Chapter One

“So, how does it feel?” Liz asked as she peeked her head around the swinging door that separated the kitchen from the bakery storefront.

Bitsie dipped her finger into the luscious raspberry-flavored cupcake batter in the bowl in front of her and answered her sister-in-law’s question with one of her own.

”How does what feel?”

“How does it feel to be a small-business owner?” Liz asked.

“Oh, you saw the new sign up out front. You don’t mind, do you?”

“Of course, I don’t mind,” Liz answered. “It’s a beautiful sign, and it makes me happy to see your name up there instead of my own.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course, I’m sure,” Liz insisted. “You bought this place fair and square. Stan and I will put that money to excellent use, I can tell you. Now that Stan’s taken early retirement, we can travel more. I’m relieved you took the place off our hands.”

Bitsie let the matter rest. She shouldn’t worry about what Liz would think about her taking down the sign that read, “Lizzy’s Sweets” and putting up another that said, “Bitsie’s Bakeshop.” After all, it was her own place now.

Bitsie smiled at her sister-in-law and passed her a spoonful of batter.

“It’s something new I’m trying,” Bitsie said. “I thought I’d call it raspberry ripple. What do you think?”

“I think it’s delicious. Of course, you never can tell until it comes out of the oven.”

“True. This is my eighth batch. We tried them out on customers today, and they were pretty popular, so I suppose I should give up fine-tuning the flavors at some point.”

“Is that lemon zest in there?” Liz asked.

“Yes. Isn’t it lovely?”

It was lovely. It was all lovely. The sweet scent of the cupcakes on the cooling racks, the chatter of customers filtering through the swinging door, the feeling of being back in the town she’d grown up in surrounded by people who loved her, and, best of all, having 1,873 miles between her and Robert, the man who’d promised to love, honor and cherish—

Bitsie blinked back tears. That had been happening a lot lately, the urge to cry.

“Oh, Bitsie,” Liz said, coming and wrapping her arms around her sister-in-law. “I’m so sorry you have to go through all this.”

“Can’t be helped. I have no regrets. I did everything I could.”

“I know you did,” Liz said. “You’re a better woman than I am. I wouldn’t have even considered taking that rotten cheating rat back. I think you must be some kind of saint.”

“Hardly. And you don’t know what you’d do,” Bitsie said. She pulled away and began pouring the batter into the cupcake pans. Bitsie appreciated the sympathy, but the problem with sympathy was that it always ended up making her even more emotional than she already was.

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned from this whole horrible ordeal,” Bitsie continued, “it’s that it’s never safe to say what you’d do in any situation until you’ve actually gone through it.”

“I suppose.” Liz looked doubtful. “The one thing I’ve learned from watching Ro—“

Liz paused, hesitant to go on.

“It’s OK. You’re allowed to say his name. It’s not as if we can just pretend it didn’t happen,” Bitsie reassured her.

“I’ll just say that the one thing I’ve learned is how true that old saying is, that one about Old Fools,” said Liz.

“What saying?”

“You know the one: ‘There’s no fool like an old fool.’”

“I rather take exception to that,” Bitsie protested, but she was laughing. “Robert’s only two years older than I am, and I don’t think 52 is exactly geriatric—“

“Robert may not be teetering on the brink of old age, but how could he leave you for—“ Liz trailed off again.

Bitsie slipped the pans of raspberry ripple cupcakes into the oven and turned to face her sister-in-law. “—for a woman young enough to be his daughter, you mean?”

“Yes,” said Liz. “That’s literally what Robert did. She’s 25. That’s a whole year younger than Emily!“

“At least my daughter turned out to have better taste in men than I did. Emily picked a good one when she picked Bradley, thank goodness. At least I don’t have to worry about her.”

“I don’t know,” said Liz. “I like Bradley, too. But I was convinced that you’d picked a good one when you picked Robert.”

“He was a good one back then.”

“That’s not a very reassuring thought.” Liz frowned. “If Stan ever did anything like that to me—”

“My brother would never—how about we talk about something more pleasant,” Bitsie suggested.

“Alright,” said Liz. “How about when you’re done with this test-bake, you leave the closing up to your able assistant and take me over to see your new place?”

“Do you think Nick would mind?”

“Someone talking about me?” Nick smiled as he came in the door from the shop.

“I’m kidnapping Bitsie,” said Liz, “as soon as those raspberry ripples come out of the oven. I told her you were good to close up on your own.”

“Sure,” said Nick with an amiable smile on his face.

Bitsie tried not to stare. She almost succeeded. The man was just so spectacularly good-looking. With his blond hair and green eyes and tan skin, Nick would have looked a lot more at home on a beach somewhere than he did in the bakery.

“See! I told you Nick was the best hire I ever made,” Liz insisted. “Been with me eight years, and now he’s all yours.”

“I’m all hers, am I? Can’t say I mind that.” Nick smiled a bit too broadly, and Liz punched him playfully on the arm.

“Bitsie is a married woman, you know,” Liz pointed out, “for two or three more days, anyway.”

Bitsie blushed a furious red. Nick looked at her and smiled even more broadly. Liz and Nick were teasing her, she knew, but it seemed so inappropriate, a man of 40 flirting with a woman ten years his senior, never mind that woman was his boss.

Bitsie struggled to regain her composure. She shouldn’t take it seriously. She was sure Nick didn’t mean her to. Stan might have left her for a 25-year-old, but she, Bitsie Harman (soon to be Bitsie George again after 27 years), was not going to look like a fool by flirting with a man a decade younger than herself.

“Oh, Bitsie,” said Liz, as Nick ducked back out to the shop with a tray of maple nut cupcakes to replenish the case, “I forgot to tell you, the landlord called me today—I told him he should be calling you, but I guess he forgot to put your number in his phone.”

“What did he want?”

“He’s been promising for ages to upgrade the electrical system in the building, and he’s finally following through. He’s found a contractor willing to work his crew nights, so it won’t interfere with business.”

“Does he know that Hector and Anabel come in at three in the morning to start baking?”

“He said that shouldn’t be a problem. The electricians will come in right after closing and leave by three.”

Bitsie was out front washing the windows when Nick came rushing outside.

“I got them out of the oven before they actually caught fire, “Nick said, “but I’m afraid half of your latest test batch of raspberry ripples is ruined.”

She’d taken out the first half of the batch and put in the second half but had forgotten to set the timer! Bitsie followed Nick into the kitchen to view the remains of her burnt raspberry ripples. They were a charred mess.

“Do you think there’s any hope of salvaging the pans?” Bitsie asked Nick.

“Where there’s life, there’s hope,” said Nick philosophically. “You might try leaving them to soak in the sink for a while.”

By the time Bitsie fell into bed that evening, she was exhausted.

She had left the closing-up to Nick, just as Liz had suggested. She was lucky to have inherited such an experienced and competent staff. Bitsie might be a whiz at baking, but she didn’t know the first thing about running a business. That didn’t seem to matter. She had the best team a person could hope for.

Bitsie lay awake, staring at the ceiling of her minuscule bedroom in her tiny cottage. Everything about the cottage was small, right down to the neat yard overflowing with rose bushes and the miniature vegetable patch in the back.

Her cat, Max, lay curled up at the end of her bed, resting against her feet like a giant fur-covered hot water bottle. She could hardly believe that it had only been a week since she’d moved out of the huge house she and Robert had built on a beautiful piece of land just outside of Tucson at the base of the Santa Catalina mountains. That house had been her dream home. On the day she and Robert had moved into that dream house nine years ago, Bitsie could never have imagined she’d have been happy to leave it and move back to her hometown of Little Creek, Arkansas.

When Bitsie had left Little Creek to go off to college, she had vowed that she’d never return, but here she was again. Life was funny that way, turning things around and making you do things you’d sworn you never would.

As Bitsie drifted off to sleep, she wondered if what her raspberry ripple cupcake recipe needed to be absolutely perfect might be a subtle hint of nutmeg.

Bitsie was jolted awake by the ringing of her phone. The clock on the nightstand read 3:10 AM.

“Who in the world could that be?” she asked Max. Max, never one to be excitable, merely opened one eye to look at her and then closed it again.

“Hello!”

“Bitsie?”   

“Who is this?”

“It’s Hector.”

Hector. Of course. Hector and Anabel would be at the shop starting the early morning bake, but what could have gone so wrong that he felt the need to call her up at three in the morning?

“Is something wrong?” Bitsie asked. She was sitting up in bed now, fully awake.

“Well—“

There was a long pause on Hector’s end. At the end of the bed, Max stood up and stretched luxuriously before turning a complete circle and lying down again.

“Are you ok?” Bitsie asked, “Has something happened to Anabel?”

“We’re both fine.”

“What’s happened?”

Maybe the kitchen had caught fire. Maybe someone had smashed the plate-glass windows at the front of the shop and cleaned them out down to the last crumb. Maybe—

“You’d better come down here,” said Hector. “The police are here. Liz and Stan are on their way. I figured you’d want them to come, seeing how new—”

“Why are the police—“

“One of the electricians is dead,” said Hector, his voice quavering.