Cupcakes & Chardonnay Read online

  He looked around for Suzanne, amid the whirring mixers and clattering trays. Ah, there she was! And there was Brent.

  "That figures," Daryle muttered. Leave it to Brent to get here first and show, yet again, another way in which Daryle was unworthy of Suzanne. He was her husband and still he didn't manage to get to the grand opening before her former boss did. Alanna had nagged him to leave the hospital earlier but he had waited to see if his mother would wake up. She hadn't and finally Alanna had all but pushed him out the door, with orders to bring back cupcakes for the nurses.

  Suzanne had impossibly high standards for men, to begin with, and he knew Brent only encouraged her to keep those standards at unattainable heights. At least when it came to Daryle, anyway. It was one thing to have to compete with another man for a woman's attention. It was another thing entirely to deal with someone who considered himself your wife's personal bodyguard.

  As if on cue, he watched as Brent enfolded Suzanne in a big, tight hug. Brent spotted him and gave him a look of undisguised contempt. Daryle felt that tight squeeze of jealousy gripping his chest. He wanted to kick himself. Why hadn't he gotten here first? He should have been the one to congratulate Suzanne, to share in her happiness. Maybe Brent was right. Maybe he wasn't worthy of her.

  "Don't look now, but Daryle's here," Brent said.

  Suzanne nearly popped out of his arms in her effort to see past him. Brent was dismayed to see the sudden spike in her already happy mood, and the way her face lit up at the mention of Daryle's name. But he held his tongue and quietly slipped out to the front of the shop to buy some cupcakes. If he was lucky, he'd take the last of whichever flavor was Daryle's favorite.

  Suzanne rushed over to where Daryle was standing, in faded jeans and a rumpled shirt that looked as though he had slept in it. "How is your mother?" she asked. Her heart dropped when he simply grimaced and looked down at his feet.

  "I'm sorry I didn't get here sooner," he said. "I was hoping she'd wake up. I wanted to tell her that your shop opened."

  "But .." Suzanne said hesitantly.

  He shook his head sadly.

  "I'm sorry. Alanna will call you if she wakes, I'm sure," Suzanne reached out and touched his wrist, where it was exposed, tanned and lean, below the rolled cuff of his shirtsleeve. What she really wanted to do was wrap her arms around him, comfort him, take some of his sorrow off his shoulders. But that awkwardness between them had returned. They had been so close in Chicago, like any normal couple, and now everything was back to business.

  "Do you have a minute? I have something to show you," she said, leading him over to a tray of just frosted cupcakes. At one point during the conference, she had almost given in and told him what she was doing, instead of keeping it a surprise. She wasn't sure how well Daryle handled surprises. Now, she held her breath as his eyes skimmed over the tray. He was quiet. Too quiet, Suzanne thought. She wished she were able to read that face. But when his jaw set like that and his eyes went dark and thoughtful, he was completely unreadable. Wasn't he going to say anything?

  Finally, she took a slow quiet breath and picked up one of the cupcakes, carefully peeled off the paper and held it out to him. "This is the Iris cupcake. It's The Cupcakery's newest flavor," she said, warily, beginning to get worried about his silence. A month ago, she wouldn't have cared whether Daryle approved of it. Even if he hadn't liked it, she would have kept it on the menu anyway. Damn the torpedoes!

  But now there was no denying that she cared about his reaction. The pounding in her chest was evidence of that. If he didn't like it, she knew she'd have to pull it from the menu here and cancel her plan to add it to the Marina shop. If only Iris herself could have been here today. She would have loved it, would have embraced the idea of a namesake cupcake. But Iris was lying in a hospital bed. It was her inscrutable, mercurial son here instead.

  "It's been our bestselling flavor today," she ventured cautiously.

  That seemed to break the trance Daryle was in. He bit gingerly into the cupcake. Suzanne watched him, expectantly, as he chewed slowly, thoughtfully. There was a smudge of white icing on his upper lip and it took all of Suzanne's willpower to resist stretching up on her tiptoes and kissing it away. As if reading her mind, his tongue licked it away.

  Suzanne opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. He took another bite.

  "Is there ... " His brow furrowed in concentration. "Is there wine in this cupcake?"

  Suzanne's face broke into a wide smile and she finally allowed herself to exhale. "Yes! A touch of oakiness, hints of melon and apple, a frisson of vanilla," she quoted the label from Iris Vineyards' chardonnay.

  "Wait—you put our wine in this?"

  Uh-oh. Suzanne's heart sank. "Yes. I did it for your mother," she said quietly. "I had expected she would be here ..." Her voice trailed off.

  "Oh Suzanne. She would have loved this. Her own cupcake? Are you kidding? It would have been one more thing to lord over her luncheon friends."

  "I set aside two dozen for you to take back. When I realized how fast they were selling."

  "When did you have time to create a new recipe?" he asked. "I'm impressed, Suzie-Q. I really am." Just when you think you know her, he thought, she turns around and does something that makes you look at her all over again. And he definitely wanted to look at her now. She was in her element here, in her pink and brown apron—how many women could wear that and make it look that sexy, he wondered. Not many. No one he had ever known, at any rate.

  She had that sparkle in her eye today, too, the one that appeared whenever she spoke about The Cupcakery. This is where she belongs, he realized. She's going to build herself a cupcake empire. He could see it clearly. She'd have shops all along the California coast. What was I thinking, making her go to the wine conference with me for a week? Not that he hadn't enjoyed himself. And he was pretty certain this time that she had enjoyed herself, too. But where did she find the time to do everything that she did? Open a new shop, keep the old one running, concoct a new recipe ... and still look as bright and energetic as always?

  On top of that, he knew she'd left the winery before dawn. He'd come back from the hospital in the middle of the night. Unable to sleep, he ended up just walking the halls for hours. She slipped out of his room without him noticing, but he'd heard the engine of her car as she drove down the long vineyard driveway.

  He was suddenly keenly aware of his own disheveled state. He was barely holding it together these days.

  His cell phone rang. He looked at it. "It's Alanna." As he listened to what his sister was saying, Suzanne disappeared into the heart of the kitchen chaos. She returned just as he hung up.

  "Mother is awake. I'm going back to the hospital. Hopefully she'll still be conscious by the time I get there."

  "Give her my love," Suzanne said, pushing a white pastry box into his hands.

  He caught her hands before she could move away. "Have dinner with me tonight."

  Suzanne hesitated. "It would have to be late ..."

  "As late as you want. I'll have the restaurant fix us something. We can eat at home. You can tell me about the big day," he replied, looking around at the people streaming in and out of the kitchen, in and out of the front door, cupcakes in hand, smiles on their faces. Suzanne made a lot of people smile. Not to name any names, he thought as he left The Cupcakery, carrying cupcakes and smiling himself.

  Suzanne was awakened by the ringing of a phone and then a ruckus on the mattress next to her. She opened her eyes, sleepily, to see Daryle scrambling to extricate himself from the bed linens and get to his phone, which was still in his pants pocket. The pants were in a heap on the floor, right where Suzanne had taken them off of him.

  He answered the phone on the last ring. Suzanne sat up in the bed, pulling up the sheet to cover her breasts and shoulders. This couldn't be good. Middle-of-the-night calls never were. She watched as Daryle took several deep breaths, as if he were trying to calm himself. He said little, his forehead creased in
concentration. "Okay," he said several times. "Will do." "I understand." And finally, "Thank you."

  He walked slowly toward the bed and gently placed the phone on the nightstand. Then he sat down on the edge of the mattress. Suzanne knew what was coming. She slid up behind him on the mattress and wrapped her arms around his back and chest.

  "That was the hospital," Daryle said, his voice cracking. "She's gone."

  Suzanne had never seen Daryle cry. Had never seen any man cry, really. But she held Daryle as his body shuddered in rolling earthquakes of grief, until dawn when he fell asleep at last, exhausted.

  Chapter 12

  "Mr. Kennedy will be with you shortly," the receptionist said, hanging up the phone. She smiled at Daryle. She was young and shapely with deep red hair that curled beguilingly just below the collar of her grey silk blouse. Daryle didn't notice.

  He walked across the thickly carpeted lobby of Kennedy, Callahan, Dante and Baugh to stand in front of the floor to ceiling windows on the other side. The lobby was as quiet as a doctor's office, the only sound that of the receptionist's low, measured voice paging partners and associates. Liam Kennedy had been the Catterton family's lawyer for

  as long as Daryle could remember.

  He looked out over the bay and the grey spans of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. Daryle preferred the Bay Bridge to the city's other, more famous bridge, the Golden Gate. He liked driving west on the Bay Bridge at dusk, with the downtown skyline silhouetted against a darkening pink and violet sky. Today it was mid-afternoon and already white billows of fog were rolling in under the bridge.

  "Daryle." Liam Kennedy clapped a hand on his shoulder. Daryle turned and found his hand gripped in Liam's sure handshake. "Very sorry about your mother, you know that. I'm not sure Napa will be the same without her. Come on into my office."

  Liam's office shared the same expansive view as the lobby.

  "Let's sit over here," Liam gestured toward a grouping of black leather chairs around a small coffee table. "Can I get you something to drink? Coffee? Water? Grappa?"

  The grappa sounded tantalizing, but Daryle refused. He was driving back to Napa tonight, after a day spent visiting restaurants and reviewing wine lists.

  "So how are you doing?" Liam asked. "How is Alanna? I saw her show at the museum. Very nice."

  "I'm holding up. The winery keeps me busy. Alanna flew home to New York last night."

  "Well, we're working through the estate matters as fast as we can," Liam said. "Your mother made a zillion small bequests to people. Half the world, it seems."

  "That was mother. I'm not here about that, however. I'm here about the divorce."

  Liam was silent for a long moment, then a look of recognition lit up his eyes. "Right. I had forgotten about that. You and your ... wife ... seemed close at the funeral. She's a lovely woman."

  "Yes, she is a lovely woman."

  "Do you need to do this so soon? Why not wait until a little more time has passed? Wait until your one year anniversary? Doing it now will raise some eyebrows."

  Daryle stood up and strode over to the window. Liam had a point. Some people might find it odd that he and Suzanne were divorcing after less than a year.

  "It will take some time to happen though, right?" he said without turning away from the window. "So if we get things started now, by the time it's done, enough time will have passed."

  "There's a six month waiting period, that's true. And if you're discreet, no one needs to know what the two of you are doing until the divorce is final." Liam joined Daryle at the window. "Your wife's new shop seems to be doing well. My wife and daughters are in her Marina one all the time. I should be an investor."

  Daryle nodded, noncommittally. It was true. The Cupcakery had been a smashing success in Napa. He had wondered if traffic would drop off after the grand opening. But he drove past it almost every day and there was usually a line snaking out the front door and onto the sidewalk.

  "That's exactly why I need to get this started right away. Suzanne could expand her business considerably, if she had the resources. I don't want to hold her back by delaying."

  Liam rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "I'm not sure this was what your mother really intended, though."

  Daryle threw up his hands in exasperation. He wasn't used to other people parrying his wishes. "I know what my mother's intention was. And her intentions were usually good, if sometimes a little ill-conceived. But the issue here is Suzanne's intentions. She married me—and did it very reluctantly, I might add—in exchange for the money for her business. I can't renege on that. Even if Suzanne wanted to stay married to me, which she doesn't. She held up her end of the bargain and so I owe her a divorce."

  Liam looked curiously at Daryle. He had inherited a little of his mother's testiness after all. "I'll get to work on it then. Leave me her contact information."

  Daryle scribbled Suzanne's cell and home phone numbers on the back of a business card. "I'm flying out tomorrow for a wine conference in Dallas. I'll touch base when I get back."

  Daryle rode the elevator back down the twenty stories to the parking garage. Inside his sleek grey car, he inserted the key into the ignition and then leaned his head against the cool leather seat. Wasn't it just yesterday that he had "kidnapped" Suzanne and driven her to Napa to convince her to marry him? It sure felt like it. And now it was ending. He should be happy. He had Iris Vineyards. He was now the owner. And as soon as the divorce came through, he could start dating again. That would be fun, he told himself. Remember when you had sex every night? There'd been more women than he'd had available nights.

  He pulled out of the garage and wound his way through the streets of the financial district. Daryle loved to drive. That was one reason why he had never minded the frequent trips back and forth between the city and the winery. He crossed Mission Street into arty South of Market, then began the steep drive up to Potrero Hill. He'd owned a condo in Potrero Hill for years.

  When he unlocked the door, he was hit with a stale, musty smell. He hadn't stayed here in months. Alanna used the place when she was in town, but other than that it had been mostly unoccupied since he began working at the winery. He opened the refrigerator and leaned in. Not much in there. A few bottles of water, half-empty condiments, a stick of butter. He grabbed a water and sat down in the morning room.

  How many mornings had he sat here with a beautiful woman—clad only in one of his custom-made shirts or a bathrobe or, well, even less—drinking coffee and looking out over the breathtaking view? From here, candy-colored houses cascaded down the steep streets of the neighborhood; in the distance rose the skyscrapers of the financial district. He uncapped the water and took a long, cool drink.

  Suzanne had spent only a few nights here. When they were dating, usually he spent the night at her place. Suzanne liked to be on her own turf. He sighed. She had never been comfortable in his world. There was nothing of Suzanne in the condo. Lots of remnants of other women, but not of her. He slammed the water bottle down, spilling water onto the table. He ignored it and strode back to his marble-clad bathroom. He began yanking open cabinets and drawers. Look at all the stuff in here. Lipsticks, hairbrushes, expensive shampoos, a small leather bag of cosmetics. He didn't even know who these things belonged to anymore. He retrieved a trash bag from the kitchen pantry and tossed everything in.

  He looked around the leather sofas in the living room, the large screen plasma television, the fully-stocked bar, the modern paintings on the wall. I need to sell this place. The thought came out of nowhere, but once it was there, it felt right. The condo no longer felt like his. He couldn't imagine living here now, couldn't imagine living anywhere but at the winery. That's where his life was. Nor could he imagine bringing women here anymore. The thought of dating again suddenly depressed him.

  This was what he had wanted. He had wanted to inherit Iris Vineyards, and now he had. So why wasn't he happy?

  He leaned his forehead against a window and peered out into the city. Wh
ere was she right now, he wondered. Was she in the Marina shop? Or Napa? He never knew. She came and went without telling him. Every evening, he went back to his suite, hopeful that there'd be some sign she had been there. Something left in the bathroom or the impression of her body in the duvet on the bed. But she came and went like a ghost. She was trying to leave so little imprint on his life, but it was having the exact opposite effect. Her absence swirled around his days, whispered in his ear at night, followed him out into the vineyards.

  She had stayed at the winery until just after the funeral, then she'd gone home. It was like she had—pouf—disappeared into thin air. Well, what did he expect? This was what he had offered her. She was only living according to the terms he had come up with. There was no need for her to pretend to be his loving wife anymore, and so she had gone back to her own life. She was just waiting for the divorce now.

  I want to see her. He'd been trying to avoid that thought for weeks. But there was no denying it. He wanted to hold her in his arms. Kiss her for hours on end. He wanted to wake up and find her soft warm body in his arms. I want to go back to that time when I had sex every night. With Suzanne.

  Chapter 13

  Suzanne was inside the pantry in the Marina Cupcakery. It was early in the morning, the dawn sun outside still filtered through the fog. She liked to take inventory before her staff arrived. Once the day's baking began, it was hard to account for every last bag of cake flour and bottle of imported Madagascar vanilla.

  She was tallying up bags of coconut, when she heard someone knocking on the front window of the shop. The unexpected noise startled her and she dropped both her pencil and notepad. She hurried out to the front of the shop, expecting to see the police.