Better Than Chocolate
“Bailey isn’t here yet,” Cecily told them. “She called to say she’s running late.”
“What a surprise,” Samantha murmured.
“Baby of the family. What can we say?” Cecily said. She widened her eyes. “Is that a brownie you’re eating?”
Samantha stuffed the last of her brownie in her mouth. “Mmm.”
Cecily made a face. “Unfair.”
Kind of like her being up here all by herself, worrying about Mom and the business. Then she reminded herself that she’d been the stupid martyr who insisted her sisters return to their lives in L.A.
“But better your waist than mine,” Cecily taunted.
“By the time everyone in Icicle Falls is done bringing food we’ll have no waists. We’ll be tree trunks,” Mom predicted. “Still, it’s very thoughtful.”
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.”
Now she did look at him. She had great eyes. And then there was her mouth. And other parts of her.
“It was very unprofessional of me,” she said, “and I’m not normally like that.”
“I’m sure you’re not,” he agreed. “And believe me, this isn’t any more fun for the bank than it is for you.”
A delicate eyebrow cocked, turning her earnest expression into something a little more cynical. “It hurts you more than it does me?”
“Well, sort of.” That had sounded stupid and made him look like a real jerk. This wasn’t going well. “I don’t like having to be the bad guy,” he said. Boy, there was an understatement. Why, of all the business choices in the world, had he chosen banking?
Oh, yeah, he’d wanted to help people fix their money problems, make their dreams come true, blah, blah. Talk about naive. Banks didn’t cure financial stupidity. They profited from it. He was no hero. He was a profiteer.
“Then don’t be a bad guy,” she urged. “Work with us.”
She looked so helpless, so desperate. He wanted to wrap his arms around her and tell her he’d come up with some way to save her.
Wait a minute. What was he thinking? He wasn’t, of course. Women like this one, they made a man’s brain melt. He gave himself a stern reminder that Samantha Sterling wasn’t the only person in town with financial needs. He had employees and other bank customers depending on him.
None of his other customers looked like this one.
Oh, no. He wasn’t about to follow old Arnie right over the cliff and take the bank with him. Yes, legions of men did dumb things for women. They spent money they didn’t have on women, stole for them, even committed murder for them. He didn’t have to join the legions.
“We’re making plans for something that could benefit not only Sweet Dreams but the whole town,” Samantha said earnestly.
There. She’d be fine. He’d known it all along.
This was a town full of fighters. It had been ever since the shutdown of the lumber mill and the relocation of the railroad left Icicle Falls in bad straits during the Depression. It’d been almost a ghost town by the fifties, but the people of Icicle Falls had self-administered CPR and spent the early sixties transforming their town into an Alpine village and haven for skiers. Sweet Dreams Chocolate Company was one of their success stories, weathering the hard times and giving the town a source of pride, and how it was founded had become a local legend. Like the other residents of Icicle Falls, Samantha Sterling was a fighter. She’d pull out of this.
“If we could have a little more time,” she added.
That again. So much for the false rosy picture he’d been painting. His morning coffee began churning up acid in his gut. “I wish I could,” he said. And he did. No lie.
There went the eyebrow once more. “Do you?”
Yes, damn it. But what was he supposed to do, rob the bank for her? Did he look like a money tree with hundred-dollar bills sprouting out of his ears? “Like I said before—”
“I don’t think I want to hear what you said before,” she snapped. “It was depressing the first time around.”
In under a minute she’d reduced him from six feet two to twelve inches, the world’s smallest man with the world’s smallest heart. “If there’s any other way I can help,” he began.
“You’re helping enough,” she said coldly, and marched off to the order counter, her back stiff.
But not her tush. How did women manage to walk like that? Honky-tonk badonkadonk, mmm-mmm.
Nice, Preston, he scolded himself. You’re about to take her business and you’re thinking about her butt. What kind of bastard did that make him? He supposed his ex-girlfriend would be glad to tell him.
There had been a superficial relationship that was doomed from the start. After they broke up he’d vowed to be more cautious and not let his common sense get anesthetized by a pretty face. Or a nice tush.
Talk about doomed relationships… Samantha Sterling is not for you. Still…that didn’t mean he couldn’t step back and analyze her situation once again and maybe come to a new conclusion. Really, was the bank wise to be so hard-nosed to a business that played a vital part in the local economy?
He tossed his coffee and stepped out into the cold. Instead of returning to the bank he went down to Riverfront Park. With the exception of a couple of brave walkers the footpath was deserted. He took out his cell and dialed Darren Short, his district manager, all the while telling himself that he was not following Arnie over the cliff.
“Blake, how’s it going?” Darren greeted him. “Are you settling in?”
“Well enough,” Blake said. “But now that I’m here I’m getting a bigger picture than we had on paper.”
“Oh?” Now Darren sounded cautious.
“Look, I think we need to reevaluate a few of these loans, especially the one to Sweet Dreams Chocolates.”
“Don’t go soft on me now,” Darren said. “You’re up there to stop the hemorrhaging.”
“I know.”
“Then don’t let me down. You’re our wunderkind and we’re depending on you to turn that branch around and make it an asset for Cascade Mutual. Hell, the people who work up there are depending on you, too.”
“I have every intention of doing that, but—”
Darren cut him off. “Good. I stuck my neck out for you. Don’t make me regret it.”
“Don’t worry, I’m doing my job,” Blake said. “But part of that job involves evaluating the situation and—”
Darren cut him off again with a brusque, “It’s been evaluated and I’m sure I don’t have to remind you of bank policy—to which you’ve already made an exception.”
“I haven’t forgotten,” Blake said through gritted teeth.
“I’m glad to hear it. You can give me a full report when we meet on Friday.”
“I will.” In fact, Darren was going to get a much fuller report than he expected. One way or another Blake was now determined to make his boss see reason. He had to. He couldn’t take living the rest of his life as the world’s smallest man.
* * *
Samantha had been looking forward to a caramel latte all morning, but once she had it she took no more than two sips before throwing it out. She started back to the office but changed direction at the last minute, instead walking over to Gingerbread Haus, owned by her business buddy Cassandra Wilkes.
Between her visits to the bakery, and Cass’s visits to Sweet Dreams it was inevitable that the women would become friends. In addition to a love of food and a passion for business, they also seemed to share a common snark bone.
Cass was a single mom, now in her early forties, with three children. She’d come to town a bitter thirty-four-year-old divorcée with barely a penny to her name and went to work for Dot Morrison, who owned the Breakfast Haus restaurant. Dot had lent her the money to start her fantasyland bakery seven years ago and Cass had taken the money and run as fast as she could for success. She’d never looked back.