Cupcake Club 04 - Honey Pie Read online

  Lani rose and scuttled around the desk so fast, Honey had to jerk back to keep from colliding with her. “Wait. Just . . .” Lani took a moment, pressed her hand to her chest and wiped at the corners of her own eyes. “I really don’t mind talking. And I’m so very sorry you found out this way. I’m sure she was just protecting you. I know it’s got to piss you off and hurt like hell, all at the same time.”

  Honey looked at Lani, surprised by the emotion in her voice, wondering how she’d nailed it so perfectly.

  “My mom . . . when she passed away, I was in New York, so focused on my career and on what I wanted, and my dad tried to do the same thing. Later on, when he had a heart attack, oh, he was all ‘things are great, I’m fine, don’t bother yourself,’ but I knew. He almost died. I almost lost him. I had to—” Lani broke off at the stricken look on Honey’s face. She started to reach out a comforting hand, but pulled back at the last second, remembering. The look on her face was as good as a pat on the arm.

  “Just because I knew he was in trouble doesn’t mean you should have known,” she told Honey. “My dad and I have a long history of him not asking for help and me giving it to him anyway. I didn’t know Bea that well, or for very long. I’ve only been here a few years. But I do know the whole island loved her, and everyone mourned her passing. What I’m trying to say is, she had people. She wasn’t alone. Not when she was here, and not when she was in senior care. There was nothing you could have done to stop what happened, you couldn’t have prevented the aneurysm, no one could have.”

  “I still should have been there.”

  “But you were there for her. You said you talked all the time. She still had you, just as she always did.”

  “I know, but—”

  “Honey—God, it’s killing me not to hug you. And I’m not a hugger!” Lani sounded so out of sorts when she said it, then a laugh spluttered out, surprising them both.

  Honey couldn’t help herself, she snorted. The tears in her throat made it end on a hiccup, which put Lani over the edge. And somehow, Honey was laughing along with her, only it was cathartic and emotional; the tears that streamed down her cheeks were a release of grief.

  “God, I’m such a basket case,” she said, still half laughing, half crying, as she tried to get herself back under control. “I was so worried, first about being here, and dealing with . . . well, with my thing, and then the shop I thought had been sitting empty was occupied and all decked out for a grand opening of someone else’s business, and my car broke down . . .”

  Lani motioned her back toward the seat. When Honey wavered, she said, “Don’t make me hug you.”

  Which made the laughter threaten all over again. Honey sat. “You have no idea, but this is so not how I pictured this going.”

  “Is it going worse, or better?” Lani said, amusement in her words.

  “Better. I think.” Both smiled at that, and Honey finally got her tears to stop trickling and her heart to stop racing.

  Lani refreshed her coffee and pushed the chocolate cupcake toward her. “Have a bite. Everything makes more sense with cupcakes. Especially ones filled with dark chocolate. And the sugar buzz doesn’t hurt, either.”

  Honey peeled off the paper more for something to do than because she really wanted a bite. But peeling off the paper released the rich, decadent scents of chocolate and spicy ginger, so she gave in and took a bite. Her eyes widened, even as her body hummed. When she swallowed, she looked at Lani with a whole new level of understanding. “It’s no wonder you all are so ridiculously happy. God, these are like . . . what do you put in them?”

  “Love,” Lani said simply. “Works every time.” She handed Honey another Kleenex to catch the crumbs. “What did you mean, ‘you all’? Have you met more of the crew?”

  Honey’s cheeks warmed, but she was so far past mortification at this point, she honestly couldn’t let herself care. “I was sitting over behind the auto repair shop yesterday, and I saw you all come in for some after hours baking.”

  “Ah, Cupcake Club. You should have come over, introduced yourself.”

  Maybe I should have, she thought. “Cupcake Club?”

  Lani grinned. “You know, like having a book club. Some women bitch and knit, or bitch and read, we bitch and bake.”

  Honey found herself smiling again. “I like it.”

  “You’ll have to come next week. It would be a good way to get to know folks here. We’re a good bunch. A little eccentric, maybe.”

  “Well, I think it goes without saying, I have you all beat on that score.”

  Lani laughed again and Honey found herself laughing with her. Seriously in Wonderland, she thought.

  Any minute she’d wake up and this wacky dream would all be just that. Except, she realized, she didn’t want to wake up. Because, as dreams went, this one was a little odd, okay a lot odd, but had the potential to be pretty awesome.

  “Besides, if you really do own half the place, I could hardly keep you out,” Lani said on another laugh.

  Honey’s smile faded, as, true to form, cold, harsh reality crept right back in. “Yes, that. I still don’t know about, well . . . any of it, I guess.”

  “Do you want to go next door and see it?”

  Then some other realization struck Lani because her face paled, just a little. “Oh my God. If you thought Bea still lived upstairs over the shop when she passed, then, did you—? Were you planning on living there?”

  “Kind of.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “That, too.”

  Lani’s mouth quirked at that. “You can’t know this yet, but I promise you’re going to fit in here just fine. I can’t wait to introduce you to Charlotte. And Kit. You’ve already met Alva.”

  Lani picked up a pencil, tapped it on her desk, her expression growing serious. “We’ll figure something out. We will. I mean, we have to get it all sorted out legally, of course, but—” She stopped and looked up at Honey as another thought apparently struck her. “Double shit. Were you planning on reopening her shop? Are you a tailor, too? I thought Bea said you were an artist.”

  “I am an artist. But about the shop space, yes, I was planning to use it. Bea wanted me to open up a storefront. I’ve had a mail-order business for years, but she knew it was time to get out of the barn and into a real life, and she was right.” Honey stopped, knowing it was pointless to explain further. The bakery adjunct was built and ready to open for business. Even if she had the legal right to take the space back, she didn’t have the funds to reconstruct it from a kitchen to her little artisan shop. It wouldn’t have taken much to shift it from the way Bea had had it to meet her basic needs; then, as the shop progressed, she would have made further improvements until she had it the way she wanted it.

  And kicking the cupcake ladies out wouldn’t exactly be the way to endear herself to her new customer base or her new neighbors. Not that she wanted to kick them out.

  “Listen, I don’t know what will happen,” Honey said, not wanting to think abut the shop she’d finally let herself envision, only to lose it before it even began. “Obviously, I need to talk to Bea’s lawyers. I didn’t come here to make trouble. I came here—”

  “To make yourself a home,” Lani finished, and it was only because she was smiling so sincerely, without an ounce of pity in her voice or on her face, that Honey took it as the kind gesture it was intended to be. “I know something about that, too. A lot of something, actually. As does my husband, and a few of my closest friends. Trust me, you couldn’t be surrounded by more understanding people. We know what you’re going through.” She grinned again. “Well, the starting over part, anyway. As for the rest . . . you just tell us what you’re comfortable with and what makes you uncomfortable, and we’ll work around it.”

  She said it so simply. As if that was all there was to it. But . . . it wasn’t that simple. Couldn’t be. Honey knew otherwise. Didn’t she?

  “Okay, so maybe Franco won’t.” Lani laughed and rolled her eyes. “Oh my
god, he’ll love you. But he’s a bit like a big, untamed French poodle, so we’ll have to work on him.”

  “Franco?”

  “One of the cupcake crew. You’ll love him, trust me. A better friend and a more staunch ally, you couldn’t hope to have. Plus he’s very tall and can reach the high things. Win-win, really. So, I’m sorry, I don’t remember. What kind of art? It’s sculpting or something, right?”

  Honey felt . . . dazed. She sat there, trying to keep up and regroup at the same time, wanting to step away from her own spinning head and thundering heart long enough to take stock of this moment, of what was happening, so she could understand how things could simultaneously be so horribly wrong, and yet feel almost magically right.

  “Oh,” she said, when she saw Lani’s expectant face and realized she’d lost the thread of the conversation. “Yes, I work with clay; I’m also a wood carver. Not a serious one. I mean, I’m serious about my work, but my eye lends itself more to the whimsical than the thought-provoking. As a kid, I learned to whittle from my dad and started making little fantasy creatures and woodland critters.” My own circle of friends, she thought. “My mom would tuck them here and there in her gardens and around the property. Then I discovered clay and . . . well, it kind of mushroomed, as my dad loved to say, into a business.”

  “I’m sorry to say I’ve never checked out your catalog, but I will now. Do you have somewhere to stay? Oh, right, you were here yesterday if you saw us at bake club—and your car’s in the shop. Wow, welcome to Sugarberry, huh?”

  “It’s been . . . memorable.” Despite all the incredible things that had happened in the past hour, the first thing that came to mind when Honey thought of memorable welcomes was Dylan Ross. And his hands on her arms. And his grin when he told her a little crazy was a good thing. And that he didn’t plan on touching her again.

  And how much she really wished he would. And that she could let him.

  “So, where are you staying now?”

  Honey snapped out of thoughts she had no business thinking about. “At the Hughes’s place. My car is going to take a while. Barbara—Mrs. Hughes, lent me her bicycle to use. Is it always this hot in the spring?”

  “No, this is unusual, even for the South. Listen, why don’t we do this? Let me get someone to cover the shop tomorrow morning, and I can take you over the causeway to get the papers and whatever copies you need from the county, and then we can come back over here and see Morgan—our lawyer and Kit’s significant other as it happens. Kit is the manager next door. At least we can get that part settled. I don’t know what to tell you about your plans and about the shop itself. I’m pretty sure my lease is valid and—”

  “You’re right. I need to get up to speed on, well, on a lot of things, it seems. I appreciate your willingness to drive me, but please don’t go to the trouble. I can get a cab and—to be honest,” she added, when Lani started to reassure her, “I’d like to handle it on my own.”

  “I completely understand. I am really sorry. I wish it wasn’t happening like this, but, trust me, between me and Char, and Kit, and Morgan, Baxter, everyone . . . we’ll find a solution that works.”

  “Honestly, I don’t know if I’ll stay, but—” Honey was surprised by how stricken Lani looked at the news. They’d just met, after all.

  “Bea wanted you here. And you wanted to be here, or you wouldn’t have uprooted your whole life to come all this way to start over. Don’t let this—well, it’s not a small thing. It’s a huge, giant pain in the ass thing, I know, but don’t give up on us, okay? I wanted to run back to New York a hundred times, a thousand, when I was getting ready to open my bakery, but thank God I didn’t. You’ll be happy you stayed.”

  Honey didn’t mention that getting the shop situation figured out was only part of her problems with relocating. In fact, it might end up being the least of her worries. Alva’s and Lani’s easy breezy acceptance of her little “eccentricity” notwithstanding, if what Alva said was true and the islanders actually thought she would put out some kind of fortune teller shingle, they were going to be sadly disappointed.

  She wanted a normal life. Or as normal a life as she could have. She’d deal with her stuff, figure out how she was going to handle it as things happened. She’d been a much younger person the last time she’d allowed her curse free reign. She hoped a bit of life wisdom and maturity would help her to deal with it better this time around. She sort of had to, if she was ever going to get the life she really wanted.

  She was beyond gratified—amazed and stunned was more like it—that the locals she’d met so far seemed so unfazed by her curse. Or the idea of it, anyway. They hadn’t had to deal with it yet. Bea had been open to her gift, had nurtured it, strengthened it, utilized it. Honey’s “abilities,” however, were significantly stronger than Bea’s. When Honey let go and opened up the portals again, allowing people in . . . well, the good, kind folks of Sugarberry really might not want to know what she’d find out about them.

  Chapter 5

  Dylan signed the deliveryman’s invoice, grunted his thanks, then used a utility knife to slice through the tape on the box he’d just been handed. He lifted out the vintage teak dorade box with a bronze cowl vent and carefully removed the packing material. “Damn, but you’re pretty.” He turned it so the sunlight glinted off the sleek, shiny finish, then smiled as he walked back up the crushed shell driveway.

  His sailboat sat on its trailer at the far end, closest to the house. “Look what I bought for you,” he said as he skirted the work bench, stepped over an assortment of tools, an overturned bucket, and Lolly, who lifted her head, sniffed once, realized whatever he had wasn’t edible, and plopped back down in the shade to snooze.

  “Not for you,” he told the dog, then climbed up the ladder and stepped onto the back of the boat. “For you.” He lifted the antique ventilator in a toast to the carved mermaid mounted above the cabin door.

  Two years he’d been looking for just the right piece, combing online auctions and sale listings on several boating sites he frequented. So, naturally he hadn’t found it on any of those. He’d found it on an ad for an old junker of a sailboat. In its original form, the junker had sported gorgeous hand-carved woodwork, the kind of craftsmanship rarely seen in the modern times of sleeker, faster, shinier. The owner had wanted to sell the boat “as is,” all or nothing. It had taken Dylan the better part of the past six months to wear him down. Well, that and the fact that no one else had put any kind of offer on the old thing.

  Of course, he’d also advised the old man that the boat was beyond salvaging. He’d advised the owner to consider putting it up for parts as he’d likely make more money (any money) on it that way, and had been gratified to see that very ad posted just last week.

  Ross & Sons had still been down near the docks when he’d first discovered the little teak beauty. His boat had been parked right out back, in easy reach to work on when there weren’t any cars in for servicing. And simply to look at when the frustrations of the job got the better of him. Someday he’d get her out on the water, but he was perfectly content to keep tinkering on the boat until he had her restored to the vision he’d pictured in his mind the day he’d laid eyes on her.

  He could still recall his brother Mickey sneering at his decision to blow all the money he’d saved up for an old Mustang on a boat instead. Too drunk to hold his tongue, his old man had stood up for him, and had paid the price for it. Mickey had stopped accepting parental feedback the day he’d figured out he was bigger, stronger, and faster with his fists than the old man. Since their dad was usually on his way to passing out drunk, or already passed out, even Dylan, who was six years Mickey’s junior, could hold his own against the old man by the time he hit puberty.

  Of course, Donny Ross hadn’t always been a drunk. There’d been a time when he’d been a pretty damn good mechanic and a decent man to boot. Better than his own old man or his uncle. Dylan’s grandfather, Tommy, had been proud of his son . . . but of his own brother,
Uncle Dick, not so much. Then again, Dick usually had a beer in one hand and a nasty observation at the ready, so it wasn’t a surprise that he’d felt threatened by the father-son duo. Dick was a mean son of a bitch who’d never married, much less procreated—a fact that Dylan, in the short time he’d known the man, had thought was perhaps the only fortunate thing that had ever happened to the guy. In fact, the story went that Dylan’s father had been proud of the fact that he hadn’t followed the Ross family tradition, in which at least one member of every generation lost the battle with the bottle.

  Unfortunately, that had changed after the sudden death of Donny’s father, followed by his wife—Dylan’s and Mickey’s mother—abandoning them, and Dick landing himself in jail for shooting a jealous husband who’d come after him when he’d found out Dick was the guy who’d banged and banged up his wife. Fortunately Dick hadn’t killed the guy.

  With his dad dead, Dick in jail, and his wife gone without looking back, unable to deal with Mickey’s temperamental outbursts and having another small one underfoot, Donny had cracked.

  By the time Dick had gotten out of jail, Donny had claimed a permanent place on the Ross Family Drunk roster. He wasn’t a mean drunk, just a sad, sorry, pitiable one.

  And Dick was back to drinking again before his first parole meeting.

  Mickey was fourteen when Uncle Dick wrapped his car around a tree . . . and he rose up to become the man of the house. Young Dylan had quickly learned that life could, in fact, get worse. He used to dream of the day he could run away from home.

  When that day came, he’d stayed. Someone had to protect their dad from Mickey’s rages. With or without alcohol, Mickey made Dick look like a choir boy when it came to getting himself into trouble.

  For years, the islanders thought it was Donny abusing Dylan, and that Mickey was just a chip off the Ross family block, brawling with his old man. There had been no point in explaining that Donny was as much a victim as Dylan was, and Mickey was the current tyrant in residence. When Dylan wasn’t feeling guilty for wishing his brother would do something bad enough to end up in jail like Uncle Dick had, he was feeling guilty for being so damn angry with his father. He couldn’t forgive his dad for not being strong enough to handle life, to handle Mickey. To love and take care of Dylan.