Rhiannon smiled as she trailed behind her. Pride and excitement caused her stomach to soar and her skin to tingle.
Seated at a small table reserved for them after much finagling and begging, Rhiannon smiled. “Not a bad little spot, huh?”
Carmela raised her brows. “Why do I get the sense this isn’t the first time you’ve seen this place?”
Rhiannon shrugged. “No comment.”
Before Carmela could grill her any further, the server arrived with the drinks Rhiannon had selected in advance.
Setting two champagne coupe glasses at the center of the table, the woman worked silently as she placed hot pink cotton candy in each glass before pouring golden sparkling wine over each.
“To you,” Rhiannon said as she lifted her glass in a toast.
“The most amazing surprise I’ve ever discovered. Happy birthday.”
Clinking glasses, Carmela smiled before taking a sip of the drink that had turned pink after the cotton candy melted.
The fruity flavor filled Rhiannon’s nose before she was transported to a beach with
salt spray and coconut scented tanning oil.
“Damn that’s good,” Rhiannon decided before stopping herself from chugging it in one go.
“That is really something special,” Carmela agreed. “This whole place,” she looked around as if still struggling to find the words, “it’s incredible.”
“You ain’t seen nothing yet,” she replied with a grin just as the server returned with a glass dome they were meant to break with a tiny gold hammer to access the food beneath.
After several courses of imaginative and delicious food, Rhiannon winked at the server as surreptitiously as she could. Minutes later, she returned with a small chocolate dome on a huge, white plate. With a flick of her wrist, she produced a tiny torch, setting the chocolate aflame with a frightening rush of blue fire followed by a loud pop that burst the chocolate shell.
“Whoa, shit!” Rhiannon cried as she jumped back, unprepared for the pyrotechnics.
Carmela laughed so hard, half of the other patrons turned around to look at them. “Perdón,” she said in a sharp
American accent before turning her attention back to Rhiannon. “Sorry,” she repeated in English and she reached for a glass of water. “I wasn’t expecting that.”
Rhiannon was soaring somewhere a hundred feet above the table and didn’t give a single shit that their reaction had caused a stir. It was worth all the judgy, sideways glances on Earth to watch Carmela’s open-mouthed, full-bodied belly laugh.
Once the dome melted, it created a chocolate moat around a sparkling firework in the shape of the letter C on top of a bright blue slice of cake. When it extinguished itself, Rhiannon grinned at her. “Happy birthday. I hope it’s the first of many I get to celebrate with you.”
Carmela’s dark eyes widened. For an unnerving moment, Rhiannon feared she’d gone too far, assumed too much.
When Carmela reached for her water, Rhiannon followed suit to ease her suddenly parched throat.
“Well,” Carmela said after a long, painful silence, “I can’t imagine how you’re going to top yourself next year.”
As Carmela’s lips eased into a smile, Rhiannon let out the breath she was holding. “And I’m not even done with this one,” she replied, steadying herself and gulping the last of her drink.
The cake tasted impossibly like raw honeycomb, ripe plums, and nutty chocolate. Rhiannon savored each bite, despite already being full, and resisted the urge to whine.
“What else could you possibly have planned?” Carmela asked as they stood from the table.
Rhiannon o ered nothing but a wry grin and an outstretched hand. There was still one more thing in store before they went back to the hotel room where the sta had set up a massage table and fresh flowers for the bath.
“No one has ever done anything like this for me before,”
Carmela confessed as they strolled under the umbrella
canopy and over cobblestone. “Thank you.”