Chapter 23
“These are the maple scones, those are blueberry, and those”—RJ pointed to another paper plate covered in baked goods—“are honey ginger. Using Becker Farms honey, of course.”
Penny grinned. “Of course.”
RJ piled one of each on Penny’s plate, which overflowed already with a salted chocolate chip cookie, a slice of rich zucchini bread, and a piece of rhubarb pie. The combined smells—sweet and salty, rich like butter and sunshine—overwhelmed her senses.
“This is a lot of food.”
“Well, yeah,” RJ responded, building a plate for his mom. “That’s the entire point of a taste-testing party. So you guys can vote on which ones I should pitch to Brewtopia and Scatterbeans.”
Penny’s plate held only a sampling of what RJ had brought to the park, where they’d arrived early enough in the day to claim two tables.
One was dedicated to RJ’s goodies—cookies, pies, and scones among them—while the other held an array of foods brought by everyone else.
Penny was particularly excited about Zander’s homemade hummus, the Robinsons’ barbecue ribs, and Mimi’s potato salad.
Just beyond the tables, the Vote Here poster board was propped on the easel Penny usually took to market.
After reluctantly agreeing to try out RJ’s ice-skating skills class a few weeks before, Winter had warmed considerably to him, even agreeing to set up the voting system, complete with ballots and colorful markers.
“Personally…” A deep voice sent goose bumps along her arm as a familiar body sank onto the bench next to her.
A very familiar body, one she’d come to know almost as well as her own.
“I’m a fan of the honey ginger. Something about that honey that melts right on the tongue.
” His voice lowered at her ear. “Reminds me of something else I love to eat.”
Her face flaming, Penny glanced behind her, where RJ was presenting his treats to his mother, Ruth, and Mallory.
Closer to the lake, Candace, Isaiah, and Mimi held court in lawn chairs, watching with smiles as Quinn used a clothes hanger to blow giant bubbles with Winter and two more kids from the rink.
Luckily, none of them were paying the slightest attention to her.
She knocked Zander’s knee under the table. “Do not dirty-talk me at a family-friendly picnic.”
“Me?” He pressed an offended hand to his chest, right over the tight pink T-shirt he’d worn to torment her.
Their real, if temporary, relationship was under wraps from Winter, so they had a strict no-touching rule when he was around.
One Zander loved tempting Penny to break. “I’m only talking about food, Penny.”
Grumbling, she took hold of her plate and scooched away from him. “You’re a very bad man.”
He laughed and slid down the bench after her. “Yes, but you like it so much. Especially this morning in the shower.” His grin was wicked. “Betcha never did that with Henry, huh?”
And now her face was surely the color of the rhubarb pie, because that had been getting on her knees and pushing her breasts between her hands to…
When Penny fanned herself with a napkin, Zander chuckled triumphantly. “Yeah, I thought so.”
Before she could douse Zander’s head with lemonade, RJ saved them both, returning to load up another plate.
“Okay, okay.” He arranged everything just so, then made a cookie and a scone trade spots.
“This is going well, right? People are gonna like the food.” He put down the plate and wiped his hands along his track pants. “What if they don’t like the food?”
“Bro, they will love the food.” Zander offered up a fist bump across the table, which seemed to soothe RJ immediately. “That rhubarb pie is ridiculous.”
Zander and RJ had regular meetings about RJ’s budding business, and sometimes Penny sat in to taste test while working on her own projects.
She loved being in the background, watching the balance between Zander’s experience and RJ’s excited-puppy instincts.
When Zander suggested that RJ pick some items to take around to local cafés and bakeries, RJ’d panicked about which treats were fit for the job.
Thus the Fourth of July picnic turned taste-testing party.
“Kinda cool having the whole gang together, huh?” RJ nodded to everyone enjoying the July day as the lake glistened just down the field. Penny’s family had spent many Mondays there in her childhood, taking a few hours’ rest after a weekend of markets. She hadn’t been back in a long time.
“Winter seems to be getting along well with those kids,” Zander noted, watching them laughing and jumping through Quinn’s giant bubble rings. “Thanks for bringing them along.”
“Of course. He’s doing great in the clinic, and these jokers have all connected. Non-jocks tend to find each other in jock-dominated environments.” He winked. “Ask how I know.”
Later, everyone would spread blankets near the bank as people in their summer homes celebrated the Fourth of July from their docks, setting off fireworks that would fill both the sky and the mirrored surface of the lake below.
Not that Penny intended to see any of it.
Her plan had been to come for the tasting and quietly slip back to work.
All her time spent with Zander—festival planning and otherwise—had farm chores piling up.
And she needed to run all the numbers again—her latest market sales along with Zander’s forecasting of festival proceeds—to assess whether she had a chance of avoiding foreclosure.
But when Zander begged her to stay and relax—adding to the chorus from her mom and Mimi—what could Penny say? She was now committed to lying to all three of them about the stakes of this summer, and her guilt for the omission weighed on her as heavily as the loan itself.
So she’d acquiesced, and now—in the sun, surrounded by RJ’s pastries, Zander’s familiar warmth next to her, and the beautiful web of their families around them—she couldn’t regret it.
With Zander’s help gathering permits and rustling up extra vendors, the Honey Festival was coming together well.
He’d even developed record-keeping systems that would save her time for years to come.
Assuming it would all be enough, and that there were years to come.
A loud, very obvious clearing of a throat announced Mimi’s presence.
She wore an old button-down and jeans, with a Finger Lakes Wine Tour hat snagged from the Becker Farms lost and found last fall perched on her head.
Penny’s grandmother had been lively today, cracking up Mallory’s parents with stories about the old days in Sullivan’s Glen, half of which were likely fabricated.
“RJ, honey, I’ve been sitting here waiting for my cookies for half a century. Is this a taste-testing party or a gabfest?”
“Sorry, Mimi.” RJ fluttered his thick eyelashes at her, a trick that had been working for him coming on three decades. “Here, this plate is special made for you.”
Mimi inserted herself between Penny and Zander, then tore off one corner of a blueberry scone and tossed it in her mouth. “Ooh boy.” Her eyes closed as she smacked her lips. “Flipping frogs, kiddo. This is amazing. This one help you?” She elbowed Zander, shooting him her biggest smile.
“Um, no, ma’am,” Zander answered. “It was all him.”
Mimi shook her head ruefully. “Zander, I told you no ma’aming me. Makes me feel too old. It’s Cynthia or Mimi to you.”
Zander’s fingers tapped along the table.
For someone who joked about being a bad boy, he turned into mush in front of Penny’s mom and grandmother.
It had taken them all of two days to realize something was happening between him and Penny, and he’d been promptly invited to dinner, where he’d spent most of the time complimenting Ruth’s rudimentary cooking before insisting on doing all the cleanup.
In other words, he’d been a hit.
“Yes, okay,” he said now. “Um, Mimi?”
“That’s more like it.” Mimi shot him another smile, then narrowed her eyes. “It’s shocking sometimes, how much you look like him. Especially that gorgeous hair of yours.”
Zander sent a hand through his hair. “Who, exactly?”
“Your grandfather, honey. You know he was in that house when I first came to town, don’t you?
His parents were still there at the time, but they retired soon after to a home somewhere or other.
Once they left and Nikolai was alone in that house, oh boy!
” She slapped the table. “Women came for miles, I swear to the goddess. Hoping for a touch of that silky hair.”
“Mimi!” Penny chided. She kept her tone playful but watched Zander’s reaction. Though they’d been together as much as possible these past two weeks, Zander had still barely talked about his grandfather.
She knew that reminders of him existed around the house, and Penny found them herself from time to time. A few nights before, she’d asked Zander if he had any wineglasses. “Second cabinet over,” he’d called from his spot at the stove as he cooked a Bolognese.
She’d pulled out two stemmed glasses and then spotted it in the back of the cabinet—a green glass, stout and heavy, with decorative edges. Soon it was in her hand, held to the sunlight coming through the window, casting green shadows around the kitchen.
“It was his,” Zander had said, gaze shifting between the shimmers of green. “He’d sit in the evenings and play solitaire and drink ouzo. One drink a night, never a drop more. He told me he’d know if I ever snuck it out of the bottle. I never bothered trying.”
Then Zander returned to cooking, and Penny had placed the glass back in the cabinet, carefully stowed like most of his memories.
Now, his face was open, curious. “I didn’t know he had women fighting over him.”
“Not after Elsie showed up, mind you.” Mimi shook her head and looked into the distance, where sun flashed on the lake. “From what I understand, they met at the fire department spaghetti dinner. I believe he was smitten.”
“Did you—” Zander swallowed, then continued. “Did you know my mom?”