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  “Hello?”

  “Jenna. I only have a second. Some woman called, looking for you. She sounded strange. You’re not in trouble, are you? She wasn’t a bill collector, was she?”

  I’m fine, she thought grimly. Nice to hear from you. How are things?

  But Aaron had never been interested in polite conversation, not unless it got him something.

  “Did the woman leave her name?” she asked, knowing it wasn’t a bill collector. She might be failing at her business, but she hadn’t stopped paying her bills.

  “No name. When I said you’d moved back to Texas, she thanked me and hung up.” He shouted something to a server.

  The background noise told her he was in the kitchen of his new restaurant. If she were vindictive, she would have been hoping he gave everyone food poisoning on opening night.

  “You’re calling to tell me someone you don’t know was asking about me and you don’t have any more information than that?”

  “I thought you’d want to know.”

  With that, he hung up.

  She stared at the phone for a few seconds, then shoved it into her pocket. After collecting her purse, she let herself out the back, then checked the lock. Although her car was only a few feet away, she decided to walk around the area and see if she could figure out her next move.

  The conversation with Aaron was confusing, but she decided to ignore it. Anyone looking for her could find her as easily here as in L.A. As for her ex, well, he had the emotional attention span of a gnat. Later, when he wanted something, he would point out he’d done her a favor tonight and would expect to be repaid.

  It was fairly light, although dusk was approaching. The evening was warm—still in the mid-seventies. As she passed a restaurant, she noticed the bar crowd spilling out onto the patio. Maybe it was just her, but there sure seemed to be a lot of couples.

  Looking at the heads bent so close together, listening to the intimate laughter, made her think more about Aaron. Not that they’d ever been like that. It seemed to her she and her ex hadn’t exactly wallowed in the “in love” stage. They’d met when he’d been hired at the restaurant where she’d worked in Phoenix. He was already successful, flown in from L.A. to save an ailing establishment. The owner had promised him free rein and had vowed to fire anyone who didn’t cooperate, so the staff had been nervous about his arrival.

  Jenna remembered her first impression had been of a charming showman who captured everyone’s attention. His style was so different from her deliberate way, his volume in contrast with her quiet voice. She’d been aware of him, intrigued by him and flattered when he’d asked her out.

  They’d mostly talked business—cooking and how she created her recipes. She hadn’t thought he was especially attracted to her and wasn’t sure how she felt about him, so it was a surprise to end up in his bed. From that day on, they’d sort of been together. A couple. For a long time, she, too, had been intrigued by the public persona. Eventually she’d started to realize Aaron was more flash than substance, but for her, a flaw in a partner wasn’t a reason to end a marriage.

  Jenna paused on the sidewalk for a second, looking at the various couples. She’d always wanted what her parents had. One true love. Sure, that sounded like something out of a fairy tale, but she knew it was real. She’d grown up watching true love at work.

  Her parents had met on Beth’s first day of college, taken one look at each other and fallen madly in love. Already aware she couldn’t have children, Beth had resisted Marshall’s advances. Jenna smiled and started walking again. Those had been her mother’s exact words when she told the story. “Marshall’s advances.”

  She could imagine her handsome father pursuing the girl of his dreams. He wasn’t a man who ever lost, and he’d wanted Beth. They’d been engaged within a year, married the following summer, after Marshall had graduated, and started looking for a baby to adopt by early fall. Jenna had shown up in their lives in the spring.

  It was perfect, she thought, happy to have been a part of their storybook lives. And what she’d always wanted. But somehow that kind of relationship had eluded her. While Aaron had obviously cared at first, she’d never felt she was the love of his life. Not that she was so sure he’d been hers, either. But she’d never thought she would end up divorced and without children. She wasn’t sorry she’d come home, she just didn’t understand how she’d gotten so offtrack.

  The store was a disaster. There was no other way to describe it. She knew she didn’t have the experience necessary to be successful, and while retail wasn’t her dream, it was all she currently had. Being smart and hardworking were great, but obviously not enough.

  She lingered outside the window of a clothing boutique, wondering how their sales were.

  The cooking class had been a disaster as well, she thought, remembering the bored looks of her squirming audience. Violet had been right. People didn’t want to attend a lecture. They wanted to get their hands dirty. Have fun, like in the yarn store. There they were always doing. No instructor sat up front, showing them how to knit. They learned by practicing the techniques themselves.

  Violet’s other point about having something to sell that related to the classes made sense, too. Assuming anyone made it through one of her lectures, he or she simply left when Jenna was finished. The customer wasn’t compelled to buy anything. Which made for a crappy bottom line. Even if she gave the occasional class on how to use different equipment, it wasn’t going to be enough to sustain the store. They needed a product customers could buy regularly. Something they liked that made their lives easier. Most people didn’t see the need to own more than one food processor or mixer.

  If she wanted to be successful, she needed to completely change her game plan and her vision for what the store should be. This wasn’t about educating the cooking public, it was about creating a place that was warm and welcoming. A place people wanted to go.

  And while she was making all these changes to her store, she might want to look at herself, she thought. At least move toward having fun with her work and maybe even her life. Or really, what was the point?

  Four

  Violet arrived at nine-thirty, per usual. The store opened at ten, which gave her a half hour to get things in order. If nothing else, she needed to make sure they had enough cash on hand to make change. Less of a problem in a store where no one bought much of anything, but she had high hopes that eventually they would start to move product.

  She pulled in next to Jenna’s Subaru, then walked to the back door and used her key to let herself in. To the left was the small restroom, to the right, the storage area. Boxes were stacked nearly to the ceiling. Jenna had ordered with the idea that she would be selling things in the first week of business. Once they’d realized the store wasn’t going to be an instant success, it had been too late to cancel the deliveries.

  A sale might work, Violet thought. Although it wouldn’t help the bottom line. Still, they had to start moving inventory or they would physically run out of space to put everything.

  She made her way through the towering stacks of boxes to the entrance of the store. Jenna sat by the kitchen area, a small folding table set up in front of her. There were several pads of paper, a few pens and a waiting coffee from Starbucks.

  Jenna looked up and smiled. “Oh, good. You’re here. I have news. We’re closed.”

  Violet felt her mouth start to drop open. She consciously kept it closed and did her best not to let any emotion show.

  “Okay,” she said slowly.

  “Not permanently,” Jenna added with a smile. “At least I hope not. I’m a little punchy. I didn’t sleep at all last night. Everything’s a mess. It’s my fault. I didn’t plan this at all. The store, I mean. You talked about research and projections and I don’t know what any of that is. I literally stood in the parking lot, saw the ‘For Lease’ sign and called because I didn’t know what else to do.”

  Violet pulled out the second folding chair and sank down. “I�
��d wondered,” she admitted. “You didn’t seem really prepared.”

  “Clueless is the word you’re looking for,” Jenna said with a laugh. “You can say it. I won’t mind.”

  “I prefer overly optimistic.”

  “Very PC,” Jenna said. “So in my hours of not sleeping, I thought about what needs to happen to make this place successful. I have every penny I own tied up in this store. Failure isn’t an option. I want to close for a couple of days while we come up with a plan and get it ready to implement. Then we’ll have a big reopening.” She leaned forward. “Violet, you’re the only one at this table who knows anything about retail. What do you think we should do?”

  Violet was surprised by the question. Based on what she knew about Jenna, she’d been expecting a chart with a couple of lists.

  “What kind of changes are you open to?” she asked tentatively.

  “Anything. Everything. If you want me to paint the floors green and sell caterpillars, I will.”

  Violet’s mouth twitched. “That might be going a little too far.”

  “Maybe, but you get my point. I know how to cook. I think I do a decent job explaining how to make something. But that’s it. You were right about having stuff to sell. Not just big-ticket items. We need people coming back week after week, buying things. So how do we do that? I want the classes to be more exciting. I want people enthused. Tell me how to make that happen.”

  Violet looked at her boss. Jenna seemed to be telling the truth. She was intense but focused. “The store has a lot of potential,” she began. “A great location.”

  “That’s what I thought. Well, in the fifteen seconds I considered before signing the lease.”

  “You got lucky,” Violet told her.

  “Let’s hope it wasn’t the last time.” Jenna watched as Violet seemed to consider her words. She leaned toward her. “I need you to be honest with me. Just say it. I promise I won’t be upset.”

  Violet drew a breath. “Okay. There are a lot of different things you can do to bring people in and keep them coming back. For starters, lose the white coat. Yes, you’re a chef, but it’s intimidating. You want people to believe they can do what you do. That it’s easy and fun. Dress like your customers. Maybe a little better.”

  Jenna did her best not to wince. “I love my white coat, but I see your point. My only concern is all my nice clothes are going to get stained. Cooking can be messy.”

  Violet thought for a second. “What about aprons? You could wear different ones depending on what we’re cooking. They could be fun and we could sell them.”

  “Sure. If you think anyone will buy them.”

  “They will if they think they’ll help make the meal taste better.”

  “It’s just an apron.”

  “It’s all about making people feel better about what they do.”

  Jenna made a note on her pad. “What’s next?”

  “Recipes. We have to have them to give out. And we should always have a food sample to offer customers along with the recipe so they can go home and make it that night.” She hesitated. “I mentioned this before, but…”

  “Tell me again,” Jenna urged. “What?”

  “We should offer the items necessary to make the recipe. Put it in bags or baskets or whatever. All the ingredients, except the fresh stuff. So if it requires a can of tomatoes and pasta, they buy that here. We can go slightly gourmet, charge more and have a better profit margin. Sure the markup on a can of tomatoes isn’t much, but multiply that by a hundred and it starts to pay the rent.”

  Jenna had never considered selling food. Her first instinct was to say no, but look at where her instincts had gotten her so far.

  “That would work,” she said slowly, thinking about some of her favorite recipes. “Especially when there are hard-to-find ingredients. I could special order items. Although some of them do require refrigeration.”

  “If they have a limited shelf life, we can tell people they have to preorder. Then they can stop by, pick up the food and then go home and cook it.” Violet straightened in her chair. “We could do classes on cooking for company. A few impressive-looking but easy-to-prepare meals. After the class, people could give us a few days’ notice and come by to pick up all the ingredients, then go home and make the meal.”

  “That sounds like fun,” Jenna said. In the past she’d always cooked what interested her, but maybe she could think about what other people would enjoy, as well. She might not think appetizers were that compelling, but then she wasn’t hosting a cocktail party for twenty.

  And speaking of cocktails… “What about a bartender?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “What if we had a bartender come in and show how to mix different drinks?” She frowned. “That might require a liquor license. But maybe we could set up something with one of the local restaurants around here. All those fancy drinks can seem intimidating.”

  Now Violet was taking notes. “I like that. It would bring in a younger crowd. Not that I don’t love the ladies who lunch.”

  “They do have money.” Jenna thought about her friends. Okay, not friends, but still. They were a potential customer group. “Mothers,” she said slowly. “What can we do with them?”

  “Healthy, organic cooking,” Violet said immediately. “Maybe classes on baby food or what to feed toddlers. Remember that cookbook on burying vegetables into regular food? Something like that.”

  “I like it,” Jenna said. “We could also feature a different cookbook every week. Cook two or three recipes. That would encourage people to try different styles of cooking.” Plus it would be safe for her. Someone else’s recipe.

  “And give us a chance to sell specialty cooking items,” Violet added. “Woks, different pans. That kind of thing, not to mention the cookbooks themselves. Oh, and don’t forget the singles.”

  “What do you mean? Cooking for one? Isn’t that kind of sad?”

  Violet laughed. “Yes, but those of us who live alone have to eat, too.”

  “I live alone,” Jenna said. “I just whip up something.”

  “That’s because you know how. Those of us who aren’t blessed with your cooking background are forced to eat frozen dinners night after night. If we advertised that class in the right places, we could get a lot of people. Meeting someone in a cooking class is a whole lot more appealing than meeting someone in a bar.”

  “Sure,” Jenna said. Singles. She never would have thought of that. But it made sense.

  They continued brainstorming. Violet suggested a website.

  “I know a guy who does decent work for not a lot of money,” she said. “Want me to have him write up a proposal?”

  “Yes. My online experience is limited to finding professional cookware on sale.”

  By eleven, they had a master plan in place. Violet left to talk to the web guy and set up the newspaper advertising. Jenna investigated cookbooks, and came up with a cooking class schedule. She also bit the bullet and bought a large refrigerator for the back room. If they were going to sell perishables, she would need a place to store them.

  She drove to the small print shop her mother had recommended and ordered flyers, copies of recipes, raffle tickets, and discussed the cost of getting custom-screened aprons with the store’s logo. At quarter to five, she returned to the store to find Violet laying printouts of an initial web design on the counter.

  “He was bored,” Violet said cheerfully. “I love it when that happens. He threw this together in about an hour and I have to say I think it’s great.”

  Jenna bent over the different pages. The design was clean, the colors bright. On the side and top were navigation buttons for recipes, cookware, gadgets and more.

  They played with the design and made a few changes.

  “What about this?” Violet asked. “Move this button here?” She’d barely finished speaking when her stomach growled.

  Jenna stared at her. “Didn’t you stop for lunch?”

  “No. I
was busy.”

  Jenna stacked the papers together. “We’ll finish this tomorrow. You’ve already put in a full day. You need to eat. Go on. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  Violet hesitated. “Want to get a margarita at Dos Salsas?”

  The invitation was unexpected. Jenna instantly felt both awkward and shy. It had been years since she’d made a new friend, she thought. Most of the people she worked with in restaurants were guys, and the friends in her life had all been Aaron’s. She certainly hadn’t kept in touch with her friends from here—her uncomfortable coffee date had proven that.

  She wanted to say it was their fault, but she hadn’t called, either. The question was why. Another area that required self-exploration, she told herself. Why had meeting Aaron and getting involved with him changed her so much? It was like he was a star in the heavens and she was simply a circling planet.

  “It wasn’t supposed to be a hard question,” Violet said quietly. “It’s okay. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  Nothing on the other woman’s face gave away what she was thinking, but Jenna knew she’d hurt her.

  “No, wait. I’d love to get a margarita.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “I want to. I got caught up in thinking about my ex. Don’t ask me how. Sometimes my brain is a scary place.”

  “Mine, too.” Violet smiled. “Let’s go.”

  “I swear, if you can figure out what they put in their nachos, I’ll give you my life savings.” Violet grabbed another chip as she spoke.

  Jenna eyed the plate in front of them, then smiled. “How much do you have in your savings?”

  Violet laughed. “Not much, but there would be gratitude, too.”

  “Well, if there’s gratitude, how can I say no?”

  “Seriously?” Violet asked. “You could make these?”

  “Sure. Re-creating a recipe isn’t that hard.”

  “Maybe not for you. I’ve tried a couple of times and I can’t do it.”

  “I’ll show you how.”

  Violet looked both pleased and surprised. “That’s really nice of you.”