Celebration's Baby Read online

  She presented a three-tiered glass-and-silver dessert plate brimming with confections in various shapes and colors. Bia’s mouth watered at the sight.

  “I thought I smelled chocolate in the air. But then I worried that I’d simply imagined it.”

  Maya laughed. “It is a lovely fragrance, isn’t it? Some say the mere smell of chocolate causes a woman’s body to release hormones that simulate the feeling of falling in love.”

  “Ha! All of the feelings and none of the heartache,” Bia said. “Sounds like the perfect relationship. I just wish chocolate didn’t love me back so much. It tends to stay with me. You know, right here.” She patted her left hip.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, you are reed-thin. You have nothing to worry about.”

  “Gosh, makes chocolates, gives compliments...I think you and I could be good friends.”

  Maya’s eyes shone. “I certainly hope so.”

  “You will have chocolate for the grand opening, won’t you?” Bia asked.

  Maya nodded. “Of course. I was fortunate enough to find a stateside manufacturer who was able to duplicate my family recipe in bulk, the one my grandmother used to start the business three generations ago. The candy for the shelves and case will be delivered the day before we open. That way it will be as fresh as can be. We’ll have to work extra hard to get everything in place, but it will be worth it.”

  Maya gestured toward the plate. “But please, don’t let me detain you. Help yourself.”

  Reverently, Bia approached the manna. She paused to give the illusion of self-control, so that it didn’t look as if she was about to bury her face in all that deliciousness. But then she found herself genuinely appreciating the sheer artistry of Maya’s offering.

  Yes, this definitely could be the start of a beautiful friendship.

  Maya placed a silver cocktail napkin on the counter next to Bia. She also produced a small crystal pitcher of water, a matching glass and a plate containing bread, crackers and apple slices.

  “What is this?” Bia asked.

  “These are the palate cleansers for the chocolate tasting,” Maya said. “To fully discern the differences between the chocolates, you must cleanse your palate between each tasting.”

  Oh. Bia suddenly felt a little out of her element. “You treat chocolate like some people treat wine?”

  “Pourquoi pas?” Maya asked.

  “You’re right. Why not?”

  “May I recommend that you start with the chocolates on the first tier? It has a lower percentage of cocoa and a milder taste. The chocolate on the upper tier will overpower those on the bottom. I suggest you let the chocolate melt on your tongue rather than chewing it, and in between different bites, enjoy a bit of apple or bread washed down by the water. That way you will taste all the nuances of each piece.”

  Maya gestured to the plate and gave Bia a few more tips on how to proceed: to observe the chocolate, to smell it and to break it, feeling the way the pieces of solid chocolate snapped, before finally tasting it. Those were all indicators of good quality.

  Finally, she said, “That is enough instruction. Please enjoy.”

  Bia started to choose a chocolate from the bottom, but she paused. “Will there be a quiz when I’m finished?”

  Maya laughed her perfect, crystal laugh. Bia breathed in deeply, savoring the mélange of scents from the plate. For the first time in a long time, a sense of peace and well-being washed over her.

  “Only questions about which are your favorites,” Maya answered.

  “It’s all gorgeous. I’m sure they will all be delicious.”

  First, she selected what looked like a classic chocolate truffle dusted with cocoa powder. She bit into it, and flavor exploded on her tongue. She closed her eyes and had to make a conscious effort not to let a moan escape.

  Oh, Maya was wrong. This chocolate didn’t simulate love; it was better. Way better. Better than kissing. Better than sex.

  Oh, my God, I’m in public and I’m making virtual love to a French truffle. And I don’t care.

  She opened her eyes, and her gaze automatically found the dessert plate. She was tempted to pluck up another piece—a handful—even before she had finished the first. Somehow she managed to restrain herself.

  She popped the rest of the first truffle into her mouth. She had the same urge to moan over the chocolate. It was too good. So she quit fighting and gave in to the unadulterated pleasure.

  Finally, after blissfully indulging in several pieces from each level, Bia forced herself to take a step back. She had to put some space between herself and her vice. If she didn’t, she was going to eat too much. Although, with the lingering flavors of chocolate, orange, cinnamon and cloves teasing her taste buds, that seemed unlikely. With one last wistful glance at the candy, she said, “That was delicious, Maya. I wish I could say I’d eaten myself sick, but I think I may want more later.”

  “And you say that like it’s a bad thing?”

  The two laughed like old friends.

  “Your decor looks exquisite. Who did your decorating?”

  Maya beamed. “Thank you. I did it myself. I tried to give the front of the house a similar feel to my shop in St. Michel. Similar, but maybe a touch more modern. More American. I wanted it to feel like home, since I will be spending a great deal of time here.”

  “Let’s see,” Bia said, flipping through her reporter’s notebook, searching for the brief bio she’d gathered on Maya. “You’re from St. Michel in Europe. Are you moving to Celebration?”

  Maya stopped, considering the question. “I will be here for the time being. Because my heart is telling me Celebration is where I belong right now, especially while I am getting the new location off the ground. I must make sure it does well.”

  Bia jotted down more notes and anecdotes for use in her story. “Who is looking after your St. Michel shop while you’re away?”

  “I have promoted my assistant, Grace, to the managerial position. If anyone knows the shop as well as I do, Grace does. I trust that the place is in good hands.”

  Maya paused again, as if weighing her words. “As you can imagine, the Celebration location will need much tender loving care while I get the business off the ground.”

  Bia nodded. “I’m curious, though. Why in the world did you choose Celebration, Texas, as the location of your first U.S. retail store? I mean, no offense to this town. It’s a great place. It’s my home. But of all the places in the world...why Celebration?”

  Maya’s eyes shone as she regarded Bia, and for the first time Bia noticed that the older woman’s eyes were a gorgeous shade of hazel infused with intriguing flecks of amber and green, accentuated by the color of her skirt. The same mossy color was also echoed in the silk scarf that she had artfully arranged around her neck. Leave it to the French, Bia mused. They could create something enchanted out of a yard of silk and a bolt of tulle.

  Maya’s hair was magical, too. Bia’s hair, when left to its natural devices, was almost as curly as Maya’s. But Bia straightened hers since it never wanted to do the same thing twice. A few months ago, she’d opted for a keratin treatment so she wouldn’t have to fight with it during the humid days of summer. It was only May, but the oppressive damp-heat days were already bearing down on them, as if someone were misting the entire town with a gigantic vaporizer. At this rate, by the time August rolled around, humidity would hang in the air like a billowing stratus cloud. Thanks to the magic of keratin, at least Bia’s hair was armed and ready to take on the summer...and the pregnancy.

  Oh...the pregnancy.

  She swallowed hard and blinked away the thought.

  “Why Celebration?” Bia urged.

  She looked up from her notepad and caught Maya staring at her with an odd expression. In an instant the look was gone, replaced by May
a’s placid, Madonna-like smile.

  “I have...friends here. Do you know Pepper Meriweather, A. J. Sherwood-Antonelli and Caroline Coopersmith?” Maya asked.

  “I know Caroline. Her husband, Drew Montgomery, is my boss.”

  Maya gave a quick flick of her wrist. “Of course he is. Well, I met Caroline, A.J. and Pepper through a mutual friend who went to school with them. This was a few years ago, before any of them were married. They’d come to St. Michel to help another friend. Margeaux Broussard? Do you know her?”

  Bia shook her head and continued to furiously scribble notes as Maya talked.

  “Anyhow,” Maya continued, “the girls had come to St. Michel with Margeaux to help her make amends with her father, from whom she’d been estranged for the better part of her life. Once they’d accomplished that mission, they returned to Celebration, luring my good friend Sydney James away from St. Michel with the promise of a job with Texas Star Energy right here in Celebration.”

  Bia raised her head and looked at Maya. She knew Sydney pretty well, since the woman had just married Miles Mercer. Miles was good friends with Bia’s best friend, Aiden Woods. The four of them got together a lot. Bia would’ve called it double dating if she and Aiden had been a couple, but they weren’t. She’d known him since kindergarten and cared too much about him to ruin their relationship by dating him.

  “Texas Star Energy, huh?” Bia said.

  Maya nodded and quirked a brow that seemed to indicate she knew all about the scandalous demise of the corrupt energy empire. Bia had been the reporter who had broken the story that had started the conglomerate’s unraveling. In fact, her investigative reporting and subsequent awards had helped her clinch the editorship of the paper after Drew Montgomery had decided to give up editing to focus more on the publishing end of the paper. But Texas Star was in the past. It was a can of worms Bia didn’t want to reopen.

  “So, you followed your friends to Celebration?”

  “Oh, mais non. It’s a little more complicated.” Maya pursed her lips. “At first, I visited them. I attended each of their weddings. In fact, some might say that I even had a hand in bringing each of them together with their soul mates.”

  “You introduced them?”

  Maya gave a noncommittal one-shoulder shrug. How very French her gestures were. But wait...hadn’t Drew met Caroline at a wedding...? Yes. It had been Caroline’s sister’s wedding. It had been right around the time that everything was coming to a head at Texas Star.

  “Technically, non. I didn’t physically introduce them. It’s another complicated story, really.”

  “You’re full of complicated stories, aren’t you? If you’d care to expound, I’m here to listen.... That’s what I do.”

  Maya studied her as if she was deciding whether she would take Bia up on the offer of a listening ear.

  “Well, I do love to talk.” Maya laughed, an infectious sound that made Bia smile.

  “Over the years, the girls—Pepper, A.J. and Caroline—have become very dear to me. So, I’ve always looked out for them, and that’s how I had a hand in bringing them together with their soul mates.”

  Again, Bia paused and looked up at the woman. Soul mates. There was that word again. Bia filed soul mates in the same category as happily ever after. She wasn’t sure she believed there was such a thing, especially after being left at the altar by the man who should’ve been her soul mate if there was such a thing. Nope, in her book, love was an urban legend. People talked about it. Some even claimed to have experienced it, but real love—the kind that grafted your soul to another person’s for better or worse, the type that could withstand bleached-blonde strippers and the relentless paparazzi—had managed to elude Bia her entire life.

  Actually, she’d read somewhere that soul mates weren’t always lovers. Sometimes they were parent and child, sometimes best friends. If that were true, the closest thing to a soul mate she’d ever had was Aiden. Their relationship had survived some pretty treacherous hurdles. It had actually transcended sex. That’s probably why it worked. They hadn’t ruined things by getting physical.

  God knew there had been plenty of times Bia had been tempted to give in to his charm. The guy was gorgeous—in a more rugged and down-to-earth way than Hugh’s pretty-boy looks. Women found Aiden irresistible. Since college, he’d had a constant rotation of babes. None of them serious.

  Then he’d gotten married. It had lasted two years before they’d called it quits and he’d reverted back to his freewheeling ways.

  He wouldn’t talk about what had happened. All he would say was that he hadn’t cheated. “It just didn’t work out.”

  His smorgasbord of women had been the main reason Bia had kept Aiden in the friend zone. Well, that and the fact that he’d thrown the bachelor party that ended with the stripper that had broken up her engagement.

  Still, despite all Aiden’s faults, Duane and Hugh were long gone, and Aiden was still there.

  She put her hand on her stomach. And he would be the first person she told about the baby.

  “...and I came to Celebration to see each one of them say I do,” Maya continued. “Each time I visited, I was drawn to this town. As time went on and I visited more, I knew there was a reason I was supposed to be here.”

  For a moment, Maya looked wistful. Bia studied her, taking a mental snapshot and hoping she could somehow convey Maya’s mood in the article.

  “Would you care to elaborate?”

  A warm smile reclaimed Maya’s delicate features. “At home, in St. Michel, I’m known as un marieur.”

  “I beg your pardon,” said Bia.

  “A matchmaker. I am a third-generation chocolatier by trade, but matchmaking, you might say, is my passion. Some people believe my chocolate is magical.”

  Bia stopped writing and looked up. The cinnamon and clove from the last piece of chocolate still lingered on the back of her tongue.

  “So, you’re telling me your chocolate is enchanted? What? Do you sprinkle in love potions or something?”

  “I would claim nothing of the sort. My chocolate is all natural. Everything is on the label, except for a few proprietary blends.”

  “The love potions?”

  Maya raked her hands through her hair. “Oh, I should not have said that. Please don’t print that in the profile.”

  “Why not? It will probably drive business through the roof. Everyone wants love.”

  Well, almost everyone.

  As if confirming Bia’s thoughts, Maya did her one-shoulder French shrug.

  “What?” Bia asked. “You don’t believe that?”

  “I do believe there is someone for everyone. You, for instance. You’ve had your share of setbacks, but there’s someone for you. In fact, you’ve already met him.”

  Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. If she was going to start asking about the Hugh Newman debacle, Bia would shut that down very quickly. Instead of waiting to get caught in the pickle, she turned the tables.

  “Is there someone special in your life?”

  Maya paused and drew in a slow, thoughtful breath.

  Ha. It’s not so comfortable to be on the receiving end of the dating game rapid-fire, is it?

  “Alas, even though my intuition is generally good when it comes to pairing up others, it doesn’t work so well for me personally.”

  “So, does this intuitive gift of yours carry over into other areas? Would you go as far as saying you have the gift of second sight?”

  Maya laughed. “If I had the second sight, I would’ve already won the lottery. I wouldn’t be agonizing over rollout budgets and marketing campaigns. But that’s strictly off the record, oui?”

  “Fair enough,” said Bia. “Back to the business of chocolate. I understand this is the first of two new Maya’s Chocolates that you’re opening stateside. Where will the
other location be?”

  “I want to get the one here in Celebration off the ground, and then I’ll look into opening another, possibly in New York. However, it’s important that I ensure the fiscal health of the current locations. Especially the one in St. Michel. That’s where my grandmother started the business. It has been a fixture in downtown St. Michel for three generations. All of the recipes have been passed down through the years from mother to daughter.”

  “And will you continue the tradition?”

  Maya nodded.

  “Do you have children?”

  For a fraction of a second, Bia thought she saw a shade of sadness color Maya’s eyes.

  “Come with me,” Maya said. “I want to show you something.”

  The woman led the way to the kitchen, which was hidden behind a double-layered curtain made of silver gossamer backed by heavy white satin. When Maya parted the drapes, allowing Bia her first glimpse behind the scenes, Bia half expected she would glimpse the great and powerful Oz or some other secret to which mere mortals weren’t privy. If they were, wouldn’t every chocoholic have her own in-home chocolatier?

  But when Bia stepped over the threshold, she didn’t see anything that looked extraordinary. In fact, the kitchen, with its sterile stainless-steel countertops and run-of-the-mill industrial sink, refrigerator and gas range, looked quite...ordinary. Well, with the exception of the gleaming copper pots hanging on a rack over the sink, and the adorable pink-and-black box that was festively tied with a ribbon and waiting on the counter. Bia eyed the package.

  It looked like a box of Maya’s famous chocolate.

  For her to take home? She had to bite her tongue to keep from asking the question out loud.

  As if Maya had read her mind, she picked up the package and handed it to Bia. “This is for you.”

  “Ah, thank you,” Bia said.

  She gestured around the kitchen with a motion of her hand. “So this is where the magic happens?”