Summer in Napa

chapter 16

Lexi pulled a tray of freshly filled cream puffs out of the fridge and smiled. No matter how sore her cheeks got, she couldn’t seem to stop.

The smile had started Sunday morning, when Marc had her for breakfast in bed, and lasted straight through the week. It stuck with her through Monday’s morning rush, Tuesday and Wednesday’s three hours of predawn baking, this morning’s argument over which direction the slate tiles in the new kitchen should go—Tanner thought they should go on the diagonal and Abby thought that he was an idiot.

“Tell me again why we’re putting mango in my tart recipe?” Pricilla asked, elbow-deep in custard.

“Because the acid will play off the sweetness in the berries nicely.” ChiChi repeated Lexi’s earlier answer while brushing butter over the top of the mini shortbread crusts.

“Open your ears,” Lucinda harped, picking up a napkin and folding it in thirds.

“My ears are open,” Pricilla defended.

“Then maybe it’s your head that’s leaky.” Lucinda smashed a napkin through a ring made of dried grapevines, poking Mr. Puffins in the ear and jerking him awake with a start.

Even though Lexi knew she’d have to redo every place setting that Lucinda touched, and watch over Pricilla’s shoulder to make sure she wasn’t purposely bruising the mangoes, her smile stuck with her—right up until the bell in the front of the bakery dinged.

“I’ll get it,” Lexi said as she walked through the swinging doors. Then her smile died a fiery death and her day spiraled into the seventh circle of hell.

“Hey, Lexi,” Jeffery said. Dressed in dark slacks and a blue shirt—the one that she’d given him for his birthday last year—he displayed enough frat-boy charm to curdle the whipped cream.

Lexi closed her eyes for a moment and wished he would disappear, because Jeffery also displayed a plump plus one, whose chicken-soup smile, white tank, and beige shorts did little to conceal the baby bump—big enough to predate their divorce.

To make matters worse, when she opened her eyes, the newlyweds were holding hands and looking happy. Really happy. Like “we just had sex where the headboard slammed into the wall and shattered the Sheetrock…oh, and we’re having a baby” happy.

The baby that Lexi had begged for, the same baby that Jeffery had said he wasn’t ready to have. He had failed to mention the “with her” part. Which was fine, since she still wanted a baby but not with him—not anymore. Now, though, seeing him happily married and happily expecting while happily running a successful restaurant made her want to cry. Not that she let him know that. So Lexi went for happy too, she really did, but it came out more constipated than congratulatory.

She tried again and failed.

She’d known that she would run into the new Mr. and Mrs. Balldinger at some point. It wasn’t as though St. Helena was a sprawling metropolis or that she thought Jeffery would never come back to visit his parents. She had just hoped that their first run-in would be later—like after she had won her first Michelin star, found Mr. Perfect, and had her own litter of perfect kids running around.

Even more perfect was that just on the other side of the window, her frosted bun peeking through the curved center of the C in Pricilla’s Patisserie, was Nora Kincaid, with her lips flapping and cell phone clutched in her fist. And since Jeffery had on shoes and a shirt, Lexi couldn’t refuse him service.

Proud that the phrase rat bastard didn’t come out, she settled on a cordial, “What can I get you?”

“How about a hug?” Jeffery asked, his arms out wide. More accurately, his right arm, since his left hand was shoved into Sara’s back pocket.

“Sorry, we’re all out of that,” she said, her anger rising with every second he stood there smiling blissfully. Yeah, it was a free country, and yeah, he grew up here too. But she’d given him Pairing and New York so that she wouldn’t have to watch the man she’d once loved love someone else. “But we are having a special on eat shit and die.”

Sara went white.

Jeffery gasped.

And Lexi, remembering Mrs. Kincaid and her phone’s uploading capabilities, forced a smile as sugary as the cream puffs in her hand before she slid the tray onto the middle shelf of the display case. The counter created a solid barrier between them, which was a good thing, since her hands were itching to reach for her straw and tissue paper—or maybe a rolling pin. “Two for one, actually.”

“I’m sorry…about everything,” Sara stammered, her face flushed with humiliation, and Lexi believed her. Not that it mattered. She was over Jeffery, over the affair and the hurt and the embarrassment, but what she wasn’t over was the way her ex kept inserting himself into her life as though he still had that right. She had a dinner to cater; she didn’t have time for his games.

Lexi grabbed two cream puffs, dumped them in a bag, and set them on the counter. “On the house. Now leave.”

Sara tugged on Jeffery’s arm. “Let’s just go.”

“Fine,” Jeffery drawled, as though Lexi was being overly dramatic and problematic. “I just wanted to give you this.” He gave Sara’s tush a parting pat and walked to the counter. Pulling out a document, he extended it toward Lexi.

“What’s that?” she asked, eyeing the paper and shoving her hands in her apron pockets.

When she didn’t reach for it, Jeffery slid it across the counter. “This is a friendly reminder that all recipes served at Pairing are property of Pairing and that you can’t serve them here or anywhere else, for that matter.”

There was nothing friendly about his tone, or the way her knee begged to greet him properly.

“I haven’t served anything from Pairing. I have a new menu. A better menu.”

“Great, then make sure Pricilla understands the terms of the ruling. You have until Monday to remove these items from your bakery menu.”

At his final words, Lexi’s heart dropped in conjunction with her eyes and she took in the list. It was a printed-out e-mail, sent to Jeffery from a third party, displaying a list of required items. It included her grandmother’s burnt-almond cake, her peppermint bark, Rocky Road truffles, chocolate-or-bust bonbons, and her great-grandmother’s éclairs, among others.

“These aren’t yours.” Not a single recipe had ever appeared on the restaurant menu. “And you have no legal rights to them.”

“The judge ruled that any and all items ever served in Pairing belong to the restaurant. Read the ruling.” Jeffery smiled and Lexi’s heart stopped.

She quickly ran through every dessert she had served at the restaurant, trying to remember a time when she had prepared any of these. She couldn’t. But she could sense that she was screwed. Jeffery never showed his cards unless he was certain he held the winning hand.

Then she saw who was CCed at the top of the e-mail, recognized the name, and her heart literally stopped. Right there in her chest. As though waiting for her to catch up before it broke.

“I don’t understand,” she muttered, looking at the Montgomery Distributions corporate logo written in big-business blue and back to Marc’s name screaming at her from the top line. She tried to take in what it all meant, convince herself that she hadn’t been played, that she hadn’t made a colossal mistake in judgment—again.

She couldn’t. She couldn’t even bring herself to speak for fear that she was right.

Mrs. Kincaid must have sensed the drama and decided to give up her window view for a front-row seat, because before Jeffery could explain, the bell chimed. But when Lexi looked up, it wasn’t just Mrs. Kincaid who had come in to witness the scene, but also Mrs. Moberly, Mrs. Rose, and Mrs. Craver.

“Lexi.” Mrs. Kincaid greeted her with a hesitant smile and took a seat at the far corner table. “Jeffery, and other.”

“Don’t mind us,” Mrs. Moberly said, taking a seat as well and making herself busy wiping down an already-clean table. “We’re just in need of an afternoon coffee and treat. But no hurry, dear; we’re in no rush.”

Mrs. Rose glared at Jeffery and whispered, loud enough for most of Main Street to hear, “We’re here as long as you need us.” With a decisive nod she took her seat and patted her purse, which according to Mrs. Lambert at the Grapevine Prune and Clip was packing a whole lot more than lipstick and her extra set of teeth.

But Lexi could survive three backseat bakers, the town’s busiest busybodies, and her ex and his new wife. It was when she saw Marc, standing frozen in the doorway looking back at her, that she knew.

Her heart slowly gave one last beat for the man she had fallen in love with.

And then it shattered.





“The recipes are mine,” Lexi whispered, her voice so small and so full of hurt, Marc’s gut twisted painfully.

Marc opened his mouth to say that he didn’t want them, that he’d never meant to hurt her, but nothing came out. The pain in his gut made it impossible to swallow, let alone speak.

The last thing he wanted to do was have this conversation here, in her grandmother’s bakery, in front of her ex-husband, his new wife, and a handful of customers. But he had waited too long, and he was out of time—and excuses.

“These recipes belong to my family,” she said, louder this time, holding out a piece of paper. “And no one is taking them from me.” She dropped the paper to her side. “You knew. This whole time you knew.”

God, his heart was breaking.

“Let me explain,” he said, moving toward her and coming to a dead stop after only one step. Because Lexi backed away and held out a shaky hand, begging him to keep his distance.

“Please. Explain. Because I want to know how my family recipes, desserts that were never served at Pairing, ended up in some contract between you, my cheat of an ex, and some distribution company.”

“Two years ago,” he said, closing the distance between them and aching to take her into his arms, “I came to visit and you made me a batch of your grandma’s éclairs.”

She nodded, her eyes big and wet, looking up as if she was silently pleading for him to make this all go away. He wanted to. So badly, but he wasn’t sure how.

“You joked that the ones in France were better,” she whispered.

The joke had been one made out of desperation, a tactic he’d adopted early on when Jeff and Lexi started dating.

They’d spent most of the evening crammed in a booth at the back of the restaurant, talking about high school, home, the progress he’d made on the hotel. The more they talked, the closer Lexi got, until she was so close that he couldn’t smell, couldn’t see, couldn’t feel anything but her. A bottle and a half into the conversation, she’d rested her hand on his knee and leaned in and laughed at something he said—and Marc had lost it.

After years of keeping his distance, playing by the rules, ignoring the insane chemistry between them, he went in for the kiss, promising himself that he just needed to taste her one time—when Jeffery had appeared from the back office. Marc whispered something stupid in her ear, made her laugh, goaded her into baking him some of her great-grandmother’s éclairs, and vowed never to go back for another visit. At least not one that included time with Lexi.

“But you weren’t even a customer,” she said. “You were a guest.”

“Of the restaurant,” Jeffery added, and Marc wanted to punch him. “You made them in my kitchen and served them to my guest. Just like the rest of the recipes on the list.”

“The rest of the recipes I made as a favor, for you,” Lexi said to Jeff. “You said you had an important client to impress who had a sweet tooth. I assumed it was for an investor for opening Pairing West Coast. Then again, I assumed you weren’t sleeping with another woman at the time.”

“Either way, they belong to Pairing.”

“Shut up, Jeff,” Marc snapped.

“What?” Jeff shrugged like a guy who didn’t have a f*cking care in the world, like Lexi’s world wasn’t shattering while they stood there and watched, like he’d never even given a damn about his ex-wife.

“When I teased you into making the éclairs…” Marc paused, seeing how everything would look to her, in this moment. Suddenly every wild, shitty, crazy thing he’d ever done came back with such force it smacked the wind out of him. He was going to lose her. And it was all his fault. “I am so sorry, Lexi.”

She looked at him for a long, tense moment. Her face crumpled, and the first tear rolled down her cheek.

“No, sugar, don’t cry.” He ran his thumb across her cheek. “I know I f*cked up. I was going to tell you, but I got scared.” Another tear fell, then another. “I’ll fix this. You need to believe me.”

Unable to hold back, he reached out and cupped her face between his hands. “Please, believe me.”

“I’m trying, Marc,” she whispered. “But it’s really hard. I don’t know what’s real, and I’m scared that this whole thing was—”

“Wait,” Jeff interrupted. “What do you mean, you’ll fix this? Do I need to remind you how much money we have riding on this? Monte, your brothers, hell, my restaurant.”

Jeff paused, his eyes darting between Lexi and Marc, a grin sliding across his face so slowly Marc wanted to smack it off. It was an ah-yeah grin that he’d flashed Marc a hundred times, reserved for poker night and mornings after at the gym. “Jesus Christ, really?”

Jeff was so obvious he might as well have given him a high five and scratched a notch in Marc’s belt that read, Alexis Moreau, Great Lay.

Lexi snatched her hand back and wrapped it around her stomach. The look of utter humiliation on her face said she got the message loud and clear.

“I know I told you to keep an eye on her, but damn, really?” Jeff shook his head, and Marc wondered what he’d ever seen in the guy. Under all of the shine and flash was a tool. A worthless piece of shit who didn’t see anything outside the realm of Jeff.

“What part of shut the hell up did you miss?” Marc snapped, but when he turned back to Lexi, his anger fled and all he felt was this gut-wrenching knowledge that Gabe had been right. He’d played this one fast and reckless and he’d blown it. And in the process he’d lost Lexi.

“You were keeping an eye on me?”

“Lexi.” He took a step forward, but she backed away again, shaking her head.

“This whole thing was a big game to you guys. Just like back in high school when you set out to seduce a new conquest. The menu, my grandma’s books, the bistro, the dinner at your family’s house, all of it. Only this time you weren’t just out to get in my pants—” Her voice caught and her eyes went round with understanding. He knew where she was going, and she was so wrong. “That was fake too. All of it was fake.”

She looked around the bakery, as if remembering that there was a roomful of people watching and chronicling the most humiliating moment of her life.

“Lexi, that’s not true.” But she wasn’t listening.

“You made me feel sexy and beautiful and like I was special.”

“You are, God, baby, you are. To me, you always have been.”

“You told me I could make the bistro a success. And I listened and like a stupid woman I believed you, Marc. I believed you so much that I stopped listening to the voice inside of me, warning me to take it slow. I believed you to the point that I don’t think I have any belief left to give.”

She reached up and untied the top of her apron, the lavender one that he loved so much. Folding it in half, she laid it on the counter and gave him one last look. A look he would never forget. He knew that whatever Jeff had done to her was nothing compared to what he’d just accomplished. Marc had played and lost, and in the process he’d completely devastated her world.

With a whispered good-bye, she walked out the door, the bells of the bakery giving a final jingle. Marc somehow made his way to the window and watched her disappear behind the alley. He rested his head against the glass when he was sure that she was gone, and that she wasn’t coming back.

And that’s when he finally understood. Understood that old man Charles wouldn’t come to the Showdown, wouldn’t try to ruin the wine tasting, wouldn’t continue this sixty-year feud. Because losing the woman you love to another man could make you do stupid things. But losing the woman you love all on your own—there’s no coming back from that.

A few seconds, a few minutes, hell, a lifetime could have passed. Marc stood there, looking out the window and replaying every decision he’d ever made with regard to Lexi. He was surprised when he turned around to find everyone still in the bakery staring at him, including his nonna, who must have come out at some point during the argument, because she was looking at him with shame.

He didn’t blame her. He was ashamed. And angry. And he hurt so f*cking bad he couldn’t breathe right.

When ChiChi took a step forward, Marc said, “I gotta go,” and walked out the door, down the street past the Paws and Claws Day Spa, past Bottles and Bottles: Pharmacy and Wine, and kept going until he found himself walking through his family’s vineyard and somehow made it to Gabe’s front door.

The door opened. Gabe took one look at Marc and took a step back, holding the door open wide. “Aw, man, come on in, you look like hell.”

Marc didn’t move.

“I blew it, Gabe.”

“Can we fix it?”

“I don’t think so.” He rested his forehead against the doorframe. “She likes my dog, doesn’t take my crap, and looks at me like I can be the kind of man Dad was. When she cooks…she wears this apron…” He paused and looked up at his brother and felt everything inside tighten. “And I love her so damn much that I have no idea how I’m supposed to wake up tomorrow and pretend like my life hasn’t just f*cking ended.”