Love Finds You in Hershey Pennsylvania Read online

  “I didn’t listen, Sadie girl.”

  “Stop it!” She smacked a palm against the counter. “Don’t call me that! I told you a long time ago not to call me that anymore.” Fearful that Kylie might overhear, she dropped her tone several decibels. “I’m not your little girl anymore.”

  His eyes were nearly apologetic as he said, “But you are. You’ll always be my Sadie girl.”

  “Well, you may be my father, but you’ll never be my dad,” she shot back.

  He nodded in seeming acceptance, and Sadie felt the sharp bite of disappointment.

  “I’m not going away this time, Sadie.”

  Against her best intentions, she felt a small wave of elation.

  “I can’t turn back time, but I’m hoping I can salvage what’s left of it.”

  “Tell that to my mother.”

  To her surprise, his lips turned up in a small, secretive smile. “I already have. I think she gave me her blessing to try.”

  Sadie suppressed a snort of derision. “Good luck with that.”

  “It’s just my poor fortune that you inherited my own hard-headedness.”

  “Mmm.” Sadie didn’t dare comment on that one.

  “But I figure I’m more experienced at it than you are.”

  “You’d be surprised how much practice I’ve had.”

  He locked eyes with her, and suddenly Sadie realized he was serious. He meant to elbow his way back into her life and carve out a niche there.

  Clearly, this was her month to meet arrogant men head-on. Well, she dared them to try to break down her defenses. They’d see soon enough how well she stood her ground.

  She stared straight into Mac’s eyes, daring him to look away first. He blinked, and his eyes shifted. She grinned smugly.

  First round, me!

  “Sadie?”

  “Yes?”

  “Your chicken’s on fire.”

  She whirled around to see bright coral flames licking the side of the pan. By the time she dumped the entire contents of an Arm & Hammer baking soda carton onto the fowl flames, Mac had gone. She tossed the empty carton into the wastebasket.

  “Figures. At the first sign of trouble, he bails.”

  She surveyed the frying pan with its powdery white hills of baking soda nestled against coal dark regions of ruined meat.

  Jasper entered with Kylie in tow.

  “We’re having blackened chicken?” he queried with raised eyebrows.

  Kylie wrinkled her nose. “Kylie’s not eating that,” she announced.

  Sadie lifted the pan from the stove. “Don’t worry, Kylie girl. We’re going to offer it to the volcano instead.”

  Sadie hated fast food. And junk food. And pretty much processed food of any kind. It wasn’t real food, after all. Jasper occasionally tried to convince her of its merit, more to see her bristle than because he really championed the cause, but she refused to budge.

  Fast food was from the devil, and Sadie considered all forms to be poison to the system.

  But at nearly five years old, Kylie didn’t see reason with her mother’s patiently illustrated discussions on what chemically laced corn chips and preservative-packed pastries did to one’s internal organs. Most of the time, Kylie could be placated with homemade cookies (containing wholesome, natural ingredients) or Sadie’s own dehydrated potato chips. After all, it wasn’t that Sadie was against sugared or fattening foods (in moderation, of course)—only the kind that was chockful of additives and preservatives.

  But children, Sadie had learned, operate on a need-to-have basis. And one moment after the chicken catastrophe, Kylie made it known that she needed to have food. Right then. Right away.

  Salad had no appeal by this time, and Sadie’s own nerves were too frazzled to concoct anything more than peanut butter sandwiches, which, of course, Kylie had already had for lunch. When Jasper suggested going out for pizza, Kylie had hugged his knees with such force that he nearly lost a leg, just like his counterpart Malibu Ken.

  Sadie could have ripped it off herself for his suggesting such a thing.

  “It won’t kill her,” he pointed out as Kylie rushed back to her bedroom to put on shoes. “She’s young; whatever they put into it will work through her system in no time at all.”

  “That’s comforting,” she replied with sarcasm.

  “I promise that if she goes into a meltdown, I’ll take full responsibility.”

  “I promise that if she goes into a meltdown, I’ll take your head.”

  Jasper grinned. “Noted.”

  So within the hour, despite her better judgment, Sadie found herself sandwiched next to Jasper in a small red booth at the Pizza Playhouse. Across from her, Kylie slurped her orange soda noisily, and Sadie tried very hard not to wring her hands with motherly concern over the amount of sugared beverage her daughter was consuming.

  Jasper eyed her with profound amusement, that ridiculous grin fixed permanently onto his expression, as Sadie repeatedly asked Kylie if she wouldn’t prefer some water.

  “Can Kylie go play in the ball pit?” the little girl eventually asked.

  Sadie gulped. The ball pit? With its myriad of unseen bacterial microorganisms? Sadie had long been convinced that fast-food ball pits were nothing more than breeding ground oases for germs and other communicable diseases.

  “Can I go play in the ball pit?” Sadie attempted to correct her. For the past three months, Kylie had found it most enjoyable to speak of herself in the third person. She only reverted to the first whenever she felt extremely tired or ill.

  “Well, yes, Mommy, if you want to,” Kylie answered her.

  Jasper snorted, and Sadie kicked him under the table.

  “Kylie—” she began again, but she was quickly interrupted.

  “Puh-lease, Mommy?”

  Sadie hesitated. Kylie looked at Jasper with large brown eyes.

  “Puh-lease, Jasper?”

  He didn’t hesitate. “Just don’t put any of the balls into your mouth,” he cautioned.

  Kylie didn’t hesitate either, as she bounded off to the adjoining room with the glass windows to cavort among the plastic rainbow mounds.

  Sadie watched her go with a shudder.

  “It’ll be all right,” Jasper soothed.

  “For years, I had no idea what my mother meant when she said, ‘Worry and motherhood were born hand in hand.’ ”

  Jasper stretched an arm around the back of the booth and rubbed her shoulders gently. “Hold her too close and she suffocates, you know.”

  Sadie sighed. “I know. But don’t hold her close enough and I lose her entirely.”

  There came a companionable pause, the kind Sadie liked best. She could lean into Jasper’s side and relax for several moments, feeling secure and protected in the warmth of her best friend’s strength.

  After several minutes—during which Sadie’s eyes continually darted to the glass window to spot Kylie’s tiny figure—Jasper spoke.

  “Did you want to talk about what happened with Mac today?”

  Sadie toyed with her straw, capping the upper end with her fingertip and suspending the liquid inside the plastic tube.

  “Not really.” She shrugged.

  “All right.” Jasper pulled his arm from the back of the booth and took a swig of his iced tea.

  “He says he’s found God, and I think he thinks he’s come back to set things right,” she blurted.

  “What do you mean, you ’think he thinks’?”

  “That’s what I think he wants to do, but it’s tougher than he thinks.”

  Jasper sighed. “That’s what I thought.”

  Sadie dropped her straw back into the glass. It buoyed for a moment before slowly sinking down and tapping the bottom.

  “I mean, who does he think he is to come back again after four years—after everything I’ve been through—and just fire up a relationship like he’d fire up a weed whacker?”

  Jasper quirked his lips at Sadie’s examples. “First of all, you’r
e not a weed whacker. And secondly, you think too much.”

  “So? What if I do?” she sullenly asked.

  “Why don’t you just go with it?” he asked.

  She arched an eyebrow. “Go with what, exactly?”

  “Why don’t you just go along with your dad and see where it leads?”

  “He’s not my dad.”

  “Fine. Mac, then. Why don’t you just go along with Mac and see what happens? See how you feel about it.”

  “Clearly, you don’t know Mac.”

  “Ah, but I do,” Jasper corrected. “I’ve known him just as long as you have.”

  “And with similar results,” she pointed out. “You don’t understand him any better than I do. It’s not the same thing, Jasper, and you know it.”

  He backed off. “I know it’s not. But maybe it’s worth a try.”

  She grew suspicious. “Why are you taking his side?”

  Jasper shrugged. “I didn’t know I was. But I did notice when he showed up today that he was…different.”

  “Different how?”

  “Mellowed. Content. Not the same old Mac.”

  Sadie paused. She hadn’t considered that, but there was an echo of truth to what Jasper said. There had been something different today.

  “You remember what it used to be like when he’d come back? Like he wanted to be here, but you could just feel it…something… pulling him away?”

  Sadie frowned sadly. “Yeah. I remember.”

  “But it wasn’t there today. There was no pull. There was just Mac.”

  Sadie blew out her breath, fluttering the strands of hair framing her face. “Just give it some time.”

  Jasper smiled triumphantly. “Exactly. Just give him some time, Sadie. Time and another chance.”

  She stared stonily at Jasper. “Mac used up all his chances a long time ago.”

  Jasper’s eyes softened in response to hers. “Maybe,” he said softly. “But I guess only time will tell.”

  Sadie groaned and stretched her neck muscles to relieve some of the tension she felt. “You can be so irritating sometimes.”

  “Only sometimes? I have to try harder, then.”

  “Great,” she muttered sarcastically.

  Just then their pizza arrived. Like a hound on the scent, Kylie came bounding over. Sadie grimaced as she doled out a slice of pepperoni to her daughter. She had attempted to convince Kylie that green peppers gave color to pizza, but it hadn’t worked. Noting her expression, Jasper grinned all the broader as he slid a piece of pepperoni pizza her way.

  Swallowing hard, she took a bite and chewed it down.

  “Huh,” she mumbled. “Not bad.”

  With Kylie’s birthday party taking place in just two days, Sadie was in desperate need of essential party items. Because Jasper owned the only car between them (willed to him by Sadie’s mother, Amelia, upon Amelia’s death), he offered to drive her to the supermarket following their time at the Pizza Playhouse. He had even been chivalrous enough to pay for their meal, and by the end of dinner, Sadie felt quite bad for her poor attitude.

  She accepted his offer for the trip to the grocer’s and laughed loudly as he and Kylie serenaded her the entire way with the song “Be Our Guest” from Kylie’s favorite Disney movie. Upon arriving at the supermarket, Kylie begged to be “lifted up” as Sadie pushed the cart through the aisles. Jasper, as usual, succumbed to her pleas and carried her in his arms for their first half-hour through the store.

  At last, Kylie grew bored with this and demanded to be put down. He did so with firm instructions that she was not to go wandering off. She skipped a few feet ahead of the cart, humming snatches of “Be Our Guest” as she went.

  The waiter at the Pizza Playhouse had presented Kylie with a cherry lollipop for dessert, which the little girl had accepted with glee. Having thoroughly smeared her own mouth with sticky sweetness, she had pushed the diminished bright red orb into Jasper’s mouth. He held its remains firmly in the pouch of his cheek as he and Sadie strolled through the supermarket.

  Sadie’s eyes narrowed to slits as they passed a display of ethnic foods with Russian caviar at its center.

  She muttered something about global conspiracies, and Jasper raised an eyebrow. Removing the lollipop from his mouth, he commented, “What makes you so sure this Russian dude has got your number?”

  Sadie pursed her lips before answering. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? He’s been coming into my restaurant for the past three weeks in order to stake out the competition. That gives him a three-week advantage over me, the dirty rat.”

  “Dirty rat?” Jasper coughed and reinserted the lollipop. “I’m just saying…maybe you’re jumping to conclusions.”

  “There you go again, defending the other team!” She dropped a box of whole-grain crackers into the cart.

  Kylie came running back to them from farther up the aisle, waving a box of fruit roll-ups in the air. “Kylie wants this!”

  Sadie gave her one of the “I’m-the-mother-and-that-means-no-is-no” expressions, and Kylie turned around with a frown and marched back to return the fruit roll-ups on the shelf.

  “I’m not defending the other team,” Jasper inserted. “I’m just making sure our team doesn’t make any premature moves.”

  “As team captain, my decision supersedes yours,” she teased.

  “But as team strategist, my rulings are final.”

  “Then I quit,” she responded.

  “You’re under contract,” he shot back.

  She frowned. “True. You’ve got me there.”

  He grinned smugly. Kylie dashed in between them.

  “This one, this one!” She held up some sort of sugary gelatin in plastic tubing. The color of the liquefied candy was neon green.

  Jasper took it from her. “Kylie, even I wouldn’t eat this stuff.”

  She ran off again. Jasper removed the lollipop, which was considerably smaller by now, and waved it in the air. Before he could comment, Sadie cut him off.

  “Listen, Jas, I’ve worked long and hard to get that restaurant running. It’s been a dream of mine for years—even before Ned died. I’m not about to take any chances on it. Let’s just say the Russian’s motives are innocent—and I’m not saying that they are, mind you…but it’s very hard to make a go at that kind of business. What are the odds that two restaurants like ours could exist side by side, even in a tourist-traffic town like this?”

  “But if there’s even a slim chance,” Jasper argued, “don’t you think he deserves the right to try?”

  Sadie paused to read the ingredients label on a spice container. “In a perfect world, yes. In my world, unfortunately not.”

  Jasper crunched the final knob off his lollipop stick and ground the ruby shards between his teeth.

  “So what are you planning to do, then?”

  Sadie wheeled the cart around a corner and into the next aisle. “I don’t know. But I’ll figure something out, don’t you worry.”

  “Me? Worry?” He stuck the white lollipop stick between his lips. “That’s your department, sweetheart, not mine.”

  She rolled her eyes at him as Kylie came running up once more.

  “Can Kylie have this, Mom, puh-lease?”

  The soon-to-be five-year-old held what appeared to be a can of edible silly string. Jasper and Sadie exchanged a worried glance.

  “Uh…” Jasper took it from her outstretched fingers. “Why don’t we see what’s in the organic foods section, huh, Kylie?”

  Kylie pouted. “But Kylie wants this!”

  Jasper crossed his arms and stood toe-to-toe with her. Sadie thought they looked adorable like that.

  “Kylie.” He used the “grown-up” tone. “We got pizza, didn’t we?”

  Her head dropped a little. “Yes,” she mumbled.

  “You got a lollipop, didn’t you?”

  Her head went lower.

  “Yes.”

  “So how about if we go look at the birthday cakes, and you can p
ick the design you want your mom to put on your cake this Saturday?”

  Her head lifted a little.

  “And then maybe we can stop by the ice cream case and pick a tasty, sweet, natural-ingredient”—he glanced at Sadie here— “dessert.”

  “That would make Mommy very, very happy,” Sadie declared.

  Kylie’s head bobbed back up like the bobble-headed dog on her teacher’s desk at school. Jasper winked at her.

  “And if Mommy’s happy…,” he began.

  “Then Kylie and Jasper is happy!” she finished with glee.

  “Kylie and Jasper are happy,” Jasper corrected.

  She frowned at him. “That’s what Kylie said, silly.”

  Jasper looked at Sadie as Kylie dragged him toward the bakery. “You know, she took two for the team with that one.”

  Sadie shrugged helplessly as Jasper and Kylie exited the aisle. Glancing back at her list, she frowned as she noticed she had forgotten to pick up a jar of nutmeg in the previous aisle. With a sigh, she swung the cart in an arc and propelled it around the corner. She felt the crash even before she heard it, a rattling connection with a shopper just beyond her line of vision.

  She gasped as a groan hit her ears, and she flew around the side of the cart and out of the aisle to see what mayhem she had caused now.

  Please don’t let it be Smith or Jones…please don’t let it be Smith or Jones!

  Her heart sank when she saw whom she had leveled with her cart. He leaned against an end display of cookies, holding on for dear life to a cardboard cutout of one of the Keebler elves and rapidly rubbing his shin.

  Dmitri Velichko. The Russian.

  Great.

  Chapter Three

  “It’s you.” Sadie realized her tone lacked something in the way of apology, not to mention the simple fact that she hadn’t apologized.

  Dmitri rubbed his shin a few more times before releasing the cardboard Keebler elf, albeit with some obvious reluctance.