Better Than Chocolate

by Sheila Roberts

  “Well, it’s an idea my family’s been toying with for some time.” Some being the operative word. She continued, the big lie tumbling out of her mouth before she could bite her tongue. “And it’s a dream my stepfather, Waldo, had hoped to make happen.” If he’d known about it he’d have been all over it, she rationalized, willing the guilty burn off her cheeks. Waldo loved a good party, and this would be the party to end all parties. Anyway, he’d been useless to the business in life. He could darn well contribute something in death.

  “God rest his soul,” someone murmured.

  If they pulled this off, he could rest in peace with Samantha’s blessing.

  “So what is it?” prompted Ed, who was practically salivating now.

  She could feel Blake Preston’s gaze on her as she stood there all dolled up in the business equivalent of the emperor’s new clothes and felt her cheeks go warmer. “Well, what’s the third-biggest spending holiday of the year?”

  “Mother’s Day,” Annemarie guessed.

  “Close,” Samantha said. “Actually, it’s Valentine’s Day, coming in right after Christmas and Thanksgiving, and I’m thinking we could celebrate it here in Icicle Falls, which is why Sweet Dreams would like to sponsor a chocolate festival in honor of Cupid’s big day. I’m sure, as you all know, a festival can bring loads of business into a town.” Okay, there it was. Had she baited the hook enough?

  Some people had caught the excitement; she could tell by the glint in their eyes. Others, like Dot and Todd Black, Mr. Alpine Neanderthal, were looking dubious.

  “What exactly did you want to do?” Dot asked.

  Samantha launched into her spiel, making the sales pitch of her life, all the while hoping no one would suggest there wasn’t enough time to plan something like this.

  “But that’s only a month away,” Hildy Johnson protested. Hildy was a stocky woman whose smile was as thin as the rest of her was fat. Her husband, Nils, was a pharmacist and he took care of filling prescriptions over at Johnson’s Drugs but Hildy ran everything else, including him.

  And now she’d just found the proverbial fly in the ointment. “I know it’s less than six weeks,” Samantha admitted, “but my family has already done a lot of the groundwork.” Some anyway. They’d logged in a ton of phone calls over the weekend talking about it and Cecily and Bailey were working on schedules and venues for possible events. “We’d have to start small this year, but if we all pulled together to offer something fun and visitors enjoyed themselves, well, word of mouth would bring us twice as many people next year. And, let’s face it, this is a day that lends itself well to merchandizing—lovers’ packages at our B and Bs and motels, wine-tastings, romantic dinners, special floral arrangements.”

  Now more eyes were lighting up. She still didn’t dare look at Blake. She pressed on, throwing out enticing details like so many Hershey’s Kisses.

  “What about advertising? How are you going to promote this?” Hildy wanted to know. “You can’t get the word out overnight.”

  “But you can get it out fast, thanks to the internet and social media,” Samantha argued, parroting Bailey’s words.

  “How many friends have you all got on Facebook who don’t live here? How many hits are you getting on your websites?” Todd asked cynically, making Samantha want to kick him.

  “Obviously, we’d need to promote other places, too,” she said. “Radio, newspaper—”

  “They all cost money,” Hildy interrupted.

  Now Samantha couldn’t help looking in Blake’s direction. The pity in his eyes made her want to cry. Instead, she pinned on her best saleslady face. “I realize we’re racing against the clock, but if we all worked together, pooled our resources, we could bring some good business into town.”

  “And God knows we could use it,” muttered Heinrich, owner of Lupine Floral.

  “So, would we like to be involved in this?” Ed asked. “What do you think, people?”

  “What the hell,” Dot said with a shrug. “I can hang up some foil hearts and offer a breakfast special.”

  “We have limited funds in our lodging tax fund,” Hildy said. “And this.” She shook her head. “It’ll get costly. We’d have to pay overtime to the police for security and we’d have to pay for maintenance and cleanup.”

  “That’s what the fund is there for, isn’t it?” Samantha asked reasonably.

  Hildy frowned at her. “Of course, but it’s not there for every cockamamie idea that gets thrown out at Chamber meetings. Money doesn’t grow on trees and we need to be wise with ours. I think we need a committee to look into this,” she concluded.

  “With only a little over a month until V Day, I think we have to decide today to either pass or jump in,” Dot said.

  “Then I say let’s jump,” Charley said. “I agree with Samantha—we can start small.”

  God bless you, Samantha thought, shooting her a grateful smile.

  Hildy shook her head again. “I think we should pass.”

  “You can’t pull this off,” Todd said.

  “I think we can,” Samantha insisted. “If the whole town supported it, we could pull it off and we’d all benefit.”

  “What do you think, Blake?” Hildy asked, obviously looking for someone to side with her.

  He tugged at his necktie. “It’s a big undertaking,” he said. “You’ll probably spend more money than you take in this first year.”

  “There you go,” Hildy said as if that settled it.

  Go ahead, stab me in the heart, thought Samantha bitterly, narrowing her eyes at him.

  He refused to look in her direction. “But if you’re asking me whether I think it’s an idea that, with a little more time to plan and execute, could increase tourism, I’d have to say yes,” he added. Now he did look at Samantha, who still hadn’t removed the scowl from her face, and regarded her with those blue eyes of his in a way that dared her to accuse him of being biased.

  She’d take that dare. He was.

  “I dunno,” Todd said with a shrug. “It doesn’t do much for me. I don’t sell chocolate at my place.”

  “But I sell wine,” Ed reminded him, “and it goes pretty damn good with chocolate. We should put our heads together and see what we can come up with,” he said to Samantha.

  “I think it’s a smart idea,” Heinrich put in. “And if it brings people here, it’s good for all of us. Why not capitalize on the fact that our town has a chocolate factory?”

  “I like the idea, too,” Annemarie said.

  “God knows we need to do something after the dead winter we’ve had,” Olivia added. “And I’d rather offer some special packages and have my place full than sit around and do nothing until the bank takes it.” Her cheeks turned red and she cast an apologetic glance at Blake. “No offense.”

  “None taken,” he assured her. “Cascade Mutual wants to be part of this community, and working together is in all our best interests.”

  What a hypocrite, thought Samantha.

  Discussion continued for another ten minutes, with Hildy raising every kind of imaginable objection. Finally Todd shrugged and said, “Do what you want. It won’t affect my business either way.”

  “That’s for sure,” Charley muttered in disgust. “As long as there are losers and beer in the world, he’ll be fine.”

  “We’ll take a vote,” Ed announced. “Do I have a motion?”

  The vote was almost unanimous, with Todd abstaining and Hildy casting a resounding no.


  “This is a waste of money,” she informed Ed as she left, but several people lingered to congratulate Samantha on her great idea.

  “I’ll be happy to help with the planning,” Olivia volunteered.

  “Me, too,” Cass said.

  “I’m already thinking about the menu for your chocolate dinner,” said Charley. “How does chocolate pasta with French cheese and artichokes sound for one of the courses?”

  “Heavenly,” Samantha murmured. And expensive. “Remember, we need to turn a profit.”

  “Trust me, we will.”

  “I think this will be wonderful,” Heinrich gushed. “We could become the perfect Northwest destination for lovers. Annemarie,” he called, hurrying after her. “We should work together on a romantic package.”

  “Don’t forget to include chocolates in it,” Samantha called after him, and he grinned and gave her a thumbs-up.

  They were on their way. She beamed as people walked past, promising to help.

  “I think you’d better set up an email loop,” Jonathan Templar suggested. He was her computer tech expert and owner of Geek Gods Computer Services. “So you can all keep one another up-to-date.”

  “Gee, I wonder who we can get to do that,” she teased. “Hopefully, someone who works cheap.”

  “Since it’s for the town, I’ll offer my services for free,” he said, pushing his glasses up his nose. “And I’ll build you a special website. I can have it up and running in a couple of days.”

  “You’re my hero,” she said, and kissed him on the cheek, making his whole face turn russet.

  From the corner of her eye she caught sight of Blake, old Mr. Community Spirit, talking with Ed while watching her. He gave her what he must have considered an encouraging smile, which made her seethe. Oh, yeah, the bank wanted to do what it could to help the community, all right. Unless a business was really in trouble. Then they could forget it.

  She turned her back on him and said to Charley, “Let’s go. I’ve got a lot of work to do.” Like saving a company.

  Chapter Eight

  If you can’t manage your family, what hope do you have of managing a business?

  —Muriel Sterling, When Family Matters

  It was going on two in the afternoon and Muriel had done about all she wanted to for one day. She’d gotten dressed. Now she was on the couch, looking through one of her photo albums.

  The cordless phone rang and she picked it up from the coffee table where it was slowly losing juice. Caller ID told her that her eldest was on the other end of the line.

  Not now, she decided, and set the phone back down. She loved her daughter, but sometimes Samantha simply exhausted her.

  This was nothing new. She’d begun by keeping her pregnant mother awake half the night with her in-the-womb acrobatics, and she hadn’t been any easier to corral once she’d left for the big wide world. Samantha had never been fond of the word no, which had made her a top seller in school fundraisers. It also made her a challenge to raise. She’d always pushed the boundaries on everything from allowances to clothing styles to curfews. By the time the other two girls came along, Muriel had given up on her idea of holding the reins of parenthood tightly and had gone lenient.

  “I never got to stay out that late,” Samantha would complain when Bailey came dragging home at midnight. “And you’re going to let her stay out all night for prom?”

  Frustration with her mother’s choices hadn’t stopped with such minor issues. “Mom, you can’t put Waldo in charge of this company. He’s a sweet man and I know he wants to be involved, but he doesn’t understand how we do things.”

  “He’s a businessman,” Muriel had insisted. “And he’ll bring new ideas to the table.”

  The fallout from that decision had taken her relationship with her firstborn to new lows, and so far she hadn’t been able to atone for her bad judgment. So she’d vowed that whatever her daughter needed to do, she’d be supportive. But putting on this festival just seemed so impossible. Merely thinking about it exhausted her. The last thing she wanted to do today was talk about it.

  With a frown, Muriel refocused her attention on the pictures from her honeymoon cruise with Waldo. There they stood at the ship’s railing, the turquoise waters of the Caribbean serving as a backdrop, smiling like a couple who had many good years ahead of them. She sighed and turned the page and fingered the picture of them seated at the captain’s table, her in her evening gown and Waldo in his tux. They should’ve just kept cruising and left Samantha to run the business.

  She flipped through the pages, blinking back tears at the snapshots of their short life together: picnicking at Lost Bride Falls, enjoying dinner at the Space Needle in Seattle, posing in front of the tree last Christmas. She looked at the brave face he was putting on and felt tears forming. They’d known about his condition for a month by then but hadn’t told the girls. The holidays hadn’t seemed like the right time. Now there was no point in saying anything, especially to Samantha. She’d only feel bad about how angry she’d been with him.

  Samantha. With a sigh, Muriel picked up the phone to check the message.

  Her daughter’s voice was filled with energy. “Good news, Mom. The Chamber is behind us. Our chocolate festival is a go. Looks like you’re going to be busy for the next several weeks.”

  Busy for the next several weeks, and all with a daughter living at home again.

  Not that she didn’t want Cecily back—she would be a comfort. But she would also be…here. And even though Muriel loved her daughter, she’d rather not expend valuable energy pretending she was doing well. She just wanted to sleep or sit in the office and stare into space or look at pictures. She’d been down this road before and it didn’t get any easier the second time around. In fact, she was sure it was harder.

  And how to explain that to her daughters, to anyone? How could you explain the ache of loss, the deep well of sorrow, to people who hadn’t experienced it yet?

  The moment that thought emerged, she knew she wasn’t being fair. Her daughters had experienced the loss of a father they adored.

  Still, they were young. They had their whole lives before them. They’d find men who loved them and build lives with those men. Muriel wouldn’t. She’d been blessed to find two wonderful men in one lifetime. There would be no third time for her. And, that being the case, what would she do with the rest of her life? She’d spent so many years as a wife and companion. What was she now?

  Still a mother, she reminded herself, and that was a role a woman never stepped out of. Life goes on.

  What a depressing saying! On days like this it seemed wrong that life kept going when someone you loved died. Now hers wasn’t going to simply keep going it was about to turn into a whirlwind, and she wasn’t ready. But she would be. For everyone’s sake she had to be. She’d call Samantha…tomorrow.

  * * *

  “That’s great,” Cecily said after Samantha told her the news.

  “And it will be really good for Mom,” Samantha said. “She can’t keep sitting in the house doing nothing.”

  “Well.” Cecily was thoughtful. “I don’t know. We’re not giving her any time to grieve.”

  “There isn’t time, not if we want to keep our business.”

  “Whoa, Scrooge lives.”

  “Scrooge has to. Did she tell you Waldo let his life insurance lapse?”

  “What? You mean—”

  “She gets n
othing. Nada. Zip.”

  “The new house isn’t paid off, is it?” Now Cecily sounded worried.

  And so she should. Someone besides Samantha needed to be. “Nope, and she’s upside down on it.”

  Cecily let out her breath. “This is not good.”

  Samantha agreed. “The sooner you get here, the better, because Mom’s not answering her phone.”

  “Well, maybe she’s out running errands.”

  “No, she’s in the house moping.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because that’s what she was doing last time I went over.” There was silence, and suddenly Samantha felt guilty. “What?” she demanded, ignoring the little voice jeering, Rotten daughter, rotten daughter, rotten, rotten daughter.

  “You’re not cutting her much slack.”

  Her sister was right and that made Samantha testy. “There’s no time to cut anybody any slack.”

  “You’ve got a point there,” Cecily said diplomatically.

  Darn right she did. Oh, who was she kidding? She was the world’s biggest bitch. Her sisters should get her a dog collar for her next birthday.

  She heaved a sigh. “You’re right. Mom needs a chance to grieve and I need to see a shrink.”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll get you whipped into shape,” Cecily teased.

  “I think it’s hopeless,” Samantha said. “I should go. I’ve got to get over to city hall and start things moving on the permits.”

  “Okay. I’ll be there by the end of the week.”

  Samantha only hoped her sister wasn’t closing shop on her account. “Are you positive you want to do this?”

  “Absolutely. You probably don’t really need me, though. Knowing you, everything’s under control.”

  Even though she’d felt put-upon when her sisters left her holding the bag at Sweet Dreams, she had to admit she liked being in control. Except this was still a family business. Had she really made Cecily think she didn’t need her?