Sweet Hearts (21 page)

Jen must have answered. The short
conversation went in the shorthand that two old friends would use. Becky
laughed out loud as she hung up.

“Jen’s got her hands full of
men,” she said, working hard not to howl. “Her exact words. I don’t think she
got the same mental picture I did.”

“We better get back there. I knew
the males of this town would wait until the last minute to get their Valentine
gifts.”

Two hours flew as cakes,
cupcakes, cookies and chocolates raced out the door. Every time Sam thought
they might turn over the Closed sign, some other harried guy would screech to a
halt outside and they would find something to send home with him. Finally, they
were down to one final square cake which Becky had decorated as a package—pink
frosting with a red bow and a generic Happy Valentine’s Day written in red gel.

“The next guy through this door
will get lucky and the one right behind him better hope the flower shops aren’t
completely cleaned out.” Sam said as she started to gather the credit card
receipts from the cash drawer. “And he better hurry. I’ve got forty-two minutes
to get home, clean up, dress elegantly, and put a little romance in my smile
before Beau gets there to pick me up.”

Luckily, she’d put a bottle of
champagne in the fridge and had taken home one of Sweet’s Sweets nicer little
cakes yesterday. With the red dress she’d bought, originally for their
honeymoon trip, she envisioned an evening that would start with an admiring
stare from him, move through dinner to champagne and dessert, and end up in
Beau’s spacious bedroom. It was 6:54 when she slipped the dress over her head and
stepped into the matching pumps.

At 7:15 she was sitting on her
sofa, cursing the sheriff’s department for keeping him late at work again.
Okay, she thought, how late will he be? She plucked her cell phone from her
black evening bag and speed dialed his number. His voice came across a little
muffled, with a lot of background noise.

“Beau? What’s going on? Are you
tied up with—”

More noise. Laughter. Music.

“Here, baby, let me talk.” Was
that Felicia Black’s voice? “Samantha, come on over. The party’s really warming
up. I’m bringing out some of your chocolates for dessert pretty soon.”

“What?” Sam’s insides went cold.
“Put Beau on this phone.”

“Darlin’—”

“Do
not
try to sweet talk
your way out of this, Beau Cardwell.”

“Sam— Darlin’—”

She hung up and threw the phone
across the room.

The ridiculous shoes lay on the
bathroom floor, one behind the toilet and the other with the red dress lying in
a heap on top of it. Sam scrubbed away the makeup she’d worked so carefully to
apply and reached for sweats she’d worn two days ago.

Rage flared through her. She
couldn’t decide where to direct it—at Beau or at Felicia—and the poor little
Valentine cake had taken the brunt of it, now smashed to bits on her kitchen
floor. The phone had rung, somewhat feebly, twice, but it had stayed quiet for
the last ten minutes. Sam yanked a Henley shirt over her head, stalked past the
mess on the kitchen floor and grabbed up her keys, put on a hoodie and stuffed
the keys into the pocket.

Before she decimated the rest of
her house or did something really stupid with that bottle of champagne, she
better take a brisk walk—for about five miles or so. Once the dark and the cold
had taken some of the fire out of her, she would have to clean up the kitchen
and decide what to do.

The back door slammed a little
harder than she’d intended. She jammed her hands into the pockets of her hoodie
and stalked down the long driveway leading to Elmwood Lane. Before she’d made
it halfway, though, a car raced off the road a skidded to a stop. Beau’s
Explorer.

She turned around, trying to
think of another exit.

“Sam! Come on . . . don’t do
this.” He left the driver’s door open and came after her, his dress shoes
slipping on the frosty gravel. “Darlin’, please— We have to talk about this.”

She spun on him. “What’s to talk
about? You were to be here at seven to pick me up for our special, secluded,
Valentine’s dinner. When I finally reach you, you’re at a party—at your
ex-girlfriend’s house! I don’t see where this discussion could possibly go.”

His face crumpled. “Felicia
didn’t call you? Earlier?”

Sam’s glare answered that
question.

He was beginning to shiver in his
good blue suit. “Could we go inside?”

Her first instinct was to pummel
him, but something stopped her. She pulled out her key and marched toward the
house while Beau stepped back to the Explorer and closed his door.

“Watch out for that spot,” she
said, pointing to the gobs of smashed cake in the middle of the kitchen.

She heard him mutter under his
breath, “Uh-oh.”

“Yeah, uh-oh. What on earth
possessed you to think I wouldn’t be mad that you stood me up in favor of
her
.”

“Want to sit down—?” he stopped.
“Ah, no. Okay.” He stuck his hands awkwardly in his trouser pockets. “Felicia
called me this evening. She told me that she had also called you, repeated the
invitation to her party, and that you’d accepted.”

“But—”

“She told me you were on your
way, that I should just drive on over.”

“And you believed her?”

He shrugged. “I heard party
sounds in the background. I tried calling your cell, the bakery and here . . .”

“You didn’t leave messages.”

His mouth opened but Sam had
turned toward the back door.

“We could still have dinner . .
.”

She ignored the misery in his
voice. “I seem to have lost my appetite. We’ve missed our reservation and
there’s no place outside of McDonald’s where we’ll be able to get in right
now.”

“Sam—”

“It’s
been a very long week, Beau. I think I just need to make it an early night.”
She held the back door open closing it a little too firmly behind him.

After a
long silent space, she heard his SUV start up. Gravel crunched as he backed out
and drove away. Iris’s garnet ring winked in the light and Sam pressed it to
her lips.
Oh, Beau.

The
moment passed though. She stared at the ruined cake on the kitchen floor, then
grabbed a roll of paper towels and set about cleaning it up. Her spirit felt
weary.

*

When her eyes opened Wednesday
morning Sam realized it was already daylight in the room. She’d not set her
alarm the night before and her heart raced as she grasped that for the first
time ever her shop should already be open and she wasn’t there. Wandering into
the living room she saw subtle signs that Kelly had come home last night and
left already this morning. She found her cell phone on the kitchen table and
dialed the bakery.

“Sam, it’s okay,” Jen said. “We’d
made the plan weeks ago. You deserve a rest.”

It hit Sam full force that the
original plan was that she and Beau would be leaving for their honeymoon today.
Her four employees already had their work schedules set up, an arrangement to
keep the shop going without her. She mumbled something about coming in a little
later, even though Jen assured her they had things well under control.

She felt numb as she showered and
set the coffee maker to brew. The shock of discovering Beau at Felicia’s house
last night and the broken Valentine’s Day date, on top of the emotional roller
coaster of their postponed wedding, had settled into a painful ache in the
center of her.

She dried her hair and stared at
herself in the mirror. Every comment from last night’s argument seemed to have
etched another line into her face, every ugly thought about Beau and Felicia
added a dozen gray hairs. She turned away from the medicine cabinet and pulled
on her slouchiest set of sweats.

The television provided
background noise, a blur of color and sound to offset the blank state of her
mind. The phone rang several times but she couldn’t summon the energy to get
off the couch and answer it. Once, in the background, she heard Beau’s voice
leaving a message on the kitchen phone. She turned up the volume on the TV set
and pulled a blanket over herself. At some point the light in the house dimmed,
telling her it was late afternoon. She didn’t particularly care.

*

By the next morning she’d decided
that wallowing in misery was not her strong suit. She took a long shower and
donned her baker’s jacket and showed up at work. The girls were surprised to
see her, but no one asked questions. She could only assume that Beau had called
here yesterday, looking for her. She’d erased his messages from her machine at
home and deleted the ones on her cell. It wasn’t so much that she was avoiding
him, she just didn’t see much point in listening to excuses.

She baked cheesecakes and then
made chocolate chip cookies for the after-school kids, even though Becky and
Sandy could have easily handled those tasks. When Kelly came into the shop at
noon, she approached Sam with a determined look in her eye.

“Mom, we need to have lunch.” It
was more an order than an invitation.

Sam couldn’t even plead that she
was swamped with work, because that clearly wasn’t the case. With the extra two
helpers and the absolute lack of custom orders, for once, her day loomed ahead
as an empty bunch of hours.

“Okay, you are clearly a wreck,”
Kelly said, once they’d settled into a corner of a noisy little cantina that
they both normally loved. “Beau says there was some terrible misunderstanding.”

“Probably.”

“
Mom
, what are you going
to do about it? Just dump Beau, like that? I thought you really loved him.”

Sam swallowed hard, covering her
emotions while the server came and took their orders.

Kelly smiled brightly at the girl
and watched her walk away. “He really loves you. When he called me yesterday he
sounded absolutely miserable.”

Sam picked up her fork and rubbed
at its already-shiny surface with her thumb. Maybe a day was long enough to
make certain that Beau had made his choice—Felicia or her.

“You’re right, Kel. He’s a good
man and I don’t mean to punish him. I’ll talk to him today sometime.” Maybe she
should let him off the hook, at least consider the idea that Felicia, not Beau,
was the cause of the problem.

Their enchiladas arrived just
then and Kelly cut right into hers, apparently satisfied that she’d done her
little mediation task satisfactorily. Sam gave herself over to the flavors of
chicken and green chile and began to feel a sense of normalcy. She finished her
lunch and excused herself to go to the ladies room, and when she came back she
saw Kelly surreptitiously slip her hand into her jacket pocket. A second later,
Sam’s own cell phone rang.

“Gosh, what can I bet that this
will be Beau?” she said with a smile at her daughter.

“Can we meet somewhere?” he asked
before she had a chance to start the conversation.

They agreed that he would come by
her house in thirty minutes.

“I have to get back to work,”
Kelly said. “Riki’s got a full shop today.”

Sam picked up the check and they
walked outside to find that the sky had clouded over and a white mist filled
the air. Kelly dashed for her car and Sam slid into her van. But before she
started it her phone chimed again. She didn’t immediately recognize the number
on the readout.

“It’s Jonathan Ernhart. I’ve got
some DNA results.”

Sam felt her mood take a dip. So
soon? She’d hoped for a few more chances to see Marla and work her healing
touch before this.

“. . . what we expected,”
Jonathan was saying. “Our John Doe is Tito Fresques. I’m sorry.”

“Will you be sending someone to
inform Marla in person?”

“We already have. I’ve asked
local law enforcement to pay a visit.”

“Sheriff Cardwell, here in Taos?”

“Yes ma’am. I spoke with him
about a minute ago. I’ve also notified the DEA. Given what we learned about his
work for them, they need to know that Panther won’t be coming back.”

Sam thanked him and hung up.
Condolence calls were one of any law enforcement man’s least favorite duties,
especially Beau’s.

She quickly dialed Beau’s cell
and determined that he was on the way to her house.

“We need to talk about something.
Other than us. Well, in addition to us,” she said.

Beau’s cruiser was in her
driveway when she pulled in. She faced him across the hood of it, imagining her
own expression to be nearly as uncertain as his. Not letting go of the lock on
her gaze, he crossed the front of the vehicle and walked over to her.

“I can’t believe Felicia set us
up that way,” he said. “Telling me that you were on the way to her party.”

Sam wanted to believe him.

“I tried to call you. When you
didn’t answer it seemed like proof that you were doing what she said.” He
looked so miserable that Sam felt the conflict dissipate.

“Beau, do you see why I was leery
of her from the start? I told you she was after you. Now she’s set this up so
we would fight—”

He stepped toward her and put his
arms around her, pulling her against him in a tight little ball. His uniform
smelled of aftershave with a faint undertone of coffee. Tiny droplets of the
gathering mist cooled her hot skin.

“Baby, I’m so sorry that I
believed a word she said.”

“I know. Hey, let’s get inside, out
of the drizzle.”

They walked into the kitchen, and
Sam offered to make tea.

“Sorry, I better not. I’ve got an
assignment and I’m not looking forward to it.”

“Marla Fresques. I heard about
the condolence visit.”

“Damn, that’s right. Tito
Fresques’s mother. I’ve been so swamped with other work that I’d forgotten
about the case.”