Free Recipe For Love by Sean Michael

Prologue
     
    Jack was sleeping hard when the doorbell rang.
    It was one of those deep, hard-core sleeps where the ringing of the doorbell read just like a fire alarm in a dream that featured a muscled-stud wearing chaps and painting the wall of that weird little club on Fifth and Gardener.
    It wasn't until the doorbell rang again, then again, that he managed to wake himself up and stumble across the apartment floor. "Just a sec!"
    He tripped on one of the piles of clothes, bouncing off a set of unpacked boxes, and went down hard, his entire body jostling. "Fuck."
    He wasn't unpacked enough to figure out where the fuck things were. Shit, he wasn't sure what Chris had fucking given him when he'd gotten thrown out. He sure as shit wasn't ready to answer the door at o-dark-thirty and...
    He scrambled up as the doorbell rang again. "I'm coming, for fuck's sake! What on earth is the--"
    He tore the door open, blinking into eyes the same color green as his own. "Rache?"
    Those eyes filled with tears, and his teenaged daughter nodded. "I... Hey."
    "Hey." He blinked at her again. Rache lived with his ex-wife in Boston, eleven hundred miles away. They spoke once a week and she came for a couple of weeks in the summer, maybe, and it wasn't fucking summer. Hell, it was cold, and she was pale, eyes dark and shadowed.
    "What..." Surely she wasn't here for Christmas, right? Surely he would have remembered that?
    "I...I came on the bus. On the bus. Daddy, I messed up. I messed up so bad."
    "Did you kill someone? If you did, was it your mother?" He'd always thought he'd enjoy that job.
    She shook her head and opened her coat. She was wearing a Boston College sweatshirt and the little garnet necklace he'd given her for her sweet sixteen, and... Oh.
    Oh, fuck him raw.
    "Is that...? Tell me you just got fat."
    "Jesus, Daddy!"
    "Sorry. It's late. I'm... I was dreaming."
    She arched an eyebrow and tilted her head.
    "Right. Sorry. Come on in. I'll make coffee. You are just eighteen, right? You didn't turn thirty and get married without warning your old man?" Maybe jokes would stop the tears.
    "I didn't. I don't know... Daddy, I'm so scared." He found himself with an armful of wailing, shaking girl, and suddenly it was more than a decade ago and he was still the hero.
    He blinked at the clock. Three-fourteen A.M.
    Wow.
    Right.
    Coffee.
    Possibly a beer.
    Definitely Excedrin.
    Then he'd try to wake himself up again.

Chapter 1
     
    Daniel worked on the cake for the Rosignol wedding, carefully doing the piping while keeping half an eye on Billy. The kid meant well, but he had the attention span of a gnat on crack and today he seemed especially unfocused.
    When a tray of cupcakes, fully decorated no less, was upended, sending fancy, frosted cupcakes sailing through the air and crashing to the ground, Daniel gently put down his bag of icing and began to count to ten. Then twenty, then thirty.
    He swore if Billy wasn't his sister's kid, Dan would have fired him ages ago.
    Big brown eyes met his glowering gaze. "I'm sorry, Uncle Danny, I swear I didn't mean to do it."
    "No one ever means to trash two dozen cupcakes. And it's Dan. Uncle Dan." Only his sister got to call him Danny. "You're more out of it than usual today." He narrowed his eyes. "Are you high?"
    "Uncle Dan!"
    "Well? Are you?"
    "No, I am not. Jeesh. Thanks a lot." Billy grabbed the paper towel and a couple of dishcloths and start cleaning the floor.
    Dan fetched the broom. "What's up, then?"
    "Nothing."
    Dan didn't say anything. He just let one eyebrow go up to let Billy know what he thought of that answer. Billy didn't make any other reply until they had the floor very nearly under control and Dan didn't push. He knew not saying anything was far more effective with Billy.
    "You remember Rachel," the kid suddenly blurted out.
    Rachel... Rachel... They'd had an intern at the bakery called Ra-- No, she'd been Andrea. "Um..."
    Billy rolled his eyes. "I was hanging out with her last