Read Online Coming Home by Mariah Stewart - Free Book Online

glaze all these damned cookies. And have you figured out how many cookies we’re talking about here?”
    Before Mia had a chance to respond, Vanessa told her.
    “One thousand and eight, that’s how many.”
    “Divided by twelve equals … eighty-four dozen,” Mia told her. “So we take the recipe, which makes … let’s see, I think it was—”
    “Five dozen. I have the recipe right in front of me.” Vanessa bit her bottom lip. “I don’t trust that to be right, though. It’s only five dozen if you make them exactly the same size as the person who wrote the recipe, and that never seems to work for me.”
    “Want to make ninety dozen, just in case?”
    There was a long silence, after which both women began to laugh.
    “Sure. Ninety dozen! What the hell!” Vanessa tried to make light of the task. “What’s a few dozen more?”
    “It won’t take any time at all with both of us baking.”
    “Seriously, I think you’re grossly underestimating the amount of time we’re going to need. Today is Tuesday. I’m thinking maybe we start tomorrow and plan to keep on baking right up to the rehearsal dinner, after which we return to our respective kitchens.”
    “Maybe we need to do this in teams,” Mia suggested.
    “That might work if we could recruit a few more bakers. Can you think of anyone else who could be talked into pitching in?”
    “I can probably get Dorsey to make some,” Mia thought aloud. “And my cousin Aidan’s wife, Mara. She loves to bake.”
    “What about your friend Annie? Isn’t the matron of honor supposed to help the bride out with all the last-minute details?”
    “Yeah, but she’s in New Mexico on a case. We’re holding our breath that she gets back in time to make it to the wedding. Otherwise, you’ll be bumped from bridesmaid to maid of honor.”
    “We’ll worry about that on Saturday. Today you need to find out if Annie has a kitchenette in her hotel room. We need all the help we can get.”
    “We’ll be okay. I’ll just ask Dorsey and Mara. Between the four of us, we should be fine.”
    “Maybe. That breaks it down to”—she tried to mentally compute—“roughly twenty-two dozen cookies each, give or take a dozen or so. And this is going to take a lot of flour, sugar, and butter. I think I’ll call over to the Market Basket while I’m thinking of it to see if I need to make a special order. I doubt they have this much butter on hand.”
    “Right about now is when you get to say, ‘You should have gone with the truffles.’ “Mia sighed. “I guess this wasn’t such a great idea.”
    “Of course it’s a great idea. You wanted to honor your mother’s memory and we’re going to do exactly that. I just thought I should point out that we should not wait until Thursday to start, and that we were severely understaffed.”
    “If we start baking on Wednesday, they’ll be stale by Saturday.”
    “No, they won’t. We’ll freeze them and put the glaze on them all on Friday. They’ll be fine.”
    “According to the schedule you made up, on Friday we’re supposed to put them in boxes and tie on those pretty ribbons.”
    “So we nudge the schedule a little,” Vanessa said to assure herself as much as she assured Mia. “We’ll get them into their little boxes and we’ll get the ribbons tied on and everything will be fine.”
    The bell over Bling’s door rang and Vanessa looked up as a woman closed the door behind her.
    “I’ll check with Ken at the market and get back to you if there’s a problem. Meantime, think about maybe three cookies per guest. That would eliminate about twenty dozen cookies if my seat-of-the-pants math is right. Gotta run …”
    She hung up the phone and replaced the receiver, then moved the phone to one side of the cash register. She smiled at the potential customer.
    “Welcome to Bling. May I help you find something, or are you just poking?”
    “Just poking,” the woman replied.
    “Poke away,” Vanessa told her cheerfully.