Five-Alarm Fudge (6 page)

A woman in the crowd asked, “But can we still eat the fudge?” She held a piece of my Cinderella Pink Fairy Tale Fudge in front of her.

I held my breath.

Cherry said, “We all live with chemicals. It’s hard to escape them in our world. It’s my job to moderate the effects as best I can by teaching good practices in farming, or grape growing, or fudge making for that matter.”

I gulped. I looked at my dad, whispering, “I guess I’ve arrived if the university extension service is taking note of my fudge.”

Kjersta asked Cherry, “But we have rights, don’t we, to make Jonas cough up his chemicals? He’s using illegal chemicals.”

“I’m not using anything illegal.”

Dad muttered under his breath, “That’s the spirit.”

A car door slammed. The sheriff had gotten out of his squad car. I’d forgotten his text. He stalked toward where Dad and I stood behind the pumpkin-filled wagon.

Three other vehicles pulled into the grassy parking area, including my grandmother in her sports utility vehicle. From a car, Fontana bolted out of the backseat, heading straight for Jonas.

“You left me back there. How could you leave me like that?” Fontana said, her shrill voice mocking the twittering of a flock of sparrows sitting on the eaves of the barn behind us.

Fontana was like a fox heading into a flock of chickens. The crowd split up or backed off. She trotted from Jonas over to Cherry, talking loudly about seeing him later and how she’d explain everything. I wondered what.

Kjersta hurried to Jonas with a cup of wine, asking if he’d like to try some, which I thought was a neighborly gesture considering how they weren’t getting along. But I saw the wisdom in breaking up this unfortunate scene. I grabbed wine cups and followed Kjersta’s lead.

Fontana then headed toward her ex-husband, Daniel, but he escaped by grabbing a bottle of pink wine right out of Mike’s hands. He began pouring a new round to anybody noshing on my pink fudge.

Dad disappeared inside the barn to help Grandpa.

John told his tour it was time to get on the bus so they could go down the road and around the corner to the Prevost Winery.

Sheriff Jordy Tollefson followed me back to where I took up sentry again at the pumpkin wagon. Customers scattered, to my chagrin.

My grandmother limped up behind him but spoke to me. “The sheriff badgered us about some knife being found in the organ bench. Maria Vasquez was there, too.”

Maria was a deputy sheriff. Guilt rattled me. I’d called the sheriff.

The sheriff looked through his aviator sunglasses at me. “Your grandfather around?”

“In the barn.”

Jordy sauntered to the stone barn.

Horrified, I asked Grandma, “Was that Grandpa’s knife in that bench?”

Grandma grabbed her white hair to keep it from
whipping in the breeze across her face. Her dark eyes looked like blisters of pain. “This whole mess is Gil’s fault.”

“What do you mean?”

By now, only a few feet from us, the church ladies were buzzing with the tourists about “blood” and “Ave Maria” and “organ bench” and “knife.”

Grandma said, “Maria kept asking about the prince and princess, and who might want to do them harm.”

Grandma was shaking all over.

Over her shoulder I spotted Fontana heading to a car with Cherry. Cherry had his arms full of the fudge and other goods he’d bought to take for testing. Fontana seemed to be arguing with him. Cherry was shaking his head vigorously.

John was herding his group into the bus.

My grandfather and father had emerged from the stone barn, walking on either side of the sheriff. While my father was always reserved, my grandfather was gesticulating wildly in the air at the sheriff.

As they approached, I asked, “What’s going on?”

The sheriff, tall and menacing in his brown and tan uniform, gun at his hip, with his hat brim set straight over his sunglasses, said, “I’m going to have to cancel the royal visit. I’ll be contacting the prince and princess.”

Chapter 4

G
randpa scooped Grandma next to his side with a long arm around her waist. “Prince Arnaud and his mother are my wife’s relatives and I invited them. Sheriff, I can do what I darn well please with family.”

My grandfather was itching to get himself in handcuffs. Again. He and I had something twisted in our DNA with a chromosome that looked like the chrome of handcuffs.

I appealed to Jordy. “If Prince Arnaud doesn’t attend, the kermis will be ruined. It’s only two weeks away from tomorrow. We need that money to restore the church steeple. Would you deny people their religious freedom? Go against the Constitution?”

The sheriff removed his aviator sunglasses and then held up a hand to quiet me. He gave me a penetrating look, as if we were in a private bubble. Last summer I had realized Jordy might have intentions concerning me that went beyond mere law enforcement. But he was a gentleman and kept a respectful demeanor. “Ava, and all of you, we don’t have a big enough staff or budget to protect royalty from some nutcase. I was called to look at a knife. Maria’s taking it into the lab. This has to be taken seriously as a possible threat to your visitors. We live in a different world now. It’s my job to be cautious.”

I muttered, trying to sound respectful, “Jordy, you don’t have the authority to stop a royal visit.” Then doubts set in. “Do you?”

His hands fiddled with his sunglasses. “I have the authority and responsibility to inform our governor and the royal visitors if I feel we lack the resources to properly protect visitors to our county. I’m sorry if that would end up canceling their visit or harming the kermis.”

Grandpa piped up again. “I’ll call Arnaud Van Damme and ask him to bring along bodyguards.”

My grandma said, “Now, Gil, if it’s not wise for Arnaud and Amandine to come, let’s listen to the sheriff.”

“I’ll find farm lads to protect them,” Grandpa said.

Jordy slipped his aviators back on. “Bodyguards at their expense would be a good idea. This is the height of the leaf-peeping tourist season and I have my hands full with important things.”

My grandfather said, “Like what? Too many people stopping at Ava’s market? Could you help us with the traffic tie-up out there on the road before you leave?”

My father and I winced at Grandpa’s directive, but he was right. The country road was clogged with all the cars leaving and the bus trying to turn around in the driveway.

My grandmother left us to hoof it back to her sports utility vehicle with her church friends Dotty Klubertanz and Lois Forbes.

After my father left, I said to Grandpa, “Grandma’s not so excited about her royal relatives.”

“Honey, I’ve been trying to figure that out. It could be my gift is too big for her. You know how humble we Belgians are. We don’t need fancy stuff in our lives.”

“She said something like that earlier to me when she was cleaning around the gravestones. But I sense there’s something deeper going on. She’d be relieved if the prince and princess never came.”

Grandpa caught my hand nearest him and gave it a gentle squeeze. His rough hand sported the accumulation of years of calluses that had weathered a lot of storms, like our ancient oak tree in the middle of our pasture that we could see from where we stood. “Let’s give Sophie plenty of space. Sooner or later we’ll know what’s going on and then we can help.”

“I’m sorry I found that knife.”

“You didn’t do anything. The knife was there. You did the right thing by calling the sheriff.”

Grandpa’s mere touch reassured me. I said, “I’ll give Grandma space. I promise.”

He laughed. “Thank you. You do have a way of not letting well enough alone.”

“You calling me stubborn?”

“I’m calling you a Belgian.”

“Same thing, Gilpa. And I inherited it from you.”

Because the sales were so good, I stayed longer than usual. I checked in with my helper at the fudge shop in Fishers’ Harbor, Cody Fjelstad, who was nineteen and busy with college classes. He said he’d be able to stay on for a couple more hours.

Grandpa and I rang up good sales after the arguing quit. The Rose Garden Fudge sales were neck and neck with Cinderella Pink Fairy Tale Fudge. Rapunzel Raspberry Rapture—served at the outdoor picnic tables with fresh whipped cream—was gone within an hour along with Mike’s pinot.

Grandpa accelerated the speed of money from the wallets by telling everybody about the impending visit by the prince. A couple of tourists from New York said they’d be back in two weeks to see Prince Arnaud. Grandpa told them a Belgian had negotiated the sale of land that created New York City.

I endured more jokes about wearing glass slippers to a ball, but I didn’t mind. The cash register’s steady ding was music to dance to in any kind of shoe.

*   *   *

My brain returned to thinking about Fontana and the knife as I pulled to a stop in front of my rental cabin on Duck Marsh Street in Fishers’ Harbor around four o’clock that Saturday. While glancing across the street at my grandparents’ cabin, I saw that Grandma’s SUV was there. It was unfortunate she’d been caught up in the mess.

I was vexed by Fontana’s sneaky behavior and her open and almost desperate flirtations with Jonas and Cherry, though I recalled Cherry was seemingly telling her no about something. She was probably trying to get him to hold some
special event at her roadside market. The great sales happening before her eyes at my market likely created jealousy.

I had barely stepped from my yellow Chevy pickup truck in front of my log cabin when Lucky Harbor planted paws firmly on my sooty front. My weariness evaporated.

The American water spaniel was a brown, curly-haired dog invented in Wisconsin that looked like a short golden retriever that had gotten an old-fashioned permanent. His eyes held golden flecks that could soak up the sun and mesmerize me. Lucky Harbor had wandered into my fudge shop last May as a puppy. Cody named him Harbor because of our location. But when my ex-husband showed up later to claim the runaway puppy, we learned the dog’s given name was Lucky. I had assumed Dillon had named the dog after his famous bad habit of gambling. Instead Dillon had kicked the habit and felt himself lucky to be starting over with his life. That sentiment unlocked something soft toward Dillon again inside my heart. I, too, was lucky to start over in Fishers’ Harbor. So all of us now called the hunting dog two names: Lucky Harbor.

“What’s all the excitement?” I asked the dog.

He plunked his butt on my lawn.

“You want fudge, don’t you?” Chocolate wasn’t good for dogs, so I never gave him fudge. I had learned that every time customers said “fudge” they said it with such exuberance that the tone excited the dog. Now my pockets were always filled with tiny Goldfish crackers to use as “fudge” for Lucky Harbor.

I tossed a handful of crackers into the air. His teeth clacked as he snatched most of the crackers. He snuffled about in the blades of grass for the two he’d missed.

On his collar I noticed a floatable key holder—an orange plastic tube about three inches long. I smiled. Dillon had taken to sending me messages in it this summer.

I unscrewed the key holder, then pulled out the paper. It read
I miss you.

I got a pen from my truck, and wrote on the note
I’ll be right up.

With the note in the key holder on his collar again,
Lucky Harbor took off toward Main Street, a block and a half away. He veered right, streaking in a brown blur up the steep hill to the Blue Heron Inn.

The inn stood on a bluff overlooking the marshy cove at the end of my three-block street as well as the harbor and a good portion of our quaint downtown. By the holidays, I planned to move into the inn permanently. Lucky Harbor paused at the top of the hill to peer back at me. His tail wagged. He wanted me to follow.

A thrill tickled my insides. After such a strange day, I couldn’t wait to fall into Dillon’s strong arms.

After I entered the Blue Heron Inn, Dillon wrapped me against his bare chest and ignited an instant fire with his lips on mine.

He smelled of fresh wood shavings and the pine scent that always spun off his saw blades when he was working on the gazebo out back. My lungs filled with his manly essence.

“I needed this,” I muttered.

“I needed you,” he whispered in my ear.

We parted to look into each other’s brown eyes. His eyes were the color of the deepest, darkest chocolate fudge in my shop. He was six feet four inches tall, which gave him enough height over me that I could fully appreciate his dreamy eyelashes and strong chin.

His bare chest and six-pack stomach sported a bronze tan from summer, begging my hands to explore. My breathing was ragged. I pressed my hands on his pectoral muscles and nuzzled his neck.

A guttural, wild growl emanated from him and then he took me to the floor.

Giggling, we rolled about on the giant floral rug in the reception hall of the historic inn. The chandelier above sparkled like stars winking down at us.

Dillon rolled to a stop, with him over me, cradling me under him. “You’re overdressed,” he murmured, a gleam in his wild eyes.

Then a big slurping tongue alongside my cheek made me go, “Ugh.”

Dillon said, “Lucky, bad timing.”

I rolled out from under Dillon, then got up off the floor.
“He’s reminding us to keep our promise to ourselves. Sex only on Wednesdays.”

Dillon rose to his feet. “I don’t need a watchdog. I’m a grown man.”

“Think of him as our guardian angel,” I said, rearranging my clothes back into proper order. “We promised to date like real people and not let sex be the only thing that attracts us to each other.”

He gave me a petulant, steamy look.

I almost caved. “If we’re going to make it as a couple, we have to control our impulses sometimes. What if Cody had walked in on us? Or my grandma? Or your mother? They’re always popping in.”

“Darn, but do you always have to be right?” He winked.

“With this, yes.”

Dillon conceded by combing through his shoulder-length hair as he caught his breath. He’d let his hair grow longer over the summer, and it gave him a wilderness persona that was new. I’d married him before at a time in his life when he was trying to be just the opposite—as polished as the casinos in Vegas, where we’d been married.