The Tea Shop on Lavender Lane (Life in Icicle Falls) (8 page)

Bailey gave a guilty start and killed the TV. Not quickly enough, though. Cecily had seen; Bailey could tell by the worried expression on her sister’s face.

There was nothing to worry about, really. So what if she was still in her pj’s? And so what if the coffee table was littered with evidence of her eating binge? A big bowl with only a couple of unpopped popcorn kernels sat in silent testimony as to what she’d had for lunch, along with three empty soda bottles. If Cecily went looking for her supply of chocolates, she’d find those missing because Bailey had consumed them, too.

“I was just...” She stopped. What was she doing? “Taking a break.”

Cecily nodded. “You’re allowed.”

But Bailey felt guilty. She hopped off the couch. “Would you like me to make dinner?”

“Sure. That’d be great. I’ve got—”

“Hamburger in the fridge,” Bailey finished for her. “I saw it. I’ll make us some Nachos Supreme.”

Half an hour later they were side by side at the granite-topped eating bar, halfway through a meal of nachos and lemonade, and had exhausted the topic of Cecily’s day. They had avoided the subject of Bailey’s day. It was all too evident how that had gone.

“So, tomorrow I’m having lunch with Charley, who used to be Charley Albach,” Cecily said casually. “Want to join us?”

Charley, the successful restaurant owner? That would be fun. Not! “No, I’ve actually got some things planned for tomorrow.”
To watch the Food Network.

Unlike their older sister, Cecily wasn’t one to pry. She simply nodded and said okay.

The next day, to prove she wasn’t a loser, Bailey showered and got dressed. Then, while Cecily was at lunch, she watched more cooking shows and had a good, long cry.

Okay, this was really bad. She was in a terrible slump. She went to the kitchen and made chocolate-dipped shortbread. There. Now she’d accomplished something.

There were even some cookies left by the time Cecily got home. And Bailey fixed dinner again. “How was lunch with Charley?” she asked.

“Fine,” Cecily said. She took a bite of the stuffed pork chops Bailey had made for dinner, then casually added, “Her sous chef just gave notice.”

Bailey’s forkful of baked potato stopped halfway to her mouth.

“She thought you might be interested.”

Suddenly Bailey’s heart began to beat faster, and she couldn’t quite catch her breath.

“Bailey?” Cecily asked in concern. “Are you okay?”

Bailey swallowed hard and set her fork back down on the plate. “I’m fine.” She took a deep breath, then reached for her water glass and gulped half of it. She
was
fine. She wasn’t going to allow a little thing like a ruined dream to keep her down.

But what was she going to do? Not work in a restaurant. Ever. Again.

She felt a gentle hand on her arm. “You can’t let that woman take your dream from you.”

Too late. “I don’t want...” Bailey stopped and bit her lip to keep from crying. It didn’t help. Sneaky little tears began to creep out of the corners of her eyes.

“It’s okay. You don’t have to do it,” Cecily said, and Bailey nodded and wiped her eyes.

“You could find something different to do for a while,” Cecily suggested.

“Like what?” All Bailey knew, all she’d ever breathed, slept and talked, was cooking.

“I don’t know. I did see a help-wanted sign in the window of Tina Swift’s shop.”

“Which one is that?”

“The one that sells lace and china.”

Bailey liked nice things. She especially liked china. She’d shipped home two boxes of pretty dishes that she’d used for catering bridal and baby showers. What was she going to do with that stuff now? Maybe she could sell it on consignment.

“It might at least give you something to do while you’re figuring out what you
really
want to do,” Cecily said, bringing them back to the topic at hand.

Her sister was right. She couldn’t sit around forever watching cooking shows and trying to eat away her unhappiness. Her jeans were already uncomfortably tight. She nodded. “I’ll go over there tomorrow.” And who knew? Maybe it would turn out to be fun. Maybe, someday, she could own a shop here in Icicle Falls, perhaps a kitchen shop. She could be happy owning a kitchen shop. And she could still have fun in the kitchen, cooking for family and friends, maybe even some special man. Although with Brandon gone, she couldn’t imagine who that would be.

“I thought I’d try a new chocolate bubble-bath recipe,” Cecily said after they’d finished eating. “Want to help me?”

“Sure.” She enjoyed doing things with her sister, and it was fun to try a new recipe, whether it was for food or bubble bath.

As they chopped up dark chocolate to heat with soy milk, she found herself comparing her life to her sisters’. Sammy was happy running Sweet Dreams and starting a family with Blake. Cecily now had an important position in the company, handling the marketing and advertising, and she owned her condo and was seeing Luke, who was a great guy. Both her sisters had their acts together, and here she was, with nothing.

It was pretty embarrassing, considering the fact that she’d always believed she’d be the sister to make a big splash in the pool of life. Things had come easy for her growing up—friends, boyfriends, making the cheer squad in high school. She’d even won the junior-baker contest at the Raise the Roof event three years in a row. Her parents had constantly praised her, and her father had predicted she’d become a famous chef. It had never occurred to her that she might fail.

At some point in our lives, failure visits us all,
she read in her mother’s book later that night.
If you don’t fail, you’re not reaching high enough.

Bailey frowned and slumped against the pillows. People should warn you that when you reached too high, you fell and got hurt.

Well, at least working in a shop wouldn’t be hard.

Chapter Seven

“T
his will be a new adventure,” Bailey told herself as she entered Tina Swift’s Lace and Lovelies shop. And she was ready for a new adventure. Catering was too much work anyway. Nobody really appreciated what you did. You went to the trouble of creating a culinary work of art, and people just snarfed it down and then accused you of making them sick. Selling lace and china would be nothing compared to what she’d been doing. If she got the job.

Insecurity suddenly assailed her. What if Tina wouldn’t hire her? Tina was older than Bailey and hung with a different crowd, so Bailey couldn’t play the friendship card. What if Tina didn’t want the notorious party poisoner working for her?

Don’t be silly,
she scolded herself.
You can do this.
After all, how hard could it be to sell lace and teacups?

Tina was ringing up a sale. “These lace curtains will look fabulous in your bedroom,” she told Hildy Johnson, who owned Johnson’s Drugs along with her husband, Nils. “Just the romantic touch you wanted.”

“Yes, I think so,” Hildy said as she turned her head to see who’d walked into the shop. “Well, Bailey Sterling, I wondered if you’d come back home after that horrible experience in Hollywood.”

Great. Now if Tina hasn’t already heard, she soon will.
Bailey forced herself to smile and shrug.

“You know, if you’d stayed in Icicle Falls, this would never have happened to you,” Hildy said. Even though Hildy was old enough to be Bailey’s mother, Bailey didn’t appreciate the unsolicited advice. Her own mother hadn’t said any such thing. But then, Muriel Sterling had ten times the class Hildy had.

“What happened?” Tina asked.

Hildy spoke before Bailey could open her mouth. “You don’t know? They started a legal defense fund for her over at the bank. She catered a party for that starlet who got food poisoning.”

“She didn’t get food poisoning,” Bailey said. “At least not from anything I made. It was all a publicity stunt.”

“Those Hollywood types,” Hildy said in disgust. “Are you suing her?”

“You should,” added Tina.

Bailey shook her head. What would be the point? “I just want to move on. In fact, that’s why I’m here. My sister told me you’re hiring.”

“You don’t want to work for your family?” Hildy asked, obviously shocked.

Maybe she should’ve let Sammy find a place for her at Sweet Dreams Chocolates. It was, after all, a family business.

But then she remembered the last time she’d helped with the family business. She’d managed to wreck the important candy sample she’d been delivering in an effort to do her part to save the company. No, it was better for everyone that she wasn’t working at Sweet Dreams.

Anyway, she wanted to do her own thing. Well, once upon a time she had. Now she wasn’t sure what she wanted or who she was.

“I thought maybe I’d branch out,” she said. It sounded better than “I failed.”

Tina nodded. “Stick around and we’ll talk.”

Hildy had been hovering at the counter, probably hoping to assist with the interview. Now she took her cue and said, “Well, I should get back to the drugstore. We’re training the Hernandez girl, and I don’t like to leave her on her own for too long.” She sighed. “It’s so hard to find good help.”

“Especially when you only pay one penny over minimum wage,” Tina said as soon as the door was shut.

“I hope that means you pay more than minimum wage,” Bailey said, and she was only half joking.

“At least two pennies over.” Tina grinned. “That woman is such a cheapskate. Do you know she wanted me to give her a ten percent discount just because she lives here in town? Like she’d ever give that to anyone who came into the drugstore.”

Hildy was notorious for always wanting a bargain. She’d tried a similar stunt when Sweet Dreams Chocolates was struggling. “It’s wrong to take advantage of people,” Bailey said. She thought of Samba Barrett and frowned.

“I agree,” Tina said. “So, tell me about you. I assume you have retail experience?”

Uh-oh. “Um, no,” Bailey admitted.

Tina’s smile faltered a little. “So you never worked in the shop at your family’s company?”

Now Bailey wished she had. She’d spent one summer working in the factory, and after that her father had never been able to get her near the place again. She shook her head. “No, but I had my own business.” Oh, no. Why was she reminding Tina about the mess she’d left behind? She bit her lip and waited for Tina to politely tell her to go away.

“Well, it’s not that hard to work a cash register. If you want the job, it’s yours.”

She had a job, a chance for a new beginning! “Great. When can I start?”

“How about tomorrow?”

“Perfect,” Bailey said.

“Okay, then. We’ll get all the paperwork filled out, and I’ll show you a few things, and then you can come in tomorrow at nine. We open at ten.”

Bailey ended up staying the rest of the morning, and for the first time since The Incident, she felt hopeful. She could work for Tina, learn the business and then maybe, in a year or two, have a shop of her own.

“That would be almost as good as getting to cook,” she told her mother when she called to share her news.

“You’ll cook again,” her mother assured her.

Of course she would. She’d create culinary treats for her family and friends. It would be enough. She was lucky to be able to come back to a wonderful town like Icicle Falls.

New people had come here to live since she’d moved away, and she saw several unfamiliar faces at Safeway when she stopped in to pick up the makings for dinner. Who was that woman in the jeans and the red blazer?

“Oh, that’s Meredith Banks,” Linda, the cashier, told her when she asked. “She married Jed Banks, who started the Kid Power program.”

“Any new men?” Bailey asked. Probably not. That was one of the benefits of living in the big city. Lots of men.

“Oh, yeah,” Linda said. “The town is definitely growing.”

Bailey would’ve loved more specifics, but another customer (yet another woman she didn’t recognize) had already unloaded her groceries and was now smiling politely while her fingers did an impatient tap dance on her grocery cart.

Bailey left, thinking that maybe on the weekend Cecily would like to go to The Red Barn and introduce her little sister to some of the new talent in town. Meanwhile, she had a celebratory dinner to make.

By the time Cecily came home, the condo was filled with wonderful aromas. “Oh, my gosh, what do I smell?”

“Three-cheese stuffed chicken. And we have a Mediterranean salad and tiramisu for dessert. We’re celebrating.”

“Yum. What are we celebrating, besides the fact that I don’t have to make dinner?”

“Thanks to you, I got a job,” Bailey crowed. “I’m starting at Lace and Lovelies tomorrow.”

Cecily broke into a grin. “No way.”

“Way,” Bailey said, and the two sisters hugged.

“It’s probably not what you’ll want to do for the rest of your life,” Cecily said as she kicked off her shoes.

“It’ll be good experience.”

As they talked, the sisters drifted into the kitchen, Bailey to put the finishing touches on their dinner and Cecily to open a bottle of Asti Spumante for a toast. “Here’s to success,” she said, once they sat down to eat. “And to new beginnings.”

“To new beginnings,” Bailey echoed.

But the next day her new beginning didn’t get off to an auspicious start. Even though Tina was nice, Bailey was still nervous, and sometimes when she got nervous, well...things happened.

She was helping Tina with a window display and managed to knock a chintz teapot off its perch and break it. Both she and her employer let out a gasp.

Bailey glanced from the broken china to Tina’s face. Tina looked like a woman who’d accidentally dropped a diamond in the ocean.

“I’m so sorry,” Bailey said. “Please, take that out of my paycheck.”

It took a moment for Tina to reply. “No, that’s okay. It could have happened to anyone.”

And maybe anyone could have rung up a sale wrong (more nerves). Anyone could have bumped into a display table and knocked over a crystal vase (which went the way of the teapot). Anyone could have gotten flustered and shorted a customer on lace by ten inches. But it didn’t happen to anyone. It happened to Bailey.

And by the end of the day, something else happened to Bailey. She got fired.

“Look.” Tina’s tone of voice said it all before she even finished her sentence. “I don’t think this is going to work out.”

Who fired someone on her first day at work? “I know today didn’t exactly go smoothly,” Bailey began.

“Smoothly?” Tina echoed. “That’s the understatement of the century.”

Okay, that hurt. It wasn’t as if Bailey had meant to screw up. “I’m sorry,” she said stiffly. “Of course, I’ll pay for what I broke.”

“No, just forget it.”

“No, really. I want to.”

Tina waved away Bailey’s offer. “I’ll write it off.”

If she was going to write it off... “Couldn’t you give me one more day?” Bailey asked in a small voice.

Tina looked at her in horror. “I can’t afford to write off
that
much.”

There wasn’t anything Bailey could say, other than, “I’ll get my purse.”

“I’m sorry,” Tina said when Bailey returned from the back room. “I hope you find something that’s a better fit.”

“I’m sure I will,” Bailey said. There were all kinds of things she could do. She just had to figure out what they were. She slung her purse onto her shoulder and overturned a pile of lace tablecloths. “Uh, I’ll get going.”

Tina frowned. “That would be a good idea.”

And so Bailey got going...right over to her mother’s cottage.

“Hi, sweetie. How was your first day on your new job?”

“I got fired,” Bailey said and burst into tears.

Her mother hugged her, then led her to the dining table and seated her with a box of tissues and a cup of chocolate mint tea. “Now, tell me what happened.”

It was a short story. Bailey’s klutz gene had kicked in, and that had been that.

“Well, I must say, she didn’t give you much of a chance,” her mother observed.

“I guess I wasn’t meant to sell lace,” Bailey said. “But I wish she’d given me one more day. I mean, I’m not totally accident prone.”

Her mother made no comment, instead saying, “Maybe God has something else in mind for you. Everything happens for a reason—you know that.”

Bailey frowned. “I’d sure like to know the reason I got turned into the party poisoner.”

“Maybe it was to bring you home to Icicle Falls.”

But she’d come back in disgrace. How was that a good thing?

“I think you were meant to come home, and I think something wonderful is waiting for you here,” her mother continued. “You just have to discover it.”

“I want to, but I have no idea what to do next,” Bailey confessed.

“What about working for Olivia?”

Brandon Wallace’s mom? “Oh, I don’t know,” Bailey said. She wasn’t sure she wanted to work at the Icicle Creek Lodge, where she could hear firsthand how happy Brandon was with his new girlfriend.

“Olivia was just telling me yesterday that she’d like to hire someone personable to run the front desk.”

On the other hand, Bailey liked Olivia Wallace. She and Bailey’s mother had been friends since they were girls, and Olivia had been like an adopted aunt to Bailey and her sisters when they were growing up. Bailey had enjoyed many a birthday tea party at Olivia’s, and it had been Olivia who’d encouraged her to go after her dream of becoming a caterer.

Working for Olivia would feel more like being with family than clocking in to a job. It might even be fun.

“Let’s call her,” Mama urged.

Bailey agreed, and a moment later they had Olivia on speakerphone.

“Bailey, I’m glad you’re back,” Olivia said. “Are you home to stay?”

“I think so.” And if her mother was right, she was home for a purpose. What that purpose was, she couldn’t imagine.

“She needs a job,” Mama put in. “I told her you were looking for someone over at the lodge.”

“Oh, Bailey, you’d be perfect!”

“You think so?” Bailey asked hopefully. It would certainly be nice to be perfect for something.

“Absolutely. Come on over and let’s talk,” Olivia said.

So Bailey left her mother’s place and went to the Icicle Creek Lodge.

The lodge was one of the town’s most popular B and Bs. Snugged in by fir and cedar trees, it looked like a Bavarian hunting lodge, all stone and timber, with a big front porch and a sweeping lawn. Inside, it was impressive. Its large, elegant reception area had high ceilings and a stone fireplace flanked by big easy chairs. There was also a baby grand piano, and on weekends, evenings and special holidays, the local music teacher came in to serenade the guests. A grand staircase, with an elaborately carved bannister, led to the second-floor landing.

In addition to the family’s private quarters, the building had thirty-six guest rooms and a large dining room that Olivia rented out for everything from wedding receptions to high school reunions. It was always booked, but when it wasn’t, she partitioned off half, which she kept available as a conference room.

Olivia hired locals to clean the rooms and work in the dining room and kitchen, but she made the breakfasts herself. She was especially fond of baking and, as she liked to say, had the figure to prove it. The lodge rarely had a vacancy, and with the rooms’ Victorian decor and beautiful mountain views, it was a popular choice for anniversaries and girlfriend weekends. One thing Bailey knew for sure, she’d have a wonderful working atmosphere.

“I’m so sorry about what happened to you,” Olivia said after she’d about smothered Bailey in an enthusiastic, vanilla-scented hug. “But we’re all happy you’re back home. And having you here will be like having a daughter working with me.”

“Sounds like you may be getting one real soon.” Maybe her sisters were wrong. She held her breath and hoped Olivia would deny it.

“Well, it does look like it’s getting serious between Brandon and Arielle.”

How Bailey wished it had gotten serious between Brandon and her. She was positive her mother would say that God had something better planned. It was hard to imagine anything better than Brandon.