Wild Iris Ridge (Hope's Crossing) (25 page)

“Hope’s Crossing is a charming series that inspires hope and the belief miracles are possible.”
—Debbie Macomber, #1
New York Times
bestselling author

If you loved
Wild Iris Ridge
, be sure to check out these other great titles in
New York Times
bestselling author RaeAnne Thayne’s charming Hope’s Crossing series:

Blackberry Summer
Woodrose Mountain
Sweet Laurel Falls
Currant Creek Valley
Willowleaf Lane
Christmas in Snowflake Canyon

All available now wherever ebooks are sold!

Looking for more? Be sure to also catch RaeAnne’s The Cowboys of Cold Creek series, only from Harlequin Special Edition:

Light the Stars
Dalton’s Undoing
The Cowboy Christmas Miracle
A Cold Creek Homecoming
A Cold Creek Holiday
A Cold Creek Secret
A Cold Creek Baby
Christmas in Cold Creek
A Cold Creek Reunion
A Cold Creek Noel
A Cold Creek Christmas Surprise

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CHAPTER ONE

C
HARLOTTE
C
AINE
CONSIDERED
herself a pretty good judge of character.

Being morbidly obese most of her life, until the serious
changes she had made the past year and a half, had given her an interesting
insight into human nature. She wanted to think she had seen the best and the
worst in people. Some people pretended she was invisible; others had been
visibly disgusted as if afraid being fat might rub off on them, while still
others treated her with true kindness.

Given her skills in that particular arena, she liked to play a
game with herself, trying to guess the candy preferences of the customers coming
into her store. Jawbreakers? Lemon drops? Or some of her heavenly fudge? Which
would they pick?

When Sugar Rush was slow, like right now on a lazy July day
late in the afternoon, it made a pleasant way to pass the time.

By the looks of the skinny preteen with the too-heavy eye
makeup, Charlotte guessed she would pick a couple packs of chewing gum and maybe
a handful of the sour balls the kids seemed to love for some reason Charlotte
didn’t understand.

But she could be wrong.

“Is there something I can help you with?” she finally asked
with a smile when the girl appeared to dither in front of the long counter that
held the hand-dipped chocolates.

The girl shrugged without meeting her eye. With all that
makeup, the dark hair, the pale features, Charlotte was reminded of a curious
little raccoon.

“Don’t know yet,” she answered. “I haven’t decided.”

She stopped in front of the fudge, her gaze going back and
forth between items inside the display.

“The blackberry fudge is particularly delicious today, if I do
say so myself,” Charlotte said helpfully after a moment. “It’s one of my better
batches.”

The girl looked from the silky fudge to Charlotte. “You made
it? For real?”

Charlotte had to smile at the disbelief in her voice. “Cross my
heart. The brand-name candy in my store comes from a distributor, but Sugar Rush
produced everything in this display case.”

She didn’t try to keep the pride out of her voice. She had
every reason to be happy at the success of Sugar Rush. She had built up the
gourmet candy store from nothing to become one of the busiest establishments in
the resort town of Hope’s Crossing, Colorado. She had two other full-time
employees and four part-time and might have to expand that in the future, given
the rapid growth in her online orders.

“Wow. That looks like a ton of work.”

“It can be.” She loved the candy-making part but hated the
inevitable accounting required in running a small business. “It’s interesting
work, though. Have you ever seen anybody dip chocolates by hand?”

Her young customer shook her head even as an older couple came
into the store. They had probably come from the big RV she could see parked in a
miraculously open spot. She smiled at them as they migrated instantly to the
boxed jelly beans displayed against the far wall.

“It’s pretty cool. My crew usually starts early in the morning
and wraps it up by about noon, when it starts to get too warm for things to set
up.”

When she first opened the store, Charlotte had made everything
herself but she inevitably ran out of inventory by the end of each day. Now she
had three people who came to her back kitchen before 6:00 a.m. to hand-dip the
sweets. She still made most of the fudge herself, prepared in the traditional
copper pots with wooden spoons.

“You’re welcome to come watch,” she said. “Are you staying in
town long?”

“I really hope not,” the girl muttered fervently, her
expression dark.

“Oh, ouch.” Charlotte smiled. “Some of us actually choose to
live in Hope’s Crossing, you know. We like it here.”

The girl fiddled with the strap on her messenger bag adorned
with buttons and pins. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “I’m sure it’s a nice town and all.
But nobody asked me if I wanted to move here. Nobody cares what I think about
anything.”

Sympathy welled up inside Charlotte. She knew very well what it
was like to be this age, feeling as if her life was spinning completely out of
her control.

Who was she kidding? She had spent most of her life feeling out
of control.

“So you’re moving here. Welcome! You know, you might discover
you really like it. Stranger things have happened.”

“I doubt that.”

“Give it some time. Talk to me again after you’ve been in town
a few weeks. I’m Charlotte, by the way. Charlotte Caine.”

“Peyton,” the girl offered and Charlotte had the strange
feeling the omission of her last name had been quite deliberate. The fairly
unusual first name struck a chord somewhere in her subconscious but she couldn’t
quite place where she might have heard it before.

“Would you like to sample a couple flavors so you can
choose?”

“Is that okay?”

“Sure. We give customers sample tastes all the time. It’s quite
sneaky, actually. One taste and I’ve generally hooked them.”

Small pieces of the different variations of fudge were arranged
in a covered glass cake tray on the countertop. She removed the lid and after a
moment’s scrutiny, separated a few flavors onto one of the pretty plastic
filigree sample plates she kept for that purpose then handed it to the girl.

“These are our three most popular flavors. Blackberry, peanut
butter and white chocolate.”

She waited while the girl tried them and had to smile when her
eyes glazed a little with pleasure after each taste. She loved watching people
enjoy her creations, even though she hardly tried them herself anymore except to
test for flavor mixes.

“These are
so
good! Wow.”

“Thanks. I’m glad you like it.”

“No.
Seriously
good! I don’t know
which to choose. It’s all so yummy.”

“See why the samples are a sneaky idea?”

“Yeah. Totally. Okay, I guess I’ll take a pound of the
blackberry and a pound of the peanut butter.”

“Good choices.” Two pounds of fudge was a large amount, but
maybe Peyton had a big family to share it with.

“Oh, and I’ll take a pound of the cinnamon bears. I love
cinnamon.”

Charlotte smiled. “Same here. Cinnamon is my favorite.”

She enjoyed finding yet another point of commonality between
them. Maybe that explained her sympathy for the girl, who appeared so lost and
unhappy.

While Charlotte hadn’t been uprooted at this tender age to a
new community, she might as well have been. Her entire world, her whole
perspective, had undergone a dramatic continental shift at losing her mother.
She had felt like she was living in a new world, one where nobody else could
possibly understand her pain.

While Charlotte cut, weighed and wrapped the fudge, Peyton
wandered around the store looking at some of the Colorado souvenirs Charlotte
stocked.

The husband half of the older couple clutched a bag with
saltwater taffy while his wife had several boxes of jelly beans in her arms. The
two of them moved to the chocolate display and started debating the merits of
dipped cashews versus cherries.

Charlotte smiled politely, waiting for the argument to play
out. When Peyton approached the cash register, Charlotte held out the bag of
sweets.

“Here you go,” she said.

“Thanks.” Instead of taking it immediately, Peyton reached into
her bag and retrieved a hard-sided snap wallet with splashy pink flowers on a
black background. She pulled out a credit card and Charlotte spied several more
inside the wallet.

She felt a moment’s disquiet. Why would a girl barely on the
brink of adolescence need multiple credit cards? Had she stolen them? Charlotte
wondered fleetingly, but discarded the idea just as quickly.

She had certainly been wrong about people before. She would be
delusional to believe her instincts were foolproof. History would certainly bear
that out. She had instinctively liked Peyton, though, and didn’t want to believe
her a thief.

She probably had self-absorbed, indulgent parents—divorced,
more than likely—who thought throwing another credit card at her would fix any
heartbreak or trauma.

Charlotte slid the card back across the clear counter. “Tell
you what. No charge. Why don’t you consider this a welcome-to-Hope’s-Crossing
sort of thing?”

Peyton’s mouth dropped open a little and she stared at
Charlotte, obviously astonished by the simple kindness. “Seriously?”

“Sure. It’s a gift for you and your family.”

At her words, the look in Peyton’s dark eyes shifted from
incredulity to a quiet sort of despair before she veiled her expression.

“I don’t have a family,” she declared, her voice small but with
a hint of defiance.

Was she a runaway? Charlotte considered. Should she be alerting
Riley McKnight, the police chief of Hope’s Crossing, so he could help reunite
her with whomever she had escaped? With the vague idea of keeping the girl
talking so she could glean as much information as possible, she glanced at the
other couple and saw they were busy sampling every variety of fudge.

“Nobody at all?” she asked.

Peyton shrugged, the movement barely rippling her thin
shoulders inside the T-shirt that looked a size or two too large. “I had a mom
but she died last year.”

Ah. Maybe that explained Charlotte’s instant empathy, that
subtle connection she felt for the girl.

“I’m sorry. My mom died when I was about your age, too. Sucks,
doesn’t it?”

Peyton made a sound that could have been a snort or a rough
laugh. “You could say that.”

“So who do you live with, then?” she asked with studied
casualness.

“My stupid dad,” Peyton said and Charlotte felt herself relax.
Okay. The girl had a dad. One she wasn’t crazy about, apparently. No need to
jump to conclusions because she said she had no family.

“Where is your dad?”

She pointed out the door. “He stopped to take a phone call. I
got bored waiting around so I came in here.”

“No brothers or sisters?”

“No. Just me.”

“So you and your dad are moving to Hope’s Crossing
together?”

“Yeah.” Her mouth tightened. “He took a job here even though I
told him I didn’t want to move. I had to leave all my friends in Portland, my
best friend, Victoria, this boy I like, Carson, and the mall and everything.
This dumb town doesn’t have any good stores.”

Charlotte, for one, had hated clothes shopping when she was
Peyton’s age. Even before her mom died, she had been pudgy, with plenty of baby
fat that stubbornly clung on. Afterward, the pounds just piled on until she
couldn’t find a single thing that fit in any store except what she had
considered the fat old lady stores.

Now her favorite thing was to go into a clothing store and
actually have choices.

“We have a pretty decent bookstore and a couple nice boutiques
that specifically cater to teens. And a killer candy store,” she added with a
smile.

Peyton didn’t look thrilled about any of those offerings.
“Yeah. I guess. It’s not the same as Portland. I could buy
anything
there.”

Charlotte wasn’t sure the shopping options were the measure of
what made a good town, but she decided not to offer that particular opinion.

“The good news is, as long as you’ve got an internet
connection, you can still find everything you like. And Denver’s only a few
hours’ drive.”

“I guess that’s true.”

Peyton still didn’t look convinced of the wonders of Hope’s
Crossing. Charlotte couldn’t blame her. Change could be tough for anyone,
especially a young girl who had no control over her own circumstances.

“Thanks for the fudge,” Peyton said.

“You’re welcome. Come back anytime. Next time maybe I’ll have
cinnamon fudge for you.”

“You make that? Really?”

“Sure. It’s generally something I have only around the holidays
but I’ll see about a special order.”

The small cowbell hanging on the door rang out. Charlotte
looked up from Peyton, donning her customary friendly smile of greeting—then the
smile and everything else inside her froze when she caught sight of the man
who’d just walked through.

Oh, crap.

Her stomach dived like the time she accidentally wandered into
a black-diamond ski run when her older brother Dylan took her up to the resort
once.

“There you are.” The man was gorgeous, with a square jawline, a
slim elegant nose and hazel eyes fringed by long lashes.

Smokin’ Hot
Spencer Gregory. The
cameras and sports magazines had loved him, once upon a time.

“Why didn’t you tell me you wanted to leave? One minute you
were there, the next I turned around and you were gone.”

The curious girl who had tasted Charlotte’s fudge with such
appreciation disappeared, replaced by a sullen, angry creature who glowered at
the man.

“I did,” she muttered. “I said I wanted to come in here. I said
it like three times. I guess you were too busy with your phone call to
notice.”

He frowned. “Pey, you can’t just wander off. I was worried
about you.”

“What did you think was going to happen in this stupid town? I
was going to die of boredom or something?”

Right now, Charlotte would give anything to be wearing
something sultry and sleek. Black, skintight, with some strategically placed
bling, maybe. Instead, after all these years she had to face him with little
makeup and her hair yanked back into a ponytail, wearing jeans and a simple blue
T-shirt, covered by an apron that had Sugar Rush emblazoned across the
chest.

At least she wasn’t wearing the ridiculous hairnet required
while making fudge. Small favors, right?

She had barely registered the thought when the full
implications of the moment washed over her like molten chocolate.