Just Like Heaven (34 page)

“Trish!” She sounded like a Marine drill sergeant on steroids. “Rachel! I need you two in the kitchen.”

Rachel stared at her wide-eyed. Trish looked like she was in a trance.

“Now!” Hayley barked, and the two teenagers sprinted past her.

Even Leather Boy straightened up.

She could get used to this.

“I’m Hayley Goldstein,” she said as she rounded the counter, “and if this is about Michael I can’t help you.”

“Who’s Michael?” He looked a whole lot less dangerous when he was puzzled. Maybe she’d shooed the girls away too soon.

“You’re not looking for my ex?”

“I’m not looking for anybody.” He gestured toward the street, where an enormous black SUV had pride of place in front of the shop. “I’m Anton and I came along for the ride.”

And here she had done some of her best work for nothing. They stared at each other for a full second or two. He really did look like an eighties rock star. Once upon a time he would have been her dream man, but fortunately that time had come and gone.

“Anton, unless you’re looking to buy a lemon meringue pie or—”

Anton raised his hand to stop her. He wore a heavy silver ring on his middle finger and a wide leather strap around his wrist. A rocker’s version of Armani. “Wait,” he said. “Let me get the boss.”

The boss?
She didn’t like the sound of that. Her ex didn’t exactly run with the Mensa crowd. Visions of an Anthony Soprano wannabe with a chip on his shoulder sprang to life, and she debated the wisdom of locking the front door and putting up the CLOSED sign while there was still time.

Anton approached the SUV parked at the curb. She watched, fascinated, as the passenger door opened and a Suit stepped out. The Suit towered over Anton. His shoulders were as wide as a running back’s, something that was either the result of good genetics or an even better tailor. Anton looked like an undernourished boy next to him.

Her younger self might have had a weakness for bad boys in leather jackets but her current self leaned more toward grown men in suits. A woman could trust a man who wore a suit. Men in suits knew how to keep a job. Men in suits paid their bills on time and owned houses and cars they could actually afford.

Of course some men in suits were Mob bosses or CEOs with a yen for embezzlement, so maybe her theory needed a little fine-tuning.

She busied herself wiping imaginary fingerprints from the glass countertop as he said something to Anton, straightened his tie, then strode across the sidewalk to the front door.

“You were looking for me,” Hayley said when the door closed behind him. She had never been good at playing games.

“You’re Hayley Maitland.”

“Hayley Maitland Goldstein,” she corrected him.

“I thought you were divorced.”

“Excuse me?”

“One of your counter girls said you were divorced.”

She needed to have a long talk with Trish. “I am divorced,” she said. “I never got around to switching back to my maiden name.”
Not that it’s any of your business.

“She also said you weren’t here.”

“Is there a point to any of this? Because if there isn’t, I have a lot of work to do.”

He should have been offended but strangely he didn’t seem to be. He wasn’t the usual caliber of bill collector sent to find her ex.

“Are you this rude to all of your paying customers?”

“I thought you were here to—” No need to play the terrible-ex-husband card until she had to.

“I’ll pay double the going rate if you’ll finish that sentence.” He managed to say it with such good humor that even she had to laugh.

“First, tell me what you’re buying and I’ll decide if it’s worth my while to spill family secrets.”

“Fair enough. I need a cake in the shape of a set of drums.”

“I can do that.”
In my sleep with my spatula tied behind my back.

He grinned. “And the bass drum has to feed two hundred.”

“We did a wedding reception for five hundred last spring. The cake was in the shape of a pair of swans. I can show you photos if you like.”

“I’ve already seen them.”

“But Trish didn’t—”

“I do my homework, Mrs. Goldstein. In the last year you handled the Citibank reception at McCarter in Princeton, two very successful election night parties in Harris-burg and Trenton, and some private functions for some very well-known families.”

“You really did do your homework. Tell me your name so I can do my homework too.”

“Finn Rafferty.” He handed her a business card with his name and numbers on it.

She looked up at him. “You’re a lawyer?”

“I represent Tommy Stiles. You might have heard of him.”

Heard of him? That was like saying you were vaguely familiar with Elvis or the Beatles. “He’s—uh, he’s a singer.” A singer who had happened to make his bones alongside Springsteen and Joel, Stewart and Clapton.

Rafferty’s eyes twinkled with amusement. “Yeah,” he said. “He’s a singer. He’ll be performing at Convention Hall in Atlantic City next month and he wants you to handle the cakes for the after-party.”

She hated herself for asking the question but the “Why me?” slipped out just the same.

“Because you’re the best between here and New York, and Tommy only deals with the best.”

She had always believed in herself but the fact that Tommy Stiles even knew she was on the same planet seemed to have rendered her temporarily speechless.

Rafferty picked up the slack.

“We’ll supply you with hotel rooms for yourself and your staff. I’ll make arrangements for you to have full access to the kitchen’s facilities. Whatever you need to get the job done, it’s yours.”

She didn’t have the heart to tell him she usually baked the cakes right here at Goldy’s then schlepped them to the venue in the back of her van, praying the whole way that they’d arrive in one piece.

“So what do you say? We know your going rate and we’re willing to sweeten the deal.”

“I’ll—maybe I can—how about I work up a proposal and fax it over to you tonight.”

“I have a better idea. Why don’t we hammer out the details right now? I didn’t come all this way to go home empty-handed.”

She tried to think of a reason why that wasn’t a good idea but her mind was a total blank. All she could think of was what this job would do for her bank account. This could be the difference between just getting by and getting ahead. With a reference from someone like Tommy Stiles, she would be catapulted into a whole different level of success.

When a superstar like Tommy Stiles did something, he did it with full press coverage. There would be photographers from
People
and
InStyle
and film crews from
Entertainment Tonight
and E! They always did a full spread on the catering at important parties. She had thumbed through countless celebrity magazines, soaking up the details on who served what and how. Sometimes the caterer’s phone number and website were published, which was the equivalent of finding the Holy Grail in your hall closet.

All she had to do was create a spectacular, mind-blowing confection for two hundred people who had seen it all at least ten times over, and pray that her Cinderella moment was finally here.

 
Hayley Maitland Goldstein might be a baker, but she had the soul of a first-class litigator. Hammering out the contract took longer than Finn had expected, and that was after he had agreed to all of her demands.

It was dark when he finally left the bakery. He felt like he had gone ten rounds with a Supreme Court justice.

Anton caught sight of him as he approached the Hummer, and the engine sprang to life.

He tapped on the window and the glass whirred down softly. “Give me a minute,” he said to his friend. “I have to make a call.”

Anton nodded and the glass window whirred back up.

Tommy picked up on the first ring. “Did you see her?”

“I saw her. I presented the proposal and she signed on the dotted line. She’ll be at the Taj Mahal on the twenty-ninth for Flash’s party.”

There was a moment’s hesitation, then Tommy cleared his throat. “And—?”

Finn thought about her quick laughter, the flashes of temper, the unexpectedly familiar green eyes with the flecks of gold. The capable hands with the odd little quirk to the right ring finger. Only one other person on earth shared that ring finger jog.

He would recommend they go the DNA route because he was a lawyer and he was trained to cross every
t
and dot every
i
, but the results would only prove what he already knew in his gut to be fact.

“Better sit down, Tommy,” he said. “I think this time we found you a daughter.”