Only for You Read online

  By Tuesday night’s council meeting he seemed all right though, albeit a little gruff with Fuzzy. He blamed him for leaking the photo, but anyone could have found the newspaper clipping in the archives at the library.

  Harlow nodded and pursed her lips. “If you say so. Save me a couple of cookies for tomorrow.” She went out to the front to tidy up before closing time.

  When the door swung shut, Emily returned to her stash of spices, in search of cinnamon. Tim had brought up the topic of another date on Saturday during one of the movie’s many commercial breaks. When he’d asked her to choose a time and place, she’d blanked. They were always doing the same things, and she wanted to show him another side of her.

  When she blurted out Tesoro, the loaded nacho chip he was about to shovel into his mouth had come to a halt, inches away from his lips. Inviting him into her kitchen to bake a test batch of cookies for the Maple Magic Festival clearly caught him off guard. No doubt he’d assumed she’d choose a restaurant, they’d split a bottle of wine, and that would be that.

  Boring.

  They could have a date anywhere and still publicize it for social media purposes. Besides, she’d feel grounded in her kitchen, and there would be no eyes watching, so she could gauge his level of interest. Somehow it felt as though she had the upper hand, scheduling the date on her own turf.

  Then again Tim had come close to kissing her again Saturday morning on her own turf, when no one was even around, so damned if she knew what was going on in his head.

  She found the cinnamon and placed it on the counter with the rest of the ingredients. When her phone vibrated, she checked the message. Another name she didn’t recognize. She’d lost count of the messages she’d gotten from strangers since Tim posted the picture of them on Saturday morning. They’d hoped that once a couple of new episodes had aired, people would forget about him, but apparently Melissa and Dak had gotten into a big argument in the most recent episode, which was like adding oxygen to Tim’s fire.

  Emily swiped to read the message, eyes skimming until she got to the end. Get out of his way so he can go on the show.

  Please. Did these people have no lives at all? She deleted the message and blocked the sender, as she had with the previous ones, before tossing her phone into her purse. Tim was doing the same, though his messages were much more frequent.

  Just before six, Tim knocked at the back door, and she beckoned him in.

  “Hey.” He stood a bottle of red wine on the counter. “I went to the front door first, but Harlow was mopping the floor. I didn’t want to track my boots over it. Do you want dinner? I can run down the street and grab whatever you feel like.”

  “I’ve been craving butter chicken all day. I thought maybe we could pick it up after we finish up here and just take it upstairs.”

  “Sounds perfect.” Tim shrugged out of his jacket and hung it up before twisting the cap off the bottle. “Wine?”

  “Sure, hit me up, Fraser. I don’t have wineglasses here, but there are mugs in the middle cabinet. Just don’t get tipsy. I can’t carry you upstairs at the end of our date.”

  Tim poured two glasses and passed one to Emily. Before he took a drink, he held his mug out for her to tap. “So, chef, tell me about these cookies we’re going to make.”

  Emily tied her pink apron around her waist. “They’re a chewy maple cookie with a maple glaze drizzled on top. If they turn out the way I hope, I’ll enlist your help when I make a ton of them for giveaways with my Maple Magic Festival promo coupon.”

  “If they taste half as good as they sound, count me in. I’m at your mercy here. What can I do to help? Show me the ropes.”

  She tossed a black apron at him. “The recipe is up on my tablet. You can start by measuring out the brown sugar. Everything we need is on the counter.”

  “I think I can handle that.” He rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt, looped the apron over his head, and tied it around his waist. Then he went to the sink and washed his hands.

  Points.

  They worked shoulder to shoulder, measuring, pouring, and stirring as they chatted over the sound of her pink KitchenAid mixer.

  He leaned in to be heard over the noise and spoke through a cloud of flour that puffed out of the mixer. “This already smells amazing.” Tim had a sweet tooth that rivaled her own. It was one of the things she loved about him.

  “So do you.”

  “What was that?” He yelled over the whirl of the mixer.

  God, had she just said that out loud? “Nothing,” she replied with an innocent shake of her head. She turned off the mixer and transferred the bowl to the fridge. “Now we chill.”

  He grabbed a dishcloth and wiped the dusting of flour off the stainless steel counter. “Why does it have to chill? Teach me, o, wise one.”

  Emily set a timer. “We chill the dough to make it a little stiffer for rolling into balls.”

  When he choked on his coffee, she started laughing. “What’re you, fourteen?” She ran hot soapy water in the sink and added the dirty dishes to soak.

  Tim pulled a stool up to the counter and inspected the bottle of syrup before unscrewing the cap. His eyes fluttered when he inhaled. “Mmm. Maple sure brings back memories.”

  Emily snuck a peek in his direction while drying her hands on a tea towel. “Did your mom bake a lot when you were a kid?”

  “She did. Still does, actually.” He set the bottle aside. “But the smell of the cookie dough—the maple, more accurately—takes me back to when our family used to go into the woods behind the house and tap trees. It was this thing my dad loved doing with us on the rare occasions he wasn’t deployed.”

  Pulling up a stool, Emily lowered down next to him and sipped her wine. “Did you make your own syrup?”

  “We did.” He spun his stool to face her. “We would go back pretty often and check if the sap was running, and once it was, we’d spend a day out in our cabin in the woods, boiling it down. Mom would bring a pot of chili or some kind of soup, and we’d have tea and banana bread. It would take all day for it to boil down to syrup, and we’d only end up with about a cup of it by the end of the day.”

  Glancing toward the window, where lampposts illuminated the parking lot, he laughed. “We’d usually have a big pancake breakfast the next day and use up the whole thing. We didn’t have a lot of chances to do normal family activities, so it was really nice.”

  Tim barely ever talked about his family life when he was a kid. “That’s a really great memory.”

  He blinked a couple of times and met her gaze with a smile. “Yeah, it is. I don’t know that I’ve ever told that story to anyone.”

  A little rush of warmth spread through her chest.

  Tim went back to his wine. “It’s amazing how a smell can take you right back to a time and place, isn’t it?”

  “Definitely. I burned some chocolate recently, and it transported me back to when Nana first taught me how to use a double boiler. You can’t rush it, Emmy, she said, and that was exactly what I did. I was hurrying to get through my to-do list. I could practically see her standing there with her hands on her hips, giving me that disapproving stink eye.”

  Tim stacked the spice jars into a tower on the counter. “Your nana’s a pretty cool lady. She got you into baking?”

  “She did.” Emily’s eyes scanned the ingredients on the counter. “She taught me how to do all of this. She and my mom, I guess. But Mom mostly taught me the practical things—bookkeeping and time management. Nana taught me the fun, creative stuff, which was what I fell in love with. That’s why I decided to embrace it and go back to school to concentrate on pastry arts six years after my original culinary diploma.”

  He nodded, rubbing his fingers over his chin. “Good for you for making that choice. You got some experience working for someone else for a while too, right?”

  “Donna Poirot.” Just saying the name made Emily’s shoulders stiffen. She took another gulp of coffee. “She’s an unbelievable pastry che
f. I learned so much working for her.” She paused before saying more.

  “I’m sensing a but in there,” he prompted, eyes creasing in the corners as he leaned his chin into the palm of his hand.

  “She was a…strong personality. You never knew what you were going to get with her, you know? One day she was your best friend in the world—she would do anything for you—and the next, she was having a meltdown over grades of vanilla beans and calling everyone down to the lowest.” She sighed, and matched his pose. “Watching her run her business was what made me realize I was ready to run my own.”

  Tim swiveled on the stool abruptly, and the tower of spice jars wobbled and fell, jars rolling in every direction. “Shit!” They both dove for them.

  Emily was quicker, but her arms didn’t stretch as far across the counter. Tim came in behind her, pelvis colliding with her backside. Between the two of them, they managed to reach all the jars before they crashed to the floor.

  “Sorry,” Tim mumbled without moving.

  I’m not. “It’s okay.” She glanced over her shoulder at him just as he backed up a step and moved over to help stand the jars up.

  “I need to put them away anyway,” she said, thankful to have something to do with herself. She stepped onto the stool she used to reach into the higher cupboards.

  Tim passed her the jars, one at a time. His gaze flickered to the sketches of the elaborate maple-inspired cake she’d designed with a window display in mind. “Now that is incredible.”

  She’d forgotten she’d stuck it up on the fridge. “It’s the idea I was telling you about for the festival. I’ve never really done anything quite like it, so I’m thinking it’s going to take some trial and error to figure out how to do the leaves.”

  He got up to take a closer look. “I have complete faith that you’ll troubleshoot the problems and figure out exactly how to pull it off. You’ve got a talent for this—that’s something that’s just in you, you know?”

  Tears pierced the backs of her eyes, but she held them back. Besides her family and Leyna, she wasn’t used to people being so supportive. His blue eyes were so intense she could almost drown in them. “I think we’ve all got certain talents bred in us, for sure. Like sailing for you, probably.”

  Tim wandered to the window and gazed toward Crayola Row. He spoke without turning around. “Yeah, I mean, sailing is the most comforting thing in the world to me. As weird as it sounds, it’s when I feel like I’m most in touch with my soul. I actually really miss it in the off-season.”

  She moved toward the window, too. “That doesn’t sound weird at all. And it probably makes you feel close to your dad.” She immediately wished she hadn’t said that. Dumb. He never talked about that stuff. He was going to get all weird now.

  “Totally,” he agreed, gaze still fixed out the window.

  When he kept talking, she relaxed her shoulders and let out a slow breath.

  “We used to sail together as a family, but a lot of times it’d just be my dad and me. Those are the trips I remember most, because he was always teaching me. He’d forget about pushing the Navy and just enjoy himself. We’d talk about the boat business we’d have some day and the sailboat we’d restore, which I’ve yet to do.”

  He turned now and glanced at her, and something told her he carried some guilt over that detail. “He’d be super proud of what you’ve accomplished.”

  Tim’s lips pulled downward. “I don’t know. I mean, he wanted me to stay in the Navy, no question. It was the topic of all our arguments those last few years. But the Navy was all for him, because he had this vision of me following in his footsteps. Junior year of high school, the application to the Naval Academy began. Everything I did—the sports, class president, it was all for that end goal.”

  She drew her brows in. “So you never wanted the Navy life at all?”

  He bit his lip and took a sidelong glance at her. “No, I wanted it. We were raised with an immense respect for it. Growing up, Dad drilled into me the importance of serving our country. I wanted to be a captain just like he was at the time. Even my sister married a well-connected officer—the son of an old friend of Dad’s.

  “I guess once I got a taste of it all, I discovered pretty quickly that I didn’t want to be a lifer, you know? I felt like I didn’t fit the Navy mold, the structure. Between the two years I spent preparing to apply to the academy, four years there, and ten years of service, half my life had been driven by the Navy, and I was only thirty-two years old. I wanted something else.” His tone softened. “I wanted freedom.”

  Emily wasn’t sure what to say. He’d never offered up this much of himself before.

  Tim took a seat again and leaned his elbows into the counter. “Dad wouldn’t hear of me resigning my commission. I was in the zone for a promotion, and he wanted me to stick it out, rank up, but it was so much politics. I couldn’t stand it, and it only gets worse the higher you climb the ranks. We’d just argued about it again the morning of his heart attack.”

  Emily sucked in a breath and lowered down beside him. “I never knew that,” she whispered.

  “Yeah, well, pretty much every conversation we were having at that time revolved around my choices. Then we lost him so suddenly, and I saw how quickly life could be pulled out from under you. It made me question a lot of things, you know? Reevaluate some of the choices I’d made along the way. It was time to move on, and maybe I just didn’t have the staying power to commit long term. I don’t regret my time in the Navy at all. It’s a part of who I am. But I realized the time had come to carve my own path. Live the life I wanted to live. A little like you deciding to change your focus to pastries.”

  They had more in common than she realized. “You said the other day that you don’t know if he’d be proud of you. I really believe he would be, Tim.”

  He didn’t respond for a minute. Then he raked his hand through his hair. “Thanks. But you didn’t know my dad. He preached the Navy my whole life. Like it was the only thing that mattered. I’m sure he’d be disappointed that I didn’t stick it out.”

  “But you fulfilled the vision he’d had for the two of you to start the boat business. And now look at you with the expansion.” Before she could even process what she was doing, her hand covered his on the counter. Since yanking it away would spoil the moment, she left it there, curious how he’d react.

  He looked at their hands, but didn’t pull away. “That means a lot to me.”

  The conversation made her circle back to her own accomplishments.

  “Now you’ve got your little worry line between your brows.” Tim kicked her playfully. “What’s on your mind?”

  His playful gesture lightened the mood. “I was just thinking that I have no idea if my dad is proud of me or not. After the divorce, he started keeping his opinions to himself. I don’t mean he was completely absent,” she added with a wave of her hand, “but I guess since he came and went a lot, maybe he never felt it was his place to try to offer direction. Then when he remarried, he became focused on his new wife and her two daughters. I don’t necessarily blame him for that.”

  Tim shifted on the stool, his knee brushing hers, sending a wonderful little pull through her belly.

  “Whenever my dad went away for work, he expected me to assume the role of the man of the house. It must have been hard on you and your mom not having him around. Not that women need a man or anything,” he quickly added. “Just that having another member of the team eases the pressure.”

  She shrugged. “I mean, even when they were still together, he traveled a lot for work. We were used to being on our own. Then when my grandfather passed away and we moved in with Nana, the three of us just kind of found our way. The O’Holland Girls, my dad called us, because Nana’s an O’Hara, I’m a Holland, and Mom hyphenated.”

  “Strong women,” he said, his tone soft.

  The timer went off, and Emily pulled her hand away and pushed off the stool. “Our balls are ready to roll.”

 
As soon as the words trickled out she met his gaze and grinned.

  She showed him how big to roll them and demonstrated how to coat them in the cinnamon-sugar mixture.

  “So, they’re not sweet enough with the maple and brown sugar and everything else, and we’re now rolling them in more sugar?” he teased.

  “Sure, why not?”

  “I like the way you think.” He gave it a try, placing one on the cookie sheet.

  “Oh, one more thing,” she added, repositioning it. “They’re going to flatten as they cook, so we can’t crowd them. They need lots of space.”

  “Nobody likes to crowd their balls.” A throaty laugh bellowed out. “I’m sorry, I’ll stop.”

  “You’re such a child.” Amused, she elbowed him and continued rolling. Every time his sleeve brushed against her bare arm it sent a glorious little shiver through her.

  When the cookies came out of the oven, Emily placed them on a wire rack to cool.

  “Now we make the glaze. I may omit this for the promos to save myself a step, but for today, we indulge.”

  Tim rubbed his hands together. “I like it.”

  She mixed the ingredients in a pot, and when she had the right consistency, she transferred the icing to a piping bag. “I think I’ll just drizzle it on them.” She zigzagged glaze across each cookie and stood back, pleased with the outcome.

  Tim looked on the entire time, silent. Finally, when she’d finished the last cookie, he spoke. “They look amazing.”

  “Go ahead,” she offered. “Try one.”

  His brows arched. “Really?”

  “Of course, that’s why we made them. I want your honest opinion.” She tented her fingers together, waiting.

  He picked one up and took a bite. Emily had to force her mouth not to part into a smile when his eyes closed and he gave the sexiest mmmm she’d ever heard in her life. His lashes fluttered open. “That may just be the best thing I’ve ever tasted.”