Mariah Stewart - Coming Home

“The little round ones with the lemon stuff on top?”

Mia nodded. “I wanted to have something special of Mom there on my wedding day. You know that if she was still alive, she’d be baking them for the wedding.”

“That’s really sweet, honey, but why don’t you send your someone to Vanessa’s place and I’ll stay here and help you?” He thought that sounded reasonable.

“Because my someone is Mara, and she’s baking at her house.”

“So why can’t Mara’s cookies count for half of Vanessa’s?”

Mia had stared at him as if he’d suddenly gone stupid, then replied, “Because they count for mine.”

Her eyes began to fill with tears, and he’d given in. What insensitive oaf would make his sister cry over cookies just three days before her wedding?

“Just go back to Charles Street, then take a left onto Cherry.” Mia seemed to recover quickly but he thought it best not to mention it at that point. “Vanessa’s house is three blocks up. Number 309. You can’t miss it. It’s a white house with a blue door. It has some pink and purple flowers in the front yard.”

“Yeah, well, no surprise there,” he grumbled as he walked along.

It wasn’t that he didn’t like Vanessa. They’d run into each other several times over the past few days, and he’d found her to be funny and charming and smart. And yes, as Mia had noted, she was very pretty. He hadn’t needed his sister to point that out. Some might even have described her as beautiful. But it wasn’t as if he hadn’t been around very pretty women before. It was just that there was something different about Vanessa. He couldn’t put his finger on just what that something was, or how to react to it, but it set off an alarm inside his head. He’d been in the FBI long enough to know danger when he saw it, regardless of the form it took.

Halfway into her block he spotted the house on the opposite side of the street. To say there were “some” flowers out front had been an understatement. There were so many tulips-in every shade of pink and purple imaginable-that it looked as if someone had spilled bags of pastel jelly beans across the yard. It must have taken her days to plant them all.

But yeah, pink and purple. It figured.

He walked along the path that wound through the sea of blooms and took the porch steps two at a time, imagining what the house must look like inside. He’d bet that the furniture would be all white with flowery pillows and the walls would be shades of pink. He pictured Vanessa in the kitchen with her pink apron, wearing pearls and high heels as she measured out flour and cracked open eggs to bake Mia’s cookies.

He rang the bell, not sure whether he was more amused or frightened by the image he’d conjured.

Vanessa unlocked the front door. “Mia just called to tell me you were on your way. Thanks for coming.”

He stepped inside and found himself engulfed by the scents of lemon and vanilla. In a flash, he was transported back to his childhood, and could almost see himself sitting on his knees on a kitchen chair, his elbows propped on the kitchen table as he sniffed the air intently while his mother grated lemon rind.

“Careful,” she’d teased him, “or there won’t be any lemony smell left for the cookies.”

“Just close the door tightly behind you so that it doesn’t blow open in this breeze we’re having this morning.” Vanessa’s voice brought him back to the present with a thud.

Her voice trailed away as she disappeared toward the back of the house.

He followed and tried to will away the memory of the way life had been back then, before their mother died and childhood had changed for all of them.

The front hall was all polished wood, the walls the color of fresh cream. Grady gave a quick glance at the rooms on either side as he followed her. The living room was a deeper shade of cream, the furniture not at all what he expected. It was all vintage-y looking, in dark jewel tones. The dining room off to the right had deep red walls and an old Oriental carpet. No pink anywhere.

No pearls, either, he realized as he came into the kitchen several steps behind Vanessa. No cutesy apron, and no high heels. The apron covering her cutoff jeans and gray T-shirt was tan and had DISCOVER ST. DENNIS! in navy-blue block letters. Her feet were bare, and though her hair was pulled back into some elastic thing, enough escaped to frame her face with curls. She wore no makeup and, in spite of her smile, appeared just barely happier to see him than he was to be there.

The counters were crowded with baking supplies and cookie sheets. An open carton of eggs, half empty, sat on the kitchen table.

“What can I do to help?” he asked.

“Do you know how to roll out cookie dough?”

“I know how to mix it.” He did his best to ignore the cut lemons that lay side by side on a cutting board. It was still his all-time favorite scent.

“I’m not ready to mix another batch yet,” she told him. “I’ll roll and you cut.”

“Cut?”

“With cookie cutters.”

“Sure.” He nodded. “I can do that. I used to be good at that.”

“Great. You’re hired.” She waved him over to the table and pressed something into his hand. He looked down at the smooth plastic object, then back up at Vanessa.

“My mom always used a round cutter,” he told her.

“Mia wants hearts.”

“Oh.” What, he wondered, had happened to kick-ass former FBI agent, criminal investigator Mia Shields in this town?

“You can work over here.” Vanessa cleared a space and tore a piece of waxed paper from a roll. She flattened it onto the counter, took a blob of dough from the refrigerator where it had been chilling, and dumped it onto the waxed paper. She sprinkled a rolling pin with a little flour, then proceeded to roll it out to the thickness she wanted.

“There you go,” she told Grady. “You’re up to bat.”

He hesitated for a moment, then realized there would be no escape until the job was done.

Oh, if only my old friends from the Bureau could see me now…

He grimaced at the thought. Where once he tracked serial killers and child predators, he was now reduced to cutting out little heart shapes in dough with Miss Fluff. How the mighty have fallen…

From the corner of his eye he stole a glance at her. He had to admit she wasn’t looking quite so fluffy today. As a matter of fact, she was all business, in an intense sort of way that he found oddly appealing. He struck the thought from his mind as quickly as it had entered.

“Nice of you to offer to help Mia,” he said to break the ice.

“Mia’s my friend, and she’s marrying my brother,” Vanessa replied very matter-of-factly. “Why wouldn’t I help?”

“She has other friends who didn’t offer to hire someone to work for them so that they could help out.”

“She’d do the same for me.” Vanessa took one batch of cookies out of the oven and placed it on a cooling rack. Into the oven went another tray.

“What do you want me to do now?” A line of cutout dough hearts lined up across the table.

“That was fast.” She glanced at his work, then nodded. “They look pretty good. You can put them on that tray on the counter there, as soon as I get a minute to clean it off.”

“I’ll do it,” he told her.

He stepped around her and grabbed the tray and took it to the sink and turned on the water. He could feel her eyes on the back of his neck while he washed off the cookie sheet, then dried it.

“I think we need a sheet of parchment on that tray before you put the cookies on it.” She was at the kitchen table measuring flour. “So they don’t burn on the bottom.”

“Okay.” He pulled a sheet off the roll and fitted it to the tray. When he finished placing the cookies on the tray, he asked, “What now?”