5 Mischief in Christmas River (2 page)

I tugged harder at his leash until he finally got the message.

Then I started walking quickly away, nearly running, like a lunatic escaping a mental hospital.

“Come back sometime!” she shouted after me.

I hurried down the ice-ridden street, scolding myself.

Chapter 2

I cut the butter into the flour and salt mixture, putting all my strength into moving the pastry cutter through the dough. Then I added a generous heap of sour cream, forcing the mixture together. I hurriedly broke the mass of dough into pieces, rolling them into balls. I started covering them in plastic wrap, struggling when the wrap stuck to itself.

A few obscenities escaped my mouth while I went through countless sheets of plastic, until finally all the dough was wrapped. I threw them into the fridge, trading them out for dough I’d made earlier.

I rolled out the sour cream pie crusts for a batch of Whiskey Apple Pies I was making. I put a little too much force into the rolling, though, and the delicate crust broke apart beneath my hands.

“Blast it all…” I muttered.  

I sighed, bringing the broken dough back together, and started over again.

I had been acting this way all afternoon around the kitchen – like a bull in a china shop. Breaking things and burning crusts and generally being an all-around klutz.

I shook my head, the reason why I’d been acting this way oh-so obvious.  

I had no right to be upset with Pepper Posey and her new pie shop that had just moved in across the street, I told myself.

No right at all.

It wasn’t exactly a pie shop anyway. It was a pastry shop, which was a completely different bird altogether. Our customer base wouldn’t be the same. My pie shop, with its rustic diner charm and good old-fashioned decorations, had a loyal following. My bakery was a place where you could drink your coffee and read the paper and chew the fat with folks while eating pies that reminded you of home. This new girl’s shop, on the other hand, was more in line with those trendy pastry shops in the city. It was a place that my loyal customers would probably try once, just to say that they had. But it wouldn’t become their regular hang-out. That I was sure of.

At least that’s what I wanted to believe, what I’d been telling myself since walking by
Pepper’s Pies
earlier and got caught gawking.

But what I wanted to believe and what I actually felt were two different things entirely.

Because there were other factors involved as well. Factors that had caused me to burn a batch of Blueberry Cinnamon pies this morning, and had caused me to shout like a crazy woman at the plastic wrap.

Those factors being that Pepper’s pie shop was cuter, hipper, and trendier than my shop. And that Pepper herself was also cuter, hipper, trendier and at least ten years
younger
than me.

And that of all the empty storefronts she could have moved into, she’d had to move in right across the street from me.  

Hell, even her name bugged me.
Pepper
. What kind of name was that?

Well, what kind of name is Cinnamon?
said another, more logical voice in my head.

The pie dough I was rolling once again broke under my manhandling of it. I let out a long sigh, and then went over to the stereo. I switched out the Christmas harp music that I’d been listening to, and traded it for some
Queens of the Stone Age
.

Tiana, my baking assistant, raised an eyebrow at me as
Smooth Sailing
blared from the speakers. She was only ever used to hearing me play Van Morrison or Otis Redding or Hayes Carll. Rarely did I feel like playing music this loud and aggressive.

But right now, it was exactly what I needed to hear.

I turned it up and then went back to rolling out the crust, trying to use a lighter touch this time.   

“Uh, anything the matter, Cin?” Tiana said, raising her voice above the music while dusting her hands off on her apron.

I chewed on the inside of my mouth, wondering if talking about it would help any.

I knew that most of the time, talking about things like this only went a ways to making you feel worse. Most of the time, it was best just to try and push it out of your mind.

But I didn’t take my own advice.  

“It’s just… it’s just so stupid,” I said, shaking my head.

“What is?” she said.

“Nothing,” I said. “There’s no use in talking about it. It is what it is.”  

“You’re talking about that new shop across the street, aren’t you?”

I looked up at her, surprised.  

“How’d you know?” I asked.

She shrugged.

“Deductive reasoning.”

Tiana was the kind of person who was easy to underestimate. She was plump, short, and in her early forties with greying hair. She had been divorced for several years and had moved to Christmas River to get away from her ex. She had no distinguishing features that made her standout, making it easy for people to not pay her much attention.

But she was smart. And not the book kind of smart necessarily, though on her breaks she’d often go out on the back deck and pore over romantic suspense novels. Tiana had an emotional intelligence that few others possessed. She always seemed to know when somebody was feeling low, and she always had a way of comforting them. She reminded me a lot of a grandmother. Kind, warm, and generous of spirit, Tiana had a way of knowing just what people needed to hear.

Though in my case, it probably didn’t take that much emotional intelligence to see that something was eating away at me.

“It’s stupid,” I said. “I mean, I’m not talking
about
the shop. I’m talking about how stupid it is that I’m feeling, I don’t know…

I let out a long, beleaguered breath.

“
Threatened
by it,” I said.  

I shook my head.

“That’s the stupid part.”

Tiana shrugged again.

“I don’t think it’s that stupid,” she said. “The woman did just start a pie shop right across the street from you. If it was me who owned this here shop, I’d be mad as hell.”

She re-tied her apron, pulling it tighter around her waist.

I’d noticed that in the past couple weeks or so, Tiana had lost a few pounds. She’d stopped taking pies home with her for her days off, the way she always did. She had also gotten a new haircut: an angled bob died a nice shade of mahogany, erasing all traces of the grey hair that had become her usual look.

I half wondered if there was a new man in her life, and had wanted to ask, but I hadn’t found the right moment to.

“Have you met
Pepper
yet?” she asked, adding extra emphasis on her name.

“No,” I said. “Well, I mean not officially. I kind of saw her earlier this afternoon when I was walking one of the pooches from the Humane Society. She, uh, she seems really nice, from what I can tell.”

Tiana leaned in across the kitchen island and lowered her voice.  

“Well, you know what I heard about her? I heard that—”

“Uh, excuse me, Miss Cinnamon?”

Tobias Jones, my newest employee, stuck his head back into the kitchen. Tiana hushed what she was saying.

Tobias hadn’t been working at the shop long, but already, he’d proven to be a skilled and valuable asset. Before I hired him, Tobias had spent the majority of his time across the street by the Christmas River drugstore and pharmacy, holding a sign begging for food. He was a Marine Corps veteran and had been homeless for a long period of time.

These days, I was helping him get back on his feet. I’d helped him rent a room on the east side of Christmas River, and had hired him to work the cash register and help with supply deliveries at the shop. If that went well, I was planning to move him back into the kitchen and teach him a few things about making pies.

So far, my bet was proving to be a sound one. Tobias had been a huge help. Additionally, he had a cheerful disposition that always went a way toward lightening the mood.

“There’s someone out here says they want to see you,” he said, looking from Tiana to me.

“Did they say who they were?”

“Uh, no, miss,” he said. “Sorry I forgot to ask. But it’s a young lady. She has red hair and seems nicer than a warm Georgia breeze.”

I smiled at his colorful way with words. But then my heart sank a little when I realized that there weren’t too many other folks in town who matched that description.

I glanced over at Tiana.

She could read my face plain enough.

“That’s her?” she asked.

I nodded, taking off my apron.

“You want me to go out for you?” Tiana said. “Tell her to come back another time?”

“No,” I said. “We’ve got to meet properly sooner or later. I might as well go out and be neighborly.”

I let out a sigh and then forced a warm, friendly smile, heading for the door.

Even though I didn’t much feel like smiling.

Chapter 3

“Didn’t… didn’t I just see you in front of the shop?”

She gave me a knowing smile.

I stammered sheepishly.

“Yeah, uh, I’m sorry I didn’t introduce myself,” I said. “I was running late on my walk with Chadwick, and I just didn’t have much time for talking.”

“Well, I’m glad that we get a chance to meet now,” she said. “I just wanted to stop by and let you know that I think the world of your establishment here. I mean, I’ve heard the best things about your pies. I hope that we can talk shop sometime when you’re less busy.”

“That would be lovely,” I said, between gritted teeth.

They felt like they’d just been crazy glued together.

“I moved here from Portland,” Pepper started saying. “I don’t know too many folks around here, and it would be really nice if we could…”

I found myself zoning out as I stared at her perfect porcelain skin, her perfectly shaped lips, that curly red hair and those full, deep blue eyes of hers.

I felt my hands inadvertently ball up into fists at my side.

I suddenly realized that she had stopped talking and was waiting for me to reply.

I cleared my throat.

“Well, we will have to grab coffee sometime,” I said, unsure whether or not that was the right response to whatever she had just said.

“That would be great,” she said, her voice brimming with excitement. “I’d love to hear what it’s been like running a pie shop for as long as you have.”

She grinned again.

Did she just call me old?

“Oh, before I forget, I brought you something.”

She fished around inside her purse, and then pulled out a round plastic container ensconced in pink ribbon.  

“These are pistachio and cherry macarons,” she said, implementing an instant French accent when she said the name of the cookie. “Something I learned to make when I was at pastry school in Paris.”

My mouth almost dropped open, and that knot that had been in my stomach all afternoon since first setting eyes on
Pepper’s Pies
tightened up more than a blood pressure arm band.

I took the carton of cookies from her, but couldn’t find any words.

“Well, I’ll let you get back to your work,” she said. “But it was such a pleasure to meet you.”

She reached a manicured hand out to me and shook my hand.

“Bye, Cinnamon,” she said.

“Bye,” I squeaked out.

She turned on her boots, and then walked, no,
floated
, across the dining room. Some of the customers turned their heads to look at her as she passed, transfixed by the new beautiful girl in town.

I looked down at the elaborate box of cookies in my hands.    

I felt like I’d just gotten shot in the gut.

Chapter 4

“Ugh, these hardly have any taste,” Kara said, stuffing another one of Pepper’s cookies into her mouth. “They’re blander than Mrs. Billings’ hair color.”

She scrunched her face up into a grimace, but judging by the way she’d devoured half the carton already, I was pretty sure Kara didn’t quite believe what she was telling me.  

Although, she
was
pregnant. I think the woman would have devoured a sandwich from a bus station vending machine at this point and not thought twice about it.

When I had bitten into one of Pepper’s macarons, the hair color of Kara’s soon-to-be mother-in-law was the last thing that would have occurred to me. The pillowy soft cookie almost melted in my mouth, the light saltiness of the pistachios pairing ever so perfectly with the sugary sweet cherry filling. The cookies were soft, gooey, powdery, and delightful. I’d been having trouble not devouring the carton myself.  

If this was how Pepper’s cookies tasted, then how were her pies?

For as long as I’d been in Christmas River, I’d always felt that I sold a unique product. No one else for towns around offered pies as good as mine, and I never felt like I had to compete with anybody.

But now… now I had the sense that change was afoot in Christmas River. And that perhaps to keep my shop’s status as the premier sweet pit stop of Main Street, I was going to have to fight tooth and nail.

Kara brushed the crumbs off of her oversized red reindeer sweater that had become her main go-to outfit of late. Mostly because it had ample room for that swelling belly of hers.  

We were in the back of her ornament shop. She had a stack of wood strips in front of her on the craft table, along with a wood burning tool. She was chowing down while the tool heated up.

“Your pies are so much better, Cin,” she said, clearing her throat. “Everyone will know that if they don’t already.”

She popped another cookie into her mouth.

“That woman has some nerve moving in right across the street from you. You know, I’ve been steaming all day about it. I can only imagine what I’d do if some ornament start-up moved so close to my shop…”

She shook her head.

“Why, I think things might get real nasty real fast,” she said.

She stared dead into my eyes.

“This is your turf, Cin,” she said, with all the intensity of a 300-pound football player going for the ball. “Don’t you
ever
let her forget that, either.”