Total pages in book: 63
Estimated words: 59236 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 296(@200wpm)___ 237(@250wpm)___ 197(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59236 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 296(@200wpm)___ 237(@250wpm)___ 197(@300wpm)
She seemed to have it all well in hand. A tall guy in an expensive suit introduced himself as Blake and asked her out. She’d had that under control. She had shaken her head kindly and said, no thank you. Then without giving excuses, she moved on, unruffled, and said good morning to the next customer in line. When there was a lull in the crowd, she returned to me.
“I’m Madison,” she said.
“Ethan,” I offered my hand.
“I thought you’d be different,” I told her.
“Younger? Less competent? Like someone who tries to extort discount electricity repairs from unsuspecting men?” She smirked at me.
“I had a stupid idea that you’d be a femme fatale out of an old movie.”
She laughed until she snorted just a bit.
“I’ve definitely never been accused of that before,” she stated, clearly amused.
“I thought Leo said your oven was shot?” I asked, gesturing to the baked good in the display case.
“It is. I stayed up all night baking this stuff at home. I don’t even want to know what my gas bill is going to look like next month. But I’m not going to close my business down. I’ve worked too hard, and my customers depend on me.”
It wasn’t difficult to understand what my brothers had seen in her. She seemed to have a kind of confidence that allowed her to do anything she wanted, no matter what stood in her way. I liked her and wouldn’t object to seeing her again. It wasn’t even a stretch to imagine her turning up at holiday dinners with one of my brothers, all of us falling into easy conversation over a bottle of wine. Maybe I couldn’t quite see her kicking back in the leather and mahogany cigar lounge with the Foster men, but that was a decidedly male domain.
If anything, it was unnerving how well I thought she’d fit in with the three of us, not at all a gentling feminine influence but an opinionated, feisty force of nature.
“Do you want to borrow my insulated cup?”
“What for?” I asked, bewildered.
“Well, you’re lingering here when you don’t strike me as someone who wastes time. There must be a point to your presence here besides the pleasure of my company. My theory, and stop me if I’m wrong here—” she gave a mischievous lift of her eyebrow. “Is you’re going to indulge your protective instincts by lifting my fingerprints for a thorough background check That’s why I offered my cup. It has my fingerprints on it, and I’ve used the straw so there’s a chance you could get DNA off that, too.”
“Do you watch a lot of crime shows?” I smirked.
“Define a lot,” she countered.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” I concluded.
Smiling on the way to my meeting, I was starting to understand what my brothers had found so captivating about Madison.
5
MADISON
When times were rough, I wanted so much to call Addi. We had been best friends for so long, and I’d come to rely on her the way you rely on family. We’d been as close as sisters. It was a loss that kept hurting. Anytime something happened in my life—the success of a new muffin recipe or a favorable review from a food blogger—she was the person I wanted to tell, even though she’d betrayed me. Maybe it was loneliness, the lack of any family or other close friends. Working to save the money, building the business had been so time consuming, so absorbing, that I hadn’t had the energy or opportunity to try to meet new people. I liked my customers, but I didn’t have much more than speaking acquaintances.
None of my employees had fit in and developed the kind of rapport I’d enjoyed with Addi, the inside jokes and shared hardships and mishaps and victories. I wanted someone to commiserate, to tell me that, hell no it wasn’t fair that I had to figure out how to budget for a replacement oven or try to get my landlord to do the right thing and make the necessary electrical repairs. There weren’t a lot of options. I didn’t have anything to fall back on if I had to close the place, even for a week if my landlord decided to be a decent person. I certainly didn’t have the money to hire a lawyer if he didn’t.
I sifted through my closet listlessly, looking for anything worth selling on eBay. The only things I owned that were worth money were commercial kitchen supplies and a pair of birthstone earrings I got for my fifteenth birthday that may have cost fifty dollars when they were new. I looked on Etsy to see if I could tie dye aprons or something, a tie-in with my business, to make a few bucks on merch. It did not look like the demand for aprons branded with obscure neighborhood shop names was booming, whether they were colorful or not.