Sweet Surprises

by Shirlee McCoy

  “Laura Beth?” she guessed, and his face flushed.

  “Now, why would you bring her up? I’m actually taking Belinda to the cakewalk at Benevolence Baptist.”

  “She’s in a wheelchair,” she pointed out.

  “And I am going to roll her around until we win a damn cake. You got a problem with that?”

  “No. I just thought—”

  “You remember how close Dillard and I used to be? We used to hunt together and fish together. We were like brothers, and that makes Belinda like my sister-in-law. When I saw her the other day . . .” He shook his head. “It nearly broke my heart that I’d let so much time slip away between visits.”

  “You did have a pretty serious accident, Granddad. It’s not like you’ve been healthy.”

  “Excuses are easy to make, kid, but time? That’s hard to get back once you lose it. So I called Belinda up and we started chatting. Turns out Elmer Wilkinson has been calling on her off and on for the past couple months, but he’s afraid to do it now that River is around.”

  “Elmer Wilkinson?”

  “Owns that farm that butts right up to the ranch? Mary was his wife. She passed about ten years ago.”

  She didn’t remember, but she nodded anyway. “So what does that have to do with you and Belinda going to the cakewalk?”

  “Elmer is going to be there. The two of them can have a little time together and I can hang out with Lau . . .”

  “Aha! This is about Laurie!”

  “It most certainly is not!” he insisted.

  They probably would have continued the argument, but someone knocked on the back door.

  “That’s got to be her,” he said, rushing to take off his apron and running his hand over his hair.

  “Laura Beth?”

  “Belinda. River said he’d drop her off after therapy. Get with the program, girl!” he said, swinging open the back door.

  Cold air rushed in, and then Belinda was there, being wheeled in by River, who looked . . .

  Great.

  Really great.

  His dark hair ruffled by the breeze, his dark slacks and white dress shirt crisp. A tie hung around his neck, the ends of it brushing the chair as he leaned over to say something to Belinda.

  Whatever he said, it made her smile.

  She looked pretty. Her white hair styled in soft curls that framed her face, a little blush on her gaunt cheeks. Someone had painted her nails pale pink and decorated her black wrist brace with silver glitter.

  “You look lovely, my dear,” Byron said, gallantly kissing her knuckles. She smiled, brushing her hand over her blue dress.

  She even had heels on her feet. Low ones with tiny little bows on the toes. “Thank you for taking me, Byron. I’m sure we will both have a good time.”

  Her words were clearer than they’d been the day Mack had tackled Brenna. Maybe the stress had made speech more difficult.

  “Have a good time?” Byron stepped behind the chair and turned her back toward the door. “We’re winning a cake, Belinda Mae. You mark my words on that.”

  She laughed, the sound smothered by the clatter of leaves blowing across the pavement.

  “Do you need help getting the chair—” River began.

  “Young man!” Byron interrupted. “Belinda and I can handle this just fine.”

  With that, he rolled her out the door.

  “I hope this isn’t a mistake,” River said, standing in the threshold, probably watching Byron make his way to his old Cadillac.

  “They’ll be fine,” Brenna said, but she wasn’t so sure.

  It was true Byron had been moving around the shop like a guy twenty years his junior, but that didn’t mean he could help Belinda into a car or lift a wheelchair into the trunk.

  “I’d feel a lot better if I were going with them.”

  “Who says you can’t?” she asked, grabbing a dirty bowl and dunking it under hot water.

  “Belinda threatened to disown me if I showed my face at the cakewalk. She says I’ve been hovering.” He edged in beside her, grabbing an apron from the hook near the door and tying it around his waist.

  “Have you been?”

  “Yeah. I have. Huckleberry and Mack picked six baskets of apples and three baskets of pears. Belinda is bound and determined to can every last one of them.”

  “I’ve always wanted to do that.” She shifted to the side, gave him room to dry while she washed.

  “Can pears and apples?”

  “Sure. Why not? Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote about her mother putting up jars of vegetables and fruits, and I always thought it sounded like fun.” The words slipped out, the childhood memory something she’d never shared with anyone. Not because she was embarrassed by it, but because it had never come up.

  In her other life, she’d talked about fashion and photo-shoots and a dozen other things that really didn’t matter. Not in any way that mattered to her. In her head, though, she’d always been one of those women who bustled around a hot kitchen, baking pies and cakes and feeding everyone who stopped by.

  She thought River might laugh, but he stopped drying the dish she’d handed him and studied her for a moment. “I trained as a chef, and I’ve spent a lot of time learning the old way of doing things. Modern techniques are great, but tradition brings us back to the roots of who we are. Seems like someone like you would appreciate that.” He smiled, and she found herself smiling right along with him.

  “First you say I’m a bookworm. Now, you say I’m traditional? What clued you in this time? My old-fashioned hair cut?” She touched the hair Dan had always insisted go with her image: hip and chic, modern and edgy.

  “Image isn’t always the same as identity,” he responded. “Look at me. If you asked around town, people would probably say I rode off into the sunset to rob banks and run drugs. In reality, I graduated from college, went to culinary school. Opened restaurants. I spent more than one summer feeding ranch hands. I learned to bake bread, can vegetables, and make a lot of good food out of a few very good ingredients while I was at it. If you really want to learn, I can teach you.”

  “I couldn’t ask you to do that.” She wouldn’t ask him because there was no way on God’s green earth she was going to spend any more time than necessary with River.

  There was just something about him . . .

  Something she hadn’t been able to put out of her mind. She knew, because she’d spent four days trying, four nights tapping her fingers against an empty cigarette box, thinking about the way he’d been with Mack and with Belinda and with her.

  Idiot, her mind shouted, but her heart gave a tiny little jump as she looked into his eyes.

  “I could teach you a little about chocolate, too,” he continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “I apprenticed under a master chocolatier in France. It’s not my thing, but I did learn a lot. There’s an art to tempering. Once you learn that, the rest is pretty easy.”

  “Like I said, I couldn’t put you out.”

  “You wouldn’t be. Besides,” he set the bowl in the cupboard, “I have a favor to ask of you.”

  “What kind of favor?”

  “No need to sound so suspicious, red. It’s all on the up-and-up.”

  She grabbed a pan from the stove, this one filled with the remnants of the marshmallow she’d been trying to make. “What favor?” she repeated.

  “I’ve been thinking about what you said regarding the ranch, about how much Belinda always loved having people around. She needs a way to make money to keep the ranch running. Local and organic are big terms in the food market. People want to eat clean and they want to be closer to their food sources.”

  “Okay,” she said, her pulse beating a little faster. Not because she was looking in his eyes or because he was staring into hers. No. This time, it was because she heard passion in his voice, determination. He’d been thinking about this a lot, and whatever it was, he planned to make it work.

  “Belinda has that huge old farmhouse, and aside from th
e dust and age, it’s in pretty good shape. I’m going to clean it up, furnish it, and advertise it as a bed-and-breakfast where people can come to help with the harvest and learn to make good, wholesome food from ingredients grown right in their own backyards.”

  “That,” she said, trying to wrap her mind around it, trying to envision this big thing happening in Benevolence, “is huge.”

  “Yeah.” He grinned, setting another bowl into the cupboard, his biceps bulging against the cotton fabric of his shirt. “I like huge projects. I love when people tell me something won’t work. It gives me the incentive to prove them wrong.”

  “Have you been talking to people about it?”

  “I ran it by one of my restaurant managers and my financial adviser. They think I’m nuts. I also talked to the business council in Benevolence. We had a meeting yesterday.”

  “And . . . ?”

  “That’s where the favor comes in.” He stopped drying, turned her so they were face-to-face. “They seem . . . interested. The idea of local produce, local products, local business benefiting is never a bad thing for a town this size. Seasonal tourists are moneymakers, and if they can add to them, it’s a win-win.”

  “I still don’t see what that has to do with me.”

  “They want me to prove I can use local people and businesses to get the farmhouse up to snuff. Once I’ve proven it can be done, they said they’ll grant me the permit to add a large demonstration kitchen. I can have classes there, show guests how to use what they harvest at home to create restaurant-quality dishes.”

  “And the favor?” she prodded, because she still had no idea where she fit into this thing.

  “I was talking to Adeline about finances this morning and she mentioned you had a shop in New York City.”

  “A clothing shop.”

  “Which you designed. She showed me photos: lots of antiques and vintage wallpaper. Old books on shelves on the walls.”

  “Those were just small details. No one paid much attention to them.” She went back to scrubbing the marshmallow pot because her cheeks had gone hot. She’d added the antiques, the books, the vintage wallpaper, after the interior designer Dan had insisted on had finished his work. The posh modern shop had been exactly what Dan thought would match her reputation as a runway model.

  “Details make the dish, red,” he replied. “The right cheese, the perfectly ripe tomato, the crisp spinach for the salad. Details are what make the person, too. Like your freckles.” He touched a spot on her cheek, and a shiver of excitement raced up her spine. “Your spiky hair. The way your mouth curves downward when you’re thinking.”

  He didn’t touch that.

  Thank God!

  She moved out of reach. Just in case.

  She was done with excitement, with men, with complications.

  But she was intrigued by what he was saying and the fact that he wasn’t talking about making a buck. He was talking about saving a lifestyle, maintaining a tradition that was nearly as old as the town. “What does Belinda think about your idea?”

  “I haven’t run it by her yet. I don’t want her to be disappointed if it doesn’t work out. If you agree to help me out, I’m just going to tell her that I’ve hired some people to update the farmhouse. What I’d like you to do is go to some of the local antique shops, pick up some things that will work in the farmhouse. Choose the paint colors. I know you’re busy here during the day, but Adeline said she’d talk to some shop owners to see if they’ll let you look around after hours. She does all their taxes so she’s got an in with most of them.”

  “Decorating my own shop is a lot different from helping you with a project like this.” But the idea excited her. She couldn’t deny that any more than she could deny the little ping of heat that danced up her arm when he grabbed her hand and pulled her to the pantry.

  “You see all this?” he asked, gesturing to dozens of ingredients that lined the shelves. “This I know about. Decorating? Not so much. You have an eye for it that I lack, and you’re the only local person who has any experience. I know. I’ve been asking around.”

  “There’s a lady in Spokane—”

  “Local,” he emphasized. “Otherwise I’ll lose the bid for the permit.”

  “River, I really don’t have experience. I decorated one shop.”

  “A highly successful shop,” he pointed out.

  Until my fiancé emptied out the business account, she almost said, but that was a story for another time. One she had no intention of telling anyone. “I really don’t think—”

  “I hear Byron is going on a fishing trip next week,” he cut in, grabbing a clean dish towel and scrubbing the stove with it. Somehow the chocolate and marshmallow and peanut butter splattered all over it disappeared.

  There was the magic Byron had been talking about.

  Which sucked, because she needed it way more than River did. “Who told you that?”

  “Your sister. She’s concerned you might be in over your head.”

  “Does it look like I’m in over my head?” she muttered, because she knew damn well it did.

  “Fair trade, red. I come in three nights a week to help you make candy. You come over to the ranch the other two nights and get the place ready for the business council’s visit.”

  “When is that?”

  “Two weeks from today.”

  “That’s not much time.”

  “You’re saying no?” He rinsed the rag in steamy hot water, swiped chocolate from the edge of the sink. Somehow, the kitchen was nearly clean, and all she’d done was wash one marshmallow pot.

  “I’m saying yes,” she found herself saying, the words tumbling out of her mouth before she could stop them.

  River grinned, the kind of I-got-what-I-wanted smirk that should have made her blood boil.

  Instead, she was grinning, too, smiling like some inane schoolgirl who’d pleased her crush.

  “I . . . need to take out the trash,” she managed to say, grabbing the bag and yanking it out of the can.

  She was pretty sure she’d left a trail of chocolate on the shop floor. She didn’t bother looking. She’d clean it later. After River left and took his contagious smile and big plans with him.

  * * *

  He’d gotten what he wanted, and that should have been all River cared about. After four fifteen-hour days, long meetings, longer phone conversations, and just about every single thing that could go wrong at the ranch going wrong, he was ready for something to go right.

  Yeah. He had what he wanted: an agreement from Brenna to help with the ranch. That would make the business council happy and would smooth the way for the permit he needed.

  But he’d lied to get what he wanted, and that didn’t sit well with him

  Truth? He had an eye for detail and he could have easily chosen antiques from any of the shops on Main Street. He could choose paint. He could choose lighting fixtures, linens, everything a place like he’d envisioned was going to need.

  What he couldn’t do was all of it himself and still expect a bunch of old-timers who had their heads up their backsides to issue the permit.

  They remembered him from his wild days.

  That was the problem.

  They figured he was shooting for the moon, with no plan for the hard work it would take to get there. They probably also figured he was going to make more of a mess of their town than he would bring in as a profit.

  They were wrong on all counts.

  He’d showed them facts and figures, charts and financial statements, but River had a reputation. In Benevolence that could be difficult to overcome. Even if the reputation was over a decade old.

  He grabbed a sponge from the edge of the sink and used it to wipe down cabinets that had somehow been splattered with chocolate and cream and—unless he missed his guess—melted sugar.

  Regardless of whether he really needed Brenna’s help, she needed his. He doubted she’d admit it, but the evidence was everywhere: the counters, the floor, the
trash bag filled with discards she’d just dragged out.

  Speaking of which, it was taking her a long time to return from her trash run.

  Not his worry. Benevolence was a small town, and a safe one. If she wanted to wander around after dark, it was nothing to him.

  Except he kept remembering that phone call she hadn’t answered and the look on her face when he’d asked about it.

  There was something going on with her. Something more than the broken engagement everyone in town seemed to be whispering about. He’d heard about it at the diner, at the barber, at the flower shop where he’d bought Belinda a dozen orange daylilies. Everyone, everywhere, seemed to know that Brenna had dumped her two-timing fiancé. But no one seemed to know why she’d gotten rid of her posh, successful clothing boutique.

  A broken heart was what most of the women seemed to think.

  Not that River paid all that much attention, but it was difficult not to hear the blue-haired ladies at the diner whispering about the lovelorn Lamont sister.

  Brenna didn’t seem heartbroken to him.

  She seemed tired, overwhelmed, and a little sad, but she didn’t seem heartbroken.

  She also still wasn’t back.

  He dried his hands on a dish rag and opened the back door.

  Summer was fading quickly, the cold, crisp night air reminding him of all the things that were good about eastern Washington. No humidity in the air, no hot nights at the end of long summer days. Just the sun going down and coolness setting in, the air clean and fresh with the coming fall.

  He could hear a woman’s voice and he followed the sound around the side of the building and into a narrow alley. A Dumpster stood against one wall and Brenna stood next to it, the trash bag abandoned at her feet.

  “Jeff, you really need to stop calling me,” she said as River approached. She must have heard him, but she gave no indication of it. The phone was pressed to her ear and she tapped her free hand against her thigh, impatience in every line of her body. “I already told you he didn’t. I already told you he wouldn’t.”

  A long pause as River grabbed the trash bag and tossed it into the Dumpster, then a sigh.

  “Right. I know what he owes you. He owes me, too, but there’s absolutely nothing I can do about either thing. Okay, Jeff. I get it. Like I said the last four times you called, I’ll contact you if I hear from him.”