Recipe for Love Read Free Page B

beside him.
    “You fool! What are you doing?” Gaston demanded, his hat falling off in his aggravated
     attempt to reclaim the card.
    Andi’s daughter, Mia, ran from the doorway of the party room to the barrel and peered
     in. “He made it float into the garbage can!”
    Andi nodded. “Where it should be.”
    Mike stooped down to pick up Gaston’s hat from the floor.
    “Have you no respect?” Gaston barked, his fair face turning red as he narrowed his
     beady gaze on the magician. “Give me back my beret!”
    Mike complied, and Gaston slapped his hat back on his head. A moment later, his eyes
     widened, and taking the hat off again, he looked inside.
    Mia gasped, her mouth transformed into a perfect O .
    Rachel sneaked a quick glance at Mike and let out a laugh. Andi, Kim, and many of
     the others coming from the party room laughed, too. The only one not laughing was
     Gaston—maybe because his head was covered in the remains of a smashed chocolate cupcake
     with coconut cream filling.
    “Who’s the buffoon now?” Mike challenged.
    Gaston Pierre Hollande let out a high-pitched, explosive word, which Rachel assumed
     to be a French curse, and stomped his foot. “Make no mistake,” Gaston declared, his
     tone ten times haughtier than when he’d first walked in, “Hollande’s French Pastry
     Parlor will be number one.”
    The door slammed behind him on his way out, and Andi gestured to the Frenchman as
     he passed outside the front window. “How did a cupcake get into his hat?”
    “Mike swiped it off the counter with his hand behind his back,” Rachel said, smiling.
    “Discovering my secrets?” Mike asked, giving her an amused look. He took out his wallet.
     “How much do I owe you?”
    “You don’t owe us anything,” Rachel told him. “You did us a favor. That man has an
     ego larger than the Astoria−Megler Bridge.”
    “I overheard the way he talked to you, and I didn’t like it,” Mike said, and a muscle
     jumped along the side of his jaw. “My sister dated someone with a similar attitude.
     It didn’t end well.”
    “What happened?”
    “He broke her heart.”
    A string of faces floated through Rachel’s mind. The ones who had managed to get too
     close were the ones who had broken her heart. “Has she met anyone else since?”
    “No.”
    Rachel recalled the boys in grade school who teased her for her freckles and red hair.
     A few years later, after she’d used a myriad of beauty products to change her appearance,
     her high school boyfriend dumped her for someone more popular because she didn’t party
     enough. Then when she went to college and passed herself off as “the party girl,”
     her college sweetheart took her for granted. That’s when she’d initiated the two-date
     limit to keep her relationships fresh and exciting and her heart intact. So far, it
     had worked.
    “Rachel?”
    She snapped out of her revelry, glanced toward the front door, where Andi and Kim
     stood waving goodbye to the party guests, and refocused on the masked magician in
     front of her. “Did you say something?”
    “I asked for your phone number, but you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
    Funny how memories can haunt you, she thought. She cocked her head, relishing the thought of a temporary diversion.
     “You want my phone number?”
    “Of course,” he said, and his mouth twitched into a subtle grin. “Unless you don’t
     want to give it to me.”
    “Depends,” Rachel teased. “Will you call to ask me to be the one you saw in half at
     your next magic show, or will you use it to ask me out?”
    “I’m asking you out now. I only need your phone number to confirm the details.”
    Rachel gave him a big smile, turned toward her friends, and called out, “Andi, Kim,
     where’s a pen?”
    T EN O’CLOCK M ONDAY morning, Rachel sprawled across her quilted patchwork bed, her cell phone to her
     ear, and waited for the coordinator of the Crab, Seafood, and Wine Festival to answer.
    “The