The Next Best Thing by Kristan Higgins Read Free Book Online

brother and dad are the chefs now, but maybe someday. What about you? Are you in the chef program, too?” he asked, sitting on the grass next to me.
    “Pastry chef. I’m a sucker for dessert,” I answered.
    “She loves sweet things,” Ethan murmured, lifting aneyebrow and giving me a sidelong glance. Flirt. I grinned again. “You’ll have to come in and try my mom’s tiramisu,” he said. “It’s the best in four states. Including New York.”
    Ethan and I became instant pals. We hung out together, met for lunch a couple times a week, sat together on the old couches at the Cable Car theater and watched foreign movies, snickering inappropriately at the love scenes. “Sex in German,” Ethan murmured. “How awful.” The couple next to us glared, then muttered to each other—in German—sending us into gales of silent, wheezing laughter.
    We didn’t date, but we were compadres. He was a sophomore, I was a senior, and we were at the age where that still sort of mattered…my almost twenty-two felt much older than his still nineteen. He couldn’t go out for a beer—not legally, anyway—and I was interviewing with hotels and restaurants while he was years away from graduation. And though he was pretty cute and very fun, it wasn’t, as we girls liked to say, that way. We never held hands or kissed or anything. We were just friends.
    A few months after we met, Ethan and I shared the short ride home to Mackerly, and he brought me to Gianni’s.
    “Hey, guys,” he called as we went into the kitchen.
    “Hey, college boy, nice of you to drop by and visit the working class” came a voice, and Jimmy turned around, and that was that.
    His eyes got me first…blue-green, ridiculously pretty. The rest of his face was awfully nice, too. Gorgeous cheekbones, generous lips, a little smile tugging at one corner. Time seemed to stop; I noticed everything…the golden hair on his muscular forearms, a healing burn on the inside of one wrist. The pulse in his neck, which was tan and smooth and seemed to urge me to bury my face there. Jimmy Mirabelli was tall and strong and smiling, and Ididn’t realize I was staring at him—and he at me—until Ethan cleared his throat.
    “This is my brother, Jimmy,” Ethan said. “Jim, this is Lucy Lang. Her family owns Bunny’s Bakery.”
    Jimmy took a few steps over, and rather than offer me his hand, he just looked at me, and that little crooked grin grew into a slow smile that spread across his face. “Hi, Lucy Lang,” he murmured as I blushed. Ethan said something, but I didn’t hear. For the first time in my young life, I’d been hit hard with lust. Sure, I’d had a couple of boyfriends here and there, but this…this was indeed that way. A warm squeeze wrapped around my stomach, my mouth went dry, my cheeks burned. Then Jimmy Mirabelli did take my hand, and I almost swooned.
    Hours after I left the restaurant, Jimmy called the bakery and asked me out. I said yes. Of course I did. And when Ethan and I drove back to school that Sunday night, I thanked him for introducing me to his brother. “He’s a great guy,” Ethan said mildly, then listened as I gushed some more.
    Jimmy Mirabelli was, I quickly learned, the missing link in my life—a man.
    It hadn’t been easy for Mom, raising Corinne and me alone. She’d done her best—we had enough money, with Dad’s life insurance policy and Mom’s small but regular income from the bakery. Mom wasn’t a bad mother, but she was a little distant, not the type to ask where we were going or with whom—she said she trusted us to make smart decisions, and then she’d turn back to her crossword puzzle or true-crime novel, her parenting done for the night.
    I grew up in a constant state of father-envy. I adored my friends’ dads…the approval, the affection, the strictness, the rules. I remember Debbie Keating, my BFF from grade school, getting absolutely chewed out for wearing a trashytank top and blue eye shadow to our