Honey Pie (Cupcake Club) - By Donna Kauffman Page 0,56
her cave. So it surprised him when she answered truthfully, openly.
“Only I don’t want to go back.” She paused, blew out another breath. “Wow. Just saying it out loud makes it a lot more real. But it’s the honest truth. I don’t know what I could have here, but . . . I don’t want to go back.”
“Then make Sugarberry work.”
“How?”
He liked that she’d asked honestly, sincerely, with no sarcasm, no wry note. No whine or wail. If he’d doubted how much she wanted to find a way to make her plans work, that answered it for him. And he was smiling again. “Well, darlin’, you’re a pretty smart girl. You started up and have run a successful business, after all.”
That seemed to surprise her. “What do you know about my business?”
“You told me you ran a mail-order business, said you wanted a shop front. I assumed that means it’s a successful one.” He didn’t have to tell her that he’d done a little research on it—on her—the night before. Damn computers. He usually tied himself to one only when he was searching online for boat parts. Somehow he’d found himself typing in her name and up popped her website, complete with a note saying she was relocating and would post an update when she was up and running again. He’d wondered what it was costing her, suspending operations like that. From the list of happy customer quotes she had on the site, it looked like she was doing quite well.
She was also a very talented artist. He might not personally be in the market for her array of little fantasy woodland creatures and garden critters, but he’d been around enough wood carving while looking at boat pieces like his mermaid to know real quality and craftsmanship when he saw it.
“Thank you,” she said. “It is . . . or it has been. It was a huge risk, taking a hiatus in order to move lock, stock, and garden gnome across the country, but that was part of the budget in making this decision. It’s also why I have no wiggle room when it comes to spending money I don’t have to lease new property.”
“Your budget assumed you already had a location.”
“And the living quarters above it.”
“You do it all yourself? Making the products, shipping, all of it?”
She nodded. “A one woman show.”
“You plan on keeping it that way with a shop?”
“Well, my hope, I guess, when I allow myself to think that far ahead—dream that far ahead—is to get to know my customers, put a more personal face on both sides of the transaction. I want to be engaged in the world around me, and I want to engage my customers in my world at the same time. What I’d really like to do is to invite them to be part of the process, see the work, how I work. Maybe even teach wood carving and clay building and sculpting classes. I know the interaction would inspire my work as well.” She lifted a shoulder, looking a bit abashed now that she’d blurted out her most personal dream. “I don’t know. I figured I’d work my way into it. There was so much to overcome first, so . . .” She offered him a half smile, shrugged again. “Now there’s way more to overcome to even get to the original obstacles I was worried about.”
What it was about her that made him want to move mountains, slay dragons, he couldn’t rightly have said. He’d been the downtrodden, so he identified, even helped out now and again, in his own low key way. A tractor part here, a lawnmower part there. Things he could do, small scale, to help out someone in need. But that impetus had never inspired him to want to leap over tall buildings in a single bound and save the day for anyone.
“If you really want it, don’t turn tail and run,” he told her. “Nothing happens if you don’t try.”
“If I keep my online business on hold too long, I may not have much to go back to.”
“See, that’s the problem right there, sugar. You already don’t have much to go back to. Not in the way that matters to you. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here in the first place. Seems to me you’ve got every reason to try, and a long list of reasons not to give up. Instead of thinking about your farm as your backup plan, use it as motivation. The farm