10. Renee
Renee
The little balls of cookie batter were beginning to stick to the scoop, but Renee managed to get the last of them onto the baking tray.
She’d saved her favorite for last that Sunday afternoon.
White chocolate with cherries and almond extract.
Small ones, because she liked a tiny one-bite cookie more than the large ones.
She normally baked these only around the holidays, but she decided she needed a bit of cheer.
“You do realize you’ve made enough bread and cookies this weekend to feed all of Oakview, right?
” Ben grabbed a cookie from the previous day’s batch.
His blond hair was a tousled mess, and he looked like he’d pulled on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt off his floor before he came over.
Which he probably did after a Saturday night in the only gay bar in a thirty-mile radius.
“Not that I don’t appreciate benefiting from your stress-baking, but I think you’ve made enough stuff for now. ”
She aimed her batter-coated spatula at him. “Hush your mouth. No such thing.”
Especially no such thing when it was her only stress release at the moment. Being away from her gym had her a little on edge, too. She was doing what strength stuff she could at the house with no equipment, but it wasn’t the same as sweating it out with a Smith machine.
Ben held his hands up in defense. “All right, all right. Stress-bake away. I’m just saying you might need to part with some of this, unless you want it to go bad.”
He wasn’t wrong. Baked goods in various containers lined the bar in the middle of the large kitchen.
Double chocolate cookies. Lemon ricotta cookies.
Banana bread. Blueberry scones. And a large, round loaf of crusty white bread she planned to eat with cheese and grapes for dinner.
Way more than she and Ben could eat, even as stressed as she was.
And she was definitely stressed.
The contents of her aunt’s will had finally settled into her brain to where she comprehended the magnitude of the gift she’d been given. But knowing and understanding didn’t make that weight any easier to carry.
The whole house. Hers.
She’d known her aunt would be generous with her. They’d been closer than anyone else in the family. But this? It was too much.
“I could take a tray to the office tomorrow? Take some of this off your hands?”
“What?” Renee shook her head, shaking off her inheritance thoughts and processing what he’d said. “Yeah, sure. Of course. I’ve got plenty here. And probably more to come.”
She’d already done an in-house workout that morning, and it didn’t alleviate much of anything. She definitely missed her gym back in Baton Rouge already. But she made do here. It just wasn’t enough to ease her current stress.
So there would be more baking in her future.
Renee put the two trays into the oven and set the timer for six minutes, so she could spin and swap the tray positions halfway through. As she turned around, she felt a warm, fuzzy body press hard against her leg.
“Dude. You almost Hansel and Greteled me.”
The cat continued to rub his big, orange and white striped body against her.
“Barth is just reminding you that he wants you to stay with him.”
“Benjamin David Ardoin, IV, I thought we agreed not to call him that.” She bent down to pet Bartholomew. His fur was slightly fluffy and oh so soft. “And you know I can’t keep him.”
“I know you said you couldn’t take him with you. But now that you don’t have to split the place with anyone, there’s nothing to stop you both from staying here.”
“Nothing but my life being in Baton Rouge.”
“Ouch.” He put a hand to his heart in dramatic fashion. “Are you saying I’m not part of your life?”
She rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean.”
“I know what you said. I also know you haven’t seriously considered it. But now’s the time to at least give it some thought.”
“You just want me to stay here so I can be your personal baker.”
“Guilty as charged,” he said. “But seriously. You should consider it. The place is paid for. You’d have the pleasure of my continual presence. And you can run your business from anywhere, with the occasional commute, which you’ve already said you don’t mind because you like driving.”
“I said I don’t mind it. I didn’t say I want to do it all the time.”
“Plus,” he said, ignoring her statement, “this house has a great kitchen.”
He had her there. She looked around the spacious room with the relatively new and generous amount of quartz countertops, along with the endless rows of oak cabinets and drawers.
It definitely beat her tiny apartment kitchen, where she barely had space to open the oven door.
But she couldn’t upend her life for a kitchen, no matter how great it was.
Her phone dinged on the bar. Renee smiled at the text.
Having fun without me?
“Is that my br twin? Tell her I miss her.”
“It is.”
Here with Ben. He says hi. Baking.
Of course you are! Say hi for me. Just checking in. Text me later.
“She says hi back.”
“She’s good? Haven’t seen her in a while.”
“Yeah. She’s going out with some new guy. I’ll have to check in with her on that tomorrow.”
Her phone dinged again. When she looked at the text, she was way less excited to see the messenger.
“Reason number five thousand why I can’t live in Oakview. I can’t live any closer to her.”
She placed the phone back down without responding to her mother.
Ben frowned. “That’s definitely a wrinkle in my plan.”
“She wants to meet to talk about putting the house on the market.”
“Already?”
“Yeah,” Renee said. “When we’re supposed to be discussing plans for the Celebration of Life.”
“When did y’all decide on doing that? With all the will stuff and the house, I don’t remember you telling me.”
“Because I didn’t,” she said. “We haven’t even set a date yet.”
Ben shook his head. “Priorities. Right?”
“Right.” Renee shot back a text saying she was free on Wednesday to discuss the Celebration of Life and that she was in the middle of something and would discuss a time with her later.
“That’s about all I can stomach for one afternoon.”
“Understandable.” Ben finished the last of his cookie, then said. “So, what do you want to tackle today? The rest of the master bedroom? Since you already did the bathroom in there. We could work our way from that end of the house to the front?”
“Yeah, that sounds like as good a plan as any.” Her phone dinged again, and she let out a groan of disgust until she saw it wasn’t, in fact, from her mother.
“What’s that smile for? I know it can’t possibly be the result of a Susan Benoit text.”
“It’s not,” Renee said, her thumbs hovering over the phone. “It’s from a client.”
“You smile at all your clients like that?”
“Like what?” She looked up at him, trying to wipe the expression from her face. “I’m just happy it’s not Mom.”
“Uh-huh. Sure.” Ben narrowed his eyes, assessing her. “It’s that new one, isn’t it? The one with the dog? You had that goofy look after you met her Thursday, too.”
“There’s no goofy look.”
“Yes, there is,” he said. “Go look in the mirror if you don’t believe me. And don’t try to fix your face first. I can see you trying not to smile, and it isn’t working.”
Was she really that obvious?
And why was she so giddy about a simple text, anyway?
“She’s just confirming that the ex will be out of town and won’t have the dog until the end of the week.”
“And that warrants a smile because…”
“Because I like my job?”
“But you hate surveillance,” he said. “Or, at least, it’s not something to make you smile like that. And you don’t even like custody cases much normally. Is the dog that great?”
“It’s not the dog.”
“Ha! I knew it.”
Well, she’d stepped in that, hadn’t she?
“It’s not a big deal. As clients go, she’s pleasant and easy to work with.”
“And easy on the eyes?”
“Yes, that, too,” Renee said. “But that’s all there is to it. She’s a client. End of story.”
It had to be. No matter how much she’d enjoyed sitting at the park with Jessica.
They’d been watching dogs play, for crying out loud.
She didn’t even particularly like dogs. Nothing against them.
She just didn’t care much one way or another about them and didn’t imagine she’d have a good time watching them.
She had to admit it was the company that made the experience enjoyable.
Jessica had dressed more casually than the first time Renee had seen her, and it was nice to see her looking comfortable in her jeans and fitted green T-shirt.
Her thick hair had been pulled back in a messy low bun, and she’d worn only a touch of makeup.
More lip gloss on that pretty little mouth of hers.
But it wasn’t just her outfit that made her look comfortable.
It was the environment. She’d been perfectly at home sitting at that dog park, content to watch her dog play with the others.
Soothed by her surroundings, even through the difficult topic of their discussion.
Or at least the main topic. Their conversation had taken some natural turns, and Renee found it easy to talk to her.
“There’s that smile again.”
“It’s not a smile,” she said. “It’s a sugar high.”
“It’s a smile, and you like her.” Ben pushed back from the bar, resisting another cookie.
The oven timer went off, and Renee opened the door to swap out and turn the baking trays. Then she set the timer for six more minutes.
“I like working, and she’s giving me a job. So, yeah, I like her in that regard.”
Ben rolled his eyes. “You’re impossible.”
“You know my stance on relationships. Too messy. Too doomed. And definitely not with a client. Not to even mention that I won’t be staying in town.”
“Okay, but what’s your stance on fun?”
She’d actually given that possibility some thought. The idea of something short-term and casual. No commitments. Definitely after this job was done.
She shook her head. “Jessica isn’t available for that kind of fun. She’s going through a divorce.”
“Sounds like the best time for a little fun to me.”
“Nah. She strikes me as an all-in type of person.”
“Maybe ask her first before you rule it out? After the job is over, if that makes you feel better.”
“If I’m still here,” she said.
“Fine,” he said with a sigh. “If you don’t break my heart and are still here for a while.”
Her phone dinged again. She didn’t bother hiding her smile that time. “She’s coming over tomorrow with a check.”
“Ooh, love that for you.”
She kind of loved that for herself, too. As much as she could sense the sadness clouding Jessica, she also had a sunshiny quality to her that was downright intoxicating. Renee could stand a little sunshine in her life after the heaviness of the last few days. Weeks, actually.
With a quick reply, she put the phone back down and said, “There. Happy?”
A sly grin spread across Ben’s face. “I’m surrounded by sweets, and my best friend is getting her love life in the game. I’m ecstatic.”
“It’s not my love life,” she said. “It’s a client meeting, and then maybe a hookup down the road. Don’t think I’m planning a wedding and sticking around here.”
“A boy can hope.”
“A boy can help out by carrying some empty boxes to that bedroom while he waits for me to take this last batch out of the oven.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said with a laugh as he left the room, leaving Renee alone with her thoughts about the possibility she was now entertaining.
A short-term, no-strings thing. She liked the sound of that.
In her line of work, she saw too many relationships fall apart for one reason or another.
Often because people weren’t meant to be tied down and behaved in really shitty ways towards each other because of that.
So a serious relationship with anyone—especially a client or someone who’d eventually be long-distance—was out of the question for her.
But a… fling?
Maybe that was just what she needed.
If Jessica would be interested in the same kind of thing.
Only one way to find out.