Page 68 of New Day at the Beach House

That got Miles to laugh and Alex to groan. Miles leaned over and kissed Trina again, this time on the lips. “Feeling’s mutual.”

Smiling, she picked up her shrimp and dipped it in the sauce, then took a careful bite. It was crunchy and sweet, but savory and spicy, too. In a word, it was one of the best things she’d ever eaten.

Even if it was a little hot.

“What do you think?” Miles asked.

She nodded as she chewed, then swallowed. “So good. I could eat that whole plate. And I’m not just saying that because I’m starving from surfing. Those are delicious.”

He grinned. “I told you.” He pushed the plate toward her. “Go on. I’ll get another one.”

“No, no. I can’t eat all those or I won’t eat my sandwich.” But she was touched by his kindness all the same.

When he was getting one of the shrimp for himself, Trina glanced in the direction Liz had gone. She was at a table with three other women, all of them laughing.

Except for Liz, who was watching Miles.

Claire was in a buoyant mood and not just because she felt so good in her new outfit. That helped, of course. But the main lift in her spirits was because she was having dinner with Danny, his daughter, and his father and that genuinely made her feel like part of the bakery business.

Which wasn’t to say she hadn’t felt like part of it before, but this was a new level of inclusion. They were essentially having a family meeting about their new family business. And she’d been invited.

If that didn’t fill her with warmth and confidence about how they saw her, nothing would.

Because no matter what her title was, no matter that she was going to be one of the investors, Mrs. Butter’s Bakery was still a Rojas brainchild. It was still their family’s new venture.

It had been Danny and Miguel’s idea years ago. Claire had just come along at the right moment with the right ideas to spark them into action. She was perfectly fine with that, too. She would have been happy just to be a senior employee.

But Danny had insisted she be more. He wanted her to be more. He wanted her to get her fair share of recognition for the ideas and recipes she was contributing. She’d be putting in a lot of hard work, too.

So would Danny, but when it came to the kitchen, she’d be in there more than anyone. And she was a hundred percent ready for it.

She took a quick glance at herself in the mirror to make sure nothing was amiss, then picked up her new little purse and tucked her phone into it. The only problem with the leggings she had on was they didn’t have a pocket to put her phone in. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have taken a purse at all.

She went out to the kitchen, got the tin of cookies she’d made that day, and headed for the elevator. She was a little nervous about this new batch of cookies. They weren’t anything she’d invented.

They were something much more important: One of the Rojas family recipes. A cookie called a mantecadito that was really just a traditional jam thumbprint. Instead of jam there was guava paste, which hadn’t been hard to find, thanks to the extensive International Foods aisle at the Publix.

She stepped into the elevator. The recipe wasn’t all that complicated, but that made getting it right even harder. The simplest recipes were the trickiest, because simple meant everything had to be perfect for the recipe to shine.

But this recipe also had a long history behind it and memories attached. Because of that, and because Danny had told her they’d had a hard time making his mother’s and grandmother’s recipes taste right when they’d followed them, Claire’s first step had been to research the cookie before anything else.

The internet was a glorious thing. She’d found several old versions of the recipe and had compared them to the yellowed recipe card that had been in the collection of recipes Danny had turned over to her.

After much deliberation, she’d made only two changes to the recipe as it was printed. She’d used lard instead of vegetable shortening, since all of her research had said that was more traditional, which made sense, because lard would have been more readily available. She’d also added a teaspoon of vanilla extract along with the teaspoon of almond extract that was called for. She’d done that to add a depth of flavor.

She’d tried one of the cookies and thought it had turned out pretty good. But she wasn’t the one who’d grown up with the recipe. Danny and his family would be the real judges.

As she got out of the elevator and walked toward Danny’s house, she could only hope she’d gotten close.

Faint music reached her ears as she went up the steps to the front door, the Latin beat putting a smile on Claire’s face. Ivelisse must already be here, because there was a car she didn’t recognize in the drive. She rang the bell, and the door was soon opened.

Ivelisse smiled at her. “Hi, Claire. My dad’s just in the kitchen putting the finishing touches on a few things. Come on in.”

“Thanks.” Claire stepped inside. “Nice to see you again.”

“You, too.” Ivelisse glanced at the tin in Claire’s hands, her eyes bright with curiosity. “Did you bring us another new creation?”

Claire shook her head. “Not this time. More like an old creation.”

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