Always the Baker, Finally the Bride (2 page)

Emma dropped her bags at the foot of the staircase and hurried toward the vistas calling to her from fifty yards beyond the wall of windows. She unlatched the French doors at the top, and again at the knobs, and shoved them fully open with dramatic flair, expectant and eager. The salty sea breeze caressed her face just as she’d imagined, and the distant purr of the rolling ocean waves brought the perfect music to accompany the lyric of chattering gulls.

Emma approached the porch railing and leaned against it, mesmerized by the foam-capped dance on the white sand shore. Aunt Sophie had always called it “Atlantic Therapy,” a term that had popped immediately to mind when Sherilyn had suggested they go away somewhere relaxing where Emma could pull her thoughts together and make some solid wedding plans after months of avoidance.

Well. Not avoidance, really. More like . . . 
inertia
. A numb sort of wedding paralysis that seemed to set in whenever key decisions needed to be made. Like the cake.

She wiggled the fingers of her left hand, allowing sunbeams to bounce off her beautiful engagement ring. She wondered for the hundredth time how Jackson had known that she’d always wanted a princess-cut diamond. She would have been pleased with a little square solitaire, of course, but the frame of smaller round diamonds that surrounded the stone and worked their way down to the platinum band caused the ring to catch that much more light. It was an exquisite ring. Perfect in every way.

“Sher, I never asked you before,” she said as Sherilyn stepped up beside her. “Did you tell Jackson I wanted a princess diamond?”

“No, of course not. I was as surprised as you.”

“Mm.”

“Why?”

“No reason. I’ve just wondered, and I keep forgetting to ask him how he knew.”

“Hey,” she said after a moment’s thought. “What do you say we unpack? Then we can head into town and get some groceries.”

“No need,” Emma said, breaking her gaze from the ring and fixing it on the sweeping blue horizon. “I faxed a list to Elmer and Louise. They took care of everything.”

“Elmer and Louise!” Sherilyn exclaimed. “They still take care of this place? Are they still
alive
?”

“Twenty years connected to the Travis clan when they actually had a choice not to be,” Emma summarized. “Boggles the mind, doesn’t it?”

“Not really,” she replied. “I’ve stayed connected without being required by blood.” Emma glanced at Sherilyn, whose turquoise eyes were dancing with amusement as she mindlessly scratched her protruding stomach. “It’s not such a bad deal, really.”

“What’s with this new move of yours?” Emma asked her, nodding at Sherilyn’s belly.

“Oh, the scratching?”

“Uh, yeah!”

“I can’t help it. My skin itches all the time now.”

“You’ve got, what, a few more weeks? If you’re not careful, you’ll wear down the skin and the baby can step right out on her own.”

“Stop,” Sherilyn groaned, smacking Emma’s arm playfully. “Wait! You said
on HER own
. Do you have a feeling? You think it’s a girl?”

“If you wanted to know the sex, you should have had them tell you at the doctor’s office, Sher.”

“We want to be surprised,” she sort of whined without conviction.

“You mean Andy wants to be surprised.”

Twisting her red hair around one finger, Sherilyn shrugged one shoulder. “Yeah.”

“Well, I can tell you this with total conviction. I absolutely know it’s either a girl . . . 
Or a boy!
”

Sherilyn swatted her arm again, and Emma rubbed her friend’s stomach lovingly.

“Em,” Fee called from inside. “Hey, Emma!”

Emma and Sherilyn went into the house, both of them looking around. When she spotted Fee standing at the top of the stairs leaning over the banister, Emma laughed.

“Can I have the blue room with the shells on the wall?”

She nodded, and Fee hopped away before she could utter the
s
in “Yes.”

“Cool. This place has a lot of happy-looking rooms. But I think I can live with this one.”

“What about you?” Emma asked Sherilyn. “Do you have any preferences?”

“Is the green room still green?”

“It is indeed.”

Sherilyn grabbed her bags and waddled up the stairs. “I get the green room across the hall,” she called out to Fee as she reached the landing, breathless.

Emma padded across the great room and through the open doors. Leaving her sandals behind on the porch, she rushed down the three wooden stairs and took off at a full run across the sand. She unzipped the heather-gray hoodie, discarded it at the halfway mark, and left her khaki shorts on the sand about three yards from the water’s edge. She stopped where the sand darkened from a recent overflow of surf and adjusted the bottom of her red bathing suit. Knee-deep in the icy ocean,
she tugged at the suit top before diving in and swimming out against the brisk green-blue current.

Just before surfacing again, she thought she heard her aunt Sophie’s melodic laughter.

“Atlantic Therapy, Emma Rae. And the colder the better when you’re looking for answers. They’re all right out there in the Atlantic Ocean. God’s hidden them there for us to find when we really, really need them.”

The elevator door creaked as it shut, and the car groaned slightly before setting out on its shaky ascent to his fourth-floor office. Something about the
klunk!
before the door opened again waxed familiar. Jackson had heard that noise before.

Emma’s sweet face fluttered across his mind. And that pink sweater of his sister’s that she’d changed into for their job interview after wiping out in the lobby and smearing fondant all over herself. She’d struck him as cute that day, with a speck of carrot cake still in her hair as they sat down to discuss the impending opening of The Tanglewood; even more so, a bit of a know-it-all when she stood there beside him as trapped passengers called out from the elevator car below a short while afterward.

“I’m assuming this is a hydraulic system, right? . . . Well, it probably is. Anyway, I’m thinking it’s likely that the rails are just dry. A little oil can take care of that for you. But the door jamming like this is probably your drive belt. The service guy will take care of that when he gets the passengers out.”

When the serviceman had confirmed her findings, Jackson recalled thinking that he’d better hire her, just so he could be around on the off chance that she might ever be proven wrong about anything. At the moment, as he pried the reluctant
elevator door open, he felt pretty certain she hadn’t been wrong about much of anything since.

“Call downstairs and tell them to place Out of Order signs on the west elevator on each floor, and call the repair service, will you, Susannah?” he asked his assistant as he passed her desk. “The doors are sticking. I think it could be the drive belt again.”

“Will do,” she returned as he entered his office and dropped into the chair. “Andy Drummond phoned. Says your cell goes straight to voice mail.”

Jackson had turned it off after it rang about thirty times during his meeting with the front desk manager, and he’d forgotten to turn it back on.

“You can reach him on his cell for another thirty minutes.”

“Thanks.”

Jackson pulled his cell phone from his jacket pocket and dialed Andy. “Hey, buddy. It’s Jackson. What’s up?”

“Cats are away,” Andy announced. “Mice must barbecue. You in?”

“What can I bring?”

“Whatever strikes you.”

“What time?”

“Six thirty?”

“I’m there. You invite Sean since he’s on his own too?”

“He’s bringing soda and garbage bags.”

“Garbage bags?”

“We’re out. I thought since he was going to the store for drinks anyway—”

Jackson laughed. “Whatever. Later.”

He ended the call and checked his watch. Twelve forty p.m. The growl from his stomach rumbled with regret that there wasn’t time enough to grab some lunch before Bingham arrived for their one o’clock meeting.

Jackson produced a manila file of notes from his briefcase and opened it on the desktop. He’d been preparing all week to meet with Rod Bingham, and he probably didn’t need to review the notes yet again. But he did anyway.

The possibility of franchising The Tanglewood into a start-up of six wedding destination hotels across the country flicked the back of his brain with excitement. Who could have ever imagined such a thing just a couple of years back when they’d opened their doors?

Desi
.

More than likely, Desiree would have imagined it. The place had always been her dream more than his, but the death of his late wife had choked the life out of things for a while. Once his sisters, and eventually Emma, hopped onboard, however, he’d caught the fire, and The Tanglewood Inn had become a well-known and successful venture. Now someone wanted to clone the place, setting up Jackson for making a fairly obscene amount of money in the process. Maybe it would allow him to become a little more hands-off for a while and to pursue other interests and challenges. Maybe after the wedding, he and Emma could even travel a little and leave The Tanglewood in other capable hands for a bit now and then. Not forever. Just for a while. They’d swum around in that Paris-for-a-year dream often enough that it surfaced almost immediately every time he considered cutting back on hours and responsibilities.

“Jackson Drake! How are you, my friend?”

“Rod. Good to see you,” he said, standing to shake Bingham’s hand.

“I’m really enthused about our meeting, Jack.” Tapping his briefcase with a grin, Rod added, “I think I’ve got something here that’s going to put some real wind in your sails. Are you ready to talk?”

“I’m ready,” he said, and they both sat down and faced each other from opposite sides of the large maple desk. “Tell me what you’ve got.”

“Well, first of all,” Rod blurted, “this thing is bigger than even I had guessed. Hold on to your hat, Jack. And tell me what you think about this idea. Not only would Allegiant Industries be interested in planting wedding destination hotels all across the United States, Canada, and Europe over the next five years—while making you a very rich beneficiary in the process, by the way—but they would also be interested in purchasing the original hotel from you.”

“Purchasing . . . this place?”

“That’s right, buddy. Allegiant wants to buy—”

“The Tanglewood?”

“Yes, indeedy.”

“What do you mean?”

“What do you mean, what do I mean? They want to buy—”

Jackson gulped back the bubble of air stuck in his throat. “You want me to sell?”

“Yes. And not just for a song, Jack. For a
symphony
!”

He sat there quietly for a moment and rubbed his temple while the idea settled down on him.

“You want me to . . . 
sell The Tanglewood
?”

“Dude. What is wrong with you? Have you had a mental break?”

“No, I haven’t had a mental break, Fiona. And you’re not helping.”

“Just decide. It’s not like this isn’t your forte, right? I mean, cakes are what you
do
. Picking a wedding cake design should be a piece of it for you.”

The conversation was momentarily sidelined by the ghastly slurping sounds Sherilyn made from where she sat across from them, cradling a bowl on her basketball-shaped belly and scraping out the leftover chocolate muffin batter with a large rubber spatula.

“Sher, you’re gonna make yourself sick,” Emma scolded.

“No, I won’t. It’s just what was left in the bowl after you poured the rest out.”

“Still. That can’t be good for the baby.”

“It’s fine. It won’t make me sick.”

“Then it’ll make
us
sick,” Fee cracked. “Dude, you’re gross.”

“
Any
way,” Emma said with the shake of her head. “It’s just not that simple, Fee,” she retorted. “I’m a cake designer. How am I supposed to pick just one for . . . Oh, you just don’t understand.”

“No. You’re right. I don’t understand. You’ve got the greatest guy in the world convinced that you’re a catch. So like, maybe, you should, you know, pitch or get off the mound.”

“Don’t say that! How could you say something like that?” Emma groaned and tossed herself into the thick cushions of the couch.