Chapter One
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Whenever Luis entered Lapp's Dutch Country Market on Saturday mornings in the fall, his heart felt lighter and his mind raced with all the wonderful possibilities the world possessed. The market's front porch was lined with shiny white Adirondack chairs, and the chairs were all filled with bright orange pumpkins and yellow and green gourds set in hay. On the floorboards beside the chairs were hardy mums in purple, yellow, orange, and pink. Life suddenly became so wonderful Luis couldn't contain his emotions. He wanted to hug everyone he passed.
Fall was the season that gave Luis the most energy and the widest smiles. Cool, crisp weather made him feel centered and balanced to the universe. This adorable market was to Luis what Xanax was to his Botox-loving, jetsetter gay friends in New York who spent drunken summer weekends on Fire Island and lost winter weekends in South Beach.
Though Luis considered himself a typical New York weekender in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and knew virtually no facts or details about the Amish way of life, anything that even remotely resembled the Pennsylvania Dutch took him away from his fast-paced existence as a model in New York. The sheer simplicity of what little he did know about Amish life warmed his heart. The modest setting they'd created at the country market not far from Cider Mill Farm made him breathe easier and wish he could one day live full time in Bucks County—at least part of the year.
Luis and Jase had arrived at Cider Mill Farm late that Friday night with Hunter, Camp, and Jase's grandmother from Alaska, Isabelle. It was such a busy fall season that it felt as if only days had passed between their return from Alaska in late August and Thanksgiving. Jase had made special plans the week before Thanksgiving that year, and Luis had to shop earlier than he normally would have so he'd be prepared. Luis had already stocked up on everything he needed in New York earlier that week and he'd carted it out to Cider Mill Farm in the car. But he still had to do some last-minute shopping for those little odds and ends at Lapp's Market on Saturday morning.
Luis had never been a one-stop shopper. He tended to travel from store to store, picking up individual items he thought each store specialized in.
This didn't make his life easier. Since Labor Day, Luis had had one modeling job after the other. He didn't complain; he was thrilled to have the work. In addition to that, he'd been taking cooking—or, as he and Isabelle liked to put it, cookery—classes with his friend Hillary three times a week, working hard on a winter ball for his favorite charity, The Angel Association, and managing to get his regular blog posts in on time for Elena's Romantic Treasures and Tidbits. All this combined with running two homes and raising a child who had just started kindergarten left Luis so exhausted he fell into bed each night and passed out until the alarm went off the next morning.
Jase, Luis's husband, had been just as busy. Aside from his regular duties of running his billion-dollar empire, he'd been working on a new invention that hadn't been going well. In fact, this was the first time Jase had started a new project and he'd refused so far to tell Luis what it was all about. It drove Luis out of his mind to watch Jase disappear into his home office off the living room in their New York home on 95th Street every night after dinner to work on the invention, especially when he knew nothing about what Jase was doing. It was all so top secret it made Luis clench his back teeth. Whenever Luis asked Jase about the new invention, Jase would kiss him and tell him he wasn't ready to talk about it yet.
At least Isabelle, bless her soul, had given Luis a short break. Jase, Hunter, and Luis had gone to Alaska for Halloween to spend a long weekend in their new dream home, and Isabelle had flown back to New York with them in early November. At first Luis had begged Isabelle to come out because he wanted to make sure she wasn't depressed about losing her son the previous summer. Jase's father, Barry Nicholas, had passed away so suddenly that summer he'd left them all in a state of shock. But when Isabelle finally arrived in New York and started devoting all her time to taking care of Hunter and the house while Luis and Jase went back to work, Luis realized they needed Isabelle around far more than she needed them.
Jase's mother, Mary Nicholas, wouldn't be arriving until Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving. She was flying in with Preston, Isabelle's new boyfriend, who was twenty years younger than Isabelle. When summer ended, Mary had plunged into taking over the family business in Alaska, which Luis knew was partly because there was no one else to take over now that Jase's father was gone, and partly because she was grieving so hard she needed the distraction of work to keep her from falling apart. Luis and Jase spoke with Mary at least three times a week on the phone. She always put up a good front and told them she was fine and that she was getting along okay on her own. But they'd hang up, exchange glances, and Jase would say, “She's hurting so badly right now. I heard it in her voice.” The hardest part was no one could do anything to make it better for her. They were planning on spending Christmas and New Year's in Alaska. But right now they just wanted to get through Thanksgiving, the first holiday without Jase's father.
Luis knew Jase had been mourning the death of his father in his own way, too. It tugged at Luis's heart to see the man he loved grieve so deeply and with so much intensity. But Luis also knew how difficult it was because he'd lost close family members himself, and he left Jase alone so he could work it all out on his own. They'd all been grieving over Barry's death, including Hunter. Poor Hunter had covered the dresser top in his bedroom with photos of his grandfather lined up in neat rows, and the last thing he did before he went to bed every night was say goodnight to Barry up in heaven.
But Luis's work load was lightening up for a while, at least until after Christmas. He only had two modeling jobs in December, and both were for clothing companies located in New York and would only take two or three days to shoot. Luis needed the break. He needed time to focus on Hunter and Jase, and time to focus on his cookery classes with Hillary and his blog posts for Elena. Luis and Hillary were planning to begin writing a cookbook, but they'd been putting it off until Luis wasn't so busy.
When Luis entered Lapp's Market that Saturday morning, he pulled his small shopping list out of his pocket and grabbed a small cart near the entrance. When he stepped inside and his shoes touched the wide barn planks and he gazed down at the large wooden display crate filled with Cinderella pumpkins, he took a deep breath and sighed. He'd already filled the walkways, the kitchen, and entrances at Cider Mill Farm with bright orange pumpkins and colorful mums that he'd been collecting at farm stands between Pennsylvania and New York since early October. He'd arranged corn stalks and bales of hay from the back door to the barn. He'd even put up a scarecrow with Hunter near the pool. He didn't need one more thing as far as fall decorations went. But Luis couldn't resist a Cinderella pumpkin when he saw one, especially not the ones in the pale peachy beige with light green stripes.