Sheila Roberts - Better Than Chocolate

“Arnie’s not married,” Bailey said. “Neither is Mayor Stone. Or Waldo’s brother. Wouldn’t it be sweet if—”

Samantha cut her off. “Let’s not even put that thought out in the universe.” All they needed was another man coming along and convincing Mom that the third time would be the charm.

“Look at them. Waldo’s barely gone and they’re already circling around her like some old-guy version of The Bachelor.” Cecily shook her head. “Men.”

“You know, for a matchmaker you sure have a sucky attitude,” Bailey observed.

“Where do you think I got it?” Cecily retorted.

“How do you manage to stay in business?” Bailey asked in disgust.

“By staying superficial.” Cecily gave them a wicked grin.

Cecily was the only blonde in the family and she was the prettiest of them all with perfect features and the longest legs. Samantha had been cute with her red hair and freckles, but it was Cecily the boys drooled over. Still, in spite of her good looks, Cupid had never been kind to her. So far she’d gone through two fiancés. Samantha didn’t understand how Cecily could make money matching up beautiful people in L.A. but couldn’t seem to get it right when it came to her own love life.

Like you’re doing so well?

Touché, she told her snarky self.

“You’re enough to make a woman give up on love,” Bailey muttered as she nodded and smiled politely at old Mr. Nilsen, who was ogling her from the other side of the hall.

“That would be the smart thing to do,” Cecily said.

“Well, I don’t think Mom’s ready to give up on love. Maybe you could match her up with someone,” Bailey suggested.

“No!” Several people turned to stare and Samantha downed a slug of punch in an effort to put out the fire in her cheeks. What was wrong with her? Could a woman suddenly get Tourette’s at thirty?

The wicked in Cecily’s grin kicked up a notch. “I know what you mean. No one will ever be able to replace Waldo.”

“I liked Waldo, I really did,” Samantha said. “But no more men. I’ve got enough to deal with already.”

“Gosh, Sammy.” Bailey frowned at her.

Samantha frowned back. “Hey, baby sister, you two get to go back to sunny California and match up lonely millionaires and cater events for starlets. I’m the one stuck with the fallout here.”

Cecily sobered. “I’m sorry. You’re right. We’re leaving you with a mess. You’ve got the business to sort out, plus Mom’s affairs.”

“Except if anyone can do it, you can, Sammy,” Bailey said, linking arms with her.

Samantha sighed. As the oldest it was her job to be the rock everyone leaned on—although right now she didn’t feel like a rock. She felt like a pebble on a beach about to be swept away by a tsunami.

And her own mother had been the one to unwittingly drop her there. She and Muriel loved each other dearly, but they often disagreed. And before Waldo died they’d disagreed a lot, especially when Samantha tried to get her mother to talk sense into him.

“He’s not feeling well,” Mom kept saying, but when pressed for details she’d remained vague.

Maybe the poor guy’s heart had been acting up all along. Maybe he’d been so worried about his bad health he hadn’t been able to concentrate and that was why he’d made such poor decisions. Except that didn’t explain his odd purchases. Or the answers he’d given her when she asked about them.

“A man needs to be able to protect what’s his,” he’d said when she’d questioned him about the gun.

“In Icicle Falls?” she’d countered. The biggest crime they’d had all year was when Amanda Stevens keyed Jimmy Rodriguez’s Jeep after he’d cheated on her with another girl. And Jimmy hadn’t pressed charges.

“You never know,” Waldo had hedged. “I saw someone. In the parking lot.”

“Doing what?” she’d asked.

“He was following me. And don’t tell your mother,” he’d said. “I don’t want to worry her.”

Like he’d just worried his stepdaughter? Then there’d been the water.

“We could have an avalanche and be trapped here for days,” he’d said.

She’d let that slide, too. Until things started getting really bad. And then, just when she’d decided she and her mother would need to have a very unpleasant conversation, Waldo had walked from their house on Alpine Drive into town and keeled over dead right in front of Lupine Floral. Poor Kevin had dropped the roses he’d been storing in the cooler and run out to give him CPR while his partner, Heinrich, called 9-1-1, but Waldo was dead within minutes.

And now she was stuck dealing with the mess he’d left behind. Her sisters were leaving on Monday and she was the one who’d be dealing with their mother and figuring out how to pay the people who depended on Sweet Dreams for their livelihood. Great-grandma Rose, who’d started this business on a dream, was probably turning in her grave at what her descendants had done to it.

Samantha frowned at her half-empty punch cup. The glass is half empty…the glass is half full. Either way, “This stuff needs booze.”

Chapter Two

Your biggest asset is your family.

—Muriel Sterling, Mixing Business with Pleasure: How to Successfully Balance Work and Love

Two hours later, friends and extended relatives had exhausted themselves on the topic of Waldo and consumed all the potato salad and cold cuts. The party was over. Sent on their way with one final hug from Olivia Wallace and a paper plate containing half a dozen lemon bars, the three sisters and their mother stepped outside to a cold, cloudless night.

Mom looked as drained as Samantha felt. Only Mom’s exhaustion was from pure grief. Samantha’s was contaminated by a less pure mixture of feelings.

“I’ll follow you guys back to the house,” she said, and went in search of her car.

It was now five-thirty on a Friday afternoon and the old-fashioned lampposts along Center Street stood sentinel over a downtown shopping area about to go to sleep for the night. Nearby restaurants like Zelda’s and Schwangau would open for business, but here, on what the locals dubbed Tourist Street, the shops were closed and only a smattering of cars remained.

Samantha loved their little downtown, its park with the gazebo and multitude of flower beds, its cobbled streets edged with quaint shops, the mountains standing guard over it. Normally this time of year the mountains would have worn a thick blanket of snow, and both cross-country and downhill skiers, as well as snowboarders, would be in town for the weekend, shopping, eating in the restaurants, enjoying the little outdoor skating rink and admiring the Bavarian architecture. But these days there were few visitors. It had been a lean year for snow. Heck, it had been a lean year, period, and several once-thriving shops were now shuttered.

Businesses going under—don’t even think about that.

Too late. That was all it took to make her angry once more about her own company’s troubles and she had to remind herself that her world, unlike her mother’s, had not come to an end. Somehow she’d manage to pull the business from the brink but Mom would never have her husband back. This was the second one she’d lost in five years. What was that like, to be in love and happy and lose it all not once but twice? Samantha thought back to her own romantic troubles and realized she had no point of reference. She could only imagine.

She needed to be a supportive daughter, lock any negative thoughts inside her head and keep her big mouth shut. Mouth shut, mouth shut, mouth shut. She chanted it for the last several steps to her car. Then she got in, closed the door and said it one more time. “Mouth shut.” Okay. She was ready.