Something Blue, page 1
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2022 by Heather McGovern
Cover art and design by Daniela Medina
Cover images © Shutterstock
Cover copyright © 2022 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
Bonus novella A Wedding on Lavender Hill by Annie Rains © 2019 by Annie Rains
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First Edition: June 2022
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ISBN: 9781538737446 (mass market), 9781538737422 (ebook)
E3-20220505-NF-DA-ORI
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Discover More
Don’t miss the next book in the Orchard Inn series! Coming Winter 2023
About the Author
BONUS STORY: A Wedding on Lavender Hill
For more from Annie Rains, check out the rest of the Sweetwater Springs series!
Fall in Love with Forever
To My FWF, SJ, and Cupcake
Acknowledgments
This book would not be possible without the loving support of my family and the guidance of so many. Thank you to Nicole Resciniti, Emily Sylvan Kim, Jeannie Chin, and Laura Trentham. If not for them, the stories would still be in my head instead of on the page.
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Chapter 1
Your Caesar salad darn near killed three people.”
Beth pinched her eyes closed and swallowed the wince that’d been threatening since they started discussing quarterly earnings.
“Isn’t that being a little overdramatic?” her sister, Aurora, whispered.
Cece, the youngest, shook her head. “Not really.”
Beth hit the mute button on her phone before their accountant became privy to the peanut gallery.
“At least five members of the wedding party went to the hospital,” Tom kept talking. “One of them was the governor’s press secretary.”
She wanted to crawl under the table and hide for the next three months. Instead, she unmuted her phone and centered it on their kitchen table. “I’m aware. I was there when it happened, remember?”
Like a slow-motion nightmare, the bad news had trickled in that night in February.
Then, it poured.
She’d pulled off the society wedding of the season last winter at the Orchard Inn, but a few hours after the sparkler send-off for the bride and groom, the first call came in.
The mother of the bride didn’t feel so good. The bride wasn’t doing great either. Then a groomsman got sick. Then a bridesmaid. Then another, and another. Could it be…food poisoning?
“I know you were. And I’m sorry to dig up old bones, but bad press like that is going to have negative impacts on a business. I just didn’t expect it to be this negative. Then again, you did almost kill a press secretary.”
“It was a salad!” Aurora blurted.
Beth patted her arm, attempting to calm and shush her. Aurora was only a few years her junior, but twice as blunt.
“It wasn’t even a main course of bad chicken or fish,” she muttered anyway. “Like you’d serve bad romaine on purpose?”
“Tom,” Beth spoke over her sister’s indignance, “I’m looking at our income and expenses year to date, and they don’t seem completely dire.” Just really, really desperate.
“But how many events do you have booked for next quarter?”
She pinched her lips together. That’d be zero, Tom.
“I won’t insult your intelligence by telling you what this means for your bottom line.” Tom had been their family’s accountant for decades, and while he still called them “girls” even though they were in their twenties, he’d always respected and supported their decision to keep Orchard Inn in the Shipley family, with Beth taking the helm.
That didn’t change the fact that the inn, and their wedding business, were in a pickle.
No. That wasn’t fair to pickles. Pickles were delicious.
The Shipley sisters were in a great big salad of doom.
“Thanks for going over this with us, Tom. I’ll look over everything else tonight and call you tomorrow if I have any questions. We won’t keep you, though.”
“Good luck, girls.”
Aurora quirked her lips as soon as the call ended. “At least he was nice about telling us we’re broke.”
“We’re not broke.”
“Who even eats that much salad at a wedding, anyway?” Aurora asked the question like she was addressing a room of thousands. “You know the good stuff is coming out later. You eat a few bites to be polite and save up for the mains and cake.”
“Can we stop obsessing over the food, please?”
“Not when the food is what got us into this mess in the first place.”
And as a trained chef, Aurora was incapable of not obsessing over food, and she hadn’t been Orchard Inn’s chef at the time. Still working in Los Angeles, she’d been nowhere near the doomed wedding reception, but the family business was the family business to the sisters, regardless of how near or far they roamed.
“And not when we wouldn’t be here if they’d only eaten a couple of bites,” Aurora continued.
“I don’t think E. coli works that way.” Beth needed to get this thought train back on track before they spent the next hour debating and speculating. “Regardless, we can’t blame guests for eating the food we served at the wedding they paid us to host.”
“I know all that, and I know exactly how E. coli works, but…” Aurora let the sentence die.
“But I’m trying to be nice.” Beth filled in the blank for her.
An argument of fluff and fluster, attempting to salve Beth’s guilt by removing some of the pressure and blame.
Good luck with that.
Her sisters had to know by now that this disaster rested squarely on Beth’s shoulders, and she wasn’t sharing.
“Come on.” She rose from the table in their common area, signaling the end of dwelling on their bad news. “Let’s get some tea and sit on the back porch. The few guests we do have will start getting back from town soon. They may need something, and we can’t wear long faces in front of them.”
Besides, she was the type to dwell on things endlessly. No sense in her sisters duplicating her efforts.
“Y’all go on out there and I’ll get the tea,” Aurora said. “I made some little cheese biscuits I want you to try before I put them out for guests.”
Beth followed Cece out of their shared family space at the back of the inn and tossed her financial file and the accountant’s review into her room.
Ever since they’d invested in taking their orchard house from a private residence to the Orchard Inn, the girls had lived in a collection of four rooms at the back of the house. The house was plenty big, but it was still an adjustment. Now that Aurora had moved home, even more so.
Three grown women living in less than a thousand square feet.
Good thing they loved each other. And had several acres of peach orchard to escape into for privacy.
“You want to rock?” Beth nodded to the rocking chairs that lined the left side of the back porch.
Cece nodded, and Beth took the chair farthest from the door, saving her sister the extra steps.
It was silly and unnecessary, and Cece would flay her with one look if she knew it was intentional, but old habits died hard.
Her sister had been on her feet a lot today, working around the inn and running errands back and forth to town and the orchard’s main shop. Her foot had to be killing her.
Cece dealt with exhaustion or discomfort by soldierin
“Here we go.” Aurora showed up carrying a beautiful tray with three glasses of iced tea, a porcelain plate of little cheese biscuits the size of half dollars, and a bowl of the most perfect strawberries Beth had ever seen.
“Aurora. You didn’t have to do all that.” She felt guilty enough already.
Aurora set the tray down on the table next to Cece. “Yes, I did. We could use a little pick-me-up after that call.”
Cece quietly took one of the biscuits and nibbled on it, her silence quickly becoming a concern.
She was always quiet—painfully so when around new people—but usually, when it was just the three of them, she came out of her shell with quick-witted comments or a thoughtful retort.
This afternoon she’d said barely two words.
Beth grabbed one of Aurora’s latest offerings. If only she could bury all her worries in a biscuit.
She took a bite. Soft and buttery, fluffy with just the right bite of cheddar. It was a handful of heaven. “Oh, my word, how do you do it?”
Aurora shrugged it off and took the rocking chair on the other side of Cece. “It’s just flour and water. Salt. Some cheese. And an oven.”
“It’s not just anything. You’re a magician.”
Cece giggled, the first sound she’d made since they’d gotten off the call. “She’s a kitchen magician.”
That was more like it.
Beth had another bite of her biscuit, toes curling inside her flats.
Aurora was way too humble about her talents. She had been a genius with food and flavors since they were kids, and she’d taken that natural gift and honed it at culinary school. Honed it so well she’d gone on to work in one of the best kitchens in Los Angeles.
That was, until things imploded back home at Orchard Inn and she’d come to Beth’s rescue.
If she’d been working at Orchard Inn and catered the wedding in February, Aurora would’ve somehow prevented the salad scandal and everything would be fine. And while it wasn’t fair she had to deal with the fallout, Beth was forever grateful.
She chanced a glance at her sister.
Their old catering manager had been let go, and as soon as Aurora heard, she’d insisted on returning home. She also insisted it was no big deal. She was happy to help. This was partially her business too—and on and on with why her leaving her life in LA was okay. But Aurora had to resent her for what she’d left behind.
It kept Beth up at nights.
“You’re awfully quiet over there.” Aurora leaned forward with a raised eyebrow. “You aren’t spiraling, are you?”
“No.” Only a little bit.
Orchard Inn was her brainchild. All of this was her doing.
“Mmm-hmm.” Aurora wasn’t buying it, but she went back to rocking in her chair.
Three years ago, when their mother announced she wanted to sell the place, get a little condo, and travel the world, Beth had come up with the idea for them all to pitch in, financially and otherwise, take out a loan, and turn their large home into the wedding destination in the Hill Country of Texas.
A charming country inn, complete with ideal orchard location and Texan hospitality, combined with Beth’s business sense and years of experience as an event planner, Aurora’s culinary talents, and Cece’s eye for aesthetics and things of beauty, they were sure to be a success.
And they were. Or at least they were headed that way.
Season after season of working their butts off, and they’d made a name for themselves. Enough so that, last year, some big restaurant group courted Aurora off to California. And then came the doomed Caesar.
“We’ll figure something out,” Aurora tried to reassure Beth. “Try not to worry.”
But if Beth didn’t do something, fast, they were going to lose not just their business, but the orchard and estate that had been in their family for generations. Their employees, including the brand-new orchard manager, would be out of jobs. Worst of all, the biggest connection she shared with her sisters would be severed.
Stifling a frustrated grumble, Beth devoured what was left of the biscuit. The savory softness danced across her taste buds.
Life couldn’t be that bad with snacks like this.
And it wasn’t all bad. She had both of her sisters home now. Even if they had little else, they had each other.
When their dad took off decades ago, Beth had helped hold the family together. That was her job as the oldest. She’d started working as soon as she turned fifteen, worked all through school, and specifically gone to business school with the intention of keeping the orchard in the Shipley family name. This was her business, and, more importantly, her family.
She’d always looked out for them, and she wasn’t about to stop now.
Somehow, she was going to get the inn back in the good graces of the Texas Hill Country. She’d get their finances back in the black and be profitable. The wedding schedule would once again be booked solid. Cece would not have to work as hard as she did, doing three different jobs. And she would ensure Aurora’s return to California, back to the life she’d put on pause.
Beth reached for a second helping of her sister’s delicious snack.
Somehow, she was going to make this work, but figuring out how was going to take more than just one cheese biscuit.
Beth snuggled under her softest blanket with a cup of honey chamomile and the accountant’s report. It’d be hours before sleep caught up with her, but the tea and numbers might help.
She was neck-deep in their payables when her phone vibrated on the nightstand.
OMG. Are you still awake?! Please say you’re awake! I need to talk to you!
The text was from Shelby Meyers, her roommate from UT and still one of her dearest friends. They didn’t talk as often now, what with life and careers, but if Shelby was texting at almost midnight, she wasn’t going to stop until she got a reply.
I’m awake. What’s up? Beth texted back.
I’m on your back porch! Let me in.
“What in the world?” She got up, not completely surprised by the giddy behavior. Excitement about pretty much everything was Shelby’s default setting. But showing up late at night?
“Shelby?” She stepped out into the porch light to find her friend bouncing on the balls of her feet, her left hand flung out toward Beth.
“Guess what! Guess what!”
Judging by the size of the blinding rock on her fourth finger, she—
“I got engaged!”
Beth grabbed the hand that’d been thrust in her face. “Oh my gosh! Shelby! Congratulations!” She hugged her friend tight and tried to think when she’d even started dating the guy. A couple of months ago?
“Thank you! I am just beside myself. I’m so happy!”
“So, when— How? When did all this happen?”
“Tonight. He proposed tonight. We were walking around downtown after dinner—it’s what we did after our first date—and he took me by the hand and told me how much he loved me, how I felt like home. Then he got down on one knee and asked me to be his wife.” Shelby’s eyes glimmered with joyful tears, her smile radiant.
“I am so happy for you and—” Oh jeez. Started with a G. “Garrett!”
It wasn’t Beth’s fault. She’d never met the guy, and she and Shelby had only talked two or three times since they started dating.
“Thank you. Can you believe it? I know it’s soon and all, and people will probably think we’re crazy, but we’re in love. We’re perfect for each other. I mean other than him and his whole family loving horses. But you’ll see. I want you to meet him and get to know him. There’s time for all of that.”
“I know. And I think it’s wonderful.” Truly, she did. Marriage was on Beth’s agenda too.
At some point.
That whole key element of finding someone you loved, and who loved you in return? See, that’s where life got tricky.
Surely all good things in time, right? But she’d never found a good thing, and now was most definitely not the time.
Shelby was obviously over the moon, and if anyone deserved happiness, it was her. She’d never been anything but good to Beth and, while she put on a face for the rest of the world, she had to deal with a lot when it came to her family.
