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Chapter One
Sleet was hittingthe window in silent smudges of half rain, half snow. They were large drops, and Lucy Lovely wished she could hear the satisfying splats on the window. But the windows were soundproof, so all she could do was watch. Even now, hours before the end of her workday, she was a little nervous about the drive home. Nobody seemed to be able to drive in this weather, no matter how many times a year it snowed.
Her phone suddenly shook in her hand, indicating she had a phone call. The sound almost made her jump. She was in her boss’s office, looking out the window because her office didn’t have one. Not that she wasn’t allowed in his office, just that it seemed weird that she was in there when he was gone.
“Lucy,” she answered curtly without looking to see who it was. But it was her personal phone, so it was someone she knew. If she had been answering her work line, she would have been friendly and personable. Today she was happy her boss was out of the office so that she could answer the call. She hated when she had to ignore it. Her friends and family seemed to avoid leaving a voice message, opting instead to send a text. She hated those even more.
“Hey, Lucy, it’s Harper.” Her older sister sounded breathless on the phone. The woman was always doing a dozen things during the day. “I need a big favor.”
Lucy tried not to get her hopes up at the request. Eight months ago, she and Harper had been running a thriving catering business Lucy had loved. But once Harper had married Kane Hawthorn, head of Hawthorn International, she had been able to hire the people she needed to help her. Her younger sister was no longer needed or wanted, it seemed.
“Sure, Harper, what can I help you with?” Lucy kept the excitement from her voice. Maybe today was finally the day Harper would really need her back.
“When you get home, could you take out fifty pounds of chicken from the freezer and put it in the fridge? I’ll swing by and grab it tomorrow morning. I’ve been keeping it there because I’m out of room here. It would help me greatly,” Harper said. “Here” was her new house, the one she shared with her new husband. It was huge and gorgeous. “Home” was the big Victorian they used to live in together, where all her sisters used to live. Now they were mostly gone, married and happily living with their respective husbands.
Watching as the sleet blurred her view of the street below, Lucy tried to keep her voice steady. “Sure, I’ll do it when I get home.”
“Thanks, you’re the best,” Harper said and hung up on her in a rush. Lucy knew how rushed she used to be on days where they had an event. It seemed nothing had changed.
“Bye,” Lucy said out loud to the dead line, not hiding the disappointment in her voice anymore. If she had been so great, she would have been helping her sister, not working here right now.
It had been six months, and she still missed her old life of being a caterer. The sisters had been partners for three years, or Lucy had thought that they had been partners. After a month where Harper was working another job, and Lucy had to take over most of the catering business, Harper had returned with a rich boyfriend and more time and money.
Still, Lucy had thought that they were partners in Lovely Catering. Then during a Saturday morning breakfast with all the sisters, Harper had let Lucy know what she thought of her and who she was in the company.
That morning, their mom, Sera, had been sitting at the island at the house the girls had been raised in, waiting for leftovers from the night before’s catering event to warm up when she said, “There’s a secretary job opening in the building next to me. The HR guy is looking for someone.”
“Who wants to be a secretary?” Lucy’s sister Agatha asked as she ate a freshly made cinnamon roll. Agatha was a bartender when she wanted to be, as well as a full-time artist. Sera was always trying to get her to be more than a bartender but always failed.
“I was thinking you.” Sera herself was waiting on the pork chops that were still warming in the oven.
“Nope,” Agatha responded quickly, as everyone knew she would. Agatha did not work during daytime hours.
Sera gave her a disappointed look and then looked at her other adult daughters. Agatha was out. Mabel taught at the university and was married, so she was out. Harper had just moved in with her billionaire boyfriend, so she didn’t need a second job. Now she could be a full-time caterer. Buzz was still hanging on to her reporting career by her fingernails and wasn’t even there that morning. That left Lucy, the lone one who could possibly take the job. So, all eyes turned to her.
Saying over the bite of cinnamon roll, “Me? No, I can’t be a secretary.”
“Of course you can, Lucy,” Sera stated. She never saw any flaws in her children, even if Lucy’s most obvious flaw for this job was that she could barely read. Having only known she was dyslexic for a few months, she had always just assumed she was too dumb to learn to read, not that she had a disability.
“I really don’t think so,” Lucy argued.
“I can put in a good word. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work,” she said with a smile. Sera was the happiest person Lucy knew.
“I have a job. I work with Harper.” Lucy pointed to the woman busy in the kitchen.
“I can do it without you, Lucy. I don’t need you as much now that I can devote all my time to the business. I love having you help, but it would be a better job than cleaning,” Harper insisted. Up until the week or so before, she had a full-time job and worked with the catering business, but so had Lucy—only hers was a cleaning job at an office near the house. Both had agreed that until the company took off, they would each have a second job. That was until Harper fell for Kaine.
Lucy looked over at her sister, her best friend and co-owner of the business she thought that they both ran. “What?”
“I was thinking that since I asked Kane to cut back, I should too so that we can spend more time together. It’s only seems fair.” Harper shrugged as if they had talked about it.
“I thought we were going to start doing more than one event at a time? Expand?” That had been all Harper could talk about for months.
“I know, but that was before. Now I think we should just concentrate on a few events a week, and I can handle that on my own easily.” Harper took a pan from the oven, the new commercial oven they had just installed to grow their business.
Looking around the room, it didn’t seem like anyone cared that Harper was changing everything in one instant, that they hadn’t discussed it, and Harper was kicking Lucy out.
“But we worked so hard! We got The J!” Lucy said in disbelief. They had only been working the event venue for just over a week. They were finally making a name for themselves in the catering world. Calls had doubled last week, doubled!
