LITMIR.BIZ

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it was this morning? Thanks, Lord, for sending me the reminder I needed, Dinah prayed silently as she reached for the file of sketches she had ready for her friend.

      “I’m here,” Emily called out. “This is going to be so much fun.”

      Dinah motioned to the little corner table that sat by the bakery’s front windows while she reached for a second mug and some hot water. “Tea for you, coffee for me.”

      Emily ran the West of Paris bath shop down the street and was in the middle of planning her February wedding to a local horse farmer named Gil Sorrent. Dinah was happy to see her friend so madly in love and even happier to bake her the wedding cake of her dreams. Even if it meant a little extra work around an already-busy time.

      “You’re sure you can do this? I just heard you’ll be doing all the cookies for that new fund-raiser.”

      Dinah sat upright in her chair and hoisted her coffee mug. “That’s right. You’re looking at the Middleburg Community Fund’s official Cookiegram baker. Complete with a fancy new oven thanks to the untimely but welcome death of Old Ironsides back there.”

      “Right,” said Emily, “Sandy Burnside told me your oven died.”

      “I choose to believe God was simply better equipping me for the surge of business ahead. And no amount of cookies could put me off baking my friend’s spectacular wedding cake.” Dinah opened the file. “I took a look at the handkerchiefs you showed me and made a few sketches.” Emily loved all things vintage and had given Dinah an assortment of delicate antique handkerchiefs with embroidered pastel borders as motifs to incorporate into the cake decoration. Emily was nothing if not a woman who knew what she wanted and Dinah liked her for that.

      “You’re sure you’ll have time?” Emily was also a first-class control freak, although love had softened her edges.

      “Honey, for you I’ll make time. You’re my top February priority. Cookies are easy. Wedding cakes—those are the stuff of bakers’ dreams.” All the more reason not to crawl back to New Jersey, Dinah thought as she poured Emily’s tea. You’ve got a bustling bakery business to run.

      They chatted through an hour of delightful options—fillings, shapes, colors, patterns—before choosing a design. Dinah was particularly tickled that Emily’s favorite design was her first choice as well: a lovely, delicate trio of ovals—vintage enough to suit Emily’s style, but not so fussy that her fiancé, Gil, would groan. They were a textbook case of opposites attract, those two. Emily was all soft, delicate pastels, whereas Gil was a large, dark, storm cloud of a man—at least before Emily came along. She couldn’t be happier for the pair and baking for their wedding just made the joy that much more complete.

      Wedding cakes were—and always had been—all the reasons why Dinah baked, wrapped up in one single confection. Why is it that no one in her family could understand baking’s appeal for her? Why did they consider it some lower form of domestic servitude rather than the gift of beauty and pleasure that it was?

      “So you want to tell me what’s up?” Emily said as she closed the lace-covered notebook she used to hold her wedding notes. “Sandy told me she sold the building—your new landlord making you miserable?”

      “Well, yes and no. Sorry, have I been that distracted?”

      Emily smiled. “Just a bit. Come on, Dinah, what’s up?”

      It was no use hiding things from Emily. She was intuitive that way and they’d been good friends practically from Dinah’s first day in Middleburg. “I got another card from my mom today.”

      Emily let out a little moan of understanding. “That’s the third one, isn’t it? She really is trying to patch things up between you.”

      Dinah pulled the card out from her pocket and slid it across to Emily. “Not that she was ever subtle before, but she’s actually told me to come home in this one.”

      Emily quickly scanned the card and then looked up at Dinah. “Okay, but you don’t have to go home. I can’t remember you ever doing as you were told. You disregard Howard on a monthly basis for the fun of it.”

      Dinah served on the Middleburg Library board, vice chair to Mayor Howard Epson, a man who believed himself to be the most important person in Middleburg. A man who loved issuing commands that Dinah loved ignoring. Still, the two had managed a begrudging admiration for each other which somehow got the job done. No one else had ever lasted as long as vice chair of the library board under Howard, and Howard was showing no signs of ever resigning any of his many board chairmanships or from his long run as Middleburg’s mayor. “Ruffling Howard’s feathers is fun. Ruffling Mom’s is playing with fire.”

      “She’ll come around.” Emily handed back the letter. “Once she understands how happy you are out here, she’ll ease up. Parents want their children to be happy most of all.”

      Dinah sighed. “Yeah, but I can’t help thinking something’s up. Something bugs me about all her cards. Something I can’t quite read between the lines yet. She’s not telling me everything.”

      “Maybe she’s just afraid to admit how lonely she is without you. Maybe it’s easier for her to believe it’s for your own good to go back to New Jersey when she’d really just like it for her own good.”

      Dinah drained her coffee and stuffed the card back into her pocket. “You’re probably right. She’s been busier than a beehive since Dad died, but she’s never remarried. She says she loves her independence, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t lonely. Dad’s been gone almost fifteen years now.” She threw Emily a look. “Maybe she’s just itching for grandchildren and has some dreamy neurosurgical student all lined up for me.”

      “Now that,” Emily replied, finishing the last of her tea, “sounds like a mother to me. You could do a lot worse than a dreamy neurosurgeon. But you won’t know unless you talk to her.”

      Talk. Emily should know better than to make such a suggestion. There was no talking with Mom. Only listening to her version of how Dinah’s life ought to be. A catalog of suggestions and disappointments in how Dinah chose to spend—Mom barely refrained from using the word “waste”—her fine young life.

      “I think you are too smitten with farmer handsome to think clearly at the moment.” Dinah stood up and planted her hands on her hips, diverting the conversation. “You do know the pair of you are probably the only people on the planet who could force me into pastels.” She was a bridesmaid in the wedding, which sported the kind of pale green dresses Dinah would only tolerate for a dear friend. “The universe may shift on its axis to see me in pale mint and an actual ruffle. It could cause a crack in the space–time continuum or something.”

      Emily melted into the dreamy-eyed smirk of the soon-to-be-married. “I’ll take that chance. Can you do lunch?”

      Chapter Four

      There had been days where Cameron craved this kind of solitude. Thirsted for a single uninterrupted hour. Now no phones rang. No one poked a head into his office with a “could you look this over?” interruption. They hadn’t yet installed his cable or Internet connections, and the television only got something like four channels. He was stuck here at his dining room table, within the boring, empty confines of his apartment, facing a to-do list that rivaled only the slowest of weeks in Manhattan. So far he’d gone all five days of the new year without putting on a tie. This should feel like a grand vacation. Instead, the whole morning felt like an odd, unwanted sick day. Only he wasn’t sick. He wasn’t even tired.

      What he really felt was an irrational irritation that no one barged through his door every hour to throw in a batch of muffins or poke at a cake pan. It had driven him bonkers while she’d done it, but now he missed the interruptions. As annoying as Dinah Hopkins was, she was the only Middleburg resident he knew other than Aunt Sandy and Uncle George—and he was in no hurry to talk to them at the moment.

      It all begged the overwhelming question: What am I doing here?

      Cameron

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