by Tracy March
“I’m not really sure,” Trent said. “But it’s got to work both ways. We’ll have to fit in with each other’s lives. I’m trusting my grandmother’s instincts, since she picked out the girls I’ll be dating. She knows me better than anyone.” Thoughts of his parents crept into his mind, and he looked away from the camera. He’d lost track of where on the globe they were as they sailed on the cruise ship The World, going from port to port, year after year. His father had had little interest in Hawthorne Resorts, nearly devastating Gran, although he’d gone on to make millions running a hedge fund. Gran had shifted her hopes to Trent the moment he was born and hadn’t looked back. More interested in socializing and traveling than parenting, his mom and dad had been thrilled to leave Trent at Hawthorne Manor whenever possible, flee Maple Creek, and let Gran worry about him. Heck, Gran had practically raised him. “Believe it or not, my grandmother and I are a lot alike.”
A glint of silver caught his eye—Cyn checking her watch. She winced, got up from her seat, and whispered something to Stuart, who nodded. She gave Trent a reassuring smile and disappeared inside Hawthorne Manor.
At first Trent had thought the fewer people watching, the better. But the moment Cyn was gone, he wished she hadn’t left.
Chapter Four
Cyn’s appointment with the tent rental company outside Baltimore hadn’t taken as long as she thought it would. She’d hated to miss a word of Trent’s Q&A, but she had to squeeze her garden party planning appointments in when she could, now that her schedule had tightened. On her way back to Hawthorne Manor, she decided to swing by her parents’ house and share her news.
She climbed the front porch steps of the Sawyers’ modest brick rancher as her mom opened the front door and smiled wearily at Cyn. “I heard you pull into the driveway.” Her prim look never changed. She wore an A-line skirt paired with a blouse and cardigan, her dark hair in a neat chignon at the nape of her neck—pure librarian from head to toe with a string of big faux pearls thrown in for excitement. She must’ve worked this morning, her workdays having been reduced to half. “What a surprise.” She gave Cyn a hug. Things could be better between them, but Cyn was thankful that the toughest times were behind them.
The running away and boarding school years had been emotionally taxing, and expensive for her parents. Not to mention embarrassing. But when Cyn came home from the University of Maryland for the summer after her freshman year in all her Goth glory, they hadn’t taken it well.
“Cynthia,” her dad had said, looking more disappointed than angry.
Cyn had propped her hand on her hip. “I go by Cyn now.”
“Not with us.” He’d shaken his head and raked his fingers through his hair. “I get that you want to fit in with your friends, but your mom and I are trying to set an example and lead a church, and we need you to respect that.”
Her mom had stood next to her dad, her face lined with concern. “Could you give up the Goth look for the summer, or at least tone it down—”
“It’s only makeup and black clothes.” Cyn had flipped her hair behind her shoulder. “It’s not like I’m cavorting with the devil.”
“We don’t think that,” her dad said. “But other people might.”
In a flash of rebellion Cyn said, “If I can’t be myself here, then I’m not staying.” She hadn’t wanted to come home for the summer anyway. How could she possibly survive her parents’ suffocating rules and expectations after she’d experienced the freedom of college?
Cyn had wasted no time hauling her belongings back to College Park in the beat-up Volkswagen Rabbit she’d bought with money she’d earned working at Domino’s Pizza. If worse had come to worst, she could’ve lived in the Rabbit, but she’d gotten lucky. Six of her friends had been renting a dilapidated two-bedroom house for the summer and they’d let her crash with them for cheap. She’d enrolled in summer school, studied hard, and worked every crazy hour she could squeeze in at Domino’s.
Cyn hated to think about her younger obstinate self, and wondered how her parents had put up with her. Eventually moving on from the Goth look, she’d changed her attitude and grown up, but she’d only returned home for weekend or holiday visits. She’d apologized to her parents long ago—and often since—for her behavior, yet a struggle remained between them. Their strict lifestyle wasn’t for her, and her mainstream one, not for them. Even so, she’d moved back to Maple Creek, hoping to develop a better relationship with them. They still loved each other, after all.
Stepping into the foyer, Cyn caught the familiar scent of a vanilla candle burning. “You won’t believe this,” she said. “I’m going to the islands—Jamaica, the Bahamas, and Turks and Caicos.”
Her mom’s lips formed an O. “Come tell your dad, too.”
Cyn followed her mom past the formal living and dining rooms, and into the family room. Her dad leaned over a neat stack of packing boxes that blocked the French doors leading out to the deck. He picked at a roll of packing tape, trying to pry up the end.
Cyn’s skin went prickly. Am I too late? Wide-eyed, she looked from her mom to her dad. “Are you moving already?”
Her dad stood upright, his khaki pants and green polo shirt fitting him more loosely than they used to. He’d lost weight, but he still had a commanding presence—tall and straight, with an angular face and silver-gray hair. “We have two more months, unless there’s some kind of miracle.”
Cyn wondered if that miracle might come in the form of the twenty-five grand she would earn if she managed to get Trent Hawthorne engaged to a suitable fiancée.
She stepped over and hugged her dad. “You never know. Something unexpected might happen.” She longed to tell them there was hope. That they just might be able to keep the house. But she stayed silent. They wouldn’t approve of the Queen’s matchmaking scheme, much less Cyn’s involvement in it.
“Did I hear you say you’re going to the islands?” he asked.
Cyn gazed at the stack of boxes and the roll of tape that he still worked his finger over. In light of their situation, she felt totally self-indulgent for being excited about her upcoming trips. “For work,” she said, “on a marketing campaign for Hawthorne Resorts. If I can prove myself with this, it might lead to bigger things.” That wasn’t telling them anything, exactly, but if all went as planned, she could at least claim that she’d hinted at it. And if she got Trent married off successfully, maybe there’d be a bigger job in the picture for her. It would be nice to put her marketing degree to better use working on behalf of the resorts and not just the Queen.
“You’re becoming quite a jet-setter, aren’t you?” her dad asked, a twinge of disapproval in his tone.
“It’s just three short weekend trips, all within the next few weeks.” Cyn gestured toward the boxes. “So I can help if you need me.”
“There’s not much left to do right now,” her mom said. “But when we move…”
Cyn couldn’t imagine her parents living anywhere else. They’d been in this house since before she was born. She furrowed her brow, longing to do something about it immediately. “This really sucks.”
“Language,” her dad chastised. He set the tape on a nearby end table. “There are a couple of things.” He crossed the room and headed down the hall toward the bedrooms, disappearing into the one that used to be Cyn’s.
Staring after him, her mom rolled one of the fat pearls on her necklace between her thumb and forefinger. “Don’t worry about this,” she said. “We’ll get it sorted out.”
Cyn nodded, unconvinced, as her dad came back carrying two boxes.
“We packed up what was left of your things,” he said. “There won’t be much space in our apartment, so it would help if you could take these.”
Cyn’s heart hitched. “Um, sure.”
“When you’re ready,” he said, “I’ll load them in your car for you.”
“I should probably get going now.” Cyn gave them a rueful smile. “I head out in two days, and I’ve got a lot to do bef
ore then…”
She could’ve spared some time to stay, but she could hardly stand to see her parents’ belongings being packed into boxes…their home, their life. Good or bad, all their family memories were here. She had to earn that bonus so they could stay. It was the only way to fix this.
…
With the boxes loaded in the trunk of her car, Cyn drove away from her parents’ house depressed but determined. She rolled down her window and let the spring air billow through her hair. Could she really pull this off and save her parents’ house from foreclosure? As if there wasn’t enough pressure on her already…
Cyn needed a friend to confide in—and a triple-chocolate caramel brownie. Gordon and Jamie had things under control at Hawthorne Manor, so she headed straight for Sweet Bee’s Bakery. Despite her mood, she smiled at the sight of the bright-pink-and-yellow-striped awning. She pulled into one of the parallel parking spaces in front of Lane’s medical practice next door to the bakery. Through the office’s plate glass window she saw Lane’s nurse, Alice, standing near the reception window. Cyn waved as she got out of the car. Alice greeted her cheerily, her expression as bright as her lime-green scrubs, wavy tendrils of gray hair framing her face.
The sweet smell of fresh muffins enveloped Cyn the moment she stepped inside Sweet Bee’s. She only worked there part time, but she still worried she might become immune to that delicious aroma. Lane called that sensory adaptation. He’d said he prayed for it when he and Paige visited the rotten-egg-scented Sulphur Springs in Saint Lucia several months ago. But when Paige almost lost the top of her bikini under a waterfall, he’d forgotten all about the smell.
Business had picked up at Sweet Bee’s over the last several months. Everyone wanted to buy goodies from Paige, Maple Creek’s reigning Sweetheart of the Year. Cyn waved to the customers who caught her eye and headed straight behind the counter and into the kitchen. Thumbelina-sized Paige leaned over a gleaming stainless steel prep table, wrangling with a sheet cake box that was nearly as big as she was.
“Be careful,” Cyn said. “You might fall in.”
Paige stood upright and gave her a crooked grin. “Headfirst, I hope. With no way out.” A strand of her long blond hair had escaped from her ponytail and she blew it away from her face. “Then you’ll have to deal with decorating Mr. Dittmar’s woodworking-themed birthday cake.” She tipped her head toward the opposite prep table where the cake in question sat cooling.
Cyn winced. “Woodworking? How’d I miss that order?”
“Just got it yesterday. And Mrs. Dittmar wants it tonight.” A brown paper bag with the hardware store logo on it sat at the end of the table. Paige grabbed it and dumped the contents onto the table with a clang. Nails and screws scattered everywhere, along with a small tape measure; a miniature saw, hammer, and screwdriver; and lots of random wood scraps. She shot Cyn a there-you-have-it look.
Cyn lowered her eyebrows. “You’re usually a genius decorator…but you bought that stuff to put on a cake?” She might hesitate to say such a thing to someone else, but she and Paige were always straight-up with each other.
“Um…no. Mrs. Dittmar had a vision.” Paige made quotation marks with her fingers, then hurried over to the bulletin board that hung just inside the kitchen doorway. She pulled a piece of creased paper from beneath a tack and showed it to Cyn.
Cyn scrunched her face as she took in the “design.” “That looks more like a workbench explosion than a birthday cake.”
Paige tossed the paper on top of the decorations and shook her head, her sassy smile brightening her eyes. “Screw it.”
Cyn laughed. She could always count on Paige to cheer her up. “Got any brownies?”
Paige’s expression turned curious. “Something happen I need to know about?”
Swallowing against the tightening in her throat, Cyn nodded. Paige tugged her out front to the display cases, where she dished up two brownies, grabbed forks and napkins, and led her to a table by the picture window.
After setting everything on the table, Paige said, “Oh. One more thing.” She dashed back into the kitchen, came back with two tall glasses of milk, and sat across from Cyn.
Cyn took a decadent chocolaty-caramel bite of her brownie, and chewed slowly. She closed her eyes for a second and took a deep breath, basking in sheer deliciousness.
“Better?” Paige asked.
Cyn blinked her eyes open and nodded, fortified enough to talk about her parents’ situation. “My mom and dad will have to get out of their house in a couple of months, so they’ve started packing now.”
Paige frowned. “That’s so sad.”
“For sure.” Cyn blotted her mouth with a napkin. “We have our differences, but it breaks my heart to see the house so bare—I mean, it’s pretty much down to the furniture. No books left on the shelf, or pictures on the wall. Like none of us had ever lived there.”
A crease formed between Paige’s eyebrows as she chewed, then her eyes brightened. “We could do a fund-raiser!”
Cyn’s heart tumbled. “Aw, you’re so sweet to offer. You have no idea how much that means to me.” She stared at the half-eaten brownie on her plate. “But I’m afraid they need a lot more money than we could raise. And imagine how mortified they’d be if everyone knew about their financial trouble.”
Paige bunched her lips. “This is Maple Creek, remember? Anyone who’s interested already knows. But I get what you’re saying. Hearing it through the grapevine is one thing, but advertising it is another.”
“Exactly.”
Paige shook her head. “I wish there was something we could do.”
Cyn had no doubt that Paige meant what she’d said. She was one of the most selfless and helpful people Cyn knew. Paige had given up a sweet job as a pastry chef at a swanky DC hotel to come back to Maple Creek and take care of her mom when she was diagnosed with cancer. After her mom died, Paige couldn’t bear to leave her father alone. Instead of heading back to the big city, she’d opened Sweet Bee’s right next door to her father’s barbershop.
Cyn took a long swallow of cold milk. The Queen preferred to keep her bonus offer a secret, but Cyn had to confide in someone—and she trusted Paige. “There might be a way, and I’m dying to tell you about it, but it’s totally confidential.”
Paige pressed her thumb and forefinger together and zipped them across her lips.
“Believe it or not,” Cyn said, “the Queen’s offered me a twenty-five-thousand-dollar bonus if I can make this find-Trent-a-bride thing work.”
“What?” Paige’s shriek nearly vibrated the glass window. Her sparkly blue eyes bugged.
“I know, right? But if it works…when it works, I can use that money to save my parents’ house from foreclosure.”
Paige blinked several times. “That would be incredibly generous.” She shook her head and whistled out a breath. “Twenty-five grand? Dang. If I’d known that, I might’ve had second thoughts about Lane back in Saint Lucia when Trent told me he wanted a wife.”
Cyn cleared her throat, preparing to imitate the Queen’s snooty voice. “It can’t be just any wife—like a regular girl. It has to be one of the ‘young ladies’ I selected. Someone with a certain amount of refinement that simple peasants lack.”
“What-la-di-da-ever.” Paige lifted her glass of milk. “Here’s to us peasant girls, and to hoping you cash in on one of the Queen’s princesses.”
They clinked glasses and Cyn took a slug of milk. “I finally spent some time with Trent today. Between what I saw and what you and Liza have told me about him, all those girls will probably want to marry him.”
“Oh, they totally will. He’s adorable.”
“And we moved production to the islands,” Cyn said. “Who knows better than you how easy it is to fall in love in a tropical paradise?”
“For real,” Paige said with an exaggerated swoony grin. “Wait. Does that mean you get to go to the islands?”
It was Cyn’s turn to grin. “Yep. The Bahamas, Turks and Caico
s, and Jamaica.”
“Sweet.” Paige took the last bite of her brownie and nodded while she chewed. “Sounds like it’s all coming together.”
Cyn nodded, too, feeling hopeful. Maybe it was all coming together—finally. Now she just had to figure out how to get two people to fall in love. Fast.
Chapter Five
Trent spent the next two days at a business meeting in DC in a whirlwind of PowerPoint presentations, renovation proposals, spreadsheets, and budget discussions. He’d even made time for a couple of interviews for a new assistant manager for Caldera, the Hawthornes’ premier resort in Saint Lucia. Despite everything else that had demanded his attention, the new marketing campaign—and his quest to find a wife—was never far from his mind. He’d left Gordon, Jamie, and Stuart to handle the production details, and Cyn to take care of everything else—with Gran’s guidance. From what he could tell now that he’d returned to Maple Creek, everything was on track for his romantic adventure to begin. Tomorrow they’d head to the Bahamas, where he’d finally get to meet Ava Brennan.
Nerves had him going a little stir-crazy in his suite at Hawthorne Manor, even though it was plenty big and outfitted with nearly anything he’d need to stay comfortable and entertained. As Trent had grown up, Gran had changed the decor and the amenities to match his interests—from a Lego theme to outer space, and sports to upscale man cave. He couldn’t have asked for anything more. Every time his parents had decided to head off on a spur-of-the-moment vacation—or for an extended time at one of their places in San Francisco or New York City—he didn’t have to worry about packing everything he wanted from home and toting it across town to Gran’s. Some people thought he was spoiled, and Trent could understand why. He appreciated all Gran had done for him, but he would love to have had his parents at home…at his ball games…at the dinner table.