Morning Glory Circle by Pamela Grandstaff Page B

and make sure there’s no animal testing involved.”
    “You’re always so serious, Caroline. Lighten up, please, will you? Let’s not worry for ten seconds about lab rabbits, and just enjoy my beautiful clothes together, shall we?”
    “Alright, but it really is the most frightful waste of resources and a shameful display of excess.”
    “Oh, I know it, but don’t be cross. Tell you what, I’ll have Louise fix us a nice lunch and then you can tell me about all the dreary things you’ve been doing in all those awful places you go.”
    Caroline sighed, but acquiesced. Gwyneth was her only living relative on this side of the Atlantic, after all.
    Later, after lunch, Gwyneth broached the delicate subject of money.
    “When you talk to Paxton, my love, just tell him you’re broke, and he simply must advance you some of your inheritance. That’s what I did and the coffers were immediately opened wide. Now there is as much money as I need, right there in my account, whenever I need it. It’s all electronic these days.”
    “Except Theo didn’t leave mine to me like he left yours to you, so accessible,” Caroline said. “Mine’s all tied up in trusts, and Paxton will probably put me on some sort of budget, or make me submit receipts.”
    “How dreadful,” Gwyneth said, but smiled as if it was delicious to hear. “I’m sure I could help you out if you’re desperate.”
    “Well, not exactly desperate. I got Paxton to pay for the plane fare.”
    “But how did you get here from the airport? Why didn’t you call me? I would have sent my car for you.”
    “It was two in the morning and I didn’t have money for a hotel room or a rental car. I know how you hate to have your sleep disturbed, so I called Maggie, and she came to get me.”
    “Oh, that odious book store woman. I don’t know how you could stand her for five minutes, let alone for two hours in a car.”
    “I slept most of the way. The thing about Maggie is I knew she’d do it. She’s like that. You call and she comes.”
    “Like a faithful, stupid dog.”
    “Handy to have around, though, and she’s got great taste in books. Her store is very well stocked.”
    “I wouldn’t know,” Gwyneth said, still smarting from being banned from entering that particular establishment, after literally being thrown out of it.
    “She introduced me to a great guy, too; Dr. Drew Rosen, have you met him?”
    “A doctor, and on your first day, how lovely,” Gwyneth said with a marked lack of enthusiasm.
    “He’s a veterinarian.”
    “Oh, I see. Not a real doctor, then.”
    “Gwyneth, you haven’t changed a bit.”
    “I had a little work done, does it show?”
    “That wasn’t what I meant.”
     
     
    Ava Fitzpatrick put the finishing touches on the flower arrangement she had created for the library table in the entryway. The snow was falling in downy clusters, making her three-story Victorian home turned bed and breakfast look like a Currier and Ives illustration come to life. Every available room was booked for the festival, and guests were due to begin arriving soon.
    Ava stacked firewood in the fireplace of the front parlor, and lit the crumpled up newspaper beneath it so a warm blaze would greet the new arrivals. She checked her makeup in the hall mirror, smoothed her hair back from her face, and practiced a friendly smile. It would be nonstop for her over the next several days, with long hours of hard work and not much sleep. And no Patrick, she’d resolved.
    When Ava’s husband Brian deserted her and their two children, his brother Patrick stepped in to become a rock she could lean on. Patrick and the rest of Brian’s extended family helped her transform a falling down money-pit into a showplace that supported her little broken family over the intervening years. She sacrificed much, went without any personal luxuries, and worked her fingers to the bone to make the business a success. In part because of Patrick’s presence in their lives, her