The Missing Dough(53)

“It’s nothing,” Paul insisted.

“Then tell us about it and let us judge for ourselves. We are friends, right?”

“The best I could ask for,” Paul answered me. “It’s about Gina.”

“What about her?” I asked. I knew that they were taking it slow this time around. The two had met in college, but it had fallen apart. When Gina came back to town, they hemmed and hawed before finally deciding to give it another try. I hoped it worked out, but then again, I hated it when any relationship failed.

“We were watching a romantic comedy on TV last night, and I fell asleep,” Paul admitted sheepishly.

“It’s not the first thing a girl wants to see when she looks over at her boyfriend and expects to see his adoring gaze,” Maddy said.

“I understand that, but my hours are so brutal, by eight o’clock I’m completely worn out. It’s really not a good excuse, though, because I know that she works just as hard as I do. That hotel can’t be easy to run.” The hotel in question was quite a bit more than that. Tree-Line was a luxurious complex built on the edge of town that offered a multitude of rooms and had a pretty spectacular convention center as well.

“So, what are you going to do about it?” I asked him.

“I don’t know what I can do, but she’s not pleased with me. I convinced her to come into town to have an early lunch with me today, but I have no idea how I’m going to make it up to her.”

“How early are we talking about here?” I asked.

“Eleven thirty,” he replied as he glanced at his watch. “Is any place around here even open then? I’m always grabbing a snack at the bakery, but I can’t offer her that.”

“Bring her here,” I said, suddenly struck by the brilliance of it.

He looked at me a bit oddly. “But you’re not even open then.”

“We’ll make an exception for you,” Maddy said, getting into the spirit of things.

“I can’t ask you to go to all that trouble for me.”

“You didn’t ask. We volunteered. Now scat. Bring her by at eleven thirty on the nose, and treat her like she’s a princess. And, Paul? Trust us,” I said.

“I do,” he said. “I don’t know why, but I’m already feeling better about everything.”

“That’s because you know that we won’t let you down,” Maddy said.

I let Paul back out and then locked the door behind him.

Maddy came out of the kitchen and said, “We’ve got twenty-six minutes to come up with something spectacular.”

“Let me turn on the oven so it will warm up, and then we’ll stage something nice out here together.”

“What are we going to serve them?” Maddy asked. “Pizza, as good as it is, isn’t quite what’s called for, for a legitimate apology.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll come up with something,” I said.

Maddy frowned and then said, “Tell you what. Why don’t you take care of the food, and I’ll handle things out here.”

I really wanted to have a hand in the prep work in the dining room, too, but she was right. I had to get cracking if I was going to come up with something good enough for our special guests.

“Okay, it’s a deal. Make it special.”

“Right back at you,” Maddy said with a grin.

We were in business. I just hoped that whatever we could come up with wouldn’t disappoint them.

I started digging through my cookbooks, searching for something really special I could make with the ingredients we had on hand. Thankfully, the pizza dough was finished, so I wouldn’t have to use anything that had been refrigerated. Now I just had to figure out what I was going to make. As I flipped through the stack of cookbooks I had, I found and then immediately rejected recipe after recipe that I didn’t feel was good enough for the occasion. A quick glance at the clock showed me that I had only eighteen minutes left, though. Just in case my new recipe didn’t work out, I made a simple cheese pizza and put it on the conveyor. That way if disaster struck, I’d have something to offer them. But it wasn’t going to be my lead, if I could help it.

Blast it. Most of the fanciest recipes called for ingredients I didn’t have on hand. I was going to have to make do with what I had.

I grabbed more dough, cut some of it into strips, and then I worked grated Parmesan, mozzarella, and a little cheddar into it all before making a braid, just for fun. I put that on a pan and sent it through the oven and then started on small individual-size dessert pizzas. After I pulled out the cookie crusts that I had made ahead of time and kept on hand, I made one with cherry pie filling and the other with apple pie mix, since I didn’t know what they liked. It wasn’t nearly as elegant as I would have liked to offer them, but it was the best I could do on such short notice.