Strawberry Lace

  Strawberry Lace

  AMY BELDING BROWN

  Strawberry Lace

  Copyright ©1994 by Amy Belding Brown.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from Don Congdon Associates, Inc.; the agency can be reached at dca@doncongdon.com.

  ISBN-13: 9781940941837

  Contents

  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 One

  When Chelsea received the request in mid-May to cater Muriel Winter’s Independence Day buffet, she almost said no. It was her first reaction, an automatic, almost instinctive response. In fact, if it had been Muriel who called, instead of her personal secretary, she would have refused on the spot. But Beth Harmon’s warmly efficient voice made her pause just long enough to consider the possibilities. Muriel Winter’s parties were attended by the wealthiest summer people in southern Maine. Chelsea knew it would be an incredible opportunity for her fledgling catering business, one she couldn’t afford to pass up.

  She accepted with just the slightest edge of bitterness in her voice. “Strawberry Lace is always glad to welcome new clients. May I ask how Mrs. Winter selected us?”

  “She was disappointed with her last caterer,” Beth said. “She’s been looking around. Someone mentioned your name. Are you familiar with the Winter estate?”

  “I was there once, several years ago. I don’t remember many details.” Chelsea’s mind flickered darkly and she tugged at a strand of her strawberry-blond hair to remind herself this was a business call. No time for dragging up old grievances. “I’d like to come up and take a look around, if that’s possible.”

  “Of course. You name the time.”

  “How about tomorrow?” Chelsea squinted at her calendar. “I’m free at eleven.”

  “That would be fine. Come to the service entrance. I’ll meet you there.”

  Chelsea penciled in the appointment and circled the fourth of July on the big wall calendar before she called Lori. She knew her older sister would be thrilled at the prospect of doing the Winter party. None of Chelsea’s resentment had ever rubbed off on her.

  But then, Lori wasn’t Holly Martin’s best friend. She hadn’t gone through weeks and weeks of sympathetic anguish as Holly struggled to recover from her broken engagement with Brandon Winter. It had taken almost six months. Six months of watching Holly fade away to skin and bones because she stopped eating. Six months of listening to her cry every time they talked. Six months of fighting her own growing indignation, before Holly finally decided she had to leave Maine and get as far away as possible from Muriel Winter and her East Coast money. So now Holly was living in Los Angeles. Chelsea hadn’t seen her in over a year, and she wasn’t likely to either. Because Holly still hadn’t gotten over Brandon.

  And it was all Muriel Winter’s doing. She had taken one look at Holly and decided she wasn’t good enough for her son. Decided that Holly’s slim, dark-eyed beauty and her generous, loving personality counted for nothing. All that mattered was that the Martin family didn’t have money or culture, that they didn’t come from the social elite, that they weren’t summer people, but fishermen. At his mother’s insistence, Brandon had broken the engagement one hot August afternoon on the Winters’ private beach. And almost three years of Holly’s devotion to the tall, handsome financier had been trashed. Just like that.

  Chelsea still couldn’t think about it without seething. She vividly recalled Holly’s phone call the night of the breakup. Her friend had been close to hysteria, her breathing so rapid and loud that Chelsea could hear the gasps over the phone. She’d dropped everything and rushed over to Holly’s apartment, where she’d spent all night trying to calm her down. Holly was still wearing her engagement ring then, the huge heart-shaped solitaire shimmering on her left hand, and Chelsea had kept looking at it and wanting to pull it off her finger and flush it down the toilet. But when she suggested that Holly remove it, her friend had vehemently refused. She’d worn the ring for weeks afterward, until Chelsea finally told her how pathetic it looked.

  Holly had glanced down at her hand and smiled faintly. “You’re right. It is pathetic. And so am I.” She slid it off her finger and dropped it into Chelsea’s hand. “You take it.”

  “Me? No, Holly—come on.” Chelsea tried to hand it back to her and then thought better of it. “What am I supposed to do with it?”

  Holly shrugged. “I don’t know. Sell it. Buy yourself a new van for the business.”

  Chelsea still had the ring, locked in a safe deposit box down at Merchant’s Bank. She was resolved to keep it and give it back to Holly when she finally got over Brandon Winter. If that day ever came.

  She shook herself out of her memories and reached for the phone. Lori answered on the fifth ring.

  “Guess what, sis?” She made her voice bright. There was no point in sending bad vibes over the phone. Not when her sister was seven months pregnant with her first baby. “We just got a big one.”

  “The Gables?” Lori sounded excited already.

  “Even bigger. Muriel Winter’s Independence Day party.”

  “You’re kidding! Muriel Winter?”

  “No joke. I’m going up there tomorrow to look the place over. Want to come along?”

  “Of course! I wouldn’t miss it!”

  “Great.” Chelsea brushed at a lemon-colored stain on her apron. “I’ll pick you up at ten-thirty.”

  Chelsea was wearing her trademark pink lace blouse and brushed-denim skirt when she picked Lori up in the van. For three years now she’d used the van almost exclusively. It wasn’t just that her little red Toyota was on its last legs, but driving the van around Maynard Landing, even into Portland, was just good business sense. The dark blue Dodge with its logo of a wicker basket of strawberries trailing vines and streamers of lace was advertising, after all. She’d painted it herself after weeks of laboring over the design, had lettered the words STRAWBERRY LACE carefully over the logo, with the phrase Catering to the Cream of the Coast written in a long, lacy curve underneath. She had never been entirely pleased with the motto. It seemed a bit too pretentious, but Lori and her husband Paul had loved it, and, as Paul pointed out, it was too risky from a business perspective to change it now.

  The business had done quite well, growing by word of mouth over the past three years, drawing most of its clientele from professional upper-middle-class couples who worked in Portland and lived in the beautiful little coastal towns nearby. It had yet to insinuate its way into the wealthy summer population, but perhaps now that would change. They would just have to keep their fingers crossed and hope all went well.

  “I’m going to have nightmares about this for weeks,” Lori said as she settled herself into the passenger seat and strapped her seat belt over her swollen waist. “From what I’ve heard, Muriel Winter is the kind of person who notices everything. One detail out of place, and we’re dead.”

  “We have to think positively.” Chelsea swung out of Lori’s driveway and headed up the hill out of Maynard Landing. The Winter estate was thirty minutes away, at the end of a long, winding road off Route 1. You drove for miles through
pine forest, thinking the road must be taking you all the way to Portland, until the woods suddenly opened up and you could see the house, high on a rise overlooking the sea. It was huge, large enough to be an inn: a rambling, two-story, white clapboard building with deep porches and wide, sloping lawns, the grass so luxuriantly thick it felt like velvet under your feet. At the foot of the lawns was the ocean, which rolled constantly onto a crescent of sand beach, tucked between high rocky ledges.

  “I wonder if we’ll actually get to see Muriel herself,” said Lori. “Maybe she’ll want to meet us.”

  “I doubt it,” Chelsea said. “If so, it’ll just be to look us over. See if we’re presentable. From what I’ve heard, she has a secret suspicion that all Maine natives are ignorant, bumbling fools.”

  “You’re thinking about her attitude toward Holly.”

  Chelsea nodded. “The one time I was invited to a cocktail party as Holly’s friend, Queen Muriel didn’t even introduce herself to me. She was too busy holding court for all the yacht owners. They have boats that they can’t operate without a crew, but they all think they’re sailors.”

  Lori chuckled. “For the sake of the business, I hope we don’t meet her. One look at you smoldering away and she’ll cancel the deal.”

  “You’re right.” Chelsea slowed the van and turned right onto Route 1. She glanced at her sister and smiled. Lori was sitting with her hands cupped over the swell of her belly, a bemused expression on her beautiful oval face. “I promise, I’ll behave myself.”

  Chelsea followed the gravel driveway all the way around to the back of the house and parked at the service entrance. She scowled through the windshield, surveying the heavy wooden door. Talk about pretentious. It looked as if it had been acquired directly from an English castle. It was overhung with ivy, which had clearly been trained to grow over the thick stones of the building’s foundation. A flagstone terrace flanked by low shrubs was tucked into a small recess to the door’s right. As she got out of the van, she spotted a cluster of tennis courts on a ridge of land to their left, and beyond them, a low, gray building that could only be a riding stable.

  “Wow!” Lori circled the van to join her. “I had no idea it was so elegant! This is like a palace! Do you think we’ll get a complete tour?”

  “One way or the other. If we’re not shown the whole place, we’ll use one of our undercover techniques.” Chelsea grinned at her sister. “We might as well get started.” She crossed the parking lot to the door and knocked twice before she spotted the bell, hidden under a cluster of ivy leaves.

  She was reaching for it when the door opened suddenly and Chelsea found herself looking up into a pair of the darkest, most attractive eyes she’d ever seen.

  “Oh, hello.” She was abruptly, oddly flustered. The man in front of her was incredibly handsome, with the chiseled, regular features you usually saw only in magazine ads. He looked a few years older than she, perhaps in his early thirties. Damp strands of black hair hung over his forehead. A lower lip slightly fuller than his upper one gave him an intensely sensual aura. He was wearing faded blue jeans and a worn white T-shirt, through which she could clearly see the tight undulation of his well-developed muscles. There was a tiny gold stud in his left ear, and, she noticed, as she glanced down in a vain attempt to recover her equilibrium, his feet were bare.

  “May I help you?” The owner of the eyes smiled down at her.

  Chelsea took a small step backward. “We’re from Strawberry Lace.”

  The man’s smile disappeared; he gave her a blank look.

  “The catering service.”

  “And?”

  “We have an eleven o’clock appointment with Miss Harmon.”

  “Oh, yeah.” The smile returned, broadened into a grin; a deep, curving dimple appeared in his left cheek. “Beth did mention something about a meeting. Hang on, I’ll get her.” He disappeared briefly, leaving Chelsea and Lori standing at the open door.

  Lori chuckled. “Who do you figure he is—the butler?”

  Chelsea shrugged. “Maybe the chauffeur. The butler wouldn’t leave us standing here, would he?”

  The man returned. “Sorry to keep you waiting. Come on in. Beth’ll be right with you.” His eyes were shining with laughter.

  Chelsea followed him into a wide room with high ceilings and dark wood paneling. It was empty, except for a counter that ran the length of one wall.

  The man was still smiling and watching her with those disturbing eyes. Chelsea tried to make herself smile back at him, but her face felt wooden and stiff.

  “Sorry I can’t offer you a place to sit.” He shrugged and opened his hands. “Would you like to wait in the kitchen?” Chelsea noted his long fingers.

  “We’re fine,” Lori said.

  The man’s eyes flicked over to her briefly, then settled again on Chelsea, who felt a distinct wave of relief a moment later, when Beth Harmon came rushing through a door at the far end of the room. Her short, curly hair was damp and her face was flushed. Her clothes looked hastily put on. Chelsea shot a quick glance back at the man. His eyes had shifted, and he was now watching Beth with an appreciative smile. Chelsea held out her hand.

  “Miss Harmon? I’m Chelsea Adams and this is Lori LeBlanc.”

  Beth shook their hands warmly. “Please call me Beth. I see you’ve already met Jeff.”

  “Only informally.” The man was suddenly beside Beth, extending his hand toward Chelsea. “Jeff Blaine.” He wrapped his fingers around hers. “At your service.”

  Chelsea was startled to find herself blushing. It was something about the way he was looking at her, the intensity of his gaze, as if he were mentally stripping her. She nodded quickly, withdrew her hand and turned to Beth. “I’m looking forward to seeing the grounds.”

  “Of course. I’m sorry if I kept you waiting.”

  “No problem.” Actually, it was good to know that Muriel Winter’s servants had lives of their own, that working in the big house sometimes had its moments of pleasure.

  The tour started in the kitchen. Beth pushed a button on the entryway wall and two sections of paneling slid open to reveal an enormous kitchen. Lori gasped with delight, and even Chelsea couldn’t contain her excitement.

  “This is wonderful!” She ran her hand over one of the three, long, polished wood counters. The walls were faced in aged red bricks and divided by multipaned windows. Rows of polished brass pendant lights hung over the counters. Pots, pans, and ladles hung from a latticework of beams between the counters. Chelsea glanced out one window into a small, informal garden bounded by hedges which, she saw, were actually thick rosebushes. A stone birdbath and two white-painted, wrought-iron benches were surrounded by a profusion of ferns and flowers. She imagined herself sitting on one of the benches, reading or just enjoying the colors and smells. What would it feel like to live in a place like this, with so much luxury and beauty available always?

  Lori’s hand on her shoulder pulled her out of her reverie and she turned to find Beth opening another door.

  “This is the pantry.” Beth swept her hand through the doorway, inviting them to explore the long, narrow room. It was filled to the ceiling with ancient, glass-walled cupboards. “You’re welcome to use all the space you need, of course,” Beth said. “Mrs. Winter’s only requirement is that it’s left in the condition in which it was found.”

  “That won’t be a problem,” said Chelsea crisply. “We always clean up after an affair.”

  Beth nodded. “Mrs. Winter thoroughly investigated your reputation before she chose Strawberry Lace. She doesn’t enjoy taking chances.” She turned back to the kitchen.

  Chelsea rolled her eyes at Lori, who gave her an admonishing frown and gestured toward Beth, who was still speaking.

  “Mrs. Winter wants the party centered on the lawn directly off the dining room. I’ll show you.”

  Chelsea glanced again toward the pantry. “Does Mrs. Winter prefer that we use her serving pieces or shall we provide our own?”


  Beth gave her a startled look. “Mrs. Winter always uses her own. She wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  “Then I’ll need to take some more time in the kitchen area.”

  “Of course.” Beth seemed agitated, impatient. “Let me finish the tour first and then you can take all the time you need.” Beth led the way to a door at the far end of the kitchen.

  Chelsea swallowed a smile. Beth clearly wanted to get the tour over with, so she could get back to Jeff. She couldn’t blame her either. There had been something about him, beyond his amazing good looks, that would excite any red-blooded American woman. He was alive in a way that had made her own skin tingle just being in the same room with him.

  She followed Lori and Beth up a narrow flight of stairs to the dining room. Like the kitchen, it was huge, dominated by a long walnut table and antique Chippendale chairs centered on the shining, parquet floor. It was papered in pale mint; one long wall was given over to a row of French doors which opened onto a flagstone patio and the sloping lawn beyond.

  Beth waved her hand in the direction of the ocean. “There should be a tent set up on the lawn to accommodate the guests in case of rain. Is that something you can arrange?”

  “Of course.”

  “Good.” Beth smiled. With relief, Chelsea thought. Probably if they hadn’t been able to provide a tent, she would have had to arrange for it. And a million other little details.

  “I assume she’d like cocktails first?” Lori asked.

  “Yes, at about four o’clock, with dinner starting no later than seven. Buffet-style, unless it rains, in which case it should be sit-down.” Beth crossed to a door on the wall opposite the windows. “In here are a couple of smaller dining rooms. You may use them if you think it’s necessary.”

  Chelsea checked out the two smaller rooms. One had a fireplace and a small, round dining table. Blue and green chintz fabric decorated the upholstered chairs. It was a perfect place to set up a dessert buffet. She slipped her notebook out of her purse and started writing. Her best ideas often attacked her when she was on the premises, and it wasn’t always easy to remember them later. She wrote furiously, only vaguely aware of Lori’s string of routine questions. Lori was the detail person, the one who made sure all the questions were asked, all the fussy particulars organized. This allowed Chelsea to let her mind run wild, which was the real secret to their success. They were creative and careful at the same time, a rare combination. Chelsea looked up from her notebook to find Lori and Beth standing in the doorway to the main dining room.