The Christmas Gift

Chapter 3

A/N: At last, the end, or is it the beginning? You tell me! Hope you enjoy!

Jake Dalton loved to cook; loved the textures, the smells, the intricacies of putting a meal together that made mouths water. It hadn’t always been so. For most of his life he’d been a box and microwave chef, and only then if he didn’t feel like going out. But a six month stint in the slammer for a crime he’d NEVER committed introduced him to the joys of cooking, as well as the other, less joyful aspects of prison life. So now the ex-cop embraced the peaceful activity of cooking for others, tonight being no exception.

If Jake loved cooking, he absolutely adored baking, and the holidays afforded him the excuse to bake to his heart’s content. There was no confection he wouldn’t try replicating, though he had his favorites. Like tonight. Tonight Jake was concocting his signature pumpkin pie. He furnished this pie regularly in the café, along with apple and chocolate cream, and it remained his favorite. He sold a lot of the dessert, and ate way more of it than he should. In fact, as he rolled the pie dough expertly to the strains of “Music of the Night,” from The Phantom of the Opera, Jake admitted that he didn’t really need a belt anymore to hold up his jeans, and hadn’t he had to readjust the strings to his apron just the other day? If he was smart, he’d take pumpkin pie right off the menu! But Jake’s taste buds rebelled, so stay it did.

Normally a pop or rock n’ roll aficionado, the ex-cop-turned-chef found himself more and more often listening to classical music when he baked. Usually found belting out the lyrics to Lady Gaga hits, tonight Jake contentedly sang along with Sarah Brightman as she warbled her way through the monster hit opera, his voice untrained but warmly pleasant in accompaniment.

The only fly in the ointment of his new life was the fact that the ex-cop and his lady-love remained on opposite sides of the matrimonial fence, and their opposition was beginning to affect Jake’s new-found serenity. Witness today; he hadn’t seen Lucy Parker since they’d closed the restaurant at two, and now it was pushing seven o’clock! Where the hell was she?

As if on cue Jake heard the lock on the kitchen’s rear door rattle, announcing the very woman he pined for. Pausing in mid-roll, Jake kept his eyes trained on the back entrance to the kitchen. Sure enough, Lucy Parker hove through the opening, dressed in pink sweats with a matching sweatband holding her long hair off her face. As Jake stood straight, anger spiked through him as he realized where she’d been, and the fact that she’d somehow come home and changed into her new get-up without even stopping to speak to him first. What the hell! Yet he still managed to say civilly enough, “How many times have I asked you not to run after dark, Lucy?”

Lucy stopped her advance, shooting an unexpectedly cool glare toward Jake. The cop blinked at the animosity spearing through those sexy as hell glasses she wore. Had they fought this afternoon, and it just slipped his mind, unimportant to the former cop like all their other petty differences because his love for Lucy Parker remained unshakable? Jake cast his mind back to the afternoon service. No, she’d kissed him before she’d gone shopping with Jane. Lucy always held back her affection when she got angry with him, which, luckily for Jake, wasn’t very often. And he could always unlock her irritation at him with well-placed lips and fingers…

But now it was Jake’s turn to be irritated. Another reason he’d gone ahead and sealed the deal on that little house away from the city center: this neighborhood wasn’t real safe for a woman jogging alone, which Lucy Parker insisted on doing in her continual quest for the perfect body. It didn’t matter that Jake gave her statistic after statistic regarding physical attacks on lone women at night, or the fact that he was crazy about her voluptuous curves and wasn’t real stoked on her trying to firm them up. Lucy persisted on running by herself while he prepared the next day’s menu, and consequently Jake continued to fume. Like now.