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“We don’t do cakes,” Gretchen said with as much professionalism as she could muster. “Jon, have you met William Cooper?”
Jon nodded at him, no extended hand in sight. “Will.”
“Jon.”
Gretchen looked back and forth between the two of them, and she hadn’t been around many dogfights, but this definitely felt like that. The tension rode on the air, and she had no idea why.
Jon exhaled first, his boxy shoulders relaxing. “I told Mrs. Lunt that we don’t do cakes, but she’s insisting you talked to her and said we could.”
“Oh, Wilma Lunt. Right. I did talk to her a week or so ago. I’ll be right out.”
Jon flicked his gaze to Will again. “Okay, and then we need to get started on those mint wafer cookies, because they take forever to set.” He turned and marched away, disappearing around the corner quickly.
Gretchen gaped after him, even when she couldn’t see him. “Does he think I don’t know how long it takes to make the mint wafer cookies? They’remyrecipe.” She looked at Will, completely befuddled. “He’s never acted like that, I swear. He’s a nice guy. Agreatcandy-maker.”
“He likes you,” Will said, the frown deep between his eyes.
Gretchen could not compute. “What?”
“He—likes—you,” Will said just as darkly. “He’s mad you’re going out with me, and finding us kissing?” He shook his head. “He doesn’t like me on principle, and he doesn’t like you bein’ with me.”
Gretchen laughed, but Will did not join in. “That can’t be it,” she said, sudden worry gnawing through her. She couldn’t lose Jon too. If he quit…Gretchen would seriously curl into a ball and sob in the corner.
“That’s it,” Will said. “Should we go eat?”
Gretchen looked around for the bags of food he’d brought, but she didn’t see them. He walked around the corner and returned with them a moment later, all traces of ire gone from his face. “We can sit in my truck for a couple of minutes.”
“All right,” she said, thinking she better go talk to Mrs. Lunt first. “Can you give me a few minutes to talk to Wilma? I’ll be right out, I swear.”
“Sure thing, sweetheart.” He brushed a kiss across her cheek, his gaze catching hers and holding. He didn’t add anything else, at least not verbally. But Gretchen felt the searing heat of what he might’ve said flow all the way down her right leg to her toes, and then jolt up her left side in a powerful wave.
He went through the back door where he’d entered the candy kitchen, and with flames licking through her, she went to talk to Wilma Lunt about baking her a cake.
* * *
Gretchen survivedanother Thursday night with her father. The doctor didn’t have anything new to report, and the medicine her father took couldn’t do more for him than it currently was. They got the same old sandwiches, and she listened to the Oldies station on her radio as she drove him home.
She tempered chocolate and made rose-flavored truffles for a bridal shower that weekend. She skipped church on Sunday and instead, took Aunt Patty to breakfast in a tiny café out in the middle of somewhere that didn’t even have a name. Then they went to Daddy’s for the afternoon, the same as usual.
More weekdays marched by, and the memories of kissing Will so passionately against the wall just inside the back door of the candy kitchen began to fade. She texted with him every day. He called her a time or two, and she returned the favor. They were dating, and she didn’t doubt that they were together.
Life is busyshe told herself more times than she could count.
He’d originally invited her to a Sabbath Day dinner at the farm, but he’d called in the morning and said tempers were high already, and perhaps she should come another time. She’d suggested a dinner date on Wednesday, but then the manager of a huge department store had stopped by five minutes before she was set to leave, and she wanted to hire Gretchen to make her “becoming famous” truffles for a massive sidewalk sale.
Thea’s words, not Gretchen’s, though she was glad someone had told Thea—the general manager at the largest department store in the mall—about her truffles. She suspected Karyn, but her friend wouldn’t admit to it.
No matter who’d told her, Thea would bring in thousands of dollars and get Sweet Water Taffy out into the larger community surrounding Sweet Water Falls, and apparently everyone drove in for the Spring Sidewalk Sale at the beginning of March.
Gretchen felt like she spent a large part of her life behind the wheel of her car, but she wasn’t driving where she wanted to go.
Another Thursday passed, and then February arrived. She’d started thinking about Valentine’s Day weeks ago, because Sweet Water Falls did play home to about fifteen thousand people, many of them men who needed to impress someone on February fourteenth.
She’d been taking special orders for chocolates for weeks, and thankfully the cutoff date was January thirty-first. She couldn’t exactly make the orders early, which made for a very busy February twelfth and thirteenth—and the fourteenth too, for those last day-of pick-up orders. But she did limit what else she stocked the shop with, a trick she’d learned in New Orleans from Malcolm.
She only put out what truffles she’d received orders for, so they could be perfect for Valentine’s Day, and if she had any trouble fulfilling the orders, she could pull from her trays. Jon continued to make his grasshoppers and spiders, which were wildly popular, and she’d managed to hire several new employees to keep the front of the shop running smoothly during this very busy time.
“Gretchen,” Jon said, none of the bite in his tone that he’d used with Will a couple of weeks ago.
