Sorry, Mrs. Hollister. You’d better keep looking. I’ve got three hundred sixty-five days of unencumbered singleness ahead of me.
Caitlin cleared her throat. “I saw on your sign that you give free tours, and thought I might take one.” She glanced around the room, looking for a listing of the tour times. “When is the next one scheduled?”
Mrs. Hollister looked at her watch. “How does right now sound?”
“Perfect. Do you conduct the tours?”
The woman looped her hand through her son’s arm and squeezed. “Chase does a much better job with the tours than I do. He can tell you everything you ever wanted to know about candle making.”
Chase looked startled. “But I’ve got to finish the invent—”
“Nonsense!” The stern look Mrs. Hollister turned on her son brought a grin to Caitlin’s face. She looked like she was scolding her ten-year-old, though Chase was closer to thirty, if Caitlin was any judge.
“I don’t want to be any trouble,” Caitlin said. “I’m here until Sunday night. I could come back tomorrow.”
The stern look turned her way. “It’s no trouble at all. Is it, Chase?”
He obviously didn’t want to be bothered giving her a personal tour. But apparently he wasn’t up for contradicting his mother. The smile he assumed held a touch of resignation. “I have been making candles long enough to know a thing or two about the process.”
This is a joke, isn’t it, God? Throw me together with a handsome guy, add a few not-so-subtle nudges from his mother—it’s a test to see if I’m really serious about my decision, isn’t it?
Well, Caitlin was accustomed to scoring well on tests.
“That’s terrific. Thanks so much.” Did her voice sound too bubbly, too enthusiastic? To cover her embarrassment, she thrust her hand toward him. “My name’s Caitlin Saylor.”
“Nice to meet you, Caitlin.”
Their hands connected, and the soft skin of Caitlin’s palm tingled where it nestled next to his. An answering flutter tickled the pit of her stomach. This kind of stuff never happened to her. Why now, after her decision?
When Chase released her hand, she clutched the shoulder strap of her purse and lifted her chin, determined to ignore the flutter.
Three hundred and sixty-five days. No problem.
“We break the blocks into smaller pieces to speed the melting process.” Chase directed Caitlin’s attention to the worktable where Alex stood hacking at a slab of wax with a hammer and chisel.
She stopped her curious inspection of the room to watch Alex. Chase didn’t think her interest was feigned, though up in the shop he’d thought she might hightail it out of there when his mom started shoving them together.
Not that Chase would have blamed Caitlin. In fact, he’d have been tempted to flee with her, to escape the machinations of his mother when she got that gleam in her eye. And she seemed to get it a lot lately. Like finding him a date had become her number-one priority in life or something. She reminded Chase at least twice a week that he hadn’t gone on a date since he and Leslie broke up, shortly after Kevin’s death.
The image he’d seen inside the car this morning flashed across his mind with surprising clarity. An answering surge of bile threatened. Chase gulped in a couple of deep breaths.
“I do the same thing with baker’s chocolate.” Caitlin brought him back to the task at hand. “Otherwise part of it scorches before the bigger pieces have a chance to melt.”
“Exactly.”
Alex pounded off another chunk, this time with a quick sideways glance at Caitlin as the piece of pale white wax broke off. Were his biceps bulging more than normal? Yeah, they were. Chase swallowed a disgusted grunt. Alex was flexing them on purpose, the show-off. Known as something of a lady’s man, Alex loved to put on a show for the pretty tourists.
And Caitlin was pretty. Blond hair. Blue eyes. The top of her head was on level with his nose.
Her looks weren’t lost on Alex, apparently. The guy puffed his chest out and swaggered behind the table where he stood. “This is the easy part,” Alex said. He waved a dismissive hand at the block of wax. “Requires nothing but brute force.” The show-off gave her a broad wink as he hefted a new slab of wax into position. “Stick around and I’ll be happy to demonstrate the part that takes finesse a little later.”
Judging by the way her cheeks flushed, she caught the double entendre. Chase couldn’t tell if she was pleased or embarrassed by Alex’s flirting, but she didn’t meet his eyes. Definitely didn’t flirt, like many women would have.
In fact, she hadn’t flirted with him, either. Chase liked that—he preferred women who didn’t go for all that eyelash-batting stuff.
“Thanks for the offer, but I think we’re good.” Chase gave Alex a stern stare over the top of Caitlin’s lowered head. Grinning, the Romeo lifted a shoulder and picked up his hammer.
Chase smiled down at Caitlin. “Let’s go into the other room, where the real work takes place.”
He put a hand on the back of her arm and guided her away from Alex’s worktable. He pointed out the neat rows of twenty-five-pound pails containing scented oil, stored on shelves along the rear wall, then led her through the doorway into the long, narrow room beyond. Fifty or so jars filled with liquid wax lined the worktable in the center. At the deep sink, Irene was cleaning up the last of the equipment from the morning’s pour. She flashed a smile in their direction, continuing with her task.
“You just missed a pour,” he informed Caitlin as he led her down the length of the table. “We did French Vanilla this morning.”
He described the process of mixing the fragrances, achieving the correct wax temperature, securing the wicks and pouring, and also the various effects to be achieved by different cooling techniques.
When he finished his spiel, she pointed toward a table that lined the rear wall, laden with dozens of metal molds. “You do all kinds of candles at once? Jars, pillars, tins, all the ones I saw in the shop?”
He shook his head. “We use a different kind of wax for pillars and votives, because they have to be taken out of the mold.” He nodded toward the table. “Those are Cinnamon Red Hots from yesterday afternoon. They’re ready to be unmolded, wrapped and shipped out.”
She gave him a surprised look. “Shipped out? You don’t sell them all here?”
“Oh, no. The shop is just one small piece of our business. We have a great Web site, and we get orders from all over the country. And most of our local business comes from the shops downtown.”
Chase led her to the third worktable, where four boxes of jar candles stood waiting for delivery. “These are interesting.” He flipped open a flap of the box and pulled out a deep-purple candle. “Forbidden Fantasy. Last year we designed this scent for a shop here in town. They sell a ton of them.”
He held the jar up for her inspection, and she read from the label. “‘Made by Good Things In Wax exclusively for The Candle Corner, Nashville, Indiana.’” She tilted her head to look at him sideways, a smile hovering at the edge of her mouth. “So you mean I can’t buy this from you? I’d have to go downtown to get it?”
That almost-smile was contagious. Chase found his mouth curving in answer, and was unable to look away from eyes almost exactly the same shade of blue as his favorite Maui Breeze candle.
On impulse, he pushed the jar toward her. “You don’t have to go anywhere. This is your gift for taking the tour. With our compliments.”
The smile broke loose, and a deep dimple creased her cheek. “Thank you.”
Blue eyes, blond hair, dimples. Chase tore his gaze away, his throat suddenly dry. “That concludes the tour, I’m afraid. If you’ll follow me.”
“Hey!”
An exclamation from behind made Caitlin jump, and Chase turned, frowning toward the intruder. Willie Evans had come through the back door and was hovering at the edge of the worktable.
“Yes, Willie?” Chase kept his tone polite. Truth be told, he didn’t like the man. Som
ething about the way he wouldn’t look Chase in the eye when they talked. Like now. His eyes moved continually, darting between Caitlin and Chase and the boxes of product. But he was a charity case of Korey’s, who’d insisted on giving him a job as a part-time delivery driver because the guy needed steady employment. He was too scattered, too inattentive to trust in the factory, but he was a good driver. He’d never had an accident, and Chase had to admit, Willie was reliable. He showed up for work when he was supposed to and he made the deliveries on time.
“Uh, I was just getting ready to take those over to the Candle Corner.” A muscle beneath his left eye twitched as his gaze fixed on the jar in Caitlin’s hand. “Now there’s one short. I don’t wanna get in trouble or nothing.”
Chase forced himself to smile at the man. “Don’t worry. I’ll make sure their account reflects the credit. If anybody says anything, have them call me.”
Willie’s tongue made an appearance to run quickly across his lower lip, his gaze fixed on the candle. His nod was more like a jerk. “I’ll tell ’em.”
Chase flashed a quick smile of dismissal before he turned away, and Caitlin fell in beside him. As they passed through the workroom, Alex stopped in the act of placing another slab of wax on the sturdy table to watch their progress across the room. Caitlin didn’t seem to notice his attention, but stuck right by Chase’s side, holding her candle close. Chase straightened his shoulders and smirked over the top of her head. Take that, Casanova.
FOUR
They stepped into the shop to find Chase’s mother chatting with two older women. Caitlin hesitated. Should she buy something? It would probably be the polite thing to do, since she’d taken up so much of his time—and since he’d given her one candle as a gift already.
She turned away from him to hide a fit of nerves. The suddenness of his gesture in the back room led her to believe not every person who took the tour left with a gift. Especially one of the special candles they didn’t even sell in their own store. That definitely counted as flirting. And she’d probably flirted back, despite her best intentions.
She straightened and infused her tone with politeness. “Thank you for that tour. And for this.” She popped the lid off the candle, lifted it to her nose, and inhaled. “Mmm—”
Her throat closed off in a choke as the odor reached her nostrils. Or, rather, assaulted her nostrils. A pungent blend of eucalyptus and … was that licorice? Tears sprang to her eyes. Whatever it was, the combination was horrible.
“Oh.” She replaced the lid, blinking rapidly to clear her eyes. The smell clung to the back of her throat. If Chase hadn’t been standing there watching, she would have wrinkled her nose and coughed. “That’s really strong.”
“You don’t like it?”
“Oh, no, it’s not that,” Caitlin hurried to assure him. “It’s just that it’s, uh …” She swallowed. What could she truthfully say about that terrible smell without offending him? “Really strong,” she repeated lamely.
Though his expression was serious, laugh lines creased the edges of his eyes. “It is one of our strongest scents.”
“Well, at least it’s …” Caitlin held the jar up and peered at the dark purple wax. She’d been about to say, “At least it’s pretty,” but she wasn’t a fan of purple. And this was so dark it was almost black. Black candles had such sinister connotations, she wouldn’t dare display this one in her living room. She searched desperately for something nice to say.
“To be honest,” Chase said, “it’s not one of my favorites.”
She caught sight of a twitch at the corner of his lips, and relaxed. “Mine, either,” she confessed. “I’m more of a plain vanilla kind of girl.”
He took the candle from her unresisting hands and tucked it on a shelf beneath the sales counter. “In that case, we have a triple-scented vanilla candle you’re going to love.”
Caitlin let him guide her toward a shelf on the opposite side of the shop, ignoring the warmth of his light touch at the small of her back. “You said the store in town sells a lot of those Forbidden Fantasy candles?”
“A ton.”
She tried to keep the disbelief off her face, but apparently failed, because he held his hand out, palm up and fingers splayed, as he shrugged.
“I don’t understand it, either.” He lowered his voice and glanced at the three women on the other side of a display shelf. “Personally, I think they stink.”
A giggle escaped her lips. Caitlin cut it off quickly. She might not be interested in the guy, but that didn’t mean she wanted him to think she was one of those giggly women she couldn’t stand. They were often the same ones who checked for wedding rings.
Chase didn’t seem to mind. He picked up a jar filled with creamy white wax, twisted off the lid, and extended it toward her. “How’s this?”
She inhaled, and breathed a happy sigh. “Wonderful. I love that one.”
His smile deepened as he put it in her hands. “Good. We like to keep our customers happy.”
Was there a bit of extra meaning in those words? Heat flooded Caitlin’s face, and she tore her gaze away from his. “I think I’ll buy one of those Fresh Apples you showed me earlier. My mom loves candles, and the green will match her bathroom perfectly.”
Mrs. Hollister stepped behind the cash register to ring up the purchases of the pair of women she’d been helping. Caitlin took her place in line behind them while Chase wrapped her candles in thick paper. When the women left with bulging bags clutched in their hands, Mrs. Hollister turned her wide grin on Caitlin.
“And how did you like the tour, dear?”
“It was fascinating. I never knew the process of making candles was so involved.”
The woman locked her arm through Chase’s and beamed up at him. “Chase is going to own the whole company some day.”
“Mother.” He gave her a stern look and extracted his arm.
Caitlin hid a smile as she took her wallet from her purse. She handed Chase enough money to cover the total displayed on the register’s screen.
“So, how long are you in town?” Mrs. Hollister asked.
“Until Sunday afternoon. My friends and I have a musical trio and we’re playing at a wedding Saturday evening, but I came up a few days early.”
“You’re here alone?”
Caitlin could almost see the thoughts flying back and forth behind the woman’s arched eyebrows. Uh-oh. She knew what came next. Better halt this conversation right now, or she’d find herself fending off an invitation to their house for a big family dinner.
“My friends couldn’t get off work until Friday, but I decided to come a few days early to spend some time in prayer and bible study. You know, a kind of retreat.” She raised her eyebrows. “Alone.”
That made Mrs. Hollister pause.
Chase cut into the conversation, his tone holding a note of polite dismissal. “Thanks for taking some of your retreat time to visit our factory.” He extended the bag across the counter toward her, his smile friendly. “We hope you have a nice time in Little Nashville.”
Caitlin took the bag, more than willing to be dismissed. The sooner she got out of Mrs. Hollister’s calculating presence, the better. “I’m sure I will. Thank you for the tour, and the candle.”
She turned to go, and Mrs. Hollister practically ran around the counter. “Wait! Since you’re here on a retreat, you should come to our church tonight.”
Caitlin paused. “Your church?”
The woman’s eager smile deepened as she nodded. “We’re having a miniconcert tonight instead of our regular Wednesday service. One of the local gospel groups is performing. I really think you’d enjoy it, especially since you’re a musician yourself.”
Caitlin’s interest sparked to life. She loved gospel music. “That does sound good.”
“Excellent!” Mrs. Hollister put a hand on Caitlin’s arm. “The concert is at seven-thirty, so how about coming to dinner at our house around six?”
Ah. There it was. As expecte
d.
Chase stood silent behind the register, his lips pressed into a tight line. He didn’t want Caitlin at his family’s dinner table any more than she wanted to be there. A completely unreasonable stab of disappointment assaulted her at the realization.
Caitlin took a step toward the door, beyond the woman’s clutch. “Thank you, but I’d better not come for dinner. Tell me where your church is, and I might come to the concert.”
Mrs. Hollister was nothing if not determined. “Oh, it’s much too complicated for you to try to find on your own. Chase will pick you up. Where are you staying?”
Caitlin opened her mouth to protest, but Chase stopped her.
“Actually,” he said, “our church is off the beaten path. It might be best if I gave you a ride. That is, if you plan to come.”
Klaxon alarms sounded in Caitlin’s ears. Her heart was vulnerable, and she knew it. The pain inflicted by Glenn was too fresh, too raw. That’s why the dateless year was so important. She needed time to heal so she wouldn’t fall head over heels for the first good-looking guy who came along. And Chase definitely fit that mold.
But this wasn’t really a date, was it? It was a concert at church. No harm in that, surely.
“I’m staying at the Nashville Inn,” she told Chase.
“I’ll pick you up around seven, then.” His gaze fixed on something behind her. A half-formed smile froze on his lips.
Caitlin turned and looked through the window in the door. A vehicle pulled into the space next to her Geo, white with green lettering and the unmistakable red-and-white bar across the top. A cruiser from the Brown County Sheriff’s Department.
“It’s the police.” Mrs. Hollister’s voice was low. “What do they want?”
“Me.” Chase stared out the window. “They want me.” Startled, Caitlin jerked her head around to stare at him. The police were here for the handsome candle man?
What have I gotten myself into?
FIVE
Chase stood in the parking lot beside Detective Jenkins’s vehicle and watched Caitlin’s car disappear down the tree-lined street. She was an attractive woman with a sweet, appealing air about her that he didn’t come across often. And she’d survived Mom’s clumsy maneuvering with grace. Exactly the kind of woman who could coax him back into the dating world. But the sight of the sheriff sent her scurrying away like a frightened squirrel. Not that he blamed her.
Murder in D Minor Boxed Set Page 39