Bluegrass Blessings

by Allie Pleiter

  “I just can’t picture you not baking, that’s all. It’d be like cutting off a hand or something. It’s what you do.”

  Dinah let herself smile. “When did you get all insightful?”

  “Since I had to start baking.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Dinah bolted upright. “Since you started what? Did you just say ‘baking’?”

  “Well, that’s sort of the other reason why I called. Howard’s decided the Cookiegram thing needs to go on. So he put me in charge of staffing volunteers to use the bakery to make all the cookies. Sort of an extended tour of duty from last time.”

  Dinah actually laughed out loud. “Oh, that sounds like Howard all right. You’re not really going to do it, are you? You’ve got your exam and all.”

  “I don’t think I have a choice. I’ve been ambushed, exam or no exam. Sandy helped him.”

  “Oh, you really are outnumbered.” She laughed again and some of the knots in her chest came undone, like an unlaced corset letting her breathe again.

  “I was hoping you could give me a few pointers on running this kitchen for more than a pair of days. You know, a Cookies for Dummies kind of thing. I’m thinking if we stick to two or three common recipes it’ll be less crazy than if everyone does their own thing.”

  Dinah cringed. “Can’t Sandy do this?”

  There was an odd pause on the other end of the phone. “It’s become sort of a pride thing now. I refuse to admit I can’t do it. Take that secret to your grave, okay? Oops, sorry. That probably wasn’t the most sensitive thing to say.”

  Dinah was amazed how many people had edited death out of their language in the past five days. It was funny, having now looked death in the face through both her parents, it didn’t loom as a horrible specter for her. She’d survived it. Twice. “It’s okay. I’m too tired to take offense at anything tiny like that.”

  “Still. But really, how are you feeling about everything? How are you holding up?” She felt like he stopped just short of saying “I’m worried about you.”

  “I’ll get through it. I just don’t know how or when.”

  “You have a really strong faith, Dinah. That’s how. The when doesn’t make that much difference.”

  “Said the landlord.” She meant it jokingly. Sort of.

  “Don’t do that. I don’t want you to think like that.” His voice got rather quiet and she imagined him leaning against his kitchen counter the way he did, kicking the baseboard with one foot. “Stop worrying about the bakery and the apartment. I’ve already told you I’d hold it. Just let me make this one part of it easy for you.”

  “Why?” she asked, feeling odd about how indebted she already was to him. “We don’t exactly have a long history together. You don’t owe me anything this big.”

  “Because I can. Because it’s the right thing to do and I’m able to do it.” He must have realized the emotion showed in his voice, because he changed his tone to one that was more kidding and added, “So I have a hero complex. Sue me.”

  “Speaking of suing, have you decided what to do about the lawsuit yet?”

  “I’m still working that out. Howard says the cookies will help me decide.”

  She laughed openly at that one. “He what?”

  “He explained it to me twice,” Cameron replied, laughing himself, “but I’m still not sure I understand it.”

  “That’s Howard. Sounds like you’ve taken a shine to our illustrious mayor. Can’t say I saw that coming. He’s sure taking a shine to you.”

  “Trouble is, when Howard takes a shine to you, you end up managing hordes of volunteer cookie bakers for a project you’re not even sure will succeed in the first place. There have to be easier ways to raise money than Cookiegrams. A good old-fashioned raffle perhaps. Car washes. Pony rides.”

  “If I were you, I wouldn’t mention any of those around Howard. You might end up in charge of them all. Tell you what. You send me those real estate brokers’ names, and I’ll send you four no-fail cookie recipes. I’ll even send them in large-batch versions, and I’ll explain all the hard words for you. Consider it Cookies for Cameron instead of Cookies for Dummies.”

  “That’d be great. We’ll stand a chance that way.”

  Suddenly, the urge to run back to Kentucky, to stand in her warm kitchen and listen to Howard’s crazy volunteers baking all around her, to be part of the Cookiegram fund-raiser she’d called ridiculous a dozen times over, surged up inside her. A second ago she’d loved Cameron’s idea of baking in her childhood kitchen, now it seemed such a poor substitute she could barely stand the notion. “You’ll be fine,” she said, almost choking up.

  “So will you. Take care now and I’ll call you when the flour settles.”

  After Dinah hung up, she walked into the kitchen and stared at the dull, ordinary white oven. There are strangers in my kitchen, Lord! Only which kitchen was hers now? I want to go home! Her heart cried out like a lost child. Only where was home now? The house she now owned, or the bakery and apartment Cameron Rollings owned and she only rented?

  Life was so confusing and painful even two dozen batches of sticky buns couldn’t make it better.

  Cameron was in full-blown management mode.

  Four recipes were typed up in large print, laminated and mounted on the four walls of the bakery. Four workstations had been equipped with the needed ingredients. Taste and See was about to become the most efficient cookie factory Middleburg had ever seen. Managed by the soon-to-be locally licensed real estate mogul who would parlay his extraordinary community contribution into one launch of a dynamic local business. If the path to success and a street name change had to be paved with powdered sugar, then so be it.

  Sandy and her five volunteers, shift one of three today, stood tying their aprons and awaiting his instructions. They looked a little frightened, actually. Maybe the clipboard and baking checklist was a bit much. Really, this was just cookies—perhaps he was investing a bit too much in this, banking too highly on the outcome. After all, what did it really matter if he couldn’t manage to pull this off? It didn’t reflect badly on him as a man, as a businessman or even as a broker. As a matter of fact, most of the people whose opinion he valued would have called him crazy for even attempting it in the first place, much less place any weight on his results.

  “Who needs coffee?” he asked, remembering Aunt Sandy’s warning that the gray-haired woman on the left was a bit foggy before noon.

  “Oh, thank you,” she said, walking toward the coffee station he’d set up in one corner. She seemed oblivious to the fact that her apron wasn’t tied and fell off her waist with the first few steps.

  “Let me help you with that.” He picked the apron up off the floor and mentally reassigned her to a task not involving sharp objects. “You’ll be breaking eggs this morning, Mrs. Carlson. You’ll want that apron.”

  By noon, no less than twenty-two dozen sugar cookies had been baked and loaded onto wax paper flats. Success! When the more…um…skilled team came in at one-thirty, the trickier task of icing would begin. Cameron hoped he wouldn’t be knee-deep in a sugar disaster by the end of the day.

  As it turned out, Audrey Lupine had a way with piping royal icing and Aunt Sandy, working all three shifts today, showed herself to be the fastest icing spreader this side of the Mississippi. The other three ladies, evidently chosen for their superior skills, whipped their way through the assembly line of cookie decorating that Cameron had devised. Four designs on four kinds of cookies produced a respectable assortment of sixteen selections.

  “The Keebler elves should watch their backs,” Cameron mused as he surveyed the results so far. Contrary to his previous efforts at this, these cookies were actually attractive and, upon further inspection, surprisingly tasty. “Dinah would be proud of you,” Cameron said to Sandy and her baking buddies as they loaded iced cookies into special boxes that would sit in Dinah’s freezer—and other donated freezer space—until Cookiegram day.

  Dinah’s free
zer. He supposed he might have to stop calling it that. But his brain still couldn’t classify this as anything other than filling in for Dinah. Because he wanted her back. That’s right—he missed loud, rambunctious, color-outside-the-lines Dinah Hopkins. He missed her vibrancy upending his life and that unnerved him. He’d always found elegant, conservative, powerful woman attractive. Now he found himself with a disturbing need to talk things over with an annoying redhead. Things like his huge, life-altering decision whether or not to sue Landemere.

  “Dinah’d be proud of you, sugar,” Sandy replied. “This is way out of your league and you handled it like a pro. Middleburg’s going to owe you big time when this whole fund-raiser is over.”

  Cameron winked at his aunt. “Now you know you should never say those kinds of things to a deal maker like me. I’ll find a way to take you up on them.”

  “That wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest. And y’all done surprised me enough already in the month since you moved in.” Aunt Sandy turned in a slow circle, taking in the bakery. “But land sakes, I sure do miss that girl. I can’t imagine anyone else behind that counter but Dinah Hopkins.”

  Cameron finished wiping his hands on a dish towel and handed it to Audrey. She was taking all the towels and washcloths home to wash so that Cameron only had to run the industrial dishwasher when the day’s work was done. “I was just thinking the same thing.”

  “Do you think she’ll come back now that her mom is gone?” Audrey asked.

  “That’s between her and God,” Sandy said. “But I’ve already told God what I’d like to see happen. I want that girl back here where she loves and is loved. But it ain’t about what I want, or even what Dinah wants. It’s about what God wants.”

  “I pray God wants her back in Middleburg.” Audrey sighed. “And not just because the woman makes killer sticky buns. We’ll miss her something fierce on the library board.”

  “We’ll miss her something fierce in the choir,” added Sandy. “We were short on altos even before she left.”

  Cameron thought, Why did I just know that woman was an alto? He’d never heard her sing. She probably had a silky, rich voice. Like that laugh of hers. It was a delight to hear it, even over the phone from miles away. It made him feel good to know he could make her laugh. Made him feel like a good guy, not the dark character who sat in his living room at night and contemplated legal revenge on the likes of Frank.

  And that’s when it hit him. Even though it was a complete turnaround from his previous thoughts, the moment it came to him, Cameron knew what he should do. Somehow Howard had been right; he’d know himself better by baking cookies. Sitting alone in his apartment, contemplating the ideological fallout of his actions was no way to decide his next course of action. He needed to craft the deal—talk face-to-face with the parties involved, to explore his options from the viewpoint of possibility, not the shadow of evil. He finished up, said goodbye to Aunt Sandy and her gang and flipped on his PDA to look at the coming weeks.

  If they moved the fund-raiser just one week, he could pull it off. There was enough time. It was tight, but it was worth it. He had two more baking days to reach his goal. If he left on Sunday and came back Wednesday, he’d have enough time to visit the New York lawyers about the Landemere case and still study for his real estate exam. He had time to talk and explore and decide…and yes, he had time to make a side trip to New Jersey to visit Dinah. He’d be able to tell her how they handled…no, how they mastered the cookie production and how much people missed her. He’d have the chance to talk over his options with her and hopefully to help her at a time when she really needed it. He’d somehow convince Howard he needed one more week. Within minutes, Cameron was upstairs buying an online ticket to the one place he vowed he wouldn’t return: NewYork.

  Howard pulled up to the airport and put his car in park. “You got your extra week. It better be worth it.”

  Cameron smiled. “When my Kentucky real estate license comes through next month, I’ll buy you a steak or something.”

  “You’re a mover and a shaker, Rollings, that’s for sure.” He looked straight at Cameron. “Believe or not, I respect what you’re doing now. I think this is the right choice.” A smug grin settled on his chubby face. “Didn’t I tell you a stint of cookie baking would lead you to a good decision?”

  Cameron had doubts his tour of duty with flour and sugar really had produced his decision to visit New York. There was no telling Howard, however, when he’d decided on the extent of his influence. “You did,” he simply agreed.

  “See if you can’t use that extra week to get Dinah back here. Tell her how much we all miss her,” Howard said, shaking Cameron’s hand.

  “I will.”

  Howard did not let go of Cameron’s hand. “Right after you let her know how much you miss her.”

  Cameron did a double-take.

  “What?” chuckled Howard, “You think I gave you that extra week just to chat with lawyers and bake cookies?”

  Cameron still could not form a reply.

  “Don’t worry, son, I won’t say a word to anyone. But remember, this is a small town full of women just itching to meddle. You won’t get away with a secret like this for long. Especially if you convince that fine young woman to come back here where she belongs.”

  Cameron thought about denying it, but found it no use. “Start praying. And get the coots in on it.” He grabbed his suitcase out of Howard’s backseat.

  “They’ve been in on it from the beginning, son. You don’t fool an old coot for long. Vern’s decided you’re building a house up there on Lullaby Lane for more than just yourself.”

  “Yeah,” Cameron said, leaning back through the window, “about that…”

  “When you get back, we’ll talk all about your big fancy plans for Lullaby Lane. You go figure out your future so’s you can come on back here and make it happen.”

  “I’ll try.”

  As he waited to check in, it dawned on Cameron that for the first time in his life he wasn’t embarking on a return trip to New York. Sometime in the span of six weeks in Kentucky, his home had shifted. As if it sneaked out of the East Coast after dark and settled into the bluegrass region while he wasn’t looking. He wasn’t heading back home to New York. He was only visiting. Funny how Howard and Aunt Sandy and even kooky old Vern had figured it out before he had. Funny how God had known it way back when he set Cameron’s path out of New York those months ago. Cameron remembered driving over the New York state line back then, thinking his life as he knew it was over. Well, that much was true. He just hadn’t figured out yet how rich the new life just beginning would be.

  “Going to or coming from?” the college student with too much eyeliner asked him as she settled into the airplane seat next to him.

  Cameron just laughed, wondering what she’d think of him if he offered her one of the dozen overly frosted cookies in his carry on bag. “Both, actually.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Dinah tried to slow the thumping in her chest. “Monday night will work. I’ve got some accountant thing in the morning, but I’m free from two o’clock on.” Cameron was in New York meeting with the case attorney. And he was asking to come here for a short stay after his meetings. Here. It was unfair what that did to her pulse.

  “My train gets in at two-forty. I’ve booked two nights at the hotel on Seventh Street.”

  “Good choice. There’s an outstanding bistro just down the block from it.”

  “Great. I know I’ll be starved. I’ll be too nervous to eat anything before my big meeting tomorrow.”

  “How can you be nervous about anything now? You got Howard to change his mind. You’ve achieved the impossible.” Dinah hiked herself up to sit on the kitchen counter. “How are you—I mean about it all? Do you know what you want to do yet?”

  She heard him exhale on the other end. “No, I’m trying not to make up my mind before I hear them out.”

  “That sounds smart. I think your gut will tell
you what to do once you get there. These kinds of things are always better done face-to-face.” She wondered what kinds of things her stomach would do when she saw his face again. He had stuck with her, invaded her thoughts since their phone call a week ago. She’d think about how he pushed up his sleeves when he worked. The way he kept flicking his hair out of his eyes now that it had grown longer. When she’d tried out a new banana bread recipe yesterday, she’d caught herself wondering what he’d think of it—he’d said he didn’t like bananas. “I’ll be praying for you.”

  “I’ve moved the immovable Cookiegram. How can I go wrong?” He paused for a moment before adding, “That half—and most of the other half, too—told me to tell you how much they miss you.”

  Now there was a loaded sentence. Was he including himself in the contingent of Middleburgians who missed her? Did she even have business wondering something like that after how brief a time they’d known each other?

  She was sure she’d felt something between them. There was a connection, there in the park when the world had been falling apart around her. It was just complicated by the worst possible timing. That and a couple of tons of emotional baggage like death, corruption, geography and the fact that she couldn’t think straight about anything these days. As much as her intuition told her this guy was more than all his executive trappings, she didn’t feel like she could trust her gut when it was tied up in such knots.

  Cameron wasn’t sure who he was expecting when he walked into the meeting the following Monday morning, but his first thought was how normal everyone looked. Without realizing it, in his mind he’d remembered the team of lawyers as a snarling monster. As though he’d walk into a room full of ready-to-pounce attorneys wringing their hands in vicious anticipation of bringing down their latest “bad guy.” It was a ridiculous characterization, probably more born of his own internal conflict than anything they’d ever said to him. They were just a bunch of people doing their job—a job he’d first asked them to do—which is exactly what they looked like. Surprisingly, they also understood his own indecision.