One Winter’s Day: A feel-good winter romance Read online

  Natalie made a slight face. “I guess it could be worse,” she said. “It’s more than our advertising budget for this year, though.”

  “I thought we were taking out some ads in the bridal magazines instead,” said Ama.

  “Well… we will,” said Tessa. “We’ll do both. It’ll pay off in the end, you’ll see. All we need is one high-profile client to help secure our reputation in the event planning community.”

  “But I thought the ad in Local Bridal Trends was really pricey,” began Natalie, who was now searching through her satchel for an older quote from her business partner.

  “Let’s not worry about that right now, okay?” said Tessa. “I’ve got it under control—you just need to worry about the alterations you’re making on the wedding gown for that bride who hired you last-minute for her self-planned ceremony. And the decorating project, since we clearly need to spruce up our image a little for the holidays.”

  Ama’s usual smile had dimmed a little. “Tess, I agree with Natalie,” she said. “We’re taking a big risk if we spend too much money. I mean, we are still paying our unofficial fourth partner, too.”

  As if to illustrate her point came the sound of a Skilsaw buzzing to life in one of the building’s closed-off rooms. The building contractor and all-round handyman Blake Ellingham had done more than fix their building’s faulty wiring and floorboards. And though he might roll his eyes at this reference to his honorary partnership in their firm, it was more than a little true. From the beginning, Blake had been helpful, after all—even stepping into the role (albeit begrudgingly) when their fourth partner had quit, to save the Wedding Belles’ first ever paid event from turning into an utter disaster.

  Although he had stuck to carpentry duties since that first wedding, it didn’t stop Tessa and the others from thinking of him as part of their creative team. And—though she would never, ever admit it aloud—it didn’t stop Tessa from thinking of him as something more than merely a hired craftsman who could leave them at any time.

  “He’s not working for peanuts,” contributed Natalie. “He keeps threatening to bring in some sort of antique shelf facings to spruce up that room, whatever those are.”

  Blake’s skills as a restoration contractor were at odds with both the budget and the eclectic tastes of the Wedding Belles, who were fine with the ‘un-period’ metal spiral staircase and the sunny 1940s yellow and green in the newly installed kitchen, none of which belonged to the building’s original interior.

  “Plus, we kind of promised him a cut of our profits,” said Ama. “Not that he’ll ever make good on that promise. Or that we’ll never again need a guy in a suit to spruce up our image, right?”

  “I know all of this,” said Tessa. “Why do you guys doubt that I’m on top of the situation? It just so happens that I do have a plan to pay for all this which won’t touch our profits.”

  “How?” asked Natalie.

  “I’m paying for it myself,” said Tessa. “I have a job on the side, and the money I’m making will cover the billboard for a month. So there. You don’t have to worry, see? It won’t be a burden on our fragile expenses or our partnership’s budget.”

  Her partners exchanged glances. “What job?” asked Ama.

  Tessa’s expression became coy—or cagey—but it was impossible to tell which one. Was that a slight blush on her cheeks, or just the sunlight reflecting off her gingery-red hair?

  “That’s for me to know,” she answered loftily. “Let’s just say that I’m helping out a friend on a sort of… consulting basis… and leave it at that.” She smiled. “See? Nothing to worry about.”

  “If you say so,” said Natalie, who still sounded a little disbelieving. “So what kind of sprucing should we begin with? A bigger autumn wedding display in the window? Christmas trees in the parlor?” She held up one end of a leaf garland sporting orange silk aspen leaves, and the dusky, speckled pinkish-red and yellow of Bradford pears. Tessa’s fall wedding vision held lots of seasonal pastel shades, from Pink Lady apples to Princess de Monaco roses mixed with soft orange, coral, and red-shaded peonies, and delicate corn husk flowers in the same shade trimming the fake two-layer wedding cake on display.

  “I think we should do a white wedding for Christmas,” said Ama. “With lots of silver and maybe some graceful elements like birch trees for accents, or a big floral centerpiece with mistletoe and paperwhites. Or we could do a big red-and-green display with the classic shades.”

  “You’re really getting carried away with this idea, for someone who doesn’t celebrate Christmas,” said Natalie with a grin.

  “I like Christmas,” said Ama. “Gingerbread cookies and trees decorated in the stores, and all the candles and bells and snowflakes, and the really big nativity outside the cathedral. It’s my parents who stick to strictly traditional Indian holidays in the home. Me? I’m happy to celebrate both kinds.” She planted her hands on her hips as she studied the display window. “Maybe I could make a huge iced gingerbread mansion with little lights in it, and lots of sugar glitter.”

  “In my house, the Christmas tree isn’t even up for discussion until after the last bit of my mom’s Thanksgiving feast has been eaten,” said Natalie. “Until then, the only decorations in my house are brown paper turkeys cut out of grocery sacks by my cousins’ kids. And those awful clay turkey place-card holders that me and Roberto made when we were in grade school.”

  “I longed for paper turkeys as a kid,” said Ama enviously. “And real turkey with sage dressing. My mom always fixed bhakra curry, my dad’s favorite. Thanksgiving’s not the same when your turkey’s dressing is seasoned with turmeric and comes with rice, either.” An electronic beep trilled persistently in the room. “My cupcakes,” declared Ama, racing to the kitchen as the timer beeped. “Oh no—these are the ones for the birthday party on Saturday, and I’ve burned one batch already!”

  “Are you sure you have this covered?” Natalie glanced at Tessa. “Everything?” She lifted one eyebrow, watching to see if Tessa squirmed under scrutiny.

  “Of course,” Tessa answered, without any visible twinges of doubt. “You just worry about the next window display. Bring a couple of the latest wedding dresses downstairs for the new window, right?”

  She moved aside the sketches on their reception desk, ones for fall weddings that had never materialized. The newest of Ama’s cake designs was festooned with glittery marzipan leaves in red and spicy orange. It was accompanied by some sketches Tessa had made of a country church decorated with the display garlands and flowers, with glittering pumpkins in shades of blue, pale orange, and rich burnt red matched with the delicate Pink Lady apples and pastel-shaded Indian corn bundles.

  Natalie was adjusting the bridesmaids’ gowns on show—a few lucky finds from Natalie’s home closet of fashions past that she had tweaked to be more fashionable now—and turned one of the silk floral bouquets to a nicer angle.

  “I think I have a gown that will be perfect for the Christmas one, if I finish the hem tonight,” said Natalie. “I guess we should find some fake snow or something.”

  “I brought tons of old decorations from my mom’s store room,” said Tessa. “She decorated like a fiend for the holidays when she still had that big house to show off. Snowflakes, garlands, the whole collection. There’s even a tree from one of those end-of-the-year retail sales.”

  “I’ll go sort through piles, I guess,” said Natalie. “Let’s change the display over Thanksgiving weekend, okay? I know you might be busy, but I don’t want Ma force-feeding me leftovers while chiding me for not having made fruit buns or spice cookies or something for the big dinner. If Ama doesn’t have big holiday plans, that is.”

  “Second-generation Indian-American in a traditional family, remember?” Ama called from the direction of the kitchen, where the clatter of pans suggested her cupcakes were ready to emerge from the oven for the cooling period.

  “Stuff’s in the sitting room,” said Tessa, as she gathered up the hammer and picture
hooks she had been using for the foyer’s new art. Natalie pushed open the door to the closed-off room at the same time as the handyman opened it.

  “Why is there a Christmas tree in my workspace?” Blake asked. A pair of safety glasses was propped on his head, holding back his unruly cinnamon-brown mane of hair. Sawdust and bits of rotted wood decorated the shoulders and sleeves of his worn blue flannel shirt. At the sight of him, Tessa turned quickly on her heel and began stowing away the picture-hanging supplies as if they were unsightly clutter.

  “No reason,” answered Tessa over her shoulder. “It’ll be gone in another week. Just throw a plastic tarp over it if it’s in the way.”

  “So long as you don’t mind wood rot and fiberglass in your Christmas decor,” said Blake. “I have to take the whole windowsill and surround out today, because two guys from the crew I’m working with volunteered to haul off the grisly remains.”

  “Is that the crew from the old bank building with the storm damage?” asked Natalie.

  “My paying gig, you mean. How nice of you to remember,” said Blake. “Yes, it is. And they’ve offered to bring the new one. If you sign the purchase receipt, so I can go pick it up from the yard. You’re signing it, right?” He glanced from Natalie to Tessa, as if to emphasize his hint. “We have a deal.”

  “Right. Our deal,” said Tessa. “I’ll sign away, I promise.”

  “Good. It’ll be here by Wednesday,” he said. “I’ll have your wall back together by Thanksgiving, scout’s honor.” He started to leave, then paused. “Is that my hammer?” he asked. Tessa hid it behind her back.

  “No,” she said. “I don’t think so.” Blake looked unconvinced before he retreated into the sitting room again.

  Natalie raised one eyebrow. “Can we afford whatever that window thing costs?” she asked.

  Tessa sighed. “It’s that, or pay him money out of guilt,” she said. “Which do you think pinches our bank account less?”

  “So long as he doesn’t make me paint over my wall mural, I’m happy,” answered Natalie.

  Four dozen vanilla cupcakes, frosted with swirling icing, gold-glittered, each decorated with a single gold candy fleur-de-lis on top, were nestled in bakery boxes for delivery to the wedding-shower client by Ama herself early Saturday morning. That was after she stopped by the baking supply shop to pick out some new round gold sprinkles and some edible glitter, both for dusting some red-and-orange winterberry clusters she was making with colored white chocolate beads and dark chocolate stems.

  Meanwhile, Ama’s latest customer’s order—cupcakes from Sweetheart Treats—was cooling at the family restaurant’s kitchen today, rather than at the Wedding Belles HQ. These were big red velvet ones waiting for spiced cream cheese icing and the aforementioned winterberries; three dozen in total to be served at a women’s luncheon at the Dogwood Tearoom the day after tomorrow. Ama was hoping to find something new to add an extra kick to the frosting, as somehow cinnamon didn’t seem quite special enough for this batch.

  Lately, she had been spending her Saturdays off from Wedding Belles in the new ethnic market at the south end of town, where her family’s favorite Indian vendors had moved to set up shop near some Thai stands, some Taiwanese and Chinese spice stalls, and a host of other new flavors that Ama hadn’t yet experienced in the world of cuisine. Her brother loved to branch out when it came to flavors—not that the Tandoori Tiger’s menu often reflected this—and Ama herself was always on the lookout for something unique for her baked goods. Plus, she loved the excitement of the new location, full of new scents, diverse faces, and the electricity of cultures blending and melding in one location.

  Today’s dessert selection at the Tandoori Tiger was one of her father’s favorites: an Americanized version of banana halva, which was served with an additional sweet sauce of melted butter or ghee and a little dusting of cinnamon across the top. She garnished it with a side of bananas in a brown sugar glaze, which seemed a little excessive in her opinion, but her father loved excesses. “Americans like it sweet,” he always insisted—and that was one thing they had in common with her Punjabi immigrant family, even if the flavors they were used to were different.

  “Order up,” she said, as she placed one of the finished desserts in the kitchen window, ringing the bell. She arranged more slices on the next plate, her father hovering at her shoulder.

  “Add some of this,” he said, pushing forward a container with some sweet and spicy pecans in it, with an orange hue from the spices and sauce that her brother Jaidev had used in roasting them. “It’s a good color. The customers will like them. And put on some little candy squash—pumpkins—from the container there.” He pointed toward the glass canister across from Ama, where the dessert garnishes were kept, including some sticky candy corn pumpkins her brother had bought at an end-of-Halloween sale.

  “No, Papa—that’s too much,” she protested. “It’s sugar overload.”

  “No—it’s for autumn,” said her father. “We should make pumpkin desserts next week. And put some of those little candy leaves on them you put on your cupcakes, too.” He lifted his big rice pot from beneath the counter, not hearing Ama sigh as she added a sprinkle of nuts and a little candy pumpkin to the top of her next order. Her father had changed the dessert of the day on the chalkboard to read ‘festive fall halva’ with a badly drawn turkey next to it. That part made her smile a little.

  “I can’t believe you haven’t said anything yet,” said Rasha, who was arranging mint leaves around the edges of some turmeric-infused quinoa on a vegetarian plate.

  “About what?” Ama asked.

  “About your match. The online one.”

  Ama’s smile vanished, and the world ground to a halt despite the double order for banana halva, one with marshmallow cream on top. “What?” she said, dropping her spoon on the table.

  “Dad didn’t tell you?” said Rasha, who looked surprised. Jaidev let out a groan.

  “No, he did not,” said Ama indignantly. “Was anybody going to tell me about it?” she demanded, staring at the rest of her family in turn.

  Her father had placed an ad in the matchmaking section of an Indian journal for her at the end of summer, and created a profile on an online matchmaking site, all of which Ama had chosen to ignore up to now. No one would respond, she told herself, but now this—an actual reply to whatever badly written description of herself her father had crafted to solicit an acceptable, likeminded Indian boy.

  “A nice boy responded to you on the computer this week,” said Ranjit casually. “What’s to explain? He sent a question, I sent an answer.”

  “Papa, you know how I feel about this,” said Ama, suppressing a groan.

  “Ama, two more desserts,” her brother reminded her. “Hungry customers await.”

  Her auntie tapped the spoon against the pot of clarified butter. “Don’t look so sour,” she said. “It’s good news. It means you’re being noticed now. We’ll find some nice boy for you, at last.”

  Her auntie had introduced her to virtually every ‘nice young boy’ she had met since Ama was sixteen. Most of them had been related to friends of her auntie, or friends of friends, although there had been the occasional random boy her auntie met at the grocery, the laundromat, or even the dentist’s office, whose coerced phone numbers and half-hearted coffee invitations Ama had been dodging for years.

  “But I don’t want to meet him,” said Ama. She dolloped marshmallow cream a bit too forcefully over the brown sugar sauce, where it slid away. “I’m sorry, Papa, but I told you I wasn’t interested in matchmaking sites when you insisted on doing this.”

  “Ama, just give it a chance,” coaxed her sister. “Who knows? It could be a fun experience.”

  The kitchen door opened. “A customer wants to know if we have fresh fruit to top the yogurt,” said Ama’s sister-in-law, Deena.

  “Did you explain to them it’s not dessert?” asked Jaidev, as he minced green onions beneath his knife’s blade.

  “
No. They want fruit and they’re the customers. I’m not going to give them a lecture on Indian cuisine,” she added with a laugh. “So do we have fruit or what?”

  “Blueberries in the fridge,” snapped Ama. “I’ll get them. And I really mean it when I say I don’t want to be matched with someone. Doesn’t matter who he is, or how much money he makes, or how many Indian restaurants his family owns. I’m serious, Papa.” She gave her father a look, one that matched the stubborn determination set deep in his own gaze. It took a lot for Ama’s good humor to evaporate, so not even her father said anything at this moment, although Ama could sense a few glances being exchanged by her family members, even with her back to them.

  Of course, the lunch crowd might be part of the reason why no one argued with her, she told herself, as she slammed the fridge door, and pretended to be busy peeling open the blueberries’ container.

  She was not meeting this boy. She meant it—really and truly. Her father knew how she felt about ideas like matchmaking; he knew how she felt about love and romance being breathtaking and spontaneous for her. As far as she was concerned, that little slip of information about someone being interested in her profile could stay a secret, because she intended to ignore it from this moment forward.

  She pounded milk dough balls for tomorrow’s gulab jamun with more force than necessary that afternoon, until she felt better. Then she baked two pumpkin spice cakes and let them cool, dicing them into cubes. If her father wanted pumpkin for dessert, maybe an Indian-inspired trifle would be a good choice, with lots of cream, sugar syrup, sweet milk sauce, and spicy apples.

  “Smells good,” said Rasha, who had come downstairs for a container of pineapple from the fridge. “Can I try some?”