Unrivaled (34 page)

For the second day in a row, Lucy showed up on my doorstep. She thrust two cellophane-wrapped packets into my hand. “I want you try one of each of those and tell me which is better.”

“One of . . . ?” I looked down at the packages.

“They’re candies.”

When I glanced up from the packets, she was nibbling on her lip. “Now?”

“Please.”

I led her into the parlor, then put the packets down on the tea table and opened them. Both sets looked like Royal Taffy. “We already tried these yesterday. And they’re fine. They’re perfect.”

“Just try one of each.” Her hands wound around each other, and she looked for all the world as if she wanted to be anywhere but there.

I chose a piece from the first packet and took a bite. It tasted like a Royal Taffy. “It’s fine. If you’re worried whether you got it right—”

“I’m not. It’s right. But . . . could you try the other?”

I picked up a piece from the second batch and tried it. “It’s . . .” There was something crunchy inside.

She was looking at me with such fear. And such hope.

I liked it. I liked it a lot. “It’s better. It’s even better than the first one.”

Triumph flared for one brief instant in her eyes. And then it died. “You’re just saying that.” She whispered the words as if she couldn’t bear not to believe me.

“I’m not. It is.” It was. There was something new, and fresh, and crunchy about it. It made my father’s Royal Taffy seem old and tired.

“What’s this?” My father walked into the parlor. His gaze came to rest on Lucy.

She took a deep breath as she faced him. “I’ve made a candy, and I think it’s even better than Royal Taffy.”

He grunted. But when she held out a piece toward him, he took it. As he bit into it, his brows flared, and then he nodded. “You must have your father’s talent. But how are you going to produce something like this in that kitchen of yours? Times have changed. People want more, faster.”

“I’m not planning to produce it. I’m giving it to you to make once the factory’s been rebuilt.” She took a piece of paper from her pocket and laid it on the table next to the packet.

My father was stretching for the paper. “Let me see that.”

I blocked his hand. “Don’t you dare give it to him, Lucy!”

She blinked, but she took it up once more. “But . . . it’s his. You asked me to make it for you.”

“It’s
yours
. You’re the one who recreated Royal Taffy. If it weren’t for you, we’d have nothing at all.”

My father was pointing to the recipe she held. “It is mine. By rights, it’s mine. I signed a contract for that candy.”

I took the recipe from her. “But you changed the recipe, Lucy. You made it better. You could have great success with this. This candy is what you’ve been hoping for.”

My father scoffed. “It might be different, but I don’t know that it’s
better
.”

I lifted a hand toward Jennie, who’d been passing in the front hall. “Come over here for a minute, Miss Harrison. I’d like to ask you a question.”

She eyed me for a moment and I thought she’d refuse, but then she stepped into the room.

“Tell me which of these you like better.” I gave her one of each piece of candy. The original recipe and Lucy’s new one.

She tried them both.

“I liked the second one.”

I smiled. “Thank you, Miss Harrison.” I included Father in my smile. “That piece was Lucy’s.”

“It doesn’t mean anything. It’s still a Royal Taffy.”

Jennie looked at him oddly. “No, sir, it’s not.”

“Yes, it is. Now, then.” He addressed himself to Lucy. “Give that recipe to me.”

“Don’t do it!” City Confectionery was already ours, but with this new recipe, Lucy could start another company.

“She owes it to me.”

I turned on my father. “She owes you nothing. You walked away from one life and had the good luck to just walk into another. You never did the hard work needed to make anything. But Lucy has. If you want this recipe, then you’re going to have to pay for it. You’re going to have to give something up in order to get what you want this time.”

Lucy stepped away from both of us. “I do owe it to him.” She looked at me. “And to you, Charlie. So here.” She stepped past me and handed the recipe to my father on her way to the door.

My father shoved the recipe into his pocket and strode through the parlor toward the front hall. “Now, Charles. Let’s get to work. We have a factory to rebuild. And a new candy to produce. Are you coming?”

“I . . . don’t know.” The butler was opening the door for Lucy.

My father stopped. Turned around. “I could stand here and offer apologies forever, but it’s not going to change what happened, and it’s not going to fix anything. I can never give you back the time we were apart; I’ll regret that until I die. And you can think of me what you will, but that’s not going to change anything either. Can we agree that I took a coward’s way out when I gave you my responsibilities? And can I tell you that I’m proud of the way you took care of the family and proud of the man you’ve become?”

“You’re . . . proud of me?”

“I always have been. And I’m too old to be starting over again. I need you, son.” He extended his hand.

“You know, we never wanted you to be something you weren’t. We just . . . we just wanted you. To be there with us.”

“I’m sorry.” He said it with tears glistening in his eyes. “You’ll never know how sorry I am.”

Because I couldn’t bear to look at him anymore, I threw an arm around him. And then, at last, he gave me the one thing I’d always really wanted: an embrace. I couldn’t see my father through the tears in my eyes, but there was something I needed to say to him. “If it’s all right with you, then, I think I will stay. And I’ll help you. With everything.”

For the next few days, I followed Father and Mr. Gillespie around the factory site, planning for the rebuilding. I made it clear that what had happened before should not be allowed to happen again.

“All the machines in the process need to be located next to each other. In the order they’re used.”

“Standard practice.” Father waved off my concerns.

“No. It wasn’t. It was never standard practice.”

He stopped and looked at me. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that children were carrying the syrup in wheelbarrows from one side of the building to the other and then back again.”

His brows spiked. “Not very efficient.”

“No. And we’re not going to employ children anymore.”

“Why not? They worked well before.”

“They’re not very efficient. And besides that, it’s just not right. When we order the new machines, we’ll make sure that small hands aren’t needed to work them.”

“But they minimize costs. We don’t have to pay them as much as an adult.”

“We shouldn’t be employing them at all. If you want me to stay, then you’ll have to agree. And we shouldn’t just have employees. We’re making candy, for pete’s sake! We should be more like . . . like family.”

“Family!”

“Or at least we should treat them that way.” Mr. Kendall might have run his company into the ground, but the people at City Confectionery still thought he walked on cotton candy. If there was anything he’d done right, it was the way he’d treated his workers. “There are lots of factory jobs in this city. People should choose to work here because they want to, not because they have to.”

Father chewed on his cigar for a while, but eventually he agreed with me. “You seem to have it all figured out.”

“I do.” I did. All except for one thing. I couldn’t figure out what to do about Lucy.

“There’s someone to see you, miss. In the parlor.” The maid’s voice at my bedroom door interrupted my packing.

“Tell them I’m indisposed.” It wasn’t far from the truth. I was helping Mother pack up the house. I’d long since made my peace with her. In a way, she’d been right all along: Candy hadn’t been good for any of us. So we were leaving it, and St. Louis, behind, preparing for a move to Denver. The doctor thought the dry air would be better for my father.

The confectionery was being inventoried for the sale to Mr. Clarke, and the papers were to be brought over at the end of the week for signing. Though it was already the first of March, with the convenience of trains and frequent stops along the way, we hoped to have Father settled into a new house by Easter.

The maid’s footsteps retreated back down the hall as I grabbed at my Queen of Love and Beauty sash and spun it into a ball. Fall had started out with such promise, but if I’d ever done anything
to earn that title, I was certain I didn’t deserve it now. I jammed it into a trunk and piled some pairs of gloves on top of it.

I opened my hope chest and paused to survey my souvenirs from Europe. My sketchbook from the Alps and the viewing disks from Florence. The lace doilies I’d bought in Brussels. How long ago all of that seemed. How young I had been back then. I started to place some handkerchiefs atop them, then thought the better of it, and put one of the doilies aside for Winnie. The friend I’d never appreciated and never respected—who’d proven to be the truest friend I’d ever had.

Those footsteps returned. They paused in front of my door. “The gentleman says you’d want to see him.”

”Really, I don’t think that I do.”

“But, Miss Lucy—”

“Please, send him away.”

The maid looked at me for a long moment. She opened her mouth to speak, but then twisted it shut and turned on her heel. She did not return for quite some time, and when she did it was with another missive. “Your mother would like to see you downstairs, miss.”

Sighing, I pushed up from the floor. My hair was slipping its pins, but what did it matter? As I walked down the stairs, I picked pieces of lint from my skirts. When I was done packing, I vowed to find a mop and chase all the dust from my room.

“Yes, Mama?”

I rounded the corner to find Charlie Clarke sitting across the table from her. She was smiling at him.

He scrambled to his feet. His hair was oiled back, his collar was tall, his shoes were gleaming. His suit was . . . immaculate. He looked the perfect gentleman.

I
looked the perfect housemaid. I wished I’d had time to pluck all of the lint from my skirts.

“Miss Kendall.” Charlie turned his dimpled smile on me.

I struggled to keep it from affecting me. “Mr. Clarke.”

“Come, Lucy. Sit.” Mother gestured to an open chair, next to Charlie’s. “Mr. Clarke has come to us with a proposition.”

Charlie turned toward me as I sat. “Rebuilding is underway, and we’ve begun to order up supplies. But as I was looking at your recipe, I realized there was one thing in it we’d never bought before.”

I resisted an urge to bite at my nails. I didn’t want to think about sugar, and I didn’t want to think about taffy. Candy making was behind me now.

“Your recipe has Fancy Crunch as one of its ingredients.”

“I put all of my favorite things into it.” I had figured it would be the last chance I’d have to create a recipe, so I’d wanted to make the best candy I could.

“It so happens we never owned a machine that could pan nuts.”

No. And at the confectionery we’d always done everything by hand. I glanced over at Mama. She was still smiling. “I suppose . . . are you here to buy our panning trays?” Is that the proposition he had come to make? “I don’t think we’d have enough for you—and I’d assumed that they’d go along with the sale, but—”

“No.”

I looked up at him. “No? Then—?”

“I’m here to contract with City Confectionery to pan the nuts for us.”

“ . . . What?”

“I want City Confectionery to make Fancy Crunch for us. Exclusively. We’d need all you have in order to produce our new candy in the amounts that we’ll need. It’s going to be our new bestseller, so we’re willing to pay you a thousand dollars for it.”

A thousand! I grabbed Mama’s ledger book and quickly did a calculation in the margin. I looked up at her.

She was still smiling.

“A week.”

“A week!”

I recalculated and then recalculated again. It couldn’t be right. “Are you . . . sure?”

“Yes. At least, that’s what I was
hoping
to pay.”

“That can’t be right.”

“Sure it can.”

“But the confectionery is yours. You bought it from us. We’ve all but signed the final papers.”

He shrugged. “If you insist.” He drew a packet of paper from his coat pocket with a flourish and laid it on the table in front of Mama.

“What is that?” I reached for the papers, but my mother pulled them away and started flipping through them.

“Royal Crunch is going to be produced just as soon as we can start making it, according to your recipe, using candy-coated nuts.”

“
City Confectionery’s
Fancy Crunch. That’s what you’ll need to put on the wrapper. If you’re using our nuts, then you’re going to have to say so.” Mama’s voice was quite firm. “And you must know that we’re planning a move to Denver.”

“But . . . but . . .” I didn’t understand. I looked over at my mother. “You said you were finished with candy! You said it had been nothing but trouble. And I agree with you.”

She looked up from the papers. “I’m finished with scrimping and scraping to get by. I’m finished with being ignored by my husband and my own daughter. But I also realize that I did neither of you any favors by trying to sell your dream out from under you.”

Charlie laid a hand on my arm. “I’m aware of your move, although I was hoping . . .” He gave me a look that made me blush. He cleared his throat. “Among other things, I was hoping that instead of selling your company outright, you might consider leasing it to me.”

My mother was reading the contract, making notations in the margin. “I’ll have to consult our lawyer about this.”

Charlie was nodding. “I hope you will.”

I was almost afraid to speak. And most definitely afraid to hope. “Leasing . . . you mean we’d be . . .”

“We’d be partners.”

Partners!

“If my past doesn’t offend you. I’m not proud of the person I was, back in Chicago.”

“And I’m not proud of the things that I’ve done and said since you came to the city. Can we forget about the past and just . . . keep going?”

He looked over at me with regret pooling in his eyes. “No.”

“We can’t?”

Charlie shook his head. “How can we?”

All of my hopes, all of my delight at seeing him again, died.

“I don’t think we should try to forget the past since that’s what’s brought us here. But maybe . . . ?” As he paused, his dimples flashed.

“Yes?”

“Maybe we can remember and move forward.”

“But . . . are you sure, Charlie?
My
candy? You want to sell my candy?” I could hardly dare to believe it.

“Across the nation. It’s the best candy that anyone who’s tried it has ever tasted.”

“But I tried to destroy your company, Charlie. And I tried to hurt you.”

“You did hurt me.”

“I’m so sorry.”

He smiled a smile that made everything inside me turn to syrup. “I’m sorry, too.”

“I just wanted . . .”

“To win. I know. So did I. But I discovered there’s something even sweeter than winning.” Charlie took my hand and pulled me up from the chair.

“What’s that?”

“You.” He bent to kiss me, cupping his hands to my face.

There was a time when I never would have admitted it, but he was right. There was something sweeter than winning. I put my hands to his wrists, trying to find some anchor against the sensations that had made my head spin.

“Surely Mr. Clarke can do better than this!” Mama was clucking over the contract, crossing out something in the text.

“Yes, I’m sure he can.” Charlie winked at me.

I smothered a laugh, and then I rose up on my toes and closed my eyes as he bent to kiss me again.