Page 106 of Perfectly Matched: Harbor Falls Romance Collection

Jillian Bass had many things going for her. She sailed through her liberal arts degree at Vassar in three years, rather than four. She landed a to-die-for job right after college at Thurston House Publishing, working under the senior editor who handled the notorious crime author, Stephen Crown. And thanks to her grandmother’s foresight, Jillian had acquired a nice trust fund when the matriarch of the family passed on.

Money wasn’t an issue for Jillian Bass.

She missed her grandmother and their talks tremendously, of course. She said a prayer of thanks daily for having had that wonderful woman in her life for all her twenty-three years. Grateful, too, was Jillian that her grandmother had loved her so much to entrust her with her money and the little empire she had built over her lifetime.

Much to her father’s chagrin.

Because you see, there were some not so good things in Jillian Bass’s life too.

She’d quit the job a few weeks after her grandmother had died, left New York City in her wake, and pretty much had told her father to stuff his influence and his money where the sun don’t shine.

She was tired of working with words. Tired of diva authors, incompetent copyeditors, and liquid lunches. Truly, she was tired of all of it. It had only taken her a little over a year to realize that her heart wasn’t in the publishing world.

Her father’s world.

Oh yes, her father owned Bass Publishing Conglomerates, the country’s premier publisher of mass market genre fiction, true story and true crime magazines, and a couple of tabloids to boot. From the day she found out that her father had acquired Thurston House Publishing, and that she had only been offered the position because of that fact, her stomach had soured to the future possibilities of working in publishing—or in any profession that may be loosely connected to her father’s conglomerate. Her father was not happy about that of course, since she was the sole heir to his kingdom; he had planned on her taking over the business someday.

Not.

And if all that weren’t enough, she broke off her engagement. Handpicked for her by her father, Rand Harper was also from a publishing family. Nice to keep thing.

“all in the business”

her father used to say. Not that it was an arranged marriage or anything like that—she really did truly, almost, love Rand at the time—but he was just like her father. In fact, he was her father’s right-hand man in his company, and so, well, while she was cleaning house, she just decided to make a clean sweep. Rand was upset, couldn’t understand at all why she would want to run off to the hillbillies of Appalachia, and when he had made that statement to her, Jillian knew she was making the right choice.

It was time to cut all the apron strings.

So, when Grandma Jean passed on and left her a quite healthy sum of money—enough to live on for years if her business idea fell through—she decided to go after her dream. A dream that only Grandma Jean knew about. Life out of the rat race, small town, and owning her own little business.

Oh, and chocolate. She loved chocolate. And somehow, chocolate would fit into this equation. Somehow.

You see, because Grandma Jean was the Jeaneva of Chocolates by Jeaneva. World-renowned Chocolates by Jeaneva. Her chocolates were so revered that even some of the top names in the industry were jealous and had tried to hack into her company computers to steal her recipes! However, those recipes were all safe with Jillian.

After her passing, Grandma Jean had left Jillian with all her secret recipes and the full rights to use them and the Jeaneva Chocolates name in whatever manner she wished. She’d also left her the company, although Jillian had never told her father that. She didn’t plan to tell anyone that—not yet at least. She wanted to make it in this business on her own merit.

She had convinced her mother not to tell her father about her inheritance. What her father had assumed—and no one had corrected him—was that his wife had inherited her mother’s estate. That was not the case. Truth be told, her mother did not want to be bothered. She had become accustomed to being a kept woman by her father and had absolutely no interest in getting her hands dirty in business.

Cathryn Bass happily accepted the fact that she did not inherit the business and somewhat reluctantly agreed to Jillian’s suggestion to keep that information from her husband for the time being.

Why? Because deep down Cathryn wanted Jillian to be happy, and in her own heart-of-hearts, she knew she had kowtowed to her husband for way too many years, so she gave in to her daughter’s request. After all, had her mother taken her own mother’s advice all those years ago, she would never have married the man anyway.

Jillian kept the business management with the man who had run the company with her grandmother for years. She trusted Robert Knowles, to the nth degree, and saw no reason to make changes. He kept her informed, they made some decisions together from time to time, and she could go off on her small-town adventure and live her life.

Which is how and why she landed in Harbor Falls, North Carolina with a small establishment called Bittersweets. Sweet, because of the chocolate, and bitter, because she wouldn’t have had this at all had her grandmother not died and left her the money.

Bittersweet.

It was a nice play on words and her Grandma Jean would have enjoyed it. Probably already had.

The bell over her door chimed and Jillian looked up from her books. It was barely half-past eight in the morning, but the first coffee rush had already come and gone. She’d taken advantage of the lull to glance over the numbers from the day before. She expected that her next rush would be after lunch, for some sort of chocolate confection dessert or drink.

At least that was the way it had happened yesterday. All bets were off, of course, with new businesses. She’d not been operating long enough to predict trends. But all of that was forgotten when the two women walking into her shop gave her pause for concern. Jillian sucked in a breath. So, there they were. Yes. She’d been waiting for them.

****

As he deplaned, Scott Matthews took a deep breath, and then exhaled long to clear the fog in his head. He’d driven two hours from the Bianchi estate to Rome’s Fiumicino Airport, then slept half of the eight-hour-plus flight to John F. Kennedy International in New York. Nice that he had first class for that leg. Then came the hour or so long flight to Charlotte and the brutally long delay waiting for maintenance to fix the bathroom toilet before they could leave, and finally, the short hop to the Harbor Falls Regional Airport via the smallest aircraft on which he had ever flown.

If he’d rented a car in New York, he might have arrived faster.

But he was here now, and if all went as planned, his brother should be waiting for him at the baggage claim—which shouldn’t be difficult to find in this one-horse town airport. At least that was what the text message on his phone said upon landing. Baggage claim, not the one-horse town part. One thing for certain, Scott was looking forward to two full weeks of restful bliss, staying for a few days at his sister-in-law’s Sweet Hart Inn, and then the following week, in one of Brad’s cabins up on Falls Mountain.

Two full weeks with nothing to do but sit, sleep, read, eat fabulous cooking, and maybe even fish. If he wanted to fish, that is. Truthfully? He wanted to play it all by ear and see what unfolded.

Chuckling, he headed out of the gate area following the signs to baggage claim. Fishing. He’d not been fishing since he was seventeen. That was nearly fourteen years ago. Where had the time gone?

He knew exactly where it had gone.

Brad had left home and gone to college. Their parents had decided to sell the house and travel, taking him with him. His senior year in high school had become a graduate course in navigating Europe via train, plane, automobile, and sometimes, bicycle. He’d learned how to live out of a backpack for a month, which hostels to trust and which not, and how to cook and eat his way through Italy for room and board.

Italy was where he had landed at age nineteen after a huge blow-up with his folks. His parents moved on to Amsterdam, where they had lived for the past dozen years or so. But Italy, well, there was nothing like Italy....

Food. Coffee. Women. Chocolate.

And women.

Had he said women?

But chocolate. That was his first love. There barely was a woman alive—or at least not one he’d found—who could compete with his love for chocolate.

But not this week. This week he was off chocolate. And women. His palate needed cleansed—on both counts. He chuckled again to himself.

Yes, he needed some down time.

That’s why, perhaps, fishing would be a good diversion. He’d ask Brad about that.

“Hey, Scott!”

And there he was, waving and smiling from across the way. Seeing his big brother for the first time since his wedding was a welcome sight.

****

Jillian gulped, rose, and offered her hand to the two women.

“Hello. I’m Jillian Bass.”

The tall blonde took her hand and shook it with an uneasy grip, a limp shake.

“I’m Sydney,”

she said with some authority, rivaling her weak handshake, and tipping her head to her right.

“I own the bakery and coffee shop down the street.”

Emphasis on coffee shop.

Jillian nodded.

“Yes, Sydney Hart, right? I know who you are. Best scones of the south.”

Sydney’s eyes grew a little wide.

“Yes, that’s right. How did you...?”

The other woman, the shorter one with the strawberry-blond hair stepped forward and took her hand then. Firm shake, meant business. Jillian liked her already.

“I’m Suzie Hart Matthews,”

she told her.

“Sydney and I are cousins and we occasionally work together.”

“And you are The Matchmaking Chef.”

Jillian smiled.

“I’ve seen every one of your shows. I love them!”

Suzie gave her a hesitant grin then.

“Oh, yes. That’s me. You know me?”

Huffing a breath that lifted her bangs, Jillian said.

“Oh my goodness, yes! I’ve watched you from the beginning. I loved that magazine spread in Southern’s Best showcasing your bed and breakfast, too. I mean, seeing that, was one of the reasons I sought out Harbor Falls. I was looking for a small town to live in, you know? And the pictures in the magazine, well... And speaking of Southern’s Best,”

she turned to Sydney.

“what a coup to land the Best Scones of the South title out from under Stone Kellerman, then to land him as your boyfriend, too. What a story! I mean, if that just isn’t...”

Pausing, she took another deep breath. Slow down, Jillian. Too much.

Sydney and Suzie stared at her.

“I’m sorry,”

Jillian plunged in again.

“I can talk too much sometimes, and too fast. It’s the New Yorker in me. But I’m learning to be slower. Here. In the south. Please, sit down, and let me get you a cup of coffee.”

She headed behind the counter, cringing at her clumsy words.

“We just came by to say hello.”

And to check me out.

Turning, Jillian glanced back at the two women. Sydney was wringing her hands. Suzie stood with her arms crossed over her chest. Uh-oh. She faced them again.

“Ladies, look. I know what you must be thinking.”

“What do you think we’re thinking, Ms. Bass?”

Oh dear, Ms. Bass?

She bit her lip.

“Well, if I were you,”

she squared herself in front of the women.

“I would be thinking, who is this hussy coming in here and hedging in on our world? Our business? After all, she’s a total stranger. Not local. Sweeping in here and thinking she can win over our customers. Competition. That’s what I’d be thinking.”

This time she watched Sydney bite her lip.

“Well, not really, I never thought that.”

The shorter woman scowled at her cousin, and then stepped closer to Jillian.

“That’s exactly what we’ve been thinking,”

she said then.

“right down to the hussy part.”

There was one brief second of silence, and then all three women burst out laughing.

“Hussy,”

Sydney repeated.

Jillian laughed louder.

“It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been called that.”

“Have you ever been called heifer?”

“No!”

Suzie grinned.

“Well, you’re in the south, honey, get used to it.”

“Oh dear...”

They laughed again, and finally, they all three stopped. Jillian decided this was her chance.

“Look, Sydney and Suzie. I have no desire to horn in on your business. What I’m eventually opening here is a candy store. Chocolates. And on the side I’ll offer the chocolate and coffee-flavored drinks—just until I get my candy-making equipment here and set up in the back. So please, relax, okay? I truly wish that we could be friends. Truly.”

She felt like she was begging. Well, maybe she was, a little. She wanted and needed to make it in this town. Not that she was entirely certain why, she just did.

Sydney stepped up to her then, reached for her hand, and gave her a firm handshake this time.

“Well then,”

she said.

“welcome to Harbor Falls, Jillian Bass.”