Page 78 of Hard to Love
He awkwardly patted her on the back. “Mind explaining that to me?”
She drew back and looked up at him. “Well, who doesn’t like dessert? And she wanted folks to see your sweet side. You win the PTO dessert competition, and people will sweeten up to you as well. And sugar, you kinda need it. We’ll stay up here until they auction off the five desserts. Then the rest of dishes go for twenty dollars apiece.”
Within ten minutes, the emcee had raised close to a thousand dollars with the fifth through second place dishes.
“And now for the flan,” he said, holding up the platter and peering at it. “Best I can tell it’s a kind of pudding.”
“Custard,” Alex told him.
“Custard then.”
The bidding started and went quickly, with people lifting their hands in the air to up the price. In the end, his simple dish of eggs, milk, and caramel went for three hundred bucks. These people were insane. Didn’t they know it would cost them less than five or six to make their own?
Afterward, Greer squirmed her way through the peoplecrowding the still-packed dessert table to give Alex a hug herself. “Knew it.” With her arms still looped around his waist, she looked up at him, her smile hitting him dead-center in the chest. “You just raised the PTO enough money for a tetherball set.”
Well, that was pretty cool actually. He sure as hell would’ve enjoyed that when he was a little kid. His playground never had new equipment. It was mainly a mishmash of old tires, wooden swings, and 1950s teeter-totters. But damn, he and his brothers had loved that place. “Well, I guess I can’t be too pissed off that you robbed my fridge then.”
“It was all in the name of good community relations.”
“Because you don’t think I can relate on my own?”
“Because I think it makes you uncomfortable, but this way you won’t have to approach other people because they’ll be flocking to you.”
“What?” He glanced up from Greer’s pleased face to notice people were ringed around them. “What the hell?” he said to Greer.
“People love to congratulate the winner and also see if they can mooch the recipe.”
He leaned close to her ear. “It’s just fucking flan.”
She pressed a quick kiss to his cheek and pulled away. “Good luck.” Before he could grab her by the back of the shirt, she ducked between a woman in a soccer-mom yoga outfit and an older man with a goat tucked under one arm.
The goat guy, who Alex now recognized from his first day in town, thrust out his other hand. “Henry McCormick. Pleased to meet you.”
Alex automatically shook. “Alex Villanueva.”
“You know it’s tradition for the winner to share the winning recipe, right?” someone else said.
Alex forced his lips to stretch into a—hopefully—casual smile. “Is that so?” He raised his brows at the soccer mom. “Or are y’all just trying to get one past the new guy?”
“Told y’all that wouldn’t work,” someone else grumbled.
“It’s really not all that special,” Alex said. “Just Google flan, and you’ll come up with a thousand recipes.”
Soccer Mom placed her hand on his arm, squeezed as though she were searching for a ripe mango and smiled at him. “But those aren’t your recipe, and that’s the whole point.”
Skinny as she was, she didn’t look like she ever ate dessert, much less something with eggs and whole milk in it. Not like Greer. She obviously enjoyed her food and it settled on her curves just right.
“It’s a family recipe, isn’t it?” Mr. Garvey asked.
“Actually my great-great-abuela’s,” Alex told them. “And she would haunt me from her grave if she ever found out I’d given it out.”
“Don’t forget.” Soccer Mom leaned closer, and her perfume tickled his nose. “These are the same people judging the art competition.”
Shit. But hell, it wasn’t like histatarabuela’s recipe was that different from what these people would find on the Food Network. “Someone have a piece of paper?”
McCormick dug a mangled receipt from his baggy jeans and handed it to Alex.
Alex glanced around at the group. “You will share, won’t you?”
