Mistletoe Bay (15 page)

Estelle and Priscilla were talking Dorothy's ears off on the other side of the room, while Jenni had the misfortune of sitting within speaking distance of Norma. Once the woman starting talking, there was no shutting her up. Not even the blow-dryer could drown out her voice.

“I heard Cooper Armstrong was the one to find him.” Norma wiggled her fingers, trying to dry her nails faster under the light.

“That he did. Mr. Armstrong has performed quite a few rescues when it comes to my boys. I don't know what I would have done without him.” She felt funny talking about Coop with a stranger. For some reason, it just seemed personal.

Norma gave a loud “Hhmmmpppph,” then added, “He used to be such a nice boy. I'm glad he hasn't forgotten all the manners his parents and teachers taught him over the years.”

“I'm sure he hasn't.” What did Norma mean by “used to be”? As far as Jenni knew or had seen, Coop was still nice. She hated small-town gossip with all its hidden innuendos.

Lauren must have felt her stiffen beneath her pink fabric cape. “Hey, Norma, guess who I saw at the movies Saturday night in Franklin?”

“Who?” Norma perked up and even stopped wiggling her fingers as if the movement would affect her hearing.

“Gracie and Abraham.” Lauren gave Jenni a wink. “They were in front of us when we were buying our tickets. They were holding hands and whispering like newlyweds. Of course, since they are newlyweds, I guess it's okay to act like that.”

“They should act their age, that's what Gracie should be doing.” Norma's thin nose actually got thinner. “Gracie is a whole year younger than I.”

Lauren chuckled. “You big phony. I saw you crying into your hankie at their wedding, Norma. You don't fool me.”

Norma sniffed. “I was crying over the fact that she had the audacity to wear white to her own wedding. It was scandalous.”

Lauren laughed out loud. “You're just jealous because Gracie's getting some, and by the look on her face, I'd say old Abraham was doing a mighty fine job of it.”

Chapter Eight

Dorothy glanced around her kitchen and wondered when she had lost control. It seemed everyone wanted to help get dinner ready—except for the men. They were all in the basement banging, muttering words she knew she was better off not hearing, and laughing. Although the heater wasn't sounding any worse, it sure wasn't sounding any better.

Coop had shown up for dinner three hours early, with his parents and two toolboxes in tow. Lucy, Coop's mother, was as nice as could be and had insisted on helping wherever she could. Dorothy had had her peel potatoes, a lot of potatoes. Now Lucy was out in the family room helping Jenni set the long makeshift table.

Who would have thought that her fine china set, with twelve settings, wouldn't have been enough? Tonight she was making a Thanksgiving feast for thirteen. One had to wonder if that was a bad omen. She hoped not.

Before Coop and his father, Fred, could get down to the basement, Sam and the rest of his family had shown up. Sam's sisters, Hope and Faith, were typical teenage girls. They had giggled a lot and were now upstairs in Felicity's room, doing makeup and such. She shuddered to think what they were going to look like when they came down. Her daughter had been known to go overboard with the glittery eye shadow on occasion. Eli Fischer didn't look like a guy who would appreciate having his very young and impressionable daughters made into streetwalkers.

It had been Sam's father who had thrown her off-kilter. Eli Fischer wasn't what, or who, she had been expecting. After talking to him on the phone the other day, she had been picturing a bigger, older Sam dressed in mechanic's bib overalls. What she got was a six-foot-two-inch, dark blond, gorgeously rough and fit male in a poorly ironed shirt. The woman in her wanted to rip that shirt off him.

To iron it, of course.

Dorothy picked up the empty platter she had set out for the turkey and fanned herself.

“Are you okay?” Lucy Armstrong asked as she came back into the kitchen. “You look flushed, Dorothy.”

Nothing a little hormone replacement therapy won't cure. “I just had the oven open,” she lied. She'd just committed two of the deadly sins, lust and lying. Was lying one of the seven sins? She couldn't remember. She was going to go to hell for sure. Eli Fischer was years younger than her and, by the glint of interest in his blue-gray eyes, had a lot more energy.

“Anything else I can help you with?” Lucy stood at the counter and waited for her next instruction.

“Thank you, but nothing needs to be done right now.” She liked Lucy, who was in her early sixties and tended to fuss about her husband, Fred. So far Lucy had been in the basement twice on the pretense of delivering hot coffee and a few cookies. “Let's sit down and have a cup of tea.”

Dorothy had put on the kettle while Jenni and Lucy had been setting the table in the back room. They wouldn't all fit in the dining room, so they had set up the table in the long family room that ran the length of the house. Felicity had been so excited to have Sam's family over, she had helped clean the room this morning. For once it looked neat and orderly.

It was a real shame it wouldn't stay that way with the boys. Her grandsons liked to spread out when they played, and currently Corey was into making tents with blankets and anything else he could find.

“It will be a mad dash the last fifteen minutes to get everything onto the table while it's hot. I could use some help then, if that's okay with you.” She got out three mugs and set them on the counter. She had never cooked a Thanksgiving dinner for thirteen before. Even when her own parents and a couple of elderly aunts were still alive, they had never had more than eight at the table. Entertaining just wasn't what she had the time or opportunity to do very often.

“I'll be more than glad to help, Dorothy.” Lucy glanced around the kitchen. “I must say, you have a wonderful kitchen. Who designed it?”

“I did. It's Jenni's house, but she allowed me to redo the kitchen the way I saw fit.” Jenni had been so busy setting up her shop, she had been more than thankful to turn that job over to her mother-in-law. Dorothy removed the whistling kettle from the back burner. “Did Jenni say where she was going?”

Lucy sat down at the kitchen table. “She said something about the table looking bare and she went outside to see what she could find.”

“She'll probably throw together some sort of centerpiece.” Dorothy wondered what they could use to brighten up the table. They had stopped using candles two years ago when Tucker had set his napkin on fire. “As you can tell, we don't get a chance to entertain much.”

“I understand you just recently moved to this part of Maine.”

“Six months ago.” Dorothy cringed at the racket coming from the third floor of the house. By the sound of it, the boys had just given Sam's sisters a surprise visit from Chase's pet iguana. “As you can hear, we sometimes have our hands full.”

Sam had parked his butt in front of their television and was watching the pregame show for the football game that was about to start. Bojangles was asleep next to his favorite visitor. Hearing all the football jargon on Thanksgiving Day reminded her of when George was still alive. George had loved watching football and rooting for his favorite teams.

Lucy chuckled. “I hear about the boys from Coop a lot. Did Tucker really glue the cat to the wall?”

Dorothy poured the hot water over the tea bags. “I would just like to say I was at the store when that one happened. For once it wasn't on my watch.” Jenni had been home with the boys and the handyman.

“Coop misses them now that they started day care.”

“Talks about them, does he?” Maybe it wasn't such a good idea inviting Coop and his parents to dinner. Maybe the UPS man was going to read a lot more into the invitation than she had intended.

“Sometimes.” Lucy chuckled. “I have to admit, meeting Tucker was kind of a letdown. I was expecting someone a little different.” Lucy seemed disappointed. “He looks like Jenni and was polite as could be.”

Dorothy rolled her eyes. “The day is still young. By about the time the pie is served, I'm sure his head will be rotating 360 degrees.” She carried two of the mugs over to the table and sat. “As much as I love that boy, there are days . . .” She let the sentence trail off. Any mother worth her salt would know how to complete it.

Lucy laughed. “I vaguely remember days like that, and I only had the one child, Coop. He was an only child, but he filled our lives with nothing but love.”

Either Lucy was making up stories, or the rumor Jenni had heard in Estelle's the other hadn't been true. By the love gleaming in Lucy's eyes, she would say the rumor mill had it wrong. It didn't appear that Coop had disappointed his parents after all. “What kind of boy was Coop? You seem to have raised a very fine young man who goes out of his way to help people.”

“Thank you.” Lucy sipped her tea. “He was a mama's boy until he was about eight. By the time he was in seventh or eighth grade the coaches started noticing him on the football field. From tenth grade on he was cocky and arrogant. The school let him get away with anything he wanted, because he was such a natural on the field. The town loved Coop. The girls loved Coop. Our phone used to ring all day and night with girls asking him out.” Lucy shook her head.

“Call me old-fashioned, Dorothy, but I just don't agree with girls asking boys out.”

“I know I never would have the nerve to ask a man out on a date.” She winked at Lucy. “There are just too many ways for a girl to let a boy know she's interested.”

“What ways are those?” Eli Fischer stood at the top of the basement stairs, staring right at her. “A man who's been out of practice for the past seven years might miss those signals.”

Dorothy prayed for the floor to open up and to fall straight into the gaping jaws of the oil burner beneath her. Talk about embarrassing. The man must walk like a cat when he wanted to, because the basement steps groaned and moaned under the weight of Bojangles, let alone a full-grown man. She glanced at Lucy to see if there was going to be any help from that direction.

Lucy appeared fascinated as she glanced between Eli and Dorothy. “Why, Eli, have you really been on the market for the past seven years? It's truly amazing that no one has gotten her hooks into you yet.”

“Lord, Lucy, you make him sound like a cod down at Cosmo's Seafood Shanty at the height of summer tourist season.” She couldn't believe that Lucy had said that to Eli. The man didn't look like he needed any help in the dating department, and she was more than positive that he knew every signal in the book. Eli had probably taught his son, Sam, each and every one of them.

His son who was dating her daughter!

Maybe Eli wasn't a cod but a shark.

Eli threw back his head and laughed.

Dorothy melted at the husky sound of Eli's laugh. There was no other way to describe the warm, liquid feeling that had rushed to her stomach. Eli's laugh could put the heat into one of her hot flashes.

“What's so funny?” Jenni stood in the door of the family room and surveyed the room. She was holding a bunch of evergreens and berries. “What did I miss?”

“Nothing, Jenni,” Lucy answered. “Your mother called Eli a cod.”

“I certainly did not.” She cringed when Eli started to laugh again.

“Hey, what's going on up here?” Coop asked. He stood behind Eli on the steps. “We send Eli up for more cookies, and you guys throw a party?”

“There's no party.” Dorothy stood up and carried her cup over to the sink. She felt more in control standing in her kitchen behind the counter. “And there will be no more cookies. Dinner will be ready soon, and I don't want you men to ruin your appetite.”

“Dorothy, there's a better chance of that old oil burner producing snowballs than us losing our appetite. We've been down in the basement for the past two and a half hours smelling nothing but oil and roasting turkey. We're ready to eat our boots.” Coop walked into the kitchen and started to wash his hands at the sink. “Please tell us it's almost ready.”

Coop was giving her that little-boy pleading look that Tucker had mastered by the age of two. She couldn't refuse Tucker any more than could she refuse three hungry men. But she could tease. “Is the monster fixed?”

Eli let out an exaggerated sigh. “The woman's heartless. Ulysses was sent out to do easier tasks.”

“It's that bad?” questioned Jenni, clearly worried.

“No,” Coop said.

“Yes,” Eli said.

All three women looked at each other. “Which is it?” asked Lucy.

“Both,” answered Fred, Coop's father, who had climbed the basement steps to join them. Fred was wiping his hands on a rag, but he smiled. “Jenni, the beast in the basement is about to give up the ghost, but I think we lovingly persuaded it to stick around, at least through this winter, possibly spring.”

Eli started to wash his hands, now that Coop was done. “There's a couple parts that I would like to replace. I'll stop by next week, as soon as I can get them, and put them in. It might mean a couple more months, and better fuel efficiency this winter. But you really have to look into replacing it before next fall. Sorry, Jenni, but Maine is one place you don't want to be in January without a good heater.”

“I'd really appreciate that, Mr. Fischer. Just let me know what I owe you.” Jenni dumped the small pine clippings and berry branches onto the counter.

“A slice of that pumpkin pie sitting right there will do just fine.” Eli glanced at the three pies sitting over by the refrigerator as if he hadn't seen a pie in years.

“After dinner you can have as many slices as you wish.” Dorothy liked her guests coming to the table hungry. “What's your favorite pie, Mr. Fischer?”

“Pumpkin, and call me Eli.” Eli gave her a smile that melted her knees as he dried his hands with a paper towel.

“Today it's pumpkin, but what will it be next week?” She had to give him points for being polite. Of course, with that killer smile, Eli Fischer was already off the charts in her book.

“Apple.” Eli looked hesitant.

“Just let us know what day you're coming, and I'll have a freshly baked apple pie for you to take home.” The poor man couldn't cook. It was the least she could do. Besides, if he thought her pumpkin pie looked and smelled good, wait until he got a gander at her homemade apple pie. In her younger days she had won quite a few ribbons with her pies, and she had only gotten better with practice.

Her grandsons gave her a lot of practice.

“You serious?” Eli looked like he wanted to get down on bended knee to thank her.

“Mr. Fischer, believe me, Dorothy is always serious when it comes to pie.” Jenni chuckled as she got out a silver platter from the dining room's china cabinet and started to arrange the pine clippings and red berries.

“I can vouch for her cookies.” Coop moved away from the sink area so his father would have room to wash up. “Dorothy has a habit of paying people in food—great food.” Coop gave her a teasing wink. “Why do you think I'm always hanging around fixing stuff?”

“I didn't see you complaining.” Dorothy checked the potatoes to see how they were doing. Another fifteen minutes and it would be feast time. “In fact, I distinctly remember you holding on to that box of chocolate chips for all you were worth.”

She watched as Coop went to stand next to Jenni. “Hey, blame my dad for that one,” Coop said.

“Me? What do I have to do with it?” Fred Armstrong dried his hands and tossed the paper towel in the trash.