Sweets Galore: The Sixth Samantha Sweet Mystery (The Samantha Sweet Mysteries) (4 page)

“Mom! Hey!” Kelly stood at the
edge of the plaza, waving.

Before Sam could think of a way to
stop her she’d skipped across the street, a small shopping bag dangling from
her fingers. “Look what I found at Serendipity.”

She reached into the bag,
rummaging for something.

Sam glanced back at Jake.

“Oh, sorry,” Kelly said. “I didn’t
realize you were talking to someone. I can show you this later.”

She gave a small wiggle of the
fingers in Jake and
Evie’s
direction and headed back
across the plaza where Sam noticed Kelly’s little red car was parked.

When Sam looked back toward Jake
he was standing still as a statue. He knew.

“That’s your daughter?” he said
quietly.

“Yes. Well, I’ve got to get
going.” She opened the van’s door. “Nice to meet you, Evie.”

She slammed her door, started the
engine and backed out of her spot before Jake could make a move. A small pickup
truck blared its horn at her and she shoved the gearshift into Drive and got
out of its way.

Jake knew. Well, what did she
expect? One look at Kelly’s curly brown hair and those aquamarine eyes that
were identical to his—there was no way she could
not
be his kid. Had Kelly noticed? There’d been no reaction but Sam
couldn’t take the chance.

All Jake had to do was look up her
number in the phone book. One call and Kelly would get a ton of questions she
did not have answers to. Sam circled the block and headed for the house.

She caught up with Kelly’s car a
block from home and followed her into the driveway.

“It wasn’t that important,” Kelly
said, holding up her little shopping bag as she got out of the car. “Just a new
pair of earrings.”

“There’s something else. Something
we should have talked about a long time ago.”

Kelly’s smile faded a touch and
her forehead wrinkled.

“Let’s go inside, maybe put the
tea kettle on,” Sam said.

“Mom? Is somebody sick or
something?”

Sam draped an arm around Kelly’s
shoulders. “Nothing like that. C’mon, let’s go in.”

Kelly was already making the place
her own, Sam noticed. Small touches, like a candle in the middle of the kitchen
table, a mug Sam hadn’t seen before. She felt a little pang.

She danced around the subject for
a couple of minutes, filling the kettle with water, setting it on the burner.
She’d had more than thirty years to prepare for this conversation but it all
boiled down to the past fifteen minutes.

“Your father is in town,” she
began.

A crease formed between Kelly’s
eyebrows.

“I never thought I would see him
again but here he is, shocking the hell out of me,” Sam said.

“Did he come looking for me?”

Sam blew out a breath. “He
actually contacted me, wanting money.”

Kelly sank into one of the kitchen
chairs. Sam adjusted the heat under the kettle.

“
Kel
, he
never knew about you. We worked together in a temporary camp in Alaska. We were
nineteen. Had a quick fling.” She found it hard to look into Kelly’s blue eyes.
“When I discovered I was pregnant I left. Jake was—a free spirit, a guy who
loved to move around, take a variety of jobs.” Play around with a variety of
women. She didn’t say that.

“With a baby coming I knew I’d
better settle somewhere. I couldn’t go back to my parents in Texas; I never fit
in there. I just bought a used Jeep, got in and started driving. Stopped when I
came to Taos. This felt like home. It still does.”

“You never told him about me?
Ever?”

“No. I didn’t.”

The kettle let out a shriek. Sam
turned off the burner and picked it up, suddenly not really wanting tea. She
set it back down.

“I guess I got selfish,
Kel
. I didn’t want to share you. Not with a man I barely
knew, not with whatever extended family he might have. It was hard work, trying
to support us both, but I loved our life together. Just us girls.” They’d often
used that phrase when Kelly was a kid. Just us girls.

“But what if he’d wanted to do the
responsible thing and marry you and be a dad to me?”

He didn’t. Sam would have bet on
it. The picture of Jake with the young woman who was probably younger than
Kelly popped into her head. She pressed her lips shut before a snide comment
could come out.

“How could you
do
that to me, Mom? I never had a
father, just because you felt a little
selfish
that day?”

“
Kel
, it
wasn’t—” It wasn’t like that.

But Kelly had left the kitchen,
stormed to her bedroom and closed the door a little too firmly.

Sam started after her but stopped short
at the living room doorway. Pointing out that Kelly had never really asked
questions about her father, nor had she expressed any particular regret about
not having one—all that would be counterproductive at this moment. Give her
some time. Sam picked up her pack and locked the back door behind her when she
left.

At the ranch Beau was feeding the
horses when she pulled up the long drive to the big log house. She left her
pack on one of the porch chairs and walked toward the barn. The pinto nuzzled
Beau’s hand as he offered half an apple.

“Hey,
darlin
’,”
he said, turning toward her for a quick kiss. “Something wrong?”

She perked her mouth into a smile
for him. “Kelly’s upset with me. Long story.”

Beau was another who deserved to
know the whole truth. She’d told him about Jake, back when they began dating,
but he didn’t know the recent parts. She felt weary and not at all in the mood
to get into it tonight.

“I put that chicken into the
marinade when I got home,” he said. “Anything else I can help you with?”

“Just keep being this wonderful,”
she said, hugging him around the middle. “I’ll go in and finish dinner. Twenty
minutes?”

* *
*

Sam slept fitfully and was already
wide awake when her alarm went off at four-thirty. By the time she arrived at
the bakery she was feeling put-off because the scale had only showed a loss of
two pounds and the way Kelly had slammed the door last night still echoed in
her head. This couldn’t go on. She would have to settle things with her
daughter, and soon.

Two days until her mother, the
ultimate lie detector, would be here. There was no way Sam and Kelly could be
on bad terms during the family visit without everybody knowing what was going
on. Sam checked the fridge to be sure Julio had baked the layers for her
wedding cake, then set to work finalizing the audition cake for Vic Valentino.

It seemed clear now that either
Jake or one of the others from his show would be the intended recipient. She
pictured the way he’d wolfed down that cupcake in her shop. It was tempting to sneak
some kind of bitter extract into the icing, but she discarded the thought. She
didn’t want him suing her—she preferred that he just get out of town soon.

The audition cake was
ninety-percent done, only needing the fireworks and the figurine of Valentino,
which Becky would finish this morning.

While Julio started baking the
breakfast pastries for the display cases, Sam turned to making sugar flowers
for her own cake. The color theme was autumn shades of orange, yellow and red
so she started with tiger lilies, adding the tiny details that made them look
as if they’d come straight from the florist. Realistic chrysanthemums took a
lot of time but added great detail, so she made several of them too.

The intercom buzzed. “Sam? Mr.
Calendar is here to see you.”

God, Jake, could you possibly complicate my life any further?

She set the flowers to dry and
wiped her hands on a towel. He stood at the beverage bar, helping himself to a
cup of coffee.

“Jake, I told you I can’t invest
in your project.”

He turned those blue eyes on her.
“We need to talk about something else.”

Oh boy. She turned to Jen. “I’ll
handle the front for a few minutes, if you can maybe check with Julio about
getting some more scones out here?”

Jen raised an eyebrow but exited
gracefully.

“Our last conversation ended a
little too fast,” he said. “I believe I’d just learned that you have a
daughter. Or should I say,
we
do?”

“Lower your voice,” she whispered.
“No one knew about this. Including Kelly.”

The light that sparked in his eyes
worried her.

“You aren’t going to blackmail me,
Jake. I’ve told her.”

“Good. I want to meet her.”

It was all Sam could do not to
glance toward the shop next door where Kelly would be at work right now.

“I want to clear that with her first.
I’m not sure she wants to meet you.”

His mouth opened. Closed again.
“Fine. Today?”

Sam’s foot tapped. Why not just
get it over with now? Rip the bandage off all at once. “Let me give her a call.
Wait here.”

She walked into the kitchen and
instructed Jen to watch the front again. Without a word Sam went out the back
door and gave a quick tap at the back entrance to Puppy Chic then walked in.

Kelly was at the deep sink,
sprayer in hand, rinsing suds off a small, shivering poodle.

“I need to talk to you,” Sam said.
“It’s about that previous subject, the one that kept me awake half the night.”

Judging by the circles under her
eyes, Kelly must not have rested all that well either.

 
“Mom, why is this all coming up now?” Her
voice was chilly.

Deep breath. “Well, like I told
you, he’s in town. He—he’s figured it out. About you.”

“How?”

“Yesterday, on the plaza, the man
who was standing there. That’s Jake. I had hoped . . . well, I’d planned . . .”

What she’d hoped was that Jake
would simply go away so that her life, and Kelly’s, would continue as always
before.

“When he saw you walking toward
me, and when you called me mom . . . Well, you look a lot like him.”

The breath seemed to go out of
Kelly. She scrubbed at the poodle, her thoughts obviously churning.

“I look like him? How could I have
not spotted that?”

“You had no reason to. But now he
wants to meet you.”

Kelly turned off the water and the
dog clawed at the sides of the tub.

“He’s at the bakery now. I can get
you his number or set up a meeting for you . . . It’s your call.”

“I can come now,” Kelly said. “Let
me get
Babycakes
dried off and into a kennel.
Riki
should be back from the bank any second and I’ll ask
for an early lunch.”

“Okay then. I’ll tell him you’ll
come by the bakery in ten minutes. He doesn’t need to know you work right here,
at least until you know him better.”

Kelly sent Sam that
don’t be so overprotective look
, but at
least there was a little smile attached.

Jake was flirting subtly with Jen
when Sam walked back into the sales room. Jen sent a plea toward Sam and she
shot him a look.

“Ten minutes. She’ll meet you
here, so go ahead and refill your coffee if you’d like. We’ve got work to do
and I would appreciate it if you don’t bother my employees.”

Dirty old man
, she fumed as she went back to the worktable.

She botched three flowers before
convincing herself that she needed to concentrate on work. She could be as
angry as she wanted with Jake, but later. When she heard the front door bells
she went to the sales room to be sure Kelly and Jake got off on the right foot.

The two were studying each other
but at least Jake’s manner seemed respectful as he suggested they go for a
walk. Kelly patted the front pocket of her jeans, her normal signal to Sam that
she had her phone with her and would call if there was trouble. Sam felt
herself giving a weak smile to the pair as they walked out.

Jen fidgeted behind the counter
but managed to appear busy rather than pelting Sam with the questions she
clearly wanted to ask.

Sam went back to the kitchen and
spent the next ten minutes figuring out that her hands were far too shaky to
form decent sugar flowers or pipe anything in icing. She ended up tinting
fondant for a birthday cake order, kneading and pounding the paste color into
it, imagining how it would feel to wad Jake Calendar into a lump of claylike
dough and be done with him.

Chapter
4

Sam was draping the rolled pink
fondant over a three layer red velvet birthday cake—her arms tired and her frustrations
assuaged—when she heard the door bells tinkle. She smoothed the fondant and
caught herself listening for Kelly’s voice.
How
long have they been gone?
How long
have I been working with one ear tuned to the other room?

She picked up a knife to trim away
the excess fondant and realized that the voice she was hearing out front was
Beau’s. A glance at the clock told her it was nearly twelve and she remembered
he had mentioned getting together for lunch. She turned the cake project over
to Becky and washed her hands.

“Hey you,” she said when she
walked into the sales room.

“I come bearing gifts,” he said.
“Well, actually, it’s just your mail. I had to stop by the post office anyway.”
The small stack appeared to be mainly catalogs, with a couple of letter-sized
envelopes included. One of them was heavy white paper with a very business-like
return address imprinted on it. She squeezed it, testing the thickness of the
contents.

“What’s this?” she muttered, half
to herself.

She set the other mail on a table
and ripped open the interesting one. Two sheets of paper came out. The
letterhead indicated that it came from a legal firm in New York and she scanned
to the bottom to see that it was signed by a Clinton Hardgate, Esq.