Am I good enough, Adeline? Can we make this work? Are you willing to try?
Those were the things he hadn’t said, but she’d known exactly what he’d meant.
He could have asked her every one of those questions, he could have begged her for an answer, and she would have given him the same response—that same, stupid non-answer.
Because she was an idiot, and now she was crying into the damn fudge that was never going to taste right. No matter how hard she worked at it.
Her cell phone rang.
Byron. Of course.
He’d been calling at six every morning. Just to make sure she was on schedule with things.
“What’s up?” she asked, her voice shakier than she wanted it to be.
“You crying, doll?” Byron asked.
“Why would I be?”
“That’s a good question, and you’re the only one who can answer it.”
“Did you need something, Granddad?” she asked, completely avoiding the question.
“Just to tell you that your sisters are on their way to the airport. It was good seeing them.”
“It was.”
“Also, the sheriff just stopped by.”
“It’s early for a visit,” she said, her heart thudding painfully. This was what they’d been waiting for. Kane had been doing research, contacting lawyers, checking with an attorney in Houston who’d worked with Chase’s mother.
“He had good news, and he didn’t want to wait to share it.”
“What news?”
“The kids’ father has no legal right to the girl. When he took Larkin from Houston, he was breaking the law. Their mother filed an order of protection nine years ago, and he lost all parental rights. Only supervised visitations. Which he never asked for.”
“And?”
“The will that Chase claimed she had left? It checked out. Chase is Larkin’s legal guardian. If he can get a full-time job and a permanent address, CPS is willing to work with him.”
“They can live with us,” she said, mentally reconfiguring the attic. If they cleaned out the storage room, insulated it . . .
“That’s what I told Kane. Also told him I was hiring the boy full time.”
“Can you afford that?” She set the vanilla on the counter, eyeing her list. There was plenty that Chase could do to help. She had twenty favors to make for a baby shower. Another three dozen for a wedding shower, and sixteen online orders to fill.
“I can afford to do whatever the hell I want,” Byron retorted. “Now that Kane has cleared things up, I’m sending Chase back to work. Tomorrow. Today, we’re going over to the school to get Larkin enrolled.”
“You aren’t driving!?” She hurried to the list and scribbled Enroll Larkin in school at the end of it. She added Buy a twin bed beneath that.
“He’s driving, and we can handle it, so you just cross that right off your list.”
“How did you know I wrote it there?” she asked, running her finger through the words.
“Because I know you. Now, how about you tell me why you were crying?”
“I didn’t say I was crying.”
“And you didn’t say you weren’t. So, what’s wrong, kid? You missing the Jefferson boy?”
“He’s not a boy.”
“Ahh,” he said. “It is Sinclair, then. What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re lying, Adeline, and it surprises me.”
“Nothing happened, Granddad. He lives in Seattle. I live here. He has his life. I have mine.” She poured a bucketload of vanilla into the fudge mixture.
“And suddenly your life doesn’t seem as exciting as it did?”
“My life—” She grunted as she lifted the bowl and poured the mixture into a huge sheet pan. It looked like crap, chunky and mud brown. Not a speck of sheen or shine in it. It probably tasted like crap too. She wasn’t going to try it. If she never tasted fudge again it would be too soon. “—has never been exciting.”
“Sure it was. When you had Adam and all those dreams people have. When you were thinking about making a life with someone, having kids, growing a family and growing old. That’s exciting stuff for someone like you, Addie. Just like it was exciting for me.”
“You make me sound like a boring old maid,” she said, her throat burning with the need to cry again. She held back the tears because she didn’t want Byron to worry.
“Only because that’s the way you’re feeling. So, how about you pick yourself up by your bootstraps like I taught you to do? How about you go after what you want, just the way I’ve always told you? You want those things you used to dream about? Stop being so afraid of not having them that you miss out on what’s being offered. Stop being so afraid of losing that you never give yourself a chance to win.”
“What is that supposed to—”
“Damn! Your mother is at the door. You think about what I said, doll.”
He hung up, and she dropped the phone into her apron pocket, walked over to the list, and wrote GET A LIFE in big bold letters over everything else, because if her grandfather was lecturing her on going after what she wanted, she obviously did not have one.
“You are pitiful,” she muttered, grabbing the pan of fudge and tossing the entire thing into the trash.
She stalked to the pantry, pulled more ingredients from the shelves.
Maybe she didn’t have a life.
Maybe she was as pitiful as she felt.
But she’d be darned if she was going to let the fudge beat her.
She measured sugar into a giant pot, poured in cocoa nibs, evaporated milk, and half a bottle of vanilla, stirred it as if everything depended on that one batch of fudge turning out well.
Someone knocked on the back door.
She ignored it because she was sure it was Janelle, hurrying over from Byron’s to complain about Addie adding two kids to her household. Permanently.
That was a big word.
It was a word that meant she was committed to making sure Chase and Larkin did okay. That they were successful. That they found the right paths to walk down.
That was a big responsibility. One Janelle probably didn’t think Adeline was capable of taking on. Even though she had a successful accounting business, even though she’d been running Chocolate Haven, even though she’d taken over Byron’s rehab, making sure he got to appointments, had rides when he needed them, took the pills the doctor had prescribed, in Janelle’s mind, Addie would always be just a little less capable than her sisters.
She slammed the spoon on the counter, splattering chocolate everywhere.
Whoever it was knocked again, and she yanked the door open.
“What do you . . .” The words died as she met Sinclair’s eyes.
He looked tired, his eyes deeply shadowed, his jaw covered with a couple days’ worth of stubble. He’d been running. Or it looked like he had, his black gym shorts falling to midthigh, his long-sleeved compression shirt clinging to his chest and biceps.
“I thought you were in Seattle,” she said, her voice shaking because she wanted to pull him into her arms, ask him what was wrong.
But of course she couldn’t. She wouldn’t.
Because she was a coward. Too afraid to lose to ever win.
“Portland. Getting that project started.”
“The old schoolhouse?” she asked as he moved past, the scent of snow and outdoors drifting into the kitchen.
“Yes.”
“You won the bid?”
“I didn’t come here to discuss business, Adeline,” he said, his voice cold.
“Then why did you come?”
“I was out running. I saw the light.” He shrugged.
“When did you get back?”
“An hour ago.” He leaned against the counter, his arms crossed. There was a deep purple scar on his thigh. A couple of inches thick in some places, it snaked up from his knee and disappeared beneath the hem of his shorts.
He must have seen her looking
. He touched the thickest area. “I’m lucky to still have the leg.”
“I can see that.”
“And my life.”
“Is that what the demons are about?” she asked, and his face softened, all the hardness gone.
“They’re more about having everything I’ve got when some of my buddies are gone. More about the memories, watching people I cared about breathing their last breaths, telling them they were going to be okay, even though I knew they weren’t.”
“Sinclair—”
“Maybe most of all,” he continued, cutting her off, “they’re about guilt. I was given a second chance. A lot of people weren’t. I want to honor that. Make good on it. That can be a heavy burden.”
“So you run? To get away from that?”
“And I play the guitar, and sometimes I visit people who may not want me around.” He smiled ruefully, and her heart ached.
“I want you around,” she said, and he shook his head.
“How about we don’t overstate things, Adeline? How about we just talk about the facts. I was out. I saw the light. I wanted a distraction, because I kept thinking about all my buddies, the ones who had dreams that are never going to come true. Everything I do, every job I take, I have that in my mind—that I have to do my best, because I’m still here to do it and because they aren’t.”
“You’ve made good on that, Sinclair,” she said, because it was true. He’d come back from what had nearly killed him, created a successful life, one that he could be proud of.
“Some days that’s enough,” he said with a sigh. “Some days it isn’t.” His gaze drifted from her to the trash can, the giant pan lying in it, and then to the whiteboard and her list, GET A LIFE written so boldly across it that he couldn’t help seeing it.
“New list?” he said.
“I was . . . frustrated,” she responded, turning away because she didn’t want to see the sympathy in his eyes.
He’d been through way more than she ever had, and he’d done exactly what Byron had said Adeline should: pulled himself up by the bootstraps and gone on.
“The fudge?” He lifted the pan from the trash, scraped out the chocolate and set it in the sink.
“Yes.”
“Want some help?”
She should have said no. It was the family recipe. Top secret and not to be shared. Ever. With anyone. But Sinclair was standing there, the scar purple and thick, his face tired and worn, and she thought maybe he needed to make the fudge as much as she did.
“Sure,” she said, taking his hand, leading him to the pot that was sitting on the burner. “But we need to start again, because I poured enough vanilla in there to kill a canary.”
He laughed and lifted the pot, dropping it into the sink with the pan.
“Now,” she said as she pulled out a clean pot, “remember, this recipe is top secret. If Byron finds out I shared it, he’ll disown me.”
“He would never disown you.”
“Probably not, but he might kick me out of the kitchen. For good.”
“Isn’t that what you want?”
“Maybe.”
“You like running the shop more than you thought you would?”
No. Yes. Maybe.
She wasn’t sure.
There was something nice about being in the shop every day. People she knew walked in all the time, buying treats or gifts, telling her stories about what they were doing, where they were headed.
She liked that.
She liked the familiarity of it, the constancy, every day rolling into the next.
“We’re not here to talk business, Sinclair,” she responded, because she wasn’t going to lie and she really didn’t know the truth. “We’re here to make fudge.”
He laughed again, moving in beside her, his arm pressed close as he helped her measure ingredients, stir the thick mixture, pour it into a waxed-paper-lined pan.
It felt so good to have him there, so wonderfully right, that when they finished, she pulled more ingredients and showed him how to make peanut butter swirl fudge.
When the back door opened, they were hip to hip, cutting squares of fudge from two different pans.
Janelle stepped in and stopped short when she saw the two of them.
“Good God in heaven, Adeline! You have an assistant. You don’t need to make Sinclair do the work for you.”
“It would be very difficult to make me do anything I don’t want to do,” Sinclair said, setting his knife down and washing his hands. “Speaking of which, I’ve got to head over to my brother’s house. The crew should be finishing up the floors. See you this afternoon, Janelle.”
He walked outside without saying good-bye to Adeline.
She noticed.
A lot.
“What was that all about?” Janelle’s gaze focused on the closed door. Maybe she thought Sinclair would walk back through it.
“He offered to help with the fudge. I let him.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about, and you know it.” Janelle eyed the pans of fudge, the cut pieces, the pots abandoned in the sink. “You do know that Byron would have a coronary if he knew you’d let anyone in on the fudge recipe, right?”
“Did you stop by to criticize me, or did you actually need something?” The words slipped out and just kind of hung in the air between them.
Janelle blinked. Opened her mouth. Closed it again.
Finally, she cleared her throat, tugged her suit jacket closed. “Is that what you think?”
“About what?”
“Me. Do you think that all I do is criticize you?”
“Mom”—Adeline sighed—“you criticize everyone. Not just me.”
“I’m . . . sorry. That’s not the person I ever planned to be.” She twirled her wedding ring. The one she’d moved from her left to her right hand a year after Brett died. “But after your father died . . . I just wanted to make sure all my girls would be happy. I just need to know that you have the things you want in life.”
“Because you don’t?” Adeline asked, all her frustration flying away.
“I do. Mostly.” Janelle smiled, but there was a hint of sorrow in her eyes. It was enough to make Addie sorry that she’d snapped at Janelle, enough to make her wish she could take the words back.
“I’m sorry, Mom. I’m in a mood today. I shouldn’t be taking it out on you.”
“You didn’t do anything to be sorry for. And you’re not the first person to call me critical this week.”
“No?”
“Noah said the same thing. Right after May’s wedding.” Her cheeks were red, and Adeline thought the memory wasn’t a good one.
“Mom—”
“I just stopped by to make sure you were okay. Byron thought you were upset, but it looks like everything is under control.”
“Everything is great.”
“Good. Wonderful. I’ll talk to you later, sweetie.” She ran out the door, nearly slamming it behind her.
Adeline walked to her list, jotted a tiny note in one corner. Make sure Mom is okay.
And then she took the fudge out into the service area and put it in the display case.
* * *
The Jefferson house looked great.
Sinclair walked through every room, checking floors and window frames. The team had done a fantastic job, but then, that’s why the men and women he’d hired were on his payroll.
“What do you think?” Angel Ramirez asked as Sinclair ran his hands along the handrail that led from the second floor to the attic area.
“It looks good.”
“Good? That’s all you have to say?” Angel demanded, hands on her narrow hips, her dark eyes blazing. She’d joined the team two years ago and had made foreman within six months. She had a reputation for being the hardest taskmaster on the team, but she was also the best.
The fact that she wanted to get out of Seattle, start fresh somewhere else? That was a bonus, because he was buying May’s building, and he was opening an office
in Benevolence. He already had two jobs in town—Byron’s and a church restoration. The old parsonage needed to be torn down or rebuilt. He’d learned about that while he was waiting for May’s wedding to begin.
He’d contacted the pastor the next day. The job had been his within an hour. He had other prospects too: Three Victorians in Spokane that had been bought at auction and were sitting empty, waiting for the right person to restore them. A hotel in the next town over that had been a brothel eons ago, and the new owner wanted that part of its past wiped out, the glamorous gold-rush days restored.
“It’s outstanding, Angel, and you know it, so stop fishing for compliments,” he said.
“Just demanding what I’ve earned.” Her smile lit up a face that was usually somber and a little hard.
“You still looking to get out of Seattle?” he asked as he walked into the attic, checked the new insulation.
“You know I am, Sinclair.”
“How’d you like to move to small-town America?”
“You mean this small town?” She looked surprised but not horrified by the idea.
That was a good start.
“I’m buying some property in town. I figure this part of the state is untapped as far as restoration goes. I need a team here. Just a small one to start. I’d like you to head it up.”
“Are you kidding?”
“I’ll pay your moving expenses and give you a stipend for the first year. If things work out the way I think they will, we should have a pretty active business here within three or four years.”
“And if they don’t work out?” she asked, because she was that kind of person, always looking at the variables, figuring out cost versus risk versus potential profit.
“We’ll cut our losses, close things down, and you’ll get back your old position in Seattle.”
“Sounds too good to be true.”
“Only because you’re cynical by nature.”
“True.” She ran a hand over her short-cropped hair. “Tell you what, Sinclair. I’ll do it, but I want all of that in writing.”
“I didn’t expect anything less of you.”
She smiled and headed for the attic stairs. “Give me the address of the first project. I want to go take a look. See what kind of rattrap you’ve picked this time.”
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