¾ cup buttermilk
1 tablespoon melted butter
sprinkle of lavender sugar
Heat oven to 450°F. Combine dry ingredients and cut in butter with two knives or pastry blender until crumbly. Stir in buttermilk just until moistened. Turn dough onto lightly floured surface; knead about 10 times or until smooth. Roll out dough to ¾-inch thickness. Cut with a 2-½-inch biscuit cutter, or use a juice glass. This makes about a dozen biscuits. Place 1 inch apart on ungreased baking sheet. Brush biscuits with melted butter and sprinkle with lavender sugar. Bake for 10-14 minutes or until lightly browned. Serve warm with butter.
LAVENDER SUGAR
1 cup sugar
1 vanilla bean, halved and snipped into pieces
1 tablespoon dried lavender buds
In a spice or coffee grinder, pulse 2 tablespoons sugar with vanilla beans. Transfer to a jar. Then pulse the lavender with 1 tablespoon of the remaining sugar until finely ground. Combine everything in the jar, cover tightly and let stand for about 5 days.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Jenny’s plan to move to New York still didn’t seem quite real to her. One reason, she conceded, might be that she was having a hard time actually leaving. There were a thousand details to take care of, matters that had to do with her grandmother’s property, and the house and bakery. It was amazing how long it took to figure out how to go about replacing all the items she never thought about, like her birth certificate and social security card, all her banking and finance information. She felt as though she had a permanent crick in her neck from being on hold with people who were not terribly eager to help her.
In her office above the bakery, she had separated things into neat stacks. For some reason, the neatness of the stacks pleased her and made her feel less anxious. And definitely caused her to worry that she was turning eccentric.
And of course, Jenny knew she wasn’t turning eccentric at all. She was stalling. She was putting off everything—even her dreamed-about trip to New York—because she’d been avoiding something.
No more, she thought, grabbing her jacket and purse. There was something she needed to do, and putting it off was not going to make it any easier. Fifteen minutes later, she was knocking on the front door of the Alger house. It was a big ranch-style home with a view of the river. From a distance, it appeared grand and imposing, pretentious, even. Up close, she noticed peeling paint on the trim and crumbling brickwork—an air of neglect. Perhaps it had started when Matthew’s wife had left, suddenly and without explanation, years ago. This was one of the reasons Jenny felt a connection to Zach. Both of their mothers had walked away.
When no one came to the door, Jenny felt both frustrated and relieved. This was a reprieve. She didn’t have to do it today. She gave one last knock and leaned on the bell. Nothing. There was no one home, and here it was dusk, the windows all dark. As she was turning to go back to her car, the front door cracked open.
“Jenny?” Zach Alger looked as though he’d just rolled out of bed, with rumpled hair and flushed cheeks. He was wearing an oversize plaid hunting jacket. “Is something the matter?”
All right, she thought. Let’s get this over with. “I need to talk to you, Zach.”
“Sure. I can come by the bakery—”
“Now.”
“Okay. Let me grab my boots.”
“You don’t need boots. I drove all the way out here. We can talk inside.”
“But—”
“It’s important.” Due to her insistence on going to the city, Rourke had been giving her lessons in self-defense. One of the basic tenets was self-assurance. Walk into situations as though you’re in charge, and you won’t be challenged. She put the concept to the test, gave the door a shove and strode into the house.
The place was freezing cold, and her footfalls echoed on bare floors. She paused, momentarily forgetting her self-assurance. “Uh, is there somewhere we can sit down and talk? Actually, where do you keep your computer? I need to show you something.”
Zach looked as though he wanted to throw up. It was quite possible he already knew why she’d come. He said, “The, um, my computer’s not working.”
She could probably make her point without it. “Fine, then let’s just have a seat.”
His shoulders slumped as he turned and led the way down a dark hallway to the kitchen, where weak gray light streamed in through unadorned windows. A small stack of white cardboard bakery boxes littered the counter. Catching her look, Zach said, “It was discard stuff, I swear it. That’s all I ever bring home.”
Not quite, Jenny thought. She grew increasingly confused, though. She had never been to the Algers’ home before, yet the condition of the place shocked her. It was frigid here, and there was barely a stick of furniture. Maybe it was the lack of a feminine touch, she rationalized.
But that wasn’t it. Even Greg Bellamy kept his house warm. Even Rourke, the Ho Ho-eating bachelor, had furniture.
“Zach, is everything all right?”
He indicated a pair of three-legged stools at the counter. “We can sit over here.”
“You didn’t answer me. Is everything all right?”
“Sure,” he said. “Everything’s great.”
She took a video-storage disk out of her purse and showed it to him in its plastic holder. “This was what I wanted to show you on the computer.” She didn’t see a computer. She suspected there wasn’t one in the house. “We don’t need to look at it, though. It’s the security video from the bakery. I suspect you know what’s on it.”
Wild alarm flashed in his eyes. Then he made a visible effort to compose himself. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure you do, Zach.” Jenny found it hard to speak. She felt absolutely terrible. “I’m the only one who’s seen this. I don’t review it every day, so I don’t know how many times this scene has been repeated, but the camera doesn’t lie. When I saw this,
