Icing On The Cake

www.mirabooks.co.uk

For Drake Anthony, the newest member of the Castoro clan.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A big thanks to Scott McGehee, owner of

Boulevard Bread Company in Little Rock, Arkansas.

And a special thanks to his night crew, who let me in

on the secret life of bread making. After watching their

intensive efforts, I’ll never complain about the

cost of a loaf of artisan bread again!

Chapter 1

The Pritikin diet almost killed me. Then along came Atkins, followed by the Stillman, Scarsdale, Hollywood, ketogenic and Zone diets. The South Beach was almost my coup de grâce. I’ve fought the good fight with all. I’m a baker.

Bread is the staff of life. Who could resist the warm yeasty fragrance of something loving in the oven? Plenty, to tell by sales at the No-Bagel Emporium during the no-carb years. After years of denying themselves steaks and chops, butter and cheese, the diet nation was ready to indulge in fat, as long as no flour was involved. But the mass hysteria couldn’t last. The craze has fizzled. It’s just a matter of time before bread is king again.

Yet New Jersey is not Manhattan. New ideas, even bad-diet fads, take a while to catch on and twice as long to fade out.

The morning rush, make that amble, has slowed as a well-toned woman in a workout camisole and low-rise pants gazes longingly at my bread racks. Then she sucks in her lower lip. She said she just came in for bottled water but I sense a weakness.

Shameless panderer that I am, I lure undecided customers with generous samples. Yesterday it was palm-size ciabatta slices spread with violet-flower honey. Today it’s raspberry-almond butter spread upon chocolate sourdough.

“We were meant for bread,” I whisper over my countertop like a desperate lover. “Try it.”

She shakes her head, clutching her Nina Bucci workout bag to her chest. “I really shouldn’t.”

“Just a taste.” I push the tray an inch closer to her. “If you’re going to sin, do it for the best of reasons.”

“I suppose one nibble can’t hurt.” She looks quickly left and right in my all-but-empty store, then reaches out and snatches up the smallest cube and pops it in her mouth.

I know what to expect, the sudden widening of her eyes, the slight catch of her breath, and then that little moan of animal satisfaction. I nod and smile. “I’ll just pop a loaf in a bag for you. Pay now and pick it up on the way back from working out.”

Before she can think better of her seduction I turn to bag a loaf, only a little ashamed of myself. I’ve become a pimp, and my madam is un petit pain.

Let me explain. I’m a bread addict. My grandparents owned the Bagel Emporium in Upper Montclair, New Jersey, for fifty years. They bought it from a Jewish couple from Hoboken, who were some of the first to emigrate to the new state of Israel in 1949. Five years ago Grandpa Horace decided they were too old to carry on and left the business to me, their only grandchild, and moved to Phoenix. It was a case of perfect timing. My career in advertising with my now ex, Ted, had begun to bore me to tears. I didn’t have to think twice. I’m a Jersey girl, albeit one with a degree from a Swiss finishing school. Practicality is bred into my genes. The way I see it something that engages the five senses, makes arm-toning exercises an option and produces one of life’s oldest culinary delights is a win-win situation.

Okay, Ted hated the idea. He said that in leaving advertising for an industry requiring physical labor I was “Opting out of an upper-middle-class career for a trade with all the cachet of cosmetology.”

I consider his attitude bias. He has gluten sensitivity, which makes him swell with gas. Not a deadly reaction, just a very uncomfortable one. The sight of a floury kitchen counter is enough to send him reeling backward.

“Thanks.” My customer smiles shyly at me as she pockets her change. “I hope Rodrigo doesn’t smell chocolate bread on my breath.”

“My pleasure.” I offer her a Pez from my Snoopy dispenser. “This will keep it our little secret.”

Ted’s opinion aside, I was born to make bread. I compensate by making the best bread in the tri-state area. I have plaques on the wall that attest to the fact.

We’re an artisan bakery, which is small enough so that each worker knows the whole process of making bread, and two or three of us can make enough batches to supply the daily requirements of the store.

From the beginning, we flourished.

The location was ideal, situated on the first floor of a three-story building whose second floor is home to Five-0, a lifestyle magazine for the woman of a certain age. The third floor houses Rodrigo’s Body Salon, which caters to suburbanites with cellulite issues. Between them and street traffic, the Bagel Emporium had a readymade clientele of boomer women who no longer thought two lettuce leaves make a lunch, and health acolytes who reasoned they had earned a little sumthin’ after burning two cinnamon buns’ worth of calories. Burn two, eat one. It was a calculation they could live with, and I knew I could live on.

Within weeks of ownership, I invested in two used industrial mixers and a brand-new stone deck oven, and branched out from bagels to my personal passion: leaven bread. We make the basics like baguettes, ciabatta, pagnotta, whole wheat, rye and sourdough. But I love to experiment. Custom orders for chocolate-cherry pumpernickel and piñon-nut queso blanco con mango whole wheat garnered so many requests they quickly became store staples along with gourmet delights like bittersweet chocolate croissants, bourbon pecan cinnamon rolls and focaccia pizzas. Friends call my creations the haute couture of bread-making. Business was so good after the first year that I dropped bagels altogether, a decision appreciated by the deli down the block. Regulars nicknamed us the No-Bagel Emporium, and it stuck. Then disaster struck. Noodles, pasta and bread became the pariahs of modern life.

The bakery is definitely on the road to recovery but the bills accrued while it was on life support sucked up all my discretionary savings. The bread is better than ever, but once lost, one’s clientele is difficult to lure back. We’re a broken habit.

I glance around my store. Like me, it’s neat but showing its age. Once I wore Albert Nippon and Ferragamos. Now I dress from the Gap sale rack. The No-Bagel Emporium needs a makeover to attract new attention. But there’s already a lien on the bakery. Guess we’ll both have to make do for now.

I check the front windows for the passing of a perspective customer. The bump bump vibrations of the body-pump class sound track that filters into my shop means my customer base is focused for the moment on burning calories, not consuming them.

To console my disappointment that there is no line around the block waiting to get in there’s always the case for a cinnamon roll. One bite is all it takes to produce a smile. Its syrupy, crunchy texture cannot be bested anywhere in the tri-state area. I know because we won a taste test four years ago.

Just as I’m adjusting my mouth for the first bite, the door opens and in comes the skinniest eight-year-old I’ve ever seen. “Hey, Dupree.”

“Hey, Miz T. You got a job for me today?”

I look around until I spy a broom. “Want to sweep the front?”

He nods but sticks out his lip. “When am I gonna get a real job?”

“Sweeping is a real job.” Dupree is an entrepreneur. His parents could buy my store but Dupree likes to earn his own money, which he doesn’t waste on things like sweet rolls. So I have to think up excuses to fatten him up a bit.

“Before you start I have something else I need you to do for me.” I put my cinnamon roll on a napkin and push it toward him. “I think Shemar is slipping. Tell me if you think this cinnamon roll is up to his usual standard.”

Serious as any adult, Dupree takes it, eyeballs it and then takes a big bite.

“You need some milk, to get the full flavor experience.” I pull a half-pint carton out of my case and offer it to him with a straw.

“It’s good.” He cranks his head to one side. “Only, needs a little more cin’mon.”

“I’ll tell Shemar. Finish it, anyway, because you know I don’t like wastefulness. I’ll give you a dollar as my consultant, and your choice of a loaf when you’re done sweeping.” Wish I could pay him but I don’t want child services coming after me for violating child labor laws.

Coffee cup in hand, I scoop up the mail and head for a booth. An ominous-looking envelope from my flour distributor sits on top.

I love the tone of dunning letters.

“We are sure you have overlooked…If not rectified in thirty days we will be forced…If the remit has been mailed please ignore…”

They manage to make you feel delinquent, a failure and possibly a good egg all in the same paragraph. Oh, and very afraid for your credit record.

I scan quickly through the advertisements and catalogs, until an industry magazine with the cover line AWAKE from the No-Carb Nightmare catches my eye.

I mumble as I read it until Celia taps me on the shoulder. “You okay, Liz?”

“Listen to this. The cover article says the low-carb craze peaked last year. Yet on the very next page there’s a piece about making low-carb bread. Instead of backing us up, the industry is still trying to cover every angle.”

Celia smiles, which emphasizes the Kewpie doll contours of her face. “Those articles are written months in advance. Everyone knows bread is back.”

I nod. “You’re right. Got to think positively. Business will pick up after people sample our wares at the Fine Arts and Crafts Show. That’s only a month away.”

“So is the wedding.” My blank look must give away the need for a prompt because Celia adds, “My friend Jenna’s wedding?”

“Oh, yeah.” How could I forget the topic of every other conversation with Celia since the invitation arrived two weeks ago?

Celia pats her twice-pregnant tummy. “Can you tell I’m working out with Rodrigo twice a week?”

“Absolutely.”

Celia Martin is a former Wall Street analyst who quit three years ago because she had fertility issues to resolve. They resolved as two sets of twins born sixteen months apart. Yet even the most dedicated mommy needs a little time off. Luckily, Celia’s husband has one of those boring-sounding careers in insurance financing that earns obscene amounts of money. Thanks to him, and her two live-in nannies, she can slum two mornings a week for me, ordering and pairing cheeses with our specialty breads. Twice a month, she goes into the city to get her hair done, and pick up our custom orders from Murray’s Cheese Shop in Greenwich Village.

Working for the No-Bagel Emporium isn’t usually an ego issue for Celia. But when a girlfriend from her “firmest” years is a partner in some disgustingly attractive IPO stock-optioned company, it’s hard to say “cheese specialist” in the same top that fashion. According to Celia, Jenna was one of those friends who would steal your boyfriend and then still manage to keep your friendship by making you feel she’s done you a service by freeing you up to find “someone worthy of you.” Now, that’s just Machiavellian. No wonder the upcoming wedding has Celia feeling the need to measure up to the world she left behind. She has, by my count, bought and taken back five outfits.

“Why don’t we knock off early?” Celia waggles her perfectly arched brows at me. “Shemar can take care of the lunch crowd. Let’s go get manicures and pedicures. My treat.”

I don’t hesitate on the issue of if she can afford it. But I’m in debt up to my no-longer-waxed eyebrows.

I duck my head. “You go. I really need to stay and help out.”

“It’s not a pity bribe,” she says, reading my mind. “Think of it as girlfriend therapy. You’re doing it not to embarrass me.”

And just like that, we’re out the door, after a quick reminder to Shemar, my baker and right hand. “Don’t forget to bag up the leftovers for pickup by the soup kitchens.”

One thing a bakery like ours simply can’t do is compete with itself by selling day-old bread. It’s quite frightening the number of customers who can’t tell the difference.

“What do you mean, let’s get tanned, too?”

Celia offers me a glib smile as she maneuvers her SUV into a parking space before a strip mall tanning salon in West Orange.

“The entire time I was trying to decide between dresses the salesgirls kept saying any of the dresses would look hot if I had a tan.”

“You have to be able to tan to tan, Celia. You don’t tan.”

Her Irish porcelain skin turns strawberry. “Spray tanning doesn’t activate a body’s melanin, just changes the outmost layer of skin, so even I can tan. If I start now, I will be able to squeeze in several sessions before the wedding. Let’s try it. With your olive skin tone, you’d turn JLo honey-gold.”

“Not me. I don’t do chemical things to my body unless under a doctor’s orders.”

Celia gives me her mommy’s-disappointed-in-baby glance. “Liz, life is about the decisions we make to live passionately or passively. Where’s your passion?”

Okay, I know what this is about. Celia is like Noah, and thinks the world should be paired up. “I’m seeing someone, remember?”

“You are, to put it in your own words, nondating Harrison Buckley.”

She’s right. That relationship could be said to be living passively. Really should do something about that. When I have time.

I glance down at my feet and smile. We’ve had our toes and nails done. Celia got tips and a French manicure and pedicure. I work in dough and prefer natural short nails. However, my toes are the color of watermelon slices. The glue-on “seeds” were optional. If that’s not living dangerously I don’t know what is.

“A-hem!”

“What?”

“Tan? Now?” Celia points to a banner in the window of the tanning salon.

Change your outside to love your inside.

“I hope no one paid money for that slogan.”

One minute later Celia and I are standing in the reception area of the South Beach Day Spa and Tanning Salon. Nearby a row of girls who look young enough to be cutting class flip through teen magazines and chat. Behind the wall of glass bricks flanking the reception area, colorful shapes move through a fogged kaleidoscope.

“Did you say Mrs. Tal-bot?” The receptionist’s eyes couldn’t be wider.

I nod.

She cuts her eyes to a young woman standing nearby, who is also openly staring at me, then says, “O-kaaaay.” She pushes a button and announces, “There are a Mrs. Talbot and a Mrs. Duffy here for spray tanning appointments.”

I wonder only briefly what that was about. Too nervous to sit I survey the menu of services on the wall that includes manicures, pedicures, facials and wraps. And, of course, tanning options.

I’m just wondering what sort of “options” there are to tanning when Celia says, “Oh, that’s what I want.” She points to a menu item: Double Hot-Action Dark Tanning.

“You’re a beginner, Celia. Think Gwyneth Paltrow and Julianne Moore.”

But she’s not listening. She’s picks up a flyer and reads. “Hot Action, also known as Tropical Heat, Skin Stimulation and Tingle, uses a combination of ingredients to increase the microcirculation of the skin, which increases blood flow. The hot-action lotion uses tan-extending walnut oil to produce an instant, Intense glow.”

“Intense glow? That doesn’t even sound normal, let alone safe.”

She flashes me a grin. “We’re not here for safe. We’re here for that outside to match our adventurous insides.”

“You obviously haven’t seen the unadventurous inside of my wallet.”

“My treat!”

Before I can form another way to say N-O, a young woman, this one in a shrink-to-fit tropical-blue smock that barely covers the tops of her bronzed thighs says to me, “I’m your hostess, Lili. Follow me, please.”

She pauses in a hallway of doors and says to Celia, “Did you bring a swimsuit?”

Celia nods and produces one from the depths of a purse the size of Pennsylvania. Since the twins were born, all her purses are the size of Pennsylvania.

“You may change out of your day clothing in here into a robe and shower cap. In the shower stalls you’ll find exfoliating cleanser to use to help prepare your skin. Dry yourself really well before you put on your suit and goggles.”

When she turns to me a big fat grin stretches my face. “I can’t tan because I didn’t bring a swimsuit. Or goggles.”

“We provide goggles. You have the option of going into the spray booth in the nude.”

“Not in this lifetime.”

She gives me a quick up and down. Her expression says she agrees that my shelf life for public nudity has expired. “We have disposable paper suits available, for a small fee.”

“She’ll take it.” Celia dares me to contradict her.

In spite of my anxiety about the paint job to come, I’m enjoying the idea of more pampering. Ask any woman of any age from any walk of life: self-affirmation can be most easily accomplished by a pampered hour consumed by such things as toenail length and shades of polish.

Five minutes later Celia and I are standing in a mint-green dressing room area, having exfoliated from chin to heels, putting on our suits. The locker room is a room away, and the cubbies provided for dressing don’t have curtains for privacy. I guess the thinking is if you’re vain/proud enough to tan it, you’d want to show off what you’re working with.

“What do you think?” Celia’s swimsuit bra top is a good fit. The low-waist boxer briefs make the most of her ample hips but hold in only part of her tummy. She puts a hand on the pooched-out leftovers. “Baby-making fat. I’m thinking lipo next year, after I lose another ten pounds. Good idea?”

“Maybe.” At the moment I have worse problems.

Who decided a halter top made from what seems to be quilted paper towels could contain a real woman? One breast keeps sliding out of its triangle section while the weight of the other tests the elastic bandeau meant to stop it from slipping out underneath. The panties? It barely covers the lawful essentials. My cheeks are on their own.

Our hostess sticks her head in the door. “Okay, first one ready?”

Before I can answer, Celia’s out the door. As I fiddle with the strings that claim to adjust hip exposure, the door swings back open and two young women enter.

One glance over my shoulder reveals a pair of deeply tanned but un-sun-kissed babes in micro bikinis, the kind you only see in ads for Australian beaches or Brazilian wax jobs. They are also wearing shower caps and heels.

One holds out a slender arm to the other. “Does this look like a Brazilian tan to you?”

Her whole body is the color of maple furniture; who can tell? But I turn quickly away. They weren’t speaking to me.

I hear her companion reply, “You look a bit toasty around the edges.”

The first one sighs. “They say it will take several hours for the full effect. Still, I expected, well, you know. More.”

The way she says this, I visualize beluga on toast triangles, chilled Dom, an ocean view and live violins.

I sidestep back into one of the dressing cubicles, hoping they will just ignore me. Now, not only do I feel sallow-complexioned and under-exfoliated, even my pedicure screams amateur. I’m a self-made woman in this spa-day world.

“Oh, look, a newbie,” says one of them in a stage whisper. The reason that must be so crystal clear is because my pale June-moon posterior is turned to her.

Moving closer to me, she says, “Hi there. You will want to go slow the first time in a tanning bed. You’re really untan.”

“Thanks,” I mumble without turning around. “But I’m getting a spray job.”

“Should you tell her?” murmurs the other one. “About the, you know, uneven affects spray tans can have on aging skin. How it streaks in sagging areas?”

“No, that wouldn’t be kind.” Muffled giggles accompany this as they drift into cubicles to change out of their suits. “But I’ve seen what inconsistent coverage can do. The poor woman looked like she had a disease.”

I suspect I’m being baited, even if they are whispering, but the partition blocks the nasty look I toss in their direction.

After a moment of silence one says, “Have you bought your wardrobe for Santa Fe?”

“Not everything. It’s so hard to shop now that I’m between sizes. I saw these really cute capris at Bloomies.” Big sigh. “But they were a size four, and positively bagged in the crotch. To make up for my bad mood, I bought two pairs of Michael Kors sandals, a gold-leather flat and wedgies with turquoise stones up the front.”

“Oh m’god! I saw those. They cost a fortune.”

“That’s right. But I earn it.” There’s a muffled exchange and more giggles. “Teddy just loves my new abs.”

“Ten days at a spa in New Mexico. You’re so fricking lucky, Brandi!”

My head jerks up. Teddy? Brandi! “Oh…my…God!”

I step backward out of my cubicle just as she does, and find myself looking dazedly at a face and body that accelerates my heart. It’s…. it’s…her!

Her gaze widens, as if I’m the one who needs help because I’m gaping at her standing there in the nude. “You know, I’m sure I’ve seen you somewhere before.”

That’s when I remember I’m wearing a shower cap and goggles. I hurriedly snatch off both, which is a mistake. My breasts heave and then drop, breaking the paper halter strings, so that they flop out over the top.

I reach back and grab for modesty’s sake one of the paper towelettes they gave us to dry off with. As I do, I hear a rip. The crotch of my bikini bottom pops, leaving me with two narrow triangles flapping free, fore and aft.

“Well, well. Liz.” Brandi’s lips twitch as her gaze flicks up and down my torso with mortifying interest in my wayward flesh. “It’s always…interesting to see you.”

“I—er, yeah,” I manage but she’s on the move.

“Got to run,” she says as she sashays her tiny bronze butt toward the lockers.

“Who was that?” I hear her buddy ask as they disappear around the corner. I miss the reply. But I don’t really need to hear it.

I strip off the remains of my wrecked suit with shaking hands. Of all the bad-luck, unnecessary things to happen!

I’m back in my own bra and panties when Celia reappears, which adds a second shock to the day. She looks like something that should be served up with clarified butter and lemon wedges.

“Holy cow! Celia, are you okay?”

“She’s fine. She’s just had a reaction to the tanning booster,” Lili says calmly.

Celia doesn’t look calm. She’s vibrating as if she’s got one of her new fingernail tips caught in an electric socket. “The hot-action cream said it gave maximum tanning results in the shortest possible time. I—I wanted to look—look.”

I turn to our hostess. “I thought she was going to be painted bronze. Cherry-red is not a tanning color.”