Five-Alarm Fudge (27 page)

But what was going on with this overnight transformation of the inn?

My mouth was hanging open when a man I didn’t know walked in from the foyer behind me, startling me.

He bowed slightly.
“Bonjour, mademoiselle
.
”

He was taller than me by a couple of inches, and had the most magnificent, wavy coppery hair perfectly clipped at the sides. His eyes were blue-gray, calm as our morning fog and mesmerizing, though they competed with a dazzling smile. A sky blue cashmere sweater over a blue pin-striped, collared shirt enhanced his perfection. He wore expensive slacks and shoes, the kind of which I’d only seen on Rodeo Drive in Los Angeles. Perhaps he’d stepped from a photograph? An advertisement? A dream? Maybe I was still asleep. I was tempted to slap my face.

Our awkward meeting was interrupted by the clomping feet of Dillon and Piers emerging through the kitchen door at the other end of the dining room.

In contrast to the man standing before me, they were smudged with dust and dirt, maybe a little oil, and wearing T-shirts with sports team logos. They had on holey and frayed work jeans.

Piers grunted, “We got the stove put in already. Savage Brothers is a good name.”

Dillon loped over with a big grin as he spread his arms
apart. “How’s it looking so far? Piers and I worked until midnight after we played pool. Then we headed to the airport for this guy. I see you’ve met.”

“No,” I said, “we hadn’t gotten to names yet.”

Dillon ran a hand through his shaggy hair. “I guess your grandfather didn’t tell you what’s going on.”

Uh-oh. “He said he had a new stove delivered.”

“But your grandpa didn’t buy the equipment. This man bought the stove and copper kettle for you. As a gift for the Blue Heron Inn. You don’t know who this is?”

“No.”

Dillon bowed. “Let me present Prince Arnaud Van Damme.”

Chapter 23

T
he prince was here? My “cousin” in Grandma’s lineage?

Prince Arnaud took my hand, bowed again, and then kissed the top of my hand. “
Enchanté.
I am pleased to meet you, Ava Oosterling. Your fudge is saintly. I can taste the holiness of Sister Adele Brise. Her fudge—your fudge,
mademoiselle
, is light as the wafer we receive during Communion.”

Oh boy. No—
oh crap.
What was I going to do? Evidently, Grandpa had brought that batch of experimental fudge up here to the inn this morning early and told a big fat lie.

After a fevered, panicked glance at Dillon, I smiled for my relative. “I’m charmed to meet you, too.” Did I just say “charmed”?

I took a deep breath, then got back to being me. I gave Prince Arnaud a big hug. “When did you get here? Why are you here early? Can I get you something?”

Prince Arnaud laughed again—a rich, melodious song from his throat. His perfection amazed me. He even had the Belgian nose with its slight hump in the middle of the ridge.

Dillon came to my rescue. “Your grandfather brought us the holy fudge this morning before he opened the shop.”

Piers said, “We tried the fudge because we couldn’t resist, but I set the table with the cups your mother dropped off a few minutes ago. I thought we could offer coffee after breakfast in them, then chocolate. Arnie says he likes some kind of chocolate drink at breakfast.”

Arnie?

Prince Arnaud stepped to the head of the table. “It is very pretty.
Merci.
” Then he nodded at me. “I would love to see the recipe for the divinity fudge, the paper that Sister Adele touched. That is where my hunger lies—with knowing the past and connecting the Van Dammes to history, to connecting our two continents and countries, and our families. All accomplished with a confection recipe.”

Sweat was trickling down my spine. “The recipe?” I said, stalling to give my brain time to think of some lie.

Dillon grimaced. The man was no help to me at all.

I said, “I, well, you see, to protect the recipe I put it in a bank vault and asked them to seal it until the kermis a week from Saturday.”

The prince’s face was like the sunrise breaking through clouds over Lake Michigan. “That is smart. You can show me where you found it today. I would enjoy a tour.”

Piers stepped up. “Hey, guys, I’m starving. Why don’t we head up to Sister Bay to Al Johnson’s for pancakes? The prince will get a kick out of those goats.”

Panic exploded inside me. “I’ll make us breakfast here. We’ll christen the new stove. Prince Arnaud, I’m so honored you’re here and so thankful for your gift. Would my cooking on the new stove—your gift to me—be acceptable?”

“Of course. May I help?”

“No, thanks. Perhaps you’d like to go outside and look at the gazebo for a few minutes while I get things started. Dillon, can I speak to you in the kitchen about the menu?”

I marched ahead of Dillon into the kitchen.

Once the door was closed, I whispered, “We can’t go to Al Johnson’s, because Grandma is there with your mother supposedly talking about why she doesn’t want the prince here on our soil. I assume Grandpa hasn’t told her about Prince Arnaud’s arrival. You picked him up this morning?”

Dillon took me in his arms. I wasn’t in the mood for lovey-dovey stuff and wriggled, but he wouldn’t let me go.

Dillon said, “Your grandfather told me this was the prince’s idea. The prince called your grandfather a few days ago about arriving early so that he could experience life here without a mob of people following him and without
the obligations of being a good son and escorting his mother and seeing to her comfort.”

“A mob is going to follow him with the way he’s dressed.”

“Piers and I will fix that with a stop at the farm store.”

“Where did he stay last night?”

“Here, in the suite. Piers and I settled him in, then cleaned up things until about three or so in the morning, then sacked out at my mother’s condo.”

“You and Piers are suddenly mighty chummy.” I was jealous. I felt ugly even saying that and wanted to take it back.

Dillon kissed me soundly on the lips, with a little tongue action that tasted like marshmallows.

I said, “What am I going to do about the recipe? The prince thinks that fudge concoction Grandpa brought over here is the real deal. And boy, am I going to have to give Gilpa a talking-to!”

Dillon nuzzled my neck. My body was going limp. This was not going how I wanted the discussion to go.

Dillon said, “The only people who know it’s not the real thing are you and me, and your grandpa.”

“Wrong. My grandma, too. She helped me make it. Dillon, there are ordinary marshmallows in that stuff. Marshmallows,” I repeated, trying to extricate myself from Dillon’s arms.

He let me go. “We won’t tell your grandmother anything. She doesn’t have to know he’s here.”

I found Dillon’s coffee beans in the refrigerator and silenced him by grinding for a few seconds. After tossing the coffeepot together and turning it on, I said, “But she’s going to see this guy. Isn’t he going to be at the shop and meet her sometime soon? This is awful because she was in a really good mood last night. Except when I brought up the ghost thing. Why is Grandpa so happy about this? This could blow up his marriage. He did this last July with his lies about not paying taxes like he should on the bait shop, and now this? Grandma’s going to divorce him—”

Dillon kissed me again.

Then he began pulling pans from the hooks in the ceiling over the island he’d created for me. “Prince Arnaud wants
to experience life here. Haven’t you listened to me? The prince came early so that he could work as a farmhand for a few days on your family farm. He wants to explore life as it was experienced by the Belgian immigrants. Your grandfather plans to take him fishing, and he called Parker Balusek about some lumberjack he knows who can show him how wooden shingles are made by hand, just as your ancestors did after the Great Fire.”

“Wait a minute. Do my father and mother know about this?” I reached under a counter cupboard for the flour tub. The menu in my head called for Belgian waffles.

“Your grandpa told me your father knows, but not your mother. Yet. She thinks you merely wanted the cups and saucers because the inn is nearly done. So she brought them with when Mercy picked her up in the limo.”

“This isn’t going to end well. I can feel it. Grandpa does this all the time. We were swimming along so smoothly, too.”

“Very smoothly. Fires, a body you found in a basement, wrecking Pauline’s car, Jordy wanting to arrest you—”

“Dillon, this isn’t how I want a future husband to help me.”

Dillon tugged my ponytail lovingly. “I’ll keep doing that until you see the bright side to all this.”

“What bright side? The prince thinks a mere marshmallow concoction is something from God, and I’ve got to figure out what to show him as the place where we found the recipe. And how in the heck am I going to find a divinity fudge recipe written on paper that can be authenticated as coming from the 1850s or 1860s? You know the Vassar College girls didn’t even make it popular until the 1880s.”

“Maybe check with Milton at the Wise Owl. Maybe he’s got collections of old letters from that time. Maybe some of them contain recipes for divinity fudge. We can try to convince Arnie that Adele and her family would have shared in those recipes.”

“Brilliant. None of the cookbooks from Lloyd go back to the 1800s. They all start after 1900.”

“You called me brilliant.” Dillon dipped me into a kiss that held promises for later. His arms were strong and reassuring, holding me snugly against his muscular chest.

After we popped up, I asked, “Is Jane Goodland a stripper?”

“Huh?”

“Don’t ‘huh’ me. I’ve heard the rumors that she’s good-looking. And I looked up the name Jane Goodland online. There’s a convict and an exotic dancer. Milton said the lady was a lawyer. Somebody who’s been in prison can’t be a lawyer, so our new tenant in Milt’s building has to be the stripper.”

Dillon was quiet for too long, fussing around with pouring cream into a small pitcher.

I said, “So, is Jane Goodland the lawyer also Jane the stripper?”

“That may have been something she did years ago. I saw the pictures, too. All the guys have. Erik helped recruit her.” He referred to Erik Gustafson, who bartended at the Troubled Trout bar and was our village president, too. “You should be glad he’s making sure the Main Street buildings stay full of tenants. And you shouldn’t hold her looks against her. And she has a dog.”

“Sheesh. Because she has a dog makes Jane the stripper all right?” I shook my head, trying to clear it. “Too early for this discussion. I’ll ask her myself when I meet her.” Beating the waffle batter, I said, “What does the prince want for breakfast? Besides hot chocolate? And Belgian waffles?”

“He definitely wants to try American bacon. He said in his castle they don’t eat much meat and he’d heard that our bacon was pretty good. And of course he’d like to enjoy more of your fudge.”

“Now, there’s a breakfast menu. Fudge and bacon. Piers tried to make that bacon fudge last July. I suppose I should ask him to make the bacon.”

The kitchen became a communal event with Piers and “Arnie” joining Dillon and me. An odd joy set in, a joy I hadn’t ever experienced, not having any siblings or relatives here my own age.

We talked nonstop. Arnie loved his nickname. He lived in a small castle in the countryside of Belgium near a stream where he fly-fished. He told us about riding show horses
and owning foxhounds. Arnie was eager to flush birds with Lucky Harbor.

He’d played soccer for a short time on Belgium’s national team, which made us all awestruck.

He worked now as a fund-raiser for several charity organizations, including the museum that wanted to bring home Sister Adele’s handwritten recipe. The deal was they’d get it for two years, and then it would journey back to us. Prince Arnaud and his mother, Amandine, would leave the precious cup with AVD on it for us to display; plus, they’d contribute other royal items to display at fund-raisers. Arnie said he’d travel back here again next summer for Belgian National Day in July. His good looks and friendly manner would easily get people to pull out their wallets.

I asked, “Do you really think the cup our friend John found is authentic?”

“It appears so, but then I’m just a prince.” We laughed. “My mother is an expert on the chinaware handed down in our family.”

Seated minutes later in the dining room, we enjoyed eggs sunny-side up per the prince’s wishes and waffles with whipped cream and Door County cherries on top, and of course plenty of thick-cut bacon. I made a rich cocoa with Belgian chocolate melted in it, which we enjoyed in the beautiful antique cups at the insistence of the prince. He wanted to experience everything full tilt. I began to feel a kindred spirit with him.

We were finishing up our cocoa at around nine o’clock when John Schultz and Marc Hayward knocked on the door of the inn. They walked in with a camera and lights. My heart fell into my stomach. Had Grandpa told them about our visitor?

But I relaxed soon enough when John made it known they were here to ask permission to film in the shop again today. At first he didn’t even notice the prince seated with us.

Marc, a bit bleary-eyed, said, “I’m amazed at how many people are at the harbor already. People around here really do get up early.”

“With the birds, Marc,” I said.

Los Angeles was a ten o’clock town for the TV series
industry, and sometimes people didn’t stir until the afternoon because they worked writing their shows and rehearsing with the actors until midnight.

John, who was standing in the foyer, said, “Hey, that’s the cup I brought up from the bottom of the lake, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” I said. “And these are the cups from Lloyd’s collection.”

John took a little video. Then he noticed Prince Arnaud. He reached out a hand as the prince stood up.

I rushed over. “This is, uh, Arnie . . . Malle.”

My manager said, “Like Louis Malle? The director? You related?”

Prince Arnaud laughed his beautiful laugh, then said in his slight accent, “I belong to another family.”