Truffles and Troubles: Book 1 in The Chocolate Cafe Series Read online

  “You really don’t need that.” Mac said, whispering despite the fact that it was only the two of them. “The whole place has an alarm, remember?”

  “I really don’t care! It’s cool.” Sabrina whispered back. The lock clicked and she swung the door open.

  What had been a fog of scent now hit the two of them like a tidal wave. Vanilla, nutmeg, rum, lavender, something that smelled distinctly sea-like…. it all poured out of Sabrina’s marvelous little workshop. “Enter if ye dare.” Sabrina called out to the high, dark ceiling, her voice echoing into the rafters.

  Mac hit the light switch and the bare bulbs strung like a net above them flickered on a bit slower than usual. The girls breathlessly waited for the lights to turn on.

  “You’ve been paying the electric bill, haven’t you?” Sabrina asked, one eyebrow arched incredulously.

  “Of course.” Mac said, “Oh, wait though… it’s the fifth, right?”

  “Right.” Sabrina pulled her black sweater over her head, revealing a ripped concert tee-shirt from a show they had snuck into as teens. She called it her ‘working shirt’.

  “So Victoria came by for the rent?” Sabrina paused, the wheels almost audibly turning in her head as she tried to remember. The shop had been a whirl of activity the past month, so Mac didn’t blame her for having to rewind a bit.

  “Come to think of it, no. She hasn’t.”

  “Strange that she would miss her rent check,” Mac said, idly rolling a cacao bean along one of Sabrina’s tables. She frowned a bit, trying to quell what she was sure was unnecessary concern.

  “I know it’s almost impossible to actually care for that woman’s well being, but being late to pick up the rent is very out of character.”

  She was not the most-liked woman in town and certainly had not been Mac’s grandfather’s favorite. For his final three terms as mayor, Victoria Dunleavy had run against him, convinced that he and his ‘old school values’ were standing in the way of a lucrative future for their little town. She flaunted her money, her many fiancés, and showcased her broody son like he was the Second Coming.

  “Something awful must have happened,” Sabrina snorted. “That woman would have to be dead before she missed soaking up all her cash.”

  Despite herself and her lifelong dislike of Mrs. Dunleavy, Mac felt a little sting at Sabrina’s words. Yes, Victoria had always treated Mac and her grandfather with barely veiled disdain. Yes, she did her best to inveigle ‘the masses’ with her couture sheath dresses and antique jewelry, all while shouting about the good of the town. Yes, Mrs. Dunleavy hadn’t even waited a month before taking over as mayor but… She was still a person.

  “That’s not nice.” Mac mumbled.

  “What? Not nice? About your granddad’s nemesis? There’s definitely something wrong with you. What’s up?” Sabrina looked at her friend with concern, her newly gloved hands resting on her hips.

  “You…” Sabrina said. She took her rubbery fingers and pushed Mac’s long wavy hair over her ears. She examined her lifelong friend carefully for some sort of hint, a crack in Mac’s well-constructed facade “You are a woman that needs to get out and have some fun.” She announced, as if she’d made a major discovery.

  Mac pushed her hands away, annoyed. “I have plenty of fun,” she responded.

  “Yeah? Going through your grandfather’s stuff? Arranging his estate? Starting a business with me? Researching Egyptian hieroglyphics on Wikipedia all night? Is that your good time? You, my nerdy little friend, are young and you are pretty. We’re going out tonight.”

  “No.”

  Sabrina put her hands on either side of her best friend’s face again and reflected. Brie knew Mac was pretty, but in a way that made people stop and wonder why. But she could never convince Mac.

  Mac had always been the one painting in a gallery of bland beauty that made you stop and question it. Once you figured it out, however, it became the most gorgeous thing you’d ever seen—all the more beautiful because you, personally, had discovered it.

  Her eyes were almond shaped and set almost unnaturally wide. Her nose turned up at the end in a way that had always reminded Sabrina of a pixie.

  “A little blush. A little lip gloss. A pair of thigh-high boots… come on. Get out of your head. You’ve given me an incredible opportunity with this shop and the money is—no joke—pouring in. Come over tonight, we’ll get sloppy on some wine and maybe you can let out a tear or two.”

  Mac paused, too tired to fight the overwhelming force that was Sabrina. She was right. She hadn’t cried since her grandfather had suffered his stroke. She hadn’t cried during those months she looked after him and not even when he had passed. Her emotions had been muted for the past few months.

  “Fine. But we need to get the rent paid first. I don’t want to have to deal with that woman if anything goes wrong.”

  Sabrina planted a sloppy kiss on Mac’s forehead with enough force to almost knock her backwards into a Dr. Frankenstein-esque tangle of pots and tubes.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Someone had strapped a thirty-pound weight to her hips while she was sleeping, Mac was sure of it. At least thirty pounds. Every step she took on what was normally an easy run felt like an effort. Her knees were aching, her legs felt leaden, and her head? Good lord. Mac felt as if her head had single-handedly absorbed all the wine that Brie had poured last night and had no intention of letting it go.

  The sand pulled Mac’s sneakers deep down as she ran and her breath rasped in her throat. She had never been more thankful for the empty beach than she was today. No one to smile at as she jogged past. No one to notice how much sweat was dripping down her face. The only thing to annoy her was the wind gusting against her, pushing her terribly hungover body in whichever direction it chose.

  Why? Why did she need to feel this way? What was it about her that made Brie think a whopping great hangover was going to make her feel any better? There had been no tears last night. No release. Just a lot of singing and a lot of chips eaten.

  Mac tried to steady her breathing and find a pace. Sometimes the hard runs were the best. Wasn’t that what all the motivational posts said? Run the mile you’re in? Success is earned? It was hard to keep any of those thoughts in mind when pretty much every inch of her wine-ravaged body protested every step.

  It was early enough that there was still a low fog hovering lazily on the beach ahead of her. The only indication of the stony cliffs that lined the shore was the tip of the lighthouse emerging from the grey. Just get to the lighthouse. Mac thought to herself, Get to the lighthouse and then you’ve done enough.

  Breathing deeply, Mac concentrated on her form, trying desperately to find that space inside her mind she accessed to keep herself focused.

  Ick. Did she smell cigarettes?

  The acrid, heavy scent of tobacco was slowly and surely creeping up on her. Her uneasy stomach warned her that it wouldn’t take much to heave. Who the hell smoked on the beach first thing in the morning?

  Her nausea increasing, Mac stopped and looked around but saw no one. The scent grew stronger. Someone behind her maybe? Mac awkwardly turned around to see another jogger, pacing her a few feet away.

  He smiled at her from behind a cigarette that he somehow, diabolically, was calmly puffing as he ran. Mac stumbled, falling to the sand.

  He was tall, with the slim build of someone who had been running for a lifetime. Like a gazelle, he moved nearer. Despite the nausea his smoke was causing, Mac found herself becoming uncomfortably nervous in an all too familiar way. If it weren’t for his incredibly eccentric appearance, he would have been a thing of beauty.

  He paused as he greeted her. “Morning! Nice day for it.” he said, taking his horrid cigarette from his mouth to smile at her broadly again.

  His sweatshirt was sweat soaked and through her own misty gaze, she could make out a faded Oxford University emblem. That would explain the accent.

  British origins might also explain the fact that he was
wearing a pair of too-short shorts and black socks half-pulled up his long, pale legs. Legs that continued running in place next to her with little or no effort.

  The smell of his cigarette intensified, and Mac’s stomach gave up the fight. The sour burn of the two bottles of wine she had somehow managed to put away started to crawl up her throat. Oh my gosh. She was going to vomit. On the beach. In front of a stranger.

  “I’m sorry…” Mac managed to gurgle. She tried to stand, then fell to her knees in the sand, last night’s red wine spilling out of her.

  She could hear the man with the accent asking her if she was okay. His dirty and ancient sneakers were in her line of vision as her stomach fought to empty itself into the sands of the Atlantic Ocean. She tried to shoo him away, but couldn’t speak through her retching.

  The sneakers were still there when the nausea had passed; thankfully, the smell of the cigarette was gone. Mac sat back into the sand, the wet soaking into her running pants. She gasped and did her best to swipe the residue of sweat and vomit off her face, but just succeeded in adding sand grains to the mix.

  “God, kill me now.” She mumbled, despite herself. “I’m sorry.”

  “Here you go. Drink this.” That soft voice in bad clothes was offering her a container of water. The Mackenzie Bay Police Department logo was on it, but as worn as his sweatshirt. “At least swish out your mouth.” Mac took the bottle but looked up at him.

  “It’s just water? Not vodka?” He looked puzzled, his large brown eyes magnified by the heavy framed glasses he wore. Not a puppy so much, but an owl… His nose was certainly beaky enough. A lovely, dark-haired owl, Mac thought, which has just watched me collapse and puke.

  “Not vodka no. Just water, I’m afraid. I don’t normally have this effect on women by the way. It’s my shorts, isn’t it? The fanny pack?”

  Mac laughed despite her embarrassment.

  “That might have been part of it.” She motioned to his cigarette with her head, now gloriously clear thanks to the puking. He had stubbed it out at some point but the butt lay like a murder weapon beside her nasty red vomit pool.

  “Oh! Oh my gosh! I’m so sorry. All my fault. Filthy habit. Do you feel well enough to stand? It’s the least I can do to get you up and out of here.” His hands, as gangly and large as the rest of him, wrapped around Mac’s sweaty arms and lifted her up. “Drink the water, it will help.”

  Mac gratefully took a swig of his bottle. It was cool and almost immediately slowed her thumping heart to a dull roar in her chest. She handed it back to him where he stood, using his worn down shoes to push sand onto her vomit.

  “Mackenzie Bay Police Department?” Mac said, grateful to have enough breath back to make conversation. Albeit a most awkward kind. “Not Scotland Yard?”

  The man’s smile broadened, exposing delightfully crooked teeth. Crooked teeth were hard to come by in a town as moneyed as theirs. Mac was pretty sure most residents of Mackenzie Bay put their babies in braces as soon as the first molar broke through.

  “I’ve been trying to get them to change it, but strangely, I’m not getting a lot of support.” He offered his hand. “Detective Louis Stocker, sorry about making you boot.” Mac wiped her hand self-consciously on her legs and took his. He enveloped it and pumped it firmly a few times.

  “Catharine Mackenzie. Hungover,” she said. “Hopefully not permanently.”

  “Mackenzie? As in the late Mayor Mackenzie?”

  “He was my grandfather.” Mac wasn’t sure what chilled her—the cold ocean breeze or Detective Stocker—but she began to shiver. His big owl eyes darkened slightly with concern and he pulled his Oxford sweatshirt off. Mac looked away, doing her best to seem uninterested in his lean runner’s chest barely covered in a sleeveless undershirt.

  “You may mock me for my vest, but you never know when you’re going to make a pretty girl boot and have to offer a sweatshirt to her. Modesty and all that.”

  Mac gratefully took it and slipped it over her head. It dwarfed her the way his hand had enveloped hers. She could feel the moisture from his sweat on the neckband against her skin.

  “Are you parked up in the lot? I’ll walk you back.”

  “No, don’t be silly. I know where you work, so I’ll just wash your sweatshirt and bring it back. You probably want to continue your run.”

  That smile again and those amazingly imperfect teeth. Mac felt her shivering come to a complete halt as warmth blossomed in her torso.

  “Not at all. Running. Who’d have it? I’d much rather…” His face changed suddenly as a demanding buzzing came from his fanny pack. All the goofy boyishness disappeared instantly, leaving behind a man who looked like as careworn as his shirt and sneakers. “Sorry,” he mumbled, and answered the phone.

  “Detective Sergeant Stocker,” he said. He looked past Mac’s head as he listened intently. Mac watched as his brown eyes darkened even more… transforming his eyes and face, into something hard and far more authoritative. “Is trauma already up there? Uh huh. So the son is taken care of? All right. I’ll be there shortly.”

  Louis put the phone back in his pack. Distractedly, he pulled Mac into a sudden, hurried embrace. Shocked, Mac froze as that silly heat he had earlier caused in her torso spread through her entire body.

  “I have to go. I’m sorry.” he told her. He held her at a distance, and placed a kiss in the exact same spot Brie had the previous day. “Sorry about the smoking and vest, er…undershirt?”

  Her skin still felt warm from his kiss as she watched him run off, the strangest creature she’d ever seen with his fanny pack bobbing and black socks. He turned and yelled over his shoulder at her,

  “You’re very pretty. Don’t throw up on my sweater.” He broke into a full run, leaving Mac stunned and filthy where she stood.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The woman in front of Mac rolled her eyes, hiking up her designer bag higher on her shoulder as if to intimidate her. Scratch that, knock-off designer bag. Mac had a closet full of the real deal at home and she could spot a fake Coach in a lineup. She had her grandfather to thank for that one.

  “So, you don’t have any sugar-free cotton candy?” the woman practically whined at her. Her child, busily demolishing a brightly colored snow cone, looked at Mac with the same arrogant gaze. “He doesn’t do well with sugar. You don’t do well with sugar, do you, honey?” She addressed the sticky-faced child in a tone that was far sweeter than anything they had in the shop.

  The child said nothing. His mother turned her attention back to Mac who was still sweating out the last of the red wine behind the counter.

  “He doesn’t do well with sugar.”

  “I’ve heard that.” Mac said, trying to smile as convincingly as possible. Why was she here? She didn’t need to work. As a matter of fact, if she had children they probably wouldn’t need to work either. So what compelled her to stand behind this counter every day and put up with bridge and tunnel poseurs looking for the beach experience? Boredom? Sense of duty? Forestalling those tears that Brie was convinced were sloshing around inside of her? Whatever it was, she was ready to throw it right at the woman and her ‘sugar-sensitive’ child in front of her.

  “Do you have any soda or like…cookies or anything?”

  “Sorry. This is a chocolate café. We’re pretty literal folk. Everything we sell is chocolate.” The woman, completely oblivious, sneered—an odd sight since her face was Botoxed into immobility.

  “He doesn’t like chocolate.”

  The scream that Mac wanted to emit turned into the slightest of sighs as she once again made an effort to smile.

  “There are quite a few bakeries just down from us. Maybe you could try those out instead?” The precious, food-coloring-coated child finally spoke. He yanked on his mother’s fake Coach bag and spat, “I want cake.”

  “Do you honey? Okay sweetheart, let’s go get you some cake.”

  Thankfully, the two terrors turned and walked out. Mac picked up her rag with relief
and began to polish the countertops. She had very little patience today. She was distracted and more often than not, she found herself touching the spot that the mysterious Detective Sergeant had kissed earlier. More often than that, she found herself dying to know what his urgent phone call had been about.

  She loved a good mystery. Most criminology majors did.

  “Holy smokes, lady.” The shop door swung open with a rattle. Brie stood in the doorway, her hair wild as ever and her eyes even more so.

  The only two customers in the shop looked up momentarily from their triple chocolate mousses. Unimpressed with Brie’s noisy entrance, they went back to enjoying their treats. Brie’s creations did that to people. A dinosaur could’ve crashed through the front door and they probably wouldn’t have noticed.

  “Holy smokes, what? Why do you look so well rested and I look like hell warmed over?” Mac asked. She barely finished her grumbling before Brie had practically vaulted behind the counter. She was breathless and fresh as a daisy. Obviously she was used to happy hours like she’d inflicted on Mac last night.

  “You’ll never guess. On the way here? Police, ambulances, impressive black cars… all swarming the Dunleavy mansion.”

  “What?” Mac was shocked. “So that’s what he was talking about! Oh my gosh, the rent money!”

  “Right? I knew something was up. Wait… he who?”

  Mac made a dismissive gesture, too wrapped up in the news. “A guy I almost threw up on this morning. He’s a detective. He got a call about that this morning.”

  Brie was obviously horrified she hadn’t heard this news before. “Slow down. You’re vomiting on strange men and you didn’t even text me about it? What the heck…”

  Mac was so excited that she was practically skipping on the spot. She ignored all of Brie’s assumed pre-teen angst . “Oh my gosh, he said, ‘is the son there?’ He must’ve been talking about Cameron! Something serious must have happened.”

  “Why do you look so thrilled? You’re weird. Isn’t Cameron at Yale or something? You guys left here at the same time.”