Bitter Sweet (5 page)

Beau would be home tonight and she
couldn’t greet him as an aching old bag of bones who was working herself to
death.

Her gaze traveled to her dresser
where her jewelry box sat, that strange looking carved hunk of wood. Bertha
Martinez, the woman who had given it to her, promised Sam it was a gift meant
for her, something she could use when help was most needed. The woman had
promptly died five minutes after handing the box to Sam. The very first time
she’d opened the box something strange happened—an electric-like jolt, a flash
of insight—and from that time on, Sam’s life changed in ways she’d never
dreamed.

She stared at its ugly façade—the
unevenly carved quilted pattern, the nasty-looking yellowish stain, the small
cabochon stones set lopsidedly at each X intersection in the carved surface.
Homely and lonesome, it sat like the skinny girl at the prom with braces on her
teeth and a too-large dress from the thrift store. Sam reached for it, almost
as if she could comfort the poor, lonely thing.

Instead, it comforted her. The
wooden box began to warm her hands and the yellowish surface glowed, rich and
golden. The small stones shone red, green and blue, sparkling as Sam ran her
hands over them. The tension drained from her spine, the aches from her legs.

She’d promised herself that she wouldn’t
become addicted to using the box’s powers. She couldn’t bail herself out of
every tough spot by taking on its energy. Well, actually she could. But the
idea frightened her. Despite trying, what she couldn’t seem to do was to get
rid of it. And that was the scary part.

The box became too warm and she
pulled her hands away from it.

Okay, this gift was given to
me so I could help others. And what’s more important to a bride than her
wedding cake? Well, a lot of other things
should
be more important, but
to those young women who come into my shop with their hearts full of dreams and
their heads full of wedding plans . . . This is what I have to do . . . but
only today
.

A hot shower, a quick fluff of
her short, graying hair and Sam was out the door. Stars filled the black sky
and she breathed deeply of the cool air. With no traffic she arrived at the
bakery in under ten minutes. Determined to make the most of her mystical energy
boost, she preheated the oven and pulled orders from the basket on her desk.

By the time Becky arrived at six,
Sam had completed half the orders and all of the morning’s breakfast pastries
for the displays out front. Becky stared at the loaded worktable.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Sam told her
assistant. “That plus a lot of coffee.”

Neither claim was strictly true
but it was safer than revealing the powers of the magical wooden box. Only Beau
knew that part of the story.

Becky began crafting sugar
flowers with a vengeance while Sam carried trays of muffins and éclairs out to
the display shelves in the store. Her cell phone buzzed deep in her pocket and
she pulled it out. Delbert Crow. Again. Did the man never sleep?

She let it go to voice mail,
determined to speak with Marshall Gray and get some answers before trying to
make more excuses to Delbert. She’d left two messages for the husband and
wasn’t a hundred percent sure that she even had a valid number for him. She
reached below the sales counter and pulled out the telephone directory,
reaching an amazingly perky receptionist at Casa Serenita, considering that the
sun was barely over the horizon yet. She gave minimal explanation, asking
simply that Mr. Gray be told that he needed to call her the next time he
visited his wife.

With the kitchen in good shape
for the moment, Sam set up the beverage bar with two pots of her signature
blend coffee, plus an assortment of teas and a variety of sweeteners and
creamers for the first customers who would start arriving in the next twenty
minutes or so. Jen arrived to take over the front and Sam lost herself once
again in her favorite part of the business, the creation of beautiful pastries.

“Sam?” Jen stepped into the
kitchen, keeping her voice low. “Want a little break? There’s a really cute guy
here who says he’s an old friend.”

Sam glanced up at the kitchen
clock and realized that it was well after noon. She washed her hands and
stepped out to the sales room.

“Samantha! How great to see you!”
Derek Sanchez greeted her with a smile and a hug.

She’d last seen him as a young
man and was surprised to note strands of gray at his temples.

The son of her former boss from
her days at The Sanchez Agency when Kelly was still a kid, Derek spoke with his
typical salesman ebullience. The small insurance firm had been founded by
Derek’s father Michael, but when the elder man died, Derek couldn’t resist a
buyout offer from a big national firm and Sam didn’t like the pace and
corporate attitude the new management brought to the game. Derek, on the other
hand, thrived on that hustle-bustle and the last she’d heard he had moved up to
a corporate-level position in some major city—she just couldn’t remember which.

“Great to see you too, Derek. Did
Jen offer you some coffee?”

“She did. And it’s great.” He
motioned toward one of the bistro tables where a steaming cup waited for him to
return. “Can you sit a minute?”

She almost pleaded her way out of
it but a sudden thought came to her. “Sure. I’d love to take a break.”

He chatted on about how great
life was in San Francisco while she made herself a cup of tea and answered questions
over her shoulder about the local scene. When she sat across from him, she
brought up what was really on her mind.

“I ran into a lady the other day
who said she used to be in insurance here in town but I can’t place her. Maybe
you’d remember—her name is Sadie Gray.”

His eyebrows pulled together
above the strong bridge of his nose. “Gray. Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“Oh, wait—Gray is a new married
name for her. Her first husband’s name was Joe. Unfortunately, I don’t know
their last name.”

“Joe and Sadie? Well, it’s got to
be the Wilsons. My gosh, they were like grandparents to me. My dad worked in
Joe’s agency when he first got into the business.” He sipped at his coffee.
“When Dad branched off to start his own agency, I suppose they must have been
somewhat hurt about it, but they never said a word. Always wished him well. At
least, as far as I know. I was probably in junior high when all that happened.
Man, I remember Sunday pot roast dinners at their house. Sadie was a heck of a
cook.”

Sam gave him a minute to
reminisce.

“You said you ran into her
recently? And she’s remarried—wow. I heard about Joe passing away, but that was
years ago. At least Sadie was left financially comfortable. One thing about
insurance guys—their own policies are always up to date.”

“Sadie’s in a nursing home,
Derek. Dementia.”

“Oh, man, that’s rough. She was
sharp as a tack when I knew her. Believe me, I got caught with my hand in the
cookie jar at her house so many times, I swore she had eyes in the back of her
head. A kid could pull
nothing
over on that lady.” He chuckled at the
memory.

“I’m trying to save her home from
foreclosure. I just don’t understand how that came about. I really need to get
in touch with her husband and get the payments up to date. I mean, surely from
what you’ve said it’s not a lack of money. I’m guessing she just began losing
track of things.”

He nodded slowly. “Probably so.
It’s really sad. I’d like to go by and see her if you can give me the name of
the place.”

Sam grabbed a business card and
wrote the information on the back. “If you should happen to run into Marshall
Gray there, please have him call me.”

Derek assured her that he would.
She watched him get into a rented Lincoln and drive away.

Jen stared out the window, a
little starry-eyed.

“He’s as gay as they come, girl,
and last I heard his longtime partner was still around.” Sam patted Jen’s
shoulder. “I better get back to those wedding cakes.”

Her energy began to flag by
mid-afternoon and Becky insisted she go home and rest. Jen told her the air conditioning
repair guy had called and was on his way over, and she assured Sam that she and
Becky could handle the shop the rest of the day.

“Go,” Becky insisted. “Beau gets
back tonight, right? Well, you might want to have a nap and some time to fancy
up a little. Is he taking you out to dinner?”

“I should cook at home,” Sam
said. “He’s been eating in restaurants all week.”

Great intentions, but when she
began a mental inventory of her freezer contents and couldn’t think of a single
thing to make, she detoured to the supermarket and picked up a deli pasta sauce
that was actually better than her homemade. With some fresh garlic bread and a
salad, it ought to please him. Considering that their phone conversations had
increasingly taken a sexy turn, it didn’t seem likely that he would be too
picky about the meal anyway.

Her cell phone rang while she was
standing in the checkout line.

“Hey
darlin
’,
I’m getting closer. I’m at the Albuquerque airport. Be heading your way as soon
as I get my bag from that carousel over there and my car from the parking lot.”
His voice dropped to a near-whisper. “So, seven o’clock, my place?”

“I’ll bring dinner.”

“Is it something that might keep
for an extra hour?”

She laughed at his urgent tone.
“Yes, absolutely.”

Out in the van she dialed Sweet’s
Sweets. “Jen, is there any way you and Becky could get there early enough to
get things going in the morning?”

“Already thought of that.
You
may have been so busy that you didn’t think about the morning after Beau gets
home. But
we
did. There’s no way you’re coming in at five o’clock to
start baking. We’ll handle it.” She paused and Sam heard Becky’s voice in the
background. “Oh, yeah. The AC is back on and everything’s going just fine
here.”

Sam permitted herself a long,
relaxing bath when she got home and a refreshing nap, awaking in time to pull
her silk kimono from the closet, the one Beau loved to remove from her. She
tossed it into a small bag, gathered the dinner ingredients and headed for his
ranch, about fifteen minutes past the north edge of town.

She couldn’t believe how her
heart rate picked up when his blue Explorer pulled through the gate and started
up the driveway. His two dogs, Ranger and Nellie, ran out to meet the vehicle
and raced alongside it. Obviously, the neighbor who fed them and tended the
horses was no substitute for Beau in their estimation.

When he stepped out, she met him
at the door, taking in the welcome sight of him in snug jeans and short-sleeved
plaid shirt. He pulled off the Stetson and took her into his arms.

“I don’t ever want to be gone a
whole week again,” he murmured into her ear. “Can we go upstairs right this
minute?”

She smiled and took his hand.

In the master bedroom she’d
turned back the thick comforter on the king-size bed and aired the room before
he arrived. Now, she turned on the shower and began undoing the pearl snaps on
his shirt. His kisses trailed from her mouth to her neck to her shoulder.

“You coming into that shower with
me?” he asked, peeling off the jeans in record time.

Well, with an invitation like
that . . .

The pasta dinner wasn’t at its
best when they finally emerged from the bedroom, so they settled for
salads—which she’d luckily remembered to stash in the fridge—and some hot
toasted garlic bread, carried to the big wooden rockers on the back deck where
the mild evening air felt cool on their skin.

“You don’t know how lucky you are
to be in this part of the world until you spend time in the month of June in a
big, hot city,” he said after he’d polished off half of his salad.

“I
do
know how lucky I
am,” Sam answered. “And that’s precisely why I’m here.”

“Missed you.”

“You too.” She sipped from her
wine glass. “Life just becomes too unbalanced without you. I felt like it was
work, work, work. I’m up to three caretaking jobs now. One of them is a little
weird.”

She filled him on her first visit
to the Gray house and the discovery that Sadie Gray was in a nursing home.
“Casa Serenita . . . was that where Iris went?”

He shook his head. “No, Mama was
in that other place after her stroke.” He stared across the open field. “We
thought she would have some physical therapy and then come home.”

“Sorry I brought that up. It
still hurts, doesn’t it?”

“It’s okay,
darlin
’.
At least she’s not in pain anymore.”

Sam watched as he took a pull
from his beer and rocked thoughtfully.

“The weird thing about this job
is that we can’t seem to reach the husband even though he visits his wife
regularly. You’d think he’d want to be sure the house was all right. And the
place of employment he listed on Sadie’s admission forms turned out to be
false.”

“And you’d like for me to quietly
look into it.” He glanced sideways at her. “I can do a standard background
check but it may not turn up much more than you already know about his
employment, not if he’s purposely trying to hide information.”

“He’ll probably respond to my
messages soon.”

“What’s his name?” Beau’s tone
was firm.

“Marshall Gray. But don’t go to
any trouble over this.”

They carried their dishes indoors
and settled onto the large sofa in the living room, tucked close together in
one corner. The kisses started again and about the time Beau was about to slip
the silk kimono off her shoulder, Sam’s cell phone jangled on the coffee table.

“I’ll just ignore it,” she
mumbled into his neck.

He lifted his head. “What if it’s
Kelly? Or the girls from the bakery? Maybe there’s a problem.”