The Chesapeake Diaries Series (126 page)

“Okay.” Jesse stopped raking and waited to see where she was headed with this.

“This firm has served as legal counsel for that family going back over a hundred years.”

“And …” He gestured for her to continue.

“And the girl needs her interests looked after.” She stared a hole right through the center of his face. “Don’t screw it up.”

She went back into the building, the door slamming behind her. It was almost a full minute before Jesse was able to pull his jaw off the ground and follow her.

“What makes you think I’d do anything to screw up Brooke’s will?”

“It’s not just her will. She needs solid counsel.”

“Why do you think I’m not capable of giving her good legal counsel, Violet?” He stared her down. For a moment he felt as if he was staring into the face of a dragon.

“Law of averages, sonny. I’ve known your grandparents all my life, went to school with your grandmother. So I knew your father. I know what he did to this family. How all his nonsense broke his mother’s heart. Sooner or later, blood will tell.”

“My grandfather is satisfied with everything I’ve done since day one. If he had any complaints, I imagine he’d have let me know, but hey, I’m still here.” He paused. “And don’t call me ‘sonny.’ ”

“Right now Curtis doesn’t have anyone else, what with Mike having to take care of poor Andrea day and night. He’s just waiting for the other shoe to
drop.” A mean little smile crossed her face. “We’re all just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Sooner or later, it will.”

She started into her office near the front door.

“Violet, I’m not my father,” Jesse said softly.

“Like I said, blood will tell.” Violet went into her office and started to close the door in his face. At the last minute, she added, “And don’t think I didn’t see you flirting with Brooke, standing out there in the middle of the square, holding up traffic.”

“I wasn’t flirting; she stopped at the stop sign and called me over.”
Why
, he asked himself,
am I bothering to defend myself to this old shrew?
“And even if I had been, what business is it of yours?”

“Like I said, I’ve known her all her life. Her grandmother and I were best friends all through school,” Violet said, as if that explained her interest. “We watch out for each other here.”

Jesse nodded slowly. “This is your way of letting me know I am now, and always will be, an outsider, right?”

“Take it as you see it.” She sniffed pointedly and closed the door.

He went back into his office and closed the file, making a note that the trial would be postponed at the request of defense counsel and that a settlement conference would be held on Tuesday morning. All of which was fine with Jesse, but he would have appreciated it if Violet had given him the opportunity to have had a say in the change. Apparently, over the years, Curtis had given her a certain amount of responsibility when it came to such things, and she assumed that she still had the authority he’d granted her. Jesse’s
first reaction had been to remind her that things had changed and that he wasn’t his grandfather, though he knew she was all too aware of that. Violet kept his calendar much as she had kept his grandfather’s. Was that really such a bad thing? Hadn’t he given the same authority to his secretary back in Ohio?

And just this morning, when he stopped at Cuppachino, hadn’t Grace Sinclair patted him on the back for keeping Violet on, telling him how the older woman had devoted her life to the firm and his grandfather, how she’d lived for her job and taken such pride in being Curtis Enright’s right hand?

Jesse sighed. There was no graceful way to get rid of Violet, and apparently no way to make her like him, or to convince her that he had the right to be there, or to accept him as Curtis’s successor. He understood that none of those things were likely to happen. Which, in itself, was okay; he could be mature and reasonable about the situation, even if Violet couldn’t. After Sophie’s call that morning, he was ready to put a big black
X
on the entire day.

But there’d been those few unexpected moments with Brooke that morning, he reminded himself, so the day hadn’t been a complete wash. There was something about that woman that made him smile, inside and out, and had since the first time he noticed her.

Well, she was hard to miss. To his eye, she was drop-dead gorgeous.

It had been months before that they’d been introduced by Steffie one night at Captain Walt’s. He’d gone there for dinner with Stef and her family, at her mother’s invitation, and on the way out, Brooke, her
brother, Clay, and Wade MacGregor were seated at the bar. It had been obvious to Jesse that there was a strong undercurrent between Stef and Wade, and he hadn’t been at all surprised when the two of them left together, leaving Jesse at the bar in conversation with Brooke. That first conversation, which had started with her asking his advice about her will, had lasted for almost two hours, during which they’d covered everything from sailing (she did, he didn’t) to rock climbing (he did, she didn’t) and the best place in St. Dennis to hear live music (Captain Walt’s on Friday nights). Over the course of those few hours, it was apparent that she was more than just a pretty face. When she spoke, she looked directly into his eyes. When he spoke, she listened, as if what he was saying mattered to her. And she had a knockout laugh. Brooke wasn’t one of those women who covered their mouth when they laughed. Nothing was more irresistible than a beautiful woman with a good sense of humor, and he’d wanted to see more of her.

There had been many times since that first meeting when he’d thought about asking her out, but the word around town was that Brooke had yet to be willing to go on a second date with anyone, and that just didn’t fit into Jesse’s plans. She was the only woman he’d met since he’d been here that he really wanted to get to know—not to just take out occasionally, but to spend time with, see what there could be. Jesse had never been a love-’em-and-leave-’em kind of guy. Life with his father had taught him all he needed to know about playing the field, and he wanted none of it. Since coming to St. Dennis and making a place for
himself there, more and more, he was starting to feel like it might be time to start to settle down.

Jesse knew from that first meeting that he wasn’t interested in being one of Brooke’s onetime dates, that he was going to have to wait it out until she was ready. The same instinct that told him that the time was right for him to come to St. Dennis had been telling him that Brooke was worth waiting for, and at first, he’d been okay with that. Now, however, might be the time to try to speed things up a bit.

Timing, he’d long since come to understand, in life and in love, was everything.

Chapter 5

“Be careful what you wish for. Don’t bite off more than you can chew. Know your limitations,” Brooke muttered as she lined up several dozen cupcakes on the kitchen counter. “Then again, we could counter with ‘Opportunity seldom knocks twice. Opportunities are often disguised as hard work. Luck is the intersection of opportunity and preparation’—or however that one went.”

“Talking to ourselves, now, are we?” Clay leaned upon the doorjamb. “Is this what it’s come to?”

Brooke nodded. “I’ve been reduced to mumbling strings of platitudes.”

“Must be all that flour you’ve been inhaling this week.” He came into the room and surveyed the lines of cupcakes. “How many of these did you make, anyway?”

“Don’t ask me to add numbers together.” She shook her head. “The effort might break me.”

“Should I count them for you?”

“I don’t really want to know. I just want to know when I’m finished.” She measured butter into a bowl, followed it with confectioners’ sugar.

“These can’t all be for the engagement party.”

“These are for Lola’s.” Brooke pointed to the first two dozen on the counter. “And these are for Cuppachino.” She pointed to the pans she’d placed on cooling racks near the stove. “And those are for Scoop.”

“I thought you took cupcakes to Scoop on Wednesday,” he noted.

“They sold out.” She paused and smiled. “The same day. Actually, everyone sold out. Lola, Carlo …”

“Nice.” Clay nodded. “A very nice start to your business.”

“I’m not complaining. I swear I am not. But if I’d had any sense at all, I’d have waited until next week to solicit orders from the local businesses.” She picked up her zester and ran an unpeeled lemon over the top, then tapped the zester on the side of the bowl, sending the little scraps of peel into the butter-and-sugar mix.

“Because of the party.” Clay pulled up a chair at the kitchen table.

“Right. Because of the eight thousand cupcakes I have to make for the party.”

“I thought you said you agreed to make twelve dozen.”

“Right now it seems more like eight thousand. If this keeps up, I’m going to need to buy another oven.”

“Anything I can do to help?”

Brooke considered for a moment. “No, but thanks. I like to do things in order, you know? Frost all the lemons, then the strawberries, and so on for the frostings. Then I like to go back along the lines and decorate.
All the twists of lemon peel, all the bits of coconut, all the little fondant flowers.”

“Yeah, my fondant flowers would never stand up to yours.”

“Go away.” Brooke laughed and picked up her hand mixer. “Anything else before I turn it on?”

“No, I’m good.” He snatched an unfrosted cupcake from the counter and headed for the back door.

“If you hadn’t grabbed one, I’d have thought there was something seriously wrong with you.” She turned on the mixer and drowned out his reply. “Which is why I always bake an extra dozen. I’ll leave them in the fridge. Logan can have one after lunch. You’re still on to bring him home from soccer in the morning?”

“I’ve cleared my schedule for the entire day. I’m at his beck and call, at least until Mom takes over when I leave for the party.”

“Great. Thanks, Clay. I appreciate it.”

“Hey, he’s my favorite kid. We’ll have a great day.”

She frosted and decorated a dozen of each of three flavors—lemon, raspberry, and chocolate—for each of her new local clients. After tucking them into the white pastry boxes she’d picked up that afternoon, she turned her attention to the cupcakes for the party. They were cool enough to frost, but she wanted to wait until tomorrow to add all the finishing touches, so she packed them into a series of large white boxes and left them on the counter.

“Crap,” she said aloud after a glance at the clock. It was almost two
A.M
. Logan had soccer in the morning and she had three delivery stops to make—one before seven. Any thought she’d had of studying tonight was dismissed.

“Tomorrow is another day,” she reminded herself.

She checked the back door to make sure it was locked, pausing for a moment to push aside the curtain to look up at the sky. Wisps of clouds, remnants of the day’s earlier rainstorm, hung low over the back fields, but the moon was visible over the barn, its pale light more dim than luminous. She left the light on over the back porch—her mother was convinced that that alone kept burglars from breaking in at night—and turned off the lights in the kitchen.

She was so tired that she skipped her usual nightly routine and fell face-first onto her bed, so tired that she would be asleep in minutes. Exhaustion directly into sleep was her new game plan to avoid lying awake and thinking about things she didn’t want to think about. Most nights it worked. She figured any morning she woke up and knew she hadn’t spent half the night asking questions that had no answers was going to be a good morning.

I can’t believe how late I am
. Brooke parked in front of Vanessa’s house a full fifteen minutes later than the caterer had told her to be there.
Way to make an impression
.

Deanna Clark was the Eastern Shore’s most sought-after caterer, and she never—but
never
—contracted out any portion of an event. She hadn’t been pleased when she learned that the desserts for this party would be provided by someone other than herself. But since the party was for Dallas MacGregor’s brother and his fiancée, and Dallas personally had given Deanna the news, there’d been no discussion. At least, that
was what Dallas told Brooke, who wondered just how gracious Deanna actually had been. All that really mattered to Brooke was that she’d make the most spectacular array of cupcakes she could, and hoped that Deanna was impressed—if not enough to ask her to work with her on occasion in the future, maybe enough to send a little business to her from time to time. It was a long shot, Brooke knew, but she was back to that opportunity mantra again:
Luck is where opportunity and preparation meet
.

She got out of the car and waved to Jesse, who was jogging on the opposite side of the street. She smoothed her skirt, then opened the hatch of the back of the SUV she’d borrowed from Clay. She slid the large white pastry boxes forward and hesitated, debating on whether or not to stack the smaller ones atop the pile.

Reminding herself that she was late, she piled on the small boxes and took a few steps back. There was no way she could get the hatch closed, but she’d have to come back out for the boxes of trays and cake stands and display racks. Leaving the back of the car open, she stepped up onto the curb, and tripped on the raised root of a nearby oak tree. She lurched forward, but was able to maintain her balance enough that she did not fall, but not enough to keep the three smaller boxes from slipping from the top of the pile and hitting the pavement. The other boxes shifted in her hands.

“Shit!” she yelled.

“Whoa, hold on there.” Jesse grabbed the bottom of the stack to stabilize it.

“Shit. Shit. Shit,” was all Brooke could think to say.

“At least you didn’t drop them all.” Jesse steadied the rest of the boxes.

“I can’t believe this.” Brooke all but wept. “
Damn
it. I knew I shouldn’t have tried to carry them all at the same time.”

She blew out a long frustrated breath, then looked up at Jesse.