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Cameron looked up from the knob he was twisting. “No leeway?”
The poor man pushed his cap back on his head and exhaled. “Mister, if I had leeway I’d have given it to you the first time you asked. Asking three times ain’t gonna make things any different, okay?”
“Okay.” Cameron sounded as if he’d lost some kind of battle instead of gotten her one hundred dollars more than she expected for Old Ironsides. As a matter of fact, she hadn’t even thought to ask them about buying the old one—she’d completely forgotten it could be sold as scrap. And that made a whole load of sense—the thing weighed a ton and she was pretty sure they sold scrap by the pound. Still, she thought Cameron was coming on a bit strong.
“Did you have to go for the jugular?” she asked the minute the repairman left to get his dolly out of his truck. “It’s an oven, not a peace treaty.”
“It’s not the best deal until the other guy says ‘no.’”
Dinah cut out another cookie. “He said ‘no’ twenty minutes ago.”
“Reluctance is not refusal.” Cameron pulled a towel off her counter and wiped the grease from his hands.
“Is that what you do for a living? Beat other people down until you get what you want? The real estate brokers on television are all smiling guys eager to help families find the home of their dreams. You, you look like you’re going to snarl any second.”
“My job is to get the best deal between buyer and seller. That’s good for everyone.”
“Okay, you’re not the bad guy,” she said, holding up her hand. “You’re the good guy. But you have to admit,” she looked straight at him, “you’re mighty tightly strung for a good guy.”
“You got your oven, didn’t you?”
“Well, yeah, but I didn’t need it to be the high-level negotiation you made it. I mean, I’m grateful, but you can take it down a notch here, okay?”
Cameron fiddled with the knob he’d removed from the oven. Even though he had a game face that could scare those with weaker constitutions, Dinah could tell in his body language that he was giving in. Reminding himself to turn off—or at least tone down—the New York biz demeanor.
“Okay,” he said after a pause.
She had to give him credit; he was still doing pretty good for a guy who’d uprooted himself and dived head-first into a whole new culture. She’d come here of her own free will (which somehow she knew he hadn’t—or thought he hadn’t), and it had still taken her a while to find her footing. The guy hadn’t even been here half a week. As she loaded a second cookie sheet to take upstairs, Dinah said a quick prayer for rest and peace to visit Cameron Rollings—and maybe a little for herself, too.
The conversation lulled while the repairman and his buddy went through the huge task of getting the ancient oven out the bakery’s back door. The thing was a behemoth—it astounded Dinah how big a space it left in the kitchen when they hauled it out. Installation of the new one would begin at nine o’clock tomorrow morning and after that, life might tilt back toward normal. Dinah hoped. Although part of her thought “normal” wasn’t really on the radar anymore with Cameron Rollings next door.
“These are for you. Oven rent.” Dinah appeared at his door thirty minutes later with a batch of macadamia nut white chocolate chip cookies. A stack of large, blueprint-like papers lay strewn out on his kitchen table. The display made it easy to picture him in the corner office of some Manhattan high-rise.
“Thanks,” Cameron said, taking the cookies and putting them next to the papers. He had an elegant look about him that made him seem so foreign here, even in jeans. There was something in the set of his shoulders, the way he carried himself. A sleekness that came from always having the upper hand.
An upper hand she was pretty sure he felt he no longer had. That was pure intuition, but Dinah was a mighty intuitive gal and prided herself on her ability to read people. All that carefully crafted city confidence was coming unraveled in a few corners. She saw it in the way he’d overly defended his negotiation. In how he always tapped his left foot. There was a story there, all right. Even Sandy had alluded as much, although Dinah certainly had no idea what it was.
“I’m warning you,” Dinah pointed to the cookies, “don’t put those within easy reach. If you haven’t eaten lunch, you’re in trouble.”
“I’ll be fine,” he said.
“Willpower is no match for the smell of my macadamia nut white chocolate chip cookies. Don’t get cocky or I might come back up here to find you hiding an empty plate behind your back.”
He didn’t even laugh at the joke. “Baked goods don’t scare me.” He sat back down at the table, all business.
Dinah headed toward the door, but stopped before leaving. “So, why’d you leave New York, anyway?”
That made him look up. She knew it would. “To get away from people asking personal questions.”
If he thought she’d be put off by a few snarky replies, he had a think or two coming. “No, really. What made you come all the way out here?”
Cameron pulled off his glasses and wiped his hands down his face. “Let’s just say ‘employment issues.’”
Dinah leaned against the open door. “You got canned?”
“Are you always this diplomatic?”
“I’ll take that as a yes. I heard some famous guy say all truly innovative people get fired at least once in their careers.”
“That’s not true.”
“How do you know?”
“Let’s just say it was my lack of innovation that…heralded my job change.”
“Meaning?”
He leaned on one elbow. “It was because I wouldn’t get creative that I lost my job. And I didn’t lose it, by the way,” he corrected himself. “I merely agreed with the management that it would be best for all concerned if I left immediately.”
“Honey, in this neck of the woods, that’s called getting fired. Best own up to it now, so you can move on.” She walked back into the apartment despite the dark look he gave her. “What kind of ‘creative,’ anyway? You mean cheating?”
“It has a nicer term in real estate. Alternative accounting. Although that’s not the name I’d put to it. I wouldn’t look the other way when some guy started skimming off the sales when apartment buildings were made into condos. Unfortunately that process has a lot of convenient little places to hide some cheating—if no one is looking. But I was, and when they started really putting the pressure on me, I had no choice but to go to the local authorities. I just couldn’t sit by and watch them steal from people.” He sighed and got up from the table. “But, as you can see, it didn’t exactly go well for me.”
Cameron had told himself over and over that he wouldn’t go into his situation for his first couple of weeks in Kentucky. He had a set of polite but evasive answers for all questions about his sudden move. All of which left his skull in the presence of this relentless redhead. Why on earth was he getting into this with her? Already?
She blinked at him. “You’re a whistle-blower?”
There had to be a more noble term for it than that. If only he could remember it. “Let’s just say I’m a guy paying a very high price for doing the right thing at the wrong time.”
She scratched her chin and he noticed it left a smear of flour on her cheek. Brown eyes were a very normal color—so why did they stand out on a redhead like that? And that red hair—did that come from God or a salon? He looked at her, standing in his kitchen with a bright pink potholder tucked into her back jean pocket, and thought there wasn’t a single subtle thing about this woman. She narrowed her eyes and he wondered if he’d been staring too long. “Are you in the witness protection program or something?” she asked.
“Using my real name? Buying real estate? Here? With loudmouth Aunt Sandy?” There wasn’t a more ridiculous notion in the world. Although, based on the last couple of days, perhaps a phone call to the FBI might be in order. Disappearing into thin air looked like an attractive option at the moment.
“Well, yeah, that’d hardly do the trick, would it?” she laughed. He expected her to have a high, musical laugh, but instead the low notes of her silky chuckle tickled him somewhere under his ribs. “But really, is that what happened? You called the cops on some guys so your own company fired you? Can they do that, legally? I mean, that’s gangster stuff.”
Cameron laughed. “My old boss would tell you that’s simply a highly competitive marketplace. Everybody’s scratching everyone else’s back. Especially in a place like New York.”
She shifted her weight. “Are you sorry you did it?” she asked in a tone so sincere it caught him off guard. “With all it cost you, would you do it again?”
Funny how no one had asked him that before now. Which was odd, because it really was the question of the hour, wasn’t it? Was it all worth the cost? Would he have been able to sleep at night if he’d kept his mouth shut?
“You know,” he said quite honestly, “I thought I’d know that for sure by now.” Again, the prepared “noble guy” answer he’d crafted for the world just wouldn’t come. “I keep waiting for that great big atta boy of peace to come down from God and, well, I’m still waiting.”
A warm tone softened in her eyes. It looked far too much like pity and that sprouted a hard spot in the pit of his stomach. He really didn’t know what he wanted from all this, but he knew for certain he didn’t want pity. And for some reason, especially not from her. He shuffled his papers, suddenly wanting this conversation over.
“This isn’t one of those black-and-white morality tales, Miss Hopkins. There’s no hero, there’s no wicked witch. I made the best choice I could at the time and I’ll just deal with what comes.”
Her face told him his tone had been sharper than he would have liked, but she seemed able to irk him with a single look. Not even his boss…ahem, his old boss—could get to him so quickly.
“Hey, you don’t have to prove anything to me.” She yanked the potholder from her pocket and huffed back toward the door. He slumped in his seat, half glad to be rid of her, half contrite for being such a beast.
“For what it’s worth,” he heard her call out from the hall as she pulled the door shut, “it sounds like you got a lousy deal.”
When the door clicked shut behind her, he tossed his pencil down and thought, here or there?
Dinah stared at the envelope now opened on her bakery’s kitchen counter. Last time I checked, Lord, You were still in control. But can You see how I feel like the world’s ganging up on me? Did she have to send this card? Now?
A perfectly good morning—including the installation of Taste and See’s new oven—had been ruined by a single piece of mail. All her euphoria over having an oven that actually obeyed the temperature she set on the dial—Dinah’s math skills never really were up to speed when it came to compensating for Old Ironsides being 27 degrees too hot—was lost in the contents of one pale blue envelope.
Mom.
Dinah stared at the final two words of the card: “Come home.” Suddenly she was eight years old and being told to come in from the thrilling Jersey seashore waves to wash up for dinner. To Dinah, “come home” never had any of those “welcome back” warm, fuzzy connotations. “Come home” was a command putting an end to anything fun or anything she called her own.
A command, in this particular instance, to “stop all this Kentucky nonsense and come back to your family where you belong.” Dinah poured herself another cup of coffee and winced at the concept. She couldn’t think of any place she felt like she belonged less than that manicured Jersey suburb. “All this Kentucky nonsense” felt more like “home” or “where she belonged” than anything on the East Coast. Back home she was a square peg being continually squashed into a round hole. Here, those things her mother delicately called her “eccentricities” were welcomed, if not outright celebrated. Her craving to do something so pedestrian as baking, something so manual chafed at the academic and scientific values of her parents. Dinah knew God had brought her to Middleburg as sure as she knew anything in this world.
Middleburg is my home, Lord. How will I ever get her to understand that? Why can’t she let me be who You made me to be? Why can’t she let me be, period?
Dinah tucked the offending card into her back pocket as she heard the bakery’s front door chime. She walked out of the kitchen to find Emily Montague coming into the bakery. The woman was grinning from ear to ear and it reminded Dinah of all the reasons she did what she did. She’d been looking forward to this appointment all week—how on earth could she have forgotten it was this morning? Thanks, Lord, for sending me the reminder I needed, Dinah prayed silently as she reached for the file of sketches she had ready for her friend.
“I’m here,” Emily called out. “This is going to be so much fun.”
Dinah motioned to the little corner table that sat by the bakery’s front windows while she reached for a second mug and some hot water. “Tea for you, coffee for me.”
Emily ran the West of Paris bath shop down the street and was in the middle of planning her February wedding to a local horse farmer named Gil Sorrent. Dinah was happy to see her friend so madly in love and even happier to bake her the wedding cake of her dreams. Even if it meant a little extra work around an already-busy time.
“You’re sure you can do this? I just heard you’ll be doing all the cookies for that new fund-raiser.”
Dinah sat upright in her chair and hoisted her coffee mug. “That’s right. You’re looking at the Middleburg Community Fund’s official Cookiegram baker. Complete with a fancy new oven thanks to the untimely but welcome death of Old Ironsides back there.”
“Right,” said Emily, “Sandy Burnside told me your oven died.”
“I choose to believe God was simply better equipping me for the surge of business ahead. And no amount of cookies could put me off baking my friend’s spectacular wedding cake.” Dinah opened the file. “I took a look at the handkerchiefs you showed me and made a few sketches.” Emily loved all things vintage and had given Dinah an assortment of delicate antique handkerchiefs with embroidered pastel borders as motifs to incorporate into the cake decoration. Emily was nothing if not a woman who knew what she wanted and Dinah liked her for that.
“You’re sure you’ll have time?” Emily was also a first-class control freak, although love had softened her edges.
“Honey, for you I’ll make time. You’re my top February priority. Cookies are easy. Wedding cakes—those are the stuff of bakers’ dreams.” All the more reason not to crawl back to New Jersey, Dinah thought as she poured Emily’s tea. You’ve got a bustling bakery business to run.
They chatted through an hour of delightful options—fillings, shapes, colors, patterns—before choosing a design. Dinah was particularly tickled that Emily’s favorite design was her first choice as well: a lovely, delicate trio of ovals—vintage enough to suit Emily’s style, but not so fussy that her fiancé, Gil, would groan. They were a textbook case of opposites attract, those two. Emily was all soft, delicate pastels, whereas Gil was a large, dark, storm cloud of a man—at least before Emily came along. She couldn’t be happier for the pair and baking for their wedding just made the joy that much more complete.
Wedding cakes were—and always had been—all the reasons why Dinah baked, wrapped up in one single confection. Why is it that no one in her family could understand baking’s appeal for her? Why did they consider it some lower form of domestic servitude rather than the gift of beauty and pleasure that it was?
“So you want to tell me what’s up?” Emily said as she closed the lace-covered notebook she used to hold her wedding notes. “Sandy told me she sold the building—your new landlord making you miserable?”
“Well, yes and no. Sorry, have I been that distracted?”
Emily smiled. “Just a bit. Come on, Dinah, what’s up?”
It was no use hiding things from Emily. She was intuitive that way and they’d been good friends practically from Dinah’s first day in Middleburg. “I got another card from my mom today.”
Emily let out a little moan of understanding. “That’s the third one, isn’t it? She really is trying to patch things up between you.”
Dinah pulled the card out from her pocket and slid it across to Emily. “Not that she was ever subtle before, but she’s actually told me to come home in this one.”
Emily quickly scanned the card and then looked up at Dinah. “Okay, but you don’t have to go home. I can’t remember you ever doing as you were told. You disregard Howard on a monthly basis for the fun of it.”
Dinah served on the Middleburg Library board, vice chair to Mayor Howard Epson, a man who believed himself to be the most important person in Middleburg. A man who loved issuing commands that Dinah loved ignoring. Still, the two had managed a begrudging admiration for each other which somehow got the job done. No one else had ever lasted as long as vice chair of the library board under Howard, and Howard was showing no signs of ever resigning any of his many board chairmanships or from his long run as Middleburg’s mayor. “Ruffling Howard’s feathers is fun. Ruffling Mom’s is playing with fire.”
“She’ll come around.” Emily handed back the letter. “Once she understands how happy you are out here, she’ll ease up. Parents want their children to be happy most of all.”
Dinah sighed. “Yeah, but I can’t help thinking something’s up. Something bugs me about all her cards. Something I can’t quite read between the lines yet. She’s not telling me everything.”
“Maybe she’s just afraid to admit how lonely she is without you. Maybe it’s easier for her to believe it’s for your own good to go back to New Jersey when she’d really just like it for her own good.”
Dinah drained her coffee and stuffed the card back into her pocket. “You’re probably right. She’s been busier than a beehive since Dad died, but she’s never remarried. She says she loves her independence, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t lonely. Dad’s been gone almost fifteen years now.” She threw Emily a look. “Maybe she’s just itching for grandchildren and has some dreamy neurosurgical student all lined up for me.”
“Now that,” Emily replied, finishing the last of her tea, “sounds like a mother to me. You could do a lot worse than a dreamy neurosurgeon. But you won’t know unless you talk to her.”
Talk. Emily should know better than to make such a suggestion. There was no talking with Mom. Only listening to her version of how Dinah’s life ought to be. A catalog of suggestions and disappointments in how Dinah chose to spend—Mom barely refrained from using the word “waste”—her fine young life.
“I think you are too smitten with farmer handsome to think clearly at the moment.” Dinah stood up and planted her hands on her hips, diverting the conversation. “You do know the pair of you are probably the only people on the planet who could force me into pastels.” She was a bridesmaid in the wedding, which sported the kind of pale green dresses Dinah would only tolerate for a dear friend. “The universe may shift on its axis to see me in pale mint and an actual ruffle. It could cause a crack in the space–time continuum or something.”
Emily melted into the dreamy-eyed smirk of the soon-to-be-married. “I’ll take that chance. Can you do lunch?”
Chapter Four
There had been days where Cameron craved this kind of solitude. Thirsted for a single uninterrupted hour. Now no phones rang. No one poked a head into his office with a “could you look this over?” interruption. They hadn’t yet installed his cable or Internet connections, and the television only got something like four channels. He was stuck here at his dining room table, within the boring, empty confines of his apartment, facing a to-do list that rivaled only the slowest of weeks in Manhattan. So far he’d gone all five days of the new year without putting on a tie. This should feel like a grand vacation. Instead, the whole morning felt like an odd, unwanted sick day. Only he wasn’t sick. He wasn’t even tired.
What he really felt was an irrational irritation that no one barged through his door every hour to throw in a batch of muffins or poke at a cake pan. It had driven him bonkers while she’d done it, but now he missed the interruptions. As annoying as Dinah Hopkins was, she was the only Middleburg resident he knew other than Aunt Sandy and Uncle George—and he was in no hurry to talk to them at the moment.
It all begged the overwhelming question: What am I doing here?
Cameron almost breathed a sigh of relief when insistent knocking came at his door. He jumped up eagerly to answer it, but his face fell almost immediately.
“Wipe that scowl off your face, son, and go shave.” His aunt Sandy’s tone registered annoyance. Evidently he hadn’t hid his disappointment very well. He’d never admit to anyone that he was hoping Dinah Hopkins was on the other side of that door, especially not to his big-haired blond relative.
Registering what she’d said, Cameron’s hand flew to his chin—he’d forgotten to shave? That would have never happened in New York, even on his worst of days. “Um…why?”
“Because I’m not that bad a choice of company, and you’re coming out to lunch. I’m introducing you around.”
Starved as he was for human contact, that did not sound good. “‘Around’?”
“You’re goin’ to Deacon’s Grill for lunch.” Aunt Sandy pushed past him to drape her leather coat across the back of his couch. “That’s as good as meetin’ everybody in Middleburg. Especially today, when the pies are all fresh. You’ll have a dozen new friends by sundown.”
“Won’t that be swell?” he snapped sarcastically as he headed to the bathroom to find his cordless razor. There was no reason to be as irritated as he was, but he just couldn’t seem to stop it.
Sandy followed him, pushing the bathroom door back open when he tried to shut it. She reached out and grabbed him by the ear like a schoolboy, having to stretch up to cover the foot between them even in her ridiculously high heels. For an absurd second he actually thought she was going to cuff him—and he probably deserved it. Instead, she pulled his forehead down to her height and kissed it. “I know you’re hurtin’, sugar. So I’ll let that slide.” She tugged his head a little, like a mama dog with a puppy by the scruff. It was a weird but completely disarming gesture. “I’m so proud of you for what you’ve done and all you’ve had to put up with. Y’all stood up for what was right just like your mama taught you. Don’t think God wasn’t watching every second.”
How could the woman do that? Make you love her and hate her at the same time? Aunt Sandy was probably right—he needed to get out. He’d come here to launch his own business, to be the kind of resident broker Dinah had mentioned. The happy, straight-dealing kind. The sooner he re-planted himself in this strange little town, the better off he’d be. Find some new friends who didn’t make his brain hurt. At least get a decent meal—the forty-eight-hour onslaught of baking smells gave him a nonstop appetite. If nothing else, this town seemed to have a full supply of great cooking—even if you couldn’t get a single thing delivered.
