First Chapter: The Tea Shop on Lavender Lane by Sheila Roberts

Title: The Tea shop on Lavender Lane
Author: Sheila Roberts
Publisher: Harlequin Mira
Pages: 352
Genre: Women’s Fiction/Romance
Format: Paperback/Kindle

Purchase at AMAZON

When it comes to men, sisters don’t share! 

After a fake food poisoning incident in L.A., Bailey Sterling’s dreams of becoming a caterer to the stars collapse faster than a soufflé. Now Bailey’s face is in all the gossip rags and her business is in ruins. But the Sterling women close ranks and bring her back to Icicle Falls, where she’ll stay with her sister Cecily.

All goes well between the sisters until Bailey comes up with a new business idea—a tea shop on a charming street called Lavender Lane. She’s going into partnership with Todd Black, who—it turns out—is the man Cecily’s started dating. It looks to Cecily as if there’s more than tea brewing in that cute little shop. And she’s not pleased.

Wait! Isn’t Cecily seeing Luke Goodman? He’s a widower with an adorable little girl, and yes, Cecily does care about him. But Todd’s the one who sends her zing-o-meter off the charts. So now what? Should you have to choose between your sister and the man you love (or think you love)?

First Chapter:

The party was going perfectly until the hostess clutched her stomach with an agonized cry and crumpled to the floor in a heap.

Rory Rourke, her boyfriend and star of the new TV series Man Handled, knelt by her side and barked, “Someone, call 911.”

“Call her doctor,” said someone else.

“Call The Star Reporter,” the victim said faintly.

And that was when Bailey Sterling knew she was in trouble.

She’d been so excited to land this gig catering Samba Barrett’s party. Samba wasn’t an Emma Stone or Kristen Stewart but she was …. someone. Sort of. And with her catlike green eyes and red hair everyone said she was on her way up, like the rest of her party guests. And surely that had meant Bailey was on her way up, too. The West Hollywood apartment had been packed with hot young actors and actresses. As she’d slipped among them bearing trays of goodies she’d heard more than one person rave about the food and had envisioned a whole string of catering gigs after this one.

The shrimp salsa in Phyllo cups had been an especially big hit. “Oh, my God, this is to die for,” America Winston (from the new reality show Hard Ass) had raved. Bailey had smiled modestly and kept circulating, while her assistant Giorgio served up stuffed mushrooms. She’d been working hard for the last three years to earn a reputation as caterer to the stars and things were finally starting to happen.

Except now here was Samba Barrett, writhing on her living room floor, groaning in agony. Only twenty minutes ago she’d been eating those shrimp cups and laughing. Did she have food allergies she hadn’t told Bailey about? Samba had gone over the menu with Bailey, approved everything. How could this have happened? Was Bailey going to be known as killer of the stars?

Thirty people gathered around the actress, some offering advice, some taking pictures with their cell phones, others texting wildly. Bailey stood on the fringe and nervously downed one of her own appetizers.

“You’ll be okay, baby,” Rory Rourke assured Samba.

“I think I ate something bad,” she whimpered.

“Oh, no, that’s not possible,” Bailey protested and everyone turned to look at her. One woman aimed her cell phone at Bailey, capturing her miserable expression. This couldn’t be happening.

But it could. And it did. Now Bailey felt sick. She lost her grip on the tray of canapes she was carrying and down they went, the tray landing on a Jimmy Choos of one of the party guests who was busy recording her hostess’s misery on her cell phone.

The woman let out a yelp and jumped back, then glared at Bailey.

“Sorry,” Bailey muttered, and bent to scoop the mess onto the tray. In the process she managed to get in the way of another guest, nearly tripping him.

He didn’t settle for glaring. He swore at her.

Caterer hell, that was what this was. Bailey bolted for the kitchen and hid out, watching the drama unfold from behind the counter.

The ambulance arrived and the E.M.T.s showed up to take Samba’s vitals and load her onto a stretcher. Then away she went, a pitiful but beautiful victim of Sterling Catering.

The guests switched from eating to drinking. Rory told Bailey she could clean up and leave, and not in the kindest tone of voice. He didn’t offer to pay her and she didn’t ask. All she wanted to do was get out of that cramped apartment full of the young and the beautiful.

By the time she left the media was waiting. Photographers snapped her picture and reporters stuck microphones in her face. “Have you catered for Samba before?” … “Has Samba threatened to sue?” … “What’s your relationship with Rory Rourke?”

Bailey stood there like Bambi looking at the headlights of a Mac truck, her toque askew, offering quotable quotes such as, “What?”

She quickly realized that it was time to scram and bolted for the van where Giorgio was loading up boxes of supplies… and telling a reporter that he wasn’t involved with any of the food prep. “I’m only doing this while I wait to hear from my agent. We’ve got something big in the works. Giorgio Romano. R-o-m…”

Bailey tossed in the last of her serving equipment, then pulled on his double-breasted, white jacket and growled, “Get in the van,” even as the vultures who had been talking to him now turned their attention to her.

He scowled at her but got moving.

They drove away with photographers aiming their cameras and shooting. “What were you thinking?” she demanded, swerving to avoid one.

“I wasn’t thinking anything. I was just answering questions.”

“Well, thanks a lot,” she snapped.

He held out both hands. “What did you want me to do?”

“How about saying that Sterling Catering was not responsible for Samba Barrett’s illness?” she suggested, her voice rising.

“I don’t know that,” Giorgio said sullenly.

“You’ve been working for me for six months now, Giorgio. You know how good I am. You could have said something.” Was there no loyalty in the world? She brushed away a tear.

“I told you, I’m only here until I get my break.”

“And I suppose that was it,” she said in disgust. “Getting your name in the paper as a caterer?”

“Every little bit helps,” he retorted. “Publicity is great, whether it’s good or bad.”

Not for a caterer. She had a small liability policy but it didn’t cover bad press. Overwhelmed with misery, Bailey pulled off the road and began to cry in earnest.

Giorgio sat there in what she thought was silent sympathy. Until he said, “Here, let me drive. I’ve got a date.”

She raised her tear-stained face from the steering wheel to stare at him. “A date? You were working the party.”

“I know. But when it ended early …” He shrugged. “Sorry.”

Sorry about summed it up.

After a long day of work punctuated hourly by texts from her miserable little sister, Cecily Sterling was standing in line at the Icicle Falls Safeway with her recharge essentials – – a pint of mint chocolate chip ice cream and a bag of Cheetos. It seemed everyone in Icicle Falls had had a long day at work and the store was packed.

She’d already run into Dot Morrison, who’d eyed her purchases and said, “Now, that’s my kind of dinner.”

She’d planned on adding more to her “dinner” but she’d spotted Luke Goodman, the production manager at her family’s chocolate company, in the cookie department with his daughter Serena, and had decided to skip the cookies.

Not that she didn’t want to see little Serena or, as Serena would insist, Big Serena now that she’d “graduated” from kindergarten. Serena’s visits to the Sweet Dreams Chocolates office with her grandma gave Cecily her kid fix on a regular basis.

But Serena’s daddy was another matter.

Luke Goodman was a nice guy. He had the husky build of a wrestler (which he’d been in high school), kind blue, eyes, and a great smile. He was a widower and he’d been interested in Cecily ever since she moved back home to Icicle Falls. The only problem was, she wasn’t interested in him as anything more than a friend.

She should have been. She had such a gift for matching up other people. She’d brought together friends in high school and in college and, thanks to her, a lot of weddings had taken place. She’d even been in the matchmaking business, for crying out loud. She could look at people and instinctively know who should be with whom. But when it came to herself she knew nothing. She’d been engaged twice and each man had turned out to be a loser and a user. Pathetic.

Luke was neither of those, and he wanted her. So why did her stupid hormones do the happy dance every time she got anywhere near Todd Black?

Todd had also been after her ever since she moved home. He owned The Man Cave, a seedy tavern at the edge of town, and he was no Luke Goodman. He looked like Johnny Depp’s kid brother and he was a heartbreak waiting to happen. He had bad boy written all over him, from the double entendres he was so good at tossing Cecily’s way to how he looked at her, as if she was a chocolate bar he’d like to unwrap. Slowly. Luke Goodman was the kind of man who married a girl, but Todd Black was the kind who slept with her and then conveniently forgot to call her the next day.

She should have no interest whatsoever in Todd Black. And she certainly should never have agreed to stop by his tavern on Friday night to play pinball when she’d run into him earlier that day at Bavarian Brews.

But he’d caught her in a weak moment. She’d been worried about her younger sister Bailey and she’d said yes without thinking. At least that was her excuse. She really couldn’t blame her moment of weakness on preoccupation though. Insanity was the true culprit. Every time she was around that man he heated up her hormones and fried her brain. Now she was going to go home and re-wire the synapses with junk food and a long bubble bath.  She was into making bath salts and bubble bath and could hardly wait to indulge in her latest creation – – lavender-vanilla.

She’d barely gotten in line when Cass Wilkes walked up behind her and said hi. “Ice cream, food of the gods.”

Cass was Cecily’s sister Samantha’s BFF, but she’d opened the door of friendship to Cecily, too, and they saw each other every Sunday at Cass’s chick flick nights and when their monthly book club met.

Cecily smiled, feeling slightly embarrassed. That was both the beauty and the curse of living in a small town. Everyone knew your business. “Not exactly the diet special, is it?”

“No, but it looks good to me. Anyway, I can’t say anything.” Cass held up her shopping basket, which contained a pizza and a two liter bottle of root beer. “You can see we’re eating well tonight.”

The basket also contained a bag of readymade salad. “It’s not all bad,” Cecily said, pointing to the salad. “And pizza has good things in it.”

“That’s what I keep telling myself. I also keep telling myself that I’m only going to eat the salad and leave the pizza for the kids. But I’m lying.”

“Life’s too short to not eat pizza.” Cecily said with a smile. The smile fell away when her cell phone started singing Bailey’s ring tone, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”.

Bailey’s life had been anything but fun the last couple of days. She had called Cecily the evening of the disaster party, practically hysterical. They’d pulled in Samantha, who had found Bailey a tough L.A. lawyer, but no legal shark could save her from bad publicity. Of course, the story had made the papers, and all the TV stations had run the footage over and over of her van driving away, leaving the scene of the “crime”. Naturally, they’d zoomed in on “Sterling Catering” painted on the side of the van. Word of mouth had added to the avalanche of bad press. People who had booked her for their events had been calling right and left and canceling.

Cecily answered, bracing herself for more bad news.

Sure enough. “Have you seen The Star Reporter?”

Oh, no. What now? Cecily turned to the magazine rack. There, on the front of the latest popular celebrity news rag was a picture of Bailey in her white caterer’s coat, standing outside Samba Bennett’s apartment house. She was wearing an expression of shock, right along with her chef’s toque, her big hazel eyes wide in shock and her mouth dangling open. She looked more confused than crazy. In fact she looked like the village idiot. The bold print above the picture proclaimed, Samba Bennett Poisoned? Crazy Caterer Tries to Take Out the Competition.

“Oh, no,” said Cecily. She dropped her junk food on the checkout conveyor belt and grabbed the magazine.

Cass, standing right next to her, took one also, muttering, “Those creeps.”

“This is the worst yet. I’m ruined,” Bailey wailed.

“What competition are they talking about?” Cecily asked, trying to balance her cell phone, calm her sister, and turn to the article all at the same time.

“They’re saying I had a thing for Rory Rourke, which is ridiculous. I don’t even know Rory Rourke. I didn’t know any of those people!”

During the last forty-eight hours Bailey’s moods had swung between grim resignation and wild hysteria. It wasn’t hard to tell what mode she was in now. “This is a gossip rag,” Cecily reminded her. “Everyone knows you can’t believe what you read in papers like this.”

“My business is trashed. My life is trashed. I don’t even have money to pay for the lawyer.”

“Samantha and I told you not to worry about that,” Cecily told her. “It’s being taken care of.” News had traveled as fast around Icicle Falls as it had in L.A., and Dot Morrison and Pat Wilder, two of the town’s older businesswomen, had already set up a special bank account for Bailey’s defense fund.

Not that she was going to need it. Anyone with eyes could see the actress had pulled a cheap publicity stunt. The lawyer was already on top of things, and Cecily was sure before the month was over that Bailey would be out from under this. She said as much, hoping to calm Bailey.

“It’s just … this article,” Bailey said between sobs. “I’m nothing like that. And I worked so hard to build my business. Now it’s … gone.”

Cecily wished she could assure her sister otherwise, but in Hollywood where making an impression was everything, well, it didn’t look good for Sterling Catering. “Come home,” she said.

“I can’t.”

Cecily knew how hard it was to close the doors on a dream. She also knew how hard it was to admit defeat and come full circle, right back where you started. She’d done it herself. It had turned out to be exactly what she needed and she was much happier working in the family business than she’d been trying to match up gold diggers with shallow men looking for Playboy bunnies.

“At least think about it,” she urged. “Everyone here loves you.”

“That’s for sure,” Cass said from over her shoulder.

“I can’t even leave my apartment. There are reporters hiding in the bushes.”

“They won’t hide there forever. And I can guarantee they won’t follow you here,”  Cecily said. At least she hoped they wouldn’t. “The story will die down as soon as the next manufactured scandal hits. Which, I predict will be sometime within the next seventy-two hours.”

“I asked her if she had any allergies,” Bailey said miserably. “I have all kinds of menus to choose from and she chose that one.”

“Don’t worry, this will all work out,” Cecily assured her.

It was as if Bailey hadn’t even heard. “I’m ruined.”

“Only temporarily,” Cecily assured her.

“Well, how long is temporary?” Bailey cried.

That was something for which Cecily had no answer.

Ruined, Bailey thought miserably as she ended the call with her sister. She’d gone to the hospital to see Samba, hoping that maybe they could talk, that she could explain her food couldn’t have possibly made the actress sick. She’d even brought flowers. She’d encountered a hired guard at the door of Samba’s private room and all he’d allowed in had been the flowers, along with the get well card on which Bailey had written, “I hope you feel better soon.” But after everything that had happened she now hoped Samba contracted terminal acne.

Well, okay, not really. She liked to think she was better than that.

Samba was out of the hospital the next day, shopping on Rodeo Drive, pretending to look annoyed when photographers took her picture. Of course she’d given a quote to any paper that was interested. “I really don’t know what happened.”

Bailey knew what had happened. She’d been duped.

“All I want is to put this behind me,” Samba said, looking like a tragic heroine.

Sure, now that she’d milked all the free publicity she could out of ruining Bailey. Rumor had it that Samba had just been offered a part in a pilot for a new TV series, some sort of female detective show. (That was rich. Samba Barrett, who had just faked her own food poisoning, solving crimes.)

Meanwhile, Bailey Sterling, owner of Sterling Caterers couldn’t even get a job catering to street people. She’d been dubbed “the party poisoner” and not only had she lost business, she was the butt of everyone’s jokes. One late night TV host had cracked that he’d planned to hire a caterer for his birthday party but changed his mind since he wanted to live to see his next birthday. Ha, ha.

She’d finally given a quote to The Star Reporter, a diplomatic but strong quote, insisting, “I don’t know what happened to Samba, but I know it wasn’t my food that made her sick. No one else at that party got ill.”

The paper had run with it and the next headline proclaimed, Caterer Claims Samba Bennett Faked Food Poisoning. Great. That was almost as good for business as the original incident.

This will all work out, she told herself. When life gives you lemons make lemonade. Or eat chocolate. Except her chocolate stash was gone. Okay, she needed a drink.

She went to her fridge to pull out a Coke. None left. The refrigerator was a giant, near-empty cave, containing a bag with only a few spinach leaves, half a tomato, some canned olives and pickles and a dab of Gruyere. At some point she was going to have to go out and get groceries.

Not today though, at least, not in broad daylight. She’d have to wait until nightfall.

At last, around ten-thirty, she deemed it safe to leave her apartment. No one jumped up out of the bushes as she dashed to her car, and she told herself she was being paranoid as she drove to the supermarket.

Once inside, she hurried through the store, picking up produce, milk, and juice. No photographer dogged her and she let out her breath.

But when Bailey went to pay, the checker kept studying her all the while trying to appear as if she wasn’t. She could almost hear the checker thinking, Why does this woman look so familiar?

The customer in line behind her had a copy of The Star Reporter and was eye-balling her, too.

Now another shopper joined them, and he, also, began staring inquisitively.

It was all Bailey could do not to pull out her hair and shriek. Instead, she paid for her groceries and said, “I didn’t poison Samba Barrett. She just got sick. Okay?” She didn’t stick around to find out whether it was okay or not. She grabbed her bag and left.

As the doors swooshed open she heard one of the gawkers say, “Do you think she did?”

She rushed to her car, tripped in the process, and dropped her grocery bag. A head of cabbage went rolling and she dove to rescue it. As she plopped it back in the bag she looked over her shoulder to check if anyone had seen her clumsy moment.

That was when she spotted the man with the camera lurking on the other side of the parking lot. Great. She could see the headlines now. Crazy Caterer Cracks up at Supermarket.

It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. She hadn’t done anything to anybody. And these buzzards knew it. Frustration and anger finally took over and she did something she’d never done in her life. She lifted her hand and saluted the rat across the lot with one lone finger, and it wasn’t her index finger. There. That said it all.

That would probably say it all in the next issue of The Star Reporter.

And it didn’t make her feel any better. With a sob, she put her groceries in her car and drove away. How long was this going to go on? How long were people going to look at her like she was some kind of sicko?

How long was her money going to last?

 

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