Chapter 14

14

Grady

I'm in the middle of making sugar cookies Tuesday morning when my phone blows up.

Sixty million people all at once need me to know that Cooper's in the gossip section.

Visiting Duh-Nuts.

I don't care that it's six AM. I pick up the phone and I call him.

"Don't go being an asshole," he says by way of greeting.

I squeeze my eyes shut and sigh. I have a mound of bad donut dough sitting on one corner of my worktable, because either I don't have enough love in my life to perfect crème br?lée macaron donuts, or it was a bad idea.

Just like practically everything else I've done in the last week has been a bad idea.

"How's Annika?" I ask Cooper.

"The better question is, who invited the paparazzi out to the boonies? There goes my privacy. Oh. Wait. You just pulled your head out of your ass. Huh. And there goes my speech. Want to hear it anyway?"

"No."

"Bro. You know I don't take bad pictures, but if I did, that one of me pointing to those galaxy donuts would be a bad picture. I made having one eyelid half-closed and my lips crooked look good , but you know if I'd done it on purpose to help the donuts, I would've been canoodling the pastries with my eyes."

"I said I didn't want to hear your speech," I tell him.

"I know, I know. What was I doing in Duh-Nuts anyway? Am I right? So here's the thing. I was gonna buy 'em out of banana pudding so Tillie Jean could analyze it and make sure hers was still better, no matter what that asshole from Sarcasm wrote in the Blue Lagoon County Gazette about the Duh-Nuts banana pudding taking Tillie Jean's ribbon at the fair this fall."

"Cooper. Shut up. How the fuck is Annika?"

"Your former best friend Annika who's dealing with a shit-ton of shit in her life right now?"

Fuck.

Fuck .

The back door bangs open, and I've never been so aggravated to see Georgia walking in phone-first. "Gotta go. Time to work. Text me, you pain in the ass."

I hang up, toss my phone back in my apron pocket, and spread my hands on the metal worktable, nodding to Georgia's phone screen. "Let me guess. They made pirate ship cupcakes."

It's what she's most likely to tell me, right?

Those Sarcasm assholes are at it again. Taunting us on social media .

Hell, I started it.

"You ever heard of Virginia Blue Magazine ?" Georgia asks.

"Yeah. My Nana gets that."

She smiles so big that my pirate hat sugar cookies get suspicious and shrink in fear. I silently promise the cookies I'll treat them right and smother them in vanilla icing in mere minutes, and they seem to breathe a sigh of relief.

"They're interested in lifestyle pieces about friendly rivalries," Georgia announces. "Like, oh, say, a rivalry between two bakeries in towns that have hated each other forever?"

Before I can point out that friendly is the opposite of hated each other forever , the back door bangs open again and Tillie Jean marches in. "Grady. Grady . Look what I found in Nana's Virginia Blue Magazine . Look ."

So this is what I've become.

The guy who would exploit an old friendship to get a little extra publicity for my bakery.

Which has been doing better and better every day since I upped my social media game to compete with Bailey.

It's the extra attention. The extra pressure.

Because of having a bakery war.

Of course people are coming in more.

They want to help me win.

That's what you do in Shipwreck.

Plus, I'm trying harder.

Because I can't handle the fact that the woman I've put on a pedestal for the last fourteen years is back, and she doesn't want me any more today than she did a decade ago.

Fuck .

Why would she?

I've been an ass and a half.

And my reward is my bottom line creeping further and further into the black while guilt keeps me from hitting the buy button on a four-pack of bubble waffle makers and a soft serve ice cream machine that would undoubtedly push me even further into the black, because it wasn't my idea.

"Do you two have anything better to do at this hour of the day than barge in here with more plans for bakery wars?"

They look at each other.

Then back to me.

"No," they say in unison.

I scrub a hand over my face and realize I haven't shaved in over a week. Then I wonder if I've showered.

"Aw, you're making my favorite pirate hat cookies. I love it." Tillie Jean hooks an arm around my neck and goes up on tiptoe to kiss my cheek, then wrinkles her nose. "Ugh, that smell. You been sleeping with Sue again? You know what they say about sleeping with goats."

I blink at her.

She grins. "It makes your package shrink."

I shake her off. "You got these?" I ask Georgia with a nod to the cookies.

She heads to the sink. "Hmm, decorate cookies by myself, or stand next to a stinky master baker who's been rolling in goat poop. What a hard decision. Where you going?"

I shake my head, because I don't know. I just know that somewhere in the last two weeks, I've quit smooth-talking my pastries, and I've quit baking for the love of it.

And I need to get that back.

I need to make a profit because I'm good , not because I'm being an ass.

"You're in charge today," I tell her. "Don't burn the place down."

Or do.

Fuck.

This morning, I don't care.