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  He drove around his sister’s old Toyota and parked close to the barn. Brooke was coming down the steps from the back porch as he was walking toward it.

  “Hey,” he called to her. “Where are you off to?”

  She pointed beyond the field next to the barn.

  “I’m meeting Cameron at the tenant house to go over his schedule of the renovations.” She paused. “I suppose I shouldn’t call it the tenant house anymore, since it’s going to be my house.”

  “True enough.” Clay met her halfway along the worn path between the barn and the farmhouse where they’d both grown up, left, and come back to. “Did Cam give you his final estimate?”

  Brooke nodded and pulled her blond hair into a ponytail, which she held in place with an elastic she’d had on her wrist.

  “It’s pretty much what we talked about. Right now I’m dying to see the work schedule. I won’t be moving in until well after Christmas, which is fine with me. I have almost a thousand cupcakes to bake between now and New Year’s Eve and the new kitchen at the shop to put together, so I don’t really have time to pack.”

  “Just as well,” Clay told her. “Let Logan have a Christmas here in the farmhouse with Mom and me.”

  Logan was Brooke’s almost eight-year-old son and the apple of Clay’s eye. Since the death of Brooke’s husband, Eric, in Afghanistan almost three years ago, Brooke and Logan had been living on the family farm, which Clay had taken over when their father retired.

  “Mom was hoping to be into her new house by then,” Brooke told him, “or hadn’t you heard? She’s looking forward to hosting a New Year’s Eve party for some of her friends.”

  “She shouldn’t move before Christmas.” Clay frowned. Their mother, also a widow, had just bought herself a spiffy town house in which everything was brand spanking new.

  “That’s her decision, not ours.” Brooke shrugged.

  “Do you think she’ll miss us after she moves out?” Clay asked.

  “You’re kidding, right?” Brooke laughed. “She’s not moving to Canada, Clay. She’s only going across town.”

  “By herself,” he reminded her. “She’s never lived alone before.”

  “Maybe it’s time she did. She married young, had her kids young. Devoted most of her life to Dad and to us. She went from her parents’ house to her husband’s, and after Dad died, Logan and I moved in with her. She’s looking forward to having her own place, to having some time to herself.” Brooke fell in step with her brother. “She’s really excited about her new house and I’m not surprised she wants to share it with her friends, but I do agree, it would be nice if we were all together on Christmas morning. Who knows where any of us will be this time next year.”

  “You’ve got plans that I don’t know about? You and your boyfriend planning on running away together?” he teased. Before she could answer, he added, “Okay, then, leave if you must, but the kid stays here.”

  Brooke laughed. “I doubt I’d ever be able to get Logan to leave the farm now. I’ve never seen him so happy. But no, Jesse and I aren’t planning on leaving town, and I’m not going any farther than right here.” She pointed up ahead to where the path ended at the front porch of the cottage that had been their destination.

  Long known as the tenant’s house, the two-story clapboard had been scraped clean of its old paint and awaited a new coat. The shutters had been removed, scraped, and sanded, and leaned up against the front of the building. The small front porch had also been prepped for painting.

  “Looks like Cam’s guys have been busy,” Clay noted approvingly.

  “The entire exterior has been prepped,” Brooke pointed out. “Cam said the painters will start tomorrow out here while the carpenters continue inside. Come on in, and I’ll show you what they’ve done so far.”

  Brooke unlocked the door and pushed it open.

  “Wow, it sure looks different from when I lived here.” Clay walked around the large front room, nodding at the work that had already been done. “New windows, I see. That’s a real improvement. That first winter I stayed here, I thought I’d freeze to death. The wind whipped right around those sashes, so the house was always cold. I took to watching TV upstairs after that.”

  “New windows, new insulation.” Brooke walked around the big room, her footsteps echoing.

  “And we’re starting on that new kitchen tomorrow.” Cameron O’Connor, their contractor, pushed open the front door and joined them. “Brooke, did you tell Clay about what we’re doing in the kitchen?”

  “Only about seventeen times,” Clay told him.

  Brooke nodded, her eyes shining. “Lots of counters, two ovens, a big freezer—”

  “I’m outta here.” Clay laughed. “She’s all yours, Cam. I’ve got work to do.”

  “How are those plans for the brewery going?” Cam asked.

  “Great. As soon as Wade gets back from his honeymoon, we’re going to start mapping out what equipment we’ll need and how to turn that first barn into a brewery.”

  “Still planning on growing all your own hops and barley?” Cam followed Clay to the door, Brooke’s project momentarily forgotten.

  Clay nodded. “We found a great source of seed for both. It’ll be a few more years before the hops are ready, so we’ll buy some this year and experiment. Wade has some formulas he’s used before that we can work with. I love farming, but I have to admit, I’m excited about this new venture.”

  “Hey, we’re all excited to have some local brew to look forward to,” Cam told him.

  “Stay tuned,” Clay said. He waved to his sister. “See you back at the house.”

  Clay smiled all the way back to the house. MadMac Brews was still a working plan in progress, but he had no doubt that he and Wade MacGregor, who’d owned a brewery in Texas not too long ago, would make some of the finest beer on the Eastern Shore. Once they got up and running, that is.

  And as he’d told Cam, they’d be growing a lot of the ingredients that would go into their beer. Clay’s success with his organic produce over the past few years encouraged him to try growing what they needed to brew organic beer as well. Wade had some pretty interesting ideas for beer flavors.

  Flavored beer. Clay had laughed when Wade first mentioned it, but once he saw the numbers Wade had from his previous venture, Clay was sold. Why not beers flavored with herbs or fruits? The possibilities, it would seem, were endless.

  And if it kept Clay’s farm profitable, well, that was the bottom line, wasn’t it? He paused midway to the barn and looked out over the fields that his family had farmed for over two hundred years. His ancestors had settled here and built the earliest section of the farmhouse he grew up in, the same one he now shared—however temporarily—with his mother and sister.

  Clay had never wanted to do anything but farm, never wanted to be anything but a farmer. It was in his blood and in his heart, and over the past few years, he’d found ways to make Madison Farms relevant to the community in ways his forefathers could never have imagined. He grew for the farmers’ markets and he grew for restaurants from D.C. to Manhattan. Certain famous chefs requested that he grow herbs and vegetables for them, and he grew rows of flowers that he sold to a number of restaurants for their tables. There was the orchard that still produced some of the finest apples and pears in the region, and the fields of wheat and rye that provided nearby Autumn Mills with the raw product they ground and made into breads and other products that they sold to some of the best restaurants on the East Coast. Thanks to Clay’s foresight in recognizing the direction the food market was headed, Madison Farms was thriving. Growing organic hops and grains to make beer in his own microbrewery—well, his and Wade’s—was just one more way to keep the farm intact. It was a promise he’d made to his father when the farm passed to him, and it was a promise Clay intended to keep.

  Chapter 3

  LUCY opened her eyes and glanced at her watch as she stretched as much as one could within the confines of an airplane seat. Disappointed to fin
d she was still three hours from L.A., she sat up, opened her bag, and pulled out the paperback novel she’d picked up at BWI, a thriller by one of her favorite authors. She’d had trouble concentrating on the first few pages and gave up and tossed it back into her handbag and traded it for the folder containing notes she’d made regarding upcoming events.

  The sheer number of holiday parties was enough to give her a headache, but toss in the six weddings they’d booked between now and New Year’s Day and she could feel a migraine closing in. What in the name of all that’s holy were they thinking when they booked not one, but two weddings for Christmas Eve, one on Christmas night, two on New Year’s Eve, and one on New Year’s Day, which pretty much guaranteed that neither Lucy nor her partner, Bonnie Shaefer, would have much of a holiday this year. Since Bonnie had been left to deal with the business over the past ten days on her own, Lucy figured it was only fair that she take the New Year’s Day wedding and give Bonnie at least one day off.

  She sighed and checked her calendar for potential dates to meet Robert Magellan and his fiancée, Susanna Jones. The second week in January looked good, weather permitting a trip back east. The last really big deal they had booked was a Twelfth Night party on January 6. After that, they were clear for almost two full weeks. What to do with all that free time? she wondered wryly. Of course, there’d be no free time. There were two weddings at the end of January, a wedding and a sweet sixteen on Valentine’s Day, and full bookings almost every weekend beginning in March.

  Might be time to bring in another pair of hands, Lucy thought as she closed her date book. Her assistant, Ava, would be the logical person to promote, if they could only get her to organize her time better …

  Lucy closed her eyes for what she thought would be a moment while she visualized each of the upcoming events, starting with the Christmas party the following Saturday. In her mind’s eye, she saw the venue ready to receive guests, everything from place cards to flowers to the table linens, the food, the band, the photographer. By the time she was midway through the January events, the plane was landing.

  It was almost seven P.M. when Lucy turned into the parking lot at the small pink stucco building that served as the office of Shaefer & Sinclair. Noting that Bonnie’s car was still in its assigned spot, she grabbed her bag and got out of the car, locked it, and went in through the back door.

  “Honey, I’m home,” she called out.

  “Luce?” Ava called from the small conference room.

  “Yup.” Lucy opened her office door, dropped her bag on the floor near her desk, and walked the short hall to the conference room.

  “Hey, you sure caused a stir.” Ava met her in the doorway. “Did you see all the press coverage for your big gig?”

  “I saw the Internet coverage, which was awesome.” Lucy followed Ava into the conference room, where Ava tossed a handful of tabloid newspapers across the table, all of which had coverage of Dallas MacGregor’s wedding on their front pages.

  “Well, I’m not surprised. The security at the inn on Saturday was ridiculous. As in practically nonexistent. Dallas said she didn’t want her guests to feel as if they were in an armed camp, so she just told the few guards she did hire to look for people who looked like they didn’t belong there.” Lucy skimmed the photos, noting that the photographers had managed to get shots of not only the famous bride and her groom, but plenty of the decor as well. “This is like good news and bad news. The bad news, of course, is that there are too many photos floating around out there. The good news, however, is that the shots that were taken certainly do justice to the old inn.”

  “It all looks glorious.” Bonnie breezed into the room. “Either the inn is one of the most beautiful places on the planet, or you’re a genius.”

  Lucy grinned. “Perhaps a bit of both.”

  Ava sorted through the stack of papers until she found what she was looking for. She folded the tabloid in half and held up a photo. “This one of the ballroom before anyone arrived? We’ve had seven calls today from brides who want this look for their wedding. Seven,” she repeated for emphasis.

  “Including Marlena Missoni.” Bonnie made a face.

  “Marlena Misso—oh.” Lucy frowned. “You mean my Christmas Eve bride?”

  Bonnie nodded and pulled a chair out from the table. “Yes, that Marlena Missoni. She left voice mail for me three times yesterday—that would be Sunday—wanting to know why you didn’t suggest those pretty trees with the twinkling white lights for her reception. Now, of course, she wants them. Must have them. Daddy says money is no object.”

  Daddy, as Lucy knew, was Enrico Missoni, the Italian director.

  “So she wants, what, the decor changed at the last minute? Is she crazy?” Lucy sat on the edge of the table.

  “No. She’s spoiled and she’s jealous that someone else had something beautiful that she doesn’t have, so she wants it.” Ava sighed. “Any chance you could line up some of those trees …?”

  “I’ll call around in the morning and see what I can find.” Lucy thought for a moment. Leafless trees weren’t all that easy to come by in Southern California in December. Especially on short notice. “I’ll call Olivia—she’s the florist back in St. Dennis—and ask her who her supplier was for the trees we got for the inn.”

  “I hope the supplier has lots of them,” Bonnie told her, “because Marlena wasn’t the only bride who called about them. I think we’re going to have to buy the trees and rent them out.”

  “That many?”

  “Every one who saw those photos loved those tiny white sparkly lights,” Bonnie said.

  “And all the white flowers,” Ava added. “One of the New Year’s Eve brides wanted to know if she could change her flower order to all white.”

  “You told her no, I hope.”

  Ava nodded. “I told her the order was already in with the florist and she’d have to pay for the ones she ordered as well as the new order. She said she’d get back to us.”

  Lucy rolled her eyes. “I knew that doing Dallas MacGregor’s wedding was going to be good for business, but I didn’t think it would be this good.”

  “As bad as the phones were this morning, this afternoon was worse.” Bonnie slipped off her shoes and rested her feet on the chair next to the one she was sitting in. “Angela stopped answering the phone by three o’clock and just let all the calls go to voice mail. She said she’d come in early tomorrow and listen to them.”

  “It’s not like we’ve never done a celebrity wedding before,” Lucy said.

  “Ah, but this is Dallas MacGregor, and she’s always news. Especially after all the scandal her ex-husband caused last year with that stupid sex tape of his,” Bonnie reminded her.

  “At which time she went back to her old summer haunt and reunited with her childhood love.” Ava smiled. “Who doesn’t love a story like that?”

  “Dallas is really a very nice woman,” Lucy told them, “and she deserves her happy ending. And as you can see from the photos, she was a beautiful bride.”

  “Well, she’s helped to move Shaefer and Sinclair up a few notches in the event planning hierarchy.” Bonnie straightened up, slipped her shoes back on, and stood. “We do need to thank her for that.”

  “Thank my mother,” Lucy told her. “It was her idea.”

  “The same mother who also arranged for you to meet with Robert Magellan. We should all be so lucky.” Bonnie waved from the doorway. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “How does your mom know all these famous people?” Ava asked. “Is she, like, famous or something, too?”

  “No, she just knows a lot of people who know people. Mom’s lived in St. Dennis forever and knows everyone, including Dallas and her great-aunt, Berry Eberle.”

  “And Robert Magellan? Does he live in St. Dennis, too?”

  “No. His … I guess you’d call her his surrogate grandmother, for lack of something better … is one of my mom’s oldest friends. Trula has a lot of influence where Robert is concer
ned. She wants him to have his wedding at my family’s inn, so unless I propose something totally unsuitable, or if he or his fiancée hates me on sight, we could very well land that wedding.”

  “And we move up another notch. Not bad for a few months’ work.”

  “Well, first we have to get through the holidays,” Lucy reminded her. “With all the parties and the weddings we booked, we’re going to be near crazy come January. I’ll need a trip back home just to unwind.”

  “Don’t count on relaxing for too long. Beverly Tolliver called about her daughter’s sweet sixteen party.”

  “The one we booked for Valentine’s Day?”

  Ava nodded. “She’s had what she called a ‘flash of brilliance.’ ”

  Lucy covered her face with her hands. “I don’t think I want to hear this.”

  Ava laughed. “Since it’s in February, she thinks it would be fun to have an old-fashioned skating party.”

  “Roller skating?”

  “Ah, that it would be too simple.” Ava paused. “Ice skating.”

  “Okay, well, I’m sure there are rinks—”

  “No, no, not inside. She wants it outside. Like on a pond.”

  “There are no frozen ponds in Los Angeles in February.” Lucy stated the obvious.

  “I pointed that out. But she has faith in you. She wants the pond built on their estate grounds. She’s sure you can arrange for that.”

  “Possibly. But not tonight.” Lucy gathered the newspapers into a neat stack and left them in the middle of the conference table. “I’ll think about the Tollivers tomorrow.”