Bluegrass Blessings

by Allie Pleiter

  Cameron took off his glasses and gave her his most domineering I-am-immovable-on-the-subject look. “And you know, I can’t imagine what that feels like.”

  That set her back a bit. As if she’d just realized most of the civilized world didn’t take kindly to rising so painfully early. So early it was actually still late. The pity was just a flash across her features, replaced almost immediately by a sharp scowl. “Well, fine, then. Be like that. Just what kind of heartless beast did Sandy sell to, anyway?”

  “Her nephew,” he shot back. He hadn’t intended to let her know that just yet, but his growing exasperation pulled it out of him. Aunt Sandy told him Dinah could be a handful.

  Which was sadly funny, because Aunt Sandy usually exaggerated.

  Chapter Two

  Knock. Pause. Louder knock. Pause. Bang.

  “Aw, for crying out loud, Dinah, will you give it up already?”

  “Cameron?” Knock.

  Cameron thrust his head under the pillow, moaning. Kentucky was proving to be the most miserable retreat on Earth. “Go away!”

  Bang. “Cameron Jacob Rollings, don’t you talk to me like that, young man.”

  Cameron shot straight up. Nasty, shiny sunlight invaded his bedroom while the sickening smell of cinnamon assaulted his nose. “Aunt Sandy?” He hauled his protesting body up off the bed.

  “What’s gotten into you?” Sandy Burnside’s unmistakable drawl came through the door. “Open up right now.”

  Cameron checked his watch as he shuffled to the door. It seemed way too bright to be seven-thirty. “Coming, coming.” She swooped into the room the minute Cameron got the door open. “You have a key, Aunt Sandy, you could have just let yourself in instead of breaking down my door.”

  She poked a finger into her mass of blond hair as if to replace a stray strand. He always found that gesture odd on her—there was so much hairspray on that head he doubted gale force winds could pull a hair out of place. “I do not invade the privacy of my tenants. No matter how rude they are.” She paused, taking in the strong scent of the room. “I haven’t had a tenant in this apartment since Dinah moved in. Does the bakery send that powerful a smell up here all the time? I’ll have a word with Dinah. Mac in the office downstairs has never complained about it before—of course, it is a nice smell at that. Not that you’ll be here that long once your house is built.”

  Aunt Sandy’s heels clacked into the kitchen as she poked her head here and there, assessing his meager attempts at unpacking his possessions—which were truly meager, considering he’d sold most of his New York apartment’s furnishings before he moved and this apartment of his aunt’s was only supposed to be temporary. “Honey,” she pointed a red-lacquered fingernail at his oven, “y’all left that on.”

  Cameron stuffed his hands in his jeans pockets, leaned up against the refrigerator and glared at his aunt. “Dinah Hopkins.”

  “Dinah? What’s Dinah got to do with your oven?”

  Cameron reached for the coffeemaker. “Long story. Want a cup?”

  Dinah closed her cash register drawer with a satisfied click. It was five minutes to nine and she’d made it through the morning rush—granted, with only two blueberry muffins to spare and a couple of last-minute substitutions for customers, but she’d made it. Thank you, Jesus! The oven repair company would open in five minutes and she could place a service call.

  She’d never have made it without the use of Cameron Rollings’s oven. She made a mental note to thank him sincerely—that is, if he ever spoke to her again. When that muffin pan had slipped off the counter and clattered loudly to the floor, he’d growled like a grizzly bear with murder in his eye. The man was from Manhattan; he should be used to all kinds of noise. Still, she had to give him credit; he had finally relented and let her use his oven—the third time she knocked on his door to ask. She’d whip up a batch of her famous macadamia nut cookies in an hour or so, after the sandwich bread finished baking, and take them over as a peace offering. He was her new landlord, after all.

  And really, how had that happened? And so quickly? Granted, Sandy was the spontaneous type, but to sell the bakery out from underneath her (okay, so it was really just the space the bakery sat in—she still had her business) while she was gone on vacation? Without so much as a phone call to let her know? Sandy had come in the bakery just after eight, all flushed and apologetic, saying “If I’d known Cameron was gonna scare the pants off you in the middle of the night like that, I’d have left y’all a note or something.”

  There was a story behind Sandy’s sudden sale to her nephew. Dinah was sure of that. She just wasn’t sure whether she’d get the story out of Sandy or Cameron first.

  He walked in the door about half an hour later—thick dark hair neatly combed, a yawn crossing his clean-shaven face. Cameron had the sleeves pushed up on the rust-colored wool sweater he wore over black jeans and his glasses were gone. With an expensive-looking watch and leather shoes, he looked everything and nothing like the man who had invaded her kitchen last night. He walked toward her with the shuffle of someone who hadn’t gotten enough sleep.

  “Good morning,” she said cheerfully, as if she didn’t feel a twinge of regret for imposing on her new neighbor and/or landlord so severely. “You’ve earned free coffee for the entire week.”

  “I’ll need it.” He yawned again. “Did you get a repairman to come out?” He didn’t ask the question with a tone of concern—it was more defensive, as if confirming he’d have his kitchen to himself from here on in.

  Dinah nodded and handed him a cup of her strongest brew. “He’ll be here at eleven. I just hope it’s an easy fix.” She pointed over to a sideboard where she kept the cream and sugar in wildly colored ceramic jars, but he just took the cup and downed half of it right in front of her. Evidently the man took his coffee black and fast. Very New York.

  “You and me both.”

  Dinah handed him one of the last two blueberry muffins. “Not to worry. Even if the oven’s a goner, I can work through the evening using my own oven and get enough baked ahead of time to make it through another day. Can’t say I’m looking forward to a week of baking twenty-four-seven if I have to replace it, though. Pastor Anderson might let me take over the church kitchen’s two ovens if it looks like a long haul.”

  Cameron scratched his chin and got a thoughtful look on his face. “Anderson. Middleburg Community Church? Aunt Sandy’s church?”

  Dinah grinned. “Yep. So I guess that means I’ll be seeing you Sunday mornings?”

  “I suppose so,” he said in a way that didn’t let on if he found that good news or bad.

  Never one to beat around the bush, Dinah opted for the direct approach. “You a churchgoin’ man, Mr. Rollings?”

  He chuckled and took another swig of coffee. “I still can’t get used to that New Jersey-esque drawl.”

  “I have folks tell me it’s endearing.” Dinah lifted the towel off a batch of whole wheat dough that was rising on the shelf beside her. “A unique combination.” She noticed he hadn’t yet answered her question. The man’s verbal dexterity told her he spent a lot of time in negotiations.

  “Oh, unique is the word. I can tell you I’ve never heard anything like it ever before. How long have you been out here?”

  “About a year and a half.”

  Rollings practically choked on his coffee. “That short?”

  Are you saying I look old enough to have been here a decade? “I have a highly adaptive personality,” she said defensively. “I can be at home in any situation.”

  “Or any kitchen.” He reached into his pocket and removed a bottle of red sparkle nail polish, which he placed on her counter. “You left this on my kitchen table. Aunt Sandy had a field day when she found it. She didn’t believe it was yours—she says redheads don’t wear red.”

  Nobody told Dinah Hopkins what to do. She raised one leg and pointed to her toes, which were a delightfully sparkly crimson that matched the shade on the bottle. “It depends where.
” She snatched back the bottle of polish and tucked it behind the counter.

  Cameron finished his coffee and tossed the paper cup into the trash can by the door. “And by the way, yes, I am a churchgoin’ man. Can’t wait for Sunday, as a matter of fact. I gotta see what kind of church can handle you and Aunt Sandy in the same congregation.” With the closest thing to a grin she’d seen out of him yet, he pulled open the door and headed off down the street.

  “Well, well, I do declare,” Dinah drawled as she put the Back in a Minute sign on her door and hoisted the tray of dough for a trip to the apartment oven. “What hath the Good Lord brought unto Middleburg?”

  Cameron was beyond annoyed.

  Served him right for buying a piece of property sight unseen. He, of all people, ought to know better. Then again, who’d have thought to not trust a family member? Aunt Sandy didn’t seem to have a deceptive bone in her body. And in truth, she hadn’t lied. It was good property.

  She’d just left out a large chunk of the truth.

  “The what?” A man in thick glasses had stared blankly at him when he went to town hall for the legal history of the Route 26 extension. The extension was the short street on which he’d purchased not only the land that would hold his new house, but three other eventual large-lot homes as well. A little bluegrass subdivision. His little corner of the world. A street to call his own.

  A street that evidently didn’t go by the perfectly normal name of Route 26. The perfectly legal, perfectly acceptable name of Route 26.

  “That stretch out over by the Wentworths’ farm?” the clerk had said. “You mean Lullaby Lane?”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Lullaby Lane. I can’t remember the last person that ever wanted to know anything about Lullaby Lane.” He looked as if that query called Cameron’s sense of good judgment into question.

  Cameron pulled out his paperwork. “All my documents refer to that parcel of land as ‘the Route 26 extension.’”

  “Well, it is the Route 26 extension all right, but ain’t nobody here ever called it that. It’s been Lullaby Lane for as long as I’ve been here and I’ve been here a long time. All that property you bought is Lullaby Lane, mister, no matter what your piece of paper says.”

  Cameron immediately drove out to the land in question. He stopped his car in front of the rusted old street sign, leaning precariously to the right against a falling-down stone wall. His new empire, his future, was indeed Lullaby Lane.

  Lord God, You’re kidding. Lullaby Lane? Aunt Sandy and Uncle George sold me something called Lullaby Lane? I know land is land is land and it’s only a detail, but could You just cut me a break here? It’s salt in the wound, Lord. I used to be the smart guy at the office. Now I feel like the biggest fool in the county.

  “She went through with it?” Dinah balked when Cameron returned to the bakery. “Sandy said George had an idea to finally sell Lullaby Lane by getting someone from out of town to invest in it by its legal name—the something-something extension. And it’s you.” She got a look on her face that was half shock, half amusement. “You bought Lullaby Lane. Man, I thought I was having a bad week.”

  Cameron stared around the bakery. His bakery, actually. He now owned cupcakes and lullabies. It’d be hard to think of anything farther from real estate empires and high finance. “I bought a parcel of land called the Route 26 extension. The ‘Lullaby’ part was conveniently omitted.”

  Dinah hopped up on the counter and swung her legs over to slide off on the other side. “It’s just a silly name. You look like the kind of guy who can handle a challenge like that. Oh, the oven’s dead. Thanks for asking.”

  He stared at her. She was just this side of crazy.

  “I reckon you’ll be fine.” She had a completely fake, completely unconvincing look on her face.

  He glared until she dissolved into a cascade of giggles.

  “Okay, okay, everyone knows it by Lullaby Lane. It’s too sissy a name for all those horsemen and so nobody lives there.”

  He widened his stance. “Street names get changed all the time.”

  She shook her head, one unruly curl spilling out across her forehead. “Not in this town. Middleburg’s as anti-change as it gets. You have no idea what you’re dealing with here.”

  “You have no idea who you’re dealing with here.” He pointed to his chest. “I’ll find a way.”

  She pulled some napkins out of a box and started stuffing them into a holder on a table. “Well, suit yourself, but that will take some serious leverage, and y’all only been here—what—two days?”

  Cameron walked up and planted his hands on the table. “Well, then it’s a good thing I’ll have resourceful help.” He looked her in the eye. “You can’t afford a new oven, can you?”

  “Well,” she replied slowly, “I admit it’s a bit of a cash flow challenge, but the money I was saving up to buy my building has surprisingly freed up.” She gave him a pointed look.

  So she had designs on owning the building. No wonder she’d bristled when he’d told her who he was. “Have you got enough to replace the oven?”

  She stopped stuffing napkins, slowly moving her gaze up to meet his. “Almost.”

  He felt the first grin in days creep across his face. “I’ll make you a deal. I’ll loan you the money for the oven if you help me get my name change.”

  “It’s just a name. You’re getting all crazy over nothing.”

  “A sissy name according to you. As for the crazy, it sounds like I’ll fit right in.”

  “I knew you would, honey,” Aunt Sandy’s voice came from behind him. He hadn’t even heard the bakery door open. “I’m so glad to have you out here instead of squeezed into a stuffy suit back there in New York.”

  Cameron couldn’t think of a moment when the word “impossible” didn’t describe his Aunt Sandy. The one his mother called “loony Aunt Sandy.” The “black sheep” sister of his mother’s well-groomed Massachusetts family—although looking at the woman, “blond sheep” would have been a better metaphor. “Aunt Sandy, I’m thinking I should haul you in for fraud. And I know enough attorneys that I might just do it. Lullaby Lane?”

  Sandy actually managed a look of remorse. “I did not lie. It is the Route 26 extension. That is its legal name. And I knew that my nephew Cameron was just the type of real estate mogul to take on a challenge like Lullaby Lane.”

  “A challenge is something you know about in advance and accept. As in willingly take on. This is more like an ambush. Dangerously close to a con job, if you ask me.”

  “Well, then,” Aunt Sandy said with an indulgent grin, “I suppose I should thank the Good Lord I’m not askin’.”

  She pointed a pink fingernail at Cameron. “You just think about one thing, son. There’s a reason you said yes. Maybe you know it somewhere inside, maybe only God knows it yet, but there’s a reason a detail-focused, suit-wearin’ planning type like you said yes to buying a hunk o’ land sight unseen. You think about that, hon.”

  She sauntered out of the bakery as if that were an acceptable explanation. It was annoyingly true that what Sandy had done was legal, but it was not especially ethical in Cameron’s book. And not at all the kind of stuff he’d expect out of a woman who claimed to have as much faith as Aunt Sandy did.

  Cameron thought perhaps he should just point his BMW east—toward civilization—and start driving. Somewhere between here and the Atlantic Ocean, somebody needed a commercial real estate broker. God just wasn’t cruel enough to make him stay here.

  Chapter Three

  Dinah glanced up from her cookie dough while Cameron negotiated—again—with the oven man. At first she was glad to have Cameron offer to take care of dealing with the repair man—dashing between the bakery and her apartment oven all day was keeping her running—but the minute a dollar sign got involved the man couldn’t seem to turn off the big city tycoon persona.

  “You can’t give me another fifty for the old one? You could get more than that for the scrap
metal alone.”

  The repairman, a nice guy from a company that had been more than amiable to her in the past, looked up at Dinah as if to say where’d you find this guy? He pointed to a page on his clipboard. “I got a chart here says what I can give you. This is what I can give you. That’s it.”

  Cameron looked up from the knob he was twisting. “No leeway?”

  The poor man pushed his cap back on his head and exhaled. “Mister, if I had leeway I’d have given it to you the first time you asked. Asking three times ain’t gonna make things any different, okay?”

  “Okay.” Cameron sounded as if he’d lost some kind of battle instead of gotten her one hundred dollars more than she expected for Old Ironsides. As a matter of fact, she hadn’t even thought to ask them about buying the old one—she’d completely forgotten it could be sold as scrap. And that made a whole load of sense—the thing weighed a ton and she was pretty sure they sold scrap by the pound. Still, she thought Cameron was coming on a bit strong.

  “Did you have to go for the jugular?” she asked the minute the repairman left to get his dolly out of his truck. “It’s an oven, not a peace treaty.”

  “It’s not the best deal until the other guy says ‘no.’”

  Dinah cut out another cookie. “He said ‘no’ twenty minutes ago.”

  “Reluctance is not refusal.” Cameron pulled a towel off her counter and wiped the grease from his hands.

  “Is that what you do for a living? Beat other people down until you get what you want? The real estate brokers on television are all smiling guys eager to help families find the home of their dreams. You, you look like you’re going to snarl any second.”

  “My job is to get the best deal between buyer and seller. That’s good for everyone.”

  “Okay, you’re not the bad guy,” she said, holding up her hand. “You’re the good guy. But you have to admit,” she looked straight at him, “you’re mighty tightly strung for a good guy.”