Sheila Roberts - Better Than Chocolate

SHEILA ROBERTSis married and has three children. She lives on a lake in the Pacific Northwest. When she's not hanging out with her girlfriends or hitting the dance floor with her husband, she can be found writing about those things dear to women's hearts: family, friends and chocolate.

You can visit Sheila at her website, www.sheilasplace.com. You can also find her on Twitter and Facebook.

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Hi, one and all!

Welcome to Icicle Falls, my ideal town. This place has it all: breathtaking scenery, quaint shops, people who understand the importance of pulling together when the going gets tough, laughter, romance and, best of all, a chocolate factory. (Does it get any more ideal than that?)

I hope you'll enjoy your time with the Sterling women and their friends. These are my kind of women—women who dare to dream and then work hard to make those dreams come true—because where would we be without dreams? And where would we be without our mothers, sisters and girlfriends, those special people who understand us and love us in spite of our flaws? I don't know and I don't want to know.

I dare you to get all the way through this book without eating so much as a bite of chocolate. I couldn't! I hope you'll find me on Facebook and Twitter, and stop by my website, www.sheilasplace.com.

Happy reading!

Sheila

For Lilly-Anne, Pat and the gang at

A Book for All Seasons in Leavenworth, Washington

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Sometimes when we think of an author writing a novel we envision the poor thing hunched over a keyboard for hours on end, staring at a computer screen, all by herself, consuming vast quantities of chocolate, growing fat on her hips. Oh, my gosh, that's me!

Except writing isn't always a solitary pursuit. After all, a girl has to do research. And this is the part of the book where I get to thank the people who helped me with that research. I owe a big thank you to my long-suffering husband for sharing his banking expertise and doing copious research to help me try and get my business details correct. Also, a huge thank you to Laura at Bainbridge Island City Hall for explaining all the work that goes into putting on a community event. When it comes to community events, Bainbridge knows how to do it. Big thanks to Brett at Theo Chocolate in Seattle for being so willing to answer all my questions about what goes into running a chocolate company. They do it right over there. Thanks to my Facebook friends and fans who sent me recipes—wish there was room in this book for every one of them. To the brain trust—Susan Wiggs, Anjali Banerjee, Kate Breslin and Elsa Watson—you girls rock. And finally, huge thanks to the gang at the Chamber of Commerce in Leavenworth, Washington, for making their resources available to me—the history of how your town built itself into a charming alpine village and successful tourist destination is truly inspiring. Icicle Falls is the closest I can come to a tribute.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Epilogue: Dreams Coming True

Extract

Recipes from the Sterlings

The Chocolate Rose White Chocolate Truffle

Bailey’s Chocolate Truffle Trifle

Icicle Falls Moose Munch

White Lavender Fudge

Bear Droppings

Chapter One

Manage your relationships well and your business will go well. Because what, after all, is business but a relationship with some dollar signs attached?

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

Samantha Sterling sat next to her mother in the first pew of Icicle Falls Community Church and fought back the urge to jump up, run to the front of the sanctuary, grab her stepfather, Waldo, by the neck and throttle him. She didn’t, for two reasons. One, a girl didn’t do things like that in church. Still, she could have overcome her reservations if not for the second reason—God had already taken Waldo out. Waldo was as dead as roadkill on Highway 2. In addition to a daughter from his first marriage, he’d left behind his grieving wife, Muriel, his three stepdaughters, Samantha, Cecily and Bailey, and the family business, which was nearly as dead as Waldo.

Sweet Dreams Chocolates had been healthy when Samantha’s father was alive. The company had been started by her great-grandmother Rose and had slowly but steadily grown under his leadership—one big, happy family to mirror the happy family who were living off its profits. All three sisters had spent their summers working at Sweet Dreams. All three had it drummed into them from an early age that this business was the source of both the family’s income and honor (not to mention chocolate). But it was Samantha who had fallen in love with it. Of the three girls, she was the one who’d stayed and she was the heir apparent.

But then her father had died and everything came to a halt. Samantha lost the man she and her sisters idolized, and her mother lost her way. Muriel left it to Samantha and the bookkeeper, Lizzy, to keep the company running on autopilot while first she mourned and then later searched for a new husband.

Enter Waldo Wittman, a tall, gray-haired widower recently retired, encouraged to do so by his company, which was downsizing. (Now, looking back, Samantha suspected there were other reasons Waldo had been turned loose.) He’d wanted to get away from the rat race, or so he’d said. With its mountain views, its proximity to eastern Washington wine country, its small-town friendliness and its attractive widow, Waldo decided Icicle Falls would fit the bill. And Muriel decided the same about Waldo. So, after a year and a half of widowhood, she got a new man.

And now there he was, at the front of the church, stretched out in his favorite—expensive!—gray suit. Sweet, beloved Waldo…the money-eater. Oh, Waldo, how could everything have gone so wrong so fast?

It was early January, the beginning of a new year. And what a nightmare year it was promising to be, all because Mom had made her new husband president of their family-owned business. She’d left Samantha as VP in charge of marketing; much good that had done. Now Samantha was VP in charge of disaster and she could hardly sit still thinking of the mess waiting for her back at the office.

“You’re fidgeting,” whispered her sister Cecily, who was sitting next to her.

Fidgeting at a funeral probably wasn’t polite but it was an improvement over standing up, pulling out her hair and shrieking like a madwoman.

Why, oh, why hadn’t Mom and Dad done what needed to be done to make sure that if something happened to Dad the business passed into competent hands? Then Mom could have skipped happily off into newlywed bliss, no harm no foul.

None of them had expected her to remain alone forever. She was only in her fifties when Dad died and she didn’t function well alone.

When Waldo arrived on the scene she came back to life, and Samantha had been happy for her. He was fun and charming, and she and her sisters gave him a hearty thumbs-up. Why not? He’d brought back Mom’s smile. At first everyone got along well. Like Samantha, he’d been a shutterbug and they’d enjoyed talking photography. Her favorite joke when she’d stop by the house to talk business with Mom (or try, anyway) was to ask, “Where’s Waldo?”