Sisters By Choice

“You’d rather I did it for you?”

“Well, yeah. Of course. Nobody wants to do chores.”

They were in Tommy’s bedroom, facing a massive pile of laundry. Kristine had been doing her best to convince her middle son it was time for him to learn a few life skills. As his older brother had before him, Tommy resisted. In the end, she’d had to threaten JJ with the loss of Xbox privileges before he was willing to take on the task. She was hoping she wouldn’t have to resort to anything that dire with Tommy.

“So it’s okay for me to take care of this entire house, cook the meals and do your laundry, while you do nothing?”

Tommy grinned. “It’s your job, Mom. My job is school. Remember how I got an A on my last math test? Being a great student takes a lot of time.” His expression turned sly. “Which would you rather have? Me doing my own laundry or a super-intelligent kid who gets straight A’s?”

“It’s not an either-or proposition. You’re twelve now. It’s time to start doing your own laundry.”

“But I already help Dad out with the yard.”

“We all do that. Look at my face. Is there anything about my expression that makes you think I’m going to change my mind on this? Let us remember the sad summer from two years ago when JJ refused to do his laundry. Think about the layer of dust on his Xbox controller and how he cried and pouted and stomped his feet.”

“It was embarrassing for all of us.”

“Yes, it was. Now, you can either be an example to your little brother, or you can provide me with a very humorous story to tell everyone who’s ever met you, but at the end of the day, you will still be doing laundry. Which is it to be?”

“Maybe I should ask Dad what he thinks.”

Kristine knew that Jaxsen would take Tommy’s side—not out of malice, but because when it came to his kids, he was the softest touch around.

“You could and then you would still have to face me.” She kept her tone cheerful. “Am I wrong?”

“No.” Tommy sighed heavily. “I surrender to the inevitable.”

“That’s my boy. I’m proud of you. Now, collect your dirty clothes and meet me in the laundry room. You’re going to learn how to work the washer and dryer. I have a schedule posted. You’ll have certain days and times when you will have the privilege of using the washer and dryer. If you use them at other times, when they’re scheduled for JJ or when I want them, you will not enjoy the consequences.”

“No Xbox?”

“No skateboard.”

“Mom! Not my skateboard.”

Kristine smiled. Both her mother and mother-in-law had taught her that the key to getting kids to do what you wanted was to find out what they wanted and use that as leverage. For JJ it was his Xbox, for Tommy it was his skateboard and for Grant it was being outside. She tried to use her power for good, but she did absolutely use it.

“And on Saturday, you’ll change your sheets and wash those,” she said happily. “It’s going to be great.”

“It’s not fair.”

“I know. Isn’t it fabulous?”

“What if I don’t care about clean sheets?”

“I think you care about clean sheets about as much as I care about driving you into Marysville to that skate park you love.”

Tommy’s brown eyes widened in horror. “You wouldn’t not take me, would you?”

“Of course not. Any young man of twelve years old who has washed his own sheets deserves to be driven to a skate park.”

“Is that blackmail?” he asked.

“I think of it as persuasion.”

“I don’t want to grow up. It’s too much work.”

“Interesting. Someone should write a book about a boy who refuses to grow up. It sounds like a great story.”

“It’s Peter Pan.”

“Is it? Shocking!” She pointed to the pile of laundry on the floor. “I will be giving laundry lessons in ten minutes. If you’re not there, I will start without you. If I start without you, I will do so with your favorite skateboard in my possession.”

“When I have kids I’m letting them do whatever they want.”

Kristine pulled her son close and kissed the top of his head—something she wouldn’t be able to do much longer. He’d grown at least two inches in the past year. JJ already towered over her and he was only fourteen. In a couple of years he would be taller than his dad. Even little Grant wasn’t so little. When he fell asleep outside, studying the stars, she couldn’t carry him to bed anymore. She had to call Jaxsen to hoist him up and get him inside.

“I’m sure you will,” she said with a laugh.

“You don’t believe me.” Tommy shook his head. “You’re wrong. I’m going to be the best parent ever.”

“Uh-huh. I’m looking forward to that first panicked phone call.” She lowered her voice. “Mom, the baby’s crying and I don’t know what to do.”

“I would never make that call. I’ll be at work.”

“Oh, I think you’ll be a stay-at-home dad,” she teased.

He looked horrified at the idea.

So far she’d managed to teach her boys to clean their bathroom and help in the kitchen. She was working on getting them to do their own laundry. But she’d been unable to convince them that child rearing should be shared. Probably because she’d always been a stay-at-home mom as were most of the moms of their friends. Jaxsen was a hands-on kind of father but he was more into taking the boys on adventures than shopping for their school clothes or helping out with the homework. She wasn’t setting a very feminist example.

They needed more exposure to strong women with killer careers. Now that her cousin Sophie was back on the island, they could all have dinner and Sophie could talk about what it was like to run a business empire. Because sending her boys out with life skills was one thing, but sending them out with the belief a woman could be in charge was another.

Still, they were good kids who were kind and respectful. At least out in public and with adults. With each other they were wild monkeys testing her patience every single day.

“I should have had girls,” she said with a sigh.

Tommy rolled his eyes. “You would have hated girls.”

“They’re clean and pretty and they smell nice.”

“Boys do smell bad,” her son admitted. “And some girls are really smart. But you’re stuck with us, Mom. No matter what and you have to love us.”

“Yes, that is the rumor. All right, middle child. Laundry room. Ten minutes or I’m taking your you-know-what for a ride.”

“You’d fall in like ten feet.”

“No way. I could totally go twenty.”

He gave her a quick hug, then started loading the pile of dirty clothes into the clothes basket she’d brought with her.

She left him to his work and headed for the kitchen. Dinner was in the Crock-Pot. She’d taken care of that this morning. She glanced at the calendar—a large, framed, wall-sized rectangle with big squares for every day of the month and cute pictures of cats around the outside—and saw that JJ would finish up with baseball practice at four and Grant was at his friend Evan’s house until four thirty. Jaxsen would pick up both kids for her, which meant between now and dinner she only had to fold towels, prepare her grocery list for her weekly shopping, decide on a menu for her catering client and write up a grocery list for that, double-check her baking supplies because she would spend all night Thursday making cookies for the upcoming weekend and remind Jaxsen they really had to decide on summer camps for the boys. It was only April but the camps filled up quickly. And speaking of April, it was spring break in two weeks and she needed to know if he was still going to take the boys up in the mountains because if he was, he needed to get out the equipment and make sure everything was still functional.

Tonight, after dinner and homework, she had to finish her book for book club and get the May calendar put together and order more bags for her cookies and do her March books for her cookie sales, because she hadn’t yet and if she got too behind, she never got caught up. And in those five seconds between brushing her teeth and falling asleep, she would really like to run the numbers on that little space by Island Chic that had gone up for lease last week. Because if she could ever catch her breath, and scrape together the cash, she wanted to talk to Jaxsen about opening a bakery. It had never been the right time before, but maybe now would work. The kids were older and...

“Mom, I’m ready. I’ve sorted my clothes by colors, like you said. But is it really a big deal if I don’t?”

“Girls,” she murmured, walking toward the laundry room. “Girls would have been so much easier.”

Chapter Two

The Blackberry Island Inn featured comfortable beds, views of the water and a daisy motif Sophie wasn’t sure she totally understood. Daisies weren’t exactly a big thing on the island. If a business wanted to appeal to tourists, then the more blackberries, the better. Yet, there were daisies in the room, daisies on the wallpaper and hundreds, possibly thousands, of daisies planted along the driveway leading from the parking lot to the main road.

As Sophie walked toward her car, she shivered in the damp, chilly air. She’d forgotten how the island was given to real seasons, unlike back in LA where there was nearly always sunshine. Today there were gray skies and the choppy, black waves of the Sound.

Under normal circumstances, and on a Monday morning, Sophie wouldn’t have noticed any of that. Instead, she would have been totally focused on her business and what needed to get done that day. But—and she would never admit this to anyone but herself—these days she was feeling a little fragile and disoriented.

It was the fire, she told herself. Losing her business, not having any of her employees want to move. Okay, and the loss of CK. That reality still had the ability to bring her to her emotional knees. And maybe the fact that she was thirty-four years old and she wasn’t any closer to having her life together than she had been at twenty. She was all about the work and with CK Industries in limbo, she felt lost.

“Not after today,” she whispered as she turned right at the end of the drive and headed toward the very small industrial area on the island.

The real estate agent was meeting her at the warehouse at nine. Sophie would get the key and have a look at the space she’d leased for the next five years.

She drove past touristy shops and wineries before heading inland. There was a small shopping center, the K through eighth-grade school and a few medical buildings. Behind all that were a few office buildings, a handful of small businesses that would do everything from repair your car to clean your carpets. At the end of the street was the large warehouse.

She parked by the front door. She was early and the place looked closed up tight, so she walked around the outside of the building.

There was a front office and reception area with big windows and lots of parking for employees. The loading dock was plenty large. Products would come in and then be shipped out to customers. Given that this was literally the only warehouse on the island, she figured she’d been lucky to get it. Now she just had to make everything work.

Sophie returned to her car and waited for the agent. She sat in the front seat, with the driver’s door open, sipping her take-out coffee. She’d skipped breakfast at the inn, feeling too yucky to bother eating.

A salty breeze blew in from the west, but despite the gray skies, she didn’t think it was going to rain today. Sophie wondered if her years in Los Angeles would make it difficult for her to adjust to the weather, or if it would matter at all. She assumed she would be working her usual sixteen-hour days. As long as the roof didn’t leak, she wasn’t sure she would even care about something as mundane as the weather.

A small SUV pulled into the parking lot. Sophie stood to greet the real estate agent. Once the key was in her hand, she would feel better, she told herself. She could get started on rebuilding CK Industries and everything would be fine.

Twenty minutes, two signatures and a brief conversation later, Sophie walked into the warehouse and waited for a sense of relief or even elation. The space was huge—nearly double what she’d had in Valencia. There were about a dozen offices, plenty of bathrooms and a massive open area where she could install miles of shelves and have the shipping center of her dreams. It was great. It was better than great, it was...

“Awful,” Sophie whispered, turning in a circle and taking in the emptiness around her.

She’d started CK Industries in the second bedroom of a two-bedroom apartment she’d rented while still in college, although the concept had been born in her freshman dorm room. From there she’d moved to a small space in a Culver City industrial complex. Two years after that she’d needed more square footage. The move to Valencia had come after her divorce and at the time, she’d felt excited—as if she were escaping to a new life.

This relocation wasn’t that. This had been forced upon her by bad electrical wiring. She hadn’t been prepared for the devastation—physical and emotional—of it all and to be honest, she wasn’t excited about the work she was going to have to do. It was overwhelming.

She wanted to stomp her feet and demand a do-over. Or at least a recount. But there was no one to complain to. This was her baby and only she could make it a success.

“Lead, follow or get out of the way,” she reminded herself. “Winners win. I am the champion. It’s up to me. I can do this.”

None of the words seemed to be getting through but at least saying them was better than admitting defeat. She walked over to one of the huge loading dock doors and pushed the button to open it. Cool air blew in. Sophie lowered her backpack to the floor, sank down to sit cross-legged and prepared to get to work.

She needed everything. Employees, product, shelves, shipping supplies, office supplies, office furniture and Wi-Fi. While still in Los Angeles, she’d picked out everything she wanted but had waited to order until she knew the size of all the various spaces. She also had a big, fat insurance check sitting in her bank account to pay for it all.

She got out her computer and, using her phone as a hotspot, logged on to the local internet provider and arranged for service. She would order everything else back in her room at the inn. The house she’d rented wouldn’t be available until the end of the week. Once she was settled there, she could fully focus on the business. In a couple of months everything would be running smoothly and it would be like the fire never happened. Or so she hoped.

“Anybody home?”

She looked up and saw a tall, barrel-chested man walking into the warehouse. He had gray hair and a tanned face and wore a plaid shirt tucked into jeans. He held a folder in one hand.

Sophie scrambled to her feet. “Can I help you?”

“Sophie Lane?”

She nodded.

“Bear Gleason.” He crossed to her and shook her hand.

She was five-five and he was at least eight inches taller. She would guess he was in his midfifties.

“How can I help you, Mr. Gleason?” she asked, hoping he wanted a job and that he had experience she could use.

“Bear, please. I heard you were moving your business to town. CK Industries.”

“That’s right.”

“My wife and I lived in Eastern Washington all our lives. I managed one of the largest fruit storage companies in the country. When we got bought out by an international conglomerate last year, they brought in their own people. Then our daughter turned up pregnant with triplets and my wife wanted to move over here to be close to the new grandkids and help her out.”

Sophie felt a whisper of hope and anticipation. She had a feeling it was the same sense of expectation other women got when they heard about a designer shoe sale. Let them fight over size whatever Jimmy Choo shoes—she just might have found herself a warehouse manager.

“I thought I’d try retiring,” Bear continued. “That lasted two whole months. Truth is, I’m going crazy at home. My daughter is eight months pregnant and on bedrest. My wife is gone all the time and I’m rattling around in our new place like a lost puppy. I’ve done every home project I can think of and my wife swears if I mess with her kitchen, she’ll kill me in my sleep.”

He looked around. “I’m not sure what all you’re buying or selling, but if it needs to be brought in, accounted for and then shipped out to customers, I’m your man.”

He handed her a slim folder. “My résumé and references.”

Yes! Sophie did her best not to break into a happy dance.

“How’d you find out about me renting the warehouse?” she asked.

“In a town this small, it’s all anyone’s been talking about. If I were you, I’d get the date of your job fair circulating real quick. Otherwise, folks are going to be drifting in at all hours.”

“Like you?”

He flashed her a grin. “Exactly like me.” The smile faded. “I heard about the fire. You had insurance, right?”

“Making sure your paycheck is going to clear?”

“I’m sure as hell not working for free.”

“I can respect that.”

She was about to start the interview when an eighteen-wheeler pulled into the parking lot and began backing up toward the loading dock.

Bear looked from the truck to her warehouse. “You don’t even have shelves yet. Or desks. Does anyone work here but you?”

“No, but they will. Better to have product and nowhere to put it than not.”

Bear didn’t look convinced. Still, he moved to the loading dock door and helped guide the truck into place.

It took nearly an hour to get the order moved from the truck to the warehouse. Sophie stopped several times to add to her list of needed supplies. Handcarts, for one. A forklift. Gloves, safety glasses, cones.

When the UPS guy pulled out, Bear stared at the stacked boxes.

“Cat food. Cat litter. Cat toys.” He glared at her. “What is this?”

“What we sell. What did you think was going on here?”

“It’s CK Industries. I didn’t know what it was.”

She grinned. “CK stands for Clandestine Kitty. I started the business when I was in college.”

Bear looked horrified. “You sell cat stuff? You need all this square footage to sell cat stuff?”

“You don’t like cats?”

“Not really. I’m a dog person. Damn. Clandestine Kitty. I never would have guessed that. I hope no one from back home ever finds out I work here.”

“Technically, I haven’t hired you yet.”

“You will. You’re not going to find anyone more qualified. Plus, I’m local now and that helps. If there’s an emergency, I’m six minutes away.”

He looked at the stacks of boxes, then at the warehouse. “Stuff comes in, you repackage it and ship it out to customers. I get it. We’re going to need shelves and a shipping station.”

“I know.”

“I’ll need you to talk me through your current workflow. It’s probably not as efficient as it could be but we’ll start with that and change it as we go. It would help if I could see purchase orders for the last six months to give me an idea of space. We’ve got to get a forklift for sure. I’ll need a computer, a stack of purchase orders and a company credit card to get started.”

“Still not hired.”

He sighed heavily. “Fine. What do you want to know?”

She had his résumé, which would cover the duties he’d performed and what he’d been responsible for. What Sophie was more interested in was who Bear was. She’d been told she was, ah, difficult to work for. Could he handle her?

“Tell me about your best day and your worst day.”

His gaze narrowed. “You’re talking about work stuff, right? Because if you want to discuss my feelings, we are not going to get along at all.”

She laughed. “Bear, I swear to you I will never ask about your feelings and I certainly won’t discuss mine. I just want to know if you’re good at what you do and if you have a problem working for a woman.”

“Do you bring a cat to work?”

Sophie thought about how CK had been a part of her world for nearly eighteen years. How her soft meows and gentle purring were as familiar as Sophie’s own heartbeat. She remembered holding CK at the very end and how she still couldn’t believe her sweet girl was gone.

“No,” she said quietly. “I won’t be bringing a cat to work.”

“Then I don’t care if you’re a woman or a zombie. Let’s have an interview and get this settled. If it seems we’ll suit, then I’ll get going on writing up a proposal on what I’m going to need.”

“I’ve already picked out shelves and tables.”

“Uh-huh. Like I said, I’ll write up a proposal and we can go over it together. I’ll use my home computer until you get the new ones for the warehouse and offices. All right. Worst day. That’s easy. Some jerkwad brought in a bunch of fruit from his mom’s place up north of here. Brought it into the warehouse without stopping to think it might have apple maggots. And it did. Damn fool. Do you know what a couple dozen breeding apple maggots can do to a warehouse full of prime quality crop?”

Something she really didn’t want to think about. “It was bad, huh?”

“Bad doesn’t begin to describe it. We lost millions. I’ve always believed stupid is forever. No idea where that kid is now but he’s sure as hell never working for me.” He thought for a second. “Best day. If you like what you’re doing, then they’re all good days.”

Sophie’s entrepreneurial heart gave a little ping of happiness. “I’m going to read through your résumé and check your references,” she said. “Want to start unloading the boxes?”

He looked at the stacks of merchandise and sighed. “Cats. I never would have guessed cats. Hell of a thing.”

* * *

Heather Sitterly carried two plates across the Blackberry Island Inn dining room. As usual, there was a large breakfast crowd, even on a Monday morning. The customers were a mix of visitors and locals, all here for great food at reasonable prices. The bacon and spring vegetable frittata was moving briskly this morning.

“Here we go,” she said, setting the plates in front of an older couple who had been at the inn all weekend. “Avocado on the side and extra bacon for the gentleman.” She smiled. “Let me refill your coffee cups, then I’ll check back to see how you’re enjoying your breakfast.”

“Thank you, dear,” the woman said. She was probably in her midsixties, with soft-looking gray hair and dark eyes. She looked a lot like Heather’s maternal grandmother, but Heather knew better than to say that. No one appreciated being told they looked like a grandparent.

She smiled before quickly walking to the coffee station. She saw the decaf pot was nearly empty, so started the brewer going before picking up one of the regular pots and heading back toward her tables. She filled a half-dozen cups before returning to the older couple.

“How’s your breakfast so far?” she asked as she poured coffee.

“Excellent as always,” the woman said, glancing at her name tag. “Heather, is it? Are you a local?”

“Born and raised.”

“Are you in college?” the woman’s husband asked.

“I go to community college. There’s one on the mainland, not too far from here.”

“It’s so nice there’s a bridge,” the woman added. “You don’t have to worry about waiting for a ferry.”

“That’s true. The ferries can’t travel when the weather’s bad, but the bridge is always open.”

The older man winked at her. “Ever dream about escaping to somewhere?” he asked, his voice teasing. “A big city?”

Nearly every day. But Heather didn’t say that. These nice people didn’t want to know about her personal trials and how much she longed to be almost anywhere but here.

“Blackberry Island is such a lovely place,” she said instead, then excused herself to attend to her other customers.

Exactly one hour and forty-seven minutes later, Heather’s shift ended. She cashed out, pocketed her tips and picked up the to-go box Helen, the cook at the dining room, always left for her. As requested, Helen had scribbled Amber on the top of the container. At first the cook had written Heather’s name, as she was the one placing and paying for the order. But Amber had complained about that.