The Love We Missed novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: Sunday Pastry

"Patrick's going to love this one," Bria called down the steps.

Ciaran's hand didn't move off my back.

I looked up at her in the doorway, in her pink dress, with my twenty thousand dollars on her finger.

"Post it," I said. "Put the date on it. Then post the date you signed the lease on Walnut Street."

Her smile slipped.

She went back inside, and the door swung shut on the string trio.

Ciaran drove me home in a pickup that smelled like onions and coffee.

He didn't turn the radio on.

At a red light on Fifth Avenue, he drummed his thumbs on the wheel.

"My pastry cook quit," he said.

"The one who was mad at you?"

"Different one. The pastry one. She went to a hotel in Cleveland for more money and a pension." He glanced over. "I need Sunday desserts. Tomorrow."

"I work Sundays."

"Do you work tomorrow?"

I didn't.

I'd asked for this weekend off back in August, because Patrick had promised me a night away for our anniversary.

"No," I said.

"Then come cook. I'll pay you what the hotel does."

"You don't know what the hotel pays."

"I'll pay you more than that, then." The light turned green. "Bring Nellie. I have crayons. I have a whole drawer of crayons and no idea why."

At seven the next morning, I was standing in his kitchen in somebody else's apron with my hair clipped up.

Nellie sat on a stool at the bar with the crayon drawer and a stack of paper placemats.

She had already named every cook after a vegetable.

The grill man was Broccoli.

The sous chef, the short woman in the hairnet, was Carrot, and she seemed to like it.

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