Better Than Chocolate. Sheila Roberts

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      Chapter One

      Manage your relationships well and your business will go well. Because what, after all, is business but a relationship with some dollar signs attached?

      —Muriel Sterling, Mixing Business with Pleasure: How to Successfully Balance Business and Love

      Samantha Sterling sat next to her mother in the first pew of Icicle Falls Community Church and fought back the urge to jump up, run to the front of the sanctuary, grab her stepfather, Waldo, by the neck and throttle him. She didn’t, for two reasons. One, a girl didn’t do things like that in church. Still, she could have overcome her reservations if not for the second reason—God had already taken Waldo out. Waldo was as dead as roadkill on Highway 2. In addition to a daughter from his first marriage, he’d left behind his grieving wife, Muriel, his three stepdaughters, Samantha, Cecily and Bailey, and the family business, which was nearly as dead as Waldo.

      Sweet Dreams Chocolates had been healthy when Samantha’s father was alive. The company had been started by her great-grandmother Rose and had slowly but steadily grown under his leadership—one big, happy family to mirror the happy family who were living off its profits. All three sisters had spent their summers working at Sweet Dreams. All three had it drummed into them from an early age that this business was the source of both the family’s income and honor (not to mention chocolate). But it was Samantha who had fallen in love with it. Of the three girls, she was the one who’d stayed and she was the heir apparent.

      But then her father had died and everything came to a halt. Samantha lost the man she and her sisters idolized, and her mother lost her way. Muriel left it to Samantha and the bookkeeper, Lizzy, to keep the company running on autopilot while first she mourned and then later searched for a new husband.

      Enter Waldo Wittman, a tall, gray-haired widower recently retired, encouraged to do so by his company, which was downsizing. (Now, looking back, Samantha suspected there were other reasons Waldo had been turned loose.) He’d wanted to get away from the rat race, or so he’d said. With its mountain views, its proximity to eastern Washington wine country, its small-town friendliness and its attractive widow, Waldo decided Icicle Falls would fit the bill. And Muriel decided the same about Waldo. So, after a year and a half of widowhood, she got a new man.

      And now there he was, at the front of the church, stretched out in his favorite—expensive!—gray suit. Sweet, beloved Waldo…the money-eater. Oh, Waldo, how could everything have gone so wrong so fast?

      It was early January, the beginning of a new year. And what a nightmare year it was promising to be, all because Mom had made her new husband president of their family-owned business. She’d left Samantha as VP in charge of marketing; much good that had done. Now Samantha was VP in charge of disaster and she could hardly sit still thinking of the mess waiting for her back at the office.

      “You’re fidgeting,” whispered her sister Cecily, who was sitting next to her.

      Fidgeting at a funeral probably wasn’t polite but it was an improvement over standing up, pulling out her hair and shrieking like a madwoman.

      Why, oh, why hadn’t Mom and Dad done what needed to be done to make sure that if something happened to Dad the business passed into competent hands? Then Mom could have skipped happily off into newlywed bliss, no harm no foul.

      None of them had expected her to remain alone forever. She was only in her fifties when Dad died and she didn’t function well alone.

      When Waldo arrived on the scene she came back to life, and Samantha had been happy for her. He was fun and charming, and she and her sisters gave him a hearty thumbs-up. Why not? He’d brought back Mom’s smile. At first everyone got along well. Like Samantha, he’d been a shutterbug and they’d enjoyed talking photography. Her favorite joke when she’d stop by the house to talk business with Mom (or try, anyway) was to ask, “Where’s Waldo?”

      But once Mom dropped him on the company like a bomb, Samantha didn’t have to ask. She knew where Waldo was. He was at the office, in over his head and making her crazy.

      She ground her teeth as she mentally tallied how much money he’d squandered: new business cards with his name on them, new stationery, new equipment they hadn’t needed, a fancy phone system they couldn’t afford that a slick-tongued sales rep had talked him into buying. How could a businessman be so bad at business? Of course he’d convinced both himself and Mom that every purchase was necessary, and Samantha hadn’t had the veto power to stop him.

      That had been just the beginning. Six months ago their profits sank and they started having trouble paying their suppliers. Waldo cut back on production, which then affected their ability to fill orders, and Lizzy, their bookkeeper, began looking as if she’d been invited to dinner with the grim reaper. “We’re behind on our IRS quarterlies,” she’d informed Samantha. “And that’s not all.” She showed Samantha expenditures on the company credit card that made no sense. A gun. Ammunition. Cases and cases of bottled water, enough to keep the whole town hydrated. Waldo was a financial locust, devouring the company.

      Where’s Waldo? Busy dumping their lives in the toilet. Flush, flush, flush! She could have happily stuffed his head in a toilet and—

      “And I believe that if Waldo could speak to us now he’d say, ‘Thank God for a life well-lived,’” Pastor Jim said.

      Her mother let out a sob and Samantha felt a pang of guilt. She should be crying, too. She’d liked Waldo. He’d been a man with a big heart and a big appetite for life.

      “We know he’ll be missed,” Pastor Jim was saying, and Cecily laid a comforting hand on Mom’s arm. That, of course, gave Mom permission to start crying in earnest.

      “Poor Mom,” whispered Bailey, who was sitting on the other side of Samantha. “First Dad and now Waldo.”

      Losing two husbands—talk about a double whammy. Mom had not only loved both her husbands, she’d loved being married. She had no head for business (which probably explained why Grandpa had been perfectly happy to let Dad run Sweet Dreams), but she had a gift for relationships. She’d even had a couple of relationship books published with a small publisher and before Waldo died she’d been about to start on a new book, Secrets of a Happy Remarriage.

      Samantha hoped that now Mom would turn her attention to learning how to have a happy life—with no marriage. At least, no marriage until they could get the business off the critical-care list and Samantha was put officially in charge.

      The sooner, the better. Her first order of business would be to rehire Lizzy, who Waldo had fired in a misbegotten attempt to economize. She only hoped Lizzy would come back and help her sort through this mess.

      She heaved a sigh. Here her mother was grieving and all she could think about was saving the family business. What was wrong with her? Did she have a calculator for a heart?

      “Now I’d like to give the rest of you a chance to say something about Waldo,” Pastor Jim said.

      He made me nuts probably wouldn’t cut it. Samantha stayed seated.

      Lots of other people were happy to oblige, though.

      “He was the most generous man I ever met,” said Maria Gomez, his regular waitress at Zelda’s. “He gave me two hundred dollars to get my car fixed. Just like that. СКАЧАТЬ