Recipe For Redemption

“I’ll do my best,” Abby chuckled. “Would you like me to drop you off at Eloise’s this morning on my way to the hospital? I’m going to be leaving in a little bit.”

“I’m ready whenever you are,” Alice announced. “I’ll go put my lipstick on and we’ll zoom, zoom, zoom. A lady just isn’t ready to go out in public without her red lipstick,” she told Jason as she held out her hand again. “It was nice to meet you, Mr. Corwin.”

“Jay, please. You, too, Mrs. Manning.”

“Alice.” She smiled, charming character wrinkles around her eyes appearing. “Welcome to Butterfly Harbor. I hope you enjoy your stay.”

Abby’s amused gaze faded as he caught her eye. “So do I.”

* * *

“MR. CORWIN, THERE you are.” Lori Fletcher, Abby’s assistant manager and invaluable right hand, met them in the dining room as Abby led their new guest to the lobby.

She could feel the cool morning air brushing in through the front door Lori had opened to clear out the smoke. All the better to see Jay Corwin. Abby’s gaze skimmed from his short-cropped, almost military-style brown hair to a neatly trimmed beard down to a myriad of muscles peeking from under a snug black T-shirt.

He seemed a bit more relaxed now that the smoke had dissipated. Or maybe it was a trick of the light. He’d stopped staring daggers at her and she was glad to see that frown on his face wasn’t permanent. Not that he would win any points for a cheery disposition.

“Bonnie’s doing a quick once-over on your room,” Lori told him as she handed him the room key dangling from one of their trademark monarch butterfly key chains. “We have fresh coffee and pastries on the buffet in the lobby if you’d like to wait there.”

“Thank you, Lori. Miss Manning.” He bowed his head as if he were dismissing her. Abby gnashed her teeth. Storming into her kitchen to lecture her? As if she didn’t know how inept she was when it came to cooking? Or that she didn’t know how to silence a smoke alarm? Arrogant know-it-all.

“Abby, Matilda’s going to have a coronary when she hears about this,” Lori whispered once Jay Corwin was out of earshot. “She almost went on strike the last time you tried to cook spaghetti and over-boiled the sauce so it erupted like a volcano.”

“If you don’t tell her,” Abby singsonged with a sweet smile as her face went hotter than the oven she’d been battling. She’d never understood how things got away from her so fast. “Then we don’t have to worry, do we?”

“Uh-huh.” Lori grinned, an expression that lit up her face as they returned to the desk. “I’d ask if this is the last time you plan to burn down the Flutterby, but now that you’re attracting men who look as if they’ve modeled for a firefighters’ calendar, I might start giving you my old matchbook collection.”

“Not funny,” Abby said. “I didn’t think breakfast and dinner were going to be a problem.”

“You had a good plan. Matilda’s replacement didn’t have any way of knowing his brother was going to die, and it’s not like Butterfly Harbor is brimming with competent cooks.”

Butterfly Harbor wasn’t brimming with much of anything these days. “We’ll make do,” Abby tried to sound more confident than she felt. She was just going to have to make it work. “Meanwhile, we’ll have to explain the situation to our guests and get by with them eating at the diner. Unless...”

“Unless what?” Lori’s tone was hesitant.

“I could call Matilda and ask for some of her best recipes.”

“Gee, Five-Alarm Manning, I can’t understand why she didn’t do that to start with.”

“Are you guys really still calling me that?” Abby sighed as she headed to the über-organized registration desk and pushed aside all thoughts of sending out an SOS to Matilda. “Oh, no. What’s this?” She picked up the large metal showerhead.

“That,” Lori said, “is a showerhead.”

“Lori—”

“Room 206. It fell off when I was cleaning the bathtub.”

“My own fault,” Abby muttered. “I got sidetracked last week and forgot to check the rest of them.” If it wasn’t the showerheads taking suicide drops, it was leaky pipes under sinks or loose floorboards...everywhere. The Flutterby was falling apart, but she was determined to stay ahead of the collapse. She had to. She didn’t have a choice. “Start me a list of any repairs we need to do. I’ll get going on them after I visit Mr. Vartebetium.” The Flutterby’s owner had been in the hospital for several days now. Her fingers throbbed. It was all she could do not to run back to the kitchen and stick her hand in the freezer. “How are we coming on the reservations?”

“Working on them now,” Lori told her. “It’s been a while since we’ve had all twelve rooms filled, but we should have everyone’s needs accounted for. That’ll also leave two extra rooms for last-minute arrivals. That producer from the National Cooking Network is a picky one.”

“New Yorkers,” Abby muttered, casting a glance to her newest arrival, who had taken a seat near the dormant fireplace. “I’m going to check with Matt about helping us get the last rooms in shape so we can have them as well.” The recent Army vet had been doing odd jobs for her around the inn for a while, but his time was more limited now that he’d been hired as one of Sheriff Saxon’s deputies. “It’s going to be a crazy couple of weeks around here,” she said to Lori. “We’re going to need all hands on deck.”

“We’re ready.”

Between the organizers of the By the Bay Food Festival and the production crew from the National Cooking Network, not to mention the out-of-town attendees, the Flutterby Inn was poised to be sold out for the first time in over two years. As much work as it was going to be for Abby and her three employees, it was their opportunity to make the Flutterby Inn shine in all its aging glory. And hopefully make a profit for their bedridden boss. “Nothing like going from a drought to a flood when it comes to guests.” Abby inclined her head toward where their new guest sipped his coffee.

“We’re in good shape. Besides, he paid for his reservation up front, so we can’t exactly kick him out. I gave him the tower room, if that’s okay? Kind of suits his knight-on-a-white-horse persona, don’t you think?” Lori leaned her chin on her hand.

“The tower’s fine.” Abby ignored the question from the ever-romantic Lori along with the implication. Knight or not, she did not have the time or energy to invest in romance, no matter what her struggling online dating persona or her well-intentioned employee thought. Not that Jay Corwin was remotely her type. She liked her potential romantic partners to have fewer sharp edges to them. This guy was more prickly than a spiny jellyfish. “That leaves us with, what? Four guest rooms occupied through this weekend?” Lori nodded. Good. Not too much upkeep then, and at least two rooms would be vacated by the following week. “I’m going to drop Gran off at Eloise’s for the day and then head over to see Mr. Vartebetium. I’ll stop at the diner and pick up lunch. What do you want?”

“One of Holly’s strawberry shakes would be heaven.” Lori sighed, then looked down at her significant waistline hidden behind a full flowing skirt and oversize sweater. “But better make it a turkey on whole wheat. No fries.”

What Abby wanted to do was remind the younger woman that depriving herself wouldn’t help, but she didn’t want to force Lori off the healthier bandwagon. Her friend’s confidence had begun to climb and she’d even treated herself to a cut and color at the Bee Hive to tame her once brown, now nutmeg-highlighted brown curls. “You’re doing great, Lori. Losing thirty pounds is nothing to sneeze at.”

“It’s the next thirty that has me worried. I’ll hold down the fort, don’t worry.”

“Paige said to keep her on speed dial if we need extra help.” But with her friend doing extra shifts at the diner, Abby didn’t think it right to ask her to man the kitchen at the Flutterby as well. Not that Abby could afford to anyway, not with the way the business’s finances were stretched these days. Not having an in-house cook was proving to be more of an issue than she’d anticipated. And it was only going to get worse with the influx of guests they were expecting.

She’d find a solution. She always did. She’d do anything to keep the Flutterby Inn running. It was the only home Gran had ever really known, and Abby wasn’t about to have Alice spend her twilight years anywhere else. Especially now.

Abby rifled through one of her drawers for the stack of meal vouchers for the Butterfly Diner. “I’m going to make sure our resident fireman is all set before I go.”

“I’d say I saw him first,” Lori said, “but you one-upped me with that fire of yours.”

“It wasn’t a full-blown fire.” But it could have been. Gran was right. When was she going to learn her lesson? She and kitchens did not mix. Abby took a steeling breath and carried the vouchers over to their new guest, who was flipping through one of the anemic local tour books. “Mr. Cor—er, Jay?”

“Should I stay on alert for the duration of my stay, Five-Alarm Manning?” He didn’t bother to look up from the booklet.

My, what big ears you have. She would not let him bait her. She couldn’t afford to alienate paying—and from what she could tell, incredibly flush—guests. Some people, like this man, exuded money. “I’m afraid you’ve discovered my one weakness.”

“Kitchens are dangerous for those not properly trained.” The superiority in his voice obliterated the last of Abby’s goodwill.

“Yes, I heard you the first time.” Why did he make her sound as if she was a rambunctious five-year-old who’d dumped a container of flour all over her head? She bit her cheek. She could tell her guest she’d been trying to save some money, that scones couldn’t possibly be that difficult, that she hadn’t wanted her guests to have to trudge to the diner. Or she could do as she’d done for the last seven years and keep her tongue in check to make sure her customers—even Mr. Jay Corwin—were happy.

“Since the kitchen is closed for the next couple of weeks—” she offered up a silent prayer that Matilda would return sooner than planned “—and your rate includes breakfast and either lunch or dinner, we’re offering free meals to our customers down at the Butterfly Diner. I think you’ll agree that’s best while my cook is on vacation.”

“You don’t have a backup cook?” He frowned at her over the top of his coffee cup.

“We did. Matilda walked him through the paces before she left, but then his brother passed away. He had to fly back to Michigan.”

“There’s no one else available?”

“It took us weeks to find him. Besides, Matilda would throw a fit if someone she didn’t know came in to work her kitchen.” It was a joke. Kind of.

“You allow her to take time off and leave you high and dry during what could be a busy couple of months for you? Doesn’t seem very responsible to me.”

He couldn’t have sounded any more judgmental if he’d banged a gavel on the sink. Life happened. And sometimes it had a cruel sense of timing. “Tell you what. If you’re here when Matilda returns, feel free to let her know her annual long-distance breast cancer awareness fund-raising walk isn’t smart business sense.” So much for holding her tongue. “In the meantime, I hope you enjoy your stay. The diner opens every morning at six and what stores there are on Monarch Lane will open between nine and ten. If you have any questions or need assistance, let Lori know. She’s more than up to the task, I’m sure.”