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“Every little bit helps,” he retorted. “Publicity is great, even if it’s bad.”
Not for a caterer. She had a small liability policy, but it didn’t cover bad press. Overwhelmed with misery, Bailey pulled off the road and began to cry in earnest.
Giorgio sat there in what she thought was silent sympathy. Until he said, “Here, let me drive. I’ve got a date.”
She raised her tearstained face from the steering wheel. “A date? You were working the party.”
“Yeah. But when it ended early...” He shrugged. “Sorry.”
Sorry about summed it up.
* * *
After a long day of work punctuated hourly by texts from her miserable little sister, Cecily Sterling was standing in line at the Icicle Falls Safeway with her recharge essentials—a pint of mint chocolate chip ice cream and a bag of Cheetos. It seemed everyone else in Icicle Falls had had a long day at work, too, and the store was packed.
She’d already run into Dot Morrison, who’d eyed her purchases and said, “Now, that’s my kind of dinner.”
She’d planned on adding more to her “dinner,” but she’d spotted Luke Goodman, the production manager at her family’s chocolate company, in the cookie department with his daughter, Serena, and had decided to skip the cookies.
Not that she didn’t want to see little Serena or, as Serena would insist, Big Serena now that she’d “graduated” from kindergarten. Serena’s visits to the Sweet Dreams Chocolates office with her grandma gave Cecily her kid fix on a regular basis.
But Serena’s daddy was another matter.
Luke Goodman was a nice guy. He had the husky build of a wrestler (which he’d been in high school), kind blue eyes and a great smile. He was a widower, and he’d been interested in Cecily ever since she’d moved back home to Icicle Falls. The only problem was that she wasn’t interested in him as anything more than a friend.
She should have been. What was wrong with her, anyway? She had such a gift for matching up other people. She’d brought together friends in high school and in college; thanks to her, a lot of weddings had taken place. She’d even been in the matchmaking business, for crying out loud. She could size people up and instinctively know who should be with whom. But when it came to herself she knew nothing. She’d been engaged twice, and each man had turned out to be a loser and a user. Pathetic.
Luke was neither of those, and he wanted her. So why did her stupid hormones do the happy dance every time she got anywhere near Todd Black?
Todd had also been after her ever since she’d moved home. He owned The Man Cave, a seedy tavern at the edge of town, and he was no Luke Goodman. He looked like Johnny Depp’s kid brother, and he was a heartbreak waiting to happen. He had bad boy written all over him, from the double entendres he was so good at throwing Cecily’s way to how he looked at her, as if she were a chocolate bar he’d like to unwrap. Slowly. Luke Goodman was the kind of man who married a girl, but Todd Black was the kind who slept with her and then conveniently forgot to call the next day.
She should have no interest whatsoever in Todd Black. And she certainly should never have agreed to stop by his tavern on Friday night to play pinball when she’d run into him earlier that day at Bavarian Brews.
But he’d caught her in a weak moment. She’d been worried about her younger sister, Bailey, and she’d said yes without thinking. At least that was her excuse. She really couldn’t blame her moment of weakness on preoccupation, though. Insanity was the true culprit. Anytime she was around that man he heated up her hormones and fried her brain. Now she was going to go home and rewire the synapses with junk food and a long bubble bath. She enjoyed making bath salts and bubble bath and could hardly wait to indulge in her latest creation—lavender-vanilla.
She’d barely gotten in line when Cass Wilkes walked up behind her and said hi. “Ice cream—food of the gods.”
Cass was Cecily’s sister Samantha’s BFF, but she’d opened the door of friendship to Cecily, too, and they saw each other every Sunday at Cass’s chick-flick nights and during their monthly book-club meetings.
Cecily smiled, feeling slightly embarrassed. That was both the beauty and the curse of living in a small town. Everyone knew your business. “Not exactly the diet special, is it?”
“No, but I can’t exactly say anything.” Cass held up her shopping basket, which contained a pizza and a two-liter bottle of root beer. “You can see we’re eating well tonight.”
The basket also held a bag of ready-made salad. “It’s not all bad,” Cecily said, pointing to the salad. “And pizza has good things on it.”
“That’s what I keep telling myself. I also keep telling myself that I’m only going to eat the salad and leave the pizza for the kids. But I’m lying.”
“Life’s too short not to eat pizza,” Cecily said with a smile. The smile fell away when her cell phone started singing Bailey’s ringtone, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.”
Bailey’s life had been anything but fun the past couple of days. She had called Cecily the evening of the disastrous party, practically hysterical. They’d pulled in Samantha, who had found Bailey a tough L.A. lawyer, but no legal shark could save her from bad publicity. Of course, the story had made the papers, and all the TV stations had repeatedly run the footage of her van driving away, leaving the scene of the “crime.” Naturally, they’d zoomed in on Sterling Catering painted on the side of the van. Word of mouth had added to the avalanche of bad press. People who’d booked her for their events had been calling right and left and canceling.
Cecily answered, bracing herself for more bad news.
Sure enough. “Have you seen the Star Reporter?”
Oh, no. What now? Cecily turned to the magazine rack near the cash register. There, on the front of the latest popular celebrity news rag, was a picture of Bailey in her white caterer’s coat, standing outside Samba Barrett’s apartment building. She was wearing an expression of shock, along with her chef’s toque, her big hazel eyes wide and her mouth dangling open. She looked more confused than crazy. In fact, she looked like the village idiot. The bold print above the picture proclaimed, Samba Barrett Poisoned? Crazy Caterer Tries to Take Out the Competition.
“Oh, no.” Cecily dropped her junk food on the checkout conveyor belt and grabbed the magazine.
Cass, standing right next to her, took one, too, muttering, “Those creeps.”
“This is the worst yet. I’m ruined!” Bailey wailed.
“That headline doesn’t make sense. What competition are they talking about?” Cecily asked, trying to balance her cell phone, calm her sister and turn to the article all at the same time.
“They’re saying I had a thing for Rory Rourke, which is ridiculous. I don’t even know Rory Rourke. I didn’t know any of those people!”
During the past forty-eight hours, Bailey’s moods had swung between grim resignation and wild hysteria. It wasn’t hard to tell what mode she was in now. “This is a gossip rag,” Cecily reminded her. “You can’t believe what you read in papers like this. Nobody takes this stuff seriously.”
“My business is trashed. My life is trashed. I don’t even have money to pay for the lawyer.”
“Samantha and I told you not to worry about that,” Cecily told her. “It’s being taken care of.” News had traveled as fast around Icicle Falls as it had in L.A., and Dot Morrison and Pat Wilder, two of the town’s older businesswomen, had already set up a special bank account for Bailey’s defense fund.
Not that she was going to need it. Anyone with eyes could see the actress had pulled a cheap publicity stunt. The lawyer was on top of things, and Cecily was sure that before the month was over, Bailey would be out from under this. She said as much, hoping to calm her sister.
“It’s just...this article,” Bailey said between sobs. “I’m nothing like that. And I worked so hard to build my business. Now it’s...gone.”
Cecily wished she could reassure her, but in Hollywood, where making an impression was everything, well, it didn’t look good for Sterling Catering. “Come home,” she said.
“I can’t.”
Cecily knew how hard it was to give up a dream. She also knew how hard it was to come full circle, right back to where you started. She’d done it herself. It had turned out to be exactly what she needed, and she was much happier working in the family business than she’d been trying to match up gold diggers with shallow men who wanted Playboy bunnies.
“Think about it,” she urged. “Everyone here loves you.”
“That’s for sure,” Cass said over her shoulder.
“I can’t even leave my apartment. There are reporters hiding in the bushes.”
“They won’t hide there forever. And I can guarantee they won’t follow you here,” Cecily said. At least she hoped they wouldn’t. “The story will die down as soon as the next manufactured scandal hits. Which, I predict, will be sometime within the next seventy-two hours.”
“I asked her if she had any allergies,” Bailey said. “I have all kinds of menus to choose from, and she chose that one.”
“Don’t worry. This will all work out,” Cecily promised.
It was as if Bailey hadn’t heard. “I’m ruined,” she said again.
“Only temporarily.”
“Well, how long is temporary?” Bailey cried.
That was something for which Cecily had no answer.
* * *
Ruined, Bailey thought miserably as she ended the call with her sister. She’d gone to the hospital to see Samba, thinking maybe they could talk, that she could explain why her food couldn’t possibly have made the actress sick. She’d even brought flowers. She’d encountered a hired guard at the door of Samba’s private room, and all he’d allowed in had been the flowers, along with the get-well card on which Bailey had written, I hope you feel better soon. But now she hoped Samba contracted terminal acne.
Well, okay, not really. She liked to think she was better than that.
Samba was out of the hospital the next day, shopping on Rodeo Drive, pretending to look annoyed when photographers took her picture. Of course, she’d given a quote to any paper that was interested. “I really don’t know what happened.”
Bailey knew what had happened. She’d been duped.
“All I want is to put this behind me,” Samba said, posing like a tragic heroine.
Sure, now that she’d milked all the free publicity she could out of ruining Bailey. Rumor had it that Samba had been offered a part in a pilot for a new TV series, some sort of female detective show. (That was rich. Samba Barrett, who had just faked her own food poisoning, solving crimes.)
Meanwhile, Bailey couldn’t even get a job catering to street people. She’d been dubbed “the party poisoner,” and not only had she lost business, but she was also the butt of everyone’s jokes. One late-night TV host had cracked that he’d planned to hire a caterer for his birthday party but changed his mind since he wanted to live to see his next birthday. Ha-ha.
She’d finally given a quote to the Star Reporter, a diplomatic but strongly worded quote, insisting, “I don’t know what happened to Samba, but I know it wasn’t my food that made her sick. No one else at that party got ill.”
The paper had run with it, and the next headline proclaimed, Caterer Claims Samba Barrett Faked Food Poisoning. Great. That was almost as good for business as the original incident.
This will all work out, she told herself. Just like Cecily had said. When life gives you lemons make lemonade. Or eat chocolate. Except her chocolate stash was gone. Okay, she needed a drink.
She went to her fridge to pull out a Coke. None left. The refrigerator was a giant, near-empty cave, containing a bag with a few spinach leaves, half a tomato, some canned olives and pickles and a dab of Gruyère. At some point she was going to have to go out and get groceries.
Not today, though—at least, not in broad daylight. She’d have to wait until nightfall.
Around ten-thirty, she deemed it safe to leave her apartment. No one jumped up out of the bushes as she dashed to her car, and she convinced herself that she was being paranoid.
She drove to the supermarket; once inside, she hurried through the store, picking up produce, milk and juice. No photographer dogged her, and she let out her breath.
But when Bailey went to pay, the checker kept studying her, all the while trying to appear as if she wasn’t. She could almost hear the checker thinking, Why does this woman look so familiar?
The customer behind her had a copy of the Star Reporter and was eyeballing her, too.
Now another shopper joined them, and he, also, began staring inquisitively.
It was all Bailey could do not to pull out her hair and shriek. Instead, she paid for her groceries and said, “I didn’t poison Samba Barrett. She just got sick. Okay?” She didn’t stick around to find out whether it was okay or not. She grabbed her bag and left.
As the doors swooshed open, she heard one of the gawkers say, “Do you think she did?”
She rushed to her car, tripped in the process and dropped her grocery bag. A head of cabbage went rolling, and she dived to rescue it. As she plopped it back in the bag, she looked over her shoulder to check whether anyone had seen her clumsy moment.
That was when she spotted the man with the camera lurking on the other side of the parking lot. Great. She could see the headlines now. Crazy Caterer Cracks Up at Supermarket.
It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. She hadn’t done anything to anybody. And these buzzards knew it. Frustration and anger finally took over, and she did something she’d never done in her life. She lifted her hand and saluted the rat across the lot with one finger, and it wasn’t her index finger. There. That said it all.
That would probably say it all in the next issue of the Star Reporter, too.
But it didn’t make her feel any better. With a sob, she put her groceries in the car and drove away. How long was this going to go on? How long were people going to look at her as if she were some kind of sicko?
How long was her money going to last?
Chapter Two (#u41e1ead5-8ff4-59a5-a7f7-76ae0b53d248)
Not for the first time, Cecily asked herself what she was doing as she walked into the murky interior of The Man Cave on a lovely spring Friday evening. It was, of course, a rhetorical question. She knew what she was doing here. She’d been moving in this direction ever since she’d hit town and encountered Todd Black. It had been only a matter of time until she gave in and agreed to do more than trade insults with him.
It was eight o’clock, and the place was full, mostly with men. The mechanic from Swede’s gas station was playing pool with Billy Williams and one of Billy’s cowboy pals, Jinx Woeburn, as well as a skinny woman with long, stringy hair wearing Daisy Duke shorts, cowgirl boots and a tight tank top. A couple of bikers and their babes stood in a corner, playing darts and drinking beer. The rest of The Man Cave’s patrons were lined up along the bar, draped over drinks, watching a baseball game on the TV that hung over the array of booze bottles. They ranged in age from men in their twenties to grizzled old guys looking to get out of the house for a while. The vibe here sure was different from the bar at Zelda’s. That place buzzed with success and hospitality. The Man Cave was more of an “Aw, what the hell” kind of retreat.
The clack of pool balls acted as a rhythm section for Trace Adkins’s “Honky Tonk Badonkadonk,” which was blasting from speakers in all four corners of the tavern, and that competed with the noise of the baseball game playing on the TV. The place smelled musty, as if no one had thrown open a door or a window in months. The pinball machine, Todd’s excuse for luring her over, sat in the far corner with an out-of-order sign on it. So much for his invitation to come in and show him what sort of pinball wizard she was.
She felt several pairs of male eyes on her as she walked in. This was nothing new. She’d always attracted male attention. But here, in this tavern, she felt as if she were the one in the tight tank top instead of a conservative pink sweater and loose-fitting jeans. This place, it was just so...ugh.
Todd had been behind the bar helping his bartender, Pete, but at the sight of her he came around and started moving toward her. He was dressed casually in jeans, loafers and a black T-shirt. It wasn’t so tight it looked spray-painted on like the one Bill Will was wearing, but it clung enough to let a girl know he was sporting some splendid pecs beneath it.
He smiled at her, sending a jolt through her that ran all the way from her bra to her panties. What was it about this man? Did he have pheromone overload?
She shouldn’t have come. If he kissed her, that would be it; she was bound to do something stupid and get her heart broken for the third time.
Well, she had a great excuse to leave. There was no sense staying if the pinball machine was out of order.
“You’re looking especially pretty tonight,” he greeted her, taking in her pink sweater. “Why do I look at you and think cupcakes?”
She motioned to his black T-shirt. “And why do I look at you and think devil’s food?”
Of course, he wasn’t insulted. Her comment served only to produce a grin on that handsome face of his.
She didn’t give him a chance to say any more. “I might as well go. Your pinball machine is broken.”
“No, it’s not. I just put the sign up there to keep everybody else off it.”
She shook her head. “You could’ve put up a sign that said Reserved.”
One dark eyebrow shot up. “What does this look like, Schwangau?”
Good point. The Man Cave was hardly an upscale restaurant.
He nodded toward the bar. “What would you like to drink?”
“Coke.” If she were at Zelda’s she’d have indulged in some girlie drink like a Chocolate Kiss or a huckleberry martini, but his place was no Zelda’s. Anyway, it was a given that an evening of verbal sparring with Todd Black would require her brain to be in top working order. She wasn’t about to cloud it with alcohol.
“Rum and Coke?”
“Just Coke.”
“You live dangerously, Cecily Sterling.” He held out some coins and said, “Go on over and warm up. I’ll get the Cokes.”
