Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Andrea gave a half-delirious smile as the whoosh sound effect ricocheted around the townhouse’s kitchen, indicating her email to Martina was on its way.
It was a few hours past business hours, even on the West Coast, but Andrea didn’t care.
She’d done it. The manuscript was in Martina’s grabby hands, at last, and she was free.
It was finally over. The months of frustration, doubt, fear, and uncertainty, now silenced.
Unfortunately, neither Crumpet nor Phantom was awake to celebrate with her, nor was there any champagne to uncork. Andrea knew she could call Lainey back, but in truth, there was only one person on her mind as she closed the laptop and got to her feet.
She’d stashed her phone in the living room to keep herself from being distracted, but she gravitated back to it, cocoa mug in hand, and checked her notifications. At the top, Wes’s name sat with the most recent text:
Time to celebrate?
He’d sent it over an hour ago, and for a moment, she worried it was too late, but replied anyway:
To her surprise, three dots popped up almost immediately. He was still awake? It was creeping up on eleven, and he’d told her he’d started work at a new job site across town.
While she waited for Wes to finish his thoughts, she flipped back to her notifications and spotted a text message from Marren from about an hour earlier. A flicker of panic shot through her at the prospect that something might be wrong with the house, and she quickly opened the text.
You didn’t warn me there would be snow
“Snow?” Andrea’s brow furrowed. Then she saw there was a video attached above the text message, and from the freeze frame, Andrea realized what Marren meant, and she smiled. “Ah, yes. Snow.”
In the south quadrant of Hecate’s Kitchen a large greenspace dominated a city block.
A fountain with Hecate’s three-faced likeness stood in its center, with walking paths and a children’s play area off to one side, a garden on the other.
The site was host to the weekly farmer’s market, art walks, and various festivals throughout the year.
It was one of Andrea’s favorite places in the district in any season, but the council really went all out for the solstice, enchanting the space into a winter wonderland, complete with heat-resistant snowfall, imported frost pixies from Siberia, and a herd of magical reindeer that could actually fly.
William was always quick to point out they were actually caribou, but no one else likely cared.
They wore jingle bells bedazzled along their harnesses and velvet-covered antlers.
A pang of homesickness coursed through Andrea as she tapped the play button on the video.
Marren had taken a 360-degree video that spun slowly, showing a panoramic view of the market, and from the looks of things, the enchanted snow had only just begun to fall.
Laughter and the sounds of delighted children in the background joined with the sound of a swing band playing a jazzy rendition of “White Christmas,” while vendors sold hot cocoa, roasted nuts, and a variety of other Christmas treats from elegantly decorated booths.
In the center of the park, a paddock fenced-in the reindeer who stood at the fence, reveling in the attention and muzzle pats from a troop of eager visitors.
Andrea laughed as one of the reindeer snatched a bag of kettle corn from a man too distracted by a passing woman dressed in a rather short elf costume.
Marren’s laugher sounded in the background of the video at the same time, then the video moved away.
Andrea was about to stop the video when suddenly her heart lurched. Her finger smashed against the screen, freezing it in place, and she narrowed her eyes.
Surely she’d misunderstood … It was a trick of the eyes. A result of not enough sleep.
She pinched at the screen to zoom in closer, then reeled back just as quickly, as though someone had backhanded her across the face.
“You son of a bitch!” she hissed, rewinding a few seconds to play it again, even though in her gut, she knew she wasn’t hallucinating.
There, near the archway over a small footbridge, frosted with snowflakes and icicles, was none other than William Noble—and he wasn’t alone. Tucked under his arm stood a bubbly blonde laughing and sipping from a paper cup.
It was Paige.
Puzzle pieces started snapping into place as Andrea’s heart beat faster and faster.
A reply text from Wes popped up, but she couldn’t tear herself away from the video long enough to check it.
William and Paige were at the winter market together.
As the video panned by slowly, she watched William pull Paige in close and whisper something in her ear, before tilting her chin up with the crook of his finger.
And then he kissed her in the way that he’d kissed Andrea a hundred times before.
Andrea’s stomach churned.
Two weeks ago, it would have bothered her to see him publicly moving on with someone—anyone—but that no longer mattered. If anything, him having a girlfriend might keep him from slinging mud her way through his column. But the fact that it was Paige…?
Paige knew what he’d done. She knew he was a cheating rat.
Then it hit her.
Andrea gasped and got to her feet, unable to sit still any longer. The woman who had sent William the text message with the tacky Christmas lingerie had been listed in his phone as “Allie.” Paige’s middle name! She hadn’t even considered it before—it would have never occurred to her. But now—
Paige was the other woman. Paige had just been biding her time, playing around with Andrea’s man behind her back. And for what?
Andrea hit the forward button on the video in Marren’s text thread and started to send it to Lainey. As the screen changed from one text conversation to the other, she realized she’d also missed a handful of messages from Lainey while finishing her cookbook.
The last messages Lainey had sent:
You need to see this!
Accompanying the message was a link to Spun Sugar Sweets.
The imposter bakery? Andrea frowned, then continued to Lainey’s next message bubble:
I got bored while I was on the treadmill and decided to do some digging. The council has the owner listed as Sadie Farrow. Is she related to Paige? Same last name anyway. Maybe I’ve just got my tinfoil hat on too tightly.
And, a few hours later, another message with the word Hello?
Andrea’s panic spiraled faster and faster, swirling around inside her mind like an overzealous sommelier swirling a glass of wine.
Sadie Farrow was Paige’s sister-in-law. And the two of them were thick as thieves.
A few years back, Paige had tried to get Andrea to hire Sadie as a baker, but when Andrea brought her in for a trial interview, it hadn’t gone well, and Andrea declined to proceed.
It had caused a bit of friction between her and Paige at the time, but years had passed.
Now she was opening her own bakery in town?
And Paige was dating William.
Then there was William.
Ugh.
He review-bombed Sunset Sweets one week, and promoted Sadie’s shop the next. Was it all for Paige?
Another even darker thought flashed through Andrea’s mind—the spreadsheet!
Her fingers had started to tremble and she abandoned the message to Lainey without forwarding the incriminating video. She dropped her phone altogether and scrambled back to her laptop and attempted to open the sales spreadsheet.
The error message popped up again.
Andrea swore loudly enough that it startled Crumpet from his nap beside the back door.
The terrier got to his feet, woofing under his breath as his half-asleep thoughts clarified and his little doggie mind fully joined the land of consciousness.
He looked around and then to Andrea, as though expecting her to sic him on an intruder.
If only she could. The problem was, the intruder, so to speak, was about 3,000 miles away and likely enjoying a nightcap with William at his condo, laughing and talking about the glowing evening at the solstice celebration, and perhaps sharing a laugh over Andrea’s na?veté.
Andrea’s hands balled into fists.
Andrea was muttering a string of progressively more colorful words to herself as she lugged her second suitcase down to the first floor.
She’d managed to book a seven o’clock flight back to Los Angeles the following morning and wanted everything ready before she attempted to sleep.
Crumpet and Phantom sat together on the couch—as close as she’d seen them, anyway—both eyeing her with equal levels of concern.
Although Crumpet’s look appeared to lean more toward nervousness while Phantom’s expression remained skeptical.
“So, you’re just going to abandon me then?” Phantom asked with a swish of his tail.
Andrea exhaled and rolled the suitcase to a stop beside the larger case, then swept her hair out of her eyes and turned to face the exasperated cat.
“I’m not abandoning you. I already texted Marren, and she said she’ll have her pet sitter come and check on you, and she also said that Maya will probably come spend time with you, too.
She’s going to check with her first thing in the morning.
So, if anything, you’ll have even more attention than while I was here. ”
Phantom made a small harumph sound and kneaded his front paws into the sofa, flexing his nails one at a time. “I still don’t see what you think you’re going to accomplish with all this.”
She’d accidentally awakened him from his slumber when she started frantically packing the first suitcase, and begrudgingly filled him in on the details. For all his scorn, the cat had a thirst for human gossip.
“What do you mean? I’m going home to take back what is mine. What are you suggesting I do? Leave my business and its future in the hands of the home-wrecking hussy?”
“I thought you weren’t living together? You had a whole thing about it. So she wasn’t really a home-wrecker.”