Free Just Desserts by Barbara Bretton Page A

going to have Dominic deliver it.”
    â€œWhat!?” Lizzie looked downright horrified. “You have to deliver it yourself! This is your chance to get noticed.”
    â€œIt’s going to be huge, Lizzie. We’ll need the van.”
    â€œYou’ve driven the van.”
    â€œAnd it will be heavy. I’ll need help.”
    â€œI can help.”
    â€œHelp with muscles,” Hayley said. What she didn’t say was that an after-party for a famous rocker probably wasn’t the place for an overly articulate, highly impressionable fourteen-year-old girl. Especially not one with huge blue-green eyes and long blond hair.
    â€œThen let me go along for the ride.”
    â€œNot happening.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œWhere do I start? How about this: I’m not going and neither are you.”
    â€œBut you have to go.”
    â€œI don’t recall seeing that spelled out in the contract.”
    â€œMom! This is your big chance. You have to go so you can bask in the glory.”
    â€œWe’ll let the cake bask in the glory. I’d be happy basking in a flood of new commissions.”
    â€œWhat about Entertainment Tonight and all of the local news guys? The place will be jammed with promo ops.”
    She shrugged. “Word will get out.”
    Lizzie narrowed her eyes and leaned across the empty salad bowl. “You’re afraid!”
    â€œI am not.”
    â€œYou are! You shouldn’t be but you so are.”
    It would be nice to keep at least one emotion secret from her daughter. She gestured toward her basic uniform of T-shirt and jeans. “Look at me. I’m not exactly red-carpet worthy. I’d need a whole new wardrobe.”
    â€œWear your whites like they do on the Food Network.”
    â€œI haven’t had my hair cut since Christmas.”
    â€œWear it in a ballerina bun.”
    â€œAll I have are sneakers and clogs.”
    â€œClogs are way cool. The interns on Grey’s Anatomy wear clogs.”
    â€œThey wear running shoes.”
    Lizzie was adamant. “Some of them wear clogs.”
    â€œYou think I should wear my red clogs?”
    â€œMario on the Food Network wears orange ones and he’s famous.”
    â€œHow much television are you watching lately anyway?”
    Lizzie ignored the question. “You’ll stand out from the crowd. You need to work this, Mom. I mean, what are the chances something like this will happen again?”
    â€œI’m still trying to figure out why it happened in the first place.”
    Lizzie fell silent for a moment. “It’s not like you aren’t great at what you do.”
    â€œLots of people are great at what they do,” she reminded her daughter, “and they live their entire lives without a single Cinderella moment.”
    â€œKarma?” Lizzie asked. “Like maybe you did something wonderful in another life and now you’re being rewarded.”
    â€œI’m Catholic,” she reminded her daughter. “I don’t get rewarded until I die.”
    Lizzie, who was forging a more ecumenical path between her Catholic mother and Jewish father, sighed. “Does there have to be a reason?”
    â€œYou’re the logical, scientific one. I thought you believed everything that happens, happens for a reason.”
    â€œLuck is luck,” her daughter said. “Luck doesn’t need a reason. It just is.”
    That was what Hayley used to say about love and look where that had gotten her.
    She tried to push the negative thought from her mind for her daughter’s sake.
    â€œYour dad and I used to eat at Olive Garden all the time,” she said after Margo dropped off their entrees. “We went to the one near Aunt Fiona’s old house the day I found out I was pregnant with you.”
    She rarely spoke about Michael and when she did, it usually wasn’t complimentary. The man had come close to ruining her life and Lizzie’s