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“Shop?”
Amy had just awakened again, and already she was asking about her business.
“The bakery is going to be okay, Mom. No matter what it takes, it will be there when you’re ready to come back.”
Caroline looked his way then. Her gaze touched him in a warm, steady connection. She didn’t have to say anything aloud for him to understand what she meant. He’d made a commitment to his mother, and she’d stepped forward to help him keep it.
As Logan sat in one of the folding chairs squeezed around Trina Scott’s small dining room table, he couldn’t help thinking that something was wrong with that picture. In fact, everything was wrong with it.
The Saturday-night dinner should have been around his mother’s mammoth dining room table. As always. She would have insisted on doing all the cooking and would have managed to top her last amazing meal. As always. This was his mother’s domain. Her fifty-plus-hour weeks making desserts for other people’s families should have taken away the novelty of preparing food for others, but she lived for dinners like this one. That only made it more tragic that she might never be able to host another one.
Logan pushed the thought from his mind. He should have been starving for a good meal. When was the last time he’d eaten anything that hadn’t been wrapped in cellophane? Still, he found himself pushing meat sauce and ricotta around on his plate.
“It’s not quite the same, is it?”
Logan looked up to find Mrs. Scott studying him from the other side of the table. She glanced at his plate of nearly untouched lasagna and then back to his face.
“No, the food’s great. Really.” He took a big bite to reinforce his comment but had to follow it with a gulp of iced tea to choke it down.
“You can’t kid a kidder, son.”
“It does seem strange, I guess.”
“Whew,” Haley called out as she reentered the room, her folded arms using her pregnant belly as a resting spot. “I thought nobody was going to say it. No offense, Mom. Your cooking is great, but having a Warren-Scott dinner anywhere but in Amy Warren’s dining room just seems wrong.”
Murmurs of agreement came from the others crowded around the table. Logan smiled at his sister-in-law, who pressed her hand to her back while she lowered herself into a chair. The two of them hadn’t agreed on much over the years, but they were in complete agreement on this one.
“I miss Grammy,” Lizzie said as she rounded the table and climbed up in her aunt Caroline’s lap.
“We all do, sweetie.” Caroline wrapped her arms around the child and pressed her cheek to Lizzie’s.
The movement of brushing her fingers along the little girl’s braids in a comforting touch appeared surprisingly natural for a woman who was probably more comfortable in a boardroom than anybody’s living room. But then Logan remembered the Scotts’ unusual family dynamic. Because Mrs. Scott wasn’t comfortable with emotional scenes, she often sent Caroline to deliver hugs as her surrogate.
He’d heard all the stories about Caroline comforting Haley after she’d been dumped by her fiancé and wiping away Jenna’s tears after she’d messed things up with Dylan. He’d just never witnessed these things himself until the last few days, and he was having a tough time reconciling this person to the businesswoman who’d marched into the bakery and tried to take it over.
Logan didn’t realize he’d been staring at her until she glanced over and caught him. He turned away in time to find Matthew watching him.
“Now, Logan, I would have expected you to be the last one to show up to joint family dinners,” Matthew said. “You were amazingly talented at finding ways to avoid them.”
Logan understood that his brother was only trying to lighten the serious mood in the room, but it didn’t make him feel any less guilty over what Matthew had said. Still, he tried his best to play along with the joke. “Could I help it if I had a date?”
“When didn’t you have a date?” Jenna supplied.
He didn’t mind that they all had a laugh at his expense. They needed a reason to laugh, and the reasons had been precious few the last few days. Out of his side vision, he caught sight of Caroline watching him, and he couldn’t help wondering what she saw.
“I did a pretty good job of avoiding family dinners myself,” Dylan said. “Optometry conferences, you know.”
“All because you didn’t want to see me.” Jenna elbowed her fiancé and then, linking her arm with his, smiled down at the diamond solitaire on her hand. “Both of you were also trying to avoid the matchmaking schemes.”
“I never missed any of those dinners,” Matthew said. “I am the good son, after all.”
They all shared another laugh at that, and Haley reached over to ruffle her husband’s hair. “Those were some good times,” she said in a wistful voice.
Matthew took her hand in his. “Yeah, good times.”
Trina planted her hands on the edge of the table with a thud. “Stop it, all of you. The last thing Amy needs is for you to be thinking this way, as if she’s not going to be able to do any of things that made her happy. She will be fine, and she doesn’t need any of you naysayers holding her back.”
“But none of us said—” Caroline began, but she cut her words short when her mother frowned her way. She lifted her hands in surrender.
Trina turned back to Logan. “And, Logan Warren, don’t you worry. You’ll have plenty of chances to avoid your mother’s amazing dinners for dates with your blonde-, brunette- or redhead-of-the-week.”
They were laughing at him again, but at least they were laughing.
Trina pressed her hands together as if to signal that the earlier subjects were closed. “Now how did things go at the bakery today?”
Automatically, Logan shot a look at Caroline. She was staring back at him.
Dylan leaned forward and rested his hands on the edge of the table. “Go ahead. Tell us. Was it as bad as the other day? We heard you two were arguing outside the back door. We would have direct quotes, but no one could hear through the steel door.”
“You heard wrong,” Logan grumbled.
“That’s the same story I—” Matthew started, but Caroline cut him off.
“It was pretty quiet today since we had no wedding cake orders this weekend.”
“No weddings on Memorial Day weekend?” Trina said.
Logan looked up in surprise and noted that Caroline had reacted the same way. Clearly, he wasn’t the only one who’d failed to notice they were in the middle of a holiday weekend. They wouldn’t be celebrating the beginning of summer with a cookout this weekend anyway.
Before Caroline could answer for the two of them again, Logan spoke up. “You know how small Markston is. Some weekends Mom has three weddings to bake for and other weekends, none at all.”
“We’re booked for every weekend in June,” Caroline added. “As long as new orders are coming in for fall and not going to Cakes & More instead, we’re fine.”
Scoffing sounds came from around the table.
“That name isn’t spoken aloud around here,” Logan explained. “That place has been a thorn in Mom’s side for the last six years.”
Trina snapped her fingers. “So that was what Amy was trying to tell me at the hospital today. She’s worried about the competition.”
“She doesn’t need to worry,” Logan assured her.
“Oh, she knows that, sweetie. She’s just keeping the business in her thoughts as her brain heals. She’s processing all those memories as she works her way back.”
Works her way back. Trina’s words reverberated through Logan’s thoughts. Had he been praying for his mother’s recovery without really believing it could happen? The question convicted him in a way that even thoughts of his empty seat at all those family dinners hadn’t.
It was difficult for him to imagine his mother entertaining big crowds or running her fast-paced business when so far she hadn’t even mastered her aim for lifting her fork to her mouth, but he couldn’t allow himself to think that way. Who was he to limit his mother’s recovery or God’s ability to heal? Faith was about believing without seeing, and his mother needed them all to believe.
“Is everyone ready for dessert?” Trina asked as she pushed back from the table.
“I am,” Lizzie announced.
The adults just stared at each other. Matthew’s daughter was too young to understand, but the others couldn’t forget that Amy Warren’s scrumptious cakes were a tradition at every Warren-Scott family gathering. Not having them there didn’t feel right. Logan caught Caroline’s gaze, and she gave him a sad smile.
“You know, Mrs. Scott, I’m pretty full already,” Logan told her.
Trina had started toward the kitchen, but she turned back. “Oh, that’s too bad. My brownies are cooling on the counter. I thought we’d put scoops of vanilla ice cream on top.” She paused, resting her knowing gaze on Logan. “Are you sure you’re too full?”
Logan pushed back from the table and patted his belly. “Oh, I think I could fit a little.”
“Good.” Trina took orders from the others and continued into the kitchen.
No one mentioned the cakes or their absence, but Logan was grateful Mrs. Scott hadn’t purchased one of his mother’s desserts for the occasion. She understood that the effort for continuity would have hurt more than it soothed.
Soon they were all gushing over Trina’s brownie dessert and laughing together about old times. That, too, was a Warren-Scott family tradition.
Logan smiled as he thought how much his mother would hate missing tonight. But there would be other times, he was suddenly certain. His mother would even host her infamous dinner parties again. He just knew it. And when she did, he would happily attend every one.
Chapter Four
The pews were only half-full at Community Church of Markston that Sunday morning, reminding Caroline again that it was a holiday weekend. As odd as it felt for her to be sitting in her mother’s church, she would have felt just as out of place at her own church in Chicago as seldom as she’d darkened its doors lately.
With Jenna and Dylan on one side of her and Haley and Lizzie on the other, Caroline couldn’t resist peeking farther down the pew to her mother. She fully expected one of her mother’s knowing stares, cueing her in that Trina had guessed about her sporadic church attendance. She hadn’t exactly given up her faith, but she’d had a hard time squeezing church into her Sunday work schedule.
But Trina wasn’t paying attention to her at all, her focus on the doors at the rear of the sanctuary. Suddenly, it made sense. Mrs. Warren had always been annoyed by Dylan and Logan’s continual tardiness at church. Jenna had reformed Dylan, but Logan was probably still playing beat-the-church-bell. In Amy’s absence, Trina must have seen it as her duty to censure Logan.
At the front of the sanctuary, Matthew sat in his music minister’s seat, his focus on the back door, as well.
“He’s not going to make it,” Jenna said, glancing at her watch.
“I should have called him before I left my apartment,” Dylan murmured.
Jenna chuckled. “Don’t worry. My mom will make him toe the line.”
“Like you did me?” He took her hand.
Caroline shifted in her seat. She’d never noticed before how many family jokes were directed at Logan. About small things from his Casanova ways to his job as “Ranger Logan,” but they all came with mild disapproval for his choices. Had he taken on the role of the family comedian to deflect some of that?
Her sudden temptation to tell both of their families to knock it off made her smile. Logan would not appreciate her defending him. He didn’t need her to be his champion now any more than he’d needed her to step in when he’d been dealing with that difficult customer. She understood that he was fine on his own, but that didn’t keep her from watching the door and rooting for him to show up tout de suite.
Just as the organist played the first notes of the processional music, Logan breezed through the door, a weathered leather Bible tucked under his arm. Although most of the men in the sanctuary wore polo shirts and slacks, Logan was dressed like it was Easter Sunday. He’d paired his navy suit with a crisp white shirt and a blue tie with geometric designs in the exact green shade of his eyes.
“What?” Logan asked in a low voice as he came to the end of the pew. His left eyebrow lifted in question, that same side of his mouth rising, as well. “Good morning, everyone.”
He might have said everyone, but he was looking right at Caroline. Only then did she realize she’d been staring at him with her mouth hanging open like a landing pad for flies. She clicked her teeth shut and shifted again. It didn’t matter how amazing he looked; she had no excuse for staring. But a glance around told her she wasn’t the only one who’d noticed the man who wore a business suit with the same ease as he sported jeans and hiking boots.
Logan didn’t pay attention to the fuss as he waved to Matthew up on the podium and scooted into the pew next to Caroline’s mother. As Trina reached over and patted Logan’s arm, Caroline couldn’t help thinking of the service last Christmas when her mother and Mrs. Warren had made a display of standing and shifting seats so that she and Dylan were forced to sit together.
Caroline hadn’t really expected her mother to try something like that this morning, but she couldn’t explain her mild discomfort when she didn’t. She should have been relieved. Was she disappointed that her mother and Mrs. Warren hadn’t tried to set her up with a third Warren brother? That couldn’t be possible.
Her gaze slid to Logan’s end of the pew. No, not possible, she decided, choosing to ignore the annoying seeds of doubt that lingered.
“Let’s get this morning started off right,” Matthew said as he stepped to the lectern. “I can’t imagine a better way than by singing ‘How Great Thou Art.’”
Caroline smiled up at her brother-in-law, grateful to him for interrupting her strange thoughts. This was what she needed to clear her head: good hymns, good meditation and a thought-provoking sermon on grace or the destructive power of sin.
But when Reverend Leyton Boggs directed everyone to turn to a passage in Mark Chapter 10, her hope faltered. It was the same passage she’d read aloud for Haley and Matthew’s wedding.
“Jesus is a real proponent of marriage,” Reverend Boggs began. “Not the temporary kind like we see so much today but the enduring kind.”
He read from the beginning of the chapter, but when he reached Verse 7, Caroline found herself quoting the Scripture with him.
“‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh,’” she whispered.
Looking up from her open Bible, Caroline glanced at the couple seated to her right. Dylan was cradling Jenna’s hand and moving it so that the sanctuary lights caught on the facets of her diamond engagement ring. Soon those two would be “one flesh.” Caroline looked up in time to catch Matthew and Haley exchanging a warm look. They already had melded their lives into one.
A knot formed in her throat, surprising her. Her gaze moved again to Logan on the opposite end of the pew. Did their siblings’ cozy togetherness ever make him uncomfortable, the way it did her? More than that, did their obvious happiness ever make him wonder if he was missing something like—
No. She cleared her throat, uncrossing and then recrossing her legs. Logan wasn’t the settling-down type any more than she was. If he was committed to anything, it was to playing the field. And her life was complete. Not a thing was missing. But had she been happy, even before she’d received the pink slip? Had she truly been fulfilled? Did she have real friends or just colleagues? She praised the joys of her solitary life, but sometimes wasn’t she just lonely?
“I don’t need a wrap-up when Jesus said it so well for us in Verse 9,” the minister said when Caroline finally tuned back in to his message. “‘What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder.’”
Reverend Boggs had taken his sermon full circle back to the passage in the Book of Mark. Her thoughts had been just as circuitous, but unlike the minister, she had no answers to her questions. Clearly, her job loss was causing her to rethink all her choices, but was it more than that? As much as she didn’t want to admit it, her general ennui just might have something to do with a park ranger who was trying his hand at running a bakery.
After Reverend Boggs spoke the benediction, Caroline had the urge to make a break for the parking lot. But how could she explain her sudden need to avoid spending time with the two families she loved most in the world? Or that she wanted to avoid a particular Warren family member?
Because there was no way she would admit any such thing, she followed Dylan and Jenna into the center aisle and braced herself for the crush of another Scott-Warren family reunion.
Lizzie reached her first, wrapping her arms around her skirt-clad legs.
“Church is over, Aunt Caroline,” she announced. “Did you think I was good in church? Mommy and Daddy let me have dessert after lunch if I’m good.”
Caroline reached down and tugged one of the child’s sandy-brown braids. “You were great in church. I think you deserve two desserts.”
“Just one will be fine,” Haley said as she reached them. “Thanks for the help, Caroline.”
“Anytime.”
Dylan elbowed Jenna and leaned close to speak to her in a loud stage whisper. “Remind me not to let your sister anywhere near our kids.”
As she laughed, Caroline felt herself relax. It was always like this when their two families got together—a lot of silliness, plenty of jokes. One marriage, another engagement and even a serious health crisis hadn’t changed that. Maybe nothing had changed.
But as Logan came around the front of the pews and stepped into the circle next to her, his sleeve brushing her bare forearm, tingles raced to her shoulder. Something was different in the old family-friend circle, all right, whether she cared to admit it or not.
Dylan grinned at his brother. “So, Logan, did you have a job interview after this, or just a photo shoot with GQ?”
“Oh, this old thing?”
“I think he cleans up nice.” The words were out of Caroline’s mouth before she had the chance to censor them. To keep from fidgeting, she tucked her hair behind her ear. Why did she always fidget so much around him, anyway?
He lifted an eyebrow, but then he grinned. “Thanks. You, too.”
“Thanks.” She brushed her damp hands down the sides of her black pencil skirt, careful not to touch her silk blouse and leave embarrassing handprints. “Remember the time when we were kids and your mom had cleaned you up for church only to find you rolling down the hill in the backyard?”
As soon as she said it, she was sorry, but she couldn’t seem to help herself. She’d always joked with Logan as much as the others.
“I’ll try to remember not to roll on the ground today,” he said, his voice sounding tight. “I wonder to whom Reverend Boggs was speaking with his message this morning.”
Caroline stilled her hands on her hips. She deserved that, she supposed. But when she looked up again, he wasn’t talking to her. He had sidled up to Dylan instead and was patting him on the back.
“Sorry, everyone.” Dylan held his hands wide. “Jenna and I didn’t mean for everyone to be included in our premarital-counseling class.”
Trina had been over talking to a few of the church ladies, but she approached in time to hear the last. “If you’re starting counseling, does that mean you two have finally set a wedding date?”
“Mother, please.” Jenna rolled her eyes.
“We’ll get around to it,” Dylan assured her.
“I’m not getting any younger, you know,” Trina said, her lips in a pout that earned her a laugh.
No one mentioned Amy, or that she was a few years older than Trina and that her health was precarious at best, but the awkward pause in the conversation showed that they were all thinking about her again.
“You know…if you were to set a date, it would give Amy something to look forward to.” Trina held her hands wide as if to show the simplicity of her idea. “It would give her another reason to work to get home sooner.”
“I don’t know, Mrs. Scott,” Dylan said, shaking his index finger at her. “Are you worried your most recent match won’t make it to the altar?”
“Of course not.” She waved away his suggestion. “I just know that Amy would want you all to live your lives instead of putting them on hold while she’s recovering.”
“That’s just what I’ve been trying to tell you, Mom,” Haley piped in. She moved between her sisters. “Did she tell you guys that Mr. Kellam invited her out for coffee, and she shot him down? The poor guy.”
“Why, Mom?” Jenna asked. “Frank Kellam is a cutie with all that silver hair and those blue, blue eyes.”
“Yeah. Why not?” Caroline wasn’t sure she was ready to see her mother begin dating, but she didn’t want her to be alone, either.
“Would you all hush?” Trina looked flustered as she shot a glance to the rear of the sanctuary. “He’s a member here, you know.”
“He’s really nice, too,” Jenna said.
Trina gave Jenna a warning look and turned back to Haley. “Now I told you…even before everything with Amy…that it wasn’t going to happen.”
“Why not?” Haley rested her crossed arms on her belly. “Dad died more than two years ago. You should—”
“Not long enough.” Trina shook her head. “It will never be long enough.”
A second uncomfortable silence settled in the sanctuary, until Logan started chuckling. Everyone turned back to see what was so funny.
“Well, well, well, Mrs. Scott,” he said finally. “It’s different when the tables are turned, isn’t it?”
Instead of answering, Trina stared at him waiting for him to explain himself.
Logan held his hands wide, as if the explanation was simple. “The matchmaker gets a dose of her own medicine, and it doesn’t taste too sweet.”
All the younger adults laughed, but Trina gave him one of those looks that used to hush her daughters in church.
“There will be no matchmaking, and that’s final.”
“Okay,” Logan said with a shrug. “But you might want to remember that Matthew said that same thing. And Haley. And Dylan. And Jenna.”
By the time that he’d made it through the list, Jenna and Haley were muffling giggles, and Logan’s brothers were looking away, trying and failing to cover their smirks.
“Logan Michael Warren,” Trina said in the same warning tone that they’d all heard Mrs. Warren use after one of Logan’s jokes.
When Logan stiffened at the sound, Caroline couldn’t help but do the same. Everything had to remind him of his mother lately.
But when Caroline turned back to her mother, Trina was smiling in a reminder that all thoughts of Mrs. Warren didn’t need to be sad ones.
“Since Amy couldn’t be here today, I knew she would want me to pick up the slack.”
Laughter filled the sanctuary again, with Lizzie laughing the loudest in that way children do when they don’t get the joke.
Just as Matthew returned to them from the receiving line in the vestibule, the overhead lights flickered off, leaving behind only the yellow cast of daylight filtering in through the stained-glass windows.
Matthew pointed to the lights. “There’s our signal to go home. Unless you all just want to stay until the evening service.”
“Back to my house, then?” Trina looked around at all their faces. “Chicken and noodles are in the Crock-Pot, and a pie is cooling on the counter. We’ll eat a nice lunch and then head over to visit Amy.”
After several affirmative murmurs, they all started up the aisle toward the exit.
Logan cleared his throat just as they stepped outside. “Ah, I don’t think I’m going to be able to make it.”
“But—” Trina’s smile fell.
“I’ll catch up with all of you at the hospital.”
Dylan elbowed his brother and waggled an eyebrow. “Got another date?”