Page 28 of Sweet Surprises

“So, I guess I won’t have a lot of reasons to call you tomorrow,” she said. “Maybe you’ll finally be able to get some work done.”

He nodded, but found himself thinking that he had actually kind of enjoyed her silly questions.

“You’re going to miss me, aren’t you?” she teased him. “How many cows are there? Do they eat snacks? Do the babies ever wear adorable little sweaters?”

“Blankets,” he couldn’t help correcting her.

“Youwillmiss me,” she said triumphantly.

“You can still call if you have a question,” he told her. “Sorry I got frustrated yesterday. The store has been kind of a drain on our resources for a while now.”

“Isn’t ice cream the only thing you sell?” she asked.

“It is,” he said, nodding. “But we could sell it all to a big grocery store in Burlington, if we wanted.”

He didn’t tell her that they could also sell the whole farm. He had suspected at first that she was just here to kill a little time after breaking up with her boyfriend. But the last twenty-four hours had shown him she had a real interest in the farm and the shop. It didn’t feel right to tell her someone was sniffing around the land. And it wasn’t like there was any kind of offer. Not yet, anyway.

“I think the shop is really special,” she said. “I’m going to make sure everyone else knows it.”

Her words were spoken softly, but there was a real strength behind them.

Maybe she can actually bring it back,he thought to himself.She got Olivia talking with her hands again. Anything is possible.

He smiled, thinking about Olivia practically spilling her mug of milk tonight as she talked a mile a minute to Charlotte, her hands dancing in the air just like her grandpa’s always did when he got into one of his stories.

“Oh, wow,” Charlotte breathed from beside him.

They had just pulled into the village, and he realized she had probably gone to sleep too early to really see the Christmas lights the other night.

The sky was a deepening lavender now, the last of the fiery sunset invisible behind the buildings of town.

He’d always thought the golden lights strung around the pavilion and the old-fashioned streetlamps around the snowy park made the village square look like the little town in a train set. Colorful Christmas lights glowed in all the shop windows, and most of the apartments above—the brilliant colors reflecting softly in the snow that still frosted the rooftops.

“You’re so lucky,” Charlotte told him for the second time in a night.

And you’re not much of a city girl, are you?he thought to himself.

“Sugarville Grove is a special place,” he said. His voice sounded gruff, even to his own ears. “Not that I’ve ever lived anywhere else.”

“Don’t bother,” she told him with a grin. “I’m willing to bet that this is as good as it gets.”

“Hey,” he said as he pulled up to the shop.

Jenny Robinson from the real estate office next door stood in front of the ice cream shop. That was nothing new, Jenny was a pacer—she often walked up and down the block while she negotiated a house sale.

But he didn’t like the way she kept looking in the window of the shop with a horrified expression on her face, and frantically tapping away on her phone. When she saw his truck, the hand with the phone in it dropped to her side and she bit her lip.

“Jenny,” he said as he got out of the truck. “What’s up?”

“Oh, Tag,” she said. “Did you get my messages?”

“No,” he said, reaching for his phone in his pocket.

“Don’t bother,” she told him. “You just need to get into the shop as fast as you can and turn off the water. There’s a flood.”

He grabbed the keys from his pocket, sensing Charlotte at his elbow.

“What’s going on, Dad?” Olivia asked.

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