So Maya had decided to give her time to think about it, or she’d wait at least until after the shop’s grand opening. If she hadn’t heard from her by then, she might start thinking of another approach. She couldn’t allow herself to think that Bia might completely shun her. Of course, it was a possibility, but she just wasn’t going to go there.
Especially not today.
Maya glanced at her watch. It had belonged to her grandmother. So it seemed particularly appropriate to wear it today. It was as if her grandmother and her mother were there with her. The only person missing was Bia, but Maya had seen the article that had appeared in the Dallas Journal of Business and Development just as Bia had promised.
Maya told herself that was second best to Bia being there in person.
It was nine-thirty. The shop would open in half an hour. Maya straightened her scarf, fluffed her hair and said a silent prayer for a great first day.
She walked from the kitchen onto the shop floor. Her three sales clerks, Susan, Paulina and Meg, were chatting away excitedly. They immediately quieted and jumped to attention when Maya walked into the room. They were dressed all in black as Maya had instructed them. Paulina had a feather duster in her hand and was swishing and swiping it over the fixtures. Maya hoped the girl would be as conscientious after the newness had worn off the adventure and the dust had had a chance to settle.
“Good morning, my chickens,” Maya said. “You three look lovely. Thank you for dressing appropriately and for being here on time. This is the beginning of a wonderful adventure for all of us, and I’m glad you are here with me. We will open our doors at precisely ten o’clock. I hope we will have so much business that it will prove impossible for us to take a break. However, I will make sure that you get some time to refresh. I have posted the schedule in the kitchen on the bulletin board above the table.”
Maya was just getting ready to go over the procedure for utilizing the cash drawer when a knock sounded at the door. She turned around to see Bia standing there with an armful of flowers. Her heart nearly leaped out of her chest.
“Please excuse me,” Maya said. “We have a very special visitor.”
Maya worried the hem of her scarf as she made her way to the door to let Bia in.
She had come.
Bia was her first-footer. It had to be a fabulous sign. While the Scottish tradition of first-footing said that the first person to cross a home’s threshold after midnight on New Year’s Eve would determine the family’s luck for the year, Maya thought it auspicious that Bia was the first person to cross her threshold on the first day of her new business. The employees had used the employee entrance in the back.
Maya opened the door and greeted Bia enthusiastically.
“I am so happy to see you,” she said. “I can’t even begin to tell you.”
“These are for you,” said Bia. She handed Maya the flowers.
“Thank you so very much,” Maya said, bringing the mix of white flowers to her nose. The flowers, which were in a tall glass vase, contained freesia, carnations and lilies that were tied with a silver ribbon. “These will look lovely on the wrap stand. I can’t believe I neglected to get fresh flowers.”
“Do you see these?” Bia asked. She indicated green stalklike limbs sticking out in the middle of the flowers. Maya had thought it was greenery.
“It’s lucky bamboo,” said Bia. “There are nine stalks and they represent good fortune. Even after the flowers fade, the bamboo will thrive. It lasts for years. If not forever.”
Maya was so touched that tears came to her eyes. She smiled at Bia. “Thank you so much for this.” Her words caught in her throat, and she took a moment to gather her composure. “It means so much that you’re here this morning.”
“I couldn’t let you open without sending good wishes and good fortune,” Bia said as Maya set the vase of flowers next to the register. “Did you see the article in today’s paper?”
“I did. It was wonderful. Thank you so very much. For that and for being here now.”
“Drew tells me you’re invited to the dinner party they’re throwing. Are you going?”
“I wouldn’t miss it.”
“I’m glad,” said Bia. “It will be good to spend some time with you. But you must be swamped getting ready to open the doors. Look, people are lining up already. I won’t keep you.”
Bia gestured toward the door, where a small crowd had gathered.
“You see—you’re already bringing me good luck,” Maya said. “Before you arrived, nobody was out there. Now look at them.”
Bia hitched her purse up onto her shoulder. “Maybe once you get the business up and running, we can meet for lunch or coffee or something?”
Maya put a hand on Bia’s arm. “I would love that. And, of course, there’s always dinner next week.”
Within an hour of the shop being open, the store was overrun with people. Maya and the staff had to keep going into the storeroom off the kitchen to bring out more chocolate to restock the shelves. It looked as if that lucky bamboo was working, after all. Or maybe it was the good fortune of her first-footer. More likely it was the attention that Bia had garnered through the article that had run that morning. Either way, Maya was grateful for the blessing of her daughter.
She rang up a box of truffles, a candy gift basket and a collection of chocolate bars for a woman who said she was buying the candy for her grandchildren. “That will be $106.42, please.” As the woman fished in her wallet for two pennies, Maya thought she saw someone familiar out of the corner of her eye. A man. It was his posture. The sight nearly made her heart stop.
Ian?
It couldn’t be. Maya knew that, although her heart didn’t seem to understand. A knot of people blocked her view and she craned her neck to see around them. No luck, though.
Her heart sank.
How many times had she thought she’d seen Ian’s face in the crowd before? Too many times to count. Ian was dead. He wasn’t coming back. She knew that. It was probably just her imagination conjuring up his image on this special day.
If wishes were chocolate...
Hmm...
She’d have to remember that, maybe use it in an advertisement.
She forced her cheeriest smile as she thanked the woman for her purchase.
“How often will you have handmade chocolate?” the woman asked.
“Of course, it will depend on the demand, but I think I will try to make fresh batches twice a week.” Maya gestured toward a silver guest book. “Would you care to sign up for our mailing list? That way I can let you know when the fresh batches of chocolate are available. I’ll also be able to tell you about specials and events that we’re having.”
Maya thought about getting a neon sign to put in the window. One she could light up when the handmade chocolate was available. She filed that idea away with the ad idea.
“Absolutely,” the woman said. Her Texas drawl made Maya smile.
As the woman was adding her name and email address to the guest book, Maya caught sight of the back of the man’s head again.
“I hope you can read my terrible handwriting,” the woman said. “That’s an o right there, not an a. Can you read that?”
Maya glanced down and read the woman’s name. “I can read it just fine. Thank you so much for coming in today, Mrs. Rogers. Please come back soon.”
When Mrs. Rogers walked away and the next person stepped up to be helped, Maya asked Meg to take over at the register. Maya made her way through the cluster of people gathered around the shelf with the boxed chocolates. To her surprise, the man was still there. Her heart thudded as she approached him.
“May I help you with something?” She held her breath until he looked up and smiled.
Her heart sank. Of course it was not Ian. She had been crazy to let herself
get carried away.
“Hello, Maya,” said the man. His familiar greeting startled her. Especially because his words were laced with the hint of an Irish accent. She knew she was imagining things, because his voice sounded like Ian’s. So much so that it made goose flesh stand up on her arms. She crossed her arms in front of her and ran her hands over her skin.
“Hello,” she said, mustering as enthusiastic a greeting as she could. He was a customer. It wasn’t his fault he wasn’t the person she had been hoping to see.
The stranger held out his right hand for Maya to shake. “I’m Charles Jordan,” he said. “I’m the one who sent you the Facebook message. We communicated back and forth a bit. Oh, or maybe someone else handles the social media for you?”
Maya extended her hand and shook his. “Oh, Mr. Jordan. How lovely to meet you. I am the one who answered your nice note. You said you would be in Texas. I’m so glad that it coincided with the opening of the store. Were you looking for anything in particular?”
He hesitated a moment. Their gazes locked. And there was something in his blue eyes that set loose the butterflies in her stomach.
His voice.
His eyes.
His posture.
It was all uncanny. He reminded her so much of Ian. And it wasn’t just because she was wishing that he were there today. For goodness’ sake, it had been nearly thirty years since she’d lost him.
Of course, not a day went by that she didn’t think of Ian, but it was the rare occasion that she met a man who seemed to be his walking ghost. And even that wasn’t right, because other than the eyes, the voice and the way he carried himself, he looked nothing like Ian. Not even Ian aged thirty years.
This man, this Charles Jordan, had a different nose, a different jawline, different cheekbones.
Her gaze fell to the open collar of his blue dress shirt, where she glimpsed the wide, raised pinkish-white edges of a scar shooting diagonally toward his Adam’s apple.
She glanced up. That’s when she realized that he was staring at her, too, seeming just as mesmerized. She tore her gaze away, looking toward the shelves.
“We have some lovely gift baskets over here,” she said. “And there’s still some handmade chocolate left. Not much. I’m pleased to report that it seems to be flying off the shelves.”
He was probably just a good soul. The world was full of them, if a person cared enough to look beneath the surface...past the scars. At least that was Maya’s philosophy.
“Do you have any Borgia truffles?” he asked. “That’s what I had the first time I visited your shop.”
Maya’s breath caught. Borgia truffles?
Borgia truffles had been one of Ian’s favorites. The memory made her heart ache.
“No, I’m so sorry. I haven’t made those in years. Goodness, probably close to twenty-five years.” She’d run into a problem getting the blood-orange extract she used for them. It was only manufactured by one company, and they went out of business. After trying to no avail to find a suitable substitute, she’d finally shelved the recipe.
“I’m so disappointed,” he said.
“So it has been a while since you were in the St. Michel shop?” she asked.
“Sadly, it has been much too long. You know how life tends to get in the way. Time goes so fast. Then all of a sudden you realize what’s important.”
What a strange thing to say.
In an effort to keep things light, Maya replied, “I must say it’s quite exciting to say that one of my first customers in my new shop was a return customer from the shop in St. Michel. How about some chocolate-covered salted caramel?”
“That sounds divine,” he said.
There it was again. That vague turn of cadence that sounded a bit Irish. But overall he had a decidedly American accent. She motioned for him to follow her to the center of the store so that she could wrap up his caramels.
“Where are you from?”
“All over the place,” he answered. “Right now, Orlando, Florida.”
“Didn’t you say in your message that you are here on business?”
“That I did.”
“How long are you in town?”
“Who knows?” He smiled. “Until my business is finished.”
Maya knew she shouldn’t pry, but she couldn’t help herself.
“I must ask, I can’t help but think I hear a slight bit of an Irish brogue when you speak. Are you from Ireland, or am I imagining it?”
He gave her a look that seemed to say touché. “That I am. Although I haven’t been back in ages. I suppose you can take the boy out of Ireland, but you can’t take Ireland out of the boy.”
Maya began the process of placing chocolates in a small box. “How many would you like? A half-dozen? A dozen? That’s what I have left.”
“I’ll take them all.”
“Are you enjoying yourself while you’re here?”
“I am. I found a great Irish pub downtown. Baldoon’s Pub. It feels like home. They even serve your Irish cream chocolate, you know?”
“I do know. It was an arrangement I was excited to make. I’d like to think that it gave the residents of Celebration a preview of what was to come when I opened the shop.”
“Well, it seems to have worked.”
She felt Charles’s gaze on her as she wrapped up his purchase. It made her both excited and a little nervous.
Finally, when she’d finished, she said, “Anything else?”
Charles hesitated a moment. “Would you care to join me for a bite to eat sometime at Baldoon’s?”
Maya’s immediate reaction was a resounding yes, but caution kicked in before she could get carried away. She didn’t know this man who seemed to appear from out of nowhere claiming to have been in her shop twenty-nine years ago.
Even though he reminded her so much of Ian, she had to be careful.
“Oh, goodness, that sounds lovely. However, I don’t know when I will have a moment of free time right now. The shop is so new. It requires my constant attention.”
Charles Jordan nodded solemnly. “A woman has to eat.”
Maya was relieved when Paulina interrupted with a question.
“Excuse me, Maya. I have a customer who has a question that I can’t answer. Would you mind helping her? She’s in a hurry. She’s in here on her lunch hour.”
“You’ll have to excuse me, please,” Maya said to Charles. “Paulina, would you please ring up Mr. Jordan’s purchase and have him sign the guest book?”
When she returned about five minutes later, Charles Jordan was gone. He had not signed the guestbook.
* * *
Aiden never imagined that a simple shopping trip for something like baby furniture could do so much for a relationship. For that matter, he never thought he’d find himself enjoying shopping so much. Funny how Bia had that effect on him.
The evening he and Bia had spent in Dallas earlier that week, shopping for baby items as if they were a couple, had brought them even closer in a million subtle ways. They were already close, but suddenly there was a new air between the two of them, new life in their relationship. They called each other several times during the day and spent evenings together.
In the past, they may have had dinner together once or twice during the week, and maybe they’d spent a weekend night together if something special was going on. But, of course, both of them had erratic work schedules. Lots of times when he was free, she was working, and vice versa. But when there was a work function, they always seemed to rely on each other as dates. Maybe it was because there had never been any pressure. Maybe it was because they had always enjoyed each other’s company.
Now that they were engaged—or fake engaged, as Bia kept calling it—spending time together seemed to happen spontaneously, naturally. Sp
ending time with her felt like going home. There was nothing forced or awkward about it. In fact, he’d never enjoyed a woman’s company quite so much.
Now they ate dinner together every night. They went for evening walks, after which they would come home and watch movies together sitting side by side on the couch—no more him sitting in the chair and her lounging alone on the couch. Things between the two of them were relaxed and companionable—a phenomenon he had never experienced with anyone else. In the past, he’d always known when he’d spent too much time with a woman. He would be bucking for some alone time or time with the guys.
Now things were different.
He didn’t know what it all meant, only that it felt good. It felt right.
After the XYZ spot aired, he didn’t feel the need to explain away the engagement to his buddies. Sure, they’d asked, but he hadn’t really given them an explanation. Nobody asked about the baby. Funny thing was, they didn’t seem to think it was so strange that, all of a sudden, he was engaged to Bia. In fact, his buddy Miles Mercer had said, “It’s about damn time you settled down. You two make a great couple.”
Of course, Miles was happily married to Sydney James. So his perspective might have been a little bit colored. But he was also a good example of how good being with the right woman could be.
He knew they’d reached a different place in their relationship. They didn’t really feel platonic, but it was different than it used to be. He couldn’t get a read. He didn’t know exactly where they stood or how this would all go down in the end, but that was okay. For now, he was content to let things ride.
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