Better Than Chocolate Read online

  Now she did look at him. She had great eyes. And then there was her mouth. And other parts of her.

  “It was very unprofessional of me,” she said, “and I’m not normally like that.”

  “I’m sure you’re not,” he agreed. “And believe me, this isn’t any more fun for the bank than it is for you.”

  A delicate eyebrow cocked, turning her earnest expression into something a little more cynical. “It hurts you more than it does me?”

  “Well, sort of.” That had sounded stupid and made him look like a real jerk. This wasn’t going well. “I don’t like having to be the bad guy,” he said. Boy, there was an understatement. Why, of all the business choices in the world, had he chosen banking?

  Oh, yeah, he’d wanted to help people fix their money problems, make their dreams come true, blah, blah. Talk about naive. Banks didn’t cure financial stupidity. They profited from it. He was no hero. He was a profiteer.

  “Then don’t be a bad guy,” she urged. “Work with us.”

  She looked so helpless, so desperate. He wanted to wrap his arms around her and tell her he’d come up with some way to save her.

  Wait a minute. What was he thinking? He wasn’t, of course. Women like this one, they made a man’s brain melt. He gave himself a stern reminder that Samantha Sterling wasn’t the only person in town with financial needs. He had employees and other bank customers depending on him.

  None of his other customers looked like this one.

  Oh, no. He wasn’t about to follow old Arnie right over the cliff and take the bank with him. Yes, legions of men did dumb things for women. They spent money they didn’t have on women, stole for them, even committed murder for them. He didn’t have to join the legions.

  “We’re making plans for something that could benefit not only Sweet Dreams but the whole town,” Samantha said earnestly.

  There. She’d be fine. He’d known it all along.

  This was a town full of fighters. It had been ever since the shutdown of the lumber mill and the relocation of the railroad left Icicle Falls in bad straits during the Depression. It’d been almost a ghost town by the fifties, but the people of Icicle Falls had self-administered CPR and spent the early sixties transforming their town into an Alpine village and haven for skiers. Sweet Dreams Chocolate Company was one of their success stories, weathering the hard times and giving the town a source of pride, and how it was founded had become a local legend. Like the other residents of Icicle Falls, Samantha Sterling was a fighter. She’d pull out of this.

  “If we could have a little more time,” she added.

  That again. So much for the false rosy picture he’d been painting. His morning coffee began churning up acid in his gut. “I wish I could,” he said. And he did. No lie.

  There went the eyebrow once more. “Do you?”

  Yes, damn it. But what was he supposed to do, rob the bank for her? Did he look like a money tree with hundred-dollar bills sprouting out of his ears? “Like I said before—”

  “I don’t think I want to hear what you said before,” she snapped. “It was depressing the first time around.”

  In under a minute she’d reduced him from six feet two to twelve inches, the world’s smallest man with the world’s smallest heart. “If there’s any other way I can help,” he began.

  “You’re helping enough,” she said coldly, and marched off to the order counter, her back stiff.

  But not her tush. How did women manage to walk like that? Honky-tonk badonkadonk, mmm-mmm.

  Nice, Preston, he scolded himself. You’re about to take her business and you’re thinking about her butt. What kind of bastard did that make him? He supposed his ex-girlfriend would be glad to tell him.

  There had been a superficial relationship that was doomed from the start. After they broke up he’d vowed to be more cautious and not let his common sense get anesthetized by a pretty face. Or a nice tush.

  Talk about doomed relationships… Samantha Sterling is not for you. Still…that didn’t mean he couldn’t step back and analyze her situation once again and maybe come to a new conclusion. Really, was the bank wise to be so hard-nosed to a business that played a vital part in the local economy?

  He tossed his coffee and stepped out into the cold. Instead of returning to the bank he went down to Riverfront Park. With the exception of a couple of brave walkers the footpath was deserted. He took out his cell and dialed Darren Short, his district manager, all the while telling himself that he was not following Arnie over the cliff.

  “Blake, how’s it going?” Darren greeted him. “Are you settling in?”

  “Well enough,” Blake said. “But now that I’m here I’m getting a bigger picture than we had on paper.”

  “Oh?” Now Darren sounded cautious.

  “Look, I think we need to reevaluate a few of these loans, especially the one to Sweet Dreams Chocolates.”

  “Don’t go soft on me now,” Darren said. “You’re up there to stop the hemorrhaging.”

  “I know.”

  “Then don’t let me down. You’re our wunderkind and we’re depending on you to turn that branch around and make it an asset for Cascade Mutual. Hell, the people who work up there are depending on you, too.”

  “I have every intention of doing that, but—”

  Darren cut him off. “Good. I stuck my neck out for you. Don’t make me regret it.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m doing my job,” Blake said. “But part of that job involves evaluating the situation and—”

  Darren cut him off again with a brusque, “It’s been evaluated and I’m sure I don’t have to remind you of bank policy—to which you’ve already made an exception.”

  “I haven’t forgotten,” Blake said through gritted teeth.

  “I’m glad to hear it. You can give me a full report when we meet on Friday.”

  “I will.” In fact, Darren was going to get a much fuller report than he expected. One way or another Blake was now determined to make his boss see reason. He had to. He couldn’t take living the rest of his life as the world’s smallest man.

  * * *

  Samantha had been looking forward to a caramel latte all morning, but once she had it she took no more than two sips before throwing it out. She started back to the office but changed direction at the last minute, instead walking over to Gingerbread Haus, owned by her business buddy Cassandra Wilkes.

  Between her visits to the bakery, and Cass’s visits to Sweet Dreams it was inevitable that the women would become friends. In addition to a love of food and a passion for business, they also seemed to share a common snark bone.

  Cass was a single mom, now in her early forties, with three children. She’d come to town a bitter thirty-four-year-old divorcée with barely a penny to her name and went to work for Dot Morrison, who owned the Breakfast Haus restaurant. Dot had lent her the money to start her fantasyland bakery seven years ago and Cass had taken the money and run as fast as she could for success. She’d never looked back.

  Samantha opened the door and was greeted with a rush of warm air carrying the scent of cinnamon and nutmeg. From behind the glass counter gingerbread cookies in every imaginable shape beckoned. Cream puff swans swam inside a refrigerator display case, along with German-style kuchen loaded with whipped cream. A huge gingerbread castle perched atop the counter and the shelves behind it displayed other examples of Cass’s creativity.

  Today she was in the kitchen, covered in flour and rolling out cookie d
ough for sugar cookie pizzas, but when she saw Samantha standing at the counter talking to her oldest daughter, twenty-year-old Danielle, she washed her hands, slipped off her apron and decided to take a coffee break.

  Cass wasn’t a bad-looking woman in spite of the fact that she tried her best to look bad. She never bothered with makeup and when her dark hair wasn’t in a net it was pulled into a sloppy bun. She was thirty pounds overweight and proud of it, and she rarely dressed up beyond jeans and a sweatshirt or T-shirt. But it was probably more her attitude than her looks that kept her single. Where something about Muriel said, “Call me,” Cass sent out signals that said, “Don’t even think about it.”

  Now she regarded Samantha with that penetrating gaze of hers and said, “Okay, who do you want to kill today?”

  Samantha couldn’t help smiling at her perceptiveness. “Not my mother and not myself.”

  “That’s a step in the right direction,” Cass said as they settled at a corner table with some cake pops.

  “But maybe the new bank manager.”

  “I didn’t get to the open house but I was in making a deposit this morning and saw our hometown boy.” Cass shook her head and smiled. “I’ve gotta say, even though my ideal man is made of gingerbread, this one brought my hormones back to life for a minute there.”

  “I always knew you were a cougar,” Samantha teased.

  “So have you been in to talk to him about helping you sort out your Waldo mess?”

  Cass and Charley were the only ones who knew Samantha had been struggling with the business but she hadn’t told either of them just how desperate the struggle was. “He won’t be any help,” she said, and left it at that.

  Cass shook her head. “The man must have a heart of stone and gonads of dough.”

  “That about covers it. We’re going to try and find some other ways to fix the business. My mom and sisters and I were kicking around something last night and I want to get your impression.” Cass was an astute businesswoman. If she was in their corner, that would help sell other members of the Chamber of Commerce on the idea.

  She sat back and slung an elbow over the back of her chair. “Okay,” she said, her voice noncommittal.

  “We’re thinking of sponsoring a chocolate festival.”

  Cass nodded thoughtfully. “Sounds interesting. Tell me more.”

  And so Samantha did, and as she talked, Cass’s skeptical body language changed. She leaned forward, arms on the table, listening intently. “You know, this could be good,” she said at last.

  “Do you think it could work?”

  “Why not? We’re always trying to find new ways to bring visitors to town. When were you hoping to do it? You have to make sure you don’t eclipse anything that’s already in place.”

  “Next month.”

  Cass blinked and fell back against her chair. “Next month?”

  “I realize it’s kind of a rush job.” That was the understatement of the century.

  “Kind of?” Cass raised both eyebrows. “You know how long it takes to plan something like this?”

  Samantha slumped in her seat. “It’s hopeless, isn’t it? I knew it.” She’d been deluding herself—which was exactly what crazy people did.

  “I didn’t say that, but damn.”

  “We could start small,” Samantha ventured.

  “Why February?”

  “I need a ton of money by the end of next month. I’m out of options, Cass.” It was painful to have to say it out loud and Samantha found herself blinking back tears.

  “Not necessarily. You have friends in this town.”

  Samantha shook her head. “I don’t have enough friends for what I owe. Anyway, I wouldn’t do that to my friends. If the bank could have worked with me…” There was no sense completing that sentence.

  “Okay, so when next month?”

  “We’d like to have it the weekend before Valentine’s Day.”

  Cass nodded slowly. “A chocolate festival the weekend before Valentine’s Day. Perfect timing. You should be able to lure lots of couples up here for that. Good for the B and Bs, restaurants, wineries. Bakeries,” she added with a grin.

  “So, if we didn’t go too wild, could we pull it off?”

  Cass shrugged. “I say give it a shot. You’ve got nothing to lose.”

  Except her business, and she wasn’t letting go of that without a fight.

  Cass returned to work and Samantha hurried back to the office, a woman ready to wage war.

  Elena looked at her uneasily. “I was getting worried. Where’ve you been?”

  “Out getting inspired. I need you to look up festivals on the internet and print out everything you can find.”

  “Okay,” Elena said. “But—”

  “And call Luke and tell him to plan to triple production on our mint chocolate hearts.”

  “What in the world is going on?”

  “We are about to sponsor Icicle Falls first annual chocolate festival,” Samantha said, and then marched into her office, a general about to form her battle plan and conquer the world. Or at least the bank.

  Chapter Seven

  A positive attitude in you inspires a positive attitude in others.

  —Muriel Sterling, When Family Matters

  Wednesday morning found the members of the Icicle Falls Chamber of Commerce assembled in the banquet room of Dot Morrison’s Breakfast Haus.

  “Do you want me to bring up the idea of the festival?” Cass asked Samantha.

  “I appreciate the offer, but no.” It would be nice if someone would just take the reins and gallop them off into the sunset (or over the cliff) but Samantha knew she had to do this herself. Her glance sneaked to the far end of the table, where Blake Preston sat talking with Ed York, who owned D’Vine Wines. Would he weigh in and advise everyone present not to listen to a woman whose business was in ruins?

  Don’t be ridiculous, she scolded herself. It was in the bank’s best interest for her to succeed. Otherwise, they’d have a chocolate company on their hands, and what would the bank do with a chocolate company?

  “Just remember to stress that we’ll all benefit from this,” said Charley, whom she’d filled in on their way to the meeting. “We need to figure out how to make Icicle Falls a tourist destination all year long, snow or no snow.”

  Samantha nodded and pushed her plate away. What little she’d eaten of her Belgian waffle was lying in her stomach like a brick.

  Another fifteen minutes of small talk and Ed brought the meeting to order. There was much to discuss, like how to encourage everyone to put out hanging baskets and window boxes full of flowers come spring so they could keep their Alpine village theme consistent throughout town.

  During this discussion several of the women present cast scornful frowns in the direction of Todd Black, whose sports bar, the Man Cave, camped at the edge of town—rather like the embarrassing relative everyone at the family picnic wishes would just go away. His concession to the requisite Bavarian look they were going for had been to add the carved wooden overhang to his roofline and commission one of his buddies to paint a Neanderthal in lederhosen holding a club on the front of the building. Many thought it in poor taste. Rather like the brawls that often took place there on a Saturday night.

  Another hot topic of discussion was whether or not to foot the bill for a new town sign welcoming visitors to Icicle Falls with a quaint German phrase.

  “Really,” said Annemarie Hu
ber, who had recently purchased the Bavarian Inn, “if we’re an Alpine-style village we should have an Alpine-style welcome sign.”

  “You have a point there, Annemarie,” Ed told her. “We should check with Bill Jacobs to see how much it would cost.”

  “Too much,” Todd muttered.

  “It will add to our town’s charm,” Annemarie insisted. She got as far as having everyone agree that the matter should be looked into.

  The brick in Samantha’s stomach grew heavier. If nobody wanted to fork out for something as small as a sign, they sure weren’t going to be excited about coughing up cash for putting on a festival.

  “We have one more piece of new business from Samantha.” Ed smiled at her encouragingly.

  She’d just had to open her big mouth and tell him she had a proposition to discuss that could benefit the whole town. Now her feet weren’t simply cold, they were frozen solid. Would everyone think she was being completely self-serving? They’d probably shoot her down. Heck, if she didn’t need this so badly she’d shoot herself down.

  People were studying her with speculative interest. Sell this idea. It’s the only one you’ve got and it needs to fly. She steeled herself and put on her game face. “Yes, I’ve kicked this around with several people.” Charley and Cass, her family—that was several. “And I’ve been getting some positive response.” Especially from her family.

  “Let’s hear it,” Ed said. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m open to ideas. Business hasn’t been the best this winter.”

  “You can say that again,” agreed Olivia Wallace, who owned Icicle Creek Lodge.

  “We need to do some things to bring in business and make Icicle Falls more of a tourist destination throughout the year,” Samantha said. “After all, it’s lovely here all year round. We have great hiking in the summer, and in the fall when the leaves turn, it’s gorgeous. Plus we’re near some of the best wineries this side of Napa.”

  Ed nodded. “Amen to that. So what did you have in mind?”