Stacey hesitated. There was nothing like getting right to the point. “Yes, I did.”
“When do you think you’ll have the money?”
Stacey thought of the commission from her great day of sales and the money she’d saved so far in her bank account. “I should have it by the end of summer.”
“Not good enough!” Pam shouted. “I need it by July 15.”
Why was she shouting? Was Pam that angry with her?
“You never asked me for rent the whole time I stayed with you,” Stacey reminded her. “You said you were happy to give me a place to stay.”
“I assumed you’d pay me as soon as you got a job, and you didn’t.”
“You never showed me any receipts or utility bills. Did you also assume I wouldn’t need to see any of them?” Stacey asked, shocked that for once she was holding her ground.
“I waited until I had the final tally before sending the bill,” Pam replied. “Look, I’ll make you a deal. Give me the money, and I’ll give you back your gold heart-shaped necklace.”
Stacey gasped. “You found my necklace? Where?”
“In a crack behind the top dresser drawer.”
“I checked the dresser drawers.” Stacey’s mind raced through each room of Pam’s small apartment. “I searched everywhere for weeks.”
Grandma Jean gave her the necklace on her fourteenth birthday, right before the tornado hit. Stacey had placed her grandmother’s photo inside the heart-shaped locket and placed the chain around her neck. That was the only reason the necklace survived, when everything else of value didn’t—including Grandma Jean. Other than memories, the photo inside the locket was all she had left of her.
Pam knew that the piece of jewelry held sentimental value and that Stacey would do anything to get it back. Had Pam taken the necklace and hidden it from her? She would never have thought her former roommate could do such a thing, but now she wasn’t so sure.
“I guess I could always pawn the necklace . . . and take whatever money they give me,” Pam said, her voice hesitant, as if unsure what to do.
“No!” Stacey swallowed hard, all thoughts of using the cash she’d saved for the security on her apartment fading away. “I’ll send you what money I have and get you the rest as soon as I can. I promise.”
“Thanks, Stacey,” Pam said, a smile coming through her confident tone. “I never thought you wouldn’t.”
EARLY THE NEXT morning, Stacey cut up her maxed out credit cards, ate one of the peanut butter-and-cracker MREs from her backpack for breakfast, and mailed a partial payment to Pam.
She’d ask Andi, Rachel, and Kim if she could work more hours and brainstorm a way to sell more cupcakes. When she arrived at the beach, she opened her Cupcake Diary and made a list.
Dave suggested she offer deals like “Buy One, Get One Free” or “Dollar Discount on a Dozen.”
They still advertised their two-for-one deal with ice cream and cupcakes, but this week she was back in her own trailer, and he was in his. The customers got their ice cream from him, then moved to her stand for the cupcake.
The pages in her diary fluttered in the warm breeze, and she set Rocky down on the edge of the book binder.
“Yes, I agree,” she told her pet rock. “What I really need is a way to get back inside Dave’s trailer.”
She hesitated, looked at the face on the rock, then added, “No, not for personal reasons. This week sales are good, but the day we sold out of one trailer sales were even better.”
“Who are you talking to?” Dave asked, coming up to her window.
She smiled and pointed to the rock with her pen. “Rocky.”
Dave looked at her smooth, round rock with the happy face and nodded. “Did you ever think about getting a cat or a dog instead?”
“I can’t right now, but I will, as soon as I can afford to buy a house with a fenced in yard.”
“And what’s this?” he asked, indicating the jar of colorful sea glass.
She smiled again. “Payment from the poor for cupcakes.”
“Have you tried depositing that in the bank?” This time he grinned. “I’m afraid you’ll have a hard time buying a house with sea glass.”
“Which is why I need you,” Stacey said, fixing an image of Kate Jones in her mind to fortify her courage. “What if we cored out the center of the cupcakes, but instead of frosting, we filled it with ice cream?”
Dave held her gaze. “We’d have to work together so the ice cream wouldn’t melt.”
Stacey nodded, holding her breath.
“The ice cream would keep the cake moist,” Dave added, “and guarantee it’s served fresh.”
Stacey nodded again, not trusting herself to speak.
“Okay,” Dave said, lifting a few dozen boxes of cupcakes off her counter and nodding for her to follow him to his truck. “Let’s do this.”
AFTER ANOTHER FANTASTIC day of sales, Dave grinned. “I was hoping I could repay you for fixing the refrigeration on my truck.”
“Just as long as it isn’t with sea glass,” she joked.
“How about I buy you dinner?”
She tensed. Don’t get misled, she told herself. He probably meant he’d send her home with a pizza. Alone. “You don’t need to repay me. My life has been cursed with trouble, and your truck probably broke because I was too close to you to begin with.”
“I like having you close,” he said, giving her a little sideways bump. “That’s why I want to ask you out on a date.”
“A date?” She swallowed hard, wondering if she’d heard him right. “W-with you?”
A worried expression crossed his face. “You make it sound like I’m the one who’s cursed.”
“What about your girlfriend?”
“Girlfriend?” He looked at her as if he had no idea what she was talking about.
“Black bikini and diamond stud sunglasses stuck onto a tanned, commercial-thin body?”
Dave grimaced. “Not a girlfriend. She’s the ex-wife. Her name’s Carla, and she came by to rub in the fact that Dave’s Ice Cream Palace has been reduced to a cheap pile of rubble on the beach.”
“You—you’re that Dave, owner of Dave’s Ice Cream Palace?”
He nodded. “Was. Past tense.”
“My cousin, Rachel, used to rave about your ice cream all the time when I lived in Nebraska. She said I’d have to come out to Oregon for a taste to believe how good it was.”
“Well, the Palace is gone. My ex took as much as she could in the divorce, and I had to sell everything and start over from scratch.”
“That’s when you got the tattoo?” Stacey asked. “To remind you not to take life for granted?”
“I wasn’t thinking too straight at the time.” Dave took her hand in his. “But I assure you, I am now. So . . . how about that date?”
A MIST GATHERED over the surf and drifted inland in wisps like ghostly dancers doing the tango upon the sand. Her heart pounding with anticipation, Stacey took Dave’s hand and followed him down the stairs to the beach, as if to join them.
Except they didn’t dance, they walked, stopping only once or twice when he spun her around for a quick kiss. And they didn’t care who could overhear them but bantered back and forth over the merits of pet rocks and sea glass until the sun dimmed and their sides ached from laughter.
Stacey didn’t know if it was because she’d had another sell-out day of sales or the fact she was with Dave that made her feel so full of peace. They sat down, and although the air grew cooler, the sand remained warm, locking in the heat of the day and blanketing their bare feet with warmth.
“I’m so glad you suggested we eat take-out on the beach,” Stacey said, snuggling into Dave’s side. She hadn’t had the best experience with dates and restaurants and didn’t want anything to jinx their relationship before it even began.
“Me, too,” Dave agreed, “except the food didn’t make it down to the beach. The fish and chips were gone before we even reached the end of the street.”
&nbs
p; Stacey smiled, and Dave’s head drew near, hopefully for a longer kiss this time . . . when suddenly a loud, incessant mooing as if from a hundred-foot-tall beast of a cow pierced the air.
She jumped back and looked in every direction around her. “What’s that?”
“The tsunami alarm system. It sounds—”
“Tsunami?” Stacey jumped to her feet, her pulse tripping over itself in a series of unrhythmic beats. “We have to run!”
She took a few steps, stumbled over a large piece of driftwood, and as soon as she was back up on her feet, sprinted toward the steps to safety. Did she still remember the tsunami routes out of the area? Was there any possible way they’d reach higher land in time? The fog rose over the ocean, making it impossible to see the incoming wave or how high it was rising.
She didn’t look back but sensed Dave behind her. Then his arm looped around her waist, and he pulled her backward.
“Stacey, stop!”
She didn’t want to stop; she wanted to escape. But his hold on her was firm as he wrapped his arms around her and pressed her to his chest.
“There’s no tsunami,” he said, his voice hoarse against her ear. “The mooing sound means the system is just conducting a test. If it was a real tsunami, you’d hear a siren.”
“A false alarm?”
It took several minutes for her to steady her breath. Whose idea was it to have a cow moo over the area? Tsunami or no tsunami, the raucous mooing had terrified her silly and certainly didn’t sound like any cow she’d ever heard before.
Stacey spent the next half hour telling Dave about the tornado that had ripped apart her family’s house in Nebraska, the feel of the wind, the abundance of thunder and lightning, the loss of her grandmother.
She and her brother had hidden in the crawl space beneath the tool shed; her parents had been driving and had pulled off the road to take refuge in the concrete bathroom at a rest stop. But her grandmother had been at the house of a friend who didn’t have any kind of storm shelter.
“You must have thought I was a freak when I started running,” Stacey said, still unable to forget the mooing cow sound used to test the Cannon Beach tsunami warning system.
Dave shook his head. “You have every right to freak out after what you’ve been through.”
She lifted her gaze to his. “So you do think I’m a freak?”
Dave laughed. “You’re different than most but not a freak.”
“I don’t want to be different,” she said and winced. “I want to fit in and be like everyone else.”
“Stace,” he said, his voice taking on a certain seriousness she’d never heard him use before, “By different, I mean in a good way. I like you just the way you are.”
“Really?”
In answer, his mouth lowered to hers, and he gave her a long, slow kiss, with a soft tenderness that far surpassed any she’d fabricated in her wildest imaginings.
That only left her with one other question. “Are you busy on August 24?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Dave whispered. “Why?”
She smiled, her hope for the future soaring. “Will you go to Kim’s wedding with me?”
Chapter Seven
* * *
Come walk with me, take off your shoes, let’s walk the beach with only the moon to light the path and waves to hear you tell me you love me.
—J. Henson, Oregon, United States
STACEY SAT UNDER the umbrella table next to her cupcake stand and opened the Cupcake Diary to read over some of the entries. The weeks had flown by, and the pages of her book were almost full.
July 4: Fireworks over the Columbia River. Dave and I stood on the waterfront dock with Andi, Jake, and their children. Jake’s sister, Trish, showed up with her son, Evan, who is closer in age to Mia and Taylor than to Max. But her husband, Oliver, went MIA, and Trish wasn’t very happy. I felt sorry for Trish and know that Andi and Jake did, too. I imagine it’s no fun to be stood up for a date, even when married. Glad I have Dave. When we kissed we set off our own fireworks.
July 10: Dave and I traveled down the coast to Sea Lion Caves. The place would make a great storm shelter, but if there was an earthquake I’d be afraid the cave might collapse and we’d be trapped inside. Besides, the sea lions are so noisy we’d never get any sleep. The sound echoes off the interior walls and made it hard for us to hear each other talk. However, we found speech wasn’t necessary. (Grin.) We used sign language: hugs, smiles, and plenty of soft, meaningful gestures.
July 29: Dave said he wanted to take me to dinner but wouldn’t tell me where. I have to admit I was more than a little bit nervous when he picked me up at Aunt Sarah’s. I still haven’t overcome my fear of being ditched by my dates in restaurants. But Dave took me back to his house for the first time (he’s had to overcome some relationship fears of his own), and we ate sautéed chicken a la mode.
I thought his house was perfect enough when I saw the mailbox, front porch, and fenced in yard, but after dinner when he took me down to the wine cellar to show me his collection of ice cream scoops, I fell in love. It’s like an underground bunker, perfect to store a complete arsenal of supplies!
August 6: Today Dave and I went berry picking, and when we got back Dave used some to make homemade marionberry ice cream. I put the rest of the marionberries on the tops of the cupcakes. A marionberry is a cross between the Chehalem blackberry and the olallieberry. Very large. Taste fabulous. Customers loved the new flavor of the ice cream and cupcake combo. I gave one to Gladys, and she traded me several new pieces of sea glass.
August 15: Shed a tear for Rocky. That dreaded surfer came back today and when I wasn’t looking picked him up off the counter and threw him down into the sand. I screamed at the surfer like a lunatic, but he just laughed at me and said, “Dude. It’s just a rock.” I raced down to the beach and tried to find him, but there were a lot of people running around, and I think Rocky got buried alive. Anyhow, I couldn’t find him and was very upset about it, until Dave appeared like a shining angel and handed me a new rock. I named it Kate.
August 20: Dave asked if I’d ever flown a kite, and when I told him no, he was determined to teach me. I didn’t mind because he kept his arms wrapped around me the whole time. At first I was holding the strings too tight, and it was only when I let go that the kite could really fly. Made me realize I’ve been holding on too tight to other things in my life, like my emergency backpack, and maybe it’s time to kiss it goodbye. Most of the MREs are gone now anyway. I had to eat them in order to save money to give to Pam.
Stacey smiled as she flipped through the pages. She’d had many other adventures over the summer and had written down as many of the dates and details as she could, but to include them all would have required a much bigger book.
AUGUST 24 ARRIVED with a flourish of gold sun, blue sky, greenery, and colorful flowers, a perfect palette for the artistic painter who was about to marry her Swedish sweetheart in his backyard rose garden.
Kim had met Nathaniel a year earlier when she’d stepped into his yard full of blooming rosebushes, ponds, and ivy trellises and mistaken it for the new community park. She’d told him her goal was to sniff one hundred roses, one for every item on her “to do” list.
Today Stacey guessed there were one hundred roses decorating the outdoor gazebo lit with tiny twinkling white lights where the couple took their vows. Andi, Rachel, and Nathaniel’s sister, Linnea, stood in their floral gowns on one side of the couple, and Jake, Mike, and Nathaniel’s brother, Fredrik, each dressed in a black tuxedo, stood on the other.
If Stacey had come alone, the fact she hadn’t been invited into the wedding party might have bothered her, but with Dave by her side, she didn’t feel like an outcast—like Jake’s sister, Trish. The brunette had dark circles under her eyes as if from lack of sleep and had come escorted by eight-year-old, Evan, but once again with no husband in sight.
“Trish,” Stacey had called, waving to the mother and son when they’d arrive
d. “Please sit with us.”
Trish looked surprised but didn’t hesitate to claim the seat beside her. “Thanks,” she confided. “I hate to attend these things alone.”
After the ceremony Mia and Taylor, both flower girls, raced Max and Evan to the food tables. Stacey got up to join them and spied Ms. Slater, the state cupcake competition coordinator, standing by the lemon meringue wedding cupcakes.
When Andi and Kim drew near, she nodded to the woman and asked, “What is she doing here?”
Andi looked over at her and frowned. “She’s the one Dad brought as a date. Out of all the women in the world, how could he pick her? She’s cold and prickly and not anything like Mom.”
Stacey gasped. “I thought he was bringing the woman who owns that bookstore.”
Kim leaned her head in and whispered. “No, Ms. Slater and Dad used the bookstore as a meeting place.”
“Why didn’t she tell us who she was when she came into the shop?” Andi demanded.
“Maybe she thought it would be better if your father introduced her to you,” Stacey suggested. “I knew there was a reason she came in person instead of emailing the contest information. She was checking you out.”
“Could this affect the competition?” Kim asked.
Andi shook her head. “No, she’s a coordinator, not a judge.”
“Still,” Stacey warned, “she has influence, and who knows how many of the judges she knows.”
Kim took a deep breath and smiled. “I won’t let her ruin my wedding day. Aren’t the men so handsome dressed in their suits and tuxedos?”
“They are,” Stacey agreed, her gaze straying to Dave, who wore a navy blue suit, the top of his blond hair blowing gently in the warm breeze.
“You’ll be the next one to marry,” Kim told her.
“I’ve never been so happy!” Stacey admitted, her emotions bubbling over as she gushed. “Dave seems too good to be true. I’m almost afraid to blink for fear I’ll wake up and discover this entire summer has been nothing but a dream.”
The Cupcake Diaries Page 6
