How to Bake a Perfect Life - Barbara O'Neal [60]
In swift, sharp recognition, I think about his voice and look up at a face that was once the most remarkable I’d ever seen in my life.
Jonah.
He looks back with honey-colored eyes, his expression only gentle, revealing nothing. My lungs have gone airless, and I can’t think of what to say, and maybe he doesn’t realize that the forty-year-old woman standing in front of him is the pregnant teenager who once had a most embarrassing, painful crush on him.
“Um,” I say, “well … thank you very much.” I reach for the tie. My hands are shaking. Visibly. “I’m … uh … we … um …” I touch my throat as if that will help clear the words stuck there. “We have fresh bread. Can I send some home with you?”
“That would be nice,” he says in that resonant tenor, so unique. I can feel it between my shoulder blades. “Thank you.”
From behind me, one of the apprentices says, “Oh, there you are, Ramona! I was worried. Do you want us to finish?”
“Yes. I have a little emergency here, but I’ll get him cleaned up and help in a few minutes.”
I can’t look at him. “Please,” I say, “come and choose a loaf.”
His hand captures mine. “It is you!”
I look up into those beautiful eyes. “Jonah.”
His gaze is unwavering. “I thought it was you yesterday morning at the café.” He inclines his head. “I just didn’t think …” He shrugs, tucks his hands behind his back. “I didn’t think it was possible that you could still look so much the same.”
I’m drinking in the details of him, the line of his jaw and the symmetry of his eyebrows, which I had forgotten, and that full lower lip. I can’t think of anything to say, as if I am still sixteen. “The café?”
“You were with a young girl.”
“Oh, Bon Ton’s. I guess I didn’t see you.”
He’s grown into his angularity, I think, become a man of unusual but compelling attractiveness. It occurs to me that I’m staring, mouth open, and I put a hand to my throat again. “Sorry. I’m being an idiot. I’m just so astonished.”
“Me, too. I’m sorry to be forward, but you are still so very beautiful.”
A rustle moves down my skin. “So are you.”
He shakes his head, gentle smile on a generous mouth. “I have never been beautiful in all my life.” His fingers pinch mine a little. “Except to you.”
I am not sixteen anymore. I am forty, and a mother and a business owner. I straighten, conscious of the curves baking has given my body, of the lines he must surely be able to see in my face in the bright sunlight. “That is not true.”
He inclines his head, almost wistfully. “It is, actually. But thank you. You, on the other hand, look remarkably the same.”
“Oh, not at all,” I protest, gesturing downward. “I’m fat.”
“You were considerably bigger when I knew you.”
I laugh, and it breaks up some of the airlessness I’m feeling. “I suppose I was.” Suddenly I think of Katie’s terror, ongoing as I stand here. I hold up a finger. “One second. This is not my dog.” Clomping around the side of the house, I call Katie’s name. I wait for her, then call once more.
She comes thrashing along the bushes, sending a shower of loose lilac petals raining down on us both. As she emerges from the cool, shaded cove, she is so thin and her hair so wild that I think of some enchanted, untamed forest creature. She looks at me with such an agony of hope that I am unable to speak. I take her hand and lead her into the morning sunshine, where her smelly dog waits.
She cries “Merlin!” and rushes to him, skidding down beside him on her knees like a baseball player diving for home plate.
He gives a woof and a lick to her face, and then looks over her shoulder at me. I swear he winks.
“You found him?” Katie says to Jonah.
“He was sniffing around in my garden. Your mother was looking for him—”
“She isn’t my mother!” Katie snatches the tie out of Jonah’s hand. “She’s not even my grandmother!”
“Katie,” I say mildly. “There’s no reason to be rude. Take Merlin in the backyard and hose that mess off his neck. I’ll be with you