Chapter 18

18

Grady

It's a hell of a lot easier to sweet talk a pastry than it is to figure out if I'm texting Annika the right messages, especially since she's only replied once.

The smart thing to do is to take a win as a win and get my ass back to Shipwreck. I have a business that I need to get back to.

Instead, I'm sitting in my car outside Duh-Nuts, watching my phone to see if she's going to reply again to my egotistical suggestion that I make better coffee than the Army.

I don't doubt it's true, but I also don't know if she'll see it as a fun comment, or if she'll think I'm insulting the coffee she makes at Duh-Nuts.

Want to know the last time I overanalyzed my conversations with a woman?

Ten years ago.

When I asked her to give me a chance and she shut me down cold.

I grew the fuck up the last ten years, yet here I am, twisted in pretzel knots over Annika.

Maybe I didn't grow up at all.

"This better not be just about you," I tell my cock, which has been asking to come out and play since the minute I realized that black spandex-clad ass tangled in the bushes belonged to the woman who's haunted my dreams for half my life.

My heart gives a jolt at the sight of her approaching the shop on her bike, but I quickly realize that's not Annika.

It's Bailey.

She has the same long dark hair and slender build, but she's thirteen, and the differences become glaringly obvious as she gets closer and her features come into sharper focus.

Specifically, the curl in her hair and the glare she's aiming at my truck.

She hops off the bike and walks it straight to the passenger window, which she raps on without hesitation. I roll down the still-wet glass and smile at her. "Hi."

"Don't hi me, dirty old man. What are you doing here?"

I glance at the bakery behind her.

It's cute in a run-down kind of way, the green and white striped awnings over the large glass front windows faded, just the same as the giant Duh-Nuts sign and its bubble letters over the door.

The windows are shiny and clean, the window boxes overflowing with small lavender flowers that probably have some kind of fancy name, and I can see the gold bells dangling on the metal handlebar inside the glass door.

The Closed sign is quaint and old-fashioned, complete with a clock indicating what time they'll open in the morning, but overall, it feels like it needs a fresh coat of paint and a logo redesign to really hit it out of the park.

"How's your mom?" I ask Bailey.

If what Annika and I escaped in the woods was a light summer sprinkle, there's a whole freaking sharknado-cane brewing in Bailey's face.

"That's none of your business."

Swear she adds shithead under her breath.

"You remember that time you tipped Annika out of a canoe out on the lake?" I ask her.

She stiffens, which tells me she probably at least hears the story often enough to know what I'm talking about, even if she doesn't remember, because she couldn't have been more than three when it happened. "I remember that time you changed all the rules on her and chased her away to the Army."

I grin. Not because it's funny—the idea that if I'd been enough, Annika wouldn't have left, has crossed my mind more than occasionally in the last decade—but because she reminds me of Tillie Jean.

"She couldn't bake back then," I say.

"Or maybe your taste buds were underdeveloped."

"You going into high school this fall?"

"Why? Trying to protect your ego by telling yourself you're losing an argument to a high-schooler instead of just some thirteen-year-old punk?"

She might not be wrong about the part where I'm losing this argument. "I was at your second birthday party. Brought you this blow-up bouncy horse thing. Last I knew, you still slept with it."

"Oh, now you're talking about an underage girl sleeping?"

"Trying to be a friend here."

"By scoping out the competition? I might be young, but I'm not stupid. You don't want to help. You want to not get beat."

"What's going on over here?"

The plumber guy ambles up the street toward us, brows lowered dangerously.

"This Shipwreck shithead is spying on us," Bailey tells him.

"That true?" He peers into my truck too and frowns at me.

I think.

His eyes are definitely frowning.

His mouth is swallowed by the giant Scottie dog on his face.

I mean his beard.

Promise.

"Yep," I concede. "You caught me. I'm a shithead. Spying on the closed bakery. Thought maybe I'd see whatever ingredients you're using in tomorrow's bakery wars."

Dammit . I need to talk to Annika. Because I'm getting an idea that could help both of us, but I can't do it without her.

Not if I want her to have any shred of respect left for me, and I'm pretty sure right now, she doesn't quite have enough respect for me to fill up a balloon, let alone a life raft.

And while it'll definitely benefit me, I'm hoping it'll benefit her more.

"Does your mama know exactly what you're up to?" the plumber demands, hands fisting the window ledge of my truck like he could crush it, which he might actually be able to do.

He's probably fifty-five, maybe sixty, but right now, I don't want to test if his stomach is thick with the remnants of thirty years of eating cake, or if it's pure muscle.

Possibly both, I decide.

"She's trying to get me help," I assure him. "Nice chatting."

I lift a hand, glance at my phone one last time, hoping for a message from Annika, but no luck.

"Don't come back," the plumber says.

"Oh, right. The whole this is my territory thing," I agree solemnly. "Since you all in Sarcasm honor it so well too."

Bailey's eyes bug out, like I'm not allowed to use sarcasm while in Sarcasm. "Don't be a smart-ass."

" Arr ," I say, like the long line of non-pirate pirates that I come from.

I wink.

She glares.

The plumber guy goes for his phone.

And I drop my truck into gear. "Okay, okay. I'm going."

"Leave my sister alone," Bailey says.

I probably should.

But I don't know who's helping her through all of this.

And if I want to be the kind of friend she deserves, then I need to fully extract my head from my ass and be the kind of friend she fucking deserves.