Sheila Roberts - The Tea Shop on Lavender Lane

Chapter One

The party was going perfectly until the hostess clutched her stomach with an agonized cry and crumpled to the floor.

Rory Rourke, her boyfriend and star of the new TV series Man Handled, knelt by the woman’s side and barked, “Someone, call 911.”

“Call her doctor,” said someone else.

“Call the Star Reporter,” the victim said faintly.

And that was when Bailey Sterling knew she was in trouble.

She’d been so excited to land this gig catering Samba Barrett’s party. Samba wasn’t an Emma Stone or Kristen Stewart, but she was...someone. Sort of. And with her catlike green eyes and red hair, she was on her way up, like the rest of her party guests. It was what everyone said. And surely that had meant Bailey was on her way up, too. The West Hollywood apartment had been packed with hot young actors and actresses. As she’d slipped among them bearing trays of goodies, she’d heard more than one person rave about the food and had envisioned a whole string of catering gigs after this one.

The shrimp salsa in phyllo cups had been an especially big hit. “Oh, my God, this is to die for,” Angelica Winston (from the new reality show Hard Ass) had raved. Bailey had smiled modestly and kept circulating, while her assistant Giorgio served up stuffed mushrooms. She’d been working for the past three years to earn a reputation as caterer to the stars, and things were finally starting to happen.

Except here was Samba Barrett, writhing on her living room floor, groaning in agony. Twenty minutes ago she’d been eating those shrimp cups and laughing. Did she have food allergies she hadn’t told Bailey about? Samba had gone over the menu with her, approved everything. How could this have happened? Was Bailey going to be known as killer of the stars?

Thirty people gathered around the actress, some offering advice, some taking pictures with their cell phones, others texting wildly. Bailey stood on the fringe and nervously downed one of her own appetizers.

“You’ll be okay, baby,” Rory Rourke assured Samba.

“I think I ate something bad,” she whimpered.

“Oh, no, that’s not possible,” Bailey protested, and everyone turned to look at her. One woman aimed her cell phone at Bailey, capturing her miserable expression. This couldn’t be happening.

But it could. And it was. Now Bailey felt sick. She lost her grip on the tray of canapés she was carrying and down they went, the tray landing on the Jimmy Choos of one of the party guests busily recording her hostess’s misery on her cell phone.

The woman next to her let out a yelp and jumped back, then glared at Bailey.

“Sorry,” Bailey muttered and bent to scoop the mess onto the tray. In the process she managed to get in the way of another guest, nearly tripping him.

He didn’t settle for glaring. He swore at her.

Catering hell—that was what this was. Bailey made a dash for the kitchen and hid out, watching the drama unfold from behind the counter.

The ambulance arrived, and the EMTs showed up to take Samba’s vitals and load her onto a stretcher. Then away she went, a pitiful—but gorgeous—victim of Sterling Catering.

The guests switched from eating to drinking. Rory told Bailey she could clean up and leave, and not in the kindest tone of voice. He didn’t offer to pay her, and she didn’t ask. All she wanted to do was get out of that cramped apartment full of the young and the beautiful.

By the time she left, the media was waiting. Photographers snapped her picture, and reporters stuck microphones in her face. “Have you catered for Samba before?”... “Has Samba threatened to sue?”... “What’s your relationship with Rory Rourke?”

Bailey stood there like Bambi staring at the headlights of a Mack truck, her toque askew, offering quotable quotes such as, “What?”

She quickly realized that it was time to scram and bolted for the van where Giorgio was loading up boxes of supplies...and telling a reporter that he wasn’t involved with any of the food prep. “I’m only doing this while I wait to hear from my agent. We’ve got something big in the works. Giorgio Romano. R-o-m...”

Bailey tossed in the last of her serving equipment, then tugged on his double-breasted white jacket and growled, “Get in the van,” even as the vultures who’d been talking to him now turned their attention to her.

He scowled at her but got moving.

They drove away with photographers pointing their cameras and shooting. “What were you thinking?” she demanded, swerving to avoid one.

“I wasn’t thinking anything. I was just answering questions.”

“Well, thanks a lot,” she snapped.

He held out both hands. “What did you want me to do?”

“How about saying that Sterling Catering was not responsible for Samba Barrett’s illness?” she suggested, her voice rising.

“I can’t be sure of that,” Giorgio said sullenly.

“You’ve been working for me for six months now, Giorgio. You know how good I am. You could have said something.” Was there no loyalty in the world? She brushed away a tear.

“I told you, I’m only here until I get my break.”

“And I suppose that was it,” she said in disgust. “Getting your name in the paper as a caterer?”

“Every little bit helps,” he retorted. “Publicity is great, even if it’s bad.”

Not for a caterer. She had a small liability policy, but it didn’t cover bad press. Overwhelmed with misery, Bailey pulled off the road and began to cry in earnest.

Giorgio sat there in what she thought was silent sympathy. Until he said, “Here, let me drive. I’ve got a date.”

She raised her tearstained face from the steering wheel. “A date? You were working the party.”

“Yeah. But when it ended early...” He shrugged. “Sorry.”

Sorry about summed it up.

* * *

After a long day of work punctuated hourly by texts from her miserable little sister, Cecily Sterling was standing in line at the Icicle Falls Safeway with her recharge essentials—a pint of mint chocolate chip ice cream and a bag of Cheetos. It seemed everyone else in Icicle Falls had had a long day at work, too, and the store was packed.

She’d already run into Dot Morrison, who’d eyed her purchases and said, “Now, that’s my kind of dinner.”

She’d planned on adding more to her “dinner,” but she’d spotted Luke Goodman, the production manager at her family’s chocolate company, in the cookie department with his daughter, Serena, and had decided to skip the cookies.

Not that she didn’t want to see little Serena or, as Serena would insist, Big Serena now that she’d “graduated” from kindergarten. Serena’s visits to the Sweet Dreams Chocolates office with her grandma gave Cecily her kid fix on a regular basis.

But Serena’s daddy was another matter.

Luke Goodman was a nice guy. He had the husky build of a wrestler (which he’d been in high school), kind blue eyes and a great smile. He was a widower, and he’d been interested in Cecily ever since she’d moved back home to Icicle Falls. The only problem was that she wasn’t interested in him as anything more than a friend.

She should have been. What was wrong with her, anyway? She had such a gift for matching up other people. She’d brought together friends in high school and in college; thanks to her, a lot of weddings had taken place. She’d even been in the matchmaking business, for crying out loud. She could size people up and instinctively know who should be with whom. But when it came to herself she knew nothing. She’d been engaged twice, and each man had turned out to be a loser and a user. Pathetic.

Luke was neither of those, and he wanted her. So why did her stupid hormones do the happy dance every time she got anywhere near Todd Black?