“She has relatives in Colorado, but I haven’t been able to make contact yet. And I won’t get to it today. Just got a call that Search and Rescue is recovering a body from the bottom of the gorge. Probably some bridge-jumper but I’m going to have to investigate. I was hoping to see you tonight, but . . .”
“It’s all right, really. Things are stacking up on me too. The shop—”
He was already saying goodbye and she let it go at that.
Thinking of her store reminded her that she intended to call the fixture manufacturer in Albuquerque very first thing this morning and had become sidetracked. She set aside the filled pastry bag and looked up their number.
“I’ve got four orders bigger than yours, lady,” the guy told her.
“My stuff was promised for this week, and it’s already Thursday.”
“Yeah, well, sometimes we just don’t get what we wish for. I’ll try for Monday.”
Sam felt her blood pressure rising and bit back a sharp retort. She hung up abruptly. No sense in pissing the guy off further; he already had enough issues and she certainly wouldn’t get her equipment faster by making him mad. She tossed the cell phone back onto the table and blew out a sharp breath.
The kitchen phone rang before she’d had the chance to turn around, and the timer on the cupcakes went off at the same instant. Sam reached for the phone with one hand, saying, “Please hold one moment” as she grabbed an oven mitt and pulled the door open with the other hand.
“Thank you for holding,” she said in the most businesslike tone she could muster.
“Mom? Busy day?”
“I can’t even describe—” The call-waiting beep came through again. “Can I put you on hold a second, Kelly?”
“I’ll let you go. Just wanted to say that I won’t be home for dinner. Fill you in later. Bye.”
“Is this the Sweet’s Sweets bakery?”
“Yes, ma’am, it certainly is.”
“Can you handle a rather large order?”
“My name is Elena Tafoya and my husband is running for governor. Perhaps you’ve heard of him, Carlos Tafoya?”
Son of the crotchety landlord, Victor Tafoya. Oh yeah, she’d heard of him.
The woman went on. “We’ll be needing a large victory cake. Maybe several. I don’t know how to figure out that kind of thing.”
Sam sat down with her order pad and took a deep breath. Hand-holding was something she did all the time. “How many guests do you expect at the, uh, victory party?”
Elena Tafoya chuckled lightly. “Oh, you mean, what if Carlos doesn’t win? What if it’s not a victory after all?”
“I didn’t want to say that, but I guess one never knows really.”
“Well, that’s true. But there will be a party, either way. Something to thank the volunteers and everyone.”
Sam went into an explanation about how many people could be served from a tiered cake, a sheet cake, a half-sheet and so forth. “If you think the amount you order isn’t quite enough, I can always bake a second cake that day, as long as it’s a simple design.”
“Oh, I like that idea. Maybe we could do a main cake that’s two or three tiers high. And if we need more, just some regular sheet cakes to feed the extra people?”
Sam assured her that would work easily and proceeded to take the information about colors and style. “Thanks” seemed to be an appropriate message to put on the cake, win or lose. She was beginning to enjoy the conversation with Elena Tafoya when the clock in the living room chimed noon, reminding her that she had to figure out how to retrieve her van from the paint shop and finish the complicated castle cake in the next three hours.
She put on her most cordial voice as she said goodbye and assured the politician’s wife that she could meet their requirements. As she was quickly learning from Beau, politics in this county carried a lot of weight, and her fledgling business could use all the connections she could muster.
Sam looked at the mess all over her kitchen—dirty mixing bowls in the sink, pastry bags filled with white, pink and lavender icing, cupcakes cooling in the pans. She tipped them out onto a rack, then made a quick dash through the rest of it to clear some of the clutter—thinking all the while about how she would get to the paint shop.
Zoe. Sam dialed her friend, who would hopefully be finished checking out her guests at the B&B and perhaps able to break away for a few minutes.
“Sure, no problem. I’ll buy lunch if you want to do it now,” Zoe said.
“Lunch would be wonderful, but there’s no way I can manage it today.” Sam explained about the sudden push with her bakery business.
Zoe’s Subaru pulled into Sam’s driveway ten minutes later. “I’ll bet you can hardly wait to get your shop open. But won’t you be just as busy? And tied down to the hours of a retail shop?”
“Employees,” Sam said. “I’m
Zoe laughed as she steered toward the little neighborhood of industrial buildings where Signs R Us was located. “Like I have time for anything more than cooking and washing linens for those five bedrooms full of people. I’m counting the days until the end of this month so I’ll get a little breather before the holiday crowds and skiers start to show up.”
Zoe loved people, Sam knew, but it had to be hard having strangers in your home all the time. Zoe’s upbringing in a hippie commune in the ’60s might have prepared her for a large extended-family lifestyle, but Sam noticed that her friend cherished the time alone that she spent in her garden during the summer months. With autumn in its full glory now, she would be bedding down her plants for winter and then giving the large adobe house a thorough cleaning before the next round of tourists began.
They pulled up in front of the sign place and Sam nearly shouted. There sat her formerly plain white van, now covered in cakes, cookies and chocolates. Her logo and shop name, SWEET’S SWEETS, were perfectly framed in ovals on either side and across the back windows. She couldn’t have asked for a better traveling billboard to advertise her new business.
“Wow,” said Zoe. “I had no idea a vehicle could look so tasty.” Not quite the sugar addict that Sam and her customers were, Zoe nevertheless raved over the van’s new look. She gave Sam a hug and got back into her Subaru while Sam went inside to pay her bill.
Sam took the long way back through town, making a few extra turns and thrilling to the stares of people who were learning the name of her new shop for the first time. She noticed more than one person in nearby cars jotting notes as she sat beside them in traffic.
The upside of a new business was the excitement of having people discover it. The downside, Sam found, was when they discovered it before you were ready. The phone was ringing when she walked in the door.
Four dozen scones for a tea tomorrow? Sure, no problem. Two cheesecakes for a women’s Bunko group? Absolutely. Cider and cookies for the kids at the elementary school’s Halloween festival next week? Yikes—this was getting complicated.
Sam had barely enough time to answer the phone and write down the orders, and the castle birthday cake was nowhere near ready. She set the answering machine to handle the calls for the next two hours while she set about assembling the layers and making stacks of cupcakes into turrets. The unicorn finished off the piece better than a pony would have, she told herself as she sprinkled edible glitter over the banks of flowers, giving a magical sparkle to the finished piece.
She loaded the cake into the back of her van, securing the cake board with blocks she’d created for the purpose, and looked again at the address where she was to deliver it. With two minutes to spare, she pulled up at the house just off Kit Carson Road.
Party guests were already arriving and several of the mothers stopped her to ask about doing fancy cakes for
