Better Than Chocolate

by Sheila Roberts

  And it’s free, Samantha thought. Right now free was good, as her savings account was on the verge of flatlining.

  “So, have you come up with any ideas for how to get the money we need?” asked Cecily.

  The elephants sitting on Samantha’s shoulders settled in for a nice, long stay. “Other than robbing the bank, no.”

  “I still think I should take out a loan,” Cecily said. “Maybe I could get a home equity loan on my condo.”

  “Nice try, but I told you, no loans,” Samantha insisted. “This family isn’t going any deeper into debt.” Mom being upside down on her house was bad enough. They didn’t need to put her sister in the same position.

  Cecily gave a fatalistic shrug. “You know, I always thought I was pretty good at thinking outside the box, but I’ve got to admit that so far I’m at a loss. Other than matching you up with a rich man,” she teased Samantha.

  “Meeting a nice man, there’s an idea,” Mom said, perfectly happy to take her seriously. “Maybe someone who’d be willing to make you a personal loan.”

  “No problem,” Samantha said irritably. “Let’s run down to the rich-guy mart and pick up a sucker.”

  “We wouldn’t have any luck, anyway,” Cecily said. “Your boobs aren’t big enough.”

  Now Mom was looking thoughtful. “What’s the new bank manager like?”

  “He’s no Arnie,” Samantha said bitterly. An image of Blake Preston with his broad shoulders and superhero chin came running into her mind, all dressed up in his football regalia. Samantha benched it.

  “Still, surely he could be of some help,” Mom said.

  Samantha shook her head. “I’ve met him. He’s useless.”

  “Maybe you didn’t get off on the right foot,” Mom persisted.

  If snatching back the bribe she’d brought him counted, no, they hadn’t. Samantha shot her sister a look that warned bodily harm if Cecily ratted her out to Mom and said, “Trust me, he won’t be any help. A man can’t always fix things,” she couldn’t keep from adding.

  Her mother heaved a sigh. “I wish your father was alive. He’d know what to do.”

  “If Dad was alive we wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place,” Samantha said, and then wanted to bite off her tongue. Just shoot me now, she thought, watching her mother’s shoulders stiffen. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” she muttered. Except she had and they both knew it.

  “It’s okay,” her mother said even though they both knew it wasn’t.

  Now Samantha could hear Bailey’s voice in the background. A moment later her youngest sister appeared on the screen, plopping onto the love seat next to Cecily and pulling off a red leather jacket, probably a consignment store find. Ever since the company’s profits had evaporated they’d all been shopping secondhand. Or, in Samantha’s case, not shopping at all.

  “So what have you guys come up with?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” Samantha said. This was going to be a big waste of time.

  “Well, I was thinking about something on the way over,” Bailey told them. “What about some kind of fundraiser? You know, with a big thermometer so people could see how much money we’ve raised.”

  “No,” Samantha said. “Perception is important in business and the last thing we want is to announce to the whole world that we’re going under.”

  “But we are going under,” Bailey pointed out.

  “No thermometers,” Samantha said sternly.

  Bailey frowned and fell back against the couch cushions, deflated.

  “Speaking of perception,” Cecily said, “does anybody know how to contact Mimi LeGrande? If she featured Sweet Dreams on a show, we’d be golden.”

  Why hadn’t she thought of that? Mimi LeGrande hosted the Food Network’s brand-new hit show All Things Chocolate. There wasn’t a bakery or chocolatier in the country who didn’t dream of getting included in one of her shows. If she were to give them a nod, orders would pour in from foodies and chocoholics, and their future would be secure.

  “I heard she lives here. I could ask around,” Bailey offered. “There’s got to be someone who knows her.”

  “That would be great,” Samantha said. Heck, it would be more than great. It would be a miracle. “But it’s a long shot. I think we need a more immediate plan.” There had to be one. Why wasn’t she seeing it?

  Silence reigned for a full five minutes until Cecily said, “You know, our baby sis could be on to something.”

  “Oh, not you, too,” Samantha groaned.

  “What if we did come up with some sort of event to bring in money for the business?”

  “A chocolate dinner?” Bailey suggested, coming back to life. “Every course could use chocolate. And we could do it at Zelda’s.”

  “Guys, I appreciate the thought,” Samantha said, “but a dinner wouldn’t even come close to raising the kind of money we need.” Maybe they were on the right track, though. “Let’s think on a grander scale.”

  “I did a chocolate tour in Seattle once,” Bailey said.

  “A chocolate tour, a chocolate weekend,” Samantha mused. Maybe they could pull that off. They could have a dinner and a chocolate high tea at Olivia’s B and B. But anything they got from that would only be a drop in the bucket. “A chocolate festival.” Too bad they didn’t have more time. Festivals brought in a lot of people and a lot of money.

  “Now, that’s brilliant!” Cecily exclaimed.

  “Brilliant but not practical,” Samantha said. “We need that money in six and a half weeks. It would take six months to plan something on such a grand scale.”

  “Then let’s plan on a baby grand scale,” Bailey said. “We can have it the weekend before Valentine’s Day when people are feeling romantic and buying candy.”

  Samantha shook her head regretfully. “There isn’t time. It’s a lot to plan, and you have to promote it.”

  “If you had people helping, you could do it,” Bailey insisted. “And with the internet and social media you can promote things fast now.”

  “It’s a great idea,” Cecily said.

  Was her entire family certifiably insane?

  Suddenly she could envision Icicle Falls buzzing with throngs of visitors all on a chocolate high. Something like this wouldn’t just help their company, it would help the whole town.

  Was she insane, too?

  “Let’s do it,” Bailey said eagerly.

  What was with this let’s do it stuff? They were down there and she was up here. On her own.

  “We can sponser a bunch of events, maybe have some sort of contest,” Bailey continued. “I couldn’t come up till just before, but I could help with planning over the phone and on email in between catering jobs.”

  “Actually, I can come up right away,” Cecily said.

  “You’ve got a business to run,” Samantha protested.

  “Things are quiet right now. I’ve got the time.”

  Quiet? What did that mean? Wasn’t her dating service doing well?

  Cecily tended to keep things to herself. When she had a crisis they never heard about it until it was long over.

  Still, this worried Samantha. “Not that I don’t want you,” she said, “but you can’t just up and leave your business for several weeks.”

  Cecily put on what Samantha thought of as her poker face; her expression gave nothing away. “I’m closing the business. It’s a long story,” she added before Samantha could press her for details. “Anyway, I’ve had all
the sun I can take. I need seasons. I can rent out my condo, and I bet Charley would let me have a job waiting tables at Zelda’s a couple of nights a week. That would leave me free during the day to work on the festival with you guys. Mom, can I stay with you?”

  “Of course,” Mom said. “But I think you girls need to figure out a few more things first, like where we’d hold this festival.”

  “All over town.” Bailey almost whacked Cecily in the nose with her sweeping hand gesture.

  “I bet we could get all the B and Bs to participate and offer some special rates,” Samantha said thoughtfully. “No one has full occupancy these days, so maybe some of them would offer a special discount for that weekend.”

  “Oh, and the restaurants can feature special chocolate desserts,” Bailey said.

  “We could award a plaque to the one that comes up with the most creative dessert, using our candy, of course,” Cecily suggested. “Bragging rights for them, profit for us.”

  “I love it,” Samantha said. This scheme was looking better by the minute.

  Bailey nodded eagerly. “Our local artists can set up booths in the park along Center Street. Heck, we can all have food booths over on Alpine like we do on the Fourth of July.”

  “Girls, this all sounds lovely, but you have to have time to get people on board,” Mom said.

  “Since when isn’t the Icicle Falls Chamber of Commerce on board with anything that brings in tourist business?” Samantha argued. “I could work that angle.”

  “Me, too,” said Bailey. “I can phone people from here. Oh, this could be really big. We can hand out samples, give tours of the factory, all kinds of cool stuff.”

  “But there’s the matter of permits,” Samantha said, coming down to earth with a thud. “We can’t just decide to have a festival without getting permits for the sale of food and alcohol. And we need a special-event permit that all the departments sign off on. It takes time for all that to make the rounds in city hall.”

  “But if it’s good for Icicle Falls I bet you can find someone to move the process along,” Cecily said.

  Hmm. Her sister had a point there.

  “Let’s try it, anyway,” Bailey urged. “Think of all the chocolate-lovers we can lure up here. Oooh, and we could have a chocolate ball,” she added dreamily. “I can see it now, an old-fashioned masked ball where everyone dresses up.”

  “And have that chocolate dinner before,” Cecily put in.

  “We can sponsor the dinner and the ball and sell hot chocolate and truffles in a booth.” Bailey was beaming now, on fire with a million ideas.

  If they could manage to pull off even some of them…Samantha felt the fire catching in her, too. “We’d need to advertise in the Seattle papers, set up a website.” She grabbed a piece of paper from Waldo’s desk and began scribbling notes to herself.

  “That will cost money,” Mom pointed out. “Girls, I just don’t think we can raise what we need by sponsoring something like this. Sponsoring, by its very nature, involves cost.”

  Now that they were going down the tubes she was deciding to grow a head for business? “Everything involves cost,” Samantha argued.

  But Mom had a point. This whole thing was a huge gamble and it could bomb big-time.

  What did it matter, though, if the bank was going to take the business, anyway? Chances were slim that they’d even come close to making enough money to get the bank off their backs—but if they did nothing their chances went from slim to none. And maybe they could at least raise enough to allow her to renegotiate with the bank. If she came in with a check…

  “I’ve got a good feeling about this,” Cecily said.

  Samantha put a lot of stock in her sister’s instincts. “Then let’s do it. What have we got to lose?”

  Their business, of course. And maybe their sanity.

  Oh, wait, trying to pull off something this big in such a short time—they’d already lost their sanity. So what the heck. Sweet Dreams Chocolates was about to sponsor a chocolate festival.

  Chapter Six

  The man of your dreams is the one who shares your dreams.

  —Muriel Sterling, Mixing Business with Pleasure: How to Successfully Balance Business and Love

  After their family conference call, Samantha’s mother loaded her up with chicken casserole, tuna surprise and brownies, gave her an encouraging hug and then sent her home feeling slightly ill. She hoped the queasiness was due to all the sugar she’d been consuming lately and not fear of failure.

  She went to bed half hoping she could save the day by dreaming up a fabulous chocolate candy recipe just like Great-grandma Rose had done all those years ago.

  Could she, though? No-o-o. Instead of dreaming up a new recipe that would put them on the map, she spent her REM sleep hours running from King Kong–size candy-bar monsters that chased her all over town, trying to squash her with their big, flat feet. Finally three of them cornered her right in front of the bank.

  “Get her,” growled one, and raised a giant foot.

  “No,” she cried. “I’ll do anything. Anything!”

  So far in her dream she’d appeared to be the last living soul in Icicle Falls but suddenly the bank door opened and Blake Preston stood in the doorway dressed in leopard-print boxers. “Did you say you’d do anything?” he asked.

  “Anything,” she panted. He took her by the arm and pulled her inside the bank.

  There she saw that all the desks had been replaced with round beds draped in pink satin bedspreads and the ceiling was one gigantic mirror. In another corner sat a hot tub, bubbling with chocolate.

  Blake slipped an arm around her waist. “I’ve been waiting for you,” he whispered. He tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and nibbled her earlobe, turning her insides gooey. “Why don’t you lose that dress and join me in the hot tub?”

  “Will you save me from the monsters?” she asked him.

  “Of course. That’s what men are for, isn’t it? Look how Waldo saved your mother.”

  “Aack.” She covered her face with her hands.

  Blake started chuckling and she glanced up to see that he’d put on some sort of Dracula cape and sprouted fangs. And they were dripping chocolate.

  She let out a shriek and ran for the door. But then she caught sight of a big, brown monster eye peering in at her and dashed blindly in the other direction with Blake in hot pursuit, his cape flying out behind him.

  “Bwa-ha-ha. You know you want me,” he cackled.

  “I want to save my company!” she yelled over her shoulder. “Sign something that guarantees you’ll save my company.”

  “First let’s seal the deal,” he called as he chased her around a bed. “Come on, Samantha, you know you want to.”

  “I shouldn’t do this,” she said, and hesitated, which gave him time to get around the bed and catch her. “It’s all right,” he murmured as he kissed her neck. “Trust me.”

  Next thing she knew he was helping her strip off her little black dress. And lo and behold, she was wearing leopard-print panties and a matching bra.

  “Now, sign this,” he said, and produced some sort of contract and a pen shaped like a licorice stick. Samantha took it and scrawled her name across the bottom of the document. “What did I just sign?”

  Blake scooped her up in his arms and smiled at her. “You signed your life away, baby. You sold your company to Madame C.”

  The cheap chocolate company in Seattle? “No!” she protested
, and struggled to get free.

  “And now nobody needs you anymore.” With her still squirming in his arms, he flew over to the hot tub and dropped her in. “Sayonara, sweet cheeks,” he said, and began pushing her head down.

  She wakened just before she drowned, sitting up with a jerk and panting, covered in sweat. What kind of sick subconscious did she have, anyway? She pushed her hair out of her eyes and lay back down with a whimper. Nibs slowly made his way across the bed to investigate and she drew him close.

  “Okay, it was only a dream,” she told herself. And one that had convinced her that no matter how bad things got, she didn’t want to end it all by drowning herself in chocolate.

  * * *

  Blake was picking up his midmorning Americano at Bavarian Brews when he spotted Samantha Sterling coming through the door. She wore a short, faux-fur-trimmed jacket over jeans that hugged her thighs and tall black boots—typical Icicle Falls business casual. Except this woman made business casual look erotic and he had to beat down a surge of red-hot lust. The memory of her losing her temper at him doused any remaining embers—until an unbidden thought fueled a fresh fire, suggesting that with so much passion she’d be a real firecracker in bed.

  She saw him and her cheeks, already rosy from the cold, deepened to red. She shot a sidelong glance at the door but then seemed to think the better of turning tail and running, instead donned a polite mask and moved toward the order counter. He smiled at her, determined to meet her halfway. They lived in the same town. Might as well manage a difficult situation civilly.

  “Good morning,” she said, her voice as stiff as her smile.

  He held up his cup. “It is—now that I’ve got my coffee.”

  She nodded. “I’m running on empty myself.”

  “Can I buy you something?”

  She blushed again and dropped her gaze to his chest. “No, thanks. That is—” she cleared her throat “—about the other day.”

  This was awkward. He held up a hand. “Consider it forgotten.”