Page 73 of His Tenth Dance

She looked around at everyone like she’d just come up with the best idea in the world—and to Kristie’s horror, Jocelyn was nodding, and Lennie looked like someone had plugged her in.

“This is a very bad idea, you guys,” Kristie said. She set her phone face-down on the counter. “I texted Cord.”

“Why is it a bad idea?” Lennie asked.

“Number one,” Kristie said. “He already knows what I’m making, so it won’t really be a blind taste test.”

“You could tell him you changed your mind,” Harper said.

“And then still serve an apple crumble?” Kristie gave her a death glare, then turned it on Jocelyn. “He won’t like being put on the spot.”

“Just ask him,” Lennie said. “If he doesn’t want to, he’ll say no, right?”

“You’ve said he’s opinionated,” Jocelyn added. “That he just tells you what he thinks.”

“I didn’t say he wasopinionated,” Kristie said. “You make that sound like a terrible quality.”

“I didnotmake it sound like a terrible quality,” Jocelyn said, glancing at Lennie. “Did I make it sound like a terrible quality—being opinionated?”

“It’ll help with my presentation,” Jocelyn added.

Kristie almost rolled her eyes, but she managed to refrain. “You can’t present your own dessert to him—then he’ll know it’syours.” She looked at Harper—who was usually the level-headed one in the group—before she remembered that she was the one who had brought it up.

“I’d like to meet him,” Harper said. “You talk about him all the time, and you said he has a sweet tooth. Maybe he’ll be able to help us refine our recipes.”

“That’s whywe’retasting them for each other,” Kristie said.

“Let me just be clear,” Lennie started. “You don’t want to invite him, because you don’t want to put him on the spot? Or…you don’t want us to meet him?”

“Of course I want you to meet him,” Kristie said.

“Will you be embarrassed of us?”

“Of course not.”

“Are you worried you’ll be embarrassed of him?”

“No,” Kristie said more emphatically.

“I really don’t see why you can’t invite him, then,” Jocelyn said. “He doesn’t have to stay for all of dessert night. He can come see the finished products right when they’re done. We can present them to him as if we were on a baking competition.”

Her eyes lit up then, because she so wanted to be food chef and critic on TV. “We’ll serve him, and he can taste each dessert. Then he can tell us what he likes about them and what he doesn’t—and we’ll send him home.”

Kristie cleared the last of her spices from the tote and pulled it off the counter. She really didn’t have a good reason for why she didn’t want to invite Mission, other than it would be stepping onto new ground she’d never walked on.

“Would you like one of us to do it?” Lennie asked, pinning her sunny smile in place. “Because I bet Harper can get him here in no time flat.”

“We don’t want him here in no time flat,” Jocelyn said. “We need a few hours for our desserts, right?”

Lennie twisted and looked at the clock. “Should we say six-thirty? It’s three o’clock right now. Does anyone need more than three and a half hours?”

Kristie did not need that long, and she shook her head.

Harper slowly started to reach for her phone, and Kristie made no move to stop her. She collected Harper’s plastic grocery bags and put them in her tote, then moved to set it over the back of the couch.

When she turned around, she found all three of her friends gathered around her phone, with Harper’s thumbs flying across the screen.

“No, don’t say that,” Lennie said.

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