Life is Sweet (2 page)

“He never comes in, even when we have free samples.” Becca peered at the skinny old guy, curious. “You think he's on a diet? Diabetic?”

“Just a crazy old coot, is what I'm guessing,” Pam said.

Most likely he wasn't a day over fifty-five, but his frayed appearance made him seem older. As always, a well-worn pork-pie hat was perched on his head, which probably accounted for Pam's having called him crazy. Pam was old-time mainline Virginia all the way; she would battle quirkiness to her dying breath, even as it sprang up around her like dandelions.

“I wonder what he wants,” Becca said.

“Wants?” Pam snorted. “He wants what all these vagrants flooding our city want—a free ride.”

Becca tried not to laugh. Leesburg, Virginia, was hardly a pit of urban decay flooded with vagrants. But evidently inside Pam's head there existed an alternate universe in which Leesburg's few placid, historic streets teemed with homeless people, panhandlers, and hookers.

Having only a moment ago acknowledged her own good fortune, Becca experienced a swell of sympathy for this down-on-his-luck guy. “I can't give him a free ride, but I wonder if he'd settle for a free cupcake.” She circled back to the other side of the counter, took a coconut cupcake from the display case, dropped it in a paper sack, and grabbed two napkins.

“Oh no.” Pam trailed her to the front door. “Don't feed him. That will just make the problem worse.”

“There is no problem. He's just a man sitting on a bench, who looks like he could use some cheering up.”

She stepped out of her shop onto the brick sidewalk and stopped in front of the bench, which was shaded by her shop's awning. The stranger lurched to his feet, his curious, anxious gaze traveling from Becca to Pam hovering behind her.

“I thought you might enjoy this.” Becca held out the bag with the Strawberry Cake Shop stamped on it.

Wary eyes lingered on Becca, but her smile persuaded the man to take the sack and peek at the contents. “Damn,” he said approvingly in a low, resonant voice. “Looks good enough to eat.”

“That's the idea,” she said.

He glanced down at her again. His height was probably close to six feet, although his lankiness and slouch made it hard to judge. He had kind, sad eyes. She also noted something that looked like oil stains on the legs of his pants.

“Thank you, thank you very much.” His voice had a leisurely timbre to it, yet not a trace of a Southern drawl. Like her, he was probably not a native, but he certainly didn't look like the typical yuppie settlers who populated Loudoun County, most of whom were DC commuters. “I hope you didn't think I was sitting here hoping to freeload.”

“No, but I've seen you out here before.”

“I just like this spot.” He pointed to the early-nineteenth-century buildings surrounding them. “Nice town.”

“The natives are friendly, too, once they get used to you.” Becca tossed a glance back at Pam, whose brows arched skeptically, as if she was still waiting for the man to produce a butcher knife and hack them both to pieces in broad daylight.

“My name's Walt,” the man said.

“Nice to meet you, Walt. I'm Becca.”

“Becca, is it?” he repeated, as if surprised. “Becca . . . ?”

“Becca Hudson.”

The man's smile faded a shade, but he nodded. “Thank you for the treat, Becca. I'm sure I'll enjoy it.”

“You're welcome.”

Without another word, Walt turned and walked away, his pace brisk. Becca felt a pang, as if she'd chased him off.

“He had shifty eyes,” Pam declared when he'd turned the corner onto Market Street. “I hope he wasn't casing the joint. He might come back later and rob us.”

Pam's community watch paranoia made Becca laugh. She'd thought his eyes looked more sad than shifty. And his expression when she'd first approached him stayed with her—as if he'd been afraid of something. “You think everyone looks shifty who hasn't lived here for fifty years. I thought he was downright civilized.” Albeit in a hurry to get away from them after a few minutes.

All at once, Pam drew back, her lips breaking into a smile at something over Becca's shoulder. Or, more likely, someone. Becca turned as her ex-husband approached. Cal always cadged free coffee when he was in town. This morning was starting to feel like a
Mister Rogers' Neighborhood
parade of regulars and special visitors.

“Why, look who's already up and about at”—Pam checked her watch—“eleven thirty!”

He smiled. “You're wasted selling cupcakes, Pam. You should hire yourself out to the city. They could install you up on city hall like a clock on a bell tower. Then you could just shout the time at people.”

“Most people in this town have figured out how to set an alarm clock by their seventh birthday,” Pam said.

He scratched his unshaven cheek and turned his attention to Becca. If the man hadn't inherited a horse farm, he would have shown great promise as a hobo. He could have been hanging out with Walt. “Got any coffee?”

“Help yourself,” Becca said. He always did.

“See?” Pam followed them into the cake shop. “You feed these guys and they start flocking around, expecting handouts. Like pigeons.”

Cal made himself at home, scooting around to the back to retrieve the Ravens mug he kept by the sink and then back out to the coffee station. The Strawberry Cake Shop's rectangular room was split into two: the front half was for customers, with a few marble-topped tables for stopping . . . but not for staying forever. Becca had opted not to put in comfy furniture, to discourage one-cup lounge lizards from planting themselves in the shop all day. Behind the long oak display counter, a remnant from the hardware store, all the innards of the kitchen stood in plain view—stainless-steel appliances, mixers, a sink loaded with mixing bowls and pans, and the island where all the icing and finishing work were done. Only the storage room off the side, which contained another utility sink and shelves loaded with all of Becca's supplies, was hidden from the front of the shop.

A mishmash of things Becca loved embellished the front half of the shop. Framed vintage photographs and posters hung on the exposed brick walls alongside horse stuff—odds and ends including photos of horses, including her own horse, Harvey. From the high, pressed-tin ceiling above hung three 1920s light fixtures with heavy white cut-glass shades that made changing light bulbs a death-defying act.

While Pam inspected a picture of herself soaring over a fence in full hunting regalia on her gelding, Crackers, Becca returned to icing duty. Wafer-thin sugared lemon slices she'd prepared in her apartment the night before stood at the ready to be used as garnish.

“You look like something puked up by a barn cat,” Becca said to Cal.

He smiled. “Poker night. Didn't get to bed until four.”

“Four o'clock?” Pam straightened her shoulders. “
I
was up at seven to meet Floyd at the barn. He never showed up, by the way. Honestly, Cal, Butternut Knoll needs a new farrier. Floyd's a no-show half the time . . . although that's probably a blessing, because I suspect that's the half when he's drunk.”

“I can guarantee you he was drunk this morning,” Cal said.

Pam's face fell and then reddened. “He was with
you?
You were out boozing with Floyd hours before he was supposed to be at the farm shoeing Crackers?”

“How was I supposed to know?”

“Because it's
your
business, you dumb cluck!” Pam exclaimed. She and Cal had been friends forever—really forever, since preschool—despite their inability to sit together in a room for five minutes without arguing. They'd even argued during a trip the three of them had taken to Vegas, which had spontaneously turned into Cal and Becca's wedding weekend. In retrospect, she wished they'd argued
that
ill-fated decision over a little more. Or had foregone the last martini that had preceded their making it.

Surprisingly, that brief wedding ceremony was probably the one time Cal and Pam were in a room together and managed to refrain from sniping at each other. Becca's memory of the blessed event was fuzzy, but she couldn't actually recall Pam saying anything before the officiant had pronounced them man and wife. Then she'd gathered Becca and Cal to her for a group hug, burst into tears, and passed out in the Chapel of Hope.

“I'm going to have to reschedule,” Pam complained now.

Cal smiled. “Well, you can be sure he'll show up next time. After last night, he needs the money.”

“Terrific.” Pam shook her head. “I'll see if I can get Floyd out to the barn this afternoon. You will be there, won't you?”

“Of course, I'm on my way back out to the Knoll right now. Just had to loop through town to pick up some stuff.” As Pam went to the storeroom to retrieve her phone from her purse and make the call, Cal emptied his leftover coffee into the sink and grabbed a ginger-pepper brownie off a cooling rack.

“How's business?” he asked.

“We're one pilfered brownie away from destitution,” Becca deadpanned.

He gobbled it down. Reddish stubble on his unshaven jaw, bed head that would give way to helmet head later in the afternoon, a fleece over worn-out jeans—looking at him, she felt the mix of affection and irritation she imagined she might have felt for a brother, if she'd ever had one. When she'd first met him, his rumpled, laid-back ways made him so different from the guys she was used to. As a recent refugee from LA, she'd found his lack of ambition refreshing, even sexy. He was an earthy guy who wanted nothing more than to manage the horse farm that had been left to him, where his family had lived for over a hundred years. Her past celebrity was a novelty to him, and maybe it made him notice her at first, but he didn't treat her any differently because of it.

She'd fallen in love with Butternut Knoll, and the friends she'd made riding there. She'd been intoxicated by her new life, by the idea of belonging to this town, these people. Just having such a tight circle of friends was a wonder to her. She had lost her mother and had felt so all alone in the world. Orphaned. Discovering and being embraced by these Leesburg friends was like having a big family for the first time in her life. Cal had been part of that, and along with romanticizing her new life, she'd romanticized him.

Until she'd flown home from Vegas and realized to her shame that she'd just married someone she liked a whole lot, but didn't really love.

“Peevish Pam working out as a helper?” he asked between bites.

Pam was a real estate agent by trade, but the Realtor she'd worked for had folded during the last economic slump. Pam now worked part-time for Becca and picked up real estate commissions on a freelance basis.

“It's been great. I can actually catch my breath during the day.” The first year Becca had tried to go it alone, which had been stressful. “And she's trying to get me to improve my people skills.”

He almost choked on his brownie. “
People
skills? Is that what they call bullying these days?”

“She doesn't treat everyone the way she treats you.”

“That makes me feel special.” He lingered another moment as if there was something he wanted to say. Their encounters always seemed to end this way now. Awkwardly. Because, a year on from their divorce, there was nothing left to say. They'd made a mistake, and righted it, and now it was a lucky thing they remained friends.

“Well . . . I guess I'd better go and see what else I can screw up today,” he said. “Sounds like I've already made a head start and I didn't even know it.”

He gazed at her. She looked away.

“Are you coming out to the stables today?” he asked.

“I'll be by after work, around seven.”

When he was gone, she wondered if she should have given him some personal encouragement, told him that he wasn't as hopeless as he pretended to be. She still felt a residual protective impulse. And, pathetic as it sounded, her ex-husband was the closest thing she had to family now, real or televised.

But if she thought about
that
too long she would do desperate things . . . which was sort of why she'd ended up marrying Cal in the first place.

Chapter 2

“Hurry, Matthew, I'm
starving.
”

Olivia's pencil-like, ten-year-old frame long-jumped down the sidewalk ahead of him. She was the most energetic starving person on the planet.

“How can you be hungry?” Matthew asked. “I packed your noontime smorgasbord myself.”

She turned, jutting her lower jaw out so that her lower teeth protruded like a little monster. A food monster. “That was hours ago. And I gave the cookie away.”

“Why?”

“Because Grover wanted it. He never gets cookies.”

Matthew had to think twice to remember that Grover was a real child, not a Muppet or an imaginary friend. Kids these days and their weird names. Back when he was in elementary school, half his friends had been named Jason. Life had been simpler then.

“Why are you smiling?” Olivia asked him.

“No reason.”

“And why are you moving sooooo slow?” She took his hand and tugged him down the sidewalk, nearly knocking them into a woman maneuvering a baby carriage out the door of the card shop.

Matthew murmured an apology and, too late, darted to hold the door for the harried mom, with whom he felt a newfound kinship. Before, he'd often wondered why Nicole wore a hunted look some evenings, but now he knew. Dealing with your own messy work-life problems was exhausting enough without another little person's schedule and headaches to squeeze in, too. To Matthew, Olivia had always seemed like an easy-care kid. But that was before she'd been left in his sole care for longer than, say, a trip to the hairdresser's.

A month.
He pushed the thought out of his mind when Olivia dropped his hand and skipped the last ten feet to the door of the bakery, ending with an impatient hop. “This is
the best
place!”

She'd been rattling on about it all week—every day after school she'd begged to go to the Strawberry Cake Shop. According to Olivia, other kids got to go all the time, but apparently Nicole wasn't as keen on the place. As Matthew opened the door and found himself stepping into a warm world where the smells of butter and baking chocolate wrapped around him like a comforting, aromatic blanket, he could see why Nicole wouldn't be a fan. He couldn't imagine any of the desserts behind the glass case passing her lips. She wasn't big on sweets.

If the mouthwatering smell had left him in doubt whether the creations behind the case were good, the line inside would have convinced him. The clientele today was heavy on perfectly made-up moms and girls in ballet clothes, all of whom seemed to know exactly what they wanted. Cupcakes flew off the shelves. There were also double cupcakes—more like mini cakes—and full-sized cakes that were available either as whole cakes or by the slice. Iced brownies cut into wedges sat under a cake cover, and next to the cash register were two glass jars—one filled with peanut butter cookies, one with chocolate chip.

Aside from the food offerings, he saw at once what attracted Olivia to this place, and kept Nicole away. There were horses everywhere—pictures of horses, figurines, a bridle hanging on the wall. (
Is that sanitary?
he wondered.) Olivia was wild about horses, but after a year of begging she hadn't succeeded in wheedling Nicole to shell out for riding lessons.

“See that?” Olivia pointed at a picture of a horse, a white one, with a woman standing next to him in one of those ridiculous black helmets. “That's Harvey.”

“Help you?” the woman behind the counter asked Matthew, goosing his attention forward.

Before he could decide what he wanted, much less speak, Olivia piped up for both of them. “A small green cake, please.”

Matthew had no idea what she was talking about until the woman reached under the counter and carefully picked up a small green-iced cake by the doily it was sitting on. “What is that?”

“Green cake,” Olivia said, as if that made any sense.

“Yeah, but—”

The woman working the counter interrupted him. “It's strawberry cake. White cake layered with strawberries and cream, thin layer of marzipan, and then icing.” She plopped it in a small box and tied it with string before he had even absorbed what she said. Her no-nonsense, slightly husky voice distracted him. Also, he had a difficult time processing the words because he was so busy looking at her. His gaze felt riveted by her face.

“It's really good,” Olivia assured him. “I have it whenever I come in with friends.”

“Anything else?” the woman asked.

He shook his head.

“That's eight dollars and twenty-eight cents.”

Matthew dug into his jeans pocket, hoping he had enough. He'd been thinking a dollar for a cookie, maybe. Or a cupcake—he looked longingly at them sitting next to their cheery $2.25 price markers.

He fished out a five and several ones and forked them over. Olivia grabbed the box off the counter while Matthew waited for the change. “I see Monica outside!” she said, and darted toward the door.

He had only a vague memory of who Monica was.

“She's a sweet kid,” the cake lady said to him, handing him a fistful of coins.

At first he thought she was reassuring him about Monica, then realized she meant Olivia. “Oh yeah.”
Why is my brain not working?
“Thanks—she's great.”

“Olivia introduced herself the first time she came in here. She's nuts about horses, just like I was.”

“Her mom isn't nuts about them,” he said.

“Mine wasn't, either.” She laughed, nodding around the room. “Maybe she was right. I was one of the horse-mad kids who actually retained the mental illness into adulthood.”

It was then that he made the connection between this woman and the woman in the picture Olivia had pointed out to him—in the picture the helmet covered her short reddish-brown hair and threw a shadow over brilliant blue eyes, and the ridiculous chin strap disguised the delicate shape of her face.

Delicate
probably wouldn't have been the first word he'd use to describe her, though. She was slender and long-limbed, although she didn't have Nicole's conscientiously thin look. Of course, when you lived in a buttercream icing world, it probably wasn't easy to keep up the Kate Moss standard.

But the structure of the bones in her face was delicate. And the smile was the same as he saw in the picture, he realized now, feeling his own lips tilt up in response. There was still something else about her . . . almost as if he knew her from somewhere.

He could feel his forehead puckering as his eyes narrowed in thought. “Haven't we . . . ?”

Before he could vocalize something that sounded like the world's oldest pickup line, she directed her attention to someone behind him who elbowed forward.

“Can I have a chocolate chip cookie?” the kid asked.

Backing up a step, Matthew gave way, feeling dazed. “I'd better find Olivia,” he announced unnecessarily.

The woman sent him a perfunctory nod. “Thanks for stopping by.”

The shop was too warm. Maybe it was the smell of the place—all that sweet, buttery scent. The very air seemed to clog his arteries, cutting off oxygen to his brain. How else could he explain his desire to stand there, waiting to hear that voice again. Honey with a hint of gravel.

He turned and headed for the door. He needed to get out of there, to breathe fresh air again.

Outside, Gayle Minter, Monica's mother, touched his arm. “How long is Nicole going to be working on the West Coast?”

“Three more weeks.”

“I'll bet you miss her.”

He nodded, although he couldn't help glancing back through the glass at the cake lady. What was the matter with him?

Monica's mom was still talking to him. When he looked back at her, he could see her lips moving, but he hadn't heard a word she'd said.

“I'm sorry?” he interrupted, having missed her words completely.

“I said, Olivia could stay the night. It would give you a little time to catch your breath.”

Yes, that's what he needed. Time to catch his breath. “That would be terrific,” he said. “We just need to go home and grab her things.”

Gayle Minter's brow wrinkled. “We were talking about this weekend.”

“Oh. Right.” Heat crept up his neck. “Well—even better. Although hopefully Nicole will be back for a weekend visit.”

He sought Olivia's gaze and pleaded silently for them to go before he made an even bigger idiot of himself. He could have sworn Monica's mother was eyeing him judgmentally, no doubt because she questioned his capabilities as stand-in dad. He was starting to have doubts himself.

Meanwhile, he could just imagine all the e-mail piling up in his inbox, since he was supposed to be working from home. Or, more specifically, from Nicole's home. His boss was being extremely patient this month.

“Bye, Monica—see you tomorrow. Don't forget to wear blue!” The two girls laughed at some private joke before Olivia skipped over to Matthew.

“What were you talking about with Mrs. Minter?” Olivia asked as they headed home.

“She wants you to come over for a sleepover this weekend.”

“Oh.” She started taking extra-long steps, a goofy walk she wouldn't be caught dead doing in public in a year or two. “I bet she's worried we aren't going to invite Monica to my birthday party. She's a new girl at our school, and she didn't get invited to Missy Dolan's. Missy thinks Monica's a snob.”

Matthew was a novice when it came to the politics of birthday parties, and adolescent girl friendships. Olivia seemed to have a new best friend every week. “Are you going to invite her?”

“Of course! Monica rides. She has her own horse and everything. I can't even get Mom to let me take lessons.”

Matthew hitched his throat, wanting to stay far from this topic. He wasn't Olivia's father, so he wasn't in a position to override Nicole's wishes. When the subject had first come up, he hadn't seen that it was all that big a deal. Lots of kids rode horses, he'd told Nicole, and they had the money.

“Money?” Nicole's voice had looped up in irritation. “Did having money help Christopher Reeve?”

“That was just a fluke. A really unfortunate, rare accident.”

“It happens more often than you'd think,” Nicole had said. “And he was jumping—which of course is what Olivia dreams of doing.”

“Right—dreams. She's a long way from doing anything very risky. You can't keep her in a bubble forever, you know.”

Wrong thing to say. Nicole's face had reddened right up to her hairline. “You know nothing. I send Olivia out into the world every day, and then go to work and hear stories about kidnappings, school shootings, drunk crossing guards. I have to worry about
everything
—about what she eats, about her schoolwork, about whether she's the one-in-a-million kid who'll have a bad reaction to a vaccine. Whether or not to put her on top of a fifteen-hundred-pound animal and watch her flying over fences? That's an easy call for me.”

“But—”

“You're not her father,” Nicole had said, finishing the discussion.

It was how a lot of their discussions about Olivia ended. No matter how much he cared about Olivia, he couldn't even claim stepfather status. Nicole's ex-husband—the guy who maybe could have influenced her on this issue, if he'd stuck around—had left her for another woman, moved to Boston, and started a new family when Olivia was five. Nearly six years later, Nicole was still in no hurry to marry again. She didn't even want to move in together, so Matthew lived a split existence, shuttling between Nicole's place and the town house he'd rented here to be closer to her but never actually stayed in much because he spent most of his free time at Nicole's.

“If I got a horse, I'd want him to look just like Harvey,” Olivia was saying.

“Harvey?” The name always made him think of giant rabbits.

“Harvey is the name of Becca's horse. You know—the white horse in the picture in the cake shop? I showed him to you.”

“Oh right.” With startling sharpness, the woman behind the counter came back to him. The short hair, the lightly freckled skin, the dry voice. He couldn't shake that weird connection he'd felt when he talked to her, as if he already knew her.

“Harvey's a thoroughbred,” Olivia continued, her tone expert. “A true white thoroughbred.”

They turned onto their street and walked the rest of the way home with Olivia chattering about horses, Monica, and what her mother could possibly have against all things equine.

Matthew continued along, only half-listening.

Becca.
The name suited her.