They were absolutely stunning, and he suddenly didn’t care if he won or not. He’d tasted the ice cream and it was fabulous. He snapped a picture with his phone, the ice cream already starting to melt. Since he’d only had thirty minutes to freeze it after he’d churned it, it wasn’t all that hard yet.
An assistant whisked his bowls away to the freezer, where he hoped it would continue to set, and he thanked his lucky stars that he’d gotten number sixty-two. All the competitors filed out of the tent and into the crowd.
A wooden dance floor had been put down over the grass, with row upon row of folding chairs flanking it. The platform where the winners would be announced had been set up near the sidewalk, and the table where he’d present his ice cream had five chairs behind it where the judges would sit.
He caught Gretchen and Dixie frantically waving at him on the side closest to her flower shop, and he grinned and waved back at them. His heart bobbed in the back of his throat. He loved them both so much.
He joined them and turned to face the judges as they climbed the few steps to the top of the platform. Mayor Lambert sat on the end, her face nothing but smiles. Next to her, Mabel Magleby sat, her wrinkled face staring out at the crowd like she expected a riot to break out. Beside her sat Gene Winthrop, who owned an essential oil company a couple of towns over. He was world-renowned for his lavender oils, and he’d built the business from his garage to a forty-thousand square foot warehouse. Beside him was Julie Spencer, the queen of botanicals at the Hawthorn Harbor Gardens. Last at the table was Yvonne Hammond.
Drew choked, his dreams of being crowned Lavender King going right down the drain.
“What’s wrong?” Gretchen asked.
He hadn’t spoken of Yvonne to Gretchen past that first time he’d mentioned her being his ex-girlfriend. He’d kept the texts a secret, and the one time they’d met to himself.
“See that dark-haired woman on the end?” He pointed though it wasn’t necessary.
“Yeah. So?”
“That’s Yvonne Hammond. Her father is Augustus, and she’s—”
“The ex-girlfriend who broke your heart and sent you to Medina.” Gretchen narrowed her eyes at the woman while Drew reeled with her assessment of what Yvonne had done. “How can she be a judge if her dad’s in the competition? That doesn’t seem fair.”
“They’ve owned a lavender farm for six generations. Joel sat on the panel of judges a few years ago.” Drew watched as the first contestant approached the judging table with a loaf of lavender honey tea bread. “There’re five judges. She won’t influence things singlehandedly.” He would be surprised if that bread won, as the lavender honey combination had been tried and tested for decades now. But he couldn’t help wondering if Yvonne had known she was going to be a judge here when she’d met him at the statue only a few weeks ago.
Yvonne’s face was like a cement mask as she tasted the bread. From sachets to flower arrangements to mason jar décor, everything and anything that could be done with lavender got paraded in front of the judges.
Augustus presented at number thirty, and he put a pretty black bowl of pure white ice cream on the table in front of the judges.
“White Asian peach and lavender ice cream,” he said with a flourish of his arm. The screen that had been set up on the side of the dance floor so people could see the item showed the bare spheres of ice cream. No garnishes. And the treat looked a stitch icy to Drew, but he could’ve been looking for the slightest flaws simply because it was Augustus.
The judges each took several bites before their bowls got whisked away and they made notes on the clipboards in front of them, the mayor smiling and nodding like she’d just found the winner. Drew relaxed after that for a bit, his nerves returning the closer to sixty-two they got.
Fifty-seven. Fifty-eight.
His leg started bouncing and he couldn’t stop. When the woman before him took up her lavender cashew brittle, everything became real. He was about to serve his ice cream to the Lavender Festival judges. His stomach twisted, and he wished he’d eaten something that day besides a few quick tastes of his ice cream base.
When it was his turn, he went backstage and waited. When the assistant signaled him, he took the suddenly-there bowl of ice cream from another volunteer and started toward the platform. He placed the bowl he’d been given on the table so it could be shown to the audience, and someone else handed him a tray with the other bowls.
It seemed like fifty steps up to the judging table. He somehow made it without tripping and served a bowl of ice cream to each of the judges, carefully avoiding eye contact with Yvonne.
He stood to the side and faced the crowd on the south lawn, searching for Gretchen’s beautiful face. “This is cranberry lavender ice cream, with black pepper, garnished with candied orange zest, a sugared maraschino cranberry, and mint. Enjoy.”
Unable to watch them sample his ice cream, Drew opted to return the tray to the volunteer and head back out into the crowd. Dixie stood on her chair and he walked toward her and Gretchen.
“They love it,” Gretchen said when he arrived.
“How can you tell?”
“Because they’re still eating it!” She pointed, and Drew twisted to watch. All five judges seemed to be enjoying his ice cream, even Yvonne. But how could he really know?
As someone came forward to take the bowls, Mabel actually pulled hers away. Her voice, though aged, could clearly be heard as she said, “I want to finish this.”
The crowd laughed, and a smile sprang to his face.
“You broke Mabel!” Gretchen giggled and put her hand in his. “I just know you’re going to win.”
“We’ll see.” He squeezed onto the row with them and waited while the rest of the competition continued, his nerves over Yvonne refusing to be quieted. She seemed to look up and find him after every entry, and he couldn’t figure out what game she was playing.
When the last contestant had finally presented her lavender poppy seed salad dressing, the judges stood and formed a circle. Several minutes passed before Mayor Lambert separated herself from them. “What an excellent showing of lavender products, tastings, and décor! We’ll announce the winner at six, from the sidewalk, right before we light the lavender and start the dance. Thank you.”
People started to disperse, and Drew’s stomach roared. “After I clean up my stuff, let’s find something to eat,” he said. “Are you guys hungry?”
“So hungry,” Dixie said. “Mom said I couldn’t get a churro.”
“You’d already had one,” Gretchen said, shaking her head. “And I knew Drew would want to eat dinner.” She smiled at him. “Go get your stuff, and we’ll meet you right here.”
He collected his equipment and leftover ingredients and returned them to his truck. He held Gretchen’s hand as they wandered through the festival, looking at lavender sachets, toys, and recipe books before arriving at a pizza-by-the-slice food truck.
With only a few minutes to spare until six o’clock, Dixie tugged him toward the sidewalk for the big announcement. His feet itched to take him somewhere else, but he held very still. He wanted this title so badly and his ice cream had been phenomenal. He hoped.
“Your mom and Joel made it,” Gretchen whispered, pointing through the crowd. He caught his mother’s eye and waved, and they started weaving through the people toward them.
“You closed the farm?” Surprise touched his words. People paid to harvest their own lavender, and the profits from their farm store were impressive every year.
“Everyone’s here,” Joel said. “We figured we should come see you get crowned the Lavender King.”
Warmth filled Drew, and a hearty dose of happiness filled him. If life could get any more perfect, he didn’t want to know how.
Mayor Lambert stepped up onto a platform and took her position behind the microphone there. The woman could really go on and on, but she cut to the chase pretty quickly. “So let’s light the lavender!”
She threw her
hand into the air, and a moment later, beautiful tea lights filled both sides of the sidewalk. People oohed and aahed at the way the lavender made the normally yellow light more purple, and then a cheer rose into the air.
The mayor laughed along with everyone else. “And now, I’m ready to announce our eighty-ninth annual Lavender Festival Creation Contest winner.” She surveyed the crowd. “But let’s start with fifth place. That’s a woman who presented a gorgeous, silky soap scented with lavender and pink lemonade…Georgina Watters!”
The crowd clapped and Georgina made her way up on stage, gripping her manila envelope while she beamed at the audience. His name wasn’t called fourth, or third, or second. But neither was Augustus’s.
Finally, it was time to announce the winner. Drew sucked in a breath and held it. And held it.
“With his delicious ice cream…” the mayor said, really drawing out something that should be quick.
Could still be Augustus.
“Andrew Herrin!”
His name bounced around inside his head before settling in his ears. Gretchen squealed and started laughing, and Dixie jumped up and down. The townspeople clapped and whooped, and everything felt like a white cyclone of noise.
“Where’s Drew?” Mayor Lambert asked when he still hadn’t moved.
“He’s here!” Dixie practically screamed. “He’s right here!”
“Go on, Drew,” Gretchen said. Her face swam so close to his, and then she kissed him, and then he was walking up to the platform to be crowned Lavender King.
Chapter Twenty-One
Pure joy flowed through Gretchen. She’d forgotten the magic the Lavender Festival contained, and her childhood memories seemed so close to the surface. She could practically feel the leathery, warm hand of her granddad as he’d kept her close so she wouldn’t get lost in the crowds. She’d done the same to Dixie while they explored, tasted lavender caramels, and rode the Ferris wheel.
Though she’d been back in town for three festivals now, she’d worked the shop, never venturing across the street to actually partake in the festivities. She’d felt a bit of guilt that she’d kept this tradition from Dixie, but she’d stuffed it away.
Watching Drew get fitted with his gaudy, gold crown made her laugh, and Dixie’s face held a glow like it was Christmas morning.
“I can’t believe he won,” Donna said, to which Dixie replied, “I knew he was going to win. I wished it.” She beamed at his mother, who put her arm around the girl’s waist and pulled her close.
“Of course you did. I guess all those bottles you labeled are worth it now, huh?”
“Totally!”
The crowd started to wander away from the sidewalk as the music for the dance lifted into the purple-hued air. But Drew still lingered on the platform, collecting something from Mayor Lambert and shaking hands with the other judges.
“Gretchen, we’ll take Dixie to get some of his ice cream, okay?” Donna held Dixie’s hand so she could jump down from the folding chair. “Then we’ll head back out to the farm. You and Drew stay and dance.” Donna looked radiant and happy, and Gretchen couldn’t help smiling at her.
“Yeah, okay.” Gretchen hugged herself and watched Donna and Joel weave through the crowd with Dixie in tow. Pulling in a deep breath, she turned away from the sidewalk lined with lit lavender and took a few slow steps.
A whoop filled the air, and she spun back to the platform just in time to see Drew kissing Yvonne.
Gretchen’s throat felt like she’s swallowed liquid nitrogen, and everything turned to ice as she watched. The woman stepped back, smiling like she’d just won the Miss American pageant, and lifted Drew’s arm into the air.
His crown had toppled to the side, and he tried to right it with his free hand. Gretchen couldn’t swallow, and though the summer was warm and wonderful, she felt frozen.
“So he won.”
Gretchen tore her eyes from the tiny platform and focused on Janey. She didn’t know what to say, because that liquid nitrogen had gone up to her brain too, making her thoughts sluggish.
“I sent Jess out to the farm with Donna and Joel. He’s going to sleep over.”
Gretchen got her throat working enough to swallow. “Okay.”
“I saw him with Yvonne at the Anchor,” Janey said, finally turning toward Gretchen. “A couple of months ago. He told me it was nothing.” She looked like she might cry. “I’m sorry, Gretchen. I should’ve told you.”
Gretchen shook her head and looked back to the platform. Drew had vacated it, but she couldn’t quite see where he’d gone.
“Doesn’t matter,” she said, her dreams of arranging her indigo daisies on the tables at their wedding dinner at the Mansion shattering. Her heart hurt, and she couldn’t believe she’d invited Drew inside her life. Inside Dixie’s life. “I have to go.”
“You’re not going to talk to him?” Janey latched onto her arm as Gretchen tried to flee.
“Nothing to say.” She pulled her arm away and started across the grass toward The Painted Daisy. She saw his truck parked in the alley, suddenly remembering she didn’t have her van here.
She spun back to find Janey, to ask for a ride, and found her friend only paces behind her. “Come on. I’ll take you home.” Janey linked her arm through Gretchen’s and towed her away from the flower shop, away from the dance now in full swing, away from the man who had crushed her heart.
“My van is at Drew’s,” Gretchen managed to say. Her phone rang, and she looked at Drew’s handsome face on the screen.
“You can get everything later.” Janey took Gretchen’s phone and kept her moving. She drove to her house and got Gretchen situated on the back porch with a glass of lavender lemonade before Gretchen’s first tears fell.
Janey let her cry for a few minutes before she said, “It’s not like Drew to do something like this.” She flipped Gretchen’s phone over and over. “That’s why I didn’t say anything. And you two seemed so happy…” She looked at Gretchen’s phone again. “I sent him a text.”
Gretchen nearly slopped lemonade down the front of her festive lavender dress. “You did? What did it say?”
Janey held out her phone, her face a mixture of sadness and sympathy.
Gretchen looked at her text string from Drew. I saw you kissing Yvonne. I don’t want to talk tonight.
Janey did know her really well. Gretchen didn’t want to talk to Drew tonight.
He’d texted twice. That was all her, not me.
And I’m not with Yvonne. She knows that. Please call me.
The message was fifteen minutes old, and Gretchen inhaled and pressed the phone to her collarbone. “Do you believe him?”
“Does it matter what I believe?”
Gretchen watched the sun sink farther along the horizon, her heart still beating furiously fast in her chest, as if she were watching Drew kiss Yvonne again and again.
She needed to rely on herself. Take care of Dixie.
An image of her granddad’s farm floated into her mind, and along with it came that roaring anger she’d experienced when she’d asked Joel to sell her the farm.
Drew was standing in her way.
She’d once said she’d do whatever was necessary to keep Dixie safe and provide for her. The lavender farm would do that.
So does The Painted Daisy, she thought.
And so her thoughts and her feelings rode the merry-go-round of her mind as she tried to figure things out.
“Can you take me to get my van?” she asked, setting her lemonade on the glass tabletop between them. “I need to go get my daughter and go home.”
A half an hour later, Drew had called once and texted twice. Gretchen hadn’t answered any of his attempts to communicate. She pulled into the driveway at Donna and Joel’s, her nerves a frayed mess. Telling Donna and Joel she had to leave the farm was going to be hard. And getting Dixie out of there was going to be a downright fight.
She steeled herself and squared her shoulders as she got out of her
van. The porch swing squeaked, and a figure straightened from it.
Drew.
Her heart catapulted to the back of her throat. His truck wasn’t anywhere in sight, and she felt tricked that he’d parked it somewhere else.
“I knew you’d come get Dixie,” he said, his voice so quiet. But out here, everything whispered, and she heard him just fine.
“We’re going back to our house,” she said.
“Don’t do that.” Drew stepped into the light bathing the steps up to the porch in orange light. “Yvonne was mistaken. She’s apologized for kissing me, and she said it won’t happen again. I told her it absolutely cannot happen again.” He looked fierce and as angry as she felt.
“This isn’t about Yvonne,” Gretchen said, climbing the steps and moving past him. She opened the front door and called, “Dixie! We need to go.”
“What’s it about?” he asked.
Gretchen folded her arms and turned back to him. “My granddad’s farm.”
Her daughter came down the steps from the second floor bedrooms, her face filled with confusion. “Where are we going?”
“Back to our house.”
“What? Why?” She held a handful of cards in her fingers. “Me and Jess are playing Hearts.”
“Get in the van.” Gretchen started away from Drew, no longer able to be so close to him.
“I don’t want to go,” Dixie said.
“Go with your mother,” Drew said quietly.
“Drew—” Dixie protested.
“Come on, Dix.” Gretchen spun back to her. “You don’t always get to do what you want. We’re leaving. Let’s go.”
Donna appeared in the doorway, and Gretchen’s eyes heated. She didn’t want to make a scene. She just wanted to take her daughter and go.
“Thank you for everything, Donna,” she said, her voice breaking. “I’ll come out tomorrow and get our things, get everything put back the way it was. I’m sorry.” She turned away from the kindness and compassion Drew’s family had offered her, unable to face them for another moment.