Love, Valentine Style

  Love, Valentine Style

  Contents

  Be My Other Valentine

  by Jasmine Haynes

  Hotel Amore

  by Pamela Fryer

  Civil War Valentine

  by Haley Whitehall

  Forever My Valentine

  by Raine English

  Finding Mr. Right

  by Lois Winston

  Valentine Rules

  by Mel Curtis

  Copyright

  Be My Other Valentine

  Jasmine Haynes

  Grace is a baker and Sugar & Spice Bakery is her life. Five years ago she was given a sacred duty to perform by a mother dying of cancer: Every Valentine’s Day, Grace must deliver one of her beautiful cake creations to a little girl named Valentine, and it must be addressed from the girl’s mother up in heaven. But this Valentine’s Day, Grace’s delivery truck might finally give up the ghost before she drops off her precious cargo.

  Brian lost his wife five years ago, and their little girl Valentine is all he has left of her. But what Brian has forgotten is that very special gift Valentine receives every year on Valentine’s Day, and he’s moved his daughter to a new house with no way to contact the mysterious baker who has followed his wife’s wishes all these years.

  In their quest to fulfill a dying woman’s last request, can Grace and Brian find their own Valentine?

  Chapter One

  “But how will Mommy know where to leave my present?”

  On the way to drop her off at school, Brian Pierce glanced at Valentine in the rearview mirror. His five-year-old daughter was seated in the child’s booster seat on the opposite side of the car so that he could see her. Her cherubic face, so like Marilyn’s, was adultly earnest.

  And damn, he’d forgotten all about the present, though God only knew how. Tomorrow was Valentine’s Day, the single most important day of the year. It was her birthday, for which she’d been named. That had been Marilyn’s idea. At the time she’d chosen it, Marilyn hadn’t realized the painful reminder it would be. Neither of them had. If he could go back, change the day, the name, change everything… But he couldn’t.

  For Valentine, it was her birthday, the best day of the year, all hearts and presents and adoration.

  Yet he’d forgotten the damn present. Maybe he’d wanted to, because it was both a blessing and a curse. Maybe he’d been hoping Valentine would forget. They’d moved over the summer, to a bigger house in a San Francisco Peninsula neighborhood with a highly regarded school district, and she’d made all new friends. But of course, she’d never forget her birthday, just as he’d never forget it was the day Marilyn had died.

  “Mommy’s an angel, sweetheart,” he said to the mirror’s reflection. “She can see everything from heaven, and she knows where we live now.” Yeah, Marilyn knew, but the mystery benefactor who delivered Valentine’s birthday cake in Marilyn’s name most likely didn’t.

  “Are you sure, Daddy?” Valentine was not a whiny child, but her voice was slightly plaintive. The special birthday cake was her only connection to her mother. It kept Marilyn alive for her, and it kept the pain of Marilyn’s death alive for him, forever reminding him of those hours spent pacing the hospital halls, waiting to hear, the fear that he could lose either of them, both of them.

  But those were things he needed to stop thinking about. This was about Valentine. About her special day.

  “Of course I’m sure.” But Brian wasn’t sure at all. The gift was anonymous, magically appearing on the doorstep first thing in the morning on Valentine’s Day every year. He’d been up for a very early flight one year, but the cake had been there even at four-thirty. The plain pink bakery box displayed no name and contained nothing but a specialty cake. Animals, girlie shapes. Last year it had been a lamb with a garland of flowers around its neck. The lamb’s wool was made of pink marshmallows, and the cake melted in his mouth, filled with the sweetness of whipped cream and strawberry jam.

  He didn’t have a clue who to call to redirect the cake. To make matters worse, he had a nine-thirty flight to Portland for the company board meeting. He was division controller for a San Francisco manufacturing facility. He didn’t have time to call all the bakeries in the area, and his return flight wasn’t until six o’clock tonight. He’d have to ask Valentine’s after-school sitter to make the calls. Hannah would make dinner and stay with Valentine until he arrived home. He’d never put Valentine in daycare; with his schedule, it wasn’t practical. Hannah was a widow with kids and grandkids living in Texas, and Valentine filled in the gap between visits, giving Hannah all the little-girl love she could ask for.

  He pulled into the line of cars forming outside the school. Most were moms, but there were a few dads as well. He climbed out and rounded to Valentine’s side. She’d already unbuckled herself. “You be good, sweetie.” It was automatic; Valentine was always good, the darling of her teacher. “I’ll call you when I get to the airport tonight after work.”

  “Okay, Daddy.” She held her arms out to him, trusting, loving, open. His heart contracted. She was the best part of him. She was the only part of Marilyn he had left. She was everything.

  And he would find that cake for her. Even if he had to order another and get up at five tomorrow morning to put it on the doorstep. He wouldn’t fail his daughter.

  *

  The van coughed and grumbled as Grace Collier turned the ignition key. Her mechanic was good, but the old beast of a vehicle was starting to spend more time in the shop than it did on the road. It needed replacing, but she’d just spent a fortune on a new state-of-the-art rack oven, not to mention the floor mixer she’d had to replace six months ago, and there wasn’t any money to spare right now.

  She should have taken her car, but the van was tricked out with special cubbies for holding confections so they didn’t slide or fall. She’d heard horror stories of five-tier wedding cakes toppling when the driver took a turn too fast. So Grace wasn’t taking any chances with this morning’s special delivery.

  “Come on, baby,” she crooned, leaning forward to pet the dashboard. “You can do it, I know you can.” The engine suddenly roared to life. Animals, children, old people, and finicky vans needed a little sugar and spice, just like the name of her bakery.

  The predawn streets were practically empty. In the bakery business, you had to be an early riser, no pun intended. She had another baker and two kitchen helpers who started work at three-thirty, but she was still down at the shop no later than four o’clock in order to be ready for the on-the-way-to-work crowd dying for a sweet treat in the morning. Her cinnamon rolls were to die for, if she did say so herself. Grace loved the smell of crisp morning air. Winter in the San Francisco Bay Area didn’t bring snow except on the mountain tops, and while the days could be gorgeous and relatively warm, the early mornings were downright cold for her Bay Area-bred bones.

  Today she had a side trip to make. She lived in San Carlos, the bakery was in Burlingame, about ten minutes north on 101, but she had to get off in San Mateo. The brief detour would cost her only another ten minutes.

  At the bottom of the ramp, the van coughed and sputtered, and for a moment, she was terrified the poor thing would expire right there. Maybe she shouldn’t have called it a beast. But then she pressed the gas and rolled onto a deserted Hillsdale Boulevard, which led up to the mall. She stopped for a light, though it was beyond her why it had turned red when there wasn’t another car in sight. She had a few blocks to go; the house she wanted was on the other side of the mall.

  Five years ago a pregnant woman had walked
into Sugar and Spice. Grace could still see her image as if she haunted the bakery. Though she had an ethereal beauty, she wasn’t healthy and glowing the way Grace thought of pregnant women, far from it. Her request had been very special: she wanted a baker who would commit to delivering a cake every year on Valentine’s Day. Every single year for as long as Grace was capable. That was a lot of cakes, since at the time Grace had only been thirty-three, and Sugar and Spice had only been around for three years. Though it was a birthday cake, the woman wanted it to be decorated in pinks and reds for Valentine’s Day. For a little girl. Her daughter. It was to be delivered in a plain pink box with no markings identifying the bakery, and accompanied only by a card. The woman had signed one sample and told Grace to copy it each year. Starting the following Valentine’s Day, not this one. The card’s words were as indelibly written into Grace’s mind as was the woman’s gaunt but beautiful face.

  To my special Valentine, from Mommy. I will always love you, even up here in heaven.

  Grace hadn’t asked questions. She hadn’t felt the woman was capable of answering without breaking down, nor was it Grace’s business. They’d negotiated a price, though Grace thought it was far too much; she would have done it for free.

  She saw the obituary a week later. The same name that had been on the credit card she’d charged. Survived by a husband and an infant daughter, the woman had died on Valentine’s Day. Of course, she’d known she would die giving birth to her little girl. Precognition? Grace would never know, but she’d kept her promise to deliver the cake to a little girl who’d lost her mother. She would always keep that promise. She knew the woman’s name, she knew the father’s name. If he moved, she’d track him down.

  She had to. Deep inside, she felt the love that woman had for her baby. Grace would never be a mother. She would never get married. She had Sugar and Spice, she had her work, and that was more than enough.

  Except on Valentine’s Day when she always felt the ache for something she would never have as she delivered the cake to a house with a white picket fence on a tree-lined street in a quiet neighborhood. Last year, there had been a tricycle on the front porch. She’d left a cake in the shape of a lamb, with small pink marshmallows as its fleece, tiny chocolate chips for its snout and hooves, and a garland of gumdrop flowers around the neck. The marshmallows and chocolate chips had taken forever to apply. They’d been worth it.

  She pulled away from the light, the van coughing again. She’d made it through the intersection when it sputtered. And coughed. Then died. Oh no. It couldn’t be. She cranked the ignition and pumped the gas. The van rolled a few more feet, allowing her to pull to the side of the road, though she was still partially blocking the lane. Dammit.

  “I didn’t mean it about being a beast,” she told the van. But no amount of apology made the engine engage again.

  She turned on her flashers, though thankfully the street was deserted so she wasn’t stopping traffic. Give it two hours, though, and things would be a mess if she didn’t get the van started again.

  After calling roadside assistance, she tugged on a pair of gloves and slid out the door. Pulling her quilted jacket tightly closed against the cold, she opened the hood. Maybe she could see something. Except that she didn’t know a thing about engines, and it all looked normal to her.

  She was going to be late for the morning rush. She’d be late with the cake. God, what if someone was awake in the house and saw her? It would violate the promise she’d made. No way. She couldn’t. There was only one choice. She’d have to walk the few blocks. And hope she made it back before the tow truck got here.

  Chapter Two

  Brian was dog-tired. Thank God the drive home from the airport wasn’t far. The plane experienced a mechanical failure, and it was three hours before the maintenance crew had decided they couldn’t fix it. If he didn’t want to spend the night in Portland, the only flight he could get out on was headed to LAX. He took it, and, after a two-hour layover, caught another flight back to San Francisco. During the long, circuitous route, he hadn’t slept more than a few minutes at a time.

  To top it off, Hannah had not been able to find a bakery with a scheduled delivery to his old house. The only other option was to go to the old place himself and hope to hell the cake was on the doorstep. Or that the delivery person would drop it off in short order so that Brian wasn’t sitting outside the house until dawn.

  Why the hell hadn’t the mystery baker contacted him at least once in the last five years so that he had a name and number to call in case of this very thing?

  Of course, he might very well end up having to buy a cake and put the card on it himself. It would be his writing, not Marilyn’s. Would Valentine know the difference?

  That didn’t matter. What mattered was that he should have thought of all this earlier. He could have copied one of the previous cards. Valentine had kept them all. After the first one, the writing was photocopied anyway. That’s what he got for ignoring the issue, for giving in to his desire to forget the pain of that day.

  He exited the freeway at Hillsdale as if it hadn’t been six months since he’d taken this route. Ahead, something was flashing on the side of the road. He’d passed through a green light before he realized it was a disabled vehicle partially blocking his lane. He pulled over slightly to avoid it, unintentionally slowing. In the beam of his headlights along the side of the van, he saw the words, but his bleary mind didn’t register them until he’d already passed. Sugar and Spice Bakery. No, it couldn’t be. His luck wasn’t that good. Besides, the van was empty.

  He’d gone another block when he saw the woman. Tall and huskily built, she took the sidewalk at a fast clip in comfortable work shoes, her short, dark curls bouncing against the collar of her coat. From the rearview, he could make out a box she held steady with extended arms. A box that turned pink in the light of a streetlamp.

  He wasn’t lucky, but Valentine had an angel looking out for her: her mother.

  He would have pulled to the curb anyway, despite the box, because a woman with a broken-down truck at not quite four in the morning wasn’t safe.

  Brian rolled down the passenger window and leaned over so he could see her. “Are you okay, ma’am?”

  “I’m fine, thanks.” She backed up against the lamp post, holding the cake box as if it were a shield. Or she might have been protecting it.

  The light from above cast shadows over her face. Brian couldn’t make out her features. “Is that your van back there?”

  She nodded, the lines of her body tense. He realized he was frightening her. “Do you need me to call a tow truck?” He didn’t offer to give her a ride anywhere; she didn’t look like she’d even consider getting in his car.

  “I’ve called Triple A. They’ll be here any minute,” she said. And yet she was walking away from her vehicle.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to scare you. It’s just pretty deserted around here.”

  “Yeah, I know,” she said wryly.

  He had to ask. “Is that a cake?”

  She nodded, swallowed.

  “Is it for a five-year old, and you’re taking it to a house on Louise Lane just up there?” He pointed ahead.

  She took a step forward. “How did you know?”

  “Because it’s for my daughter Valentine. And we don’t live in the same house anymore.”

  “You’re joking, right?” With another step, her face came into view as she peered down into the car. She wasn’t exactly pretty, her nose a little too prominent for that, her face a little too round, but he saw kindness there. She’d have to be kind to keep bringing Valentine’s cakes year after year.

  He shook his head. “Would I be here at four in the morning if I wasn’t trying to catch whoever leaves those cakes for her birthday?”

  She held fast to the box, her mouth a round O. Then she laughed. “Well, thank God. Now I don’t have to walk all the way up there.” Suddenly her words flew almost nonstop, in a musical lilt he would expect from some
one who created confections as beautiful as hers. “I was afraid I’d miss the tow truck driver, too, even though he said he’d be twenty-five minutes. Here.” She leaned in the passenger window and set the cake box on the front seat beside him. “I’ll need your new address for next year.” She slapped her hand to her forehead. “I should have talked to you years ago, but I didn’t know how to do it without revealing the whole plan. And she told me it had to be a secret.”

  His heart contracted. She was talking about Marilyn. How much had Marilyn told her? Suddenly, he wanted to know, had to know about every nuance of their encounter.

  “Why don’t you get in and I’ll take you back to your truck?” he offered.

  She flapped her hand at him. “Oh, that’s okay. Don’t bother.”

  “No way am I letting you wait alone for twenty-five minutes. I’ll stay until the mechanic has looked at your van.”

  She rolled her lips between her teeth, contemplated him, then said, “If you’re sure. But I’ll just walk back since you need to turn around. Bet I can beat you.” She smiled, two dimples appearing to transform her face. “I’ll take the cake so when you make the U-turn, it doesn’t slide.”

  “I bet you can beat me, too.”

  With the cake box once again in hand, she waved him off, beaming a smile at him. He made the turn and parked on the adjacent street where there was space available. Of course, she was already waiting for him.

  He reached over to open the door. “It’s cold, get in.” When she hesitated, he added, “If your car won’t start, you won’t be able to turn on the heater.” He smiled and patted the seat next to him. “And I have seat warmers.”

  “Oh God, you’re evil. I’ll put the cake on the floor behind the passenger seat. It won’t slide as much when you’re driving.”

  He kept the engine running and pushed the buttons for both seat warmers. Her van was visible around the corner, and they would see when the tow truck arrived.

  Settling beside him, she asked, “So I’ve been dying to know if your daughter likes the cakes.”