The Gingerbread Caper

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The romance that broke their heart on WIP Wednesday

A common trope in most genres is the relationship in the past that failed–the man or woman who broke our protagonist’s heart (or, at least, they thought so at the time). It’s particularly common in romance, and this week I’m inviting you to share an excerpt when this past relationship is mentioned.

I’ve got an excerpt from The Gingerbread Caper, which I’ve just finished. Woohoo! In my excerpt, my heroine actually finds an old boyfriend… well, you’ll see.

What Meg saw when she opened the kitchen door brought her to a halt. For a moment, she thought of screaming for Patrick’s help, but then she recognized the man searching through the drawer of the desk where Aunt Margaret planned menus, recipes, and cake decorations.

“Sam Thurston, as I live and breathe. Put those down and step away from the desk.”

The invader turned, the boyish grin already in place, the grey-green eyes calculating behind the dark-rimmed glasses. “Meg Fotheringham. How delightful to see you. How have you been keeping? I follow your career, you know. Have you sold your first million yet?”

Meg ignored the provocation. “What are you doing here, Sam?”

“Looking up an old friend. We had some good times, Meg, didn’t we?”

Yes, until Meg discovered that he was seeing their manager on the side. They’d both been under a six month contract to the same newspaper, new graduates with shiny new journalism degrees. When she challenged him, he’d told her that sleeping with the boss was business, and didn’t affect how he felt about Meg. He was just making sure he was front runner for a permanent position.

He’d got it, too, but he’d lost Meg.

Had there ever been a time that she’d enjoyed his refusal to take anything seriously? “You’ve seen me. You know where the door is. Close it on your way out.”

Instead, he hooked his foot around a stool leg and dragged it close enough to sit on. “Harsh,” he commented. “I’ve driven all this way. Surely you can grant me a few minutes?”

Meg probed the once tender place that his betrayal had left and found nothing but irritation. Had she truly once fallen for this git? “Then you no doubt came with a purpose. Get on with what you want, Sam. The sooner I say no, the sooner you get out of here. I’ve a lot to do this evening.”

She pulled a pot from the stack under the workbench and measured the butter into it, then added the brown sugar and the molasses. She set the spices ready next to the stove, turned on an element, and measured the dry ingredients into bowl.

“I wouldn’t say no to a coffee,” Sam suggested.

“The pub down the road serves a good brew. I’m busy, Sam.” She moved the pot to the element, and began to stir, clattered the spoon with more force than needed, enjoying the way he winced at the noise. If he thought their personal history meant he was a frontrunner for interviewing her, he had another think coming.

Not that she had would-be interviewers coming out of her ears. She sighed. Maybe she should be nicer to him. “Who are you working for now, anyway?”

“Myself, darling. I’m freelancing for a number of publications, and I think you’re sitting on a story we could sell at the highest level. Maybe The Listener or Metro. Maybe even one of the English dailies. Come on! You know you could do with the exposure.”

There went any inclination to be nice. “Sam, get to the point or get out.”

He narrowed his eyes. “I know what’s going on with your Aunt Margaret. I know where she is, and I know what she’s been doing.”

That’s what this was about? Aunt Margaret? “Good for you.” Which explained why he was ratting around Aunt Margaret’s desk, though what he thought was newsworthy about the contents remained a mystery.

“So which was it? MI5? MI6? NID? I know she’s in London doing a television expose of her life undercover, Meg.”

Meg, who had just added the spices to the pot on the stove, stopped mid-stir. He thought Aunt Margaret was a spy? She forced her voice to sound calm and indifferent, though tinged with real amusement. “Really, Sam? You are letting your imagination run away with you.”

Sam pounced. “Where is she, then?”

In her profession, they called the transition from journalist to public relations crossing to the dark side. An experienced journalist took with them into their new career all the techniques honed during hundreds of interviews and used them to answer the questions they wished the journalist had asked while ignoring the ones actually used.

For the briefest of moments, she was tempted to answer with the truth: In London with a television crew. But that would just confirm him in his mistake.

Meg stirred the dry ingredients into the melted mix in the pot, focusing on that while she thought about an answer that would deflect Sam. No point in telling any part of the truth. For one thing, Sam wouldn’t believe her. For another, she had promised to keep Aunt Margaret’s errand a secret until it was announced, just before Christmas. If she gave Sam half an inch of the truth, he’d keep pulling till he had the whole yard.

A straight refusal is best. One he can’t make anything of.

“Sam, I’m going to tell you one fact, and nothing more. You’re wrong. I’ll say no more than that. Aunt Margaret’s reasons for going away are her own, and nobody else’s business. Now go away and let me get on with the work.”

He cajoled, coaxed, claimed ‘the public have a right to know’, became horridly insulting about her past and present career. Meg let it wash over her as she rolled gingerbread out on baking paper, laid her pattern pieces on it, cut around them with a sharp knife, and slid the baking paper onto an oven slide. And repeat. She was making small squares, about 3 inches a side, which she would turn into miniature houses as a test of her favurite recipe in this oven, before she made the main piece. The houses would become a village clustered below her planned castle.

Ignoring Sam wasn’t working, so she repeated her last few words over and again, like a broken record. “I’ll say no more, Sam. Go away and let me get on with the work.”

In the end, he left. That wouldn’t be the last of it, of course. He smelled a story and would keep chasing it. He’d interview anyone who would speak to him. But Aunt Margaret had told no one but Meg why she was heading to England, so all he’d get was the story Aunt Margaret had told—of an urgent request from an old friend—and their speculations.

Meanwhile, with the gingerbread in the oven, Meg had a lodger to feed and more baking to do.

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Comedy on WIP Wednesday

I love to read well-written comedy. Terry Pratchett is one of my favourite writers. In our favourite genre, Sally McKenzie is hilarious, Sophie Barnes can make me giggle, and Lorraine Heath is great at setting two unlikely people at one another’s heads for comedic effect. They’re just a few of the writers I enjoy. I’ve just read Amy Quinton’s latest Umbrella Chronicles story for next year’s Bluestocking Belles’ box set, and chuckled all the way through.

I’m not naturally a comedy writer, though I like to include wry humour in my books, and comedic moments. This week, I’m inviting you to post an excerpt in which you use humour. Mine is from my contemporary novella for Authors of Main Street, The Gingerbread Caper, which is as near as I’ve got to romantic comedy.

Patrick slept for the rest of the afternoon, waking disoriented in the unfamiliar room. He rolled onto his back and lay for a while, reorienting himself. He was in Valentine Bay, in a comfortable bed in a charming upstairs flat that looked out to the sea across the pohutaukawa trees that fringed the beach. He had nothing to do except relax and get well for at least the six weeks’ leave his doctor and manager had both ordered him to take. The time was — he turned his head to check the digital clock on the bedside table — just after six o’clock. The landlady was what he’d heard described as a pintsized Venus, who presence robbed him of sense, language, and—almost—breath.

The last circumstance very nearly cancelled out all the benefits of the accommodation and the location.

He sighed. He would need to grow accustomed, and he had better start by having a quick shower and getting downstairs for his dinner. With Meg Fotheringham.

He came out of the shower to find Mr. Major asleep on his bed, curled up on top of the clean underthings and t-shirt he’d left ready. Surely he had put the cat out before he lay down?

He’d told Meg he liked cats, which was something of an exaggeration. He had little experience of animals, having lived all his adult life in city apartments or boarding houses that didn’t allow them.

“How did you get in, cat?” The cat didn’t acknowledge him by so much as a twitch. Patrick made to tug the clothes out from beneath the beast and felt a sting as Mr. Major shot out a paw and sunk four sharp claws into his hand. One slitted eye glared at him, and the cat emitted a fierce yowl, half-way between a growl and a meow.

Patrick stifled his own yowl, and used one finger of the other hand to carefully detach the claws, whipping both hands out of reach just in time to miss an repeat engagement. Jumping backwards caused the towel he’d wrapped round him to slip, and he caught it before it dropped all the way to the floor. He wasn’t about to evict the cat without at least the semblance of some protection.

“Off my clothes, cat,” he menaced. Mr. Major tucked itself back into a curl, one paw over its nose. Both eyes remained open a slit to watch what Patrick meant to do next.

“Alright. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Patrick stripped back the blanket that covered the bed, tipping cat and clothes onto the floor. The cat swore at him—tone and glare quite unmistakeable—and shot under the bed.

Patrick retrieved his clothes. At least they weren’t covered in cat hair. He picked a few errant hairs off the dark background of the t-shirt and dressed, ignoring the feline under the bed.

Ready to go downstairs, he took a quick look around the place, searching for an opening that might have allowed the cat in, and that would let it out again. The window in the bathroom was over a sheer drop. Two other windows had catches that allowed only an inch or so of opening.

He addressed the cat. “How did you do it?” Twenty past six. He’d better hurry. He stooped, and met the cat’s amber eyes. It was up against the wall at the head of the bed—too far to reach even if he’d been prepared to have his hands shredded.

“If you misbehave while I’m out, I’ll make a hat out of you,” he threatened.

When he opened the door, the cat shot out, almost tripping him over at the top of the stairs. He caught himself, and followed the fiend downstairs.

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Attraction on WIP Wednesday

 

If our story includes a romance, it includes attraction. (Sometimes, it includes attraction even without a romance!) This week, I’m sharing another bit from The Gingerbread Caper, and I’d love for you to share an extract of yours in the comments.

She joined him at the table. “It’s our quiet time, and I was about to stop for a cup of tea myself.” She offered him a plate with pieces of gingerbread cookie and a slightly flattened cupcake. “Milk?”

“A little bit, please and no sugar.” Her physical impact wasn’t lessened by her proximity. He’d been imagining a middle-aged, perhaps even an elderly woman. Someone with white curly hair, comfortably rounded, grandmotherly. Someone he could look at without wanting to fall at her feet, his tongue hanging out.

“You’re Patrick Finch, aren’t you?” she asked, and when he assured her that he was indeed, she opened her eyes very wide, her eyebrows shooting up. “I thought you would be much older.” She tossed ahead, clucking her tongue. “I said that out loud, didn’t I?”

“Ms Fotheringham–” Patrick began. She interrupted him. “You had better call me Meg.”

He said his own name, managing to manipulate the aforementioned tongue into the familiar syllables. The question he had been about to ask had to drained from his brain, and receded still further when those lovely eyes — brown with flecks of green — stayed focused on him, a question in their depths.

Before he could compose himself sufficiently to continue, she saved him the trouble. “I should explain that I am not my aunt.” She successfully interpreted the rapid blink with which she greeted this mystifying statement. “My Aunt Margaret owns this bakery and the flats upstairs. She was called away quite unexpectedly, and I am looking after the place for her. There wasn’t time to let you know, and I don’t suppose it makes a difference anyway, as far as you are concerned. In a minute I will show you your flat and leave you to get settled. As Aunt Margaret told you, your meals will be served down here in the tea rooms. Your rent includes all three meals, and morning and afternoon tea.”

Patrick sat there nodding, when what he really wanted to do was shake his head. This was a disaster. He had been sent out of town to convalesce — his doctor and his manager both insisting that if he stayed home he would not be able to resist working. Absolutely no stress, the doctor had said. He had been looking forward to a little mothering from the comfortable elderly lady he had expected. Instead, he was confronted by the finest example he had ever seen of that section of humanity that tied his tongue in knots and turned his feet into weapons of self-destruction.

A young woman. A lovely young woman. “I would like to lie down now,” he told her. His errant imagination, functioning with far greater facility than the rest of him, immediately presented a picture of Meg waiting for him in bed. Scarlet sheets set off her lovely complexion.

“Of course.” The real Meg stood immediately. “Aunt said you have been ill, and it is a long trip from Wellington. What do you do there, Patrick?”

“Senior policy analyst,” he said, shortly. She opened her eyes, wide. “Who for? What do you do?”

“It doesn’t matter.” It wasn’t a secret, but his head was both pounding and attempting to drift around the room. She must have sensed his need, because she dropped the questioning.

“Come this way. Here! Let me take one of those.” She picked up the heaviest of his two suitcases and led the way.

Patrick stumbled after her with the second suitcase, hoping his blush would be gone before she looked at him again, or at the very least she did not guess the thoughts that so embarrassed him. Lust is perfectly normal, he assured himself. As long as you don’t dwell on it or insult the young woman, all shall be well. You have several good books. You can go for long walks.

A door at the front of the shop gave on to a small hall and a bank of stairs. Meg led the way up, which put her jeans-clad behind directly at Patrick’s eyelevel.

I wonder if she has a boyfriend? He shook his head. Of course she does. A woman like this? Don’t be more of an idiot than you can help, Patrick.

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Pets and other animals on WIP Wednesday

Today, I’m looking for excerpts with animals. I’ve started my contemporary again — or, at least, I am writing a new beginning about a week before the one I already had. I’m starting with my hero being tripped up by a cat right at the moment he meets the heroine and decides he wants to impress her. So I decided to focus on excerpts with animals today. Meet the cat on my cover, who plays a crucial role in the plot as the bringer of chaos. Meet him briefly, that is. He doesn’t stick around.

“Yes. I am Meg Fotheringham.” The deity behind the counter extended her hand for Patrick to shake. Patrick stepped forward, his eyes locked on hers, determinedly not allowing them to slip to the glories outlined by her apron. Don’t stuff it up, Patrick. Smile. Say something normal. And then he was falling, crashing into the baskets and cake stands clustered on the counter.

Patrick, winded by the sharp blow to the chest, was barely conscious of a large tabby cat that shot out from under his feet and through a cat door at the back of the room.

“Are you all right?” Ms Fotheringham asked, as she hurried around the counter to help him back to his feet. “That dratted cat!”

Patrick was trying to draw in enough air to breathe, while surveying the chaos his fall had made — crushed chocolate cake, scattered buns and cupcakes, broken gingerbread cookies.

“I’m sorry,” he managed.

Ms Fotheringham frowned at the mess. “Not your fault,” she assured him. She was still holding his arm and now she nudged him towards the nearest chair. “Please sit down. I’ll make you a cup of tea or coffee. You were looking for me? No, never mind. Get your breath back first.”

Tea sounded wonderful. The long bus ride, the shock of his new landlady’s youth and loveliness, the fall — combined, they’d left Patrick limp as a dishrag, no better than he’d been when the glandular fever had been raging full force through his system.