Just Desserts (7 page)

“John, that's an announcement I feel better making in person.”

He nodded. “I understand.” Even though he had told his own children by phone. Their excited shrieks of delight still echoed in her head. “You'll present me as a fait accompli.”

“I shall.” She inhaled a deep breath. “I think it best if I met with Hayley alone when I did so.”

Some of the joy in his gray eyes dimmed. Her heart ached but there was no hope for it. “I would be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed. I had looked forward to taking this first step with you toward building an extended family.”

“And we will do precisely that, John, but first there's something I need to tell my daughter.”

“About us?”

“There is that.”

His eyes saddened. “About your health.”

She leaned across the table and took his hand in hers. “No,” she said with all the love in her heart, “about her father.”

East Hampton

Everyone said Tommy Stiles gave great interviews. He could be funny, irreverent, sincere, bawdy, and painfully honest in a way that made for juicy sound bites and lots of fun for the reporter sitting opposite him.

But not today.

“Cut!” Angela Deming gestured toward her television crew with a sharp wave of her hand. “Take five, guys.”

“There's a load of stuff in the kitchen,” Tommy said. “Tell Greta to make whatever you want.”

“If you can't give 'em a good interview, give 'em food,” Angela said as soon as the crew left the room.

“Works for me,” Tommy said.

“What's wrong? I've been lobbing softballs and you're not even managing to hit a single.”

“Maybe I'm in a slump,” he said, struggling with his signature affable grin. “I thought I was hitting doubles at least.”

“No,” Angela said with a rueful smile. “Trust me, not even close to hitting doubles.”

“It's been a long day, Angie. I'm pushing sixty. A single doesn't sound half bad.”

“So what's going on? You should be able to do twenty minutes on your benefit concert in your sleep.”

“What time is it?” he asked. “Nine, ten o'clock? I've been doing this since eleven this morning. I've spoken to a hundred and fourteen reporters and bullshitted my way through eight satellite interviews with morning-show hosts and lunch-hour talking heads. I'm sorry, Angie, but I've got nothing left.”

“Okay, so enough with the benefit.” She considered him across the room. “So when's the wedding?”

His signature smile faltered but he recovered before even a pro like Angie could notice. Every now and then practice really did make perfect. “Sooner the better. Willow's about to start the second trimester so we need to move it forward.”

“Just an old-fashioned kind of guy, Tommy?”

She meant it in a gentle, teasing kind of way but for some reason the words hit him hard.

“I love her. She's carrying my child. We plan to get married.” He leaned forward, dropping all pretense of the affable smile. “Something wrong with that?”

“Coming from anyone else, I'd say it was the biggest con job this side of Milli Vanilli.” She nodded as the crew reclaimed their positions at camera, lighting, and sound. “But it's you, so…” She spread her hands wide in a gesture meant to convey bewildered understanding.

It was the wrong day for bewildered understanding. Right now Finn was down in South Jersey talking to a thirty-eight-year-old single mother who could very well be his firstborn child. So much time wasted…

“When did family become a joke?” he said out loud, as much to himself as to her. “When I was thirteen, a girl showed up at my door. She was maybe twenty or twenty-one, a college student. She was looking for my old man. Turned out she was his first kid by an ex-girlfriend and she wanted to see the son of a bitch who didn't want her in his life.

“I'm fifty-nine years old. I've made some mistakes along the way but mostly I've been damn lucky. The women I loved still love me even if they don't want to live with me. My kids don't have to deal with anger or custody fights or divided loyalties. We're all in this together. In what twisted universe is that a joke?”

Angie's dark eyes were glittering with excitement. Amusement was okay. Laughter was even better. You never wanted a reporter's eyes to glitter with anything even close to excitement.

“Your children keep a relatively low profile as far as rock star offspring are concerned. I know Beryl is a successful jewelry designer, but we don't really know much about the others.” She gave a small gesture toward her crew to start filming again.

She had touched a nerve, a big one. His children were his Achilles' heel. Not fame. Not fortune. Family.

They were each terrific in his or her own way. Maybe it was time to talk about them, to tell them publicly how proud he was.

The bases were loaded, the ball was in the strike zone, and he was going to hit it out of the park one more time.

Rhoda, their eighty-pound rescue dog, was waiting for Hayley and Lizzie at the front door.

The Labrador mix leaped up, put her paws on Hayley's shoulders, and gazed at her with the kind of adoration usually found on Hallmark cards circa 1957.

“I know, I know,” Hayley said, ducking an enthusiastic dog kiss. “You want to go out, don't you, girl?” She grabbed the industrial-strength leash from the peg near the door and hooked it to Rhoda's collar.

“Want me to walk her?” Lizzie, stifling a yawn, asked.

“Not at this hour,” Hayley said. “I'll walk Rhoda. You feed Murray, Ted, and Mary, and make sure the litter boxes are in good shape.” The littermates had been found in a discarded cardboard box behind the bakery three years ago and instantly adopted into the family.

“Ugh.” Lizzie looked less than pleased. “We should get one of those self-cleaning litter boxes like you see on television.”

“Win the lottery and we'll talk,” Hayley said as Rhoda danced around in a state of urgent excitement. “And make sure Mr. G has clean water.”

Mr. G was a thirty-two-year-old Amazon parrot that had once belonged to her late father-in-law. Named after the famous Lou Grant character on
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
, the parrot had the same irascible demeanor and salty vocabulary of both his former owner and his namesake.

“Don't look so put upon, Lizzie. Following an eighty-pound dog with a Ziploc bag isn't fun either.”

Twenty minutes later all of the pets had been tended to, the house was locked up for the night, and Lizzie was racing for the back stairs.

“Lights off by eleven,” Hayley called out as her daughter whizzed by. “Not a second later!”

“I know, I know,” Lizzie tossed over her shoulder. “You say the same thing every night.”

“Because you push it past midnight every night. Tomorrow's a school day. You need your sleep.”

She had to admit there was something painfully ironic about a C+ mother advising her A+ daughter on anything to do with school.

Hayley had gone AWOL more times than she could count and her grades had reflected that. If the sun shone brightly in Cincinnati, she had taken the day off to celebrate. Her daughter actually liked going to school and sought out summer classes.

She swung open the door to the family fridge and found a place for their leftovers and Aunt Fiona's care package amid the Tupperware UFOs.

She started a pot of decaf, then sat down at the kitchen table to sort through the mail. Tonight had been special in so many ways that she hated to see it end. The real estate agents had loved the cake—far more than she herself had loved it, to be honest—and the association had mentioned wanting her to handle two more gigs for them before the month was over.

And, of course, there was the whole Tommy Stiles thing, which by itself was enough to fry her brain cells. She would forget all about it for ten or fifteen minutes and then the whole improbable, deliriously wonderful thing would come back to her and she would be overwhelmed with excitement all over again.

She might never be able to rationalize why a world-class rocker would hire a single mother from South Jersey to bake a cake for him, but she had a signed contract in her hands and the promise of money in the bank by this time tomorrow.

Even a world-class worrier had to admit it was looking good.

But the best thing of all was spending an evening with Lizzie. Away from home, away from the bakery, away from all the distractions that went hand in hand with everyday life, Lizzie had opened up a little about how much she missed her father and that insight had moved Hayley deeply.

You don't miss what you never had.

That was what she had told Lizzie and for Hayley it was true. She had never known what it was like to have a father figure, a man who towered above the rest and made you feel safe and secure. The Michael Goldstein that Hayley knew was terribly flawed, but the Michael that Lizzie loved was the father who made the monsters in the closet disappear and she missed him.

Lizzie had been the reason she had stayed with Michael as long as she had and, strangely enough, Lizzie was the reason she ultimately left. Michael had chosen to live a risky life and sooner or later the danger he thrived on would have crept into their home and threatened their daughter's safety.

How did you explain to a fourteen-year-old who was missing her father that sometimes being alone was the better choice? The gray areas of life were invisible when you were fourteen. Your world was cast in black and white. The people you loved were good and true and would keep you safe from harm. How did you explain to that fourteen-year-old that sometimes the people you loved made terrible, selfish decisions and the only way you could protect yourself was to walk away before it was too late?

She remembered how it felt to be fourteen. Any day now Lizzie would wake up, take a look around her, and discover she was living with a slacker cake-baking mom whose math skills were limited to the number of tablespoons of flour it took to fill a measuring cup and the Great Adolescent Rebellion would begin. They probably wouldn't speak again until Lizzie was old enough to vote.

She was glad she had let herself be talked into stopping for dinner at Olive Garden. Over the years she had grown so good at saying no, at being sensible and responsible and cautious, that sometimes she did it without even thinking.

She stood in the hallway, listening to the faint
click-click
of the keyboard coming from Lizzie's room. That noise was the sound track to their lives. Blogging. E-mailing. Creating websites. Doing whatever else your average wunderkind did.

Maybe Hayley worked her too hard. It was so easy to sit back and let Lizzie take care of the contracts, the billing, the website. Right now she was probably uploading the photos of the cake they had just delivered to the Cumberland County real estate agents.

A great kid, a great job, and now a great chance at hitting the big time.

Now if she could just shake the feeling that there was a giant shoe suspended overhead, waiting to drop.

East Hampton—After Midnight

Tommy was waiting for them on the front porch. Three empty glasses balanced on the railing and a cloud of cigarette smoke hovered over his head in the dark.

“I thought you quit,” Finn said as he climbed the steps.

“I started again.”

“That stuff'll kill you.” Anton, a reformed smoker, waved his arms in the air between them.

“I want to hear everything,” Tommy said as he led them through the sleeping house and into his office.

Taking the bar exam had been easier than answering the man's questions. He wanted to know everything about Hayley. Was she happy? Was she smart? Did she like music? Was she talented? Was she a good mother?

“This is the Hamptons, not Gitmo,” Anton said at one point. “Give us a break, will ya?”

If Finn hadn't been so tired, he would have laughed. “We've been at it almost three hours. There's nothing left to tell you.”

“Is she pretty?”

“Tall and skinny,” Anton said. “One of those big smiles that make you feel good.”

“Long, light brown hair with blond lights,” Finn said. “She wears it in a ponytail.”
She's beautiful, Tommy. Not magazine-cover beautiful like Willow. The kind that lasts.

“There's gotta be more,” Tommy said, drumming the tabletop with his long, bony fingers. “Think harder.”

“We were there ninety minutes, Tom. We didn't exactly exchange life stories.” Finn leaned back in his chair and stifled a yawn. “That's all we got.”

Tommy turned toward Anton, who was nursing his second Red Bull. “Anything he forgot?”

Anton shot a look in Finn's direction. “Did you get her shoe size?”

Finn slapped his forehead with the heel of his right hand. “Damn! Totally forgot.”

“You find a daughter I didn't know I had and you're surprised I have questions?”

Finn downed his third espresso and prayed for a reprieve from the governor. “Think how many questions she'll have when she finds out.” Not exactly what he'd meant to say but he was tired and his internal censor fell asleep over an hour ago.

“I've been thinking about that.” Tommy leaned forward, his blue-green eyes alive with excitement. “Why wait? If we leave now we can get a jump on rush hour and be down in South Jersey before nine.”

“Not going to happen,” Finn said. “Seriously bad idea.”

“Count me out too,” Anton said, pushing away from the table. “I'm going to crash.”

“Come on,” Tommy urged. “We'll split the driving. We're all Jersey boys, right? I haven't had a good diner breakfast in years.”

“Later,” Anton said. “I'm wasted.”

“Don't look at me,” Finn said after Anton closed the back door behind him. “The only place I'm driving is home.”

“So I'll drive,” Tommy said. “You can sleep in the backseat.”

“Not if you're driving, I won't. You haven't driven on a highway since nineteen eighty-seven. Let it go for now, Tom. You have a week. Let's see what we can find out between now and then.”

“You saw her. You talked to her. I know you. You think this is the real thing. What more proof do I need that she's mine?”

“Blood tests, for starters. Corroboration from the mother.”

“There's plenty of time for that. I want to see her with my own eyes.”

“Next week.” He stifled another yawn. “And I'm not exactly crazy about that idea either.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Where do I start?” Finn shot back. “There are legal precedents for handling this type of thing.”

“Is this the friend or the lawyer talking?”

“Both. She doesn't have a clue what's going on. The woman has a kid, a business to run. You're going to blow her the hell out of the water when you drop this bomb on her.”

He was making progress. He could see it in Tommy's eyes.

“And what about Willow? What about your other kids? Their mothers? Hell, your mother down in Boca is going to jump out of her Lilly Pulitzer when she finds out. Think it through, Tom. Hayley's been out there for thirty-eight years. You can wait another week to meet her.”

Tommy said nothing but Finn could feel his friend's resistance softening.

“I'm asking you to think about the repercussions before you do anything. This isn't just about you, Tom. It's about that woman and her daughter too, and they deserve better.”

The silence was long and it wasn't friendly. Tommy was a genuinely good man but superstardom had conditioned him to expect easy acquiescence whenever he exerted his will.