Spoonful of Christmas Read online

  The Cupcake Diaries: Spoonful of Christmas

  DARLENE PANZERA

  Dedication

  For my husband, Joe, and our children, Samantha, Robert, and Jason, and also for our special cousin Brandi, whom we love so much.

  Contents

  * * *

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Recipe for Peppermint Hot Chocolate Cupcakes from Malorie Gibson of Jackson, New Jersey

  An Excerpt from The Cupcake Diaries: Sweet On You

  An Excerpt from The Cupcake Diaries: Recipe for Love

  An Excerpt from The Cupcake Diaries: Taste of Romance

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  By Darlene Panzera

  An Excerpt from Rescued by a Stranger by Lizbeth Selvig

  An Excerpt from Chasing Morgan by Jennifer Ryan

  An Excerpt from Throwing Heat by Jennifer Seasons

  An Excerpt from Private Research by Sabrina Darby

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter One

  * * *

  Gifts of time and love are surely the basic ingredients of a truly merry Christmas.

  —Peg Bracken

  ANDI GLANCED AT the number on the caller ID, picked up the phone, and tried to mimic the deep, sultry voice of a sexy siren. “Hello, Creative Cupcakes.”

  “What if I told you I’d like to order a Mistletoe Magic cupcake with a dozen delicious kisses on top?”

  She smiled at the sound of Jake’s voice. “Mistletoe Magic?”

  “I was guaranteed that the person who eats it will receive a dozen kisses by midnight.”

  “What if I told you,” Andi said, playing along, “that you don’t have to eat a cupcake to get a kiss, and the magic will begin the minute you walk through the front door?”

  Jake chuckled. “I’m on my way.”

  Andi’s sister, Kim, and best friend, Rachel, watched her with amused expressions on their faces.

  “I hope Mike and I still flirt with each other after we’re married,” Rachel said, her sing-song voice a tease. “But the name ‘Mistletoe Magic’ isn’t half bad. Maybe we should make a red velvet cupcake with a Hershey’s kiss and miniature holly leaf sprinkles on top.”

  Kim finished boxing a dozen maraschino cherry cupcakes and handed them to the customer at the counter. “As if we don’t have enough sales already.”

  “Sales are great,” Andi agreed. “We’ve booked orders for eighteen holiday parties. Now, if I can only figure out what to get Jake for Christmas, life would be perfect.”

  Rachel rang up the next customer’s order. “Mike and I decided our Hollywood honeymoon will be our gift to each other.”

  “Are you serious?” Kim picked up a pastry bag from the back worktable. “You—the woman who can’t walk three feet past a store window without buying anything—are not going to get Mike a Christmas gift? Not even a little something?”

  “It is hard,” she admitted. “But I promised him I wouldn’t. I also promised I wouldn’t go overboard with spending on the wedding arrangements.”

  “You could always have a small, simple wedding like Jake and I did,” Andi suggested.

  Rachel’s red curls bounced back and forth as she shook her head. “I already booked the Liberty Theater for the reception. I know it’s expensive, but the palace-like antique architecture is so beautiful, I couldn’t help myself. I’ve always dreamed of—”

  “Being Cinderella?” Kim joked.

  “I do want a Cinderella wedding,” Rachel crooned. “I figure I can bake my own cake and skimp on other wedding details to stay within our budget.”

  Andi didn’t think Rachel knew the first thing about staying within a budget but decided it was best not to argue. Instead, she turned toward her younger sister. “Kim, what are you getting Nathaniel for Christmas?”

  “I’m not sure.” Kim shrugged away. “Maybe I should just get him a new set of luggage tags.”

  Rachel frowned. “That’s not very romantic.”

  “No, but it’s practical,” Andi said, coming to Kim’s defense. “Nathaniel’s probably getting her the same thing.”

  “He planned to fly to his family’s home in Sweden this Christmas,” Kim confessed, her dark eyebrows drawing together. “But I told him I couldn’t go, and he didn’t want to go without me.”

  “Of course you can’t go!” Rachel said, bracing her hands against the marble counter. “I need you to be my bridesmaid!”

  “It would have been awkward spending Christmas with his family anyway,” Kim said, as she piped vanilla icing over the cupcakes. “It’s not like I’m part of his family or like we’re even engaged. In fact, I don’t know what we are.”

  “You two are great together,” Andi encouraged. “You are both artistic, enjoy nature, and love to travel.”

  Kim nodded, then looked up, her expression earnest. “But what else? I’m beginning to wonder if I should tell Nathaniel to go to Sweden without me.”

  “And miss my wedding? But you’ll need a dance partner at the reception,” Rachel reminded her. “He wouldn’t go and leave you stranded without a date on Christmas Eve, would he?”

  Kim hesitated. “I don’t know.”

  The bells on the front door jingled as a man in his late forties wearing a pricey three-piece business suit entered the shop with a briefcase in hand.

  “Are you the owners of Creative Cupcakes?” he asked, his expression hopeful.

  Andi stepped forward and smiled. “Yes, we are.”

  “I’m Preston Pennyworth.” He placed his briefcase on the end of the counter and released the latch. “And I have an offer I think you might like.”

  “What kind of offer?” Rachel asked, anticipation lighting her faint-freckled face.

  Mr. Pennyworth handed them each a set of papers a half-inch thick. “An offer to buy Creative Cupcakes.”

  Thirty minutes later, after the businessman had left, Andi, Rachel, and Kim sat staring at the pink-swirled, strawberry parfait cupcake they’d placed at the center of the table for Rachel’s birthday.

  “I can’t believe that just happened,” Andi said, breaking the silence.

  “A million dollars is a lot of money,” Rachel commented.

  “Enough for each of us to start our own businesses,” Kim added.

  Andi picked up the long golden cupcake cutter they’d bought to celebrate the grand opening of Creative Cupcakes and held it tight in her hand. “The fact we own the property is a huge plus. And our revenue from shipping cupcakes and packaged mixes nationwide has increased every month, making our shop very attractive to prospective buyers.” She paused. “But, of course, we’d never sell to him or anyone else who offered.”

  “No,” Rachel chorused. “Of course not.”

  “Even though I could travel to every art gallery around the world,” Kim said dreamily. “Or buy my own art gallery to house all my paintings.”

  Rachel gasped. “I could have the wedding of the century.”

  “I could put a down payment on a big house with twenty bedrooms,” Andi told them. “A master suite for me and Jake, a bedroom for each of the girls, and—”

  “What would you do with the other seventeen bedrooms?” Rachel demanded.

  “I’d use them as guest rooms.”

  Kim laughed. “Sounds like a hotel, but knowing you, you’d probably invite every homeless person on the street into the house for the night.”

  “Im
agine how many people I could help,” Andi countered. “I’d be doing a good deed.”

  “Speaking of good deeds,” Rachel said, nodding to the cupcake cutter in her hand, “are you going to split that cupcake?”

  Andi divided Rachel’s birthday cupcake into threes and served them each a piece on a napkin, as was their tradition. In the past they’d divided the cupcake to cut calories, and this year was no exception. They had only five weeks before they had to squeeze into their slinky designer dresses for Rachel’s wedding.

  Because their birthdays were spaced four months apart, they also set goals for themselves from one person’s birthday to the next—which, of course, was much easier than setting goals for a whole year.

  As usual, Andi had an ever-growing list of goals, but her first one was to tell her husband about Preston Pennyworth’s outrageous offer.

  AN HOUR LATER Andi met Jake for lunch at the Captain’s Port, the restaurant where they had first met. Out the window, a seal bobbed up and down in the wake left behind from the large cargo vessels making their way down the Columbia River toward the Pacific Ocean.

  Andi bobbed up and down in her seat as well, anxious to see Jake’s reaction to the news she just gave him.

  “He offered to buy Creative Cupcakes for a million dollars?” Jake’s eyebrows shot upward. “What did you tell him?”

  Andi laughed. “First our jaws hit the floor from shock. Then I let Mr. Pennyworth know how hard we had worked to make the shop a success. And you know what he did? He upped his offer to one-point-two million.”

  “That’s twice what it’s worth.”

  “Pennyworth said his daughter has a dream to own a cupcake shop, and he’s determined to buy her one, no matter what the cost. They love our view of the Astoria-Megler Bridge through our shop windows and have made it clear they don’t want to be rivals with us.”

  “Of course not. We’d put them out of business.”

  “That’s why they want to buy us out and then open other stores across the country using our name and logo.”

  Jake let out a soft whistle, obviously impressed.

  “They said if they bought Creative Cupcakes, they’d also want rights to the recipes,” Andi continued, then scowled. “The recipes handed down to me from my mother.”

  The expression on Jake’s face seemed more hesitant than sympathetic—not what she had expected.

  “You turned him down, didn’t you?” he asked.

  “Of course I turned him down. I wouldn’t sell the shop for any amount of money. Would you?”

  He’d won her over with his whole-hearted support of the cupcake shop earlier that year. Since then, he’d become her business partner, her husband, and a father to her six-year-old daughter, Mia. So why was he looking at her as if he were unsure what to say?

  Andi frowned, then repeated the question. “Would you sell Creative Cupcakes?”

  Jake cleared his throat. “I think we should leave all options on the table until we’ve had a chance to discuss the matter.”

  Andi longed to brush the light brown hair off his forehead and check his temperature to see if he was feeling okay, because at the moment he didn’t sound anything like the man she had fallen in love with. “What is there to discuss?”

  “I have news for you, too,” Jake said, reaching across the table to take her hand.

  Oh-oh. She didn’t like the shadow in his eyes or the ominous tone in his voice.

  “Something . . . good?” she ventured.

  “I’ve been offered a job—in Washington—as a staff reporter,” he said quickly. “It’s a big step up with a double pay raise, but—”

  “Oh, Jake!” Andi gushed, her anxiety slipping away. “That’s fantastic! But I’m not surprised. Your articles for the Astoria Sun have been gaining national recognition.”

  Jake flashed her a big smile. “I’ve always dreamed of an opportunity like this, but I never thought in a million years they’d contact me . . . or that you would be okay with it.”

  “Why wouldn’t I be okay with it? The commute shouldn’t be too bad. Washington is just over the bridge.”

  Jake’s smile faded. “Not Washington State, Andi.”

  “No?” The back of her throat closed. He couldn’t possibly mean—

  “Washington, D.C.” he affirmed. “I’d be working for the Washington Post.”

  Her jaw dropped for the second time that day, and for a moment she couldn’t breathe. “Th-that’s the other side of the country.”

  Jake pulled her hand to his mouth for a quick kiss. “I know. We’d have to move. But just think—you could branch out, open a second cupcake shop there, create your own nationwide chain of stores.”

  “Leave Rachel and Kim?” Andi’s heart slammed against her ribs with a jolt that was downright painful.

  Then she looked at the eager expression on Jake’s face and realized her own dreams of opening the cupcake shop would never have come to fruition if it weren’t for his support. Now—especially as his wife—shouldn’t she return the favor and support his dreams, too?

  “I told the senior editor I had a family and would need to discuss the offer with you,” Jake told her. “But he’d like a decision by the first of the year.”

  Andi thought of her first marriage and how badly it had ended—with her deadbeat husband running off and leaving her to support Mia on her own. She’d been blessed to meet Jake, who had lost his wife to cancer and was also a single parent.

  But could she pick up and move away from the rest of her family and friends, the people with whom she’d spent her whole life? She’d never lived outside Astoria, Oregon. It was all she knew. And unlike her adventurous sister, Kim, it was all she had ever cared to know.

  “Promise me you’ll think about it?” Jake asked.

  Andi swallowed hard and nodded. “I will.”

  Chapter Two

  * * *

  Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love!

  —Hamilton Wright Mabie

  RACHEL SPUN AROUND in front of the mirror, the skirt of her white fairytale wedding gown swishing past the others’ knees in the crowded back bedroom of her mother’s house.

  “What do you think?” she asked, giving them a big smile as she turned first this way and then the other.

  “You look fat,” Kim teased.

  “I do not!” she said, scrunching her face. “Except for Thanksgiving dinner, I’ve been eating nothing but salad for two whole weeks.”

  “You’re beautiful,” Andi affirmed. She held still while Rachel’s mother, Sarah, stuck pins into the hem of her holly green bridesmaid dress. “Mike will be mesmerized the moment he sees you walk down the aisle.”

  “Don’t you mean hypnotized?” Sarah joked, as she pulled a loose thread off her daughter’s sleeve. “Like the poor souls who fall victim to his magic tricks?”

  “I think he’s the one who must have hypnotized Rachel to convince her to break her two-date-only rule and marry him so fast,” Andi said, breaking into a grin.

  “Mike’s too busy driving the Cupcake Mobile and working on his miniature models for the movie studios to perform any magic tricks these days,” Rachel informed them.

  “What about when he kisses you?” Kim asked, her face etched with mock innocence. “Didn’t you tell us his kisses were magical?”

  “One of a kind,” Rachel agreed. “Mom, when will the bridesmaid dresses be finished?”

  “Unless something goes wrong, I’ll have them stitched together and hemmed next week.”

  “Nothing can go wrong,” Rachel said, twirling in front of the mirror again.

  “I hope you’re right,” Andi said, looping an arm around her shoulders. “But not everything always goes as planned. Remember how it rained on my wedding day back in September?”

  Rachel nodded. Andi’s wedding had been full of last-minute changes due to the weather. The ceremony, set to take place on the waterfront dock, had to be moved to an inside pavilion. Jake’s
daughter, Taylor, and Andi’s daughter, Mia, both six, soaked the fancy shoes dyed to match their dresses when they jumped in a puddle. And the umbrella’s donated last minute by the Fish ’N’ Nets cafe for the bridal party were imprinted with tiny dancing shrimp.

  Andi and Jake had been so much in love that none of it mattered to them. But Rachel couldn’t fathom what she’d do if something like that happened to her.

  She wanted her wedding to be perfect.

  KIMBERLY NICOLE BURKE dipped a paintbrush into the can of green paint she’d perched on the top of the ladder. Then, using broad, sweeping strokes she created the branches of an evergreen tree on the glass of the large six-by-six shop window. A small dab of blue on the snowman’s button, a red swirl on the lollipop sticking out of the stocking, and there! Her window decorations were finished.

  She was leaning back to admire her work when Andi came out the front door, bundled in her coat, carrying a coiled strand of multicolored Christmas lights.

  “Ready for these?” Andi asked, lifting the bundle of bulbs up to her.

  Kim nodded. “I want to decorate the whole shop and have a good old-fashioned Christmas like we did when Mom was still with us.”

  “That would be nice,” Andi said, her voice soft. “You never know when it might be our last Christmas together.”

  Kim thought of Nathaniel, his blond hair, his Swedish accent, his cute, quirky ways. Before she met him, she’d spent several years alone. And if he wasn’t as committed as she was to their relationship, she might be alone again by this time next year.

  “Ja,” Kim said, mimicking his lilting Scandinavian tone. “You never know.”

  “Careful you don’t fall off the ladder,” Andi warned.

  Kim laughed. “After I’ve flown to Sweden, bungee jumped in Italy, hiked to the top of Mount Hood, and parasailed in the Bahamas, you’re worried about me falling off a ladder?”