Moonlight Masquerade Read online

  “Did this preacher, Russell, bail you out?”

  “More or less,” Kelli said.

  He moved along the aisle. “So why did you steal the pans?”

  “You’re a pest, you know that?”

  “Sophie thinks so and my father would agree wholeheartedly, but my mother rather liked me. So why’d you steal the pans?”

  “Because my boyfriend ran over mine with his motorcycle and I had to bake six tarts to try to get a job as a pastry chef at a major hotel.”

  Carter waited for her to continue.

  “I’d been working for a jerk of a chef who took credit for everything I did and I wanted to get away from him. Two days before I was to show up with examples of what I can do, my boyfriend and I had a fight. The next day while I was at work he cleaned out my bank account and ran his bike over every piece of cooking equipment I owned.”

  “So you ‘borrowed’ some more.”

  “That’s right. That’s what I did.”

  “But you got caught?”

  “He was stalking me,” she said.

  “The boyfriend or the mean chef boss?”

  “Boyfriend. He followed me, saw what I was doing, and called the cops. The mean chef pressed charges. The judge thought it was all ridiculous, so he sent me to help at a homeless shelter.”

  “And that’s where the Edilean pastor met you.”

  “Yes, he did, and he called me for this job, even bought my bus ticket.”

  “You’re a pastry chef but you came all the way from Chicago to take a job in a sandwich shop?”

  When Kelli didn’t answer, he stopped and stared at her. “If you want me to help you, you need to tell me the whole story.”

  “What else is there to tell?” They were in the spice aisle and she was buying the biggest, cheapest containers she could find.

  Carter didn’t reply but picked up a ten-pound bag of King Arthur flour. “When I started working for Treeborne Foods three years ago I suggested that we branch out into baked goods. Give Sara Lee a run for her money. In front of everyone my father told me to sit down and shut up.”

  Kelli seemed to be deciding whether to tell the real reason why she’d come to Edilean. “Russell said that the sandwich shop used to sell pastries and that there’s an empty building next door.”

  Carter instantly saw what she was getting at. “You want to tear through the wall to make a work area.”

  Kelli nodded.

  Carter’s eyes lit up. “I can get all the baking equipment you need, including hundreds of tart pans, from a rock bottom wholesaler.”

  “Just mention the Treeborne name?”

  Carter grinned. “Just mention the Treeborne name.”

  Understanding passed between them. Maybe, just possibly, Carter was seeing a way around his father’s rule. If he could come up with a line of pastries, things that could be frozen . . . He’d do something labeled as healthy, as that’s what sold. Healthy, high fiber, low carb. All the catch words of the industry.

  He held the bag of flour aloft. “How many do you want to start out with?”

  “Five ten-pounds bags should hold me over for a day or two.”

  When Sophie got back to the restaurant, she was shocked to see Carter and a girl she’d never met up to their elbows in flour. There was a wooden box of apples on the floor, and every burner on the stove was covered with big pots. The shop smelled wonderful.

  She and Henry had walked to the church and she’d heard his ideas of building a studio on his property.

  “My wife and I own five acres outside Williams-burg. Right now I’m working in a three-car garage, but Sophie, I could build us a studio. It would be two stories high, open to the roof, with windows on the north. It could have triple doors so any big bronzes you—or maybe we—made could be moved in and out.”

  What he was saying was like a dream come true. All through school it was what she’d imagined having someday. She and Kim and Jecca had spent long evenings talking of their possible futures.

  For Kim, everything she’d wanted had come true. She had her own shop and it was possible that she was going to go national. Jecca hadn’t become a painter as she’d wanted to be, but she did have an art career before her.

  As for Sophie, she felt that even though she was twenty-six years old she was just starting life. Her own life, that is.

  “Are you Sophie?” the young woman behind the counter asked as she wiped her hands. “I’m Kelli Parker.”

  The name meant nothing to Sophie.

  “Didn’t Russell tell you about me?”

  “Yes, he did.” She was looking at the kitchen. If she’d been in the restaurant longer, if she’d begun to feel that the place was hers, she would have been resentful of this stranger taking over. But this morning the deluge of customers had shown her how her lack of experience had come close to being a disaster.

  She saw that this pretty young woman was looking at her anxiously, waiting to see what Sophie was going to say. “What are you doing?”

  “She’s a pastry chef,” Carter said over the tall glass counter. “She’s going to fill this cabinet with . . . I don’t know . . . pastries, I guess.”

  “Could you just get back to work and let me tell her?” Kelli said, then looked back at Sophie. “Oh, sorry, you’re the boss so you should tell him what to do.”

  Sophie didn’t smile. “If I told Carter what to do it would involve boiling oil and foul language.”

  Carter’s groan echoed around the room, but he didn’t stop working.

  Sophie looked back at Kelli. “I think pastries would be a great idea. What can I do to help?”

  Twenty

  It was almost Christmas, Reede thought, and he had no idea what he was going to get Sophie. If he had his way it would be an engagement ring, but he didn’t dare do that. He didn’t think he could live with her telling him no.

  In the months since she’d arrived it seemed that his life fluctuated between perfect and horrible. He was glad that she was settling into the community of Edi-lean, but at the same time he knew he wanted to leave the little town—and he wanted Sophie to go with him.

  He’d loved seeing her excitement of the last few weeks. It was as though everything she’d ever wanted was at last coming to her.

  Reede hadn’t been too happy about Carter coming to town, although he admitted that he shouldn’t have hit the man. Afterward, the manager of Kim’s jewelry store, Carla, had called Reede at his office, saying that it was very important that she speak to him immediately.

  “I just heard what you did,” Carla said. “You know, when you hit that guy.”

  “Yes, I do know,” Reede said with a sigh. “I shouldn’t have—”

  “But you should have,” Carla said. “The whole town knows you and Sophie are meant for each other. On Halloween half the town was peeping through the curtains to watch you two riding through the night. It was the most romantic thing this town has ever seen. At least it was the best thing to happen since Dr. Tris went after Jecca, and of course there was the way Luke nearly killed Rams over—”

  “Carla!” Reede said. “Is there a point to this call? I have patients.”

  “Oh yeah, sure. I thought you might like to know that I sold that big pink diamond ring Kim made. It was by far the most expensive piece in the store.”

  Reede knew there’d been some trouble between his sister and Carla, something to do with the sale of a sapphire ring, but he thought it had been settled. “Do you want me to take charge of the money?” Reede asked with as much concern in his voice as he could manage. “The new me” he thought of himself since Sophie had arrived. Patient, understanding, sweet tempered.

  “Are you saying I can’t be trusted with money?” Carla asked loudly. “Because if you are, then—”

  “Cut it out!” Reede snapped. “Just say what you’re avoiding telling me.”

  “The man you hit bought the ring. He said it was for his engagement.”

  “Treeborne?”