Sweet Hearts (3 page)

“It’ll be nice when I have you
all to myself,” Beau said, watching Kelly get into her car and back out.

“Sorry. I should give her a
little lecture about lecturing us,” Sam said.

“Ah, it’s not that much longer.
She’s a cute kid, and she was so good with Mama.” His voice tightened.

Sam turned to the cupboard to get
plates, giving him a moment as she bustled around with flatware and napkins.

“You know . . . you can move into
my place any day now,” Beau said, coming up behind her as she pulled the food
cartons from the bag and set them on the kitchen table.

She’d taken a few things out to
his big log ranch house, basically an overnight bag and couple of changes of
clothes, but the task of really moving there—packing up her kitchen stuff and
emptying the garage of more than thirty years clutter . . . the task seemed
monumental. Of course, she reminded herself that she didn’t really have to move
absolutely everything right away. Kelly would continue to live in Sam’s house.
She’d even talked about buying the little place, rather than having Sam sell it
to a stranger. So far, it was more speculation than a real plan, and since
their engagement at Christmas Sam had found herself with very few spare minutes
to think about it.

Beau’s hands ran down her arms
and he paused, picking at something that was stuck to the sleeve of her baker’s
jacket.

“Oh gosh, I didn’t even change—”
Sam reached for the dried gob of cake batter on the sleeve. “Let me just—”

“I don’t mind,” Beau said, but
she was already on the way to her bedroom.

“Just find a bottle of wine. I
think there’s white chilling in the fridge or some kind of red in the lower
cupboard. I’ll be right back.”

She kicked aside an empty
cardboard carton, stripped off the baker’s jacket and tossed it into the
hamper, followed by the black slacks that comprised her working wardrobe. She
felt remiss in not making more effort to dress nicely for Beau in the evenings.
Once she’d moved into his place, she resolved, she would be home for dinner
every night and she would be dressed in something that she hadn’t worn all day
long. A vision of the long drive from her shop out to his house flitted through
her mind. No more five-minute commute to her little place. She tamped down the
thought while she pulled a silky blouse from the closet and buttoned it.

She had a pair of amber earrings
that went perfectly with the blouse, and she reached for the carved wooden box
that held her small jewelry collection. She’d come in here when she got home a
few hours ago, purposely handling the box, hoping for some of its energy to
pass on whatever mystical skill she needed to make the perfect chocolates. The
energy was there, but somehow the skill didn’t come. She raised the lid of the
box again. The dull brown wood began to glow slightly at her touch.

She’d still not found the right
moment to tell Beau about its magical powers. When was the right time to tell
your fiancé that you may have inherited abilities from a genuine witch? She had
told him a little of it, back when Bertha Martinez gave her the box. On one of
Beau’s cases, she’d seen invisible fingerprints in a strange plant substance.
But he’d never quite put together the fact that she also sometimes used the
box’s powers to boost her energy, to impart a healing touch, to occasionally
see auras. Now she had to tell him. Before the wedding.

“Whatcha doing in here? Dinner’s
getting cold.” From the doorway, his voice startled her.

She pulled out the amber earrings
and held them up. “Just getting these.”

Sam continued to fret over the
secret she’d withheld from Beau, but he filled the time talking about his day
and satisfying his hearty appetite with gusto. She picked at a drumstick and
nibbled bites of the macaroni salad that she normally loved.

“Beau?” she said as they began
clearing the dishes. He put them into the dishwasher while she scooped coffee
into the filter basket and started the machine. “Beau, there’s something—”

The kitchen phone rang, startling
her. As she reached for it, she noticed Beau eyeing the truffles she’d made
this afternoon. She pulled a small plate from the cupboard and gestured for him
to choose their desserts while she reached for the handset.

It was Delbert Crow, her
contracting officer for her other job. Before Sam had the money to open Sweet’s
Sweets, when baking at home wasn’t providing quite enough income she’d been
forced to look for gainful employment. And that had come in the form of a
contract to take care of properties where owners were in default on their
mortgages. Some special program that involved the Department of Agriculture.
Sam wasn’t too clear on the details of how it worked, only that her duty was to
break into the houses, if necessary, clean them up, maintain the yards, and get
the places ready for sale—basically, jump whenever Delbert called.

She tensed at the sound of his
voice. This was one week when she
really
didn’t need any extra duties.
She caught Beau about ready to pop a whole truffle into his mouth.

“Those are pretty rich,” she
whispered.

“What, Ms Sweet?” Delbert Crow
asked.

“Nothing. Just finishing dinner
here at home.” She’d often wondered if the contracting officer had any sort of
a life. He worked out of an office in Albuquerque and called at the most
inconvenient times. She’d never met him face-to-face but pictured a
curmudgeonly older guy who drew big red X’s on a calendar to mark the countdown
to his retirement. She forced her mind back to what he was saying.

“. . . start the spring
cleaning?”

Her brain raced to catch up.
Something about the unseasonably warm temperatures they’d enjoyed recently. It
happened nearly every February, a few days of such glorious weather that
everything—including a lot of the fruit trees—believed it to be the end of
winter. Then, unfailingly, wham—another stretch of freezing conditions.
Whatever some fat old groundhog back East said didn’t matter, the familiar
pattern was how New Mexico seasons were destined to play out.

“All my properties are securely
winterized, Delbert,” she said. “I check on them every couple of weeks, but
there’s no point in doing any real landscape work or turning the water systems
back on until we know we’re past the hard freezes.”

He grumbled a bit when she reminded
him that she would be on her honeymoon until the end of the month.
And don’t
bother me until then
. But what she said was that she would call him when
she returned.

By the time she’d hung up Beau
had poured mugs of coffee and carried them into the living room, where the TV
set was tuned to college basketball.

“I hope you don’t mind,” he said.
“It’s one of the few broadcast Lobo games I’ve gotten this season.” He scooted
over to made a space for her and tucked his arm around her shoulders when she
sat down.

She nibbled at a truffle and
sipped her coffee. No point in insisting that they talk about what might well
turn into an awkward subject; she put thoughts of the magical wooden box out of
her mind and savored her dessert. Now if she could just figure out how to
re-create Gustav Bobul’s techniques in chocolate.

*

Four-thirty in the morning always
came way too early for Sam. Even with months of practice, there was always that
moment when she felt tempted to roll over and bag everything until nine. It was
the one aspect of opening a pastry shop that she hadn’t really taken into
account. She slapped at the button on her clock to shut off the obnoxious
electronic beep.

Turning on the bedside lamp, she
rubbed at her eyes and wondered how Beau would take to the new routine in his
life. Being a rancher at heart, he probably wouldn’t view the pre-dawn wakening
as anything unusual. She groaned her way across the room and slipped into her
work attire more from habit than by conscious thought. Twenty-five minutes
later she was unlocking the bakery’s back door, switching on lights, and
turning on the large bake oven that would labor all day without complaint.

Mixing and baking the shop’s
usual morning offerings had become second nature. Muffins, scones, crumb cakes
and turnovers came out of the oven as if they’d put themselves there in the
first place. While Sam performed the routine tasks, her mind zipped ahead to
the specialty cake orders for the day. Coming up with a variety of different
proposal cakes for the town’s prospective grooms had proven to be a challenge.
More often than not, the guy placing the order had no clue what he wanted,
other than to wow the girl into saying yes so he would have an unlimited supply
of early morning sex. Most of them simply wanted a fitting accompaniment to the
nice meal, which was then going to be followed by a ring and the question.

She sprinkled a cinnamon brown
sugar mixture over a coffee cake and glanced at the shelves where her food
colors and supplies were organized. One of her customers had dropped a hint
about his girlfriend loving the delicate flower, forget-me-nots, and Sam
already a picture in her head for that design, coating the cake with chocolate
fondant, which would contrast nicely with the pale blue flowers. She put the
coffee cakes in the oven and set the timer.

Another man wanted to go very
traditional with hearts and flowers. Sam envisioned white fondant with very
tiny piped red hearts around the sides and top border—maybe some string work to
make the little hearts flow together, then piped red rosebuds surrounding a
raised dome where he would place his ring. She pulled cake layers from the
freezer and set to work.

The morning drifted by, Sam only
dimly aware of the other girls arriving and starting their duties. Sandy and
Cathy reviewed the orders and went to work baking the correct number of layers
in the correct sizes. Becky oversaw the pastries that came out of the ovens,
helping Jen to keep the display cases filled, coming back to her own favorite
task of making flowers for the cakes. She brought the red rosebuds, sixteen of
the delicate things, out to Sam, who placed them around the base of the
hearts-and-flowers cake.

“Okay, this is ready for
storage,” Sam told Becky, turning to the next order in the stack while her
assistant carried the romantic little cake to the fridge.

“It’s going to get crowded in
there,” Becky said when she returned.

“Be sure we set the smaller cakes
close together at one side. Once we start assembling wedding cakes, we’ll need
all the tall spaces we can create.” Sam pulled out the next of the order
sheets. “At least this cross-shaped one will be gone this afternoon. It takes
up a lot of shelf space.”

Staring at the smooth white cross
with its draping of contrasting red roses and delicate white daisies, Sam
wondered again about Marla Fresques and the family so deeply affected by the
disappearance of the son. The intense impression of sadness surrounding the
woman was understandable but there was something else . . . Bits of Marla’s conversation
filtered back but Sam couldn’t quite pinpoint the sense of mystery surrounding
the woman.

The cross cake reminded Sam that
once she’d promised to deliver it she’d committed to two others, as well. She
would just have to make time for three stops. She turned to the work table
again and set about piping trim on four dozen heart-shaped cookies, finishing
them just as Cathy set three flavors of cupcakes in front of her. Sam sighed.
It was good to be busy.

Busy, right up to the moment that
Sandy, carrying a huge mixing bowl of batter, stumbled in front of Sam and
drenched her with the gooey vanilla substance.

“Sam? I’m so sorry?” Her blond
hair began to work out of its net as the younger woman dropped the bowl and
jostled a row of cakes on the cooling rack.

“Slow down, it’s okay,” Sam said
as she grabbed for the rack and steadied it.

“Oh my god? Oh my god?”

Sam reached out, to keep Sandy
from losing her balance in the slick spill. “Let’s just get this mopped up . .
.”

Becky had set down her pastry bag
and was already reaching for the trash can and a dust pan. Before Sandy could
track the mess any farther around the room, Becky began scooping.

“Cathy, can you take a minute to
run us a pail of water?”

Sam let Becky take charge. She
wiped her feet on the wet mop that Cathy provided, then went to work on her
clothing with paper towels. It wasn’t making much difference.

“I’ll have to go home and
change,” she told the crew. “I can’t very well make deliveries like this.”

Sandy looked like she wanted to
cry. Sam swallowed the impatience in her voice and tried to reassure her that
accidents could happen to anyone. While Becky mopped the floor and Cathy washed
the mixing bowl, Sam retrieved Marla Fresques’s cake from the fridge and loaded
it into her van, along with the others.

“I’m not sure how long the
deliveries will take, but everyone can just keep working on what you’re doing.”
She breathed deeply of the bright outside air when she got to her vehicle.
Sometimes it really was better to put the hectic atmosphere behind her.

After a quick stop at home where
she changed into clean black slacks, a vivid saffron top and black wool jacket,
Sam pulled out the three order forms and checked the addresses, deciding on her
route. One, a torte for a business luncheon, wasn’t really due until the
following day but Sam reasoned that they would rather get it early than late,
and tomorrow’s schedule might bring nearly anything. The place was only a few
blocks off the plaza, so she headed there first. The second was for a child’s
birthday party on the north side of town, and leaving there set her on the path
toward Marla’s home beyond Arroyo Seco.

Passing the turnoff to Beau’s
place—soon to be her home too—she cruised past bare earth fields lying brown in
the February afternoon. Although the sky was brilliant blue, the air felt
chilly and the forecast called for increasing humidity and the inevitable
reversion to winter weather. Beyond the few buildings comprising Arroyo Seco,
the road curved twice and Sam spotted the narrow lane she wanted.