Chapter Two
HARPER CHECKED HER daily calendar to confirm all she had to get through that day. As it was the end of the month, she would be billing her clients for her work. In addition, she needed to email Blake and remind him that his mother’s birthday was in two weeks. She already had several gift ideas noted in case he wanted her help with that.
She wrote the email to Blake, a Boeing sales executive who spent his work life traveling the world. Blake sold private jets to the über-rich, and then made sure the customization of said planes was to their liking. She never knew where he was at any given time, or who he was meeting with, but it all sounded very exciting. She thought of him as the sales world’s James Bond.
Her regular clients were Blake, Lucas, a nurse turned stand-up comedian named Misty, Cathy, a party planner, and the City of Mischief Bay. When she’d first started her business, she’d had no idea what she was doing. A half-dozen college extension courses later, she’d mastered several computer programs, learned the basics of a handful of others, knew how to file a DBA, keep basic records for her business and pay her taxes. Harper Helps had been born.
Lucas had been her first client—she’d met him through a friend of a friend. After being shot on the job, Lucas had spent several weeks recovering. During that time, his bills had gone unpaid and his lights and water had been turned off. When he’d recovered, he’d decided to let someone else handle the details of his life and had hired her. Blake had found her through a Facebook ad, of all things, and Misty was one of Lucas’s former nurses.
The work with the city had come through an online posting requesting a bid to design a mailer. She’d applied, offered samples of her work and had been hired.
The irony was Harper had started her home business because she didn’t have any skills—now she would certainly be qualified to work in an office, only to find she didn’t want to. She liked making her own hours and being around for her daughter—not that Becca was especially interested in her mother these days, but still. Harper was here should her daughter ever want or need her.
Harper went into the kitchen and poured herself another cup of coffee. The back door opened and Harper’s mother walked in. Bunny Bloom was petite, slim and in her early sixties. She dressed in high-end knits, wore her dark hair short and spikey and always, always put on makeup before stepping outside her apartment.
Bunny had lost her husband a couple of years ago and while Harper had been a mess in the months following her father’s death, Bunny had soldiered on, taking care of what needed doing. Once the dust had settled, she’d moved into the apartment above Harper’s garage both to be close to her only grandchild and to help Harper financially. There were months when Bunny’s thousand-dollar rent check meant the difference between hamburger for dinner and a box of mac and cheese. Figuratively, Harper thought as she smiled at her mother. She would never use boxed mac and cheese. She would make it herself, from scratch, including the noodles.
“Hey, Mom. How are you?” Harper asked, automatically pouring a second cup of coffee before pulling a freshly made coffee cake from the bread box and cutting off a slice.
“Old. Have you heard from Becca?”
“Just that they’re planning on heading home tomorrow.” She didn’t mention that since the text two days ago saying her daughter had arrived, she hadn’t heard a word. These days Becca just wasn’t talking to her and for the life of her, Harper couldn’t figure out why.
They settled at the round kitchen table and she gave the plate of coffee cake to her mother. Each of the four matching place mats had a rabbit motif, as did the salt-and-pepper shakers in the center of the table. The sugar bowl and creamer had rabbits and tulips, celebrating the holiday and the fact that it was spring.
“Good.” Bunny poured cream into her coffee. “I need to see my only grandchild for Easter. Have you started preparing dinner?”
“I have.”
Although no matter how much she prepped, she would spend most of Easter Sunday in a frenzy of cooking. The menu this year included strawberry avocado salad, a glazed ham, Potatoes Grand-Mère, both roasted asparagus and creamy spring peas, along with lemon meringue pie and an Easter Bunny cake. Oh, and appetizers.
All that for five people, or possibly seven if Lucas came and brought a date. She was never sure with him. Regardless, there would be food for twenty and lots of leftovers. And none of that counted the special “welcome home” dinner she would make tomorrow.
“Do you need help?” her mother asked.
Harper did her best not to scream. Of course she needed help! She was working sixty hours a week in a desperate attempt to stay afloat financially, taking care of her house, dealing with a sixteen-year-old, decorating for the holiday and getting ready to cook a fancy meal. Help would be nice. Help would be grand. But, in Bunny’s world, the woman of the house did not ask for help. No, she did it all herself, seemingly effortlessly. Family came first. The measure of a woman was how well she looked after her family and so on. Harper knew it all by heart. The problem was, from her perspective, the only person who cared about all that was Bunny herself. Bunny who no longer had to do anything for anyone because somehow all that responsibility was Harper’s now. Bunny was free to spend the day with her friends, dress perfectly for every occasion and judge her oldest daughter.
Harper smiled at her mother. “I’m good, Mom. I have it all under control. You just show up and look pretty.”
“All right. Stacey and Kit are coming to dinner?”
“Last I heard.”
Which could be interesting, Harper thought. At some point her sister was going to have to reveal her pregnancy and wouldn’t that be a conversation starter? She wasn’t sure if she wanted it to happen at Easter dinner, though. Not with all the work that went into the meal. Maybe after would be better, when everyone was still digesting, although that could be problematic, as well.
She supposed the actual issue was that there was simply no good time to confess to your mother that you were six months pregnant. At sixteen it made sense to hide the truth, but Stacey was forty.
Harper held in a sigh. She knew exactly why Stacey wasn’t eager to share the information. Their mother would have a million rules and shoulds, all of which Stacey would ignore. Then there would be fighting. Given that scenario, keeping quiet sort of made sense.
“Do you think she left you anything?”
Harper stared at her mother. “I’m sorry, I have no idea what you’re asking.”
“Do you think she left you anything?”
“Saying the same thing again doesn’t make it any clearer, Mom.”
Her mother sighed. “In the will.”
Oh, right. Because Bunny would rather buy store-bought bread than actually say Great-Aunt Cheryl’s name. Which would be really funny except Harper had a similar problem with her ex’s girlfriend. She went out of her way to never say Alicia if at all possible. Although there was a huge difference, what with Alicia being twenty-eight and gorgeous and Great-Aunt Cheryl not being a relative at all and, well, dead.
“I have no idea,” Harper admitted. “A couple of years ago she asked me if I would take her dogs. I made it clear there was no way.”
Great-Aunt Cheryl had been many things, including a former army nurse who had somehow become a spy during World War II. After that, she’d traveled the world, taken lovers and generally lived a life that would have left anyone else exhausted. In the past decade or so, Great-Aunt Cheryl had taken to training dogs for the government. Harper was pretty sure they could arm a nuclear missile if instructed. They were also huge, slightly scary-looking Dobermans that she in no way wanted in her house.
“So no jewelry? No antique silver tea service?”
“Great-Aunt Cheryl wasn’t the antique silver tea service type.”
“Pity.”
They both knew that wasn’t true.
“I’m not expecting her to leave me anything, Mom. She was Terence’s aunt, not mine.”
“Yet you were always so close.”
There was a slight sniff at the end of the statement, but Harper ignored it.
“We were. She was lovely and I miss her a lot.” Great-Aunt Cheryl had always encouraged her to do more with her life than just take care of her family. When Becca had started kindergarten, Cheryl had offered to pay for Harper to go to college.
Harper, being an idiot, had refused. Why should she take time away from caring for her family to do something as ridiculous as going to college? It wasn’t as if she was ever going to be on her own and having to support herself and her daughter.
After the divorce Harper had wanted to tell Great-Aunt Cheryl how much she appreciated the offer, even if she hadn’t taken it. But at that point she’d been afraid it would sound too much like begging for money, so she’d never said the words. Now she couldn’t.
Regret was a mean and vindictive bitch.
* * *
Harper heard a knock at the front door, but before she could run to open it, she heard a familiar “It’s me.”
“In the kitchen,” she yelled as she deftly maneuvered hot lasagna noodles into the casserole dish. She wiped her hands on a towel, then reached for the bowl of marinara sauce—homemade, of course—and a spoon.
She glanced up as Lucas strolled into the room, then returned her attention to what she was doing. There was no point in looking at what she couldn’t have, she reminded herself. Not that she wanted Lucas—not exactly.
Yes, the man was ridiculously good-looking. Tall and fit, with an air of confidence that was just shy of being a swagger. He was fifty, so older than her, and unexpectedly kind. While he was always underfoot, he was rarely in the way and whenever he came to dinner—which was surprisingly often—he always brought thoughtful little gifts.
He stood on the other side of the kitchen island and studied the ingredients she’d set out earlier.
“Let’s see,” he began. “Lasagna goes without saying, so there will be garlic bread. Some kind of salad.” He paused. “The chopped one with the homemade basil dressing. Which means we’re having Becca’s favorite dinner.”
“In celebration of her return.”
“She was gone three nights. How are you going to show she’s special when she heads off to college for months at a time?”
“I don’t want to think about that,” Harper admitted. Not her only child being gone nor how she was supposed to pay for out-of-state tuition. “I made a chocolate cake.”
“Of course you did. What time is dinner?”
“Terence said they’d be back between four and five, so maybe five-thirty or six.”
“I’ll be here.” He looked around at all the mess. “This big dinner is in addition to the Easter feast tomorrow?”
“Of course. They’re totally unrelated.”
“And we couldn’t just let one of them go?”
“Seriously? You’re asking that?”
“Yeah. You’re right. What was I thinking?”
She finished sprinkling on a layer of grated cheese, then glanced at the clock. It was nearly three. She figured she could risk leaving the lasagna out on the counter until she popped it in the oven at four-fifteen. She’d made the bread days ago and had defrosted a loaf already. The garlic spread was done and the salad was in the refrigerator. She only had to pour on dressing and that was good to go. There was still the table to set. She returned her attention to Lucas.
“Are you bringing someone?”
One corner of his mouth turned up. “Persimmon.”
Harper wiped her hands on a towel. “You have got to be kidding. That’s her real name?”
“It’s on her driver’s license.”
“Which you saw because you check their ID before you date them?”
“I like to be sure.”
“That they’re not underage or that they’re not too old?”
“Sometimes both.”
“I get the biology,” she said, studying him across the kitchen island. “The young, healthy female should produce the best offspring. But we’re not living in caves anymore. You drive a Mercedes. If you’ve evolved enough to handle freeway driving, why can’t you date someone remotely close to your own age? I’m not suggesting an old lady, but maybe a woman in her thirties.” She walked to the pantry and got the small box of cookies she’d set aside for him.
“Never mind,” she told him as she handed him the decorated box. “You don’t have an answer and I have no right to question your personal life. I just work for you.”
“And give me cookies.” He studied the ribbon and appliques. “It’s beautiful, but I would have been happy with plastic wrap.”
“That’s not how we do things around here.”
“Which is part of your problem.”
“I know that. Unfortunately, knowing and doing something about it are two different things. Go wash your hands, then you can help me set the table.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
He did as she requested, then met her in the formal dining room. Harper remembered when she and Terence had been looking for a house in the area. They’d passed on several because the dining room wasn’t big enough. When he’d pointed out their family wasn’t that large, she’d reminded him that she had a huge table, a giant hutch and massive buffet to find room for. He’d grumbled about her having too many dishes—every now and then she thought maybe he was right. After the divorce she’d sold two full sets and still had more stock than the average department store.
Her basic set of dishes were white, allowing her to use them as a base for any holiday or event. Now she studied her tablecloths and napkins, then thought about the bunny fest that would be tomorrow’s table.
“Becca likes pink,” Lucas offered. “Isn’t pink a spring color?”
“It is, and that would work. Thanks.”
She pulled out a pale rose tablecloth with matching napkins. She would use gold as the accent color, along with a little dark green. The dinner would be attended by Bunny, Becca, Lucas, fruit date, Kit and Stacey, and Harper, so seven.
She handed Lucas the tablecloth before digging out seven dark green place mats. The rest was easy: seven gold chargers, seven sets of gold flatware, her favorite crystal glasses, white plates. She had a collection of salad plates in different patterns, including eight that were edged in gold. She would make custom napkin rings by dressing up plain ones with clusters of silk flowers. She had three hurricane lamps with gold bases.
She left him to put the linens on the table, then hurried into her craft room to double-check supplies. Honestly, she should have planned her table a couple of days ago, in case she needed to go to the craft store. Now she was going to have to wing it.
She plugged in her glue gun, then dug through a large bag of silk flower pieces and found several tiny pink blossoms, along with some greens. She had glass beads, of course, and plenty of ribbon. Ten minutes later, she had secured the last of the flowers to the clear plastic napkin rings she bought in bulk. She picked up bags of colored glass beads and the ribbon, then turned and nearly ran into Lucas.
“What are you doing?” he asked, sounding more amused than concerned.
“Decorating the table. Can you get those hurricane lamps, please?”
“There’s something wrong with you,” he told her as he picked up the lamps and followed her back into the dining room. “Your crafts don’t make you a penny, yet you have that huge room for them. At the same time, you cram your office into that tiny bedroom in back.”
“Sometimes I have to use my craft room for work,” she said, trying not to sound defensive. “When I work for my party planner, I do.”
“Yeah, sell it somewhere else. Harper, no one’s going to take you seriously until you take yourself seriously.”
She thought of the stack of bills on her desk and how every month was a struggle. It was the house, she admitted to herself. She’d wanted to keep it after the divorce so that Becca wouldn’t have to move and she didn’t want to be forced to sell it when her daughter turned eighteen. Buying out Terence had decimated her half of their joint assets, meaning he got to keep all the cash, savings and most of their retirement accounts. In return she had the house and little else.
“I take my income very seriously. At some point I’ll switch out the craft room with my office, but not yet. The craft room makes me happy.”
“I doubt that. It’s a constant reminder of how you have to be perfect.”
The unexpected insight caught her off guard and made her feel embarrassed and exposed. Like he’d walked in on her going to the bathroom.
Lucas was like that. Not that he walked in on her doing anything, but every now and then he was uncomfortably intuitive.
They returned to the living room, where he put the hurricane lanterns on the sideboard. She wrapped rose and gold ribbon around the bases before setting them in place. After scattering the glass beads down the center of the table, she studied the effect.
“It’s beautiful,” Lucas told her. “Becca’s going to love it.”
“Bunny will complain I haven’t done enough.”
“Want me to take her on for you?”
“You’d never take the chance,” she told him. “What if you got old lady cooties?”
“There is that.” He followed her back into the kitchen where she pulled the garlic spread out of the refrigerator.
“So who is Great-Aunt Cheryl anyway?” he asked.
“Terence’s great-aunt. I first met her when he and I were still dating. She was wonderful. Funny and irreverent. She never married, but there were always very interesting men hanging around. She had a million stories and they were all so interesting. Just when I started to think she was making it all up, she’d pull out something like a letter from President Truman thanking her for her invaluable aid to our country.”
She sliced the French loaf lengthwise. Lucas leaned against the counter.
“You admired her.”
“I did. Very much. She was always very sweet to me.”
“Bunny hated her and was jealous of your relationship.”
Harper stared at him. “How did you know?”
“Come on. Really? Your mother is the most traditional person I know, and she’s convinced you that if you buy bread instead of making it, the sun won’t rise in the morning. Bunny is all home and hearth. Great-Aunt Cheryl would make Bunny’s teeth hurt. Worse, she would have violated every one of Bunny’s core beliefs.”
“They weren’t close,” Harper admitted. “Over the past couple of years, Great-Aunt Cheryl and I weren’t in touch as often. I thought she was busy. It was only after I found out she’d died that I learned she’d been sick.”
Harper still felt guilty for not pushing harder to find out what was going on. “She didn’t want to be any trouble, or something like that. I wish I’d been with her at the end.”
“Was she alone?”
“No, she had Ramon.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Ramon?”
“Great-Aunt Cheryl was a little like you when it came to her lovers.”
“Good for her. Why didn’t you go to the memorial?”
Harper had all her socially correct excuses at the ready, but with Lucas, she found herself blurting out the truth.
“It’s nearly a day to drive to Grass Valley and I didn’t want to be in the car that long with Terence and her.”
“Alicia?” Lucas asked sweetly. “Is there a reason you can’t say her name?”
“Yes. It’s like Beetlejuice. If you say her name too many times, she’ll rise up with horrific powers and do unspeakable things. I’m being cautious.”
“The world thanks you.”
“As it should.”
She finished coating the bread. After slicing it, she wrapped it in foil so it was ready to pop in the oven.
“Expecting anything from Great-Aunt Cheryl?” he asked.
“No. We were friends and that’s plenty.”
She went into the pantry and scooped flour into a sifter, then sorted through her folder of stencils before finding the one she needed. Technically it wasn’t Easter until Sunday, but she wanted something fun for her daughter’s return.
Lucas didn’t speak as he followed her outside. She stopped at the end of the walkway, then put the stencil on the concrete path before straightening and gently turning the handle on the sifter.
Flour drifted down, landing on the stencil. When she lifted it up, there was a perfect set of rabbit footprints.
Lucas stepped around her and headed for his car. “You’re a scary woman, Harper Szymanski. I’ll see you in a couple of hours.”
“With Pomegranate.”
“Persimmon.”
“Does it actually matter?”
He got into his white Mercedes convertible, turned to her and winked. “Honestly, it doesn’t.”