The Chesapeake Diaries Series (90 page)

“Krista hasn’t noticed this?” Stef checked the progress of the ice-cream maker.

“Krista says that’s the way Paige always acts. That it’s normal behavior for her age group. I tried to tell her that it isn’t normal for Paige—at least, it isn’t when she’s here—but Krista doesn’t believe it. She thinks I’m just saying it because I don’t want to bring her back.”

“Maybe you could request another custody hearing, maybe have Paige testify this time. She didn’t last time, right?”

“I’m thinking that’s where we’re probably headed. I know the courts seem to favor the mother a lot, but I’m just as good a parent as Krista.”

“You’re a terrific parent,” Stef assured him. “The fact that Paige would rather be here with you should mean something to the court.”

“I’ll have to think about it.” He handed back the spoon. “This was really tasty. And brings me to the main reason for my stopping in. Besides congratulating you on your new address, of course.”

“What’s up?” She scooped out a spoonful of ice cream for herself. “Perfect.” She turned off the machine and proceeded to fill a large round cardboard container with the lemony confection.

“Dallas has a birthday coming up. She’s going to be thirty-eight in a couple of weeks.”

“Really? She wears it well. I hope I look that good when I’m her age.” She paused to consider. “Actually, I’d be happy if I looked that good
now
.”

“You’re okay, kid.”

“So what about Dallas’s birthday? You’re going to have a party and want ice cream?”

“Yes, but not just any ice cream,” he told her. “I want something special. You know, she could celebrate anywhere in the world, but she wants to do it here. So I’ve been trying to think of something that we could do for her, something that would be really special and totally St. Dennis.”

“And …?” She gestured for him to continue.

“I want you to make an ice-cream flavor just for her. Make enough for her party, then destroy the recipe and never make it again.”

Steffie stared at him.

“Pretty cool idea, huh?” He grinned.

“You thought of that all by yourself?”

“Yeah.” He nodded, obviously pleased with himself.

“What if I made a special Dallas flavor and she wanted me to make it again? Then what?”

“Then I guess you’d have to do it, but you could only make it for her.” He shook his head. “I can’t think of anything else, Stef. She’s the woman who has everything. She can buy anything she wants.” He lowered his voice to a confessional tone. “I want to propose to her, but I can’t buy a ring as big as what she could buy herself, even if I used my savings plus the money Horace left me.”

“Perhaps we should have beeen discussing why men are so stupid instead of ice cream.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Of course Dallas can afford to buy herself the biggest ring on the planet. She’s a huge movie star and makes millions of dollars every time she makes a film. You’re a veterinarian, you don’t make Hollywood bucks. I’m pretty sure she’s figured that out, and I don’t think she cares a fig about how big a diamond you could buy her. She has plenty of her own diamonds. Maybe what she wants from you is something that money can’t buy.”

“Like what?”

“Besides your undying love—though why she would want
that
is a discussion for another day—maybe something that has a deeper meaning. Something truly special. Something beyond a price tag. Something that no one else has.”

“Like what?” He frowned.

“Like …” She paused to think for a minute, then snapped her fingers when it came to her. “Nana’s wedding ring.”

Grant stared blankly. She waved her hand in front of his face.

“You still in there?” she asked.

“You think she’d want that? Nana’s ring?”

“I think it would mean the world to her. Dallas cares about stuff like that. If she didn’t, she’d be commuting from Hollywood to St. Dennis once a month instead of the other way around. She values family connections, Grant. Hers, yours …” Steffie nodded. “If you’re going to ask her to marry you, I think Nana’s ring is definitely the way to go. Besides, it’s a
gorgeous ring. Platinum is very in these days, and the three stones in the band are quite lovely. And it was Nana’s, so it means something.”

“Hmm. Nana’s ring … I’ll think about it. Maybe I’ll give Mom a call and see what she thinks. Thanks for the suggestion.”

“I live to serve.”

“So what do you think about the ice-cream flavor? Will you do it?”

“I’ll play around and see what I can come up with. I know what flavors she’s partial to,” Stef said thoughtfully, “because she always orders ice cream in the same family. Peach. Lemon. Fruity but not too sweet.”

“Thanks. I know you’ll come up with just the right thing. You’re a gem.” Grant checked the time on the wall clock, then stood to give her a hug. “I gotta get over to the clinic.”

“Here.” She pointed to the back door. “Go out this way. It’s closer to the parking lot.”

She unlocked the door, but then blocked it with her body so he couldn’t leave. “But first—what’s the story with Wade and the little guy who calls him Daddy?”

“I thought maybe you’d forgotten.”

“Not on your life.” She closed the door, relocked it, and made a show of tucking the key into the palm of her hand before making a tightly clenched fist. “Spill.”

“I can’t.”

“What do you mean, you can’t?” She frowned.

“I promised I wouldn’t tell anyone.”

“I’m not anyone,” she reminded him sweetly. “I’m your beloved sister.”

He shook his head. “Sorry. I really mean that. I
am
sorry. But I gave my word.”

“Who’d you give your word to?”

“Dallas,” he told her.

Steffie bit the inside of her lip. “It’s because you’re sleeping with her, isn’t it.” It wasn’t a question.

Grant sighed. “The guy’s entitled to his privacy. If he wants to discuss his private affairs with you—or anyone else—he’ll do it.”

“This isn’t fair. I knew you first. We grew up under the same roof. Your allegiance should be to me.”

“You sound like a petulant eight-year-old.”

Steffie stuck out her tongue.

“Make that a five-year-old.”

Plan B
, Stef told herself.
Maybe I can get Berry to spill over one of my special sundaes …

“And don’t be thinking you’ll trick Miss B into telling you,” he said as if reading her mind. “Her lips are sealed, too.”

“Damn.”

He wrestled the key from her hand and unlocked the door.

“Oh, and let me know what you come up with for Dallas’s birthday flavor.”

Steffie stood in the doorway for a moment watching her brother’s long strides carry him across the lot to his car.

“Damn.” She punched a fist into her other palm. “And I was so close …”

“I suppose haggis is out of the question.”

“What’s that?” Tina poked her head into the back room, where Stef had spent every possible moment that afternoon going over flavor possibilities for Dallas’s birthday ice cream.

“I was just thinking out loud,” Steffie told her.

She was thinking maybe she needed to come up with something that said “Scottish” to tie in with MacGregor, but the only two things that came to mind were haggis and heather. What did heather taste like, anyway?

She searched the shelves for the notebook containing the ice-cream recipes she’d started collecting when she was a teenager, and after spending an afternoon making ice cream with Horace, declared that she was going to make ice cream every day for the rest of her life. Over the years, she’d handwritten recipes she’d begged, borrowed, stolen, and later, made up, into the notebook. Through trial and error, testing and retesting, she’d come up with flavors that were all her own. Stef was the first to admit that some of her early attempts at creativity had in fact been duds. It had taken a while, but she’d developed an uncanny ability to blend flavors that others might not dream of putting together. Her ice cream had been written up in many local and regional periodicals, and her shop had landed on several of the must-see lists that appeared every summer in vacation guides and weekend getaway suggestions.

It had been a long time since she’d faced a challenge like this one, and she was enjoying it. She spent the entire rainy afternoon poring over her notebook, but she had yet to hit the right note.

She barely heard the ringing phone.

“Stef,” Tina told her, “it’s Cam. He wants to know what time to meet you tonight.”

“Sometime between six and seven. Whichever works best for him,” Stef said absently.

After she’d hung up the phone, Tina told her, “Cam said six-thirty is good.”

“Thanks. Any chance you could work an extra hour or two tonight? We shouldn’t be too busy with all this rain, and I’ll be back before it’s time to close.”

Tina nodded, then reminded her, “I’ve got two kids in college. I’ll take all the extra hours I can get.”

Maybe something Scottish wasn’t the way to go, Stef thought as she drove to Olive Street, the ice-cream flavor still on her mind. Maybe something that was more
Dallas
than
MacGregor
.

Maybe something with honey in it …

Yeah, honey seemed right for Dallas. But what with it? Dallas loved peaches. She almost always ordered whatever peach concoction Steffie had on the menu board. But she had the feeling that peach had been overdone that summer. Whatever she came up with for Dallas had to be special, something no one had done before. Well, no one in St. Dennis, anyway.

Yet delicious
, she reminded herself as she parked in her driveway.
It has to be unique and fabulous, like Dallas herself, and incredibly tasty
.

She put Dallas’s birthday ice cream from her mind as she walked from room to room with Cam, both of them taking notes on what they agreed should be done, and in what order.

Cam suggested they start by updating the mechanics—plumbing, electricity, the heating system.

“If you’re going to put in a whole new system”—he looked up from his clipboard—“you might want to think about central air conditioning.”

Stef nodded enthusiastically. “Definitely.”

“And if we’re doing over the plumbing, maybe you
should redo the bathrooms at the same time. You know, new fixtures, new tile. And maybe take some of that space from the back shed area and put in a powder room.”

“Put a detailed estimate in there, and I’ll think about it.”

“Now, in the kitchen, you thinking about ripping out all those old cabinets?”

They stood in the kitchen doorway.

Stef shook her head. “I like the glass doors. I just thought I’d paint them.”

Cam nodded. “I’d do the same. Now, about the floor …”

Two and a half hours later, with a promise from Cam that she’d have the estimate by the weekend, Stef went back up the steps to the second floor. The hall bath had been remodeled about thirty years ago, and was to her eyes, a fright. That one should be completely redone, definitely. But the master bathroom still had the old claw-foot tub and the delicate tiles with embossed flowers, and though a few of the tiles were crazed and others bore signs of age, she liked it just the way it was. Satisfied that she was on the right path where her house was concerned, she went from one room to the next, turning out the lights.

“Good night, house,” she whispered as she locked the front door behind her. “I’ll be back soon.”

Honey
.

She turned on her laptop and scrolled through her findings. There were more kinds than she’d ever imagined: orange blossom, wildflower, mint, Tupelo, lemon, heather, even chestnut and eucalyptus honey.
The possibilities made her head spin. There was blended honey—made from a mixture of honey that originated from different geographic origins, plants, and differing in color and taste. Polyfloral honey was made of the honey from several different flowers. Then there was monofloral honey, the honey from only one flower. And honey could be light in color and lightly flavored, like clover honey, or denser, darker, like buckwheat honey.

And who knew that honey came in so many different forms? There was liquid honey—that was what she was most familiar with—but there was also honey in the comb, as well as liquid honey in the comb, and something called “naturally crystallized honey.” There was whipped honey and organic honey and kosher honey, raw honey and wild honey.

Flavor first, she decided, shaking her head to clear it. That should be the easiest decision.

She spent several hours going from one website to another. The sheer number of honey flavors was mind-boggling. With a groan, she saved what looked like the best locations, closed the laptop, stood, and stretched. She had time to figure it out, and once she did, after a test run or two, making the ice cream shouldn’t be too difficult. She would need a guest count from Grant sooner or later so she’d know how much to make.

She turned off the lights, picked up her bag, and took it and the list she’d made with Cam into her bedroom. She left the list and a pen on her nightstand while she got ready for bed. Once in her oldest, most favorite sleep shirt, she crawled into bed, and reviewed her checklist and began to number things in
order of priority, grateful that she had savings that would cover much of the cost. Where the funds once earmarked for a down payment fell short, she’d do the work herself or she’d postpone it. Hence the need for priorities.

First, of course, was to upgrade the electrical service and replace all the wiring and the outlets. Cam was right about that. It was boring and expensive, but necessary. Next would be the plumbing and replacing any lead pipes. After that, the heating and air-conditioning needed to be addressed. She could be painting the kitchen while all that was going on. A soft, dreamy white for the cabinets and granite for the counters. A sweet buttery yellow for the walls, or a dark cream? Maybe the very palest gray, like she’d seen in a magazine. She sighed with pleasure. She’d thought it would be years before she had such delicious decisions to make.

But should she wait until the floors were done to begin painting?