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Before he could protest, the small—and fast—woman was up and hurrying across the parking lot.
He wondered if he should call a cab. He was a Christian—had been raised in church and given his life to God at an early age. True, he’d been busy lately and hadn’t spent as much time as he should with God—sometimes life seemed to get in his way. But this evening it hadn’t. This evening, for the first time, he’d met someone who was a breath of fresh air. He wouldn’t want to compromise her by going to her house. Small-town gossip could be cruel.
Shaking his head, he thought again how unique it was for someone to be as concerned about him as this woman was. He thought about her offer. What would it hurt to go home with her, let her treat his foot and spend a few hours just chatting? The woman was harmless enough. He grinned at that thought.
His foot certainly didn’t agree with him.
And it was nice that she didn’t know who he was. No bowing and scraping from her, or worse, freezing up and refusing to talk to him because he was rich. He just didn’t want that again, he thought wearily.
As he waited, he pulled his coat closer against the cold air that blew through the sleeping oak trees that dotted the church’s landscaped grounds. Asleep for the winter, they had no leaves or greenery. Instead, their brown branches were coated with a layer of fine white snow. As the wind blew, those branches smashed together, sending a thin misting of snow over everything.
A few had icicles hanging from them, just as the building did. Lights dotted the huge lawn, shining in different directions, several lighting up the manger scene that sat on the corner of the lot.
The rest of the lights allowed shadows to be cast. He could hear music inside, as the service was already under way.
He heard the approaching noise of a vehicle traveling over the snow-and sand-covered street. As the engine’s hum grew louder, it pulled Richard’s attention toward the street.
The woman drove up to the curb in a tiny red pickup truck that had seen better days. She waved at him, her engaging smile shining across the short distance. Any thoughts he’d had about the past pain and disillusionment of life and people fled at the sight of that sweet, gentle expression that graced her face. He stood, transfixed by that smile. Unfortunately, reality intruded in the form of pain, and, to his utter embarrassment, he had to hop as best he could toward the truck.
Chuckling, the woman came forward. “I hate to say this, but have you ever played hopscotch?”
Grinning, he shook his head.
“Well,” she said, pulling open the creaking rusty door, “sometimes the players are wonderful at it, other times they wobble around, right?” Her eyes twinkling, she continued, “You look like the wobbling ones at the moment.”
He chuckled. “I do, do I?”
She grinned cheekily. “By the way, I live two blocks away. Normally I don’t bring my truck, but I had to make a pickup on the way and so I drove. Oh,” she added, giving him a very stern warning glance. “I don’t normally pick up strangers either. I’m not alone where I’m going.”
“An injured man doesn’t have much room to argue, madam, what form of transportation he takes. And rest assured, you will be safe with me.”
Glancing worriedly at his foot she nibbled her lip again. “We’ll get you right over to my house and get something on that.”
If she was relieved at his words, he didn’t see it in her expression. Her attention had returned strictly to the injury.
Helping him into the vehicle, she waited until he was snug with his seat belt fastened before closing the door.
He adjusted the tan belted coat and then, in as dignified a manner as possible, folded his black nylon sock and slipped it into the empty charcoal loafer in his lap.
Samantha jumped into the truck, pausing to tuck the bottom of her blue dress well in from the closing door. She adjusted the beat-up gray jacket she wore over it and then fastened her seat belt. In moments she made a U-turn in the middle of the vacant street and took off the way she’d come. The tiny vehicle was toasty warm, the vents chugging out an air current strong enough to ruffle his hair. He felt his cheeks thaw and begin to heat.
A trash bag hung over the standard stick shift, and between the driver and passenger windshield was a sticker of a cartoon character. Stickers and trash cans. Two things not in his expensive car or any car he’d driven in for quite a while.
“It’s quiet this time of the evening,” he murmured over the engine’s noise.
“Everyone is in church. Hill Creek, Texas, may only run twenty thousand or so, including the outlying areas, but most everyone attends church.”
They did pass a few cars, belying Samantha’s claim. He wondered if she exaggerated everything, and decided that must be part of her outgoing personality. She hadn’t exaggerated where she lived, though, he realized when she turned two blocks later.
As he watched her drive down the street, he opened his mouth to mention the new building two blocks down where the street dead-ended into Hill Creek’s new mall, which this farming community certainly was proud of. Dunnington’s was very visible; the main store was surrounded by large gray sections of wall that blocked the current entrance while engineers and such worked on the inside of the store.
She had an excellent view of what was going on at the construction site, he realized. Hoping to gauge her reaction to the mention of his business, maybe find out just what she thought about someone like him in general, he opened his mouth to ask her about Dunnington’s.
The woman beat him to that. “Over here is where I live and over there is the devil’s playground.”
Blinking, Richard stared at where she pointed and then looked back to her. Though she pointed at the construction site down at the mall, she had to be talking about the hardware store or perhaps something he hadn’t seen. Words like that from such a sweet young woman were so out of character.
“Devil’s playground?” he asked, certain the astonishment could be heard in his voice. He was lucky that he could get that out through his wind-pipe. It’d nearly closed at her words. She pointed at the mall again.
He simply shook his head, certain he’d missed something.
“Yeah. Well, that’s what some of us have taken to calling it. It’s rather bad of me, I know. But they’re bringing in a store that is going to be my competition.”
Then he saw what she meant. “You own a candy store?” he asked, taking in the tiny gingerbread-like building that advertised homemade confections as well as “lunch items.”
She turned in beside the shop and then slipped the brake on before she opened her door. She slid out and came around to the other side of the vehicle. “Yeah. I sure do. And that new company that faces this way from the mall?” She gestured down the street. “It’s here to put me out of business.”
Before he could reply, Samantha slipped her arm around him and led him toward the side door of the building. Unlocking it, she guided him inside.
Dark it might be, but he recognized well the smell of a confectioner’s shop. How could he not? He’d been raised in one himself.
But unfortunately, he was afraid that when this woman, this angel of mercy and simple beauty found out who he was, she was going to break his other foot before booting him right out the front door. How could he go about telling her that her conqueror and savior was the devil that was going to put her out of business?
Chapter Two
“I really don’t want to put you out.”
Samantha smiled at the man. How could she not? He was gorgeous. He was polite. He was gentle. She could go on and on with the impression he’d made on her, but didn’t.
“You aren’t putting me out at all.”
She wondered what the man thought of her candy shop. She paused here at the front end of the store where they had entered. A tiny light on the counter illuminated the front of the shop at night, allowing Mr. Moore to see around him.
She tried to see The Candy Shoppe through a stranger’s eyes. A black and white picture of her grandparents, from the newspaper, when they opened the shop aeons ago, hung on the wall to her right. Various articles surrounded it. The announcement about adding lunchtime meals was beside those, a testament to her needing to add more to keep the store open and draw in more people.
On the other wall were professional pictures of candy and flowers hanging in a gilded frame. Wainscoting climbed halfway up the wall. Above it was a soft pastel wallpaper of blue, pink, yellow and green. Old-fashioned wrought-iron tables, in various pastel shades, dotted the sturdy wood floor. Of course, behind the counter the floor became cement.
Oh, the memories. Some of her best times had been in this shop with her grandmother—getting to help mix the candy, playing ballerina while Granny cleaned up at night.
Memories to fill the places that should have been made with parents who were absent most of her childhood. Especially her father.
“Nice,” the man murmured.
Jolted into action by the deep soft voice, Samantha moved to the end of the counter and lifted part of the Formica-covered countertop.
Richard hobbled through it.
Samantha waited until he was through before slipping her arm back around him.
He fit her perfectly, she thought, as she tried to help him limp through the public area and into the back communal living room.
“What happened!” Angela McCade, sitting on the sofa, book in her lap, jumped up from her seat.
“Meet Angela, one of my boarders,” Samantha said. “This is Richard Moore,” Samantha said to Angela, who came forward to help.
“Nice to meet you,” Richard said, and Samantha thought again what a wonderful voice he had.
She helped him get seated on her sofa. “Well,” she breathed out, tired from trying to help the huge man. “Welcome to my home.” It was nearly a question.
Richard put her instantly at ease. “It’s beautiful.”
Samantha felt herself blushing. He looked right at home in her living room, she thought. She couldn’t believe her reaction to him. He was too handsome and too charming.
She was in so much trouble.
She had better keep her mind on other things.
“What happened to your ankle?” Angela asked.
“I’ll be right back,” Samantha murmured to Mr. Moore, sitting on the overstuffed sofa, his shoe and sock lying next to him. “Angie, why don’t you help me?”
She turned and headed toward the back room, past the old elevator that led up to her grandmother’s extra rooms, where Samantha had lived for several years. She crossed the cement floor to the freezer located in a small storeroom near the back door. Angela was right on her heels, her long golden-brown hair flopping in a ponytail.
When they were out of earshot, Angela asked, “Where’d you get the knight in shining armor?” Her light blue eyes flashed with curiosity as she waited for Samantha to explain.
Samantha shook her head at her young friend. “I didn’t ‘get’ him anywhere. And though I will agree he certainly has knight qualities—” like being the most gorgeous man she’d ever met…she allowed her smile to fade “—I’m afraid he didn’t rescue me. Exactly.”
At the last word Angela groaned. “What did you do this time?”
“Hey, it’s not always my fault,” Samantha protested, hunting through the dim supply room’s shelves until she found the ice pack. Going to the huge steel freezer, she pulled it open and patiently filled the bag. Unfortunately, Angela knew her too well. When Angela simply stood there, her arms crossed, Samantha sighed. “Okay. Okay. I had forgotten my purse in the truck and was in a hurry to get it because I hadn’t locked the doors.”
“You did that to his foot?” Angela exclaimed. Angela had many sounds, good and bad. This one was definitely chastising in its own way, with a hint of I knew it added in for good measure.
Samantha simply nodded. At only twenty-two Angela had the ability to make the older Samantha feel like a little kid. “It was an accident.”
“You were worried about today, weren’t you?” Angela asked, referring to a meeting they’d had earlier to discuss the store’s condition.
Samantha sighed. “Maybe a bit distracted.”
Angela reached out and touched Samantha’s arm. “Don’t be. The business hasn’t failed yet. We still have Valentine’s Day to pull it out of the red.”
“But we didn’t at Christmastime,” she said quietly.
They’d been through so much together in the past five years. Angela had come to work for her when she was seventeen and had worked her way through college in this shop while pursuing her veterinarian degree. She was Sam’s assistant manager and definitely someone she confided in.
Since her grandmother’s first major stroke fifteen years ago, Samantha had been struggling to make a success of this store. Her mother hadn’t wanted anything to do with it—until her grandmother became an invalid. And then she only wanted it for the money she could milk out of it for her drinking habit. That had ended five years ago when her mother ran off with some trucker passing through town. Her mother died a month later in an accident. Unlike her mother, Samantha loved the store. She could remember the excitement of standing on a footstool so she could reach the cabinets to help stir the fudge, learning how to tell by smell and feel if the confections were just right. Fifteen years she’d worked to keep the store running. Everyone in the area knew and loved the candy she made. But new people were moving in, new stores, new competition that had the money to put into advertising and mass marketing of their goods. New malls were opening, like the one out on the edge of town. A tricounty area endeavor, this mall was going to revive all of the nearby towns and give people a place to go other than the bigger cities, which were located as close as a couple of hours from here.
“Maybe our Christmas sales weren’t the best, but I bet that store down the street isn’t going to be open by Valentine’s Day. They still have too much work to do. So that means we still have a chance to turn this place around.”
“You’ve been talking to my father,” Samantha said curtly. Her father wasn’t around much, but whenever he had a job in town, he made sure to stop by, or to pump Angela for information. And Angela always imparted the information that Samantha’s father passed on to her.
Angela shrugged. “I was at the Mexican restaurant and he happened to be there too, and I asked him about Dunnington’s.”
Her father had worked on many projects at the mall since it’d gone up this year. Samantha didn’t need her father’s ill-timed advice when she was struggling for her very livelihood.
“I’m only concerned about the store,” Angela said softly to her boss.
Lately Samantha simply wanted to give up and say God had forsaken her. Why had she struggled so hard with this store, only to see it sinking now? Putting her father to the back of her mind, she concentrated instead on what Angela had said about Valentine’s Day.
“I don’t know, Angie. I’m not sure I even have enough money to keep us afloat until February. I do know it’s going to take a miracle to keep this place open, though.”
“It’s all Dunnington’s fault,” Angela said now.
Ten years ago Dunnington’s Incorporated had decided to leave the shores of Ireland and the surrounding area and travel West. Landing in America like the pilgrims of so long ago, Dunnington’s had forged ahead to explore the new country and stake its claim. In a short time it had opened its first overseas store in New York City, and the previously unknown company had been an instant success. The ability to walk in and get whatever one wanted from whatever part of the world one wanted had intrigued the public as much as the way Dunnington’s advertised its store.
“They certainly haven’t helped, especially with their ad campaign,” Samantha admitted, thinking about how smart they’d been with their commercials, and how much money and time they devoted to advertising.
The commercial she most remembered was their first one, which had actually been one of the original commercials from Ireland. It opened with a young man dressed in a kilt, walking out, bagpipes in hand. He ambled across a grassy knoll with a loch in the background. A soft wind blew, whipping at the edge of his red, yellow and green kilt, causing the white shirt to ripple across his body as he walked. And he played a beautiful old love song—“Greensleeves.” Then others appeared in the background, in the slight fog that blew as they walked, and the young man let go of the pipe and began to sing in a gentle Irish brogue.
Dunnington’s had been smart, all right. Its commercial could sell anything.
“Still, you have to admit, though they had a great campaign, they didn’t have any stores here,” Samantha added. “So, that isn’t the root of our problems.”
Finally, Angela spoke. “I guess you don’t want Uncle Mitch to run them out of town?” she quipped.
Samantha laughed, though it was tinged with a bit of melancholy. “I don’t think that falls within the sheriff’s job, Angie,” she said wryly.
Angela shrugged. “Well, God can work bigger miracles than the luck of that Irishman can boast stores.”
Samantha nodded. “Anyway,” she said, dragging her friend back to the present, “I don’t want to rehash anything more about that nightmare down the street and how it’s going to affect our business.”
She took a deep calming breath.
“Here.” She shoved the ice pack at Angela. “Go put this on our guest’s foot while I make him up some hot chocolate. How’s Granny?” she asked as she closed the freezer and turned toward the kitchen. Angela blocked her way.
“Granny’s fine. She’s finally asleep. But I want to hear the rest of this before I go,” she protested, not moving aside to allow Samantha to pass.
At least she wasn’t rehashing their financial state, Samantha thought. So, she answered quickly, hoping to put it to rest. “I ran the man over. I hurt him and offered him a place to get some treatment since he wouldn’t go to the hospital and is new to town.”
“You ran him over? In the truck?”
Samantha frowned. “No, I ran into him and knocked him down.”
“He’s new to town?” Angela asked.
Samantha sighed. “Yes. He’s new here. Got in last night,” Samantha finally said, staring at Angela and waiting.
“You certainly learned a lot about him in a short time,” Angela said, lifting her eyebrows.
