Cedar Creek Seasons (30 page)

Eli smiled. “When I crafted that ring, I made another.” He opened his hand, revealing a silver ring guard studded with four diamonds. “This is the seal for the promise ring.”

Claire covered her mouth. “Oh, Eli.” She clasped his arm and he drew her close, his heart thudding. She ran her fingers across the diamonds glittering in the dappled sunlight. “Eli, you’ve kept this all these years.” It wasn’t a question. Her breathless whisper resounded with the realization he’d waited for her.

“I don’t need an answer today,” he whispered against her hair. “Just hope.”

“A hope and a future,” Claire drew back, her eyes sparkling. “Isn’t that what we’re promised?” She gave him a wobbly smile. “Refined silversmith, let’s see where the Lord leads us.”

He cupped her chin and tipped it up, his heart galloping. “He’s led us all these years, and brought us back together.” He lowered his lips to hers, pausing a fraction of an inch away. “I believe He’s leading us … home.” His lips captured hers, and warm sweetness twined around and through them like the very breath of God’s blessing.

Eileen Key, freelance writer and editor, resides in San Antonio, Texas, near her grown children and three wonderful grandchildren. She’s published ten anthology stories and numerous devotionals and articles. Her first mystery novel,
Dog Gone
from Barbour Publishing, released in 2008. Her second book,
Door County Christmas
, released in 2010. Find her on the web:
www.eileenkey.com

I wonder if any author has thanked her imaginary characters. I think I should. They always teach me so much about life as I eavesdrop on theirs. Thank you, Beth, Derrick, Oompa, Nicole….

To the very real Clayton: You thought I might forget you, didn’t you? How could I forget getting on an airplane and having my Derrick character slide into the seat beside me—all seven feet of him! Thank you for letting me discuss tallness with you and for helping me visualize Derrick as I wrote. You put the delight in him.

Thank you, Becky Germany and the Barbour Publishing staff, for inviting us to tell the stories of these characters. Thank you, Ellen Tarver, for not only editing but enthusing about this book! Wendy Lawton, you and the rest of the Books & Such Literary Agency team infuse joy in every project.

Thank you to my fellow authors for teaching me so much as we wrote. The time we spent together, the reflections we saw in Cedar Creek, will remain with me. It’s hard to leave a place like Cedarburg.

And thank you, my dearly loved family, for your joyful tolerance of a wife, mom, sister, aunt, and grammie who writes about people no one’s ever met.

A cord of three strands is not quickly broken
.

E
CCLESIASTES
4:12

Autumn

B
eth pushed away from the plate-glass window. With her shirtsleeve over the heel of her hand, she wiped her nose-sized smudge from the glass. The brownie looked smaller now from this distance, but not by much. The single-focus spotlight helped. And the sound of an angel choir. Did anyone else on Washington Avenue hear that?

A brownie frosted with smooth-as-black-ice chocolate ganache.
Thank you, Food Network, for having served as a distraction from college finals
. The Food Network taught her the meaning of the word
ganache
, although cooking and baking might always remain spectator sports for her.

She could smell the culinary masterpieces. How was that possible? Did the shop owner pipe
Eau de Chocolát
through outdoor vents to lure more customers? Her eyes were already in love. Now her nose was, too.

Cedarburg boasted a nice collection of specialty chocolate shops. Fudge. Truffles. Toffee. But a shop dedicated to brownies was a new—and dare she say
glorious
?—addition to downtown.

Beth tore her gaze from the perfect dessert and glanced at the store name arching across the upper third of the front window.
Life by Chocolate.
Beautiful lettering. Beautiful concept.

The shop was so new the paint could still be wet. This storefront had changed hands twice since Beth came on board with her grandpa’s project two doors down. Life by Chocolate was the new kid on the block, from empty to open almost overnight. Buying a brownie or two seemed the neighborly thing to do. Support local businesses.

She pressed her nose against the glass again, grateful for another sleeve to wipe a fresh smudge. Smudge. Fudge. Brownies, brownies, brownies. Gooey and fudgy and probably still warm. Thick and dark and—

Four dollars and fifty cents! Apiece?

Beth touched the window on two points now, leaning her forehead into the glass, too. The owner could afford to hire a professional window washer, at those prices.

The wave of sticker shock retreated, shamed by a stark realization.
At those prices
. That’s probably what her customers said when they saw the price tag on the imported, handspun angora two doors down.

Quality costs.

And the brownie with “Beth Schurmer” scrolled invisibly in the ganache sure looked like quality to her.

Decision made. She’d sacrifice the five dollars in the pocket of her jeans to help a new business get off the ground … and wear stretchy pants the rest of the day, if she had to.

She pulled the bill from her pocket without losing eye contact with the object of her affection. Who knew a trifolded five could perform like a paper airplane in a Wisconsin early autumn gust? It captured her attention now, soaring on the air currents, a paper/linen version of Forrest Gump’s feather.

When it landed on the sidewalk, she trapped it with her foot. A much larger Nike-clad foot smashed her toes like a bully would squash a family of caterpillars.

“Ow!”

“Sorry.” The monster foot unstomped itself. “Bad timing. Coach was right.”

Beth bent to retrieve her down payment on the world’s yummiest looking brownie then looked up. And up. A good twelve inches more vertical than an average guy’s head. And topped with glistening corkscrew curls a little redder than caramelized sugar, curls that moved whether his head was in motion or not.

He smiled. “I see you had your tonsils removed as a child.”

She lowered her gaze and snapped her gaping mouth shut. He wasn’t a freak show. He was …

Seven feet tall. With him smiling like that, and his head towering that high above her, she couldn’t catch his eye color, but she’d noticed his pale copper eyebrows and a surprisingly toasty complexion.

The scene at her eye level revealed something else. He wore a chef’s apron with icing-like swirled embroidery: L
IFE BY
C
HOCOLATE
.

She gripped the folded five and shoved her hands into her pockets. “Do you work here?”

He leaned his shoulder against the pale Cream City brick of the storefront as if he were a ladder, a ladder that hadn’t planted its legs firmly in the ground. His shoulder slid. He stumbled but recovered quickly, his facial features still locked in an expression of enjoyment of life.

Patting the logo on his chef’s apron, he answered, “Work here? Constantly. Too many hours. I’m also part owner of the place.”

Whoa. Not what she pictured for a brownie expert. Or a neighbor.

He smiled again. “Why? Do you need a job?”

She improved her posture. “No, thank you. I have more than enough. That’s mine,” she said, pointing to the limestone building on the other side of the Up the Cedar Creek Without a Paddle lodge-themed gift shop next door. “Well, not mine. It belongs to my grandfather. I manage it for him.”

“The Yarn Shop?”

“That’s it.”

He swiped his hands on his apron and reached his right one toward her. “You must be Beth. I’ve heard about you. I’m Derrick Hofferman.”

He’d heard about her? Well intentioned as they might be, did the whole town have to inform every newcomer about her failure to find a teaching job, her desperate financial picture, having to move in with Oompa, and—

She grasped his hand and shook it. “Nice to meet you.”

“They were right.” His expression opened wider. “You have the softest hands.”

“So do you.” She withdrew her hand and oddly missed the warmth. Rubbing the tips of her fingers with her thumb, she said, “It’s the lanolin in the wool. A natural skin softener.”

He rubbed his together then faced both palms toward her.

“Butter.”

Beth’s mind raced through a menu of replies.
I love butter
. No.
Thanks for your efforts to support the dairy industry
. No.
You’re not from around here, are you?
No.

He tapped on the front window with his knuckle. “That’ll be two dollars.”

Heavenly decadence preened its chocolaty goodness in the spotlight’s glow. “The sign says four fifty.”

Copper eyebrows inched above cloud level. “That’s for the brownie.” He tapped the glass again. “Two bucks to wipe off the imprint of your face.” Something caught in his expression as if he’d chomped on a walnut shell. “Not that I’d ever want to get rid of the im—Your face is just fine. Better than fine. It’s a nice face. It has some great features. Your nose. I especially like your—”

Beth couldn’t help but giggle. Derrick Hofferman’s mouth might win the klutzy contest. With that kind of competition, his feet couldn’t hope for better than second place.

I
t’s wool, not yarn.”

Beth took the skein of tightly spun blue-green Shetland wool from Derrick Hofferman’s grip. She could like this guy, if he’d start acting normal.

He’d only been in the shop a few minutes, only on the block a few days. But she’d put up with the too-tall-not-to-be-a-basketball-player long enough. Were there no other shopkeepers Derrick Hofferman could bug when his Life by Chocolate business was slow? Or when he needed an opinion about the merits of adding a sprinkling of sea salt to the bubbled surface of his toasted coconut–frosted Covered Bridge Brownie? A mouthful—both the thought and the deliciousness.

The thought of chocolate—never too far from her mind—reminded her of the shipment of hand-dyed black/brown Cotswold sheepswool she’d ordered for the Dolls with Dolls craft guild. From the Internet images she’d seen, the hills of Cotswold, England, looked far different from the rolling green of southeastern Wisconsin. Here, the green was now heavily peppered with leafy fireworks of red, orange, and gold.

Delays in international orders were a given, but the doll makers clamored to get the richly sheened locks on their bald babies in time for pre-Christmas sales. As soon as Derrick wandered back to his own shop, she’d call England.

As natural as you please. She’d call England to check on a wool shipment. How different from the duties she assumed would be part of her career’s workday.

Derrick dipped his head toward her as if waiting for a response. To what? Maybe it wasn’t the brownie connection. Maybe it was his disturbing mop of corkscrew hair that made her think of the Cotswolds.

Someday she’d have to ask why he chose baking brownies instead of, say, the NBA or life as a gymnasium lightbulb changer or top-of-refrigerator cleaner or outrageous hairstyle magazine model, as if she had any room to talk there. She’d ask about his career choice someday, just to be neighborly. As long as that didn’t prompt him to ask about hers.

She readjusted the laceweight infinity scarf at her neck. Right now, his rambling questions kept her from any number of important projects, like knitting more inventory. The surge of customers during Cedarburg’s Harvest Festival drained her supply of trademark
moebius
scarves—no beginning and no end. Other knitters tackled a wide variety of creative projects. Beth had one specialty—the math mystery moebius. She itched to get back to the one waiting on her needles—a thick, ribbed moebius too heavy for the early fall temps but perfect for the chill another calendar flip would bring.

“So …” she said.

He didn’t take the hint.

At the thought of her work in progress, part of her brain slipped into the soothing rhythm of knitting. It had taken her a month of practice to break the habit of “throwing” the wool with her right hand. Looping wool with the index finger of her left hand changed her three-beat knitting rhythm to a quick, agile two-beat dance step.

And the nosy guy from two shops north was keeping her from the music.

What was she saying? How could a person tire of having a gourmet brownie expert for a neighbor? And a neighbor who liked to share, at that.

His eyebrows arched into the rusty Brillo Pad of his irrational hair.

“Wool,” she said, adding extra
o
‘s for emphasis. “From sheep, as opposed to a factory. Have you seen an acrylic in the wild?”

“Ah, the wild acrylic.” He affected a National Geographic narrator’s voice. “Fascinating creatures. Odd mix of warmth and fragility.”

The customer’s always right. The customer’s always right
. The customer’s sometimes afflicted with altitude sickness because of his height.

“I like that thing around your neck.” He bobbed his head toward her.