plan. ”
“Please. They’re eleven years old! They think love is a Lego kit.”
“Sometimes, love would be easier if it was,” Nicole said dryly. “Look at you. You keep everything safe. Predictable. You have your shop and your son and your lists and your pies, and it’s all steady and good. You’ve built a beautiful life. But you’ve also built walls and…more walls.”
“I don’t have walls.”
Nicole reached out, squeezing Gracie’s wrist. “Benny showed you a door, that’s all. You don’t have to go through it. But don’t board it up without even peeking.”
Gracie stared at the window, at people passing in puffer jackets, at her own reflection ghosted back with a look on her face she recognized and didn’t like. Oh, Nicole. She could talk a houseplant into blooming.
“Even if I… peeked,” Gracie said, choosing words like stepping stones, “what if this hurts him? What if it confuses Benny? What if he thinks every friend’s parent is a candidate and starts arranging weddings on the school bus?”
“Then you tell him you’re the adult and you’ll handle your heart,” Nicole said simply.
“And you will. That’s the thing. You will.
Even if nothing happens with Marshall. Even if you try this gingerbread thing and decide it’s just friendship and a funny story.
You can walk yourself back across Main Street and go home to your beautiful, safe life knowing you at least tried. ”
Gracie closed her eyes.
Maybe Nicole was right. Safe had become lonely. Predictable had become small. She had mastered the single mom juggling act so thoroughly that she’d stopped tossing anything risky into the air.
“Also,” Nicole added with a wicked grin. “The man has shoulders for days. Is it a crime to enjoy building a gingerbread house next to a set of delts like that?”
Gracie bit back a laugh. “Stop.”
“I won’t,” Nicole said cheerfully. “And what’s his deal, anyway? Divorced or just separated? Why? What do we know about his life?”
“Not much,” she said. “Olivia rarely talks about her mother and in the year she and Benny have known each other, I don’t think she’s seen the woman.”
“Benny hasn’t seen much of Sam.”
She nodded. After some whitewater, Gracie’s ex and his wife, Coco, decided to do a full court press to stay together. They had, in fact, conceived another child, due in a few months. It had kept Sam completely out of their lives.
“I don’t know much about Marshall’s ex—or Marshall himself, except he’s a very involved father. He always comes to school events, and Olivia is a remarkable student.”
“So find out about him! Use the time together to get to know who this man really is. Even if it’s just as your retail neighbor, your competitor, and your son’s friend’s father. It doesn’t have to be a Christmas romance movie. I mean, it could be, but it doesn’t have to be.”
Gracie wiped her mouth and stared at her food, thinking about all that. “I’m not saying yes.”
“I know.”
“I’m also not saying no,” she heard herself admit.
Nicole’s smile turned quiet and proud. “That’s my cuz.”
“I will think about it,” Gracie said pointedly. “Think. About. It.”
“Think fast,” Nicole said as their salad and sandwich arrived with two plates. “Mistletoe on Main is in, what? Less than two weeks?”
Gracie plucked at a beet when Nicole divided the salad, changing the subject to Aunt Cindy’s upcoming wedding, happy to listen as Nicole told her all about the pressure from the Aisle Files lady.
It was a great distraction—lots of family gossip and thoughts to share—but when lunch was over, Gracie knew she had to go back to Craving Clean with a decision.
But she still wasn’t sure what it was.
Gracie used more delaying tactics at Sugarfall, then finally brushed her teeth, checked her makeup, and crossed Main Street with the steady chant of her intention in her head: tell him the truth, tell him the truth, tell him the—
The bell on Craving Clean’s door gave its modern jingle when she stepped inside. Roberto looked up and grinned like he’d been waiting and turned to the door to the kitchen.
“She’s here, boss.”
She. Was he expecting her? Talking about her? She felt a flush start.
And then Marshall stepped through the door and flashed that smile that seemed to light from somewhere inside him and take Gracie’s poor heart for a ride.
And the “shoulders for days” didn’t help matters.
“Gracie,” he said, with that jolt of pleasure that always sounded like he was happy to see her where he hadn’t expected to. “Hey. I was going to come find you today. I’ve got something.”
“I—me, too,” she said, and then nearly laughed at herself. Me, too? What was she, sixteen?
He jerked his chin toward the back. “Come on. You gotta see.”
She followed him through the door and into the Craving Clean kitchen, which looked much like hers—stainless steel, trays cooling, good prep lighting. It was smaller, definitely, but bustling and so clean.
There was a laptop open on a metal prep table, an image on the screen of a building that somehow looked like her shop and his, to scale, with measurements and notes about food and coloring.
Next to it were two square bakery boxes. “Okay, don’t laugh,” he said, sliding them toward her.
Inside one, stacks of perfectly square gingerbread panels; the other held something similar, only lighter and more textured.
“I figured we could test-drive the combo,” he said, his dark eyes hopeful.
“Yours—sweet, classic g-bread, smells like Christmas. Mine—almond flour, protein powder, not as pretty, but it holds up. I thought maybe we could blend ’em—two entrances, two flavors, same structure—just like we talked about. ”
Gracie blinked, then laughed softly. “You baked already?”
“I did.”
“You baked gingerbread with sugar and…real flour?”
He laughed, the sound somehow both boyish and deliciously masculine. “It didn’t break the oven, only my healthy heart.”
“Wow,” she said, looking down at the two samples, wishing she could do better than “wow” but, as always, words escaped her. Along with rational thought and her purpose for this visit.
“I wanted to make sure the walls don’t cave in the second a kid breathes on it.
The oat version’s sturdier but yours is obviously prettier.
So at some point they’ll have to”—he picked up one darker gingerbread and one of the pale oat pieces and fit them together like puzzle halves—“meet in the middle. Your beauty and my health.”
Why, oh goodness gracious, why did that sound like a flirtatious invitation to…
To not tell him the truth.
Her chest tightened, that dangerous combination of amusement and something else. “Marshall,” she said, half-scolding, half-melting.
He held up both hands, laughing. “I know, I know, I’m getting ahead of myself. I just thought if we’re doing this thing, we should be prepared for it to not go perfectly smoothly, but in the end, it’ll be something exquisite.”
Was he talking about a gingerbread house or…them?
For a second, neither of them moved. In that flash of time, she saw something in his dark eyes—a glimmer of attraction…the faintest flicker of hope.
It was almost as if…he liked her. The way Olivia and Benny had imagined.
Then he cleared his throat and nudged the boxes toward her again, weirdly awkward. “Anyway. That’s my play. Team effort. Sorry. You said you had something to tell me?”
Yes, she did have something to tell him. The speech she’d written in her head all the way down Main Street. The explanation that their hilarious and brilliant kids had tied them together like a pair of shoes and expected them to walk. The…
He liked her.
And what was she going to do about that? Slam the proverbial door in his face, stay safe in her comfort zone, and hide behind a wall that she denied she had?
Gracie swallowed. She could still say it. She had thirty ways to tell the truth, and every single one of them began with, “I need to explain what Benny and Olivia did.”
He watched her with that steady patience she hadn’t expected from a man whose shoulders had carried stadiums’ worth of shouting. Football players understood fouls. Boundaries. Calling a play dead and starting again. He would understand if she told him the setup was wrong.
She heard herself inhale.
“I…” She reached out and touched the edge of one of the boxes. “I wanted to tell you I have some ideas, too.”
He blinked. Then an unguarded grin lit up his face. “Yeah?”
She nodded, pulse pounding in her wrists, in her throat, maybe temples and toes, too. “And I’m excited to get started.”
Apparently, she was excited to stand in the same room as him, but she hoped he couldn’t tell.
His laugh was warm and easy. “Okay. Okay! This is happening. For a minute there, I was bracing for a penalty flag. Got a first down instead.”
She cocked her head and gave him a playful look.
“Okay. Football analogies officially over right now.”
She laughed, not even caring that her cheeks felt warm. It was a bakery—minus the good stuff—so of course she was warm.
He turned the laptop toward her, shoulder almost brushing hers, the nearness of him a spark she felt and pretended not to. “I made some sketches, but let’s hear your ideas first. What would you like to do?”
Nothing she could admit in this kitchen.
Pulling it together, she gestured to the laptop, rooting deep for an idea. “Um, the base is important. If we have a good foundation, we can do anything.”
He smiled and angled his head. “I guess that’s true about every aspect of life, Gracie.”
She met his gaze and held it for enough heartbeats to make breathing a little difficult.
“I can bake a gingerbread slab on a plywood board covered in fondant so we’re not moving something fragile when we set it up,” she said, thanking God she could still think.
“Good, good.”
“And royal icing for the outer seams,” she said, her brain finally engaged, “but I want a meringue powder batch and an egg white batch—different dry times, different strengths in the cold. Oh, and if you insist on almond flour for part of the dough, you’re going to give me the real butter.”
He pressed a hand to his heart like she’d wounded him and laughed again. “Deal. And you can talk me out of monk fruit if you say the word.”
She did not say the word—at least not the one she was thinking, which had nothing to do with baking and everything to do with what Nicole had said about doors.
They bent over the table, heads close, throwing ideas like cards. He agreed to a tiny fondant Red in a Santa suit peering in the front window, she gave in on the protein-bar “brick” trim.
There were two entrances, one a replica of Sugarfall and, on the other side, Craving Clean, and he’d promised to rig up some LED lights.
Behind them, the kitchen door swung open, and Roberto stuck his head in. “Hey, Marshall, there’s a lady on the phone wants to know if ‘clean’ gingerbread is a thing and I said yes and then I panicked.”
Marshall looked at Gracie with a conspirator’s glint, both of them laughing.
“Is ‘clean’ gingerbread a thing?” he asked.
“It will be,” she said. “Clean-ish. Don’t tell her about the butter.”
Laughing, he gave a nod to Roberto.
She let herself stay longer, soaking in the hum of the kitchen, the ridiculous joy of a project that wasn’t safe or sensible or even particularly wise. She heard Nicole’s voice one more time, not scolding now, just warm: This might be the push you needed.
Would she fall flat on her face? Maybe. But there was only one way to find out, so she kept the secret and set a date to bake with a man who just might have everything it would take to break down her walls.