Chapter 7
When Holly entered Slice of Heaven on Monday morning, the scent of freshly baked bread and pastries made her sniff appreciatively.
Her friend Sasha came around the counter and bent her six-foot-something frame to give her a hug. As always, she smelled of cinnamon. “Good morning.”
“Morning.” Holly looked around the bakery. “Are you the only one manning the fort today?”
“Nah. Auntie Mae is in the back, keeping an eye on my raspberry twists.”
Holly chuckled. “Still can’t keep her away?”
“Nope, she always says they’ll have to carry her out on a gurney one day,” Sasha said with a fond smile. She stepped back behind the counter. “So, what can I get you today? The usual?”
“No. Not today.” Holly eyed the pastries, cupcakes, pies, and breads on display. “Could you give me two cinnamon rolls, two mini-quiches, two blueberry scones, and three apricot-orange cream scones, please?”
Sasha let out a low whistle. “So Leo actually has my pastries for breakfast?”
“What?” Holly chuckled. “You thought she’d have half a grapefruit?”
“Uh, kind of. I mean, she’s so…tiny.” Sasha held her hands about half a foot apart to indicate Leo’s size.
Holly opened her mouth, then snapped it shut, surprised at the impulse to defend Leo. Admittedly, compared to Sasha’s solid frame, Leo might look tiny, even at five foot ten, but Holly liked her lithe, graceful build. “She actually loves your apricot-orange cream scones.”
“Really? Auntie Mae will be happy to hear that. It’s her recipe, after all.”
Most of the people in Holly’s life would have made a comment such as “ooh, a woman after your own heart.” Her other friends, especially the ones who were married or in a relationship, tended to ask about her love life all the time, constantly nudging her to find the one. But not Sasha.
Sasha was happily single and proclaimed herself far too busy for a relationship. Hanging out with her was like a mini-vacation from all the pressure and the expectations her well-meaning family and friends put on her.
That and the fact that they both worked unusual hours had cemented their friendship.
They made plans to go to St. Joe for an early movie on Sunday, while Sasha put the baked goods into a white paper box with the bakery’s logo, handling them carefully, as if they were precious pieces of art.
Holly put some money on the counter and carried the box to the door. “I’ll pick you up after lunch with the family.”
Sasha wisely didn’t even try to suggest that she should drive. “See you Sunday.”
An hour later, Holly nearly wished it was the weekend already. Despite having the mini-quiches he loved for breakfast, Gil had been grumpy all morning.
When she came into his room to help him with his exercises, he told her no—the only word he could speak clearly and without having to search for it.
For a moment, Holly thought that Leo might have told her parents about Holly’s relationship with Ashley and that had put him in such a bad mood, but she rejected the thought immediately. No one in town had any idea about the kiss the two had shared fourteen years ago, so Leo knew how to keep her mouth shut. She didn’t seem the type to indulge in gossip or out other people.
“We had a bit of a rough night,” Sharon said as she joined them. “He had to get up three times, and the last time, I was a bit too slow to wake up, so he, um…”
Oops. Holly didn’t comment so she wouldn’t embarrass Gil any further. He was already glaring at his wife.
Leo peeked into the room but didn’t enter. “Why didn’t you call me? I could have helped.”
“It was fine. I didn’t want to disturb you. But if you want to help, why don’t you go over and play something for your father?” Sharon pointed to the living room, where an antique-looking baby grand stood. “You could play some Pachelbel. That always cheers him up.”
Leo leaned in the doorway, looking as grumpy as her father, and made no move toward the living room. “I haven’t played that in ages. Probably forgot how to.”
Gil let out a snort. “Sports,” he got out while glaring at them all. “Go. Um…alone.”
Leo’s gaze flicked toward Holly as if she were a translator.
“He wants you to leave us alone so we can do his leg and arm exercises.”
Without comment, Leo turned and walked away.
Holly listened, thinking that maybe she would change her mind and play some music for her father after all, but everything remained quiet in the living room.
Leo lay in bed, arms folded behind her head, and listened to what her father had always called the country song—the chirping of crickets and cicadas filtering in through the closed window. Every now and then, an owl hooted in the pine tree next to the house.
It was as soothing as an all-time favorite song, but Leo still couldn’t sleep. It was three o’clock, and she was wide-awake. Her brain wouldn’t shut up. Thoughts of her career, her father, Holly, and Ash tumbled through her mind in a chaotic swirl.
She stared across the room, at the shadowy contours of her guitar case in the corner.
In the past, holding her guitar, feeling the familiar strings beneath her fingers, had always calmed her, but lately, her music had lost its soothing effect on her—maybe because it was no longer the one sure thing in her life. Now it just added more questions that she didn’t have answers for.
The owl hooted again.
“Woohoo to you too,” Leo muttered. She swung her legs out of bed and padded downstairs for a glass of water, barefoot and wearing only a tank top and a pair of boxer shorts. Since she still knew each step to the kitchen by heart, she didn’t bother turning on the light.
In the hall, she collided with something warm and soft.
Cursing, she stumbled back and crashed into the wall. Ouch. She rubbed her hipbone. That would leave a nasty bruise. She reached for the light switch and squinted against the sudden flare of light.
One hand pressed to the opposite wall, Holly stood in front of her and shaded her eyes with the other.
They stared at each other.
“God!” Leo’s heart hammered against her ribs. She blew out a breath and rubbed her hip. “You scared the crap out of me.”
“Ditto.” Holly pressed a flat palm to her chest. Unlike Leo, she was fully dressed.
“What are you doing up?” they asked at the same time.
“Your father needed to use the bathroom, and I didn’t want to wake up the entire house by turning on the light in the hall,” Holly said.
“Same here. About the light, I mean. I wanted a glass of water.”
“That sounds good,” Holly said. “Could I have one too?”
“Of course. You don’t have to ask. You practically live here, and I’m just visiting.”
They tiptoed to the kitchen—not that it was doing any good after the ruckus they’d made. They were really making a habit of colliding, Leo thought with a grin.
Instead of filling a glass with water from the tap, Leo spontaneously took a carton of milk from the fridge. “Want some milk instead?”
“Sure, thanks.”
Leo poured both of them a glass of milk. “Oh, I think there are some scones left over from this morning.”
“Scones? Now?”
“Is there ever a bad time for scones?” Leo asked.
A smile dimpled Holly’s cheeks. “Good point.”
Leo climbed onto a stool next to Holly. “What’s that?” She nodded down at a cordless receiver that Holly had placed on the breakfast bar.
“A baby monitor.”
Baby? Leo stared at her. “Don’t tell me you’ve got a kid!”
Laughter burst from Holly’s chest, and she muffled it behind her hand. “No. It’s for your father. He’s got the transmitter in his room, and either your mother or I keep the receiver with us at all times. That’s how we know when he needs us.”
Leo felt a little stupid for not knowing that. But then again, why should she?
They shared a blueberry scone and the last apricot-orange cream scone, creating a mess of crumbs all around them as they broke them in half.
Holly tore off little pieces and put them in her mouth.
For the first time, Leo noticed that she was wearing a black ring on the middle finger of her right hand. Isn’t that…? She stopped chewing and stared. One of her dancers wore the same type of ring, and when she had asked him about it, he had explained that it was a symbol for his swinger lifestyle. Did that mean Holly was a swinger too?
Somehow, she couldn’t imagine it. Holly probably just liked how it looked and had no idea what it could mean. She thought about enlightening her, but then decided against it. No one in a small town like Fair Oaks would know what it meant either, so it wasn’t as if the ring could cause any problems for Holly.
Neither of them said much besides “yum” until the scones were gone.
Finally, all that remained was a single crumb that clung to Holly’s bottom lip. As Leo watched, she flicked out her tongue and licked it away.
Had it suddenly gotten hotter? She resisted the urge to press the glass of ice-cold milk to her forehead.
Luckily, Holly didn’t seem to notice where Leo’s mind had drifted. She nibbled on her full lip and looked back and forth between her glass of milk and Leo’s face.
“What?” Leo asked.
“Um, I have a favor to ask, but I’m not sure if I should…”
Leo stiffened. Great. Just when she had started to relax. She tried not to let her dismay show. “Ask.”
“I was wondering… I feel silly asking, but…” Holly bit her poor lip again. “Would it be okay to ask you for an autograph?”
Leo nearly started laughing. An autograph? That was all Holly wanted? The way she’d been stuttering and stammering, she had been prepared to be asked for money or for a favor such as introducing a wannabe musician friend to an exec from her record label. That was what people usually asked her for.
“If you’d rather…”
“No, no, it’s okay. I just… It just surprised me.”
Holly looked at her over the rim of her glass. “You’re surprised to be asked for an autograph? Come on. I’ve seen people stop you for an autograph several times. You must hear that question a dozen times every single day.”
“Yeah, but… Forget it.” She didn’t want to admit her assumption. Slowly, it was getting through to her that Holly was different from the mooches who asked for money or other favors. Holly could have asked to be paid extra for all the additional things she did for Leo’s parents, but she had never brought up the topic of money. Even though Leo had learned not to trust in appearances, she was starting to believe that Holly was exactly what she seemed to be: a genuinely nice and decent person.
“So? Do you have something to write on?” Leo quirked a grin. “Unless you want me to sign your boob, like some of my fans.”
A hint of red crept into Holly’s cheeks. She laughed, maybe a bit too loudly, as if the thought made her nervous. “No, thanks. Paper will do. Otherwise, it would be a little hard to hand over the autograph to my friend.”
“Oh, so it’s not for you?”
“Um, no.”
“Not a fan?” Leo managed to give the question a teasing inflection, but she had to admit that the answer meant something to her.
“I liked your first album. ‘Odd One Out’ in particular really struck a chord with me. I listened to it on auto repeat for a week when it first came out.”
That pleased Leo immensely, maybe because it didn’t sound like the usual flattery. Hmm, she said the first album… “What about the rest of my work?”
“You want an honest reply?”
“Ouch.” Leo grimaced. “That bad?”
“No. No, please don’t think that. It’s just… I don’t like your newer stuff as much. I mean, the songs are all trendy, and they fit a certain…um, format, but…” Holly paused as if searching for the right words. “Well, it might sound stupid, but they have no real soul.”
Wow. Leo was stunned speechless. No one had come right out and told her something like that—ever. She was used to being fawned over. People usually told her what they thought she wanted to hear, or maybe they really liked her newer songs.
Leo didn’t. She had told her manager the same thing Holly had just commented on, but he had insisted that this kind of music was what her fans and the record label wanted.
“God.” Groaning, Holly buried her face in her palms. “I’m sitting here in the middle of the night, having milk and scones with you in your parents’ home, and to top it all, I insulted you.”
“No,” Leo said forcefully. Without pausing to think about it, she grabbed one of Holly’s hands, pulled it away from her face, and squeezed it. “I’m not insulted. It’s just pretty rare that anyone talks to me so openly.”
Holly dropped the other hand to her lap and looked at her. “I’m sorry. I—”
“Don’t you dare apologize.” She became aware that she was still holding Holly’s hand and quickly let go. “I like it.”
They sat in silence for a moment, with only the humming of the refrigerator as background noise. It wasn’t an awkward silence, though.
Leo got up and snooped through her mother’s kitchen in search of something to write on. Finally, she found an unused greeting card in a drawer full of recipes and household tips her mother had cut out from magazines. “Will this do? For the autograph?”
Holly chuckled. “It says happy birthday.”
“Yeah, well, maybe you can give it to your friend for their birthday.”
“Good idea. Her birthday is actually coming up next month.”
Leo slid back onto her stool, clicked on a pen, and gave Holly a questioning look. “So, who am I making this out for?”
“Her name is Meg, but could you make it out to Mordin? We met each other on Tumblr, and that’s her username, so the nickname stuck.”
“Mordin?” Leo asked. “After the Salarian in Mass Effect?”
Holly looked at her as if she had suddenly grown a pair of horns, like the Salarians. “You know Mass Effect? Does that mean you’re a gamer?”
“I wouldn’t go that far, but I play every now and then. My bassist got me hooked during our first tour, when we were stuck on the tour bus for hours every day, going from one city to the next.”
“Wow. Meg will be so excited when I tell her.” Holly paused. “Is it okay to tell her that?”
When was the last time someone had been so considerate of her privacy? Leo couldn’t remember. Even some of the people she had considered friends had blabbed details about her private life to the tabloids. “Oh yeah, that’s just fine. So your friend, she’s a gamer?”
“Hardcore.” The corners of her eyes crinkled as Holly laughed. “She says Yennefer from The Witcher 3 is the only crush she’s ever had.”
“Yen? Really? I mean, she’s hot and all, but I like Triss much better.” With a crooked grin, Leo added, “Guess I’m more into—” Oh jeez. She’d almost gotten herself into trouble. If she had finished that thought, Holly might have thought she was coming on to her. As nice and attractive as Holly was, getting involved with someone from Fair Oaks was the last thing Leo wanted.
“Into what?” Holly asked.
Redheads. “Um, healers.” As soon as she’d said it, she could have slapped herself. Holly was a nurse, so she could have been considered a healer too.
Luckily, Holly didn’t seem to think anything of it. She continued sipping her milk.
After secretly blowing out a breath, Leo picked up the pen again and wrote happy birthday and many butterfly kisses onto the birthday card and then signed it. As an afterthought, she added, P.S. Triss is way cooler than Yen. When she was done, she held the card out to Holly, who took it carefully.
“Thank you.” She studied the card. “Why did you pick a stage name? Why not just go with Leontyne Blake?”
“It was my manager’s idea. Leona Lewis had her debut album out shortly before I did, and he thought the names were too much alike. So we decided on Jenna, my middle name.”
“Bummer,” Holly said. “I’ve always thought Leontyne is such a beautiful name.”
The tips of Leo’s ears began to burn. Man, was she blushing now, just because Holly liked her name? She ignored it. “Um, yeah. I didn’t like it much when I was growing up, but now I’ve come to appreciate it.”
“You didn’t?”
Leo shook her head. “Just one more thing that made me stick out like a sore thumb in this town.”
“Ah.” Holly nodded as if she understood exactly what she meant.
“Plus my father named me after his favorite opera singer, Leontyne Price, and I wasn’t into classical music at all.”
Before Holly could answer, the baby monitor on the breakfast bar came to life with a demanding grunt from Leo’s father. “Bath,” he called out.
Even Leo could guess what that meant—he probably needed the bathroom. For a second, she considered offering to help him so that Holly could go to bed.
But Holly squeezed her arm as if knowing what she was thinking. “It’s okay. I’ll go.” She slid from the stool and walked to the door. “Good night. And thanks again for the autograph.”
Leo stared at her retreating back. “You’re welcome,” she said into an empty room.