Page 41 of High Note

“O-o-okay. Okay. I would try.” Maybe. She’d try to try.

“I’ll make it for you.” Skyla winked. “I can make that, chili, and I can grill meat. Oh, and I do queso and chilaquiles. My daddy says I’m the boy he always wanted that way.” She had to snort. She could kind of hear her dad say that in her head. Texans.

“I’m not a huge cook, but I love to bake. Not fancy shit—I leave that to my friend, Chey—but cookies, chocolate cake, that sort of thing.”

“Yum. I love cookies, but I do break and bake when I crave hot ones. A six-pack will fit in my little oven on the bus.” Skylasighed. “This is the best damn bread.” She sopped up salad dressing with a piece.

“Yeah. I am a carb whore. I don’t mind a huge chunk of bread with a slab of peanut butter or a little butter and jam or…” She winked over. “I like food.”

“Yeah. I hear that.” Skyla moaned when the meatballs came, the red sauce smelling of garlic and that tang that only came from deep-cooked nightshades. So damn yummy. Nonna’s was truly the best. “This smells amazing.”

“Best in town. Don’t tell Cherry.” This was heaven on a plate, and they both dug in, eating hearty for a bit. Kirsten loved that in a woman—a hearty appetite in all sorts of hungers.

Finally, Skyla moaned again, leaning back to fan her face. “I am stuffed like a tick on a big ol’ hound. Oh, that was good.”

“I assume we’ll have to get dessert to go?” she teased.

“They have good desserts?”

“Tiramisu or cannoli to die for.”

“I would give good money to watch you eat a cannoli,” Skyla told her.

“Let’s get half a dozen.” Kirsten was willing to indulge that fantasy.

“Yes, please.” Skyla waved the server over, and they ordered dessert to go.

“Come home with me?” She wanted to soak with Skyla in her claw foot bathtub, she missed her cats, and she wanted a cup of tea.

“I would love to.” Skyla’s smile spoke volumes about other things they could do.

“Excellent. I’d love to have you.” She had bath oil that smelled of sandalwood and rose.

They paid up, then as one person, got up and headed outside to her car, Skyla sliding in with her and then grabbing her hand.

It was time to go home, make tea, run a bath, and see how much licking those cannoli was worth to a certain superstar.

Chapter Thirteen

“We want pizza.”

Skyla had blinked when the band, as a unit, had come to her to say it.

“Haven’t you guys eaten your weight in Cherry’s?”

“Yes, but we want to go and have pizza and beer at the restaurant.”

So that was how she ended up at Cherry’s Pies at seven p.m. on a Thursday night, standing at the host stand and waiting for a table.

“Hey there. A table for six?” The little teenager bounced, her pigtails adorable.

“Yes, please.”

She let Andi do the talking, hanging back, her sunglasses on.

“Come on back. We have a table that’s nice and out of the way.”

“Thanks.”

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