Love Arrives in Pieces Read online

  Acclaim for Betsy St. Amant

  “I’m a Betsy St. Amant fan! Writing with smooth prose and clever metaphors, St. Amant blends truth with swoon-worthy romance. Her characters are vivid and real. Love Arrives in Pieces explores the reality of how love and faith fill the cracks of human brokenness, creating a beautiful mosaic worth viewing. Don’t miss this book!”

  —RACHEL HAUCK, AWARD-WINNING, BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE WEDDING DRESS AND THE ROYAL WEDDING SERIES

  “With the maturity of someone well beyond her years, Betsy St. Amant pens yet another amazingly sweet story about falling in love. Love Arrives in Pieces starts out with a bitter, broken young woman and ends with a strong heroine who literally regains her faith and her life piece by piece. I loved how Stella and Chase found each other again and worked toward the life God had intended for them all along. This story shows that we don’t have to wear a tiara in order to find the crown that heals all of us. We are all broken and abstract but with God’s help, we can be put back together. I loved Love Arrives in Pieces. An indulgence that will hold you captive, page by page!”

  —LENORA WORTH, AUTHOR OF AN APRIL BRIDE

  “St. Amant (A February Bride) has written a convincing tale of hope, love, and faith that readers of her popular books and fans of Melody Carlson will enjoy. Those coming to her work for the first time will appreciate the realistic characterizations and the inspirational romance that springs from a longtime friendship.”

  —LIBRARY JOURNAL FOR ALL’S FAIR IN LOVE AND CUPCAKES

  “Packed full of fun, flavor, and the perfect amount of sassy humor, All’s Fair in Love and Cupcakes will keep readers turning those pages as quick as can be, and maybe craving a cupcake or two (or three) along the way! Betsy St. Amant’s latest is sure to be a favorite among fans of inspirational romance.”

  —KATIE GANSHERT, AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR OF A BROKEN KIND OF BEAUTIFUL

  “Betsy St. Amant has whipped up a romance as yummy as her heroine’s cupcakes. A wonderfully fun read from a talented author.”

  —LIZ JOHNSON, NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR, ON ALL’S FAIR IN LOVE AND CUPCAKES

  Other Books by Betsy St. Amant

  All’s Fair in Love and Cupcakes

  A February Bride

  ZONDERVAN

  Love Arrives in Pieces

  Copyright © 2015 by Betsy St. Amant

  ePub Edition © May 2015: ISBN 978-0-310-33856-7

  Requests for information should be addressed to:

  Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  St. Amant, Betsy.

  Love arrives in pieces / Betsy St. Amant.

  pages ; cm

  ISBN 978-0-310-33847-5 (softcover)

  1. Single men--Fiction. 2. Divorced women--Fiction. 3. Man-woman relationships--Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3619.T213L69 2015

  813'.6--dc23

  2014048149

  All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com.

  Any Internet addresses (websites, blogs, etc.) and telephone numbers in this book are offered as a resource. They are not intended in any way to be or imply an endorsement by Zondervan, nor does Zondervan vouch for the content of these sites and numbers for the life of this book.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  Publisher’s Note: This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. All characters are fictional, and any similarity to people living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Interior design: Lori Lynch

  15 16 17 18 19 20 / RRD / 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  To Lori, Katie, Anne, Sarah, and Angela—you warred on your knees with me for my marriage. And when it ended anyway, you stood up and helped me gather the broken pieces of my heart. Never has anyone demonstrated being the hands and feet of Jesus like you. From the depths of my heart—thank you.

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Discussion Questions

  An Excerpt from All’s Fair In Love and Cupcakes

  One

  About the Author

  one

  Fairy tales lied.

  Plink. Stella Varland plucked another edible pearl off the glittery periwinkle icing in front of her and let it slip from her fingers onto the counter beside the others. Her cupcake might look like Cinderella’s dress, but there was no Prince Charming anywhere in sight. Plink.

  Nope. He’d straight up turned into a frog.

  Plink.

  Didn’t they all?

  “Kat! She’s doing it again!” A gravelly voice barked from the other side of the homeless shelter’s serving counter, rising above the low din of big band music blasting from an ancient jukebox.

  Stella looked up just in time to see Dixie, the shelter’s longest-served and arguably favorite patron, leave her conversation with the shelter’s director and rush toward her like a linebacker. The throng that had gathered for the Wednesday catered fellowship parted like the Red Sea.

  Definitely not her fairy godmother.

  “Your sister’s wasting the good stuff.” Dixie snatched the cupcake from the counter in front of Stella, clutched it like a Louboutin bag on clearance, and deftly stuck her tongue in the center of the peaked icing. Officially claimed.

  Stella held up both hands in surrender. “It’s all yours, Dixie.” The sixty-something-year-old woman was there every time Stella volunteered with Kat, yet for all of the older woman’s roughness, she probably had one of the softest hearts in Bayou Bend.

  Until it came to sharing anything sugar-coated.

  And somehow, the woman always managed to smell like cinnamon.

  Stella’s older sister, Kat Brannen, sidled up to the counter with a tray of fresh cupcakes from the kitchen. “Stella, I know you’ve always been one to count calories, but if you’re going to just play with my cupcakes, I’d rather you not choose my new fairy tale line.”

  She set down the tray and adjusted the ties of the pale pink apron cinched around her expectant belly. “I can give you a plain ol’ vanilla cupcake to destroy.”

  Dixie nodded her adamant agreement and licked at the baby blue frosting smeared across her chapped lips.

  This wasn’t about calories. Once upon a time, it definitely would have been. No, this ran a little deeper. And besides, easy for Kat to say. Her sister had found the proverbial fairy tale. Married her best friend, had a cozy house in the country, and now, after winning a popular reality show called Cupcake Combat, was living her dream of owning a cupcake shop—all with a bun in her own oven.

  Her sister’s success should give her hope, really. And yet . . .

  Stella pulled in her lower lip and watched as Dixie picked up a few of the discarded candy pearls
and smashed them back onto the cupcake. Life hadn’t exactly been a fairy tale for Dixie. So what did that mean? Maybe one shot at love was all anyone really got.

  And Stella had apparently chosen very, very wrong.

  More than once, actually.

  “Is it the pearls? Would you rather try the Snow White one?” Kat pointed at the tray she’d just set down. Red velvet cupcakes perched in dainty rows, topped with fondant apples nestled inside faux crowns. Another masterpiece. When it came to baking, Kat was capable of nothing less.

  She really was proud of her sister.

  Jealous, maybe, but proud.

  “No thanks. Not really hungry.” Hadn’t been for a few days now, and it wasn’t because of the anniversary date on the calendar. Well, maybe a little bit because of that. But she was past the grieving stage.

  Some scars just still pinched a little, regardless of the hands ticking away on a clock. Time healed wounds, sure. Maybe not all of them.

  Or maybe just not all the way.

  Kat frowned. “If you’re not hungry, then why’d you ask for a cupcake?”

  Stella hadn’t asked. Kat had just handed it to her the minute Stella sat down at the serving counter of the shelter, sort of like a bartender sliding a drink to an old regular. But she didn’t have to remind her sister of the truth. Pregnancy brain lasted only so long, and from the glimmer in her sister’s eye, the pieces were slowly sliding into place.

  “Wait a minute.” Kat looked at a watch she wasn’t wearing, then hiked up her apron and reached into her pocket for her cell.

  Yep. Here it came. Stella waited, glancing at the smudged glass door leading out to the street, then sighed. Escape was pointless. Kat might be pregnant, but when on a mission, the girl could haul it. She’d catch her before Stella could even make it to the parking lot.

  Which would be pointless, since Stella had left her car at the bakery and ridden with Kat to the shelter across town.

  Sigh.

  She defaulted instead to dropping the remainder of the edible pearls one by one into the big sugar-cookie candle on the serving counter. The one the homeless shelter director had lit for “ambiance.”

  It was gonna take a lot more than a candle to light up this place.

  “Hold on.” Kat tapped the screen and began scrolling through her phone. She was looking for her calendar—Stella knew it as surely as she knew Vaseline on one’s teeth made it easier to hold a pageant smile. The whole thing would be humorous, really, if that stupid scar didn’t still pull so tight on days like this one.

  Stella sucked in a deep breath and released it, slowly, as her counselor had taught her. The room wasn’t actually getting smaller. Or darker. Emotions were funny things. Powerful things.

  Annoying things.

  She wanted a hug.

  “Today is . . .” Kat scrolled faster, her brow puckered. Dixie peered over her shoulder, smacking.

  Three.

  Scroll, scroll.

  Two.

  Kat’s fingers stilled.

  One.

  “Ah.” Kat’s lips twisted to the side as she slid her phone back into her pocket. “One year since your divorce was final.”

  The music stopped in unison with her words. Silence fell over the shelter, the kind of quiet that smothers instead of warms. Like a scratchy wool blanket you’d rather just shuck off in the middle of the night.

  The silence began to hurt her ears. Stella shifted on her chair, wishing she’d stayed home instead of taking the “stay busy by volunteering and helping others” route her counselor had drilled into her. Hence her involvement with the shelter in general.

  But tonight . . . she should have passed. Should have hidden herself in her art studio or maybe gotten back to the long-ignored punching bag in the gym, the one she used to totally own when getting in shape for pageants. Something, be it physical or creative, to release this tension that had been building for days.

  Yet, as her late Aunt Maggie used to say, wishes weren’t horses, and nobody was riding away today. Time to deal.

  “It’s okay. I’m fine.” Really, she was. She avoided Dixie’s steady stare, the one that sprang up from some deep place where angels visited and prophecies were revealed. The older woman might be homeless, though many rumored it was by choice. And she might be half off her rocker, as Aunt Maggie would say. But the woman knew things.

  Some called it insight. Some called it a gift.

  Stella just called it mind-your-own-business.

  She dared to meet the woman’s gaze, partly because of the manners her southern mama had embedded in both her and Kat, and partly out of morbid curiosity. What if Dixie really did have a prophetic word for her? What if somehow God did reveal His plan for Stella through the mouth of a half-crazy old lady? At this point, she should probably take what she could get, because she’d been frozen in the in-between long enough. Fairy tales might lie, but the facts didn’t, and the simple truth remained that if Stella didn’t land another interior decorating job soon, she’d be scrubbing her mother’s kitchen floors without a single mouse or bird to help.

  Some princesses had all the luck.

  Needless to say, she could stand some direction at the moment.

  Frustration whittled down to a sliver of hope. Dixie’s eyes drilled hard back into hers, as if dissecting Stella’s soul, as if she could see straight through the past few years riddled with wedding albums and smeared mascara and cell phones lighting up with other women’s phone numbers. Of pageant smiles and sweaty gym clothes and unacceptable numbers flashing on a scale’s digital screen.

  Of voices hoarse from yelling and court gavels slamming and canvases laced with angry red paint.

  As if maybe she had an answer.

  “HOWARD!”

  Stella jumped, nearly sliding off her chair, as Dixie bellowed full-steam without even remotely shifting her gaze away from her.

  “We need another song. This place is like a cemetery.” Dixie finally looked away, over the shoulder of the thin blazer she wore year round, the one with the hole in the elbow and the patchwork floral print that had long since faded from crimson to blush pink. “I ain’t dead yet.”

  Dixie’s buddy, the man she swore she wasn’t involved with but who was the first to jump to her every command, hitched his fingers in the straps of his overalls and grinned through his gray speckled beard. “What’s your pleasure, darlin’?” He nudged the bottom of the jukebox that a well-meaning local business had donated to the shelter four months ago. Didn’t even require quarters.

  Stella turned pleading eyes to Kat, who just shrugged and grinned as she continued setting out her gourmet cupcakes on napkins for the line starting to form behind Dixie. At least once the music started, everyone could quit staring at her. And quit whispering.

  Isn’t that Kat’s sister? That pageant queen that got divorced a while back?

  Such a shame. So much beauty and yet . . .

  Bet Pastor Varland never saw that one coming. PKs aren’t supposed to get divorced.

  She’d heard it all.

  Dixie clasped her hands against her chest, her expression nearly reverent as she flitted toward Howard. “Elvis. ‘Heartbreak Hotel.’ ”

  Oh, for the love . . .

  Stella buried her face in her hands. Why hadn’t she driven her own car? She’d volunteered these last few months with Kat, and this kind of drama had never been an issue before now.

  What was in those cupcakes?

  “Stella.” Kat’s whisper in her ear made her grunt but not look up. She wasn’t coming out. No way. Denial was her only chance. She sank lower on the counter and shoved her face into her elbows. Was the room spinning again?

  She wanted to paint. Wanted to slap acrylic across a canvas and watch the bare become beautiful. See white morph into color. Get proof that something could still be made from nothing. God had done that once, with creation.

  She wanted it for her heart.

  The shelter door squeaked open, and a warm breeze drif
ted across Stella’s neck. She hadn’t even bothered to dry her hair completely before meeting Kat, just thrown it up in a forget-about-it clip. Getting ready sure did take a lot less time when you didn’t worry about hair or makeup anymore. She used to waste so much energy on that stuff. On clothes. On tanning creams and waxing and all things appearance-related.

  Pretty was a moot point now. Hence her plain thermal top and baggy jeans.

  Pretty wasn’t enough.

  Pretty played her for a fool.

  “Stella.” Kat’s whisper turned urgent. “I hate to say this. But what would be one way to make this evening even more terrible for you?”

  “Tornado?” She kept her head down, mumbling the words into her folded arms.

  “Worse.”

  “Land shark?”

  “You’re getting warmer.”

  Perfect. Stella looked up with resignation. “Hi, Mom.” She smiled wide, showing all her teeth, a skill she’d perfected on stage at pageants when waiting for the judge’s decision. Cool detachment.

  Had perfected it even further after Dillon left.

  “Why were you lying on the counter, Stella?” Disapproval flew before Claire Varland like a banner over royalty. She ran a manicured finger over the scratched wooden surface and made a show of checking it. “Pageant queens don’t—”

  “I’m not a pageant queen, Mother.” Same argument, different day. Stella had left that lifestyle behind years ago, after Dillon had proposed, choosing to pursue interior design instead. It’d been a way to experiment with art from behind the safety of a degree—a smokescreen, really, since her heart pulsed with the need to paint. Sketch. Draw.

  With interior design, she could play around with color and texture while keeping her personal projects out of the spotlight—safe.

  Mom twisted her lips to the side in the way that Kat did. “Once a queen, always a queen.”

  No. Those sashes were long since retired. Stella looked to Kat for help, but Kat just peeled the wrapper off another cupcake and rested an elbow on the counter as if gearing up for a show. Some big sister.

  Mom never knew when to quit. “You don’t compete in pageants anymore, but you’re still a winner, Stella. It still happened.”