Encore
Jack
The Zoom window freezes, and Sloane Mercer, my partner of almost two years, is caught looking like she’s mid-sneeze.
A second later, she vanishes completely, along with the Hollywood skyline behind her, as my signal stutters into pixel confetti before the app gives up altogether.
I check my phone, finding that, oddly, I have cell signal while my hardline Wi-Fi malfunctions. With an eye roll for small-town quirks, I fire off a text to Sloane that I’ll see her in person next week and close the laptop.
Leaning back in my desk chair, I listen to Hideaway Harbor breathing through the open window of Audrey’s old apartment.
Gulls cry, a porch swing creaks, and kids shriek in sprinkler arcs down by the docks. My second summer here smells like salt and sunshine and something sugary that’s permanently embedded in the walls.
Probably marshmallow fluff from Audrey’s upcoming Fourth of July s’more whoopie pies—decorated with a sparkler on top.
The door at the bottom of the steep apartment stairs pops. Footsteps. The kind I know better than my own pulse.
“Absolutely not.” I stand as the apartment/office door opens.
Audrey pauses on the landing, a bakery box in hand, the other resting on the five-month swell of a bump under her sundress. She tilts her head, giving me a look that says ‘Hi, darling’ and also ‘Explain yourself.’
I point down the stairs, scowling like they’re a sworn enemy. “You’re not doing those again.”
One brow lifts. A dangerous angle. “Those?”
“Those.” I point at the staircase as if it personally offended me.
With a roll of her eyes, Audrey toes off her sandals and pads inside, sunlight glancing auburn off her dark tresses. Her little blue dress has strawberries printed all over it, like she’s trying to tempt fate into inventing cravings.
Not that I mind. Cravings mean more sweets, which means more of my favorite new morning cardio program.
My wife sets the box on my desk and breathes out buttercream. I swear even the floorboards get a little aroused.
On her tiptoes, she kisses my cheek. “You’re being dramatic.”
I hold her to me. “It’s not dramatic to insist the mother of my child stop climbing the Death Stairs of Doom.”
She rolls her lips. “Is that the official municipal designation?”
Jokingly puffing out my chest as I do whenever the mayor asks me to consult on town meetings, I adopt my most haughty look. “Pending council review.”
Head shaking, she slides out of my grasp and opens the lid on the bakery box. Chocolate, cranberry, maple, pistachio. Sinners in a lineup, all of them.
Plucking out a Jingle My Berries and taking a bite like Christmas came to taunt me in July, she leaves a swipe of cream on her lower lip that qualifies as cruel and unusual punishment.
I thumb the sugar from her mouth and pop it in mine. “We’re putting in an elevator.”
She snorts, loud and lovely. “I’ve had enough of contractors, haven’t you?”
She’s referring to the ten months of renovations it took for the farmhouse I bought just outside of town to be dragged into modernity.
“No,” I lie, cleanly and with purpose.
She narrows her eyes. “You already called someone.”
“Maybe.” I tap the desk, the old wood warm under my fingers, and run through the plan I’m definitely not telling her about yet: construction starts while we’re in LA next week; preliminary inspection passed; the lift cab big enough for Audrey and a stroller.
Outside, a truck backfires, and the gulls swear about it. Seaside Maine is loud in the most charming way imaginable.
“Jack.” Audrey’s chin drops, her eyes lasering in on me.
“Mm?” I pause mid-thought, already cataloguing how to spin this into “responsible husband” instead of “overbearing lunatic.”
She points back toward the door. “You do realize I made it up those steps every day for years.”
I level her a look right back. “Not while incubating.” My hand slides to her belly, an instinct I didn’t know existed until three weeks ago when the first flutter hit my palm and my skull turned to stardust.
Her mouth tilts into something that warms me behind my ribs.
“Who was on the call?” Audrey’s hip bumps my knee. Her hand settles on the curve under her dress, the absent, proprietary touch making my throat burn.
“Sloane.” I scratch my jaw, buying a second to shove myself back into work mode. “Studio wants us both in person next week.”
Since pulling Sloane on board as the first agent in Lourd & Co. LLC, she’s been handling the talent while I handle the paper. Bi-coastal lawyering has turned into an entertaining challenge. I love it.
Audrey hums approval, already a card-carrying member of the Sloane Mercer Fan Club. “Any more clients tell you your voice sounds like a ‘contract in cashmere’?”
Having my wife repeat a client’s flirty soundbite back to me is infinitely more mortifying than when it happened in the first place. “Who told you?”
“Elizabeth.” Audrey smiles. “After hearing about it from Felix.” Her nostrils flare as if trying not to laugh. “Who got it from Amanda, who got it from Sloane.”
I wince at the reminder that the rumor mill needs no middleman when family and clients are one and the same. “I assure you, wife, my cashmere remains strictly for you.”
Audrey licks the last of the cream from her lip slowly and smugly. “Mmm.”
The sound slides under my skin like heat rising off her whoopie pies.
As if reading my mind, she opens the box again, pulling out a smaller, pale green cake from the corner. “Maya’s.”
I bite. Pistachio, chocolate, a whisper of something citrus that shouldn’t work and absolutely does. “Damn.”
“I know.” Pride slides through her words like butter over hot toast. “She built it off my almond base, then switched it for pistachio and cut the sweetness with dark chocolate.”
When the trademark paperwork I filed came through, Audrey made quick use of it, setting up a bakery in LA just like she said she would that day on the mountain.
Making Whoopie is now a two-store chain, with plans in the works for a third located inside Moore’s Department Store in Manhattan this Christmas.
A Christmas we’ll spend with both our families—born and chosen.
“When you check on the LA store next week, make sure to tell Maya I’m a fan. You chose your employee well.”
She tips her head as if still surprised how the woman who once shouldered a whole town’s worth of expectations by herself is no longer carrying them alone. “Turns out hiring competent people and delegating doesn’t make me lazy.”
“There are many things I would call you—” I lick pistachio from my thumb. “But lazy is not one of them.”
Eyebrows lifted, she arches a challenge. “And what things would you call me?”
I lean closer, nuzzling the skin just under her jaw. “Glowing.”
“It’s the first of July and ninety degrees outside.” Her voice is flat enough for me to feel the eye roll. “I’m not glowing, I’m sweating.”
I nuzzle her neck anyway. “It’s a wet glow.”
Pulling back, she swipes her finger across the cream of a pastry. “Can you think of anything else less… damp?” Heat dances in her eyes.
My pulse trips, the air shifting from sweet to something decidedly hungry. “Alluring.”
Smiling, she smears my bottom lip with cream. “Better.”
Watching her watch me, I tongue it off, the sweetness melting into something far more decadent. “And tempting.”
A slow smile unfurls, heat tucked in the corners. “Oh, I like that.” She braces her arms behind her on the desk, her breasts straining against the thin fabric of her sundress. “Anything else?”
“Yeah.” I place my hands on either side of her, caging her in. “Mine.”
Against the July heat she just complained about, she shivers.
But just as I’m about to claim what’s mine, a knock on the half-open door interrupts the entirely appropriate plan I was forming to test the craftsmanship of my desk—Felix’s idea of an office warming gift for a small-town lawyer.
The knock drags a growl out of me while Audrey slips off the desk with infuriating grace, smoothing her dress like she hasn’t just weaponized strawberry print and buttercream.
“Come in,” she calls because apparently I work in a commune.
Eli Bennett fills the doorway, cap tugged low, a clipboard tucked under his arm, a grease-stained paper bag in the other. Hideaway’s vet looks freshly scrubbed from whatever barnyard emergency he’s just handled, smelling faintly of cedar chips and horse liniment.
“Sorry to interrupt.” His gaze bounces from me to Audrey and back, like he walked in on exactly what he did.
He waves the clipboard. “But since I was nearby—Jack, I could use your take on something legal.” Noting my less-than-thrilled expression, he lifts the bag.
“Fish and Chips from Chowder House as a retainer.”
This time it’s my stomach that growls. With one last glance at Audrey, I nod, albeit reluctantly. “Acceptable.”
Audrey tries to hide her smile. She’s never said it out loud, but I know she’s happy about my friendship with Eli. I think she was worried that if I moved away from Los Angeles where Felix and Sofia are based that I’d regret moving.
She has no idea the lengths I’d go to for her.
And I would have given her ample evidence of my current length if said friend hadn’t shown up.
My new ‘bestie,’ as Amanda—another recent Los Angeles transplant—likes to call Eli, drops the bag of unhealthy and delicious food on the island before turning his clipboard toward us like it’s a smoking gun.
“It’s about my neighbor. The one next to the new clinic property you helped me close on.
She’s been…” He hesitates, then blurts out, “Antagonizing me to no end.”
“Antagonizing?” I cross my arms, wondering what could flap the unflappable Eli Bennet. “What did she do?”
“So much.” Heaving a long-suffering sigh, he points to a picture of what looks like tree branches and something vaguely metallic. “First there was the windchimes.” He closes his eyes as if to relive the horror. “So many wind chimes.”
“I see.” I don’t see.