Love at the Candy Heart Cafe (Chapter One--Lenora Worth)

Love at the Candy Heart Café (Our 2018 Valentine Serial)

Chapter One

Lenora Worth

“Candy, where’s my coffee?”

“On the way, Mr. Lovestock,” Candy Reese said with a smile. Her feet hurt and her back was numb, but this job paid the rent on her one-bedroom duplex down the beach from the Candy Heart Café.

The café had belonged to her grandmother and Candy, named after this quaint little place located on the beach, had inherited it six months ago.

A bitter irony if there ever was one. She’d fallen in love right here sitting in the bright red corner booth, over hot chocolate and a Valentine-shaped sugar cookie. Fallen in love and then lost her heart when she’d watched the boy she loved walk right out the lacy-wrought-iron encased front door.

“You make the best coffee,” Mr. Lovestock said with a sweet smile. “My Tootsie made good coffee, too.”

“I know you miss her,” Candy replied. “She was a good woman.”

“The best,” he said before digging into his pecan pie. “How about you? Big plans for Valentine’s Day?”

Candy scoffed and pulled at her strawberry red pony tail. Two weeks away and nothing on the horizon. “Yeah. I’ll be right here serving all the people who belong in the Lonely Hearts Club.”

Mr. Lovestock shook his head. “Well, you never know. You might get booted from that club when your true love walks through that door.”

Candy didn’t think that was possible. She was dead-broke and afraid she’d have to sell the Candy Heart. This little beach community depended on this place for fellowship and good home-cooking. The sweet treats the café provided gave people a reason to meet and mingle. But it needed serious updates and repairs and she didn’t have the funding. She couldn’t let her grandmother down. She’d find a way.

The front door rattled, the tinkling bells always bringing back memories of working here after school.

Not bothering to glance up from the chocolate shake she was about to pour from the blender, she called out, “Just sit wherever you want. We’ll be with you in a minute.”

“I’ll take the corner booth on the left,” a deep voice said from behind her. “And I’ll have a hot chocolate and a sugar cookie.”

Candy almost spilled the shake in her hurry to turn around. It couldn’t be. But it was. The boy who’d left her sitting in that corner booth ten years ago.

Chad Hershey. In the flesh and looking better than a double-chocolate cream cheese brownie with his silky dark curls and rich brown eyes.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, wishing she hadn’t chewed off all of her lip gloss.

“I came to see you,” he said, looking into her eyes. “I have a proposition for you, Candy.”

“Yeah, and what would that be, Chad?”

“I want to buy this place.”

Mr. Lovestock snorted. Candy huffed a breath. Her customer waited for his milkshake.

“Over my dead body,” she said before stomping off, her ponytail bouncing with determination.

She had no intention of selling out to the now rich and powerful real estate mogul and she certainly had no intention of giving her heart to him again either.

    

What will Candy do? Come back tomorrow for Chapter Two!