Free The Do-Over by Kathy Dunnehoff Page A

off the stuck trolley and back to her reason for taking a break. She needed to get a whiff of Abundance.

Chapter 3
    “Those are so cute.” Celia admired the sunglasses Mara had just added to her peach dress/pink butterfly sandals outfit. Gretchen had helped her pick them out after she’d escaped the restaurant and Dan. The shades were red with blue rhinestones, but things didn’t have to match to be so cute apparently.
    She touched the cat eye corner. “Thank you. Gretchen’s got everything.”
    “I never go in there.” Celia shook her head, “I’m saving my money, and I want everything I see.”
    She laughed, enjoying the enthusiasm of Celia. She tried to think back to her own life at nineteen. Had she wanted everything she’d seen? She’d wanted things, experiences too, but always with an internal reserve. She had things to learn from Celia. She thought of the women she knew at home, pictured the teacher friends, the neighbors in the subdivision. She’d never realized they were all, except for the cranky Mrs. Laird, the same age as she was. They were possibly even her same make and model, like a factory that chugged out wives and moms built to drive the distance without breaking down. But she had, that night in Seattle, and if she didn’t fix herself she might end up being the bitter, dried up Mrs. Laird. She took in a shaky breath and froze.
    Celia laughed. “Can you smell it?”
    She breathed in deeper, and the most delicious scent spread to her brain and relaxed her very cells.
    Celia sniffed the air. “I could earlier today, but when you’re here a while, you get used to it.”
    “I know how that is.” Maybe everybody needed some perspective now and then. She didn’t at the moment because every scent receptor in her nose communicated a sweet, creamy perspective. It smelled like a modest flower had given it up to a pound of butter. She felt weak in the knees.
    “You should test it.” Celia nodded her head toward the workroom.
    “I should test it.” Mara grinned and skirted the counter, heading towards the workroom and the intoxication of Lusciousness.
    She stopped a foot into the room.
    He was up to his elbows in a vat of what looked like the love child of vanilla ice-cream and sugar cookie dough. Dark curls messed around his forehead, and when he looked up, she registered that his eyes were green, and she’d stopped breathing.
    He spread his hands in charming invitation, and she made her way towards him despite the small part of her brain that asked, an invitation to what?
    He slid his hands back into the giant bowl that rested on a low table already flecked with bits of soap that had flown out like soft white rain drops.
    She watched him concentrate on the mix, glad she’d kept her sunglasses on so staring was theoretically less obvious. His hands squeezed the batter, studied it for something, a texture, a thickness, a softness. Around him the smell of vanilla, almonds, and soapy sugar circled like an aromatherapy fog, and he looked at her through the scent haze and tipped his head toward the work in a clear invitation to join him.
    She stepped up to the table but felt unprepared to offer any help. It was like she’d just walked into a test she hadn’t studied for, but the buttery smell, so compelling, made her reach out just to discover if it felt as warm and velvety as it looked. She dipped a finger in the heat of it, found a lump and squeezed it between her finger and thumb until it melted like a pat of butter. She slid the rest of her fingers, the ones still out in the cold, into the batter, and they heated instantly. She waved her hand back and forth in the cream.
    She didn’t notice that he watched her as he curved around the bowl’s rim, loosening the wave of vanilla that slid back into the mix. He moved his hands together, pulling the batter toward the center.
    It was a Luscious whirlpool, a Luscious eddy, a Luscious ocean crest. Mara plunged in past her wrists and brought the