Authors: Janet Sanders
A little bit of searching and sorting and she had her answer: a recipe for a relatively simple Italian dish of pasta, red sauce, and sausage. Serve it with crusty bread and a salad and it should do the trick. She liked that the ingredients included things like “spicy Italian sausage,” canned chicken broth, and frozen spinach – those sounded like the sort of thing that she’d be able to find in the local grocery store. The website also had a nice feature that allowed you to adjust the ingredients for the number of servings, and she spent a few minutes considering her strategy on that front. On the one hand, there would only be two of them, but on the other hand one of the two was enormous and was probably used to eating large, hearty meals. Eventually Sarah settled on four servings – just to be safe – and clicked the button to adjust the amounts. She found a slip of paper and wrote down everything she needed, then headed for the door.
Her first stop was the flower shop, though she knew that she was shopping for herself, not Brad. She had a strong suspicion that he wouldn’t notice a vase full of flowers if she wore it on her head as a hat, but still – a little life and color would feel soothing, and right now a little soothing would go a long way. She breezed into the shop and breathed deeply of the air inside, heavy with life and layered aroma. Yes, this is just what she needed.
“Can I help you?” she heard from the back of the shop, and then Diane came out, wiping her hands on her apron. “Oh, it’s you! Sarah, you don’t come in nearly often enough. I never see you!” she said in a mock-scolding voice.
Sarah smiled. Already she felt better; there was something about Diane’s manner that put her at ease. She would have made a wonderful mother. “Hi, Diane. I’m having someone over for dinner tonight and I need something for the table. I was thinking maybe sunflowers?”
“Someone?” Diane asked, her voice taking on a theatrically conspiratorial tone. “Who is this someone? Anyone I know?”
“He’s not a boyfriend,” Sarah countered.
“But he is a ‘he.’ How interesting.”
“Diane, shush. We’re just friends.”
“Everyone is ‘just friends’ until they aren’t, honey. So you said sunflowers, and that would be nice. What color is your tablecloth and napkins?”
Sarah blanched. She hadn’t even thought of that. “I don’t think I have a tablecloth, and the napkins might be made out of paper.”
Diane’s professionalism showed in the fact that she didn’t react at all to what Sarah had said. “So the wood of the table will set the background color. I assume it’s wood?”
“Yes, wood. We won’t be eating off of a card table. I suppose I should thank my father for that much, at least.”
“Well then, the yellow of the sunflowers will go nicely on the table, unless you want to offset the color with a bit of a highlight – daisies, maybe? Or possibly something red, for romance.”
“No red! There’s far too much red in the cabin already. And besides, I told you – we’re just friends. Romance is not the theme.”
“Yes, just friends, of course you are. How silly of me to forget!” she called over her shoulder as she bustled about, collecting flowers from a big white bucket and gathering the greenery that she would wrap with them. “So, what will you be serving?”
“I’m going to keep it simple. Pasta and salad. Bread and wine. Maybe ice cream for dessert.”
“All good. The food doesn’t really matter when a young man and a young woman get together, of course.”
“Diane …”
“Yes, yes, just friends. I’m just saying, is all. If you like the company, the food isn’t so important. And if you REALLY like the company…”
“Stop, please!” Sarah said, laughing, as she took money out of her purse to pay for the flowers, which Diane had arranged artfully with the greenery as a backdrop and then wrapped in tissue paper and cellophane. She took the flowers and put them under her arm. “Thank you, Diane,” she said, and then added: “Wish me luck!”
Diane beamed. “Honey, you have youth, beauty, and brains. If you had good luck, too, it would just be unfair.”
Sarah smiled and waved and walked out of the store barely holding back her laughter. Diane sold flowers, sure, but the product she really offered was the incredible knack she had for making her customers feel great. Sarah would be willing to pay for that feeling even if it didn’t come with flowers.
The next stop was the grocery store, where she found Sam busy arranging the salad greens in the display. “Sam, just the man I need,” Sarah said, feeling surprisingly flirtatious. Already she was getting in the mood for the evening’s festivities.
“Afternoon, Sarah,” he answered, and looked her up and down approvingly – almost too much so for a married man. “I see you’ve already been visiting with Diane, but you are far more lovely than any bouquet of flowers. How can I help you today?”
Sarah handed him the list of ingredients. “I’m making dinner, and this is what the recipe calls for. Please tell me that you have everything on the list.”
Sam scanned the paper, nodding as he went. “Yup, we’ve got all that. The sausage is frozen, though. I hope that’s OK?”
Sarah shrugged. “That will be fine, Sam. I didn’t expect you to slaughter a pig out in the back just to make me fresh-ground sausage.”
“For you, Sarah, I would happily slaughter a pig, but I think you’ll like the stuff I’ve got. I grill that sausage on the Fourth of July, and my friends all rave about it.” He took a hand basked and started moving through the store, consulting Sarah’s list and collecting items from the shelves.
“I’ll also be making a salad,” she called to him, though that fact would have been obvious enough since she was selecting greens from the produce selection. With a start she realized that she had forgotten to put salad dressing on her list. Something told her that Brad would not appreciate eating his greens plain, as if he were some kind of giant, flannel-clad rabbit. She filled a basket with arugula, a few carrots, and a container of cherry tomatoes, then went off in search of a salad dressing that did not hail from the famous Thousand Islands.
16
Thirty minutes later she was back in the cabin, staring at the pile of groceries and feeling somewhat dazed. Sam had thrown in a package of pine nuts, which he insisted on giving her for free – he nearly always gave her something for free, now that she thought about it. Not for the first time, Sarah wondered what had possessed her to invite Brad over. She had never had anyone over for dinner in her apartment in San Francisco, unless you counted Ellie which Sarah didn’t because, no matter what she might have been planning, they always ended up eating at a restaurant anyway. The last time she could remember cooking dinner for anyone but herself was just after college, during a brief period in which she was trying to woo a much older man who, she thought, considered her something of a child and to whom Sarah was trying to prove that she was capable of adult tasks. As it turns out, that was the worst possible strategy; the gentleman in question had, it turned out, approached Sarah entirely because he thought her very young and inexperienced and, as a consequence of these things, rather sexy. The more Sarah thought about that, the more freaked out she got, until she could no longer look him in the face and stopped returning his calls.
In short, Sarah was definitely not a dinner-cooking woman, and yet here she was, about to cook dinner. She propped her laptop open on the counter and pulled up the page that contained the recipe she’d chosen. She glanced at her watch: it was four o’clock. That might be a little early to start cooking, but it would be much worse if she started too late.
Giving a little sigh, she got started. She decided to think of the whole thing as a project schedule, with milestones and deliverables. That made her feel a little better, and then she poured herself a glass of wine, which made her feel better yet. The first thing to do, she decided, was to break the preparation into manageable stages. She got out a stack of bowls from the cupboard and methodically began measuring out the recipe’s ingredients into the bowls which she arranged in a row, where they’d be ready when she needed them.
Her eyes were burning from the onion she was chopping when her phone rang. Cursing under her breath, Sarah picked it up with one hand while she rubbed at her eyes with the other. “Hello?”
“Hey, sister mine. How goes it?”
“Ellie! Actually it goes pretty busily right now. I’m cooking.”
“Wait. What? Did you say you’re cooking?”
“Yes, and I’m really in the thick of it right now. I’ll have to call you back.”
“Cooking for what? Cooking for who?”
“I’ll call you back.”
“Sarah, don’t you hang up on me…”
“I’ll call you tomorrow. Bye! Love you!” Sarah thumbed the phone off and set it on the counter. Ellie was such a gossip that there’d be no talking to her about dinner plans without turning it into an intensive, two-hour dialogue. Actually Sarah looked forward to talking to Ellie. She had some feelings she wasn’t entirely clear on, and there was no one like her sister for cutting through all the crap and seeing how things really were. But Ellie would wait, while the sausage sizzling in hot olive oil certainly would not.
As it turns out the recipe was pretty easy to make, though there was one frightening moment where Sarah added the frozen spinach to the pan and wondered whether she was supposed to thaw the package out before adding it. The water melting off the spinach spit furiously in the hot oil, but the spinach melted out into manageable chunks soon enough. The aroma was undeniably delicious, too, which gave Sarah a little more confidence as the clock ticked forward to the time when Brad would show up. Still, she had a nervous stomach that even two glasses of wine were not entirely able to quiet.
When she heard the knock at the door, Sarah briefly entertained the impulse to turn out the lights and pretend that she wasn’t home, but she managed to fight that down, check herself in the mirror (hair acceptable, nothing in her teeth, no sauce spilled on her white blouse, lips not stained red from the wine – all systems go) and walk to the door with a minimum of wobbling. When she opened the door, though, it didn’t quite occur to her at first to invite Brad in, and the two of them stood staring at each other for an extended period before she finally came to her senses, stepped aside, and waved him in.
Brad appeared to be his usual tall, gorgeous self, and he was wearing his customary boots and Levis, but Sarah noticed that he had put on a shirt that seemed freshly-laundered in the greatest gesture to the social niceties that she was ever likely to see him make. As he walked past he handed her a bottle of red wine, but in the narrow confines of the hallway Sarah’s mind was fully occupied with just how large he was – a full head taller than her, broad-chested and with wide shoulders, while the legs of his jeans filled out in a way that promised powerfully-muscled thighs and calves. Sarah stared at his back as he walked into the living room, not so much with desire as with a feeling of intimidation. It felt as if she had opened her front door and a wild animal walked in, smelling of the forest and leaving a trail of moss and pine needles in its wake.
By now her heart was beginning to beat heavily in her chest and Sarah was feeling a little short of breath. She closed the front door and, without meeting Brad’s eyes, walked straight into the kitchen. Her plan was to collect her wits before he tried to talk with her.
Brad was looking around the cabin interior, taking in the furniture and the decorations. “This is a nice place.”
“And you’re a very polite man. It’s my Dad’s place. He likes it.”
“You don’t?”
“I’m not so big on red and green as the two dominant colors. And I don’t know what he’s thinking with some of these decorations. Have you seen the scarecrow yet?”
Brad picked the statuette up from the coffee table and chuckled. “I was just admiring this little guy. I was sure that you’d brought it with you from San Francisco. But no?”
Sarah stuck her tongue out at him. “No, not really my style. But I must seem like a horrible daughter. My Dad was so sweet to let me stay here as long as I want, and here I am making fun of his stuff. I’m bad.”
“You’re normal. If we can’t make fun of our parents, what would we do with ourselves? And believe me, your father has great taste compared to mine. I don’t think I’m going to let you see the inside of his place. It’s too much of a risk.”
Sarah walked out of the kitchen with two glasses of red wine and handed one to Brad. He accepted it and held it in the air for a toast. “To generous fathers and their beautiful daughters.”
Sarah clinked her glass against his. “To charming liars.” She could feel the blush spreading across her cheeks and hoped that Brad wouldn’t notice it, or – if all else failed – that the redness of her face would allow her to blend into the background of the cabin decor and disappear. She took a quick sip, avoiding his eyes to hide the moment. After a pause in which she could feel him watching her, she said briskly, “So, how was your day?” Not waiting for a reply, she headed back to the kitchen.
“Getting better all the time,” she heard him say behind her.
“My friends would be scandalized that I have no charming canapés for you. It’s just dinner and a salad, I’m afraid. They’re much better at parties than I am.”
“I’m not sure what a canapé is, but I already know that I’d rather be here than at one of your friends’ parties.” He moved to where he could see her working in the kitchen and stood sipping his wine and staring at her with an intensity that Sarah found disconcerting. Abruptly she found herself aware of how muscular his legs looked in the faded jeans he was wearing.
"We're about ready to go here. Are you hungry?"
"Famished," he said with a smile that would not look out of place on the wolf in a production of Little Red Riding Hood.
She couldn’t help smiling back at she filled two plates and carried them to the table, where she had already set up to place settings. She had arranged the bread and a cube of butter on a cutting board. She hadn’t thought to look for a vase for the flowers she’d bought until she had already brought them home, and wasn’t surprised that her father didn’t own anything designed for housing flowers or any growing thing for that matter. After a search that grew in intensity with every passing moment, Sarah was finally able to discover a glass juice pitcher shoved in the back of a cupboard. She didn’t doubt that her father used it for drunken Bloody Mary bachelor breakfasts, but she was relieved to find it all the same. With a little water, and arranged just so, the flowers added a welcome burst of color at the center of the table.