Bluegrass Hero
Allie Pleiter
Dust-covered men who smell like horses are the norm at Gil Sorrent's farm. Until a trip to Emily Montague's bath shop changes their lives. Suddenly, Gil's lovelorn farmhands are sparkling clean and attracting women instead of working! So Gil barges into the shop, surprised to find Emily, his pretty polar opposite, selling soap by the truckloads.Suddenly everyone in town is not only cleaner–they're nicer. And when our bluegrass hero tries out the soap for himself, love-shy Emily better watch out!
“Close your eyes.”
A tiny curl of enjoyment let loose in Emily’s stomach. She’d never tried to explain the power of scent before—at least not to someone as resistant as Gil Sorrent.
“You’re not gonna put anything on me, are you?” He gave her a look as if to suggest that contact with hand cream might melt the skin off his bones.
“If you close your eyes, you’ll find it easier to concentrate on your sense of smell.”
He stared at her, then closed his eyes, only to pop them open a second later.
“Keep those shut.” Emily put her hand on his shoulder and the contact did something to her she wasn’t ready to admit. “Smell this.”
He took a moment, searching for the scent. “Um…nuts?”
Emily smiled. “Almonds. See? You’re good at this.”
“Don’t let that get out,” he said, opening his eyes. She suddenly realized they were way too close for comfort. He did, too—she could tell by the way he shot up off the stool. “I’m pretty much a no-frills kind of guy, Emily, and I’d like to keep it that way.”
ALLIE PLEITER
Enthusiastic but slightly untidy mother of two, Allie Pleiter writes both fiction and nonfiction. An avid knitter and nonreformed chocoholic, she spends her days writing books, drinking coffee and finding new ways to avoid housework. Allie grew up in Connecticut, holds a BS in Speech from Northwestern University, and spent fifteen years in the field of professional fund-raising. She lives with her husband, children and a Havanese dog named Bella in the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois.
Bluegrass Hero
Allie Pleiter
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
—Galatians 5:22–23
To Savannah, because she loves horses
Contents
Acknowledgments
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Epilogue
Questions for Discussion
Acknowledgments
Middleburg gets ALL of its charm—and NONE of its faults—from a lovely little Kentucky town called Midway that immediately captured my heart. Kathy Werking at Soapwerks in Midway was a willing and creative soap resource for me, and Ginny Smith, Connie Camden, the Quirk Café, the Flag Fork Herb Farm and many others showcased the region’s warm hospitality. Normandy Farm gave me the inspiration (including the china cats) for Gil’s Homestretch Farm, and many of the Homestretch concepts come from a similar program at Kentucky Horse Park.
Thanks—as always—to friends, family, Spencerhill Associates and Steeple Hill Books for walking through this challenging process beside me. Some books come to life easily. Others…well, that’s what friends and colleagues are for, aren’t they? And God? Well, He’s always got the higher plan in mind—count on it.
Chapter One
“How do you reckon anybody breathes in here?”
The drawling baritone from the front door of Emily Montague’s bath shop surprised her. She drew in a breath—a very pleasured, scent-filled breath, thank you very much—and looked up at the two men. Outside of Valentine’s Day or Mother’s Day, men rarely ventured into West of Paris with all its feminine décor and lavishly scented soaps. Certainly not at the end of January.
Certainly not Gil Sorrent.
Sorrent’s companion nudged him as they shook the sleet off their jackets. The wet snow barely missed the oiled silk tablecloth on the table near the door. Emily had locked horns with Gil Sorrent enough times to be astounded that he’d even set foot in her shop. He was a big man with big ideas she didn’t always like.
Putting on her “customer voice”—the soft, smooth, How may I help you? voice—Emily approached the pair. They looked embarrassed even to be in the shop. The shorter one must be new-girlfriend gift shopping. Time to guide this man to a wise purchase, Emily thought to herself. With a little cooperation, she could make sure whoever the girl was didn’t end up with a horseman’s sorry idea of a feminine gift.
That was part of her role in life. Just last weekend at the Bluegrass Craft Expo, she had directed some misguided teenager away from purple turtle guest soaps for his grandmother and steered him toward a lovely sachet for her bureau drawer. Honestly. Purple turtle soaps for your grandmother. How did men come to such insane conclusions about the women they professed to love?
She smiled at the man. “Can I help you find something?”
Remarkably, it was Sorrent who replied. “I need a birthday present for my niece, and I ain’t got time to drive into Lexington.” His eyes scanned the room, and he tried to hide his wince. “She said ‘no gift cards,’ but I’m thinking that might just be the way to go.”
“Yeah, picking a gift in here ain’t gonna be easy for you, Gil. It’s not like you spend a whole lotta time with the concept of soap.” The wiry man flashed a goofy grin and elbowed him. Right into the stack of soap dishes. Two of which clattered to the floor and shattered.
“Ethan, you’re a big clumsy lout sometimes. That’s coming out of your paycheck right after I pay for ’em.” Sorrent crouched down and began picking up the shards.
Emily ducked behind the counter for a dustbin. “I’ve got a gift in mind, Mr. Sorrent. And no need to help with that—I’ll take care of it after we get you set.”
“Nonsense, Ms. Montague,” he said, taking the dustbin from her. “I know enough to clean up my own messes. Or,” he continued, nodding to his companion, “the messes of the louts I’m dumb enough to bring along with me. Ethan, how about you go find yourself a cup of coffee somewhere? You ain’t worth a lick in here, and you’ll probably cost me more the longer you stay.”
Ethan didn’t need any further inducement—with a quick nod, he was out the door as if the store were on fire.
“I’ve been known to call Ethan a walking tornado, but I can’t really blame him when it was me who shattered your soap dishes, now can I?”
Although they’d come down on opposite sides at the last town hall meeting, he seemed to be making a genuine effort to be nice. Emily supposed she had to respect that. “He did nudge you,” she offered. “Rather hard.”
“Ethan’s been shoving me for years. I ought to be able to handle it better by now.” He scuffed a wet boot on the shop’s hardwood floor, looking all too much like the proverbial bull in the proverbial china shop. “How about I just make my niece happy and get out of your way before I break something else?”
“I’ll help you find a gift, have it wrapped and send you out the door in ten minutes,” Emily replied, an idea popping into her head. “I’ve got some bubble bath the high-school girls just moon over, and I’ll add a loofah mitt just to make her extra happy.”
“A what mitt?” He raised an eyebrow and followed her carefully to the counter, giving each display as wide a berth as he could manage given his large frame. Emily’s shop was intentionally cluttered with all kinds of charming and delicate things. Heaps of crisp linens, vintage tins and settings of white French Market furniture were carefully arranged to intrigue her customers.
Intrigue her female customers, that is. Emily doubted her current customer appreciated the atmosphere.
“Oh, never mind, just put the bubble bath and the other doodad in some teen-friendly basket thing and get me done. And don’t forget to charge me for those soap dishes, if that’s what they are…were.” He tossed a credit card on the counter and stuffed his hands into his jean pockets.
True to her word—as she always was—Emily had his bath basket ready, wrapped and tucked into her store’s signature yellow shopping bag in nine minutes. He looked as though it was eight minutes too long, so, on an impulse, Emily tucked two small bars of soap in brown burlap wrappers on top of the lavender tissue. “There’s something in there for you and your friend, just to show no hard feelings.”
“Something for me? And Ethan?” Now he looked downright suspicious. As if there’d be nothing within four miles of this store that he’d ever consider owning.
She’d been wondering all week what to do with those two extra bars of Lord Edmund’s Pirate Soap. A box of twelve—plus the two extra—had been a bonus from an unusual vendor when she bought the full line of their very good soaps. Blythe and Daniel Edmundson were a unique pair by any standards. Daniel was a mop-haired older man with an engaging smile, who loved talking to everyone about his soaps. Blythe, his wife and partner in the business, was a steady, peaceful woman who made you feel as if she’d known you for ages. They looked just like the kind of people who would make purple turtle soaps. She liked to support local artisans and products, even with the dramatic personalities that often came with it. But this Pirate Soap was a bit out of her league. She’d almost tossed the whole box before she’d calculated that the bonus soaps might bring her another fifty dollars in revenue. And every fifty dollars counted these days.
Gil was turning the corner off Ballad Road when he ran into “Mac” MacCarthy, his longtime friend. Mac ran a civil engineering firm, and together he and Gil had been trying to get some of Mac’s improvement ideas in front of the town council. Mac was a whiz at creative solutions on tight budgets, but he and Gil hadn’t had much success. Middleburg was far too fond of the way things were to give the concept of change—even change for good or change to keep things from falling apart—much of a hearing.
“What brings you into town?” Gil asked, shaking Mac’s hand.
“I could ask the same—can’t say I ever thought I’d find Gil Sorrent shopping in town.” Mac grinned and pointed at the yellow bag.
“Got a birthday thing for my niece this weekend,” Gil grunted, wishing he’d stored the bag in his truck before he went off looking for Ethan.
Undaunted, Mac leaned over to inspect the bag. “West of Paris? Isn’t that Emily Montague’s place? Shopping with the enemy, are we now?”
Gil couldn’t really blame Mac for his surprise. Emily Montague had annoyed Gil from the start, with her “don’t change this” and “don’t tear down that” mentality, keeping Middleburg stuck in the past just to lure more tourists. He’d gotten into more than one argument with her in the past year, the most recent one over the style of Middleburg’s streetlights. He rolled his eyes. “I didn’t have enough time to run to Lexington. And just because she has outdated ideas about capital improvements doesn’t mean she can’t figure out what’ll make a sixteen-year-old girl happy better’n I can.”
“Suddenly you’re Mr. Civility? You hated her choice of streetlight designs. You were the only ‘no’ vote on the extra appropriations to buy those ridiculous things. Word has it you stomped out after that meeting like she’d shot your dog or something.”
Gil tried to cross his arms over his chest, but the frilly yellow bag got in the way. “My dog could have picked a better use for that money. Each one of those lights was an extra four hundred dollars. Do you know how far that money would have gone on our street-resurfacing budget?”
Mac tapped a thick file he was holding. “As a matter of fact, I do. Got the figures right here. I’m on my way over to town hall to try—again—to get ’em on the agenda. Third time’s supposed to be the charm, right?”
“I hope so. Sometimes I reckon we’re the only sensible souls in this town. Everybody else is so busy being ‘quaint’ we’re in danger of being run down.”
“You don’t have to tell me.” Mac waved the file in the air. “Come on over town hall with me and tell ’em yourself. We’ll gang up on them or you can growl until they back down.”
“Very funny. I got stuff to do in town while the boys are still back up at the farm. And I got to go fetch Ethan back from the bakery before he cleans ’em out of sticky buns. Call me later and let me know how it turns out.”
“Call you in half and hour,” Mac said. “Enjoy your bath products in the meantime. Who knew you had a sensitive side?”
I should have driven into Lexington, Gil thought as he headed off down the street, still in possession of that fussy yellow shopping bag. Anything would be better than this.
“No. Really?” The older woman buying four jars of lavender bath salts looked astounded.
“Yes, just hours after the concert.”
“Bless your heart. That kind of thing just doesn’t really happen in places like that, does it? Outside the orchestra hall?”
Emily was surprised at her rendition of the details. She rarely ever talked of her late husband’s demise. Most folks in town already knew, and it wasn’t the kind of thing that normally came up in conversation with strangers. Even when store chatter strayed over to the very sad tale of Ash Montague’s passing, she resisted giving the details. It was hard to watch people react to the story. Good folks balk at an actual murder—murder belongs on television and in spy movies, not in real life. But big crime happens in big cities. Ash thought the orchestra job was a huge opportunity, worth the frequent long trips away from Middleburg. Tuning pianos for a major metropolitan orchestra hall is, after all, a very important job. But sometimes pianos had to be packed up or moved into storage late at night, and things happen. Dark back alleys hide bad people. Lives get…ended.
“Oh,” sighed the woman, pursing her scarlet lips and putting her hand to her delicate jaw. “That’s beyond dreadful. You poor thing.”
“I manage,” Emily replied, placing the four bottles, now wrapped in her store’s signature lavender tissue, inside the store’s butter-colored bag. She tucked a list of next month’s sale items inside the bag beside the bath salts. “It’s been four years now since Ash’s passing.” To the day, as a matter of fact. Maybe that’s why she’d blurted out the story when the woman had asked if she was married.
“You must miss him, bless your heart. To go in such a…dreadful way.”
“Every day.” She forced brightness into her smile, not wanting to end the transaction on a somber note as she pressed the register button. Emily used an old-fashioned ornate brass cash register—the kind that made a delightful ching when you pushed the sale button to open the cash drawer. She didn’t like computerized cash registers, opting for hand-written receipts instead. Her only nod to technology was the electronic machine that generated credit card sales—and even that was placed in a tiny chintz box so that only the buttons and receipt slot were visible. It wasn’t until last year that she began asking for e-mail addresses to send out sale notices, and that was only after the postage rates had gone up again, forcing her to find a more economical way to reach her customers.
“Come back next month when I’ll have the matching body lotion on sale.”
“I’ll do that. I’ll certainly do that.” Although, from the expression on her face, Emily couldn’t quite tell if any subsequent sale would be born out of the quality of her French-milled lavender, or plain old pity for a young Kentucky widow.
She marked down the sale in her tally, lining up the numbers in precise columns. For a bath shop that was supposed to be west of Paris, France, but ended up west of Paris, Kentucky, she was doing okay. Not well, but okay enough to barely make this month’s loan payment.
Actually, Emily always made her loan payments, and she always made them on time. Her checkbook balanced down to the last penny every month. Her Christmas cards arrived on time if not early, and her library books were returned ahead of their due dates. She showed up five minutes early for every appointment, and nothing in her fridge was anywhere near its expiration date.
Emily liked to have all her details under control.
So how, she wondered as she stared at her naked left hand and the pale void where her wedding ring had once been, had so much of the big stuff gone wrong?
Chapter Two
The next morning, it was astounding that Gil Sorrent didn’t break a case of soap dishes when he stormed into the shop. He stalked up to the counter and slammed down plastic bag. “What’s in there?” he demanded, pointing to the bag. It was a wonder half the store wasn’t rocking in his wake.
Emily shot up from her desk by the window. “Pardon?”
Sorrent’s voice deepened to the near-growl she remembered from their last town-hall clash. The man had a fierce temper—one she hadn’t expected to ignite just by talking about the designs of streetlights. Was it that strange an idea that things should look nice as well as functional? Everyone else on the town council had understood that it would take a few extra dollars to get lights that didn’t look as if they belonged on the freeway. He was always going on about improving this or upgrading that—she’d have thought he’d be happy to be purchasing new streetlights for Ballad Road. He didn’t look happy then, and he sure didn’t look happy now. “I want to know what’s in that soap you gave us, and I’m not leaving until you tell me every last ingredient, you hear?”
It took Emily a moment to realize what he was talking about. Then she remembered her spontaneous act yesterday. The Pirate Soap. “Gracious. Did your friend have some kind of allergic reaction? Believe me, I’ll do whatever I can—”
“Oh, he had a reaction all right, but it wasn’t the itchy kind. Now I mean it, tell me what’s in there.”
It was at this point that Emily noticed a row of faces pressed up against her shop window—a collection of tough-looking young men, noses flattened on the glass. She panicked for a brief moment, until she realized they were Sorrent’s farmhands. Gil Sorrent ran Homestretch Farm, a correctional program for young-adult offenders. Every year he brought on a new batch of troubled young men, usually in their late teens or early twenties, to work the horse farm and put their lives back in order. She’d seen them around town every so often accompanied by Gil or Ethan—the foreman often in charge of the farm’s young residents—but they’d never had cause to come into her shop. She’d never met Ethan before yesterday. Awful as it was to say, she didn’t mind their absence. They looked…well, they looked mean.
But they didn’t look that mean at the moment. In fact, they looked downright odd. “Well,” she stammered, thinking that Sorrent and “his guys,” as he called them, were probably not people you wanted to upset. “I don’t make the soap but I can surely find out the ingredients.”
“Find out what’s in there, and quick.” Catching that Emily was glancing over his shoulder, Gil spun around to face the window. The line of rugged faces scattered like mice. She thought she could hear his teeth grind from across the counter.
She looked at the bar, wet and slightly muddy in a plastic bag. “Well, why don’t we start by looking at the label.” She started to head off to the table where the other Pirate Soap bars were displayed.
“Got it right here.” He produced the other bar, still in its label, inside another plastic bag. He held it with two fingers as if it were something nasty he’d found on the floor of his barn. “Ain’t nothin’ I can see out of the ordinary, but according to Ethan, it ain’t no ordinary soap.” Red crawled up his neck and threatened to flush his face. He shifted his weight and scratched his chin. He hadn’t yet shaved this morning.
“Why would you say that?”
Sorrent shuffled and stole another look at the window. His guys had returned and were now peering into the shop harder than ever.
“Should I tell them to come in?” Emily offered, thinking anything she could do to ease the situation might be a good start.
“Not on your life!” he shot back furiously.
“Okay, well, perhaps you should tell me what happened,” she said as calmly as possible. Behind him, one man was pressing an ear to the glass as if to eavesdrop. It was the strangest thing she’d seen in ages.
“Ethan—you remember Ethan from yesterday?” he began, “Well, he’s not exactly a ladies’ man. Not a fan of clean and shiny, if you know what I mean. But he got caught in a greased chain on the tractor—well, skip the details on that part. Anyways, he got stuck having to use my shower. I tossed him that soap you gave us yesterday cuz I didn’t want him griming up my own soap cuz he’s filthy and…well, that night…” The man flushed crimson.
“And?” Emily said. “What? Hives? A rash of some sort?”
Gil Sorrent leaned over the counter. “Women. They were all over him like flies on honey. As if he were the last man on earth. And he claims it’s the soap.” Sorrent lowered his voice even further. “Now, I wasn’t there, but you and I both know women do not flock to a man just because of the way he smells, no matter what cologne ads promise. But I had to near wrestle Ethan to get him to give me back that bar. He thinks the soap got him all that attention and those guys out there, they are more than ready to believe him.” He pushed the second bar across the counter. “I can’t have this kind of thing going on at my farm. So prove to me so’s I can prove to Ethan there’s nothin’ in there to make my foreman such a center of attention.”
“Well, of course it couldn’t be the soap.” She pulled the unused bar from the bag and scanned the rustic packaging. The usual soap and scent ingredients were listed. The wrapper was a vintage style, with a line drawing of ships and waves—nothing to suggest large-scale female attraction would result from use. No enticing claims, no warning, nothing really out of the ordinary except the Bible verse that had drawn her to Edmundson’s Soaps in the first place. Every Edmundson soap had a Bible verse on the label.
She pulled open the wrapper.
Sorrent grew still. The young men at the window pressed closer. At the other window on the opposite side of the door, three women now peered inside, curious as to what the fuss was all about.
It was a rather unimpressive little bar—nothing dashing or flashy. Hand-shaped, a bit lumpy and an inconsistent oatmeal-beige color. The Edmundsons probably gave it such a colorful name because it was such a bland-looking soap.
She stared at it, looking for some clue.
He stared at her, agitated.
Because she couldn’t think of anything else to do, she sniffed it.
Sorrent held his breath and nearly gripped the counter edge.
She sniffed again. Then a third time. It did smell wonderful. No single ingredient came to mind, but a cascade of scents left her with a single impression of strength, charisma and—though she couldn’t explain it—security. It wasn’t as though any of these characteristics had a scent. You would never say a man smelled charismatic or secure. Yet, those were the exact words that came to mind when she inhaled. Emily took a small knife from a drawer in her counter and sliced off a corner of the bar. The inside looked the same as the bland outside. No surprises.
She picked the soap back up and inhaled again. It was extraordinarily pleasant, she had to admit. But it was a bar of soap.
She took the corner she’d just cut off and rubbed it against the inside of her wrist. No tingle, no itch, no sudden burning desire to find male company. Well, she was already in male company, and he wasn’t a hideous-looking man, but…
Emily shook her head, rewrapped the soap and returned it to the plastic bag. “I haven’t got an explanation for you.”
“I saw your face when you smelled it.” Emily blushed and started to defend herself, but Sorrent pointed at her. “It’s just soap, for crying out loud. You and I both know soap can’t do that. Make sure no bar of that stuff finds its way back onto my farm. Got it?” Without another word, he turned around and walked out of the shop, the posse of young men scattering to avoid him.
Emily huffed at the door as it swung shut. Not hideous-looking, but a far cry from good-natured. He can’t tell me what to do. He’s getting all angry over nothing, besides. She bent over to toss the cut bar of soap into the trash bin. The way he’s acting, you’d think I’d suddenly become a popular shopping destination for tough-guy farmhands. Honestly.
When she looked up again, however, Sorrent’s guys had scrambled back to her window. After a split-second hesitation, the entire group lurched through her door, nearly knocking each other over to get to her counter first. Emily tried to tell herself there was no cause for alarm, but they were an alarming-looking bunch, all mobbed together like that. And Ethan was nowhere in sight. One was as tall as Gil and twice as heavy, looking as if he could be a bodyguard or a professional wrestler. Another peered at her with squinted eyes, and she could see he was missing a tooth when he smiled—it wasn’t exactly the kind of smile anyone would describe as “warm and friendly,” either. Another had thick dark hair and spoke with a silky, accented voice. The group contained every version of “tough guy” that Emily could imagine. And this was definitely one of those situations where the whole was scarier than the sum of its parts.
“I’ll give you ten dollars for that soap,” offered the one with the missing tooth as he pointed to the first wet bar in its plastic bag still on the counter.
“Forget him, I’ll give you twenty. You got more?”
“If you can hold it till Wednesday, I’ll give you thirty!” a third one cried.
Emily placed her hands over the bar and slid it protectively closer to her side of the counter. The men had been in such a hurry to get to her that the whole lot of them had walked clean past the dozen bars of Pirate Soap on the table behind them.
What in the world is going on here?
Slowly, with all the authority she could muster, she raised her eyes to meet the crowd. “Did you know your boss just told me not to sell you any of this soap?”
A chorus of disappointed moans met her declaration.
“Come on now, ma’am. You don’t have to do what he says. He’s not your boss.”
“I could have fifty dollars here by tomorrow morning, lady,” offered a small, dark-haired teenager as he pushed his way from the back of the crowd. He had black, beady eyes and a rodent-like grin. “Hey, where else you gonna get fifty dollars for a bar of soap?”
Emily stared at her sudden customers and told herself to remain calm. When she’d asked God to send her a way to make her next loan payment, this wasn’t what she’d had in mind. She was thinking more along the lines of a busload of wealthy tourists. Now she found herself holding soap she hadn’t ordered with scary-looking men fighting to give her more money than she’d ever made on even her best ladies’ soaps.
Maybe she should get another cup of coffee under her belt before she prayed over her to-do list in the mornings.
“Now gentlemen, let’s just slow down a minute and—”
“You all better get your sorry backsides out of this shop this instant!” yelled a booming voice from the door. The group turned to find a furious Gil Sorrent stalking toward them. He didn’t have to finish the threat. They were scrambling out of the store as fast as they had entered it. The beady-eyed one turned to mouth Fifty silently to her, throwing her a wink, besides.
The mob sent the soap-dish table teetering in their wake, and Sorrent was barely able to get his hand under a dish as it toppled off the table. He set it back, muttered something under his breath, gave Emily a quick glare and left the store without so much as a goodbye.
Chapter Three
Soap.
Gil slammed his truck into third gear. Soap is supposed to be home and laundry and Sunday-morning-go-to-churchness. Who knows what they put in it these days? Fragrance. That place smelled like a funeral parlor there was so much “fragrance” in it. Made it hard to breathe, much less think clearly enough to survive his last two visits to West of Paris. He’d sent his guys straight home in the van with Ethan and finished up the rest of his errands in a sour mood after his last visit to the shop.
Shop. That’s the trouble right there, Gil thought. Give me a store every time. A man can trust a store. A store’s where you go in, get what you need, pick up a few tidbits and go home with a fair deal. A shop, well, a shop’s where ladies meander and everything costs too much and you come home with far more than you bargained for. After all, no one goes “storing.”
And everyone knows what happens when women go “shopping.”
Gil had never met a man who “shopped.” And he never wanted to.
He hadn’t asked for this. He’d never have even set foot in the shop if he weren’t so pressed for time. Why hadn’t he just gone online and sent something to his niece last week? Now he owned broken soap dishes he’d never use, just because Ethan had knocked him into them. Not that he’d ever be seen with the likes of those kind of soap dishes in his bathroom. He hadn’t picked up the bars of Lord Edmund’s Pirate Voodoo Soap or whatever it was called—she’d put them in his bag. Without his permission. Gil was a man who cleaned up his own messes, but they were usually his messes, not catastrophes someone else had created.
“Mud.” Gil looked his basset hound straight in one bloodshot eye. “Never shop.”
Mud swung his enormous head away from Gil and looked out the passenger-side window, as if he found the very word repulsive.
“Good dog.”
Gil was leaning over to scratch Mud’s ears when his cell phone went off.
“What!” he barked into the phone, still angry.
“Hey, you’re the one who told me to call you. Somebody just kick you or something?” Mac’s voice was full of humor rather than anger. “So how was your niece’s thing last night? Did you smile nicely and play well with the others?”
Gil really wasn’t in the mood for Mac’s sarcasm. “Enough, Mac.”
“Okay, fine. Congratulate me.”
Gil blew out a breath. “Congratulations, Mr. MacCarthy. Why?”
“We got on the agenda.”
“Well, why didn’t you say that in the first place? That is great news, Mac.” Gil’s mood changed instantly with the welcome news. Middleburg had been taking the term rustic to new heights, and if he and Mac didn’t steer their vision toward the future, there wouldn’t be much left to visit, no matter how charming. People in Middleburg were fond of the status quo. Very fond. And Emily Montague and her ilk were all too happy to keep it that way. A slot on the next town council agenda was the first step in what was sure to be a long uphill battle to shove Middleburg into the present (much less the future), but Gil was determined to do what he could. “What else is on the docket that night? Anything that could knock us off?”
Gil heard Mac shuffle a few papers. “Civic stuff, some planning for the Character Day speeches at the high school, a couple of scholarship awards and, uh, your favorite folks, the preservation task force. Something about banning ATM machines on Ballad Road. Gotta love that.”
“We’re done for, Mud,” Gil grumbled to the dog as he finished up his call and stuffed his cell phone back in his shirt pocket. “And it ain’t even noon yet.”
Sandy Burnside pushed through the Middleburg Community Church lobby to find Emily after Sunday service. “Can you do lunch?” she asked, folding the church bulletin and slipping it into her enormous silver handbag. “We’ve got some stuff to go over for town council. Nice job on the ATM thing, by the way.”
“Sure, I’ll do lunch, but don’t give me all the credit on the ATM. It wasn’t that hard to write a letter,” Emily countered, waving away the woman’s enthusiasm. “How tough can it be to talk the rest of our town council into loving Ballad Road the way it is?”
Ballad Road was part of what made Middleburg so wonderful. It was the kind of main street everyone wished they grew up on—a stretch of unique shops and friendly places to eat where everybody knew everyone else. There wasn’t a chain store in sight, everyone decorated to the nines for Christmas and they closed the street down for a festival on the Fourth of July. You didn’t run errands on Ballad Road, you visited friends while you just happened to get things done. Sure, it wasn’t that big—sometimes Emily had to send customers into Lexington for unusual requests—and it had its share of quirks, but Emily loved every stretch of that eight-block sidewalk. Like the other shopkeepers along Ballad Road, she felt like more of a curator than a merchant. They were protectors of a small-town atmosphere that was almost nonexistent in other parts of the world.
Sandy, even though her clothing shops weren’t on Ballad Road, was just as vigilant a soldier in the fight to keep Middleburg’s rural charms. Which made her a leader in the fight against Mayor Howard Epson and his ATM machines. “Don’t you go and sell yourself short. Howard was near drooling over that dumb idea to put cash machines all over downtown. Must’ve gotten the idea from some ad in the back of one of his fi-nancial—” she rolled her eyes and emphasized the first syllable in financial “—magazines. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s already made a list of what he’s gonna do with his profits. And I’m pretty sure ‘tithe it to the Good Lord’ ain’t on the list.”
Emily pulled her jacket from the church’s coat rack. “The trouble is you’ve asked for things before. This was just arguing against something, even if it was Howard’s plan. That’s easier—it doesn’t cost anything.” She looked at Sandy, who was sharp as a tack and probably already knew why they’d met with a bit of success. “Anyone could have figured it out.”
Sandy grinned as she reached over and plucked her brown leather coat off a hanger on the other side of the rack. “Not anyone. You. I could learn a thing or two from you.”
Funny, I’d always thought it the other way around. Emily looked at her friend as they began the walk into town. Sandy owned three of the largest apparel stores in the county. Though small in stature, Sandy was a bubbly, larger-than-life character. A blizzard of blond hair, bright-pink fingernails and four-inch heels on even her most casual days, you could see Sandy coming a mile off. Sandy had considerable clout in both Middleburg and its city neighbor Lexington, but she never threw her weight around. No, Sandy sort of skipped through life, scattering her influence here and there as if she were a flower girl and life was her own personal, neverending church aisle. If you could dream up a one-woman cheering section, it’d be Sandy.
“You’ll be right beside me when we propose that ordinance,” Emily reminded her. “I need you and your sparkling personality to keep Howard and his buddies from just looking at the world with dollar signs for eyeballs.”
“Nonsense.” Sandy narrowed one eye and leaned in close. “They may be prickly, but they smell a skunk quick as everyone else. We don’t need to look like a shopping mall to draw folks—Middleburg’s best show will always be on four legs.”
Emily laughed at Sandy’s wild imagery. “Maybe, but you’ve always liked the show that walks on two legs and carries a full shopping bag.”
“Well, that kind of filly’s nice, too. I like our town just the way it is. I say we’ve always been able to keep ’em pretty and happy and comin’ back for more.”
And that, Emily thought, was a perfect description of Sandy: Pretty and happy and comin’ back for more.
“Speakin’ of fillies,” Sandy said as they settled into a table at a nearby coffee shop, “I solved your little mystery.” Sandy had social connections unachievable by mere mortals. She knew everyone, everyone knew her and Emily had yet to meet anyone who said they didn’t like Sandy. Lots of people thought her a bit…much, but they still liked her. If Emily needed anyone to do anything, chances were Sandy knew someone for the job. She was the heartbeat of Middleburg, and quite possibly of the state. “The bit about Ethan Travers,” she offered, “and his sudden popularity with the ladies?”
“You did?”
“You’re talking about Gil Sorrent’s foreman, right? Skinny, bushy hair, kinda wiry lookin’?”
“Yes, that’s him.”
“Well, women were going after him at the interfaith church social Friday night. If you’d been there, you would have been able to see it for yourself.”
Emily, a fan of church but not of church socials, chose to ignore “matchmaker” Sandy’s gentle rebuke and keep to the subject at hand. “I know that part, but I need to know why. Ethan doesn’t strike me as a real ladies’ man.”
Sandy started laughing. “No, ma’am, he ain’t. It took a little doin’, but I have figured out why he was suddenly the center of attention. And I guarantee it don’t have a thing to do with soap.” Sandy rested her elbow on the table and leaned in. “Doc Walsh’s wife told me Thursday afternoon at the Women’s Guild meeting that she heard Ethan Travers has a birthmark shaped like the state of Texas on the back of his neck.”
Odd as it was, Emily didn’t see how it explained things.
“And Barbie Jean Blabbermouth was sitting beside me when she said it.”
Now that explained a lot. Barbara Jean Millhouse, aka Barbie Jean Blabbermouth, was so fond of gossip she was practically her own communications monopoly. Anything uttered in Barbara Jean’s vicinity was instantly public and often widely exaggerated. Given Barbara Jean’s talents, Emily was surprised she hadn’t heard that Ethan had a birthmark in the shape of Elvis and that he could make it gyrate on command.
Barbara Jean also had four daughters. Four single daughters, because none of them could keep their mouths shut any better than their mother and far too many Middleburg men had learned that the hard way.
“What did Ethan think? That he’d stumbled onto some kind of love potion? That man’s smarter than that. He knows there’s no such thing as love soap.”
“Actually,” Emily corrected, “there is. There’s also joy, and peace, and patience, kindness and the rest of the fruits of the spirit—you know, from the passage in Galatians? I just bought a line of soaps from a company called Edmundsons because I thought it was such a clever idea. Edmundsons is also the company that makes Lord Edmund’s Pirate Soap, which is what Ethan thinks made him a ladies’ man.”
“Spiffy marketing. Sounds like just the sort of thing you’d carry in that pretty shop of yours. But mercy, someone needs to set that Ethan straight about what soap can and cannot do.”
“Oh, believe you me, I think Gil Sorrent is doing that. In spades. Along with every last one of those guys up on Homestretch Farm.”
“Speaking of Sorrent, we’re gonna have a hard time convincing him Middleburg doesn’t need a herd of ATM machines. Him and his electronic gadgets.”
“He’ll be a harder sell, but maybe he’ll see it our way.”
Sandy stirred her coffee. “Let’s hope. But Emily, I didn’t bring you to lunch just to gab about money machines. I’ve got somethin’ serious to ask you.”
Emily looked at her friend. “Everything okay with you?”
“No, not that kind of serious. It’s more like somethin’ hard. Or you may think it’s hard. But a good kind of hard, I’d say.”
Emily planted her hands on the table. “Sandy, out with it.”
“They were asking for names for the Character Day speech up at the high school. I told them I’d ask you.”
“Me? Give a speech at Character Day? That’s hero stuff. Not my kind of thing. Why on earth did you tell them you’d ask me?”
Sandy leaned in and took one of Emily’s hands. “Because the topic is ‘Standing Up for What’s Right.’ And the quote they’re using is the one about how the only thing evil needs to prevail is for good men to do nothin.’ And that, sugar, is your kind of thing.”
Emily pulled back. “No. I’m not ready to do that.”
“I wish you wouldn’t turn it down so quickly. I think it’s time for you to raise your voice. It’s not like everybody don’t already know what happened to Ash. Most everyone would know why you were there. How many other people have had something tragic like that happen because the one person around to stop it wouldn’t? There ain’t nobody in Middleburg with a more powerful story on that subject than you.”
“That’s just it. Everybody already does know—they don’t need to hear it from me.”
“Maybe not, but I think you need to say it. How long has it been now, four years? You’ve never spoken up. You hardly ever talk about Ash’s murder and how it affected you. You think we don’t see how it hurt you? When they stopped looking for that one witness, don’t you think we felt it alongside you? There’s a whole town waiting to let you back into life, Emily. But you gotta come out when we open the door.”
“Sandy, no.” Emily pushed away her lunch, her appetite gone.
“Look, I know it’ll be hard. I know what I’m askin’. But I think you’d give such a powerful talk that none of those kids would ever forget it. And maybe, just maybe, one of ’em will find themselves in a situation of having to take a stand like that, and they’ll step up because they remember you.” Sandy blinked back a gathering tear. “You know, I can think of no finer tribute to Ash. He’d’ve done it if it were him.”
“He’s not here.” Emily fought the lump in her throat.
“So be here for him. And for you.” She grabbed both of Emily’s hands. “Just tell me you’ll think about. Don’t say no till you’ve thought about it and prayed about it. Okay?”
Emily gave in. Refusing Sandy Burnside just wasn’t something the average person could do.
Chapter Four
Monday night, Emily spread her two problems out before her on the living-room floor.
On the one side was the stack of three scrapbooks that held clippings from all of Ash’s memorial services, obituary notices, newspaper articles and the dozens of cards that had been sent to her after his passing. All the paper accounts made it sound so clean, so clinical. “Search for Known Witness Continues.” “Montague Case Closed.” “Scholarship Fund Established at Middleburg High.” She could scan those with an odd detachment. Keep them contained like the clippings held in place by those little black photo corners. It was the real-life details—the taxi receipt he had in his pocket that night, the box of tuning equipment that she kept in her garage, his shirts that hung in the back of her closet, the wedding ring the funeral director insisted she keep even though she wanted to bury it with Ash—it was those things that always did her in. They wouldn’t contain themselves neatly in her scrapbooks. Instead, they spilled out, reminding her how messy her life had felt since Ash’s loss. While she’d taken a strange comfort in compiling and organizing the scrapbooks, she couldn’t seem to cope with those details. They remained loose ends she couldn’t tie off.
Othello, Emily’s enormous orange cat, wandered in to inspect the scrapbooks, padding at the corner of one page with a round butterscotch paw. “Do you miss him, Othello?” Emily ran her hand down the cat’s smooth back. Othello had been a gift from Ash on their first Valentine’s Day as a married couple. She was expecting something big—Ash was an incurable romantic, and she was the envy of many women when he went his usual all-out for Valentine’s Day. When he arrived at the house with a single basket, she wasn’t sure what to think.
Until the basket said, “Meow.”
Ash was a dog person to Emily’s cat person. They’d gone round a few times about whether or not they could ever agree on a pet and come to no good compromise. “Otto,” as his ratty old collar had identified him, had wandered into the orchestra hall over the weekend while Ash was in the city, and somehow formed an attachment to Ash. No owner could be found during the week Ash was working on the orchestra pianos and the cat persisted in hanging around. The cat just plain wore him down, as Ash always put it. When it came time to head back to Middleburg, it was clear that Otto was coming along. And so it was that Otto became the most loving Valentine Ash had ever given her. It seemed such a grand and romantic gesture that Emily felt Otto deserved a name with more distinction, and Otto became Othello.
He’d wandered the house restlessly for days when Ash died. He’d never done that when Ash was away on trips, but somehow the cat had known Ash was gone for good. It broke Emily’s heart to watch Othello sit on the back of the couch and look for Ash’s truck to come up the street.
“I miss him, too, boy. I think he’d know what to do about all this.”
On the other side of the living-room rug lay problem number two: all of the Edmundson’s soaps. It was easier to look at the soaps. They’d stirred up a lot of mess for something that was supposed to clean. The bars weren’t even that attractive—unwrapped, they were lumpy, inconsistent rectangles Emily doubted she’d have even noticed on a shop counter if it weren’t for their intriguing scents.
Love. Joy. Peace. Patience. Goodness. Gentleness. Faithfulness. Kindness. And self-control. They were all here, all with distinct scents that matched their labels with surprising accuracy. How had the Edmundsons created the scent of patience? She had no idea, but they had. It was the Patience Soap that had caught her eye at the craft expo. Not only because of the scent, but because “patience” was such a curious thing to name a soap.
The other thing about the Edmundsons that drew Emily in was their exuberant faith. No one before that unusual couple could have convinced her that faith could be linked to soap. They were living examples of the Bible verse that talked about doing whatever you do as unto the Lord. To them, it made perfect sense to put their faith into their soap business. Which made it easier for her to embrace putting her faith into her bath-shop business. To Emily, they weren’t just vendors, they were inspirations—purple turtle soaps aside, of course.
Emily had jumped at this chance to display her faith in the shop, buying the entire line. It was brilliant that each soap had its own Bible verse printed on the inside of the label. She’d have bought twice as many boxes if she could have afforded it.
But she’d not bought the Pirate Soap. No, the Edmundsons had thrown that box in as a bonus for her big order.
Some gift. That soap was more bother than bonus.
She picked up a bar of Pirate Soap and tried again to figure out its distinctive smell. Citrus, with spice and something botanical like sage or thyme. They had a bit of texture in them, and they were too rough for a woman to use. But to a woman, they smelled very…compelling.
Compelling? This from a very articulate woman in the field of scent? Emily was accustomed to identifying and recommending scents easily. To knowing what scent to use where. It bugged her that this Pirate Soap wouldn’t sort itself out in her brain, that she couldn’t pick out exactly what she smelled and why she liked it. She used scents all the time in her home and at the shop, and she’d been sensitive to them her whole life. Her father had been a real estate broker, and she remembered him putting vanilla extract on the light bulbs in a home for sale, because it gave off the faint aroma of baking. And baking always smelled like home. Scents could calm or enliven. Scents could trigger memory or emotion as easily—perhaps more easily—as words.
But scent did not answer prayers or build character or make Ethan Travers instantly attractive.
So why did someone like Gil Sorrent get all hyped up about it? He forbade her to sell the soap to his employees. She found that highly irritating, even if she did somewhat understand his motives. His guys were young, granted, but they were adults capable of making their own decisions. Even if Gil felt them to be poor ones. These men were eager to be her customers, and unconventional as they were, she didn’t think she could afford to refuse their business.
Lord, I need a way to know if I can give that speech. I’ve also got to find a way sell the soaps but not tick off Gil Sorrent. She sat cross-legged in pajamas on her living-room rug and pondered. She made lists, charts, pro and con tables and generally paced around until at least one of the solutions came to her.
Sell, don’t scalp. Of course.
That was the solution: Sell Lord Edmund’s Pirate Soap, but don’t scalp it. Sell for the same price as all the other Edmundson soaps. If men were rushing into her shop to buy soap, then they would get a fair deal, and the clear explanation that they would get nothing from the transaction except clean. It was, after all, the easiest antidote to the uproar: Soap that did nothing would kill the rumors about its wonder-working properties. Men liked hard evidence, Ash had always said. Well, she had thirteen bars of hard evidence, and they were going to do their job. Even Barbie Jean Blabbermouth couldn’t override good, hard evidence.
Then maybe, she mused, I can get a few of them to go home with a second bar of some other soap. Herbal hand cleaner, I’ll call it. Emily grabbed her notebook, drew up a plan and packed everything up before going to bed. The soap matter, at least, felt sufficiently resolved.
As for the speech, well, that would have to wait until another day.
Tuesday morning, Emily remembered her pledge to have a second cup of coffee, ensuring she was wide awake before she began her morning tradition of praying over her to-do list. She and God walked through her schedule and her task list, and she asked for help with the challenges of the day. It was an especially nice day for January, clear and crisp with invigorating morning sunshine. Emily opened up a bar of Edmundson’s Joy Soap for her own personal use. It had a pleasant, lemony scent cut with verbena and another floral essence she couldn’t identify. True to its name, it was a happy soap. A high-quality soap, too. The Edmundsons had achieved a lush, silky soap at a price that suited her shop and her clientele.
“With more sales like that I can save enough to take out an ad next month,” she told Othello as she scratched him behind the ears at breakfast. “I bet I can even draw up an annual marketing plan. Love soaps for Valentine’s Day. Faithfulness for anniversaries. Kindness soap as a thank you gift. Peace for Christmas. I could put a card in the gift wrap with the verse from Galatians.” Othello blinked. “Then, if it works out, I could give a special price for the eight-bar set—it’d make a great confirmation or baptism gift, wouldn’t it?” The possibilities spread themselves out before her.
Othello wound his way around her legs and stared up at her with his round yellow eyes. Sounds brilliant to me, he seemed to say.
“I’ll let you know how my plan works out at dinner, Othello. Maybe we’ll have to celebrate a successful day.”
This plan really seems brilliant, she thought as she walked to work, enjoying the beautiful day.
And then she turned the corner onto Ballad Road and saw the line. A dozen or so men stood waiting outside West of Paris. Emily’s beady-eyed top customer defending his spot at the very front of the bunch.
The Homestretch Farm workers: her newest, unlikeliest patrons. Those young men looked every bit the hard cases she’d heard they were. Some people said every one of them had had a criminal record before his sixteenth birthday. Every spring when the new hands came onto the farm, the town quietly held its breath because they looked like such a crop of miscreants. They seemed to look tougher and meaner every year. Emily was afraid of half of them, quite honestly, even though she felt bad for feeling that way.
She’d been against the farm when it had first opened three years ago. It seemed like far too big a risk for so small a town. However, Sorrent’s farm hadn’t given Middleburg much trouble. He’d kept it under tight control and even joined the town council. There had been very few complaints.
But that was before this morning. Emily wasn’t sure she was ready to get so friendly with Homestretch’s questionable residents. Still, she told herself as she walked up the street to her shop, they look no meaner than a banker would look foreclosing on your loan. Smile, and remember how long it’s been since you made a dozen sales before eleven.
She clutched the plan in her basket of work papers and reminded herself she’d come up with a brilliant solution. If she could just stick to it and hold her ground with these men, her problem would be solved before noon and the whole absurd episode of Lord Edmund’s Pirate Soap would be over by day’s end with nothing but clean men to show for it.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” she said as the bodies split into a human hedge leading up to her door.
The Latin-looking one—the one with the silky voice who had winked at her the other day—winked again. “Morning, Miss Montague,” he said.
“No work today?” She turned the key in the lock and heard their feet behind her. She wanted to ask, “Does Mr. Sorrent know you’re here?” but couldn’t bring herself to do it. Of course Sorrent knew they were here. He knew where they were every second of every day.
“We got to be back in half an hour,” one of them said. “So we gotta work fast.”
“I want two bars!” a lanky boy who barely looked old enough to drive said from the back of the throng.
“Me, too!” cried another. “I’ll pay ten a piece.”
“Fifteen!” came another shout.
Emily stilled the key and turned to face the crowd. She was glad to count only ten faces—that made things easier. The plan. Work the plan.
“Let me make one thing perfectly clear: you’ll pay the regular price of four dollars, and I’ll sell each of you one bar of soap—no more.” A chorus of moans rose up from the band of soap-seekers. “And I want you to understand clearly, in no uncertain terms, that these soaps will do nothing but get you clean. They’re soap, and nothing else, and I’ll have a bone to pick with any of you that claims otherwise.”
There was a moment of thoughtful silence, and Emily heaved a sigh of relief as she opened up the shop and let them inside. Was it possible that she’d gotten through to them?
“Sure, Ms. Montague,” said the oldest of them, “whatever you say.”
He must have thought he’d been hiding the smirk on his face, but it became instantly obvious to Emily that they hadn’t absorbed a word. They’d still have plunked down twice as much with glee. Well, that couldn’t be her problem. She’d come up with her best possible solution—whether those men learned from it was going to have to be Gil’s—or God’s—problem.
Emily did, in fact, make her midweek income goal by noon. Suddenly the Homestretch Farm men weren’t looking so scary. She was pretty sure, however, that Gil Sorrent would show up sooner or later, and sure enough she was sorting through the noon mail when he skulked through the door. It struck her, as he made his way to the counter, that she’d never seen him happy. Or laughing. She’d seen a smile or two—mostly when he won his point soundly at a town hall meeting—but that didn’t really qualify as happy. She couldn’t remember having a purely social or remotely chatty conversation with him—all of their encounters could only be described as adversarial. In fact, outside of town council business, she’d hardly ever even seen him at all.
“Had a good morning?” It was barely a question, and it became an accusation when he added, “Taking my guys’ money?”
She’d known it was coming, and she had a defense planned. “Now look here, Mr. Sorrent. I don’t claim to know how to run your farm, so I’ll thank you not to tell me how to run my shop. If those grown men come in here asking for soap, then I’ll sell them soap.”
He stared at her, a little surprised.
“I’ve given this a lot of thought,” she continued, emboldened by the fact that he hadn’t yet jumped down her throat. “I think the best thing for all concerned is for that soap to be in their hands. Disappointing them. I turned down their offers to pay all kinds of wild prices. And I made it mighty clear that the soaps would do nothing but remove grime.”
Sorrent swung his weight onto one hip. “And you really think that sunk in?” It wasn’t exactly an agreement, but it was better than the tirade she’d expected.
“Well, not yet.” His eyes narrowed to near slits but she continued anyway. “But if I’d held those soaps back, it’d be as bad as endorsing the rumor that they do something special. You and I both know they do nothing special, so the best thing for everyone is to get those soaps out, used and gone.”
He crossed his arms. “No good can come of this.”
“Nonsense. I think just the opposite. By tonight, you’ll have the cleanest, most pleasant-smelling farmhands you’ve ever had. And any and all rumors of Lord Edmund’s Pirate Soap and its unique abilities will be dead and gone.”
He gave her a look that let her know just what he thought of that prediction. She smiled at him and held her ground. And then he surprised her. “My niece, by the way, went gaga over whatever it was that you picked out for her. Thanks.” He didn’t quite smile, but his expression edged toward a reluctant pleasantness, if you could call it that.
“You’re welcome.”
“Which makes me think you’re a smart businesswoman, so would you mind telling me what you’ve got against ATM machines?”
Ah, so he had read her letter to the town council. “I have nothing against automatic teller machines, when they’re where they belong.”
“And where’s that?”
“In banks. Grocery stores. Theme parks. But not on four different Middleburg street corners. Honestly, it’s a four-block walk to the one at the bank. Now we’ve got to have them mounted on the streets like parking meters?”
“People today don’t carry cash around. We’re in the age of the debit card, Ms. Montague, and we’d best figure that out sooner rather than later.”
“Tell me, do you think people come out here to escape the city, or to see an ATM at every turn? It’s the parking meters and ATMs and bustle that they’re running away from when they come here. They don’t want a drive-through with burgers and fries, they want apple pie and coffee. I’m not against technology, Mr. Sorrent. I just don’t want to be accosted by it on every street corner.”
He turned and looked out the window. “Four is not one on every street corner.”
“We’re not a big town. Ballad Road’s downtown is just a few blocks long. The bank’s smack dab in the middle of it. We can’t expect the average American consumer to walk four blocks? I don’t know about you, but I like to think of my customers as a mite more capable than that.”
“It’s a convenience thing.”
“It’s just as much about town atmosphere as it is convenience. And tell me, have you given any thought to who it is that pockets all the service fees for those ugly little machines? And have you seen them? They’d look like giant metallic mushrooms sprung up on our street.”
She had him there. “I grant you, they’re not very artistic,” he agreed, “but they’re cash machines, not sculpture.”
“Our streetlights are streetlights, but they still look nice and fit the character of our town.” Emily crossed her arms over her chest.
Sorrent shifted his weight to the other hip and scratched his chin. “What if there were only two—one at each end of the town farthest from the bank? And what if I talked Howard into putting you in charge of selecting the design and the mounting?”
She was about to let him know that two ATMs was two too many when he held up a finger and added, “And what if twenty-five percent of all the profits went to the town beautification fund?”
Emily fiddled with her register buttons for a moment as Sorrent watched her. She’d lost a sale last week when the couple buying dish towels didn’t have enough cash and didn’t want to use their credit card. She’d told them where the ATM was, and they said they’d walk down there and come back for the towels, but they never did.
And she’d get to choose the design. Not Howard Epson, who couldn’t be counted on to choose red paint for a barn, much less a piece of public structure. And Howard would be forced to donate one quarter of his profits to the beautification fund—the fund that paid the extra money for those particularly lovely streetlights.
Choose your battles, Emily’s mother always said. Know what hill you’re willing to die on and why. Sometimes your goals planned your solution, and sometimes your solution planned your goals.
“Mr. Sorrent, you’ve got yourself a deal.”
Chapter Five
Gil walked through his bunkhouse that afternoon, shaking his head. Of the room’s twelve bunks, ten of them had those yellow bags from Emily Montague’s shop sitting on or near them.
He sighed. He bought the guys perfectly suitable soap—he bought the guys lots of things, actually. It was part of his long uphill climb to get them to realize they mattered. The first step to making people think they have potential is to treat them as if they have potential. Gil knew that it was up to him to get this idea through to them, and he did, in a thousand small ways over the course of the months he had with them.
Horses were one of the best parts of his program. Teaching the men to treat the horses with kindness and respect was a roundabout way of teaching them to respect themselves. Horses were patient listeners and nonjudgmental companions, so they were a good place to start when learning to care about something. They put up with most small errors but let you know when you’d made a big mistake. One of Gil’s first residents had jokingly called the horses “stunt people”—and it wasn’t that far off. Lots of days Gil prayed for as much patience and wisdom as his horses had.
A horse would have enough sense to steer clear of Pirate Soap.
Gil walked by Mark’s bunk and grimaced at the bar of Pirate Soap he saw lying there. Mark had been one of the hardest cases he’d ever had. King Lear, the horse Mark cared for, had been the first thing bigger than Mark that hadn’t beat him up. That tough horse and that tough guy had wrestled themselves into an understanding of each other over the months. Gil hoped all that work wouldn’t come undone because of some dumb soap gimmick. As far as he’d come, Mark still kept an eye peeled for the shortcut, the easy out. He had a soft spot for Mark because he saw so much of his former self in the young man.
Not that he could admit to anything openly. Human-to-human caring rarely showed up between these guys—that’s what made caring for horses such a good place to begin learning. Healthy relationships were like a foreign language to them: combat, defiance and violence were their mother tongues. So “caring” started with the horses, but eventually Gil added a human element, buying a guy a new T-shirt or his favorite pizza. These became footholds as the men discovered how people cared for each other.
He’d never have paid for their current taste in soap, though. The bunkhouse showers would probably smell worse than Emily Montague’s bath shop come sundown. If it wasn’t January, he’d have told Ethan to set up dinner outside.
And there was Friday night. That would be a fiasco for sure. He’d taken them to last Friday’s church social in response to a correctional officer’s suggestion that they get more social interaction. Oh, they’d got social interaction that night, but he didn’t think that was what the County had in mind. He’d bought a block of tickets to the community theater musical for this Friday night. It had seemed a safe enough idea at the time, but he was starting to think that unleashing those guys anywhere near town might be a bad idea. The play was The Music Man though, where a good deal of swindling happened, so it might serve as a timely moral lesson.
Gil took one last look around the bunkhouse, thinking he ought to just scoop up the soap and throw it out. Gratifying as it might feel, though, it wouldn’t help. He had to respect their decisions if he expected them to respect his. And as much as he hated to consider it, Emily Montague might be right about some lessons only being learned the hard way. Maybe now was the best time to teach them that a woman valued how a man treated her, not how he spiced up the air between them.
He picked up the bag on Larry’s bed and sniffed at it. It was awful. Emily Montague’d thought highly enough of it, but she was a woman given to that kind of thing. He’d seen that “pleasant enough” scent do something to her, make her eyes get a funny, faraway look. She’d certainly never looked that way during a council meeting. No, that was a face he never saw across the table at town hall.
Gil hit the power button to open the windows in the farm van as they drove into town Friday night. This had better be worth it.
“Hey,” came Steve’s aggravated voice from the back row of seats, “the hair.” Steve was in his late teens and still growing into his gangly limbs.
“Hey,” Gil shot back, “the air. My lungs outrank your ‘do.’ And since when did you care so much about your hair?” At this rate, all of Middleburg would catch the scent of them before they even pulled into the parking lot. When he’d planned on attending the theater tonight, Gil hadn’t counted on needing to sit downwind.
Steve made a show of holding down his unruly but now unruly-and-gelled locks. “There’ll be women there. They love plays and stuff. Especially musicals.” He said the word as if musicals were at the bottom of the theatrical food chain in his opinion.
“Any females present will be watching the stage, Steve, not you. The only one who’ll be watching you closely tonight is me.”
“I don’t think so,” came another voice from the back of the van. “That hair’s bound to draw stares.” A rousing chorus of commentary on Steve’s hair rose up from all over the van.
“Settle down, gentlemen, or—”
“—you’ll turn this thing around,” came the simultaneous response from every seat in the van.
Remind me, Lord, why it is that I do this again? Gil pulled into the high-school parking lot with a sigh. Some days he truly felt as if he was shepherding these young men into maturity. Other days, it felt more like herding hyperactive water buffalo.
And tonight, it was a toss up as to whether you’d smell the water buffalo or the guys first.
If Emily Montague happened to be there, he’d make sure his fragranced little herd sat right next to her. That way she’d get a good whiff of what she’d done.
As it turned out, the only one sitting near Emily Montague was him. By the time he’d rounded up his “herd” and gotten them into the auditorium, they’d ended up on the far left, split between two rows. Which meant he had guys to the left of him and ahead of him. Gil was on the aisle, with Emily directly across from him in the next section. While such an arrangement granted him a good view of them (not to mention most of them within arm’s reach, should they act up), it also gave him a clear shot of Emily for the entire evening.
She was sitting with Janet Bishop, the woman who owned the hardware store, and Dinah Hopkins, the woman who owned the bakery where he took the guys each week. They laughed and chatted in between scenes as if they’d been friends for a while. While Janet had short, dark, practical hair, and Dinah’s was a wild red, Emily’s hair couldn’t seem to decide if it was blond, brown or red—opting instead for a chaotic mixture of all three. It tumbled across her head and down her shoulders in cascades of near-curls that looked too natural to be set, but pretty enough to have been fussed with some. He’d never seen her in a bright color—she always wore pale and pinkish tones that reminded him of Easter.
When he thought about it, her obvious rapture with the play made sense. It was just the sort of nostalgic thing that would appeal to a woman living in a bitty, white, gingerbread cottage that sat like a little frosted cupcake just off Ballad Road. Her window boxes were always full. He suspected all her china matched perfectly. He could see her in the role of Marian the Librarian, even though Audrey Lupine—the woman onstage who actually was the Middleburg librarian—was remarkably good. Audrey added to the true-to-life nature of the play already established by the Middleburg High School marching band playing Harold Hill’s marching band.
Gil’s eyes kept straying to Emily all through the ballad “’Til There Was You.” She rested her chin in one hand and let her head fall to one side during the second chorus, even though the leading man didn’t have a voice to match Audrey’s. She sighed at the song’s ending kiss, and he felt it somewhere under his ribs.
At intermission, Gil ventured over to the Arts Guild bake-sale table. After shelling out an unnatural sum to Dinah for a dozen Rice Krispies treats that were big enough to be Rice Krispies bricks, he ran into Emily and Janet at the lemonade pitchers.
“How are the soaps working out—or should I say not working out?” Emily ventured, nodding her head toward the guys.
Janet Bishop smiled. “I heard the story. Your farmhands put in quite an effort tonight.”
“I had to roll down the van windows on the way here,” he complained, and then realized the rudeness of his insinuation. It was Emily’s product, after all. “No offense, of course. I’m sure you gals think they smell great. I’m just not used to my boys smelling like the fragrance counter at a department store.”
“I must admit, it does seem like they were…enthusiastic in their use of the soap.” A wry smile crept up one corner of Emily’s mouth.
“And the hair gel,” Janet added. “And a bunch of other…things.”
“Tell me about it,” Gil replied, taking a swig of lemonade. “I can hardly wait for it to backfire.”
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