by Maddie James
“Who in the world?”
She sat up. Maybe the person would go away.
The bell rang again.
She padded to the door and peeped out the peephole. Suzie?
Sydney opened the door. “I forgot my key. Sorry.” Suzie stepped toward a table, picked up her key, and slipped it into her pocket. “Bye!”
After latching and dead-bolting the lock, she headed back to bed.
It seemed like just a short time later the bell chimed again. She groaned. “Again! What did you do, lose it this time?”
Stumbling once more out of her bedroom and through the living room, she made it to the door, threw the deadbolt, and swung the door open. “I swear, if you forget your key one more time...”
Not Suzie.
Stone.
Sydney started to heave the door shut. Stone stopped the motion and held out a white paper sack. “Stop,” he said. “I have scones. Take your choice. A Cream Scone with Raspberry Preserves and Clotted Cream, or a Chocolate Marshmallow Scone with Powdered Sugar Glaze, or, my personal favorite, Blueberry Streusel with Lemon Curd. Take your pick.”
She blinked. Looked at the sack. Sniffed. And looked back at Stone.
Then, she narrowed her gaze and gave him the once over.
“Where did you get these?”
“A little shop around the corner. I’ve had my eye on it for a couple of days. Wanna go check it out?”
“Shall we go undercover?”
“I’m game, are you?”
“Definitely. But I need to get dressed first.”
“I’ll wait.”
“You better.”
Sydney let him in, and he closed the door behind him. She was halfway across the living room when she turned, looked back, and said, “You had me at clotted cream, you know.”
His left brow arched. “Oh?”
“That’s right.”
“I had hoped I had you at Red Velvet Cake.”
Her cheeks flushed hot. “Well, that, too, but don’t get cocky about it.”
“No, ma’am.”
“I’ll be right back.”
“I’ll be right here.”
“Good. Let’s go stalk some scones.”
BETTER THAN CHOCOLATE
When Scott Matthews escapes to Legend to visit his brother, Brad and his wife Suzie, he has only one request—he wants nothing to do with chocolate. Or to discuss getting fired as master chocolate taster from world-renowned Bianchi Chocolates. What Jillian Bass wants is to make it in Legend. This Manhattan transplant wants to make it big here real bad. Forget New York. She’s starting over with her small chocolate shop, Bittersweets, and setting out to impress the locals. She doesn’t want them to know that she’s inherited her grandmother’s famous chocolate business—Jeaneva Chocolates. And all is fine until she smacks straight into Scott, and he takes one small whiff of her Belgian truffle….
Prologue
“There she goes.”
With those words, everything and everyone inside Sydney’s Sugar High Coffee Stop and Bakery halted. Every thing and every one. Even the coffee stopped dripping.
Sydney, herself, had uttered the words, just as she stuffed a few dollars into the cash register after Officer Matt Branson paid his bill. Coffee and a Danish. Three dollars and ninety-eight cents, as usual. Matt faced the door. Suzie, her cousin, froze while loading a tray of just-baked cinnamon rolls into the display case, the tray perched precariously in the crook of her elbow. Her husband, Brad, reached to steady the heavy tray and said, “Who?”
To which Sydney replied, “That new woman in town.”
Brad took the tray; Suzie stood. “Where? I want to see the hussy.”
Sydney grasped Suzie by the arm and pulled her across the bakery until they were at the huge window in the front. Leaning together over plants and assorted whimsical stuff in the wide windowsill, their heads both cocked to the right, they peered down the street.
“There. See her? Pink shirt, white pants. Looking too damned petite and perky.
Suzie groaned. “I see her. The heifer.”
“Looks rather cute to me,” a male voice said.
“I thought when women called other women a heifer it was a bad thing. She’s not looking so bad.”
Sydney shot a look over her shoulder. Matt and Brad were both leaning in, too, watching the woman hurry down the street. Both women turned and stood; the men straightened right up.
Suzie reached out and chugged her husband square in the chest for that last comment.
“It is a bad thing! No woman wants to be called a heifer!”
“But Suzie, she’s a teeny little thing. Nice looking. And you don’t know her. Why would you….”
Sydney flung her hands up in the air. “Oh, my God! I can’t believe you. Men! Don’t you get it?”
Matt and Brad looked at each other and shrugged.
“No, Syd,” Matt answered, “I guess we don’t get it. Tell us.”
This time Suzie and Sydney did the eye exchange, shaking their heads and tilting them in that way women do when they know that the men they are talking to clearly do not understand what is going on.
“Because she’s new,” Sydney finally said.
“And because she’s cute and young,” Suzie added.
“And because,” Sydney paused and looked down the street again, “because she’s competition, dammit.”
Again Matt and Brad shared a look. Brad said, “Don’t even try to comprehend, man. It will make sense eventually.”
And Matt added, “This is nuts, Sydney. You and Stone just got married. Suzie is married.
So why is this woman, because she’s new in town and cute, competition for the two of you? You already have husbands.”
This time both women did a little shriek, fluttered their hands around, and stomped off back to the counter. Sydney resumed counting money, and Suzie retrieved the cinnamon roll tray off the counter, where Brad had left it, and returned to filling the display case.
“Girls?”
Neither of them responded. Sydney just shook her head.
“Ladies…?”
Finally Sydney dropped her hands full of money into the tray, looked at the men, and said,
“I will tell you why. Look around, the two of you. Just look. Where are all my customers? Hmm? Where are they?”
Clearly the men were still a tad confused. They glanced about and back to Sydney. Suzie straightened and looked at them head on.
“Well?”
“There is no one here, Sydney.”
“Exactly,” Suzie said, wiping her hands on a towel.
Matt stepped forward. “Give me more.”
“No customers! What else do you need?”
Brad stepped even with Matt. “Okay, maybe we’re getting closer. This woman has something to do with your customers not coming around lately?”
“Competition!” Suzie said. “We already told you that.”
“Competition.”
“Yes.”
“But you’re both married.”
“Not that kind of competition, Brad Matthews. Customer competition! The woman sweeps into town and within a couple of weeks has opened up a new coffee shop. Where in the world have you been? Haven’t you seen all the signs and the ads in the paper?”
Sydney crossed her arms. “Matt, if it weren’t for you and your cop friends, my coffee business would be a bust right now.”
“Does she have a bakery too?”
“No, coffee. Every kind you can imagine. Lattés, mochas, hot and iced, frappés and ice cream drinks, fancy schmancy chocolate stuff that no one in Legend really wants anyway. I heard something about candy, too, but not sure about that.”
“Frappés?” Matt questioned.
“Sort of like a milkshake, Matt,” Sydney offered.
Looking at Brad, Matt asked, “How can that be a bad thing?”
Brad shot him a look, “Don’t go there,” then turned to his wife’s cousin and business partner and said
, “If it’s true she doesn’t have a bakery, Syd, then why are you worried?”
“Because, Brad Matthews, I just am.”
Suzie leaned in. “I heard she was even going after a liquor license so she could serve after dinner coffee-liquored drinks in the evenings, like with Bailey’s and Kahlua and such.”
The men both feigned a simultaneous gasp of shock. Then Brad chuckled. “Suzie, listen to yourself. You sound like one of the old women down at the Daughters of the American Revolution meeting.”
“I do not!”
“You do.” He glanced at the clock. “Hey, I have to run. I’m already late to pick up Scott.”
“Scotty is coming?” Sydney watched Brad hurry for the door.
“Just for two weeks. Vacation.” Then Brad was gone.
The women just stood and looked at Matt, who obviously had no desire to stick around sparring with them any longer either. “I should get going myself,” he said. “I’ve got my morning rounds to do.”
Suzie nodded. “Go rattle some doorknobs, Matt.”
He tipped his head and grinned. “I’ll be back for some more coffee about ten o’clock, Syd.
I give you my word, I won’t be checking out the competition. You’ve got the best damned coffee in Legend.”
Suzie cleared her throat.
He glanced her way. “Um, except for Suzie’s cinnamon blend out at her B&B, of course.”
Smiling, Suzie crossed her arms over her chest and nodded. “Thataboy, Matt. Go do your cop-ly duty. By the way, how is Chelly doing?”
“Morning sickness. Bad.”
“Ewe.” Both women shooed him off, and he left.
After a couple of moments of silence, Sydney resumed counting her money, and Suzie finished putting all of the rolls in the display case.
Later while cleaning up the kitchen in the back, Suzie turned to her cousin and said, “Only one thing to do.” She straightened and dried off the last mixing bowl. “We must go visit the competition. See what it’s all about before we jump to conclusions.”
Sydney wasn’t sure a stroll down the street was in her best interest. “I’d have to close up shop. I might miss customers.”
Narrowing her gaze and tipping her head, Suzie took one step closer. “Five minutes, Syd. Turn the sign on the door saying you’ll be back in five. I don’t see much action going on here at the moment, do you?”
She didn’t have to glance around to answer that one. She took a big gulp and reached behind her for her apron strings. “All right. Let’s go.”
Chapter One
Jillian Bass had a lot of good things going for her. She’d sailed through her liberal arts degree at Vassar in three years, rather than four. She’d landed a to-die-for internship right after college at Thurston House Publishing, working under the senior editor who handled the notorious crime author, Stephen Crown. And thanks to her grandmother’s foresight, Jillian had acquired a nice trust fund when she had passed on.
Money wasn’t an issue for Jillian Bass.
She missed her grandmother, and their talks, tremendously; however, she said a prayer of thanks each and every day for having had her in her life for all of her twenty-three years.
Much to her father’s chagrin.
Because you see, there were some not so good things in Jillian Bass’s life too.
She’d quit the internship a few weeks after her grandmother had died, left New York City in her wake, and pretty much had told her father to stuff his influence and his money where the sun don’t shine.
She was tired of working with words. Tired of diva authors, incompetent copyeditors, and liquid lunches. Truly she was tired of all of it. It had only taken her a little over one year to realize that her heart wasn’t in the publishing world.
Her father’s world.
Oh yes, her father owned Bass Publishing Conglomerates, the country’s premier publisher of mass market genre fiction, true story magazines, and a couple of tabloids to boot. Since she was the sole heir to his kingdom, he’d planned on her taking over the business someday.
Not.
And if all that weren’t enough, she also broke her engagement. Rand Hart had been hand-picked for her by her father. Not that it was an arranged marriage, or anything like that; she did really and truly like/love Rand. But he was just like her father. In fact he was her father’s right hand man in his company, and so, well, while she was cleaning house, she just decided to make a clean sweep. Rand was upset, couldn’t understand at all why she would want to run off to the hillbillies of Tennessee, and when he had actually made that statement to her, she knew she was making the right choice.
It was time to cut all the apron strings.
So when Grandma Jean passed on and left her a quite healthy sum of money—enough to live on for years if her business idea fell through—she decided to go after her dream. A dream that only Grandma Jean knew about. Life out of the rat race, small town, and owning her own little business.
Oh, and chocolate. She loved chocolate. And somehow, chocolate would fit into this equation. Somehow.
You see, because Grandma Jean was the Jeaneva of Jeaneva Chocolates. World renowned Jeaneva Chocolates.
And with her passing, Grandma Jean had left Jillian with all of her secret recipes and the full rights to use them and the Jeaneva Chocolates name in whatever manner she wished. She’d also left her the company, although Jillian had never told her father that. She didn’t plan to tell anyone that; she wanted to make it on her own merit. It was the one thing she had convinced her mother to go along with, since her mother had always kowtowed to her husband since their marriage. But this? Well, she wanted Jillian to be happy, and she knew she wasn’t, so she’d caved and given in to her daughter’s request.
After all, had her mother taken her own mother’s, Jeaneva’s, advice all those years ago, she would never have married the man anyway.
It all was kept on the hush. Her father thought that her mother had inherited the business.
Jillian kept the management with the man who had run the company with her grandmother for years. She trusted Robert Knowles, to the nth degree, and saw no reason to make changes. He kept her informed, they made some decisions together from time to time, and she could go off on her small town adventure and live her life.
Which is how and why she landed in Legend, Tennessee with a small establishment called Bittersweets. Sweet, because of the chocolate, and bitter, because she wouldn’t have had this at all had her grandmother not died and left her the money. Bittersweet.
It was a nice play on words, and her Grandma Jean would have enjoyed it. Probably already had.
The bell over her door chimed, and Jillian looked up from her books. It was barely half-past eight in the morning, but the first coffee rush had already come and gone. She’d taken advantage of the lull to glance over the numbers from yesterday, her opening day. She expected that her next rush would be after lunch, for some sort of chocolate confection dessert or drink.
At least that was the way it had happened yesterday.
But all of that was forgotten when the two women walking into her shop gave her pause for concern.
Jillian sucked in a breath. So, there they were. She’d been waiting for them.
****
As he deplaned, Scott Matthews took a deep breath, then exhaled long in an attempt to clear the fog in his head. He’d driven two hours from the Bianchi estate to Rome’s Fiumicino Airport, then slept half of the eight-hour-plus flight to John F. Kennedy International in New York. Nice that he had first class for that leg. Then came the relatively short hop to Charlotte and the brutally long delay waiting for maintenance to fix the bathroom toilet before they could leave, and finally, the hour or so flight to Knoxville.
If he’d rented a car in New York, he might have arrived faster.
But he was here now, and if all went as planned, his brother should be waiting for him at baggage. At least that was what the text message on his phone said upon landing. One thing fo
r certain, he was looking forward to two full weeks of restful bliss, staying in one of Brad’s cabins on Legend Mountain.
Two full weeks with nothing to do but sit, sleep, read, eat his brother and his sister-in-law’s fabulous cooking, and maybe even fish. If he wanted.
Chuckling, he headed out of the gate area following the signs to baggage. Fishing. He’d not been fishing since he was seventeen. That was nearly fourteen years ago. Where had the time gone?
He knew exactly where it had gone.
Brad had left home and gone to college. Their parents had decided to sell their house and travel, taking him with him. His senior year in high school had become a graduate course in navigating Europe via train, plane, automobile, and sometimes, bicycle. He’d learned how to live out of a backpack for a month, which hostels to trust and which not, and how to cook and eat his way through Italy for room and board.
Italy was where he had landed at age nineteen, after a huge blow-up with his folks. His parents moved on to Amsterdam, where they had lived for the past dozen years or so. But Italy, well, there was nothing like Italy...
Food. Coffee. Women. Chocolate.
And women.
Had he said women?
But chocolate. That was his first love. There barely was a woman alive—or at least not one he’d found—who could compete with his love for chocolate.
But not this week. This week he was off chocolate. And women. His palate needed a cleanse. On both counts. He chuckled again to himself.
Yes, he needed some down time.
That’s why, perhaps, fishing would be a good diversion. He’d ask Brad about that.
“Hey, Scott!”
And there he was, waving and smiling at him from across the way. Seeing his big brother for the first time in years sure was a sight for sore eyes.
****
Jillian gulped, rose, and offered her hand to the two ladies. “Hello. I’m Jillian Bass.”
The tall blonde took her hand and shook it. An uneasy grip, a limp shake. “I’m Sydney,” she said with some authority, rivaling her weak handshake, and tipping her head to her right. “I own the coffee shop down the street.”