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So how, she wondered as she stared at her naked left hand and the pale void where her wedding ring had once been, had so much of the big stuff gone wrong?
Chapter Two
The next morning, it was astounding that Gil Sorrent didn’t break a case of soap dishes when he stormed into the shop. He stalked up to the counter and slammed down plastic bag. “What’s in there?” he demanded, pointing to the bag. It was a wonder half the store wasn’t rocking in his wake.
Emily shot up from her desk by the window. “Pardon?”
Sorrent’s voice deepened to the near-growl she remembered from their last town-hall clash. The man had a fierce temper—one she hadn’t expected to ignite just by talking about the designs of streetlights. Was it that strange an idea that things should look nice as well as functional? Everyone else on the town council had understood that it would take a few extra dollars to get lights that didn’t look as if they belonged on the freeway. He was always going on about improving this or upgrading that—she’d have thought he’d be happy to be purchasing new streetlights for Ballad Road. He didn’t look happy then, and he sure didn’t look happy now. “I want to know what’s in that soap you gave us, and I’m not leaving until you tell me every last ingredient, you hear?”
It took Emily a moment to realize what he was talking about. Then she remembered her spontaneous act yesterday. The Pirate Soap. “Gracious. Did your friend have some kind of allergic reaction? Believe me, I’ll do whatever I can—”
“Oh, he had a reaction all right, but it wasn’t the itchy kind. Now I mean it, tell me what’s in there.”
It was at this point that Emily noticed a row of faces pressed up against her shop window—a collection of tough-looking young men, noses flattened on the glass. She panicked for a brief moment, until she realized they were Sorrent’s farmhands. Gil Sorrent ran Homestretch Farm, a correctional program for young-adult offenders. Every year he brought on a new batch of troubled young men, usually in their late teens or early twenties, to work the horse farm and put their lives back in order. She’d seen them around town every so often accompanied by Gil or Ethan—the foreman often in charge of the farm’s young residents—but they’d never had cause to come into her shop. She’d never met Ethan before yesterday. Awful as it was to say, she didn’t mind their absence. They looked…well, they looked mean.
But they didn’t look that mean at the moment. In fact, they looked downright odd. “Well,” she stammered, thinking that Sorrent and “his guys,” as he called them, were probably not people you wanted to upset. “I don’t make the soap but I can surely find out the ingredients.”
“Find out what’s in there, and quick.” Catching that Emily was glancing over his shoulder, Gil spun around to face the window. The line of rugged faces scattered like mice. She thought she could hear his teeth grind from across the counter.
She looked at the bar, wet and slightly muddy in a plastic bag. “Well, why don’t we start by looking at the label.” She started to head off to the table where the other Pirate Soap bars were displayed.
“Got it right here.” He produced the other bar, still in its label, inside another plastic bag. He held it with two fingers as if it were something nasty he’d found on the floor of his barn. “Ain’t nothin’ I can see out of the ordinary, but according to Ethan, it ain’t no ordinary soap.” Red crawled up his neck and threatened to flush his face. He shifted his weight and scratched his chin. He hadn’t yet shaved this morning.
“Why would you say that?”
Sorrent shuffled and stole another look at the window. His guys had returned and were now peering into the shop harder than ever.
“Should I tell them to come in?” Emily offered, thinking anything she could do to ease the situation might be a good start.
“Not on your life!” he shot back furiously.
“Okay, well, perhaps you should tell me what happened,” she said as calmly as possible. Behind him, one man was pressing an ear to the glass as if to eavesdrop. It was the strangest thing she’d seen in ages.
“Ethan—you remember Ethan from yesterday?” he began, “Well, he’s not exactly a ladies’ man. Not a fan of clean and shiny, if you know what I mean. But he got caught in a greased chain on the tractor—well, skip the details on that part. Anyways, he got stuck having to use my shower. I tossed him that soap you gave us yesterday cuz I didn’t want him griming up my own soap cuz he’s filthy and…well, that night…” The man flushed crimson.
“And?” Emily said. “What? Hives? A rash of some sort?”
Gil Sorrent leaned over the counter. “Women. They were all over him like flies on honey. As if he were the last man on earth. And he claims it’s the soap.” Sorrent lowered his voice even further. “Now, I wasn’t there, but you and I both know women do not flock to a man just because of the way he smells, no matter what cologne ads promise. But I had to near wrestle Ethan to get him to give me back that bar. He thinks the soap got him all that attention and those guys out there, they are more than ready to believe him.” He pushed the second bar across the counter. “I can’t have this kind of thing going on at my farm. So prove to me so’s I can prove to Ethan there’s nothin’ in there to make my foreman such a center of attention.”
“Well, of course it couldn’t be the soap.” She pulled the unused bar from the bag and scanned the rustic packaging. The usual soap and scent ingredients were listed. The wrapper was a vintage style, with a line drawing of ships and waves—nothing to suggest large-scale female attraction would result from use. No enticing claims, no warning, nothing really out of the ordinary except the Bible verse that had drawn her to Edmundson’s Soaps in the first place. Every Edmundson soap had a Bible verse on the label.
She pulled open the wrapper.
Sorrent grew still. The young men at the window pressed closer. At the other window on the opposite side of the door, three women now peered inside, curious as to what the fuss was all about.
It was a rather unimpressive little bar—nothing dashing or flashy. Hand-shaped, a bit lumpy and an inconsistent oatmeal-beige color. The Edmundsons probably gave it such a colorful name because it was such a bland-looking soap.
She stared at it, looking for some clue.
He stared at her, agitated.
Because she couldn’t think of anything else to do, she sniffed it.
Sorrent held his breath and nearly gripped the counter edge.
She sniffed again. Then a third time. It did smell wonderful. No single ingredient came to mind, but a cascade of scents left her with a single impression of strength, charisma and—though she couldn’t explain it—security. It wasn’t as though any of these characteristics had a scent. You would never say a man smelled charismatic or secure. Yet, those were the exact words that came to mind when she inhaled. Emily took a small knife from a drawer in her counter and sliced off a corner of the bar. The inside looked the same as the bland outside. No surprises.
She picked the soap back up and inhaled again. It was extraordinarily pleasant, she had to admit. But it was a bar of soap.
She took the corner she’d just cut off and rubbed it against the inside of her wrist. No tingle, no itch, no sudden burning desire to find male company. Well, she was already in male company, and he wasn’t a hideous-looking man, but…
Emily shook her head, rewrapped the soap and returned it to the plastic bag. “I haven’t got an explanation for you.”
“I saw your face when you smelled it.” Emily blushed and started to defend herself, but Sorrent pointed at her. “It’s just soap, for crying out loud. You and I both know soap can’t do that. Make sure no bar of that stuff finds its way back onto my farm. Got it?” Without another word, he turned around and walked out of the shop, the posse of young men scattering to avoid him.
Emily huffed at the door as it swung shut. Not hideous-looking, but a far cry from good-natured. He can’t tell me what to do. He’s getting all angry over nothing, besides. She bent over to toss the cut bar of soap into the trash bin. The way he’s acting, you’d think I’d suddenly become a popular shopping destination for tough-guy farmhands. Honestly.
When she looked up again, however, Sorrent’s guys had scrambled back to her window. After a split-second hesitation, the entire group lurched through her door, nearly knocking each other over to get to her counter first. Emily tried to tell herself there was no cause for alarm, but they were an alarming-looking bunch, all mobbed together like that. And Ethan was nowhere in sight. One was as tall as Gil and twice as heavy, looking as if he could be a bodyguard or a professional wrestler. Another peered at her with squinted eyes, and she could see he was missing a tooth when he smiled—it wasn’t exactly the kind of smile anyone would describe as “warm and friendly,” either. Another had thick dark hair and spoke with a silky, accented voice. The group contained every version of “tough guy” that Emily could imagine. And this was definitely one of those situations where the whole was scarier than the sum of its parts.
“I’ll give you ten dollars for that soap,” offered the one with the missing tooth as he pointed to the first wet bar in its plastic bag still on the counter.
“Forget him, I’ll give you twenty. You got more?”
“If you can hold it till Wednesday, I’ll give you thirty!” a third one cried.
Emily placed her hands over the bar and slid it protectively closer to her side of the counter. The men had been in such a hurry to get to her that the whole lot of them had walked clean past the dozen bars of Pirate Soap on the table behind them.
What in the world is going on here?
Slowly, with all the authority she could muster, she raised her eyes to meet the crowd. “Did you know your boss just told me not to sell you any of this soap?”
A chorus of disappointed moans met her declaration.
“Come on now, ma’am. You don’t have to do what he says. He’s not your boss.”
“I could have fifty dollars here by tomorrow morning, lady,” offered a small, dark-haired teenager as he pushed his way from the back of the crowd. He had black, beady eyes and a rodent-like grin. “Hey, where else you gonna get fifty dollars for a bar of soap?”
Emily stared at her sudden customers and told herself to remain calm. When she’d asked God to send her a way to make her next loan payment, this wasn’t what she’d had in mind. She was thinking more along the lines of a busload of wealthy tourists. Now she found herself holding soap she hadn’t ordered with scary-looking men fighting to give her more money than she’d ever made on even her best ladies’ soaps.
Maybe she should get another cup of coffee under her belt before she prayed over her to-do list in the mornings.
“Now gentlemen, let’s just slow down a minute and—”
“You all better get your sorry backsides out of this shop this instant!” yelled a booming voice from the door. The group turned to find a furious Gil Sorrent stalking toward them. He didn’t have to finish the threat. They were scrambling out of the store as fast as they had entered it. The beady-eyed one turned to mouth Fifty silently to her, throwing her a wink, besides.
The mob sent the soap-dish table teetering in their wake, and Sorrent was barely able to get his hand under a dish as it toppled off the table. He set it back, muttered something under his breath, gave Emily a quick glare and left the store without so much as a goodbye.
Chapter Three
Soap.
Gil slammed his truck into third gear. Soap is supposed to be home and laundry and Sunday-morning-go-to-churchness. Who knows what they put in it these days? Fragrance. That place smelled like a funeral parlor there was so much “fragrance” in it. Made it hard to breathe, much less think clearly enough to survive his last two visits to West of Paris. He’d sent his guys straight home in the van with Ethan and finished up the rest of his errands in a sour mood after his last visit to the shop.
Shop. That’s the trouble right there, Gil thought. Give me a store every time. A man can trust a store. A store’s where you go in, get what you need, pick up a few tidbits and go home with a fair deal. A shop, well, a shop’s where ladies meander and everything costs too much and you come home with far more than you bargained for. After all, no one goes “storing.”
And everyone knows what happens when women go “shopping.”
Gil had never met a man who “shopped.” And he never wanted to.
He hadn’t asked for this. He’d never have even set foot in the shop if he weren’t so pressed for time. Why hadn’t he just gone online and sent something to his niece last week? Now he owned broken soap dishes he’d never use, just because Ethan had knocked him into them. Not that he’d ever be seen with the likes of those kind of soap dishes in his bathroom. He hadn’t picked up the bars of Lord Edmund’s Pirate Voodoo Soap or whatever it was called—she’d put them in his bag. Without his permission. Gil was a man who cleaned up his own messes, but they were usually his messes, not catastrophes someone else had created.
“Mud.” Gil looked his basset hound straight in one bloodshot eye. “Never shop.”
Mud swung his enormous head away from Gil and looked out the passenger-side window, as if he found the very word repulsive.
“Good dog.”
Gil was leaning over to scratch Mud’s ears when his cell phone went off.
“What!” he barked into the phone, still angry.
“Hey, you’re the one who told me to call you. Somebody just kick you or something?” Mac’s voice was full of humor rather than anger. “So how was your niece’s thing last night? Did you smile nicely and play well with the others?”
Gil really wasn’t in the mood for Mac’s sarcasm. “Enough, Mac.”
“Okay, fine. Congratulate me.”
Gil blew out a breath. “Congratulations, Mr. MacCarthy. Why?”
“We got on the agenda.”
“Well, why didn’t you say that in the first place? That is great news, Mac.” Gil’s mood changed instantly with the welcome news. Middleburg had been taking the term rustic to new heights, and if he and Mac didn’t steer their vision toward the future, there wouldn’t be much left to visit, no matter how charming. People in Middleburg were fond of the status quo. Very fond. And Emily Montague and her ilk were all too happy to keep it that way. A slot on the next town council agenda was the first step in what was sure to be a long uphill battle to shove Middleburg into the present (much less the future), but Gil was determined to do what he could. “What else is on the docket that night? Anything that could knock us off?”
Gil heard Mac shuffle a few papers. “Civic stuff, some planning for the Character Day speeches at the high school, a couple of scholarship awards and, uh, your favorite folks, the preservation task force. Something about banning ATM machines on Ballad Road. Gotta love that.”
“We’re done for, Mud,” Gil grumbled to the dog as he finished up his call and stuffed his cell phone back in his shirt pocket. “And it ain’t even noon yet.”
Sandy Burnside pushed through the Middleburg Community Church lobby to find Emily after Sunday service. “Can you do lunch?” she asked, folding the church bulletin and slipping it into her enormous silver handbag. “We’ve got some stuff to go over for town council. Nice job on the ATM thing, by the way.”
“Sure, I’ll do lunch, but don’t give me all the credit on the ATM. It wasn’t that hard to write a letter,” Emily countered, waving away the woman’s enthusiasm. “How tough can it be to talk the rest of our town council into loving Ballad Road the way it is?”
Ballad Road was part of what made Middleburg so wonderful. It was the kind of main street everyone wished they grew up on—a stretch of unique shops and friendly places to eat where everybody knew everyone else. There wasn’t a chain store in sight, everyone decorated to the nines for Christmas and they closed the street down for a festival on the Fourth of July. You didn’t run errands on Ballad Road, you visited friends while you just happened to get things done. Sure, it wasn’t that big—sometimes Emily had to send customers into Lexington for unusual requests—and it had its share of quirks, but Emily loved every stretch of that eight-block sidewalk. Like the other shopkeepers along Ballad Road, she felt like more of a curator than a merchant. They were protectors of a small-town atmosphere that was almost nonexistent in other parts of the world.
Sandy, even though her clothing shops weren’t on Ballad Road, was just as vigilant a soldier in the fight to keep Middleburg’s rural charms. Which made her a leader in the fight against Mayor Howard Epson and his ATM machines. “Don’t you go and sell yourself short. Howard was near drooling over that dumb idea to put cash machines all over downtown. Must’ve gotten the idea from some ad in the back of one of his fi-nancial—” she rolled her eyes and emphasized the first syllable in financial “—magazines. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s already made a list of what he’s gonna do with his profits. And I’m pretty sure ‘tithe it to the Good Lord’ ain’t on the list.”
Emily pulled her jacket from the church’s coat rack. “The trouble is you’ve asked for things before. This was just arguing against something, even if it was Howard’s plan. That’s easier—it doesn’t cost anything.” She looked at Sandy, who was sharp as a tack and probably already knew why they’d met with a bit of success. “Anyone could have figured it out.”
Sandy grinned as she reached over and plucked her brown leather coat off a hanger on the other side of the rack. “Not anyone. You. I could learn a thing or two from you.”
Funny, I’d always thought it the other way around. Emily looked at her friend as they began the walk into town. Sandy owned three of the largest apparel stores in the county. Though small in stature, Sandy was a bubbly, larger-than-life character. A blizzard of blond hair, bright-pink fingernails and four-inch heels on even her most casual days, you could see Sandy coming a mile off. Sandy had considerable clout in both Middleburg and its city neighbor Lexington, but she never threw her weight around. No, Sandy sort of skipped through life, scattering her influence here and there as if she were a flower girl and life was her own personal, neverending church aisle. If you could dream up a one-woman cheering section, it’d be Sandy.
“You’ll be right beside me when we propose that ordinance,” Emily reminded her. “I need you and your sparkling personality to keep Howard and his buddies from just looking at the world with dollar signs for eyeballs.”
“Nonsense.” Sandy narrowed one eye and leaned in close. “They may be prickly, but they smell a skunk quick as everyone else. We don’t need to look like a shopping mall to draw folks—Middleburg’s best show will always be on four legs.”
Emily laughed at Sandy’s wild imagery. “Maybe, but you’ve always liked the show that walks on two legs and carries a full shopping bag.”
“Well, that kind of filly’s nice, too. I like our town just the way it is. I say we’ve always been able to keep ’em pretty and happy and comin’ back for more.”
And that, Emily thought, was a perfect description of Sandy: Pretty and happy and comin’ back for more.
“Speakin’ of fillies,” Sandy said as they settled into a table at a nearby coffee shop, “I solved your little mystery.” Sandy had social connections unachievable by mere mortals. She knew everyone, everyone knew her and Emily had yet to meet anyone who said they didn’t like Sandy. Lots of people thought her a bit…much, but they still liked her. If Emily needed anyone to do anything, chances were Sandy knew someone for the job. She was the heartbeat of Middleburg, and quite possibly of the state. “The bit about Ethan Travers,” she offered, “and his sudden popularity with the ladies?”
“You did?”
“You’re talking about Gil Sorrent’s foreman, right? Skinny, bushy hair, kinda wiry lookin’?”
“Yes, that’s him.”
“Well, women were going after him at the interfaith church social Friday night. If you’d been there, you would have been able to see it for yourself.”
Emily, a fan of church but not of church socials, chose to ignore “matchmaker” Sandy’s gentle rebuke and keep to the subject at hand. “I know that part, but I need to know why. Ethan doesn’t strike me as a real ladies’ man.”
Sandy started laughing. “No, ma’am, he ain’t. It took a little doin’, but I have figured out why he was suddenly the center of attention. And I guarantee it don’t have a thing to do with soap.” Sandy rested her elbow on the table and leaned in. “Doc Walsh’s wife told me Thursday afternoon at the Women’s Guild meeting that she heard Ethan Travers has a birthmark shaped like the state of Texas on the back of his neck.”
Odd as it was, Emily didn’t see how it explained things.
“And Barbie Jean Blabbermouth was sitting beside me when she said it.”
Now that explained a lot. Barbara Jean Millhouse, aka Barbie Jean Blabbermouth, was so fond of gossip she was practically her own communications monopoly. Anything uttered in Barbara Jean’s vicinity was instantly public and often widely exaggerated. Given Barbara Jean’s talents, Emily was surprised she hadn’t heard that Ethan had a birthmark in the shape of Elvis and that he could make it gyrate on command.
Barbara Jean also had four daughters. Four single daughters, because none of them could keep their mouths shut any better than their mother and far too many Middleburg men had learned that the hard way.
“What did Ethan think? That he’d stumbled onto some kind of love potion? That man’s smarter than that. He knows there’s no such thing as love soap.”
“Actually,” Emily corrected, “there is. There’s also joy, and peace, and patience, kindness and the rest of the fruits of the spirit—you know, from the passage in Galatians? I just bought a line of soaps from a company called Edmundsons because I thought it was such a clever idea. Edmundsons is also the company that makes Lord Edmund’s Pirate Soap, which is what Ethan thinks made him a ladies’ man.”
“Spiffy marketing. Sounds like just the sort of thing you’d carry in that pretty shop of yours. But mercy, someone needs to set that Ethan straight about what soap can and cannot do.”
“Oh, believe you me, I think Gil Sorrent is doing that. In spades. Along with every last one of those guys up on Homestretch Farm.”
“Speaking of Sorrent, we’re gonna have a hard time convincing him Middleburg doesn’t need a herd of ATM machines. Him and his electronic gadgets.”
“He’ll be a harder sell, but maybe he’ll see it our way.”
Sandy stirred her coffee. “Let’s hope. But Emily, I didn’t bring you to lunch just to gab about money machines. I’ve got somethin’ serious to ask you.”
Emily looked at her friend. “Everything okay with you?”
