by Linda Seed
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FIRE AND GLASS
MAIN STREET MERCHANTS, BOOK 4
Copyright 2016 Linda Seed
Published by Linda Seed at Smashwords
Smashwords Edition License Notes
This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. Any characters, organizations, places, or events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
FIRE AND GLASS
Copyright © 2016 by Linda Seed
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the author, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
The author is available for book signings, book club discussions, conferences, and other appearances.
Linda Seed may be contacted via e-mail at [email protected] or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/LindaSeedAuthor.
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For Evan, my best book buddy. With love and appreciation.
Chapter One
“Lacy, will you marry me?”
Lacy Jordan stood frozen, looking down at her boyfriend, Brandon, who was kneeling in front of her on one knee. She was having an odd, out-of-body sensation, and she suspected that some of her essential physical processes had stopped working. For instance, she knew she couldn’t have been hearing him right.
“What? What did you say?”
He was looking up at her with the brilliant, confident smile of an insurance salesman, or a guy in a toothpaste ad. She could see the comb tracks in the flawless, dark gloss of his hair.
He laughed, apparently mistaking her shock for happy surprise. “Lacy, I asked if you would be my wife. You’d make me the happiest man in the world. Come on, say yes.”
Was this some sort of reality TV setup? Was it some kind of elaborate joke? Lacy wondered if perhaps this was one of those dreams you had when you’d eaten too much pizza before bed.
“Brandon, I—”
“Say yes,” he said again. He fidgeted a little, and she could see that he was becoming annoyed at finding himself on his knee on a hardwood floor longer than he’d anticipated. Also, holding that ring out to her had to have been taxing, considering that the rock was almost as big as a bowling ball. “Lacy?”
Instead of answering, Lacy imagined how happy her mother would be if she could see this scene. Nancy Jordan had set Lacy up with Brandon, a chiropractor, several months before, after Nancy had seen him for a bout of sciatica. Nancy, concerned about her daughter’s single status, had immediately looked for a wedding ring on the young doctor’s left hand, and had found it blessedly absent.
A chiropractor with a solid practice checked all of Lacy’s mother’s boxes. He was tall and attractive, and he was gainfully employed, with a 401K and a good health plan. Lacy’s own boxes—the ones labeled passion, adventure, and romance—remained unchecked, but she’d given things a chance anyway because she was lonely. Because she was past thirty and single. Because she wanted a family, wanted children, and her prime childbearing years were upon her. And because—she could admit it—all of her three best friends were paired up, and she was jealous as hell.
They all had happy relationships, and Rose was expecting a baby. And what the hell did Lacy have? A job at a coffeehouse and a trailer in her parents’ backyard.
“Lacy,” he said again, and she realized that she still hadn’t answered him.
“Brandon, this is … sudden.” It wasn’t an answer, but it was, nonetheless, true.
“Don’t you like the ring?” he said.
How could she not like the ring? It was a stunner, a two-carat emerald-cut diamond with tiny round stones lining the band. She stared at it. “It … it’s gorgeous.”
He seemed to take that for her answer, in the absence of any other. He took her left hand and slipped the ring onto the fourth finger. It fit as though it had been made for her, and it occurred to her that it probably had been.
She held out her hand and gaped at it, her mouth slack. Maybe she was hypnotized by the sparkle; maybe she was influenced by his obvious confidence; maybe she was thinking of the kids that would come with the package. Whatever it was that was clouding her judgment, she didn’t object when he stood and enfolded her in his arms.
“Lacy, sweetheart, you won’t be sorry,” he murmured into her hair.
Had she missed something? Had she missed, specifically, the part where she had said yes?
“We’re going to be so happy,” he told her. “You’re going to be such a beautiful bride.”
She stiffened slightly, and he held her away from him so he could look into her face. “Sweetie? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” She forced herself to smile. “I was just thinking about what my mother is going to say. I’d better call her and tell her the news.”
But as she pulled out of his arms and grabbed her cell phone from the kitchen counter in Brandon’s apartment, she couldn’t have said for sure whether she really wanted to call her mom, or if she’d said it as an excuse to have a moment of blessed solitude.
“Oh, honey, that’s wonderful!”
Lacy was standing on the back deck of Brandon’s place with the sliding glass door closed to keep him from hearing the conversation. Brandon’s Morro Bay apartment was four blocks from the beach, and she had a thin strip of an ocean view in front of her as she squinted against the September sun.
“Is it? I didn’t even say yes. He just assumed.” Lacy could hear the bitterness in her own voice as she held out her left hand and peered at the diamond, which was sparkling in the sunlight.
“But why wouldn’t you say yes? He’s everything you want.”
“Maybe not everything …”
“He’s got a good career. He can provide for you. He’s smart, and he’s so handsome, Lacy. He could give you a family. Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted?”
It was. But she’d also wanted the kind of passion she read about in the romance novels she’d loved since she was a teenager. Brandon wasn’t the type to give a woman passion. He was more the type to give her a sweater at Christmas, and twice-a-year vacations at a time-share in Florida.
“He said … He told me I’d be a beautiful bride.”
“And, honey, you will be.”
What Lacy’s mother didn’t understand—what nobody seemed to understand—was that for Lacy, beauty was as much a curse as it was a gift. Her porcelain skin, golden blond hair and pale blue eyes, the tall, willowy figure that had drawn the looks of boys and men since she’d hit puberty, had undoubtedly made life easy for her in more ways than even she knew. But it also made every man who approached her suspect. How many of the boys she’d dated in high school had been drawn to her by her looks alone? How many had pursued her for the bragging rights of dating Lacy Jordan? How many men, in her adult life, had even bothered to get to know the person behind the body, the face?
If Lacy was more than a little concerned that Brandon wanted her for how she’d look in the wedding photos,
well, she came by that worry honestly, after years of hard-earned experience.
Nancy was saying something, and Lacy tried to focus.
“… the engagement party. You won’t have to worry about a thing, your sisters and I will handle everything. Oh! I wonder if we can rent the veterans’ hall!”
“Mom, I don’t need—”
“Now, don’t be silly, Lacy. Of course you’re going to have an engagement party. I’ll call Brandon and we’ll set a date.”
“Um … okay.” It just seemed so much easier to agree than it was to make her mother understand the reservations that roiled within Lacy, threatening to overwhelm her.
“Wonderful, sweetie. And, Lacy?”
“Yeah, Mom?”
“Honey … I just love you so much.” Lacy could hear the emotion in her mother’s voice, and it made her own eyes hot with suppressed tears.
“I love you too, Mom.”
Nancy and Brandon both seemed so happy. Was it completely out of the question that this marriage might make Lacy happy, too? She looked at the ring again and imagined her future in its bright, shining light.
Daniel Reed held his hands on his narrow hips as he surveyed the glassblowing studio toward the back of the lot where his little house stood. Too small; the place was just too damned small. If he wanted to work on more of the larger projects like the one he was doing for Eden, a hotel that had just gone up a few blocks off the Vegas Strip, then he was going to have to hire assistants. Assistants took space, and so did the glass itself. The Eden job had taken up just about every square inch he had. He could either stick to smaller jobs, or he could expand the studio.
Screw the small jobs. Ever since the Vegas thing, which was going to be unveiled next month, he was starting to think big.
Big meant moving to a better space. Or, it meant renovations.
Daniel was leaning toward the renovations. For one thing, he liked the lot where his house and studio were located. Just south of Cambria, on the Central Coast of California, the lot sat amid rolling hills and tall grass that was emerald green in the winter, golden in the summer. Oak trees studded the property, bringing him welcome shade.
If he moved, he’d have to customize whatever property he chose anyway. It was hard to find a house with a ready-made glassblowing studio, even in Cambria.
The Vegas job meant his bank account was more flush than it had been in some time. If he was going to add on, now was the time.
He left the studio, walked the dirt path to his house, went inside, and gave it a good look. Little more than a cottage, the house had two tiny bedrooms, a sitting room, and a kitchen that had last been updated in the 1970s. Why not add on to the house while he was expanding the studio? He could use an office to manage the bookkeeping, the supply ordering, and the other day-to-day paperwork of his business. The kitchen had good bones, but visitors had a way of cringing at the sight of the ancient, harvest gold appliances and the ceramic tile countertops with their dark brown grout.
He had to admit, it was ugly as hell.
What would it hurt to put down some granite counters, buy some new, stainless steel appliances? Maybe redo the cabinets while he was at it. He had the money, but money had a way of getting spent. If he didn’t get the work done now, there was no telling when it might happen.
Daniel wasn’t an architect, but he did know a thing or two about making a decent sketch. He got out a pad of paper and a pencil, and went to work on some ideas. He sketched the outline of the cottage as it stood, then added a room to the east side of the house, with generous windows to catch the sunrise. And how about a loft? He peered up toward the cottage’s generously high ceilings. That could work.
After he’d played with it a while, and thought about it some, he fished his cell phone out of his jeans pocket and called Ryan Delaney, a good friend who’d just had a house built on his ranch property north of town.
“Ry?” he said when his friend answered. “Who’d you use for the architect on your house?”
“What are you planning?” It was midday, and Daniel could hear from the background noise that Ryan was in the barn. The new one, the state-of-the-art one that, from the sound of it, was currently occupied by a number of irritated cattle.
“Thought I might add on to my house,” Daniel said. “Expand the studio.”
Ryan let out a bitter laugh. “You make that sound like a good thing.”
“You mean it’s not?”
“It can be,” Ryan told him. “But if I had the choice of building a custom house again or having my appendix taken out through my nose, I’d have to carefully consider my options.”
And Ryan hadn’t been living in the house while it was being built. Daniel supposed he wouldn’t be able to live in his, either. He’d have to find somewhere else to stay while the work was being done. Still, that was doable.
“Maybe the less you tell me about that, the better,” Daniel suggested.
“Maybe,” Ryan agreed.
“So, anyway. The architect?”
“Right, right. We used Vince Jordan.”
It seemed to Daniel that he knew the name. Then, it came to him. “Lacy’s father?”
“That’s the one. He did good work. You’ve seen the house.” Somewhere near Ryan, a cow moaned. “I won’t say it went smoothly, because these things never do. But I can’t argue with the end result.”
Lacy Jordan’s father. Daniel considered it. He didn’t know Vince Jordan, but he did know Lacy. The woman looked like a Victoria’s Secret model crossed with a Botticelli painting. And she made a damned good cup of coffee.
He asked Ryan for Vince Jordan’s number, and wrote it down on the pad of paper next to his sketch.
The idea of running into Lacy during the course of the project gave the whole idea the edge over having his appendix removed through his nose.
Chapter Two
Lacy pulled a shot of espresso, then steamed some lowfat milk in a small, stainless steel pitcher. She piled a cloudlike layer of foam atop the coffee in a thick ceramic cup, and then finished the drink by adding a sprinkling of cinnamon on the top.
She passed the cup across the counter to Kate Bennet, one of Lacy’s best friends and the owner of Swept Away, a bookstore a few doors down on Main Street. Lacy had passed the cup to Kate with her left hand, and as she began to pull the hand back, Kate reached out and grabbed, pulling it to her so she could examine the engagement ring that sparkled like starlight in the coffeehouse’s overhead lights.
“Good God, that stone is huge,” Kate exclaimed. “Whatever else he may be lacking, Brandon has excellent taste in jewelry.” As an afterthought, she added, “And when your back starts to hurt from lugging that thing around, he can give you an adjustment. So that’s handy.”
Jitters, the coffeehouse where Lacy worked as a barista, had a light crowd—about average for nine a.m. on a Tuesday in September. She was alone behind the counter. Connor, her coworker, was in the back room, organizing the stock and taking out the trash.
“What do you mean, ‘whatever else he may be lacking’?” Lacy asked defensively. “What is he lacking?” Lacy was well aware of what Brandon was lacking—ranging from his fashion sense to his taste in movies—but with the ring on her finger and the plans for the engagement party underway, she felt the need to defend him.
“Nothing,” Kate said. “I didn’t mean anything. It’s just … he does have that thing he does with his throat.” Kate raised her eyebrows and regarded Lacy.
Lacy wanted to protest that she didn’t know what Kate meant about Brandon’s throat. Unfortunately, she did know. Brandon had a tendency to clear his throat when making what he thought was a particularly salient point. When discussing politics or personal finance, he sounded like he was suffering from smoke inhalation.
“So he has one annoying habit,” Lacy said. “We all have annoying habits. I leave wet towels on the bathroom floor!”
“She does.” Genevieve Porter, owner of Main Street’s Porter Gallery, had j
ust come in the front door to grab a coffee to go. She was dressed in her usual gallerywear: a form-fitting black dress and high-heeled black pumps. Her hair, a glorious mass of unruly red curls, was pinned up in a loose bun. She’d heard the tail end of their conversation, apparently, and chimed in to support Lacy regarding the towels. “I shared a hotel room with her that time we spent the weekend in San Francisco. She’s a slob.”
“Hey!” Lacy said.
“I’m sorry, honey, but you are.”
Lacy knew without asking that Gen wanted a large black coffee, no sugar. She poured it into a to-go cup, added a lid and a cardboard sleeve, and moved to the register to ring her up.
“Somehow, I can’t see Brandon being okay with the towels-on-the-floor thing,” Gen observed as she dug into her purse for her wallet.
“Is Ryan okay with the way you make that whistling noise in your sleep?” Lacy asked.
“I don’t do that.”
“You do. The trip to San Francisco, remember? You sound like my mother’s tea kettle.” Lacy took three dollars from Gen, put it into the cash register, and handed her some change.
Gen protested. “Well, that’s just—”
“We’ll work it out,” Lacy said, interrupting her. “People work things out.”
“I guess.” Gen sulked, looking put out about the whistling remark.
“What are we working out?” Rose Watkins had just come in the front door, and she wanted to get caught up.
It wasn’t an accident that all of Lacy’s three best friends had come into Jitters at about the same time. Their routine on workdays was to pop in for coffee sometime between nine and nine thirty just to check in with each other. But now, Lacy was starting to wish they’d all made their coffee at home.
“We’re working out the fact that Brandon clears his throat when he talks, and that Lacy leaves wet towels on the floor,” Gen informed her, her brows still gathered in an irritated pout.
“And that Gen whistles in her sleep,” Kate added helpfully.
“Ah. I guess that brings me up to speed,” Rose said.
Rose, who was more than five months pregnant and who was, therefore, watching her caffeine intake, had taken to ordering half-caff lattes in a compromise she’d reached with the baby’s father, a biology professor who’d moved in with her the same day that news of the baby had come out. One thing Rose had been unwilling to compromise on, though, was hair dye. Her hair was fire engine red this month, and her facial piercings—a delicate silver ring in one nostril and a silver barbell in her left eyebrow—appeared faintly pink in its reflection.