Dating for Two (Matchmaking Mamas) by Marie Ferrarella Read Free Book Online

voice.
    Afraid that the woman would begin placing things on the tray that Steve had picked up and was resting on the counter right now, Erin quickly shook her head.
    “Oh, no, no, I was just kidding, giving voice to a fantasy,” she explained. Taking a breath, she scanned her choices one last time and made up her mind. “I’ll have a cup of coffee and a cream-filled turnover.”
    “Make that two,” Steve told the woman.
    The dark-haired woman inclined her head. “As you wish,” she replied.
    With a grand sweep of her hand, she indicated that they should move along to the center of the counter, toward the register. She met them there, delivering two cups of steaming, aromatic black coffee and two large cream-filled turnovers, each residing on its own plate. The woman carefully placed the plates one at a time on the tray, right next to the coffee.
    She proceeded to ring up the sale. “Will that be together?” she asked.
    “No,” Erin answered.
    “Yes,” Steve said at the same time, his voice resounding slightly louder than hers. Taking out a twenty, he handed it to the woman.
    “No, really, this isn’t necessary,” Erin protested, reaching into her purse.
    The woman seemed to take no note of her, handing Steve his change. He slipped what she’d given him into the tip jar beside the register and picked up the tray. For the first time, the older woman smiled.
    “You don’t have to pay for me,” Erin told him as he walked over to a small table for two to the left of the register.
    Setting the tray down, he looked at her. “If you had asked me out for coffee, I would have expected you to pay for me,” he told her cheerfully, despite the fact that he really wouldn’t have allowed her to pay. The idea of going Dutch had never appealed to him and it wasn’t something he felt comfortable about doing. Certainly not when it came to something as insignificant as a cream-filled turnover and a cup of coffee. “Tell you what,” he suggested, sitting down after she had taken her seat. “You tell me what fantasy you were giving voice to and we’ll call it even.”
    She looked at him, slightly confused. “What?”
    “Back there, when that woman looked like she was more than happy to give you ‘one of everything,’ you stopped her by saying you were only ‘giving voice to a fantasy.’” As he spoke, he distributed the two cups of coffee and then the two turnovers. With the tray empty, he removed it and put it out of the way on the floor behind his chair. “Did you used to dream about pastries?”
    He meant it as a joke, in the same vein that he’d asked her about naming inanimate objects. He hadn’t really expected her to answer his question seriously.
    “All the time,” Erin told him with a heartfelt sigh.
    “You weren’t allowed sweets as a kid?” he asked. The guess arose out of his own childhood, when one of his friends—Billy—had parents who wouldn’t allow him to have any candy, cake or cookies. Billy’s snacks were all painfully healthy foods, such as nuts, fruits and carrots. The second Billy was out of the house, he made up for it, scarfing down as many sweets as he could get his hands on. He’d had a serious weight problem by the time he was twenty.
    Erin, on the other hand, looked as if she was in danger of blowing away if she lost as little as five pounds.
    “Oh, I was allowed sweets,” she told him. “I just couldn’t keep any of them down.”
    He took a sip of his coffee before venturing, “Allergies?”
    Erin broke off a piece of the turnover and savored it before answering, “Chemo.”
    “Chemo,” Steve repeated, stunned. “As in chemotherapy?”
    “That’s the word,” she acknowledged, nodding her head. Even now, more than twenty years later, the very sound of the word brought a chill down her spine. She always had to remind herself that she had conquered the horrible disease, not the other way around.
    He felt as if he had opened his mouth as wide as possible and