4. Charlotte

4

CHARLOTTE

C harlotte was running out of things to clean when the bells over the door jingled merrily.

She looked up, expecting the grumpy man from her phone calls. Instead, a mom with an adorable little girl came in, both of them wearing big smiles.

“Welcome,” Charlotte said. “How can I help you?”

“What do you think, honey?” the lady asked her daughter.

“Strawberry,” the girl whispered loudly.

“One strawberry milkshake, please,” the mom relayed.

“Coming right up,” Charlotte said with a smile.

As she dug into the strawberry ice cream with her scoop, she realized her arm was getting a little sore. Scooping out the ice cream was turning out to be a real arm workout, and she was motivated to do it as quickly as possible with customers watching.

If I can get this place really jumping, I’m going to have one very strong arm.

Of course, making an ice cream shop profitable in the dead of a Vermont winter should have felt like an impossible dream. But with all the activity she’d been watching in the park across the street all day, it actually seemed like it might be a real possibility. Once she’d spent a few days observing, she would be able to make a plan. It would feel good to put some of what she had learned at school to work.

Charlotte poured a little cream and strawberry sauce over the ice cream she had in the pitcher and then set it on the base of the blender as she reached for the lid.

At that exact moment, the bells over the door jingled again, and in tromped a gorgeous giant of a man who looked awfully familiar.

“Charlotte?” he demanded, in Tag Lawrence’s signature growl.

His eyes met hers, and she found herself captured by a striking Caribbean blue gaze for the second time in twenty-four hours.

It’s the man from the gas station, she thought to herself as her cheeks heated. Tag Lawrence is the man from the gas station…

He looked almost as surprised as she was.

“Y-yes,” she replied. “I’m Charlotte.”

“I want my shake, Mommy,” the little girl piped up, reminding Charlotte that she was at work.

“Now, Jocelyn,” the mother said firmly. “We have to be patient.”

“No worries, sweetheart,” Charlotte said to the little girl right away, tearing her eyes from Tag’s. “I’ve got it.”

She quickly hit the button on the blender to make the strawberry shake. But she’d been so thrown by Tag’s appearance that she forgot all about the lid she was still holding.

A fountain of strawberry ice cream erupted from the blender, covering her from head to toe and splashing all over the counter and the floor she had spent all morning polishing.

She squealed frantically holding the lid in front of her like it might actually block anything and fumbling for the button to turn the blender off.

She managed to switch it off—though by then there wasn’t really much left in the blender to worry about. And as she used her sleeve to wipe the ice cream from her face, she prayed that she hadn’t gotten any on the poor girl and her mom.

She blinked back the sticky concoction, relieved to see that the customer side of the counter was mercifully clean, even though pretty much everything on her side of it was a dripping pink mess.

The four of them stood there stunned for a moment, silently surveying the carnage.

“ It’s just like Curious George ,” the little girl finally whispered, breaking the spell.

Maybe it was just her exhaustion, but the little girl was right about Curious George, Charlotte had read that very story over and over again to a girl she babysat back in high school. She suddenly found herself pressing a hand to her mouth as she tried her level best not to laugh.

“Oh, dear,” her mother said. “It’s not very nice to compare a lady to a monkey, Jocelyn.”

Somehow that pushed Charlotte completely over the edge, and a rogue giggle escaped from behind her hand.

“But the lady is laughing,” Jocelyn rightly pointed out.

The mother looked up and Charlotte almost felt guilty for laughing, though she wasn’t sure why.

“She’s right,” Charlotte said, desperately trying and failing to stop giggling. “This did happen in a Curious George book.”

“ See, Mommy? ” the girl said.

Charlotte noticed Tag frowning, which somehow made it even harder to pull herself together. Tears gathered in the corners of her eyes now, mixing with the strawberry ice cream, which was cold but delicious on her lips.

“Why don’t you go get cleaned up,” Tag suggested. “I’ll take care of this.”

She highly doubted that the grumpy dairy farmer was actually going to clean the ice cream shop and take care of the customers. But she certainly couldn’t do it herself when she was covered in pink goop.

“Sorry about that,” she managed to mutter as she took off for the stairs, wondering for the second time in a day if she was going to be fired before the sun went down.

It wasn’t easy to get into her apartment without covering everything on the way with strawberry ice cream, but she did her best.

Half an hour later, she was showered and dressed again, and all the clothing she had been wearing before was rinsed off and hanging in her shower.

She was freezing cold, even after the warm shower, but she figured that’s what happened when you covered yourself in ice cream in Vermont. The apartment seemed to have warmed up a tiny bit during the day, which was good.

Heading downstairs, she tried to convince herself that Tag wouldn’t fire her. Maybe, if she did a good job cleaning up, and promised it would never happen again…

For about the hundredth time, she marveled over the fact that he was the man from the gas station. She hadn’t even noticed a cute guy since Bryce dumped her. It was just her wacky luck that the first man who got her attention would be Allie’s oldest brother, but the fact that he wasn’t very nice seemed right on brand for her. At least he was up front about it.

Shake it off, Charlotte, she told herself. You’re already a little bit scared of him, and this weird attraction will definitely disappear if you spend like ten more minutes with him. He took you by surprise. That’s all.

She definitely hadn’t made a good impression. She had banged her head the first time they met, and blasted herself with strawberry ice cream the second.

He probably doesn’t even remember you from the gas station, she told herself. Strange women probably get distracted and have accidents around him all the time.

But his eyes had widened when he saw her today…

Charlotte popped out into the shop and found Tag with a customer. Not wanting to interrupt, she stayed in the back part of the shop.

Her first surprise was that the area behind the counter was perfectly clean. There wasn’t a drop of ice cream anywhere that she could see, and the only signs that there had been a mess at all were the mop and bucket still leaning against the creemee machine and a pile of rags on the counter. Maybe the customer had come in before he had a chance to put it all away.

“Thank you so much, Tag,” the sweet little old lady with the worn coat said to Tag, taking her small cup of ice cream in one hand and digging in her big purple purse with the other.

“Our cash register is jammed, so it’s on the house today,” Tag told her gruffly.

Charlotte winced, wondering how ice cream had managed to get all the way to the register. She was definitely in trouble if it wasn’t fixable.

“Is that so?” the lady asked, her eyes brightening. “Thank you so much. That’s so kind of you, Tag.”

Tag made a noise of acknowledgement and watched after the lady as she tottered out the door with her treat.

“Hi,” Charlotte said softly as she approached him.

“Are you okay?” he asked, turning to her. Somehow, he seemed bigger and taller and even more handsome than before.

“Yeah,” she said, not meeting his eyes. “Just embarrassed.”

“It’s your first day,” he said.

She glanced up in time to see him shrug.

“Thank you for cleaning up,” she said, looking around and confirming that he had done an incredible job removing all the evidence of her incident.

“It’s fine,” he said. “What else do you need to know about this place?”

“Well, the questions are all coming from the customers,” she said. “So, I guess I won’t know until they ask.”

“They’re just eating ice cream,” Tag grumbled, heading over to the creemee machine and grabbing the mop and bucket. “Why do they need to know all this stuff?”

Was he just being grouchy, or was he really that clueless?

“It matters to people,” she said carefully as she grabbed the rags from the counter and placed them in the bucket to be cleaned later. “A lot of people don’t even eat dairy anymore. I think you have to be… well, sort of an ambassador.”

“An ambassador?” he echoed, shaking his head as he put the mop and bucket back in the broom closet by the door to the stairs. “I’m a farmer, Charlotte, always have been. And that’s enough for me.”

“They just want to be reassured that the cows are happy and healthy, Tag,” she said. “Or are they right to be worried?”

The look on his face told her she had crossed a line.

“The shop will be closed tomorrow,” he said, his voice suddenly cold. “You’re coming to the farm instead. I’ll pick you up at seven. Or is that too early for a city girl?”

“It’s just fine,” she told him. “But I can drive myself.”

“See you here at seven,” he said firmly, pinning her with his icy blue gaze. “I’ll drive.”

She nodded, knowing when she was beaten.

“Good,” he said, his voice a little gentler.

When he reached the door he stopped.

“Try not to hit your head or anything between now and then,” he said over his shoulder before striding out the door, leaving the bells jangling behind him.

Charlotte watched after him in wonder as he headed down the block to the same black truck she’d seen him in before.

Try not to hit your head...

So he did remember her from the gas station.

And he had just… made a joke?

She was smiling to herself as she headed over to the cash register, wondering if she could get it unjammed herself and save the Lawrences the trouble of a repair bill.

But when she pressed the button, the drawer slid out easily.

She opened and closed it a few more times, but each time the drawer moved as smoothly as if it were brand new.

The image of the sweet little old lady with the purple purse popped into her mind again, and Charlotte remembered her careworn smile, and the threadbare state of her coat.

Our cash register is jammed, so it’s on the house today, Tag had said.

But the cash register was fine, and Charlotte was pretty sure he was only being kind—brightening the day of someone who needed a little taste of sweetness.

She gazed out the front window, thinking about it, and watching the people outside greet each other as they carried packages, pushed strollers, and walked their dogs.

A group of older men had gathered around the big evergreen at the center of the park. They walked around it, talking and gesturing as if they were planning something. Every single one of them looked delighted.

This was still a world where her dad could die, where she could be treated cruelly by a boyfriend she thought would one day be her husband, and where she could leave school under a mountain of debt and without a degree.

But it was also a world where people were helping each other to cross the street, where children laughed and played, and where the older generation gathered.

It was even a world where a man like Tag Lawrence could do something selfless and kind.

Turning to the big machine behind her, Charlotte decided her people-watching might be better with a maple creemee. Besides, it felt right to celebrate her first day. It might have been a little more exciting than she’d hoped, but she had definitely learned a lot.

As she watched the pale, caramel-colored creemee swirl into the cone, Charlotte imagined an end to her string of calamities, and pictured her heart like the empty cone in her hand, being filled to the brim and beyond with sweet things.

And she definitely didn’t think any more about Tag Lawrence, or the way his deep, gruff voice tickled something inside her chest.