A Man of Influence

by Melinda Curtis

  He was walking away?

  That’s when it hit Tracy—the painful turn to her stomach, the sickening taste in her throat. This was just like the time she’d belly-flopped in Mayor Larry’s swimming pool. The only difference was there’d been no witnesses this time when she’d flopped.

  Chad was walking away.

  Because she wasn’t good enough for him. A man like Chad, who had the world at his feet, would want a woman at his side who people would look at and say, “Wow. She’s perfect for you.”

  He moved in circles she could only dream of. She was sure he was embraced by cliques formed by power players, big deals and bigger exposure. Tracy embraced gurning, pumpkin bowling and cemetery runs. She moved through town at walker speed. She needed crutches and concentration to talk without much hesitation.

  Tracy wasn’t perfect. She was scarred and scared and just a big mess.

  Whereas Chad came to the cemetery run and said all the right things to people he barely knew, kissed a woman nearly ten years younger than he was and then wondered about breakfast.

  He was walking away, not even looking back.

  Oh, she’d belly-flopped, all right. She might just as well sink to the bottom of the pool.

  * * *

  CHAD DIDN’T LOOK BACK, not once on the way into town.

  Yup, he’d kissed her.

  There were more important things for him to be focusing on than a pretty girl. His future was at stake. His travel magazine was at stake. His pride was at stake.

  None of which seemed as important as that kiss with Tracy.

  Still, he kept walking. Because being with Tracy made him feel his wineglass was half full and she planned to top it off.

  He knew there was no happily-ever-after. Just look at his parents. They’d fallen in love late in life. They’d somehow managed to have a kid when they should have been having grandkids. They’d loved each other. They’d hated each other. They’d married and divorced and married and divorced and married. All that pain. All that drama. It had all started with a kiss. It all could have been prevented if one of them had just walked away. It had been in her arms that he’d realized he and Tracy were the mirror image of his parents. They smiled at each other. They laughed together. They argued about fundamental principles. He recognized the signs: Danger Ahead. And so he left.

  Chad’s loafers pounded the pavement down Main Street. El Rosal was in his sights.

  Agnes and Rose stepped on the sidewalk in front of him.

  Agnes regarded him like a kindly aunt spotting a nephew she doted on. “Chad, have you eaten at Giordanos Café yet?”

  He shook his head. Bacon was within reach.

  Rose and Agnes had other plans. They moved on either side of him, took him by the arm and led him into the café. Agnes’ nose was red and her eyes watery. She’d talked about her husband at the cemetery.

  Bacon would have to wait.

  “Claudia is serving an early lunch because of the ceremony.” Rose squeezed his arm as if this was the best news ever. Or at least of the morning. “Look at the special.”

  There was a sandwich board sign near the door with a chalkboard. On it someone had written with thick blue chalk: Turkey Chipotle-Flecked Panini with Cheddar Cheese, Guacamole and Bacon.

  Maybe Chad wouldn’t have to wait for bacon after all. He opened the door to the café for the ladies. They took the last open table in the front corner by the window. In the kitchen, a man and a woman—both with dark hair, both with chef jackets on—were laughing. They exchanged a glance that was filled with the kind of love Chad just walked away from.

  I walked away from a kiss. Not love.

  The woman, Chef Claudia, it turned out, took their order with a smile. Chad made a mental note to research her background online. It might add some much-needed meat to his article.

  “Grief makes me hungry.” Rose tore into her second rosemary wheat roll. She’d talked about her husband at the cemetery, too, but she didn’t seem as choked up about it as Agnes was.

  “It was a nice morning.” Agnes sniffed. “I hope we didn’t seem too sentimental.”

  “It was sincere,” Chad said, meaning it.

  “What are your intentions toward Tracy?” Rose demanded, having eaten three rolls and downed one glass of water. “She grew up with my granddaughter. She’s almost like a granddaughter to me.”

  “She’s my tour guide,” Chad said sternly, hoping he didn’t give anything more away with a smile fueled by a remembered kiss. “Really, ladies. What would Tracy say if she heard you grilling me?”

  “She’d tell us to mind our own business,” Agnes said.

  “But we never do.” Rose lifted the bread bowl and shook it at Claudia.

  “Is Mildred on her date?” Chad grinned at their shocked looks. “I was there when Felix asked her to brunch.” Although when Felix had said “brunch after everything tomorrow morning,” Chad had had no idea what he’d meant. Now he knew Felix had been referring to today’s cemetery run.

  “She’s breaking up the band,” Rose lamented.

  “You guys play instruments?” Now, there was a spin to the story he hadn’t considered.

  “We sing.” Rose answered with the air of one who’d misunderstood the question. “We used to dance on my porch.”

  “On Sunday nights, Rose puts on one-woman shows,” Agnes said with the patience of a saint. “She sings all the parts herself.”

  “Alto, bass and tenor. I dance and I have costumes, too. I’m quite talented.” Rose stated things matter-of-factly, without pretense or grandiosity. Well, maybe a little grandiosity. She had her snowy white hair in a tight bun at the base of her long neck, similar to the way Leona wore her hair. But with Rose, the air was one of accomplishment and comfort with herself, rather than the cold unhappiness of Leona.

  “I’d love to see a show,” Chad said.

  “You must come by next week. I’m doing Annie.”

  Chad’s curiosity switch flipped on. “Is this a public viewing? At a theater here in town?”

  Rose harrumphed. “Who needs a theater when I have lovely hardwoods at home?”

  So much for her productions being column-worthy.

  Their lunch was delivered and their table fell silent as they dug in. Chad’s panini was excellent, the bacon thick, smokey and satisfying.

  “Let’s get back to Tracy,” Agnes said after she’d pushed more food around her plate than she’d eaten. “And your intentions.”

  Rose dabbed a napkin to the corners of her mouth. “You’re almost too old for her. What are you? Thirty-eight? Forty?”

  “Thirty-five,” Chad ground out past a bite of bacon stuck in his throat.

  “Nine years.” Rose met Agnes’ gaze. “What do you think? Is he robbing the cradle?

  “When he’s eighty, she’ll be seventy-one.” The trip to the cemetery must have hit Agnes hard. She always seemed so upbeat. “One foot in the grave.”

  “That’s a little dark,” Chad protested.

  “Not necessarily. I was a pip at seventy-one.” Rose stared at Chad as if he was a costume she wasn’t sure she should wear for one of her productions. “Not so spry at eighty.”

  “You’re still moving around.” And she was putting on one-woman shows.

  “Yes, but at eighty-nine, chances are you wouldn’t be.” Agnes stared out the window as if seeing Chad as an old man. “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea.”

  Chad didn’t like her reasoning. He was a spring chicken compared to the age his father was when he got married.

  “If you have feelings, Tracy might not know.” Rose picked up the remains of her panini. “Back in my day, if a man was interested in a woman, he tossed pebbles at her window late at night. If the woman was interested in the man, she came outside with him.”
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br />   “And did what?” He knew. He just wanted to see what Rose would say.

  “There were all-night dance halls in New York.” Rose took a bite of her sandwich.

  “Moonlit drives.” Agnes sighed. “Parking and talking.”

  Chad glanced up at the second floor window above Martin’s Bakery.

  “That’s right,” Rose said, noticing the direction of his gaze. “We’ll expect a progress report tomorrow.”

  He decided not to tell them he’d already tossed pebbles. Partly because Tracy hadn’t come outside with him. And now, she never would.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAD SAT AT the desk in his room at the Lambridge B&B and stared at the blank screen on his laptop.

  There had been words there last night about how forgetful old people were with their possessions and their pasts. He’d erased those this morning. Not because he imagined Tracy’s glower, but because it wasn’t something that would make readers want to visit the town.

  And maybe that was the point, he realized. Maybe Harmony Valley was so saccharine sweet, it wasn’t worth visiting.

  His chest felt empty at the thought.

  There was something to Harmony Valley. There was quirk and irony. There was open-armed welcome and belonging. Why couldn’t he put it on the page?

  He stared at the blank screen, changed his font style, typed the words: Welcome to Harmony Valley! Erased them. And stared at the screen.

  Maybe if he looked at some of the other columns he’d written this past month, he’d be inspired. His hand hesitated over the mouse. What if he began reading them and he found out Tracy was right? That he’d written his most cutting work when he felt grief or fear. He’d rather not know.

  Tracy would disapprove of his cowardice, especially after he’d helped talk her out of her own.

  Although, she’d approved of his kiss.

  Which was just a kiss.

  And she was just a woman.

  But when he combined that kiss with that woman, Chad was exponentially in trouble. He wanted to be with her. But they weren’t compatible. She hated the way he wrote. And he was determined to carry the Happy Bachelor forward, even if it meant losing an opportunity to date Tracy.

  There was a sound outside. And then another. A shovel cleaving dirt. Leona was digging in the garden. His grave, he suspected.

  Chad wasn’t going to check. He had a column to write. The blinking cursor laughed at him: ha, ha, ha. A ha for every blink. He knew what that meant. No words would be written until he nailed down the proper angle for his story.

  He had about eighteen hours to figure it out.

  A shame since gurning and naked yoga had seemed so promising.

  Was Tracy right? Was the town too special for his writing style?

  Leona shoveled more dirt. She was worthy of an article all her own. And he was desperate enough to give it to her.

  Chad grabbed his jacket and hurried downstairs. And there was his muse—in pressed blue jeans and a green crew neck sweatshirt—wielding a shovel like a pogo stick. She positioned the shovel and hopped on it with both feet. She’d harvested all her vegetables. Several baskets were filled with them off to the side. But her shoveling technique...

  “Should you be doing that?” There were so many ways her execution could go wrong. A slipped foot. A turned ankle. Lost balance. Broken bones.

  “Quit looking at me as if you’ve never seen someone dig in the garden, Mr. Healy. I’m not burying a body.”

  He took a step closer, fighting the urge to take the shovel from her and complete the task. Dimly aware that his story radar wasn’t pinging about Leona, he couldn’t stop himself from asking, “Do you need any help?”

  “I’m an independent woman.” She jumped and missed the shovel with her right foot. She stumbled back with a soft cry.

  Chad took the shovel from her. “You won’t be so independent when you break a bone.” He slid the shovel blade into the dirt—no small feat since the soil was clay. The clump of dirt he turned over was heavy. Had she just had plants here? If felt more like she hadn’t harvested anything from the ground in years.

  The shovel creaked. It was old. The blade was rusted. The handle had cracks running down the shaft, as if it’d been left outside for decades. His smashed finger twinged and throbbed in protest.

  “Stop shoveling.” How like Leona to refuse help.

  “I’m not going to charge you for my services.” He kept digging, levering up heavy clods of soil so quickly the wood handle expanded as he levered it down and contracted when he eased it up, pinching his palms. He eyed Leona’s gloves.

  She’d taken them off and was swatting her leg with them as if the gloves were a riding crop.

  Regardless, he wasn’t stopping. There was only another four square feet of dirt to turn in the garden. He had a rhythm down. He had speed. He had—

  Crack!

  The shovel handle broke. The wood pinched his palms. He tugged his hands free of the handle with a hiss of pain. Thin red slashes of color crossed his palms in four inch lengths. Another good deed punished.

  “Now look what you’ve done,” Leona said in that nefarious voice of hers. She picked up the shovel pieces.

  “I’m looking, all right.” At blood blisters forming on his palms. He didn’t have the ability to help this woman or others, not the way they needed to be helped. Not like Flynn or Slade or Duffy did. “I give up.”

  But not on his column. He left Leona in the garden and hurried upstairs. He forced words on the page with as much determination as he’d forced the shovel into the clay.

  * * *

  “THE BAKERY...SMELLS like Christmas. Every day.” Tracy had the camera set up in the kitchen. The lens captured Tracy on a stool next to Jess, who was kneading dough.

  She’d tried scripting things out, but she found words came easier if she had ideas and conversation starters to work with. Besides, when she’d sat down to script things out yesterday, all she could think about was Chad walking away from her. Her spirits had sunk, taking her ability to speak with them.

  It was barely five thirty in the morning. A new day. All the lights were on in the kitchen. The smell of yeast and freshly brewed coffee filled the air. Set on preheat, the ovens ticked and hummed. It was warm and intimate, and words oozed from Tracy like frosting from an icing bag—slow and steady.

  “The bakery...doesn’t care if I lose a word. The bakery...doesn’t care if I lose a job.” Tracy paused and glanced at Jess. “It’s true. The bakery...doesn’t judge.”

  “I felt it the first time I came in here.” Jessica’s gaze ran lovingly over the kitchen’s interior and the many sepia tinted photos of the Martin family on the wall.

  “The bakery...doesn’t care if you make oatmeal raisin cookies or a multi-layered fondant wedding cake.”

  Jess nodded, turning the dough again and again. “It just wants to be needed.”

  “Useful,” Tracy added softly, suddenly feeling a strong sense of belonging as if some of the pieces of herself fit here. With Harmony Valley. With Martin’s Bakery. With this new Tracy she was becoming. “Wow.” She got up and turned off the camera. “The bakery...doesn’t care if you aren’t perfect.”

  Jessica placed the dough in a bowl, covered it with a clean white tea towel and moved it to the counter near an oven. “Speaking of useful, do you know who might have keys to the veterans hall? Christine wants to have her wedding reception in town. I think that’s the largest venue around.”

  “It’s the only venue around.” At least the only one for a large wedding reception. However, given the way unused properties were falling apart in town, Tracy shuddered to think about the condition of the place. “Last I heard...Rutgar is in charge.”

  “Rutgar.” Jessica’s gaze turned thoughtful. “I haven’t
seen him here in a long while.”

  “I can go ask for the keys,” Tracy offered, knowing how much Jess hated to leave the bakery in case a potential order came in. Tracy couldn’t sell a bride a cake over the phone. “Tuesdays are always slow.” Tracy had planned to fill her day by collecting the stories behind the recipes on Jessica’s blog. “Besides. You might not like what you find. Inside the hall.”

  * * *

  “I WAS PLAYED.” Mildred said when Agnes and Rose picked her up for coffee and asked how her date with Felix went the day before. “He took me home from the cemetery. And then—”

  “Did he suggest something frisky?” Rose demanded from the back seat.

  “No.”

  “Did he get frisky in the car?” Rose demanded.

  “No. He drove me slower than Agnes does to his house.” Mildred hitched around to face Rose, not that she could see the details of her friend’s expression. “He drove so slow, I could have driven.” Using the curbs as rails.

  “His house. Now it gets frisky,” Rose said knowingly. “Can I stand the details?”

  “Rose!” Agnes and Mildred both cried foul.

  Mildred turned to face forward. Agnes parked the car in front of Martin’s Bakery. The wind had been intense last night and had blown away the clouds. Mildred squinted more than usual in the bright sunshine.

  Rose unsnapped her seat belt and scooched forward, eager for details. “You said you were played.”

  “He made a lovely brunch.” Mildred had expected as much. Felix had been a fireman and the firemen in Harmony Valley had been known to be good cooks.

  “Wait.” Agnes plucked something from Mildred’s blouse. “Is that—”

  “Cat hair,” Mildred said miserably, brushing at her blouse, not that she could see the hair. “He invited me over to get me to adopt a cat.” Not that Dusty wasn’t a lovely cat—a champion purrer, a wonderful cuddler and a warm-bed hog. But she’d wanted something more than a cat in her life. She’d wanted someone who could hold a conversation as well as her hand.