Always the Baker, Finally the Bride Read Free

the green room still green?”
    “It is indeed.”
    Sherilyn grabbed her bags and waddled up the stairs. “I get the green room across the hall,” she called out to Fee as she reached the landing, breathless.
    Emma padded across the great room and through the open doors. Leaving her sandals behind on the porch, she rushed down the three wooden stairs and took off at a full run across the sand. She unzipped the heather-gray hoodie, discarded it at the halfway mark, and left her khaki shorts on the sand about three yards from the water’s edge. She stopped where the sand darkened from a recent overflow of surf and adjusted the bottom of her red bathing suit. Knee-deep in the icy ocean,she tugged at the suit top before diving in and swimming out against the brisk green-blue current.
    Just before surfacing again, she thought she heard her aunt Sophie’s melodic laughter.
    “Atlantic Therapy, Emma Rae. And the colder the better when you’re looking for answers. They’re all right out there in the Atlantic Ocean. God’s hidden them there for us to find when we really, really need them.”

    The elevator door creaked as it shut, and the car groaned slightly before setting out on its shaky ascent to his fourth-floor office. Something about the
klunk!
before the door opened again waxed familiar. Jackson had heard that noise before.
    Emma’s sweet face fluttered across his mind. And that pink sweater of his sister’s that she’d changed into for their job interview after wiping out in the lobby and smearing fondant all over herself. She’d struck him as cute that day, with a speck of carrot cake still in her hair as they sat down to discuss the impending opening of The Tanglewood; even more so, a bit of a know-it-all when she stood there beside him as trapped passengers called out from the elevator car below a short while afterward.
    “I’m assuming this is a hydraulic system, right? . . . Well, it probably is. Anyway, I’m thinking it’s likely that the rails are just dry. A little oil can take care of that for you. But the door jamming like this is probably your drive belt. The service guy will take care of that when he gets the passengers out.”
    When the serviceman had confirmed her findings, Jackson recalled thinking that he’d better hire her, just so he could be around on the off chance that she might ever be proven wrong about anything. At the moment, as he pried the reluctantelevator door open, he felt pretty certain she hadn’t been wrong about much of anything since.
    “Call downstairs and tell them to place Out of Order signs on the west elevator on each floor, and call the repair service, will you, Susannah?” he asked his assistant as he passed her desk. “The doors are sticking. I think it could be the drive belt again.”
    “Will do,” she returned as he entered his office and dropped into the chair. “Andy Drummond phoned. Says your cell goes straight to voice mail.”
    Jackson had turned it off after it rang about thirty times during his meeting with the front desk manager, and he’d forgotten to turn it back on.
    “You can reach him on his cell for another thirty minutes.”
    “Thanks.”
    Jackson pulled his cell phone from his jacket pocket and dialed Andy. “Hey, buddy. It’s Jackson. What’s up?”
    “Cats are away,” Andy announced. “Mice must barbecue. You in?”
    “What can I bring?”
    “Whatever strikes you.”
    “What time?”
    “Six thirty?”
    “I’m there. You invite Sean since he’s on his own too?”
    “He’s bringing soda and garbage bags.”
    “Garbage bags?”
    “We’re out. I thought since he was going to the store for drinks anyway—”
    Jackson laughed. “Whatever. Later.”
    He ended the call and checked his watch. Twelve forty p.m. The growl from his stomach rumbled with regret that there wasn’t time enough to grab some lunch before Bingham arrived for their one o’clock meeting.
    Jackson produced a manila file of notes from his briefcase