Sweet Dreams on Center Street (7 page)

Their call went through and Cecily appeared on the screen. She
was perched on a brown microfiber love seat in her living room, looking comfy in
sweatpants and an old sweater, her blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. On the
wall behind her Samantha could see Mom's 1979 Moskowitz print that Cecily had
taken with her when she'd moved to L.A. It depicted three pastel-colored
ostriches, one with its head in the sand, two staring out at the world with
perplexed expressions. Rather symbolic of most of the women in her family if you
asked Samantha. Not that anyone had.

“Bailey isn't here yet,” Cecily told them. “She called to say
she's running late.”

“What a surprise,” Samantha murmured.

“Baby of the family. What can we say?” Cecily said. She widened
her eyes. “Is that a brownie you're eating?”

Samantha stuffed the last of her brownie in her mouth.
“Mmm.”

Cecily made a face. “Unfair.”

Kind of like her being up here all by herself, worrying about
Mom and the business. Then she reminded herself that she'd been the stupid
martyr who insisted her sisters return to their lives in L.A.

“But better your waist than mine,” Cecily taunted.

“By the time everyone in Icicle Falls is done bringing food
we'll have no waists. We'll be tree trunks,” Mom predicted. “Still, it's very
thoughtful.”

And it's free,
Samantha thought.
Right now free was good, as her savings account was on the verge of
flatlining.

“So, have you come up with any ideas for how to get the money
we need?” asked Cecily.

The elephants sitting on Samantha's shoulders settled in for a
nice, long stay. “Other than robbing the bank, no.”

“I still think I should take out a loan,” Cecily said. “Maybe I
could get a home equity loan on my condo.”

“Nice try, but I told you, no loans,” Samantha insisted. “This
family isn't going any deeper into debt.” Mom being upside down on her house was
bad enough. They didn't need to put her sister in the same position.

Cecily gave a fatalistic shrug. “You know, I always thought I
was pretty good at thinking outside the box, but I've got to admit that so far
I'm at a loss. Other than matching you up with a rich man,” she teased
Samantha.

“Meeting a nice man, there's an idea,” Mom said, perfectly
happy to take her seriously. “Maybe someone who'd be willing to make you a
personal loan.”

“No problem,” Samantha said irritably. “Let's run down to the
rich-guy mart and pick up a sucker.”

“We wouldn't have any luck, anyway,” Cecily said. “Your boobs
aren't big enough.”

Now Mom was looking thoughtful. “What's the new bank manager
like?”

“He's no Arnie,” Samantha said bitterly. An image of Blake
Preston with his broad shoulders and superhero chin came running into her mind,
all dressed up in his football regalia. Samantha benched it.

“Still, surely he could be of some help,” Mom said.

Samantha shook her head. “I've met him. He's useless.”

“Maybe you didn't get off on the right foot,” Mom
persisted.

If snatching back the bribe she'd brought him counted, no, they
hadn't. Samantha shot her sister a look that warned bodily harm if Cecily ratted
her out to Mom and said, “Trust me, he won't be any help. A man can't always fix
things,” she couldn't keep from adding.

Her mother heaved a sigh. “I wish your father was alive. He'd
know what to do.”

“If Dad was alive we wouldn't be in this mess in the first
place,” Samantha said, and then wanted to bite off her tongue.
Just shoot me now,
she thought, watching her mother's
shoulders stiffen. “Sorry. I didn't mean that the way it sounded,” she muttered.
Except she had and they both knew it.

“It's okay,” her mother said even though they both knew it
wasn't.

Now Samantha could hear Bailey's voice in the background. A
moment later her youngest sister appeared on the screen, plopping onto the love
seat next to Cecily and pulling off a red leather jacket, probably a consignment
store find. Ever since the company's profits had evaporated they'd all been
shopping secondhand. Or, in Samantha's case, not shopping at all.

“So what have you guys come up with?” she asked.

“Nothing,” Samantha said. This was going to be a big waste of
time.

“Well, I was thinking about something on the way over,” Bailey
told them. “What about some kind of fundraiser? You know, with a big thermometer
so people could see how much money we've raised.”

“No,” Samantha said. “Perception is important in business and
the last thing we want is to announce to the whole world that we're going
under.”

“But we are going under,” Bailey pointed out.

“No thermometers,” Samantha said sternly.

Bailey frowned and fell back against the couch cushions,
deflated.

“Speaking of perception,” Cecily said, “does anybody know how
to contact Mimi LeGrande? If she featured Sweet Dreams on a show, we'd be
golden.”

Why hadn't
she
thought of that?
Mimi LeGrande hosted the Food Network's brand-new hit show
All Things Chocolate.
There wasn't a bakery or chocolatier in the
country who didn't dream of getting included in one of her shows. If she were to
give them a nod, orders would pour in from foodies and chocoholics, and their
future would be secure.

“I heard she lives here. I could ask around,” Bailey offered.
“There's got to be someone who knows her.”

“That would be great,” Samantha said. Heck, it would be more
than great. It would be a miracle. “But it's a long shot. I think we need a more
immediate plan.” There had to be one. Why wasn't she seeing it?

Silence reigned for a full five minutes until Cecily said, “You
know, our baby sis could be on to something.”

“Oh, not you, too,” Samantha groaned.

“What if we did come up with some sort of event to bring in
money for the business?”

“A chocolate dinner?” Bailey suggested, coming back to life.
“Every course could use chocolate. And we could do it at Zelda's.”

“Guys, I appreciate the thought,” Samantha said, “but a dinner
wouldn't even come close to raising the kind of money we need.” Maybe they were
on the right track, though. “Let's think on a grander scale.”

“I did a chocolate tour in Seattle once,” Bailey said.

“A chocolate tour, a chocolate weekend,” Samantha mused. Maybe
they could pull that off. They could have a dinner and a chocolate high tea at
Olivia's B and B. But anything they got from that would only be a drop in the
bucket. “A chocolate festival.” Too bad they didn't have more time. Festivals
brought in a lot of people and a lot of money.

“Now, that's brilliant!” Cecily exclaimed.

“Brilliant but not practical,” Samantha said. “We need that
money in six and a half weeks. It would take six months to plan something on
such a grand scale.”

“Then let's plan on a baby grand scale,” Bailey said. “We can
have it the weekend before Valentine's Day when people are feeling romantic and
buying candy.”

Samantha shook her head regretfully. “There isn't time. It's a
lot to plan, and you have to promote it.”

“If you had people helping, you could do it,” Bailey insisted.
“And with the internet and social media you can promote things fast now.”

“It's a great idea,” Cecily said.

Was her entire family certifiably insane?

Suddenly she could envision Icicle Falls buzzing with throngs
of visitors all on a chocolate high. Something like this wouldn't just help
their company, it would help the whole town.

Was she insane, too?

“Let's do it,” Bailey said eagerly.

What was with this
let's do it
stuff? They were down there and she was up here. On her own.

“We can sponser a bunch of events, maybe have some sort of
contest,” Bailey continued. “I couldn't come up till just before, but I could
help with planning over the phone and on email in between catering jobs.”

“Actually, I can come up right away,” Cecily said.

“You've got a business to run,” Samantha protested.

“Things are quiet right now. I've got the time.”

Quiet? What did that mean? Wasn't her dating service doing
well?

Cecily tended to keep things to herself. When she had a crisis
they never heard about it until it was long over.

Still, this worried Samantha. “Not that I don't want you,” she
said, “but you can't just up and leave your business for several weeks.”

Cecily put on what Samantha thought of as her poker face; her
expression gave nothing away. “I'm closing the business. It's a long story,” she
added before Samantha could press her for details. “Anyway, I've had all the sun
I can take. I need seasons. I can rent out my condo, and I bet Charley would let
me have a job waiting tables at Zelda's a couple of nights a week. That would
leave me free during the day to work on the festival with you guys. Mom, can I
stay with you?”

“Of course,” Mom said. “But I think you girls need to figure
out a few more things first, like where we'd hold this festival.”

“All over town.” Bailey almost whacked Cecily in the nose with
her sweeping hand gesture.

“I bet we could get all the B and Bs to participate and offer
some special rates,” Samantha said thoughtfully. “No one has full occupancy
these days, so maybe some of them would offer a special discount for that
weekend.”

“Oh, and the restaurants can feature special chocolate
desserts,” Bailey said.

“We could award a plaque to the one that comes up with the most
creative dessert, using our candy, of course,” Cecily suggested. “Bragging
rights for them, profit for us.”

“I love it,” Samantha said. This scheme was looking better by
the minute.

Bailey nodded eagerly. “Our local artists can set up booths in
the park along Center Street. Heck, we can all have food booths over on Alpine
like we do on the Fourth of July.”

“Girls, this all sounds lovely, but you have to have time to
get people on board,” Mom said.

“Since when isn't the Icicle Falls Chamber of Commerce on board
with anything that brings in tourist business?” Samantha argued. “I could work
that angle.”

“Me, too,” said Bailey. “I can phone people from here. Oh, this
could be really big. We can hand out samples, give tours of the factory, all
kinds of cool stuff.”

“But there's the matter of permits,” Samantha said, coming down
to earth with a thud. “We can't just decide to have a festival without getting
permits for the sale of food and alcohol. And we need a special-event permit
that all the departments sign off on. It takes time for all that to make the
rounds in city hall.”

“But if it's good for Icicle Falls I bet you can find someone
to move the process along,” Cecily said.

Hmm. Her sister had a point there.

“Let's try it, anyway,” Bailey urged. “Think of all the
chocolate-lovers we can lure up here. Oooh, and we could have a chocolate ball,”
she added dreamily. “I can see it now, an old-fashioned masked ball where
everyone dresses up.”

“And have that chocolate dinner before,” Cecily put in.

“We can sponsor the dinner and the ball and sell hot chocolate
and truffles in a booth.” Bailey was beaming now, on fire with a million
ideas.

If they could manage to pull off even some of them…Samantha
felt the fire catching in her, too. “We'd need to advertise in the Seattle
papers, set up a website.” She grabbed a piece of paper from Waldo's desk and
began scribbling notes to herself.

“That will cost money,” Mom pointed out. “Girls, I just don't
think we can raise what we need by sponsoring something like this. Sponsoring,
by its very nature, involves cost.”

Now that they were going down the tubes she was deciding to
grow a head for business? “Everything involves cost,” Samantha argued.

But Mom had a point. This whole thing was a huge gamble and it
could bomb big-time.

What did it matter, though, if the bank was going to take the
business, anyway? Chances were slim that they'd even come close to making enough
money to get the bank off their backs—but if they did nothing their chances went
from slim to none. And maybe they could at least raise enough to allow her to
renegotiate with the bank. If she came in with a check…

“I've got a good feeling about this,” Cecily said.

Samantha put a lot of stock in her sister's instincts. “Then
let's do it. What have we got to lose?”

Their business, of course. And maybe their sanity.

Oh, wait, trying to pull off something this big in such a short
time—they'd already lost their sanity. So what the heck. Sweet Dreams Chocolates
was about to sponsor a chocolate festival.

Chapter Six

The man of your dreams is the one who shares your dreams.

—Muriel Sterling,
Mixing Business with
Pleasure: How to Successfully Balance Business and Love

A
fter their family conference call,
Samantha's mother loaded her up with chicken casserole, tuna surprise and
brownies, gave her an encouraging hug and then sent her home feeling slightly
ill. She hoped the queasiness was due to all the sugar she'd been consuming
lately and not fear of failure.

She went to bed half hoping she could save the day by dreaming
up a fabulous chocolate candy recipe just like Great-grandma Rose had done all
those years ago.

Could she, though? No-o-o. Instead of dreaming up a new recipe
that would put them on the map, she spent her REM sleep hours running from King
Kong–size candy-bar monsters that chased her all over town, trying to squash her
with their big, flat feet. Finally three of them cornered her right in front of
the bank.

“Get her,” growled one, and raised a giant foot.

“No,” she cried. “I'll do anything. Anything!”

So far in her dream she'd appeared to be the last living soul
in Icicle Falls but suddenly the bank door opened and Blake Preston stood in the
doorway dressed in leopard-print boxers. “Did you say you'd do
anything?
” he asked.

“Anything,” she panted. He took her by the arm and pulled her
inside the bank.

There she saw that all the desks had been replaced with round
beds draped in pink satin bedspreads and the ceiling was one gigantic mirror. In
another corner sat a hot tub, bubbling with chocolate.

Blake slipped an arm around her waist. “I've been waiting for
you,” he whispered. He tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and nibbled her
earlobe, turning her insides gooey. “Why don't you lose that dress and join me
in the hot tub?”

“Will you save me from the monsters?” she asked him.

“Of course. That's what men are for, isn't it? Look how Waldo
saved your mother.”

“Aack.” She covered her face with her hands.

Blake started chuckling and she glanced up to see that he'd put
on some sort of Dracula cape and sprouted fangs. And they were dripping
chocolate.

She let out a shriek and ran for the door. But then she caught
sight of a big, brown monster eye peering in at her and dashed blindly in the
other direction with Blake in hot pursuit, his cape flying out behind him.

“Bwa-ha-ha. You know you want me,” he cackled.

“I want to save my company!” she yelled over her shoulder.
“Sign something that guarantees you'll save my company.”

“First let's seal the deal,” he called as he chased her around
a bed. “Come on, Samantha, you know you want to.”

“I shouldn't do this,” she said, and hesitated, which gave him
time to get around the bed and catch her. “It's all right,” he murmured as he
kissed her neck. “Trust me.”

Next thing she knew he was helping her strip off her little
black dress. And lo and behold, she was wearing leopard-print panties and a
matching bra.

“Now, sign this,” he said, and produced some sort of contract
and a pen shaped like a licorice stick. Samantha took it and scrawled her name
across the bottom of the document. “What did I just sign?”

Blake scooped her up in his arms and smiled at her. “You signed
your life away, baby. You sold your company to Madame C.”

The cheap chocolate company in Seattle? “No!” she protested,
and struggled to get free.

“And now nobody needs you anymore.” With her still squirming in
his arms, he flew over to the hot tub and dropped her in. “
Sayonara,
sweet cheeks,” he said, and began pushing her head
down.

She wakened just before she drowned, sitting up with a jerk and
panting, covered in sweat. What kind of sick subconscious did she have, anyway?
She pushed her hair out of her eyes and lay back down with a whimper. Nibs
slowly made his way across the bed to investigate and she drew him close.

“Okay, it was only a dream,” she told herself. And one that had
convinced her that no matter how bad things got, she didn't want to end it all
by drowning herself in chocolate.

* * *

Blake was picking up his midmorning Americano at
Bavarian Brews when he spotted Samantha Sterling coming through the door. She
wore a short, faux-fur-trimmed jacket over jeans that hugged her thighs and tall
black boots—typical Icicle Falls business casual. Except this woman made
business casual look erotic and he had to beat down a surge of red-hot lust. The
memory of her losing her temper at him doused any remaining embers—until an
unbidden thought fueled a fresh fire, suggesting that with so much passion she'd
be a real firecracker in bed.

She saw him and her cheeks, already rosy from the cold,
deepened to red. She shot a sidelong glance at the door but then seemed to think
the better of turning tail and running, instead donned a polite mask and moved
toward the order counter. He smiled at her, determined to meet her halfway. They
lived in the same town. Might as well manage a difficult situation civilly.

“Good morning,” she said, her voice as stiff as her smile.

He held up his cup. “It is—now that I've got my coffee.”

She nodded. “I'm running on empty myself.”

“Can I buy you something?”

She blushed again and dropped her gaze to his chest. “No,
thanks. That is—” she cleared her throat “—about the other day.”

This was awkward. He held up a hand. “Consider it
forgotten.”

Now she did look at him. She had great eyes. And then there was
her mouth. And other parts of her.

“It was very unprofessional of me,” she said, “and I'm not
normally like that.”

“I'm sure you're not,” he agreed. “And believe me, this isn't
any more fun for the bank than it is for you.”

A delicate eyebrow cocked, turning her earnest expression into
something a little more cynical. “It hurts you more than it does me?”

“Well, sort of.” That had sounded stupid and made him look like
a real jerk. This wasn't going well. “I don't like having to be the bad guy,” he
said. Boy, there was an understatement. Why, of all the business choices in the
world, had he chosen banking?

Oh, yeah, he'd wanted to help people fix their money problems,
make their dreams come true, blah, blah. Talk about naive. Banks didn't cure
financial stupidity. They profited from it. He was no hero. He was a
profiteer.

“Then don't be a bad guy,” she urged. “Work with us.”

She looked so helpless, so desperate. He wanted to wrap his
arms around her and tell her he'd come up with some way to save her.

Wait a minute. What was he thinking? He wasn't, of course.
Women like this one, they made a man's brain melt. He gave himself a stern
reminder that Samantha Sterling wasn't the only person in town with financial
needs. He had employees and other bank customers depending on him.

None of his other customers looked like this one.

Oh, no.
He wasn't about to follow
old Arnie right over the cliff and take the bank with him. Yes, legions of men
did dumb things for women. They spent money they didn't have on women, stole for
them, even committed murder for them. He didn't have to join the legions.

“We're making plans for something that could benefit not only
Sweet Dreams but the whole town,” Samantha said earnestly.

There. She'd be fine. He'd known it all along.

This was a town full of fighters. It had been ever since the
shutdown of the lumber mill and the relocation of the railroad left Icicle Falls
in bad straits during the Depression. It'd been almost a ghost town by the
fifties, but the people of Icicle Falls had self-administered CPR and spent the
early sixties transforming their town into an Alpine village and haven for
skiers. Sweet Dreams Chocolate Company was one of their success stories,
weathering the hard times and giving the town a source of pride, and how it was
founded had become a local legend. Like the other residents of Icicle Falls,
Samantha Sterling was a fighter. She'd pull out of this.

“If we could have a little more time,” she added.

That again. So much for the false rosy picture he'd been
painting. His morning coffee began churning up acid in his gut. “I wish I
could,” he said. And he did. No lie.

There went the eyebrow once more. “Do you?”

Yes, damn it.
But what was he
supposed to do, rob the bank for her? Did he look like a money tree with
hundred-dollar bills sprouting out of his ears? “Like I said before—”

“I don't think I want to hear what you said before,” she
snapped. “It was depressing the first time around.”

In under a minute she'd reduced him from six feet two to twelve
inches, the world's smallest man with the world's smallest heart. “If there's
any other way I can help,” he began.

“You're helping enough,” she said coldly, and marched off to
the order counter, her back stiff.

But not her tush. How did women manage to walk like that?
Honky-tonk badonkadonk, mmm-mmm.

Nice, Preston,
he scolded himself.
You're about to take her business and you're thinking
about her butt.
What kind of bastard did that make him? He supposed
his ex-girlfriend would be glad to tell him.

There had been a superficial relationship that was doomed from
the start. After they broke up he'd vowed to be more cautious and not let his
common sense get anesthetized by a pretty face. Or a nice tush.

Talk about doomed relationships…
Samantha
Sterling is not for you.
Still…that didn't mean he couldn't step back
and analyze her situation once again and maybe come to a new conclusion. Really,
was the bank wise to be so hard-nosed to a business that played a vital part in
the local economy?

He tossed his coffee and stepped out into the cold. Instead of
returning to the bank he went down to Riverfront Park. With the exception of a
couple of brave walkers the footpath was deserted. He took out his cell and
dialed Darren Short, his district manager, all the while telling himself that he
was not following Arnie over the cliff.

“Blake, how's it going?” Darren greeted him. “Are you settling
in?”

“Well enough,” Blake said. “But now that I'm here I'm getting a
bigger picture than we had on paper.”

“Oh?” Now Darren sounded cautious.

“Look, I think we need to reevaluate a few of these loans,
especially the one to Sweet Dreams Chocolates.”

“Don't go soft on me now,” Darren said. “You're up there to
stop the hemorrhaging.”

“I know.”

“Then don't let me down. You're our wunderkind and we're
depending on you to turn that branch around and make it an asset for Cascade
Mutual. Hell, the people who work up there are depending on you, too.”

“I have every intention of doing that, but—”

Darren cut him off. “Good. I stuck my neck out for you. Don't
make me regret it.”

“Don't worry, I'm doing my job,” Blake said. “But part of that
job involves evaluating the situation and—”

Darren cut him off again with a brusque, “It's
been
evaluated and I'm sure I don't have to remind you
of bank policy—to which you've already made an exception.”

“I haven't forgotten,” Blake said through gritted teeth.

“I'm glad to hear it. You can give me a full report when we
meet on Friday.”

“I will.” In fact, Darren was going to get a much fuller report
than he expected. One way or another Blake was now determined to make his boss
see reason. He had to. He couldn't take living the rest of his life as the
world's smallest man.

* * *

Samantha had been looking forward to a caramel latte all
morning, but once she had it she took no more than two sips before throwing it
out. She started back to the office but changed direction at the last minute,
instead walking over to Gingerbread Haus, owned by her business buddy Cassandra
Wilkes.

Between her visits to the bakery, and Cass's visits to Sweet
Dreams it was inevitable that the women would become friends. In addition to a
love of food and a passion for business, they also seemed to share a common
snark bone.

Cass was a single mom, now in her early forties, with three
children. She'd come to town a bitter thirty-four-year-old divorcée with barely
a penny to her name and went to work for Dot Morrison, who owned the Breakfast
Haus restaurant. Dot had lent her the money to start her fantasyland bakery
seven years ago and Cass had taken the money and run as fast as she could for
success. She'd never looked back.

Samantha opened the door and was greeted with a rush of warm
air carrying the scent of cinnamon and nutmeg. From behind the glass counter
gingerbread cookies in every imaginable shape beckoned. Cream puff swans swam
inside a refrigerator display case, along with German-style kuchen loaded with
whipped cream. A huge gingerbread castle perched atop the counter and the
shelves behind it displayed other examples of Cass's creativity.

Today she was in the kitchen, covered in flour and rolling out
cookie dough for sugar cookie pizzas, but when she saw Samantha standing at the
counter talking to her oldest daughter, twenty-year-old Danielle, she washed her
hands, slipped off her apron and decided to take a coffee break.

Cass wasn't a bad-looking woman in spite of the fact that she
tried her best to look bad. She never bothered with makeup and when her dark
hair wasn't in a net it was pulled into a sloppy bun. She was thirty pounds
overweight and proud of it, and she rarely dressed up beyond jeans and a
sweatshirt or T-shirt. But it was probably more her attitude than her looks that
kept her single. Where something about Muriel said, “Call me,” Cass sent out
signals that said, “Don't even think about it.”