On Any Given Sundae Read Free

ice-cream-window part of the counter three times in
rapid succession. “He said everything would be explained when I got
up here.” He turned toward her. “Guess you were elected to supply
the details.”
    If she’d been capable of it, she would’ve
laughed. Oh, yeah. Now that was a first. One for the record books.
Elizabeth Daniels: Verbal Disseminator of Information. Hee-hee.
Ha-ha.
    “S-Sorry,” she said.
    He paused. “I didn’t mean it like that. I’m
just…” But words must have defied him, too, because he left the
sentence uncompleted.
    A jangling of bells broke the silence.
    “Howdy, folks,” the chatty old florist from
down the block said. “Hey, Pauly, Siegfried,” he called. “Need to
get me a double scoop of Cherry-Almond S—” He stopped mid-speech
and surveyed Rob from the top of his dark Italian head right down
to his pricey black-and-white Nikes. “Holy Hydrangea. Is that
really Roberto Gabinarri standing in front of me?”
    Rob grinned but a look of something other
than gratification (wariness, perhaps?) slid over his face like a
well-formed mask. “Good to see you again, sir. You’re looking fit
as ever.”
    The gentleman shook his head as if
disbelieving the sight. “Been blazing a hot trail through Chicago,
I hear. But, we’ve all missed you in Wilmington Bay, son. Does your
uncle know you’re back?” He didn’t wait for Rob to answer. “Pauly!
Siegfried!” He raised his palms. “Where are they?”
    She watched Rob inhale several slow breaths.
She could almost see him selecting his words with precision, the
way a pastry chef might chose just the right filling for a pie.
    “They’re taking a much-deserved vacation,” he
said, nodding sagely at the older gentleman and motioning him
closer as if letting him in on a deep family secret. “And we
couldn’t let them close the shop now, could we? During June?”
    The florist’s eyes grew large. “Oh, no.”
    “Of course not. Especially since their best
customers were counting on them.” Rob winked at the man and grabbed
an ice cream scoop. “This cone’s on the house,” he said, digging
into the tub of Cherry-Almond Swirl and piling the sweet concoction
in massive, if inexpert, blobs atop a sugar cone. “Uncle Pauly’s
orders.”
    So Rob was going to start bribing and
spin-doctoring, was he? Fine. She’d play along. In fact, she had to
hand it to him. Considering the look of bliss on the talkative
florist’s face, the gossip he’d inevitably spread about them could
only be in their favor. She clamped her mouth shut and did her part
by passing the man a paper napkin and shooting him a closed-lipped
smile.
    “Why, thank you, dearie,” the florist said to
her. “Gotta get back to talking to my geraniums and begonias before
they start complaining.” He licked his cone and twinkled his
delight at her with his eyes.
    She waved him off without uttering a sound, a
trick she’d perfected through years of social avoidance, then she
grabbed her notebook and ripped out the page she’d been working on.
She handed it to Rob.
    “What’s this?” he said, slumping against the
counter.
    With her pen, she pointed to the heading
she’d written in block letters.
    “A schedule? For what? The shop?” He stared
at her as if this were the most foreign of concepts.
    She nodded.
    “For us? To divide up the opening and closing
times?”
    Good. He could read. She nodded again.
    “But who’s going to work the shifts in
between? Last time I talked with Uncle Pauly, he said he and
Siegfried were doing most of the serving themselves. Said they
didn’t trust many people and they’d only hire out part-time helpers
during really busy times or when one of them was sick.”
    She knew this, which was why she’d have to
rely more heavily on Jacques, and why she’d called both Gretchen
and Nick and told them they absolutely had to come over
tomorrow to help her with this. She was desperate.
    “M-M-My fr-friends will be w-working