Военная мысль Китая. Группа авторов

had been on overload. She had worked ceaselessly since high school graduation for this one opportunity to prove to herself that she was accomplished. This was her blue ribbon; her Oscar.

      Because Maddie was the only child of a single mother, Babs Strong, who worked in a bread-manufacturing plant, Maddie hadn’t had the money or means to go to college. But no one was more passionate about acquiring a business degree than Maddie.

      Maddie had learned accounting and business management by copying the reading lists of the required classes her wealthier friends took in college. She read all the same materials and texts they did. It was her bet that on any given day, she was on an even par with the best of them.

      It was Sarah’s mother, Ann Marie, who’d seen Maddie’s business potential and believed in her café-and-cupcake vision right from its conception. Ann Marie had gone to Austin Carlson McCreary, by far the wealthiest man in town, and asked him to be an “angel investor” in Maddie’s café. Austin, twenty-eight years old at the time and a near recluse, agreed to put up a small amount of working capital for Maddie, but only because he respected Ann Marie and her judgment.

      Maddie’s café was a hit from the day the doors first opened. She worked fourteen hours a day and repaid the twenty-five thousand Austin had loaned her in less than three years. Because Austin never asked for interest or a dividend, Maddie was only too happy to fulfill his one eccentric request. Every Friday at eight in the morning, Maddie was to hand-deliver a box of seven assorted cupcakes to Austin’s front door. Maddie never missed a Friday.

      After ten years in business, Maddie was about to take her first step toward her ultimate goal. She was working with Alex Perkins on franchising her café. There were hundreds of ifs between this moment and the actuality of a dozen Cupcakes and Coffee Cafés opening across the Midwest. Maddie had always believed in her dream. If she didn’t dream it, it would never happen. And she intended to make all her dreams come true.

      Maddie stared at the expensive bouquet, which Alex had sent several days ago, and which she’d almost been too busy to notice, though Chloe and her girlfriends certainly had. Gazing at the spectacular flowers, she wondered why Alex would send her such an ostentatious gift. They were only business associates. She was his client, that was all. Wasn’t it?

      “Are you listening to me, Maddie?” Sarah asked.

      “Sorry,” Maddie said, wiping her hand on her bright red-and-white-striped apron. “Could you repeat that?”

      Sarah’s eyebrow cocked inquisitively. “I said that Chicago investment firms certainly treat their clients well. That’s some pretty good PR.”

      “Yeah.” Maddie smoothed her short, highlighted blond hair around her ears with her palm. “It makes me nervous,” she admitted.

      “Why?”

      “Is Alex sending me these flowers because he’s found an investor and he knows something I don’t, or because he can’t find anyone for my franchise? Or is it because he likes me more than he’s letting on?”

      Shrugging her shoulders, Sarah asked, “Either one sounds like a winner to me. Doesn’t it to you?”

      “Sure. I guess,” Maddie said. She whirled to look at the clock over the counter. “I gotta get. So do you,” she told Sarah.

      “Right. I still have to run home and take Beau out for one last potty break before my big presentation for Charmaine.” She picked up two boxes of cupcakes. “I’ll put these in your car for you, Maddie. Are you taking them up to New Buffalo right away?”

      “It’s first on my delivery list,” Maddie said. “You guys have been a great help to me today. I can’t thank you enough.”

      “I was just teasing about the torture,” Sarah said, going to Maddie and kissing her cheek. “Keys, please.”

      Maddie dug around in her jeans pocket and pulled out her car keys. “Pop the side doors in back and put the cupcakes on the driver’s side. I’ll bring out the rest of the order. Good luck with Charmaine.”

      Isabelle gazed at Sarah with what looked like hero worship in her eyes. “Is it wonderful, Sarah? Your new project?”

      “More than wonderful. I can’t tell you about it. Not yet, anyway. The owner wants everything kept under wraps until we get a go from the city council. But it’s exciting.”

      Maddie withdrew another bakery box of cupcakes from under the counter and held them out for Sarah. “I put this together last night when Isabelle and I were working. I made Luke’s favorite lemon cake with lemon-flavored cooked icing. Dutch chocolate for Annie. Double devil’s food for Timmy. Carrot cake and cream-cheese icing for you, and of course, Beau’s cream-filled vanilla cupcake.”

      Sarah smiled broadly. “This is very sweet of you.”

      “Hey, you’re the generous one, giving me your time and energy when I know you probably should have been putting the final touches on your drawings.”

      Sarah looked at Maddie with genuine gratitude and an air of conviction that Maddie had always admired in her friend, even when they were in high school. For a while last year, after Sarah’s mother died, that conviction, the abundant, sparkling hopefulness that Sarah shared with everyone in town, had faded under the storm of grief and loss. To lose one’s mother was always difficult, but to lose a person like Ann Marie Jensen, whose kindness was nearly legendary and whose lifelong dedication to the town had left not just a mark, but a swath of beautification, creativity and civic improvement, was almost insurmountable.

      But since Sarah’s engagement to Luke Bosworth, she had come back to life, and her effervescent spirit was bubbling over with enthusiasm.

      “This time my drawings are nearly perfect,” Sarah reassured her. “I’m totally confident about this presentation.”

      Maddie beamed. “That’s great to hear, Sarah.” This was her friend’s first project since her boss, interior designer Charmaine Chalmers, had laid her off a year ago.

      “I’m in such a different place than I was last year at this time. When I look back at the work I did then, I don’t blame Charmaine for kicking me to the curb. Thank goodness it was only temporary.”

      Maddie followed Sarah to the door. “You had lost both your parents in a very short period of time. You left Indianapolis and that great architecture job. It was a lot of change. Too much change in a couple short years. Then taking care of your mother before she died. That’s heartbreaking and physically exhausting. But you’re an inspiration to us all. Like the ‘comeback kid,’ Sarah. I’m so happy for you.”

      The two women walked over to Maddie’s black Yukon, which served as her delivery van. Maddie had emblazoned both sides of her SUV with her phone number, website, email, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter accounts in gold lettering. Sarah put the boxes in the back end of the SUV. “Speaking of mothers,” she said. “How is your mom?”

      “We don’t speak. You know that. She lives her life with her cigarettes and television reruns and I push for my dreams. Two different universes.” Maddie shrugged her shoulders flippantly. “Doesn’t matter.”

      “It’s just sad, is all,” Sarah said.

      “Not really. Your mother was more of a real mother to me than Babs, whose biggest regret is that she gave birth to me. Babs will be bitter till the day she dies because my father had already picked out a new girlfriend before she even told him she was pregnant. She blames him and me for the fact that she never finished high school. She should have stuck to cheerleading and she knows it.”

      Sarah squinted accusingly at Maddie. “The real truth is that your mother has been jealous of you since you were in a training bra.”

      “Check.” Maddie nodded. “She thinks I’m too entrepreneurial, not that she could spell or define it. And the she hates the fact that I’m perfectly happy without a rich husband who would pay her bills so she could sit around and smoke more cigarettes and watch more innocuous television.”