Sometimes a girl just needed to come home. Especially when she didn’t have a choice.
Even if that home was falling apart.
Two months ago, she’d been on top of the world. An up-and-coming pastry chef for a well-known bakery in San Francisco, a gorgeous boyfriend and a strong belief that her life was-finally-pretty freaking awesome.
Then, poof, everything she’d worked so hard for the last several years was gone. Destroyed. Because she’d fallen for a pretty face, been conned by a smooth line, and worst of all, ruined by a good lay.
Nope. Never again.
Pandora was home now.
Which was really just freaking awesome.
With a heavy sigh, she poked one finger at the box she’d rescued from next to a leaking pipe in the back room. It was unlabeled, so she’d have to see what was inside before she could figure out where to put it.
To disguise the musty scent, she lit a stick of prosperity incense. Then Pandora rubbed a speck of dust off a leaf on the braided money tree she’d brought in this morning to decorate the sales counter, and tidied a row of silken soy wax candles with embedded rose petals.
“Not a bad display from a recently fired bakery manager,” she commented to Bonnie.
Bonnie just cocked her head to one side, but didn’t comment. Since she was one of the two store cats, Pandora hadn’t expected much response. Probably a good thing, since the last thing Pandora’s ego needed was anyone, human or feline, to point out all the crazy reasons for her thinking returning home to start her life over was going to work.
The cats, like the rest of Moonspun Dreams, were now Pandora’s responsibility. She was excited about the felines. But the jury was still out on the quirky New Age store that’d been in Pandora’s family for decades. The very store Pandora had wanted to get away from so badly, she’d left town the day after she’d graduated high school.
Before she could settle into a good pout, the bells rang over the front door. Bringing a bright smile and a burst of fresh air, Kathy Andrews hurried in. One hand held a bakery bag, the other a vat-size cup of coffee.
“I’m here to celebrate,” Kathy sang out. She stepped over the black puddle of fur that was Paulie the cat sunning himself on the braided carpet, and waltzed across the scarred wooden floor.
“What are we celebrating?”
“That you’re back in Black Oak. That you’re taking over the family store. Not just for the month your mom is in Sedona for that psychic convention, but for good. And, more important, we need to celebrate the news that your best friend had some really great sex last night.”
Pandora exchanged looks with Bonnie. There it was, sex again. But this was Kathy’s sex. It wasn’t as if that could mess Pandora’s life up.
“I’m not so sure having to come home because I failed out there in the big bad world is an excuse to party,” Pandora said with a rueful laugh as she took the bakery bag and peeked inside. “Ooh, my favorite. Mrs. Rae’s éclairs. I thought she’d retired.”
“Mr. Rae’s off competing in some pumpkin-carving contest until next Saturday, leaving Mrs. Rae home alone for their anniversary week. Cecilia said her mom dropped off four dozen éclairs this morning with notice that she’d be making pies, too.”
One of the joys and irritations about living in a small town was knowing everyone, and everyone knowing your business. In this case, both women knew Mrs. Rae’s irritation meant cherry pie by dinner.
“Cecilia seemed surprised when I mentioned I was coming here,” Kathy said, not meeting Pandora’s eyes as she took back the bag and selected an éclair. “She said she thought Moonspun Dreams was doing so bad, your mom had given up keeping it open on weekends. I know I should have given her a smackdown, but the éclairs smelled too good.”
While Kathy dived into her éclair with an enthusiastic moan, Pandora sighed, looking around the store. When she’d been little, her grandmother had stood behind this counter. The store had been filled with herbs and tinctures, all handmade by Grammy Leda. She’d sold clothes woven by locals with wool from their own sheep, she’d taught classes on composting and lunar gardening, led women’s circles and poured her own candles. Grammy had been, Pandora admitted, a total hippie.
Then, when Pandora had been thirteen, Granny Leda had retired to a little cabin up in Humboldt County to raise chin-chillas. And it’d been Cassiopeia’s turn.
Her mother’s intuitive talents, the surge of interest in all things New Age, and her savvy use of the internet had turned a quirky small-town store into a major player in the New Age market. Moonspun Dreams had thrived.
But now that the economy had tanked and New Age had lost its luster, it was almost imploding. Leaving Pandora with the choice of trying to save it. Or letting it fade into oblivion.
“Cecilia was right. Things are really bad,” Pandora said. “No point in risking the best éclairs in the Santa Cruz Mountains over the truth.”
“And now Moonspun Dreams is yours. Are you going to give up?” Kathy asked quietly, holding out a fingerful of the rich cream for the cat. They both watched Bonnie take a delicate taste while Pandora mulled over the slim choices available.
Her mother had said that she’d run out of ideas. She’d told Pandora before she left to be the keynote speaker at the annual Scenic Psychics conference that the store was hers now. And it was up to her to decide what to do with it.
After sixty years in the family, close up shop and sell the property.
Or fight to keep it going.
Her stomach pitched, but of the two, she knew there was only one she could live with.
“I can’t give up. This is all I have, Kath. Not just my heritage, given that Moonspun Dreams has been in the family for four generations. But it’s all I’ve got now.”
“What are you going to do? And what can I do to help?” Both questions were typical of Kathy. And both warmed Pandora to the soul, shoving the fears and stress of trying to save a failing business back a bit.
“I don’t know. I’ve been racking my brain, trying to figure something out.” Her smile quirked as she gestured to the small table in the corner. Rich rosewood inset with stars and moons, part of the table was covered by a brocade cloth and a handful of vividly painted cards. “I’ve finally reached the point of desperation.”
Kathy’s eyes widened. Pandora had sworn off all things metaphysical back in high school, claiming that she didn’t have the talent or skill. The reality was that Cassiopeia was so good at it, nothing Pandora did could measure up. And she’d hated knowing she’d never, ever be good enough.
“What’d the reading say?”
“Tarot really isn’t my forte,” she excused, filling her mouth with the sweet decadence of her éclair.
“Quit stalling. Even if you don’t have that psychic edge like your mom, you still know how to read.”
That psychic edge. The family gift. Her heritage.
Her failure.
“The cards weren’t any help,” she dismissed. “The Lovers, Three of Swords, the Tower, Four of Wands and the Seven of Swords.”
The éclair halfway to her lips, Kathy scrunched her nose and shrugged. “I don’t understand any of that.”
“I don’t, either.” Pandora’s shoulders drooped. “I mean, I know what each card means-I was memorizing tarot definitions before I was conjugating verbs. But I don’t have a clue how it applies to Moonspun Dreams. It doesn’t help me figure out how to save the business.”
Yet more proof that she was a failure when it came to the family gift. Handed down from mother to daughter, that little something extra manifested differently in each generation. Leda, Pandora’s grandmother, had prophetic dreams. Cassiopeia’s gift was psychic intuition.
And Pandora’s? Somewhere around her seventeenth birth day, her mother had decided Pandora’s gift was reading people. Sensing their energy, for good or bad. In other words, she’d glommed desperately onto her daughter’s skill at reading body language and tried to convince everyone that it was some sort of gift.