Love Finds You in Hershey, Pennsylvania (23 page)

“What are you
doing
?” she snapped.

Jasper suppressed the urge to roll his eyes at her dramatics. “Cooking. Or do you have exclusive rights to that pastime?”

Sadie waved her hand toward the television screen where her other self smiled dazzlingly, hardly breaking a sweat. “I barely remember that woman—five years younger and fearless in the face of pressure.” She glared at her TV persona. “I
don’t
need you parading my failure before my daughter’s eyes. That’s hardly the life lesson I want her to learn.”

Despite his attempts to hold it up, Jasper’s jaw dropped. “What? You call that failure? Sadie, you hosted your own cooking show on national television! I’d hardly call that a reason to be ashamed.”

Sadie made a weak attempt to straighten her spine and hold her chin up high. “I’m
not
ashamed. But I don’t want Kylie knowing about—about—you know.”

“What?”

Sadie clenched her jaw and then released it. “About how hard it is to hold onto your dreams in this world. About how just when you think you’ve achieved something, something happens or someone comes to take it away from you!”

“Ahh.” Jasper crossed his arms over his chest. “So that’s what this is about.”

Her eyes spit sparks at him. “About what?”

“Dmitri Velichko.”

Apparently he had hit the mark, because Sadie’s face flamed the exact shade of red that comes from pickling beets. However, she did not seem to be willing to admit that.

“What does
he
have to do with it?” she demanded loudly.

Kylie scampered back into the kitchen at that moment, a large cookbook balanced on her head.

“Kylie brought the cookbook,” she sang.

Sadie seethed as Kylie deposited the book onto a chair.

“Kylie, go upstairs and color your number pages,” Jasper commanded, his eyes never leaving Sadie’s. Jasper did his best to keep Kylie in practice over summer vacation by presenting her with daily learning pages.

Kylie pouted. “But you said Kylie could finish them
after
dinner.”

“
Now
, Kylie.”

Jasper rarely used that disciplining tone with Kylie. She immediately left the room, and, seconds later, they heard her soft footfalls up the stairs.

“What happened?” Jasper demanded.

Sadie wouldn’t look at him. She reached for the cookbook and began flipping through it with such fury that several of the sheets ripped from the force of each turn of the page.

“Nothing.”

“
Sadie
.”

She glanced up. “There’s a dessert competition at the community fair this year. Some annual thing they’re starting called the Cocoa Cook-Off.”

He licked his lips. “I know.”

“I didn’t want you to flip out. I can see I made the right move.”

She waved a hand. “I’m not flipping out. I just need to start practicing.”

Jasper cocked his head but remained silent. Sadie didn’t say anything more at first. He could see her struggling, her fingers trembling as she flipped through the cookbook. He was fairly certain she hadn’t really looked at a single recipe yet.

“They’ve convinced Dmitri Velichko to enter,” she finally admitted with a quivering note to her syllables.

Jasper gentled his tone. “First of all, who is ’they’?”

“Lucinda Lowell.”

“Lucinda?”

Sadie nodded.

“Why would Lucinda ask Dmitri? I don’t think she’s ever even met him.”

“Well, she did today.” Sadie’s tone rang bitter.

“How? When?”

“At Suncatchers. Smith and Jones made the introductions. I think they planned the whole thing.”

“Sadie. They’re two harmless old ladies.”

Sadie’s head snapped up. “They
are not
. You don’t understand! They
want
to see me fail!”

Jasper fell silent, chewing on his lip as he studied the woman before him. Was she paranoid? Or did her anxieties have an echo of justification to them?

“So what did you do?” he asked.

“I told Lucinda I planned to enter the competition.”

Jasper swallowed. “You what?”

She couldn’t meet his eyes. “I tried, Jasper, I really did. I turned her down at first. And then when Smith and Jones started interfering, well, I just couldn’t let this opportunity slip away.”

Another long pause dragged between them as Jasper contemplated this. At last he tentatively said, “You do know this is a
dessert
competition, don’t you?”

Her reply was meekness itself. She ducked her head and softly answered, “I know.”

“And you do remember what happened with Aunt Matilda, don’t you?”

Her glare answered that one. “They were just
cookies
, Jasper. That’s different.”

He sighed. “I want you to be happy, Sadie. Do you really think this will be enough?”

She looked away from him and came face-to-face with the perky, on-screen version of herself. Jasper had lowered the volume when Kylie went to get the cookbook, so there was only a soft hum to indicate Sadie’s instructional dialogue.

“You don’t understand. This is my shot, Jas. I can do this. It’s now or never.”

He didn’t want to argue with her. He never wanted to argue with her. He just wanted her to understand that if she couldn’t be happy without a certain thing then perhaps she couldn’t be happy
with
it, either. Perhaps her happiness hinged less on her own personal skill and more on the gifts God had given to her.

He shook his head. “What do you need me to do?”

Sadie leaped to her feet with a grin and threw her arms around him. “Fix Kylie some dinner and then keep her occupied while I do some practicing.”

She pulled back and placed her palms on his cheeks. “Then maybe some taste testing?”

His stomach recoiled at the thought, but he nodded bravely.

“And I may need you to do a grocery run for ingredients.”

“Whatever you need,” he said.

Before she could rush off, he placed his palms on her neck, his thumbs brushing against her jawline.

“Sadie…I love you. You know that, don’t you? That no matter how wonderful or how bad your food is…I love you just the same?”

A flickering fire in her eyes worried him.

“Sure, Jasper. I know that. I love you too.”

Her reply had been too flippant.

“Did you…” He felt foolish bringing it up. “Did you get the flowers?”

An honest joy crossed her face. “I did. They were beautiful. Thank you.” She planted a kiss against his cheek and offered nothing more. He knew she was eager to get started.

He released her, and she immediately began clearing away the remains of his and Kylie’s cooking lesson. He took the mixing bowl from her, his fingers brushing hers.

“You can’t make yourself any better to me than you already are, Sadie.”

She forced a bright smile that didn’t quite light her eyes. “I know that.”

Jasper didn’t really think she did.

It was impossible to say how many hours Sadie devoted to perfecting her recipe for the community fair competition. If it couldn’t be measured in hours, though, Jasper thought later that it could certainly be measured by degrees of catastrophe—both inside the kitchen and out. Sadie’s sole attention and purpose became focused on chocolate. While in many situations this might have led to heady smells and mouthwatering taste tests, in Sadie’s case, it translated to bitter samples, sour expressions, and smoke alarms ringing all hours of the day and into the night as dessert after dessert sacrificed itself to the altar of Sadie’s obsession.

Two weeks after Sadie’s sign-up for the competition, both Jasper and Kylie were at wit’s end with her and found themselves avoiding the kitchen at all costs. Unfortunately for Jasper, Kylie was able to manage this much easier than he could. When the phone rang at the Spencer household, Jasper was inevitably forced to answer, and when the caller asked for Sadie, he was then obliged to penetrate the off-limits sanctity of the kitchen to tell Sadie she had a call.

Countless times it seemed he stuck his head around the corner, one eye nearly closed with wariness, to announce the latest intrusion. On one such occasion, Sadie actually threw a spatula at his head following the pronouncement. He ducked and retreated, returning to the phone to inform the caller that they must have the wrong number.

But even worse than the spatula incident was when he had to start telling Belva—Ned’s mother and Sadie’s mother-in-law—that Sadie would not come to the phone. At first, Belva contented herself with speaking to Kylie. Living in Alabama, Ned’s childhood home, Belva didn’t get to see Sadie nor her granddaughter nearly as much as she wished, but throughout Sadie and Ned’s marriage and even following her son’s death, she had made it a point to keep in regular contact with Sadie and the family. And although Sadie had never been especially close with her mother-in-law, she did love Belva and was never too busy to talk with her about the everyday happenings she was missing out on.

Until now, that is. And Jasper hated the position Sadie had put him in, having to explain to Belva nearly every day that he was sorry but Sadie couldn’t drop what she was doing to come to the phone just now.

After several days of this pat answer, Belva finally asked him in a suspicious Southern drawl, “Is it just me, sugar, or is something going on up there? Either Sadie dear is avoiding me or you’ve murdered her and disposed of the body.”

“No, no, it’s nothing like that,” Jasper hastened to explain. “It’s just this dessert competition she’s preparing for, and all the practicing doesn’t leave her much free time.”

Belva clucked her tongue. “Competition? I thought she had her hands full running the restaurant.”

Jasper swallowed. Truthfully, Belva had hit on one of his own major concerns at the moment. Sadie had shoved virtually every aspect of managing the restaurant into her night manager’s hands, forcing Glynda to work double shifts nearly every day of the week. And while Glynda seemed more than up to the task, Jasper didn’t suppose she could go on that way forever.

But then, he didn’t see how Sadie could go on like this much longer, either.

“Mrs. Spencer—”

“Call me Belva, sugar.”

Despite how harried he felt, Jasper smiled. He had only met Belva on a handful of occasions—Sadie’s wedding and Ned’s funeral being two of the major ones—but he had always liked her warm Southern drawl and constantly amused tone.

“Belva…you know how Sadie can sometimes be…well…what’s the word…?”

“Neurotically fixated?” Belva offered.

Jasper paused and nodded his head and then realized that Belva couldn’t see it. “I was going to go with ‘obsessed,’ but that works too.”

Jasper imagined Belva waving a hand with genteel Southern dismissal as she said, “Oh, sugar, don’t you worry none about all that— Sadie’s always been obsessive, for as long as I’ve known her. But she’s a sweetheart—she’ll be back to her old self soon enough.”

Jasper swallowed and hesitated, his voice dropping several degrees. “I know, Belva. I’ve known Sadie my whole life, but this—this is different. It’s getting worse, not better. It’s…”

The smoke alarm whizzed into action with a series of ear-piercing shrieks. Jasper clenched his jaw and stifled a groan. He might as well just remove the batteries and put them away until the Cocoa Cook-Off was over. It was the only way they’d get more than thirty minutes of peace at a time.

“I’ve gotta go, Belva,” Jasper shouted over the din of the smoke alarm. He faintly heard Sadie in the kitchen, talking in angry tones to the oven as faint wisps of smoke stole down the hallway. “I’ll have Kylie call you tomorrow!”

Jasper didn’t catch Belva’s good-bye save for her placating “Bye now, sugar” as he pulled the phone away from his ear. He dropped the receiver into the cradle and ran for the kitchen, determined to take his frustration out on the wild screeches of the smoke alarm.

Despite Belva’s optimistic predictions, Sadie’s obsession did not burn out over the next week. As Jasper had stated, things only grew worse… until he began to fear he’d never see Sadie—nor her kitchen—returned to a state of semi-normalcy ever again.

The days became a blur of runs to the grocery store, depositing Sadie’s requested ingredients onto the counter, and then being shooed out of the room to amuse himself and Kylie until well after midnight, when Sadie would at last emerge, kiss him good night, and stumble up the stairs to her bedroom for a brief rest. He would return to his own house to fall into an exhausted slumber for a few hours before rising, showering, and driving back to Sadie’s to begin the entire routine all over again.