Always the Baker, Finally the Bride Read online

“In return for what? Information?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Then, no thanks,” she snapped, and Hildie shoved her massive mane of reddish-brown curls away from her face and turned to leave. When Emma grabbed her arm, the girl shouted. “Let loose!”

  “I’ll tell you what. You come with me to the restaurant. I’m meeting my fiancé for dinner, but he won’t be there for half an hour or so. We’ll get you something to eat, and you and I will have a conversation.”

  “Or what?”

  “Or I’m going to march you up to the front desk, where I’ll ask the manager to send a message to every room in this hotel until your parents are notified to come down and talk to me.”

  Hildie thought it over for a long moment before asking, “I can have anything I want?”

  “Anything on the menu.” Thinking better of it, she added, “Within reason, of course.”

  “Let’s go, then.”

  Emma snagged Hildie’s arm before she went any farther. Leaning down to look the child in the eye, she said, “And if you take off again when I’m not looking, I’ll still have a message sent to every room in this hotel. There won’t be anywhere for you to hide. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes. Whatever.”

  Emma let Hildie lead the way, and she followed close behind. The hostess met the child at the entrance with a curious glance.

  “She’s with me, Lucy. There should be a table waiting for Jackson and me?”

  “Sure, Emma. Right this way.”

  They sat down right next to the window at a table with four place settings. Lucy handed them both menus, leaving one behind for Jackson. Hildie immediately peeled hers open and began to pore over it, giving Emma a chance to really look her over.

  “What?” the girl asked without glancing up from the menu. “Are you checking me for fleas or something?”

  Emma chuckled. “Why? Do you have any?”

  “Ha. Ha. You’re high-larious.”

  “And you so aren’t.”

  Their eyes locked for a moment before Hildie shrugged one shoulder and returned her attention to the menu.

  “Can I get you something to drink while you decide?” the waitress asked them.

  “Iced tea, unsweet,” Emma replied. “No lemon.”

  Before she could prompt Hildie, the girl jumped right in. “You got any chocolate milk?”

  “I think we do.” The waitress grinned at Emma.

  “Then I want a big one, and a glass of ice,” she told her. “Do you get that? An extra large chocolate milk, and a separate glass of ice on the side.”

  “Right away,” she answered. “I’ll be right back to take your orders.”

  Hildie shoved back her slightly matted mop of hair and sighed. “Everything on this menu is frou-frou. Don’t you have any plain old fried chicken?”

  “There are chicken tenders on the children’s menu. Those are like—”

  “Hey, you didn’t say anything about sticking to the children’s menu. You said I could have anything I want.”

  “I’m not saying you have to stick to the children’s menu, Hildie. And lower your voice.”

  “Sorry,” she blurted. “But I want a regular-size supper. That all right?”

  “Yes. All I was going to say was that perhaps, if the chicken tenders appealed to you, we could request a larger portion.”

  “Oh. Right. Okay. Can we do that with the spaghetti and meatballs?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Okay. That’s what I want. The spaghetti and meatballs. Super-size it.”

  Emma stifled the chuckle that tried to pop from her throat. This girl was an odd combination of annoying, incorrigible, and adorable.

  “What are you getting?”

  “Just a salad for now,” she replied. “I’d like to wait on Jackson.”

  “Is that your boyfriend? Jackson?”

  “Yes,” she said with a nod.

  “There was a girl in my fourth-grade class with that name. But it was her last name.”

  “What grade are you in now, Hildie?”

  “Fifth.”

  “And where do you live? I assume you and your family are in town for—”

  “Nice try,” she snapped.

  “We made a deal. I feed you, you give me some information,” Emma volleyed back at her.

  “Eats first. Information after.”

  The waitress set their drinks down on the table. “What can I get you?”

  “I’d just like to start with a house salad,” Emma answered. “Balsamic vinaigrette on the side. Jackson will be joining me for dinner in a while.”

  “And you?” she asked Hildie, who was involved with the very delicate operation of pouring a portion of her chocolate milk over ice. “What can I get for you?”

  “She’d like the spaghetti from the children’s menu,” Emma said.

  “But I want it super-sized,” Hildie added without looking up from her project. “And don’t skimp on the meatballs.”

  Emma sighed. “Can you increase it to an adult portion?”

  “Certainly. I’ll speak to Pearl.”

  “Thanks so much.”

  “Hey, wait a sec!” Hildie exclaimed. “Can I get another straw? I like to have two.”

  The waitress produced a second straw from the pocket of her starched apron and set it down on the table.

  “Why two?” Emma asked once the waitress departed.

  “I dunno. I like the way it feels.” Emma grinned as the girl poked the second straw into her glass and took a sip. “Wanna try?”

  “No, thank you. But you enjoy that.”

  Once Hildie had noisily slurped up the last of the milk in the glass, she poured in the rest and stirred it around with the straws.

  “Listen, Hildie,” Emma began, but the girl didn’t even glance up at her. “I need to know what’s going on with you.” Still no reply. “Come on. I think I’ve shown good faith here. Now you need to do the same.”

  She shrugged one shoulder and stared into the depths of her glass of chocolate milk and ice. “Nothin’.”

  Emma folded her arms and leaned back against the upholstered chair. “Hildie, look at me.” When she didn’t, Emma repeated the request. “Look at me.”

  Hildie raised her eyes slowly. “All right already.”

  “Your parents aren’t staying in this hotel, are they?”

  Darting her gaze back into her glass, Hildie focused on placing the straws into her mouth.

  “Hildie, answer me. Do you even have a room here?”

  It seemed like forever before the girl spoke. “Will you still let me eat the spaghetti if I say I don’t?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then . . . I don’t.”

  “Where are you staying?” Emma asked, her mind racing with a hundred different answers that might come next. But she never even imagined the one that finally did.

  “In the chair room.”

  After a moment, she repeated it, just to make sure she’d heard her right. “The chair room?”

  “Yeah. The place where they keep all the tables and chairs and stuff.”

  “Well . . . why . . . What are you doing in there?”

  Then came the standard eleven-year-old reply. “Nothin’.”

  “Hildie. Where do you live?”

  “I told you. In the chair room.”

  “No. I mean, normally. Where do you live normally?”

  “Nowhere.”

  Their eyes locked, and Hildie was the first to blink. Emma cocked her head and scratched it. “What do you mean, nowhere?”

  “I mean nowhere. Are you dumb or something?”

  Emma swallowed around the lump in her throat. “Hildie, you can’t always have been homeless. Where did you live before the chair room?”

  The girl’s eyes glazed with emotion as she looked up at Emma. “Are you going to make me leave? Because I can’t go back where I was before.”

  “Where was that?”

  “A shelter in Atlant
a.”

  “Is that where your parents are now?”

  “Nah. My dad left when I was two, and my mom died last month.”

  Emma’s chest ached. “Hildie, I’m so sorry.”

  “They wouldn’t let me stay in the shelter once she died.”

  “That’s when you came here?”

  “Yeah, my mom read to me about this place from the newspaper.” The girl’s brown-gold eyes turned dark and flashed—only for a second—with golden shards of pure pain. “We looked at the pictures from when it opened. They did a big thing on it in the Sunday Journal with color pictures and everything.”

  “I remember.”

  Emma struggled to keep her emotions in check, but she wanted to just let loose and let the tears flow.

  “My mom loved all that glamorous stuff. So after that, we’d watch the leftover papers for news on what was going on. There were weddings and birthday parties, and the pictures of all the great food . . . well . . . you know. We even took the Marta train out here to see it in person once. So when I got really hungry, I figured this would be a good place to come. So I did.”

  Emma pictured the young girl making her way all the way from downtown Atlanta out to Roswell, and finding her way to the hotel. Her heart broke just a little.

  The waitress had barely set the plate in front of her before Hildie snatched a knot of garlic bread from her plate and stuffed it into her mouth.

  The moment the waitress left Emma’s salad and moved away, she leaned forward and asked, “How long have you been hiding here, Hildie?”

  “I don’t know,” she managed through a full mouth. “A long time.”

  “Like a week?”

  “More like three, I guess.” She stabbed a meatball and poked it into her mouth.

  “And you’ve been hijacking room service carts all that time?”

  “Some,” she muttered over the meatball. “Sometimes I sneak into one of the big rooms after a party. I really clean up on those nights! Your wedding cake, by the way, is the best ever. I especially liked when you made the one out of cupcakes. I got five of ’em that night.”

  Emma shook her head and closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them again, Hildie swallowed and stared at her soulfully.

  “Emma, are you gonna send me away?” She could hardly answer. “Because I got no place to go. And I won’t bother anyone here, I promise. It’s like you won’t even know I’m here.”

  “Well, we’re not going to do anything right this minute,” she finally replied with a forced smile. “You have spaghetti to eat.”

  Hildie grinned from one ear to the other. “Thanks,” she said, and she dug her fork into the mound of spaghetti and began to twirl it. Suddenly, the girl jerked upward, and she gasped.

  “Uh-oh.”

  Emma tipped her head and followed the direction of the horror in Hildie’s eyes. Jackson stood just behind her chair, his arms folded, his brown eyes flashing with very serious curiosity.

  “Hi,” she said as she rose to her feet and touched his shoulder. “Jackson, I want you to meet a new friend of mine.”

  “This is the guy you’re going to marry?” Hildie asked her. “Are you kidding me?”

  “No, I’m not kidding. This is Jackson Drake, my fiancé. And the owner of this hotel.”

  Hildie groaned and fell back against the chair, her face parallel to the ceiling as she said, “Nice to make your acquaintance. Again.”

  “You two have met?” Emma asked. Tugging on Jackson’s arm, she added, “Come and sit down.”

  “Yes, we’ve met,” he said as he slipped into the chair beside Emma. “Sort of. She was a hurricane that nearly bowled me over in the elevator one day. So your family is still staying at the hotel?”

  Hildie’s eyes darted toward Emma’s for a moment before she ignored Jackson’s inquiry and returned her attention to the plate of messy pasta before her. Emma handed her a napkin and nodded toward the smear of tomato sauce on the girl’s cheek. Hildie wiped it grudgingly, glancing quickly at Jackson as she did.

  He looked at Emma and asked, “So how do you and Miss Hurricane know one another?”

  “We’ve run into each other a couple of times, and tonight I invited her to have a bite with me.”

  Jackson arched an eyebrow as he asked, “Is that so?”

  “Well, thanks for the grub,” Hildie chimed in. “I’ve got to be going now.”

  She’d just made it to her feet when Emma raised her hand and ordered, “Freeze!”

  Tossing her head backward in dramatic fashion, the girl groaned. “Oh, come on.”

  “Sit down and finish your dinner,” Emma commanded, and Hildie reluctantly tossed herself back into the chair.

  “What, you’re going to rat me out to The Man or something?”

  “The Man is a wonderful, very understanding person, Hildie.”

  “I’ll bet,” she grumbled. “Go ahead. Tell him. And let’s just see how understanding and wonderful Prince Charming turns out to be. My money is against it.”

  Tips for Calming the Nervous Bride-to-Be

  In the months before the wedding, the bride may experience

  feelings of anxiety, coupled with a sense of bewilderment

  brought on by the overwhelming amount of details on her to-do list.

  The typical stresses of ordinary life may even

  become magnified for her.

  Here are a few simple suggestions to help her focus on one

  checklist at a time for a more satisfying wedding experience:

  Help the bride compile an organized list of duties.

  Note: If she has hired a wedding planner, this list

  will be provided to her.

  Remind the bride often that she is about to marry

  the man of her dreams,

  and the wedding is just the party that will kick off what’s

  really important: The Marriage.

  Create a peaceful environment in which to help her

  make the decisions facing her.

  For instance:

  • Limit the planning sessions to people who make the bride feel safe and nurtured

  • Choose soothing music as a backdrop

  • Light aromatherapy candles

  • Prepare a light snack for her in the afternoon to increase her energy

  • Keep lots of bottled water on hand to ensure

  the bride is hydrated and focused

  • Help deflect daily non-wedding-related stress inducers

  8

  Hildie, this is Fee. She’s my right-hand man when it comes to baking all the wedding cakes and tearoom cookies. Fee, this is Hildie. Would you mind letting her help you prep the trays for tomorrow?”

  “Sure.”

  Jackson marveled at Emma’s sense of calm; it appeared to transfer to the young girl. She seemed to be in her element immediately as she exchanged some odd form of handshake with Fee and climbed up on the stool next to her at the worktable.

  “This has got to be the coolest job ever,” she told Fee, grinning at the rows of flower-shaped cookies set out before them.

  “Dude. You have no idea.”

  Emma took Jackson’s hand and led him into her office. He sat down in one of the two chairs crammed into the space to the side of the door, his knees touching the back of Emma’s desk.

  “You really need a bigger office,” he observed.

  “Jackson.” Emma’s way of bringing him back to the issue at hand.

  “Sorry. So she’s been stowing away here at the hotel?”

  “She was living in a shelter downtown with her mom, but a month or so ago her mom died, and Hildie ran away before they could get her into foster care.”

  “And she ran away to . . . The Tanglewood? How does something like that happen?”

  “Oh, Jackson,” Emma said, caving in a bit as her face contorted and her brown eyes melted like a pan of chocolate on the stove. “Her mom read to her out of the newspaper about the opening, and they even rode M
arta out here to have a look. We’ve worked so hard to paint this place as a magical environment, and I think Hildie bought into that. She came here looking for some magic.”

  Jackson reached across the desk and stroked Emma’s hand. “I’d say she found a little of it in you,” he said. “Just like I did.”

  Emma pushed up a smile as tears spilled from her eyes. “She doesn’t have anyone, Jackson.”

  “Well, Emma, let’s be sensible about this. We can’t just take her in like a stray cat.”

  “I know, but we can show her a little love and give her a warm bed to sleep in until we can contact social services, can’t we? It’s not like they’ll be around to answer their phones at this time of the evening.”

  “So what are you thinking?”

  “I’m going to take her home with me.”

  “Emma, I don’t know if—”

  “Jackson,” she interrupted. “You know I love you. But there’s nothing you can say to change my mind, so let’s not waste the energy arguing, okay? I’m going to take her home, get her into the bath, wash those filthy clothes of hers, and set her up in my guest room. Maybe just for a night or two, until we can find her a better option.”

  For just a minute, Jackson wondered if this was Emma’s payback for his making the decision about selling the hotel without her permission or input. But on second thought, no; he knew her far better than that. This was simply Emma being Emma, reaching out to someone who’d touched her heart, providing what she could to make the situation more bearable for her.

  “Do you want me to come with you?” he asked, resigned. “Help to get her settled or something?”

  “No.” Emma grinned at him, kissed the tip of her finger, and pressed it against his cheek. “I’m just going to take an aspirin and sit here for a minute. You kiss me goodnight and go home. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Jackson rounded the desk and took Emma into his arms. “Another headache?”

  “Just a little one.”

  They shared a deep kiss before he told her, “I look forward to the night when we don’t have to go our separate ways.”

  “We’ve somehow managed it for this long,” she reassured him, tucking her head underneath his chin. “We can stay strong another few weeks, can’t we?”

  “Speak for yourself,” he whimpered.