Chapter Nineteen
“I have a surprise for you,” I told Mack on Friday when he called. It was mid-September and the weeks since we’d been in the Hamptons had passed in a flurry of work and seeing one another.
First, Mack went back to Paris and London, before heading to China to check on a packaging plant. The scope of his business was enormous, and I was beginning to understand how hard he worked to get where he was today.
I did take on two new customers, finding myself motivated to work harder and smarter—like the man I was falling for.
“Oh, yeah? Are you taking up golf? That would be an amazing surprise…”
He’d missed a couple of golf gatherings due to being with me, and had taken to teasing me over my lack of playing.
“Sure, I’ve been secretly practicing while you were away…” I giggled.
“I’m not really a surprise kind of guy. I like to know what I’m walking into,” Mack responded, knowing I’d been joking.
When I’d called Corey to double-check on Mack’s availability, he’d said as much— “He’s not going to love a surprise, Frankie, babe,” were his exact words. “I almost got fired a few times for trying to pull one over on the guy.”
“I’m willing to risk it,” I’d told him. “I’m persuasive, you know?”
Now I reassured Mack.
“You will like this, I’m pretty sure. It’s a simple surprise.”
“Does it involve you?”
“Yes…” I couldn’t help the laugh escaping me. Mack had a way of making everything feel easy and fun, as if I were young-ish again.
“I have to swing by the office and head out to Westchester. I want to see the remodel on the store. They’ve added a few new tester areas in the front since the vandalism, and I haven’t seen the layout. Dinner later? And you can surprise away?”
That was what I was hoping he’d say. “Okay, how about at my place? I have to see one client for a French cuff emergency and then I can head home and cook. Might be nice to eat something decent?”
“Are you sure? I don’t mind going out…”
Things I’d learned about Mack over the last month: he didn’t like to make extra work for others; he’d rather spend money on getting something done than ask someone a favor; and he was allergic to leaning on anyone for support. Basically, he’d been emotionally abandoned by his mother, and convinced himself it was best not to be reliant on anyone.
There was no French cuff emergency; I was already in my kitchen with my own sleeves rolled up.
Mack and I had eaten out so many times, but I wanted to do something a bit different to mark this day. Despite going out often, Mack liked his space. He’d come to kickboxing with me two more times—requesting our own corner, reserving several extra spots to allow for the privacy. I kept wanting to settle into a more regular home-based routine, but Mack clearly tried to be a fancy-pants. Well, not this weekend, he wasn’t.
“I’m sure,” I told him despite being slightly worried later when I opened the door, wearing a party hat and a bright pink apron over my long sleeve T-shirt and jeans, in bare feet and minimal makeup.
With an eyebrow raised, Mack entered my place. He seemed to be looking for someone else.
“Is anyone here?” he asked, either reading my mind or being overly panicked.
“No, who would be here?”
“No one. Never mind. Have you been stalking me again?” He growled the question while half smiling.
I felt a small grin spread over my face. “Maybe a tiny bit of internet searching. Fact-finding, you know?”
Mack circled me, gathering me close, pulling me into his chest and kissing the top of my head. I heard him breathe me in before he spoke. “Hello, Frances. I missed you…until this very moment when I realized you were up to something naughty.”
“I knew it!” I taunted, not moving from his arms.
“But the thing is, I don’t do birthday parties…” His breath tickled the top of my head as he spoke.
Slipping out of his embrace, I stood with a hand on my hip. “This year you do, Mackenzie Miller.” I watched his mouth quirk and knew something sinister was going to come out.
“I also don’t do Mackenzie. I think I’ve mentioned this before.”
“Okay, sir. No full name, and a private birthday celebration, not a party.”
“Do I get to do whatever I want with you?”
“We will see if you behave.”
He strode over to the window and noted, “It’s starting to rain. And since we’re stuck inside, I can think of some things I’d like to do… Things I want to do very badly.”
“I bet,” I said while working my way back over to him. Since the night in the pool, this was our way. We teased, poked, prodded, and let our actions do the talking. “First, we’ll celebrate your birthday. Which, according to the internet, is today. Lucky forty-seven…and then we’ll eat cake before we do all the things you want.”
“Is that so? All of them?”
I nodded.
“You don’t even know what they are.”
“That’s the thing. When it comes to you, I don’t care.” Clamping my mouth shut, I couldn’t believe the brazenness spilling from my lips.
Mack didn’t seem to mind. He pulled me in for a brutal kiss, giving me all he had, slipping the hat off my head and running his fingers through my hair. He held the strands in the back and kept me steady while his lips crushed into mine.
When he broke free, he whispered, “Thank you. It’s been a long while since I did anything more than grab a scotch and a cigar with my friends.”
“No cigars here, but I have some other lucky surprises,” I mentioned while walking to the open kitchen area.
“Is that so?”
Nodding, I said, “I do have mishy-mashy soup.”
A veil of sadness washed over his face.
Startled, I asked, “What? I called Connie, and she told me the recipe. I thought it would be fun to replicate one of Milly’s recipes for you.”
Turning, Mack spoke to the window. “She used to make the soup for me. All the time. I never knew its origin or that she made it for Jimmy until I met you and read the letters. Now it feels strange, like it was their thing, not ours.”
“Maybe that’s the point. It was Milly’s way of bridging the gap between you and Paps.”
Facing me, he walked toward the kitchen. “Thank you, again.” He spoke softly. “Not forgetting her cooking, specifically mishy-mashy soup, was one of the tasks in her letter to me. And I’ve neglected the delicacy for a moment. But here you are—my Feisty Frankie—not letting me forget a thing.” He put his arm around me, his hand at the small of my back and whispered, “Frances, I’m so lucky to have met you. But my birthday? Really?”
Needing a breather from the serious moment, I joked, “Well, taste the soup first before you make proclamations. I didn’t tell anyone, if that matters to you.”
“It’s been a long time since anyone cared about the day, that’s all. Milly always did.” He paced while speaking, presumably not wanting to ruin the occasion. “I had a girlfriend in college who was going to fix me and all my issues…and then keep me.”
“You had a girlfriend? The self-proclaimed commitment-phobe? Scandalous!” I feigned shock, clutching my imaginary pearls.
“I did, but in terms of importance she’s not that high up. We were young, she was disillusioned, and well, that’s a story for another time. On this very day in prehistoric times, she blabbed about my birthday to the whole football team and planned a surprise party for me after a huge home game. I didn’t want any part of it. The worst was she’d known I’d invited my mom to the game and witnessed her no-show performance, and still wanted me to carry on as if nothing happened.”
I approached him slowly, running my hands up his chest, placing a small kiss above his heart. I wanted to repair what had been done to him more than my next breath. “I didn’t invite anyone or blab about your birthday, so we’re in the clear.”
I was desperate to be the positive energy he needed. And yet here we stood, neither of us able to make the necessary declarations.
“It’s like you ordered rain for my birthday so we could have soup…and stay in… If the weather was better, we could have gone to the Hamptons.” Instead of initiating any more serious conversation, that was what he said.
“Come on, sit,” I told him, taking the hint, pointing to the counter and stools.
“Drink? I think a scotch goes with soup?”
“Scotch goes with anything.”
I poured Mack his cocktail and a healthy glass of red wine for myself, and we sat and chatted over our drinks. I mentioned my new client being in the restaurant biz, and Mack said, “You’re lucky I’m not the jealous type. All these powerful men, calling you and working with you.”
“Oh, is the birthday boy having a pity party?” I teased.
“A small one…”
“Aw, poor baby.” I leaned in and kissed him as the words floated off my tongue. He tasted smoky, like expensive scotch, and I’d quickly grown to be a fan of the flavor.
“So where’s the soup? I’ll be the one to let you know if it’s any good.”
“Ha. Connie walked me through the process. It’s a lot of steps,” I told Mack. I went over to the stovetop where the soup was in a ginormous pot and lifted the lid, the salty aroma filling the air.
“I remember Milly making it. She took such pride in the whole situation. I always chalked it up to her love of home cooking, but there seems to be more to the recipe now.”
“There certainly is.” I ladled the soup into bowls, seeing all the ingredients I’d lovingly added, and couldn’t help the warm feeling spreading in my chest.
Lifting my gaze, I caught Mack’s hair looking perfectly messed, and a boyish grin on his face, contradicted by the small lines at the corner of his eyes. And the feeling inside me spiked.
I hadn’t known how this would go when I vaguely remembered Mack’s birthday. I’d checked Google and sure enough I was right, wondering why he hadn’t mentioned it. Then I’d thought about how abandoned he’d felt as a child and I knew I had to do something special. A fancy dinner out didn’t seem like the answer. That was when I’d decided on an ode to home cooking and Milly.
As we carried our dishes back to the bar, I prayed my hunch was right.
Before taking a bite, Mack stopped and looked at me. “This is a pretty good birthday. One Milly would have approved of. Homemade food, a drink at home with someone I care for… Wait, is there cake? Milly had a huge sweet tooth.”
“You’ll have to wait and see,” I teased. Of course there was cake, but in the moment, I wanted to keep this man guessing—it was turning out to be fun.
Mack waggled his eyebrows at me and went to take a spoonful of his soup. I watched him ladle a bite with spinach and a dumpling into his mouth with curiosity.
“Mmmm…tastes like Milly’s.” He glowed like a kid on Christmas morning.
I felt myself grinning while taking a bite myself.
“Tell me what Connie said,” Mack asked with his focus on me.
“She says happy birthday.”
“I thought you didn’t tell anyone?”
“Just Connie. She doesn’t count. I’m sure she knew from Milly. Okay, and my friend, Rachel. I can’t lie, but Rachel also doesn’t count.”
He took another spoonful, this one including a bite of meatball. “Later I want to hear about this Rachel, but first get on with Connie.”
“Bossy?”
“It’s my birthday, I can boss if I want to—”
I cut Mack off. This version of him was too cute and corny, and was giving me heart palpitations over my growing feelings for the man. “Connie said that she and your grandma would play around in the kitchen after school. She laughed when she told me what she referred to as their little secret—Rosie would try things she wasn’t allowed to eat at home. She even ate a ham sandwich one time.”
“What?”
“Yep, a ham sandwich. Connie told me. Anyway, she said they liked to mix and match their recipes and they came up with mishy-mashy soup together. It was basically chicken and dumplings—”
“Matzo balls,” Mack interrupted. “We call them matzo balls.”
“They’re hard to make, I’ll tell you that much. Rachel, who is Jewish, said she hates making them. Hers always come out too hard.”
“I wouldn’t know…never tried making them.”
“Well, they are difficult. You start the soup with a whole chicken, skimming the scum—Connie’s word, not mine—off the top as it boils, before adding a celery stalk, half an onion, and chopped carrots. While that’s going you make meatballs…since it’s a combination matzo ball and wedding soup. You also assemble the matzo ball mixture and refrigerate it for twenty minutes or so before tossing half a bouillon cube into the broth. Then you start rolling and adding the matzo balls and drop in the meatballs after it boils. Finally, it simmers for a long time, lid ajar. Oh! The spinach goes in last. You add that when you turn the heat down. Whew…that’s a lot to explain.”
Mack set his spoon down and kissed my cheek. “Thank you. It all sounds like a foreign language to me, but it’s very good and I’m loving every bite. I can see why Jimmy fell for my grandma.”
“Would have been easier if he fell for Connie,” I said.
“But he didn’t. The heart falls for who the heart wants. There must be some saying like that.”
Much later, after we ate and were hanging out, I told Mack about Rachel and how she’d become like a sister. We talked some more about my parents and their siding with Jeremy, and of course I asked Mack what he used to do on his birthdays.
“I can tell you, but then I might have to kill you…”
“I can keep a secret.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” he teased before going somber. His voice soft, still deep, he spoke. “It’s not my favorite day. My mom left on my birthday. That was the actual day she chose. Left me a card and a present, said she’d be back soon, and never returned. Milly tried to make up for it with birthday pool parties and sleepovers. Nothing really worked. Then there was the college catastrophe. Needless to say, that was when I banned girlfriends.”
My hand wove its way into his fingers and my thumb caressed his. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” I mentally scolded myself for asking.
“About my one serious relationship? It’s so far in the rearview. And as for my mom, how could you know? I try to keep any discussion of her out of the spotlight. She knows where I am and how successful I’ve been, and I’m not looking to invite her in to any more details. I don’t want her in my life now. She never was a part of it when I needed her, so opening up the subject would be bad for all those involved.”
“Well, I hope today was okay. I wanted to incorporate some piece of Milly.”
“It’s my new favorite way to celebrate.”
Mine too, I thought but worried if this type of happiness was sustainable…
In the past, it hadn’t been.