Free Reap What You Sew by Elizabeth Lynn Casey Page B

around all that hullabaloo yesterday that made Mamma come alive. Well, after that little incident with the people on line, anyway. Milo was such a dear helpin’ to smooth everyone’s feelings.”
    Tori lifted her face to the sun, its warmth and brightness lifting her spirits and chasing away the vestiges of fatigue that seemed born of the whole moviemaking experience. “I’ll ask Margot if I can give your mother a little tour tomorrow. If she says yes, do you think Annabelle would like that?”
    “Like it? Like it? Why, Victoria, I think that would be just the breath of fresh air she needs.” A momentary muffling of Margaret Louise’s voice lasted little more than a minute. “I just asked her if she’d like to come see you on the set and she’s all tickled now.”
    “Well let me make sure we can do it before you say too much more,” she cautioned. “Then again, I suspect Leona’s current connection might serve us better than any I’ve made.”
    Something resembling a snort of disgust permeated the phone line, a sound that was both foreign and disconcerting coming from someone as sunny and positive as Margaret Louise. “If Leona don’t like the bagger at Leeson’s to know who her mamma is, she most certainly don’t want some hotshot movie director knowin’, either.”
    She glanced down at her watch as the security guard from the day before came into view, his footsteps heavy on the sidewalk. Sure enough, the thirty-minute lunch break Margot had given them was drawing to a quick close. “Would you like me to talk to Leona? See if something I say might make a difference?”
    Again, Margaret Louise snorted. Only this time, it sounded more amused than angry. “It’s no use, Victoria. I tried when we were kids, I tried when we were teenagers, I try all the time. Why, I just tried a dab ago when she showed up on my doorstep wantin’ a crash course in bakin’ brownies.”
    Tori nearly dropped the phone. “Leona wants to learn to bake ?”
    “I s’pose you can say that, though, it was more a case of me bakin’ and my twin sittin’ all prissy like at the table demandin’ more, more, more.”
    It was Tori’s turn to laugh. “I’m not sure I’ve ever seen Leona eat one brownie, let alone more. Has she forgotten her near-daily diatribe about the evils of junk food? And its propensity for breeding cellulite?”
    “She didn’t eat them, Victoria.”
    Pushing off the bench, Tori made her way in the general direction of the tent, Margaret Louise’s one-eighty beginning to make her head hurt. “Wait. Didn’t you just say she demanded more and more the whole time you were baking?”
    “More and more nuts , not brownies.”
    She nodded at the security guard as they passed one another, the scrutiny in the man’s eyes softening as she held up the temporary name tag justifying her presence. To her friend, she said, “You lost me.”
    “She wanted me to put more and more nuts in the brownies,” Margaret Louise explained. “Why, by the time I was done, I darn near put an entire bag of walnuts in that bowl. I sure hope this Warren fella likes nuts as much as she thinks he does.”
    The meaning behind Margaret Louise’s words filtered through her thoughts, rooting her feet to the sidewalk. “Leona is making Warren brownies?”
    “She’s bringing Warren brownies,” Margaret Louise corrected. “ I made—”
    “With nuts?”
    “Lots and lots of nuts. Too many , if you ask me. But try tellin’ that pigheaded sister of mine that and, well, it’ll be like talkin’ to a wall. Leona wants to bring that man brownies with nuts tonight, Leona’s gonna bring that man brownies with nuts tonight. It’s that simple.”
    “Tonight, huh?” A knowing smile tugged the corners of her mouth upward as the reason behind Leona’s request dawned hard and fast. “You know something, Margaret Louise? Your sister may be utterly helpless at sewing, and completely inept in the kitchen, but when it comes to plotting her