19
Chloe
Holy shitake. I had no idea there were this many residents I didn’t already know in Maple Grove… let alone ones who were up late and looking for a sugary fix at eleven pm. “Another order of mac & cheese balls!” I called to Liam who was standing at the fryer, already putting together three orders.
“Roger that,” he called back with a heart-melting grin he threw at me from over his shoulder.
Shit. No. No melting of hearts. Not over Liam Evans. I needed to fix this with my sister and do it fast.
“Oops,” Liam said. “After that order, that’s an eighty-six on the mac & cheese balls.”
I paused, narrowing my gaze at Liam and I realized the only number codes I knew were 69 and 420. “And that means…”
His smirk lifted on one side causing a delicious dimple to divot on his cheek. “It means we’re sold out of the mac & cheese balls.”
My eyes widened, and if we hadn’t had a line around the block of people waiting to order, I swear I would have run to Liam and hugged him. “We’ve never sold out of anything before!”
He wiggled his brows before dunking the last of the mac & cheese into the fryer. “I know.”
“I guess we need to add more salty things to the menu,” I said as I leaned over the edge of the truck and taped a quickly scribbled sold out sign over the mac & cheese. I heard a few groans from the line as I hung the sign, and I called out, “Sorry, everyone! I promise we’ll have more tomorrow and they are worth the wait! In the meantime, just a reminder, everyone who purchases over $20 gets a voucher for a free beer or glass of wine at Nick’s Pizzeria.”
The next in line, two girls who looked college-aged, walked up and ordered two ice cream sandwiches and three donuts.
“You know,” I said, “if you make that an order of half a dozen donuts, you’ll qualify for that drink voucher at Nick’s.”
The blonde girl looked to her friend who gave a nod and they quickly handed over their credit cards.
“We’re still doing the drink vouchers for Nick after what he said about you?” Liam asked.
I shrugged, boxing up six of the daily donuts for the girls. “A wise man once told me we need to nurture our relationships with other Maple Grove businesses.”
“Yeah,” Liam grumbled. “But not the assholes.”
“We’ve all been an asshole at some point or another. I’m willing to forgive him—”
“Doesn’t he have to apologize to you in order for you to forgive him? Or did I miss him calling with an apology?”
“Not yet,” I sighed. “But he might when I go in there and pay for a couple hundred dollars’ worth of booze for other paying customers. No one goes to a bar for just one glass of wine. He’ll be groveling at my feet in no time… you’ll see.”
“We’ve done that much in sales tonight?” Liam whispered, leaving the fryer and looking over my shoulder.
“We’re closing in on $675 in sales—and we’re dangerously low on donuts and ice cream sandwiches.”
I wrapped up two ice cream sandwiches and handed them over the counter along with the donuts to the two smiling girls. The beautiful thing about The Dump Truck seemed to be that you didn’t need to be dumped and crying to enjoy late night sweets. Maple Grove had a serious lack of late night facilities—which was why Addy’s bar was so damn popular.
“Oh my God!” I said, spinning and facing Liam. “We should park outside of Addy’s bar tomorrow night!”
Liam blinked, stunned momentarily before dragging his hand through his hair. “Why didn’t I think of that?”
“Drunk people are: A) more likely to have a fight with their significant other and B) tend to get the late-night munchies.”
“We don’t have enough inventory for tonight,” Liam said, taking a look in the fridge. “But tomorrow, for sure.”
“And we should make double of everything.”
“If we’re going to be working late nights, I need to figure out a new schedule for Beefcakes. I can’t wake up to bake at three a.m. and then run the registers all morning while doing this late into the night.”
I gave him a sympathetic smile. “You and Neil are interviewing for new employees this week, right?”
He nodded. “Yeah. Finn’s agreed to help us out when he can, but he’s weirdly busy at odd hours. And Neil leaves for Budapest right after Mom’s surgery.”
Poor Liam. He had so much on his plate. So much to worry about. The least of which was this food truck. “It’s going to be okay,” I whispered.
Liam nodded but worried the inside of his cheek and turned back to lift the mac & cheese out of the fryers, putting them in a paper bowl and bagging them up. “What if tonight is just a fluke?”
“It’s not,” I whispered back. “I can feel it.”
“You’re so sure?”
As he handed me the packaged mac & cheese balls for the waiting customers, his fingers grazed mine. A jolt surged up my arms and my breasts tingled with awareness. Like a bear coming out of hibernation, my libido was ravenous and roaring to life. I turned so that Liam wouldn’t see my reaction and handed them over the side of the food truck to the awaiting customers before yelling out, “Next!”
I looked down, marking the drink voucher in my notebook so I could keep track of what I owed Nick tomorrow.
“Chloe.” I snapped my gaze up to find my sister looking up at me with red-rimmed eyes. In her hands, she twisted the strap of her purse between her fingers. “I’ve been so worried about you. Can we talk?”
“I don’t know… I’m working—”
I felt Liam’s hand on my back, nudging me toward the door. “Go,” he said gently. “I can handle the register for a while.”
Elaina and I walked in silence to a picnic table in the park and each sat down.
“I’m sorry,” Elaina said first, sniffing and dabbing her eyes with a tissue. “I’ve been such a mess since Neil and I broke up, and I’ve taken it out on you.”
I shook my head, reaching across the table to hold her hand. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think that going into business with Liam would hurt you so much. Maybe you’re right… maybe I can’t be alone. It’s like I jump from relationship to relationship. It’s my crutch. I need to learn to walk without it—”
“No,” Elaina said. “Don’t listen to me. Seriously, what do I know about any of this? I only had two boyfriends my whole life and both relationships ended disastrously.”
“I hope you’re not buying this house just to… I don’t know… get away from me and Liam—”
“No,” she said with such emphasis, I was truly surprised. I thought for sure she’d made a rash decision based on our fight. “Honestly, it’s time for me to have my own place. But I loved living with you again.”
“Me, too.” And I did. I was really going to miss having Elaina at home with me.
She dropped her voice to a whisper. “Chloe, I’m sorry, but I need to say this. You and Liam look really happy together. If you like him, you should go for it. He’s a good guy. A really good guy. I know you like him… and I think he likes you, too.”
I stole a glance at him, framed by the lit window of the food truck. Impressive triceps pushed hard against the seams of his shirt as though a simple flex might cause the stitching to give out entirely. I shook my head, looking back to Elaina. “I don’t know. We’re business partners now. It seems irresponsible to get involved with so much on the line.”
“Just think on it. I don’t want you to end up miserable and alone… like me.”
My heart squeezed at her admission. “If you’re so sad, why don’t you talk to Neil?”
“I’ve tried!” Elaina cried, a sob breaking through her usually steely exterior. She quickly covered her mouth with her hand, composing herself. Then calmer, she restated, “I’ve tried calling him. He won’t talk to me, okay?”
My face softened. “You didn’t tell me that.”
She shrugged, trying to downplay this, but I saw through her faça
de. “It’s embarrassing. He asked me to marry him. I said no to the proposal, but I didn’t want to break up over it. I just needed more time.” She dropped her face into her palms and I quickly kicked my leg around, shifting to the other side of the bench to hold my sister as she cried. Her head fell to my shoulder, tears soaking through my shirt. “I’m sorry.”
“You already said that.” I rubbed her back as she continued talking through the tears.
“I know. I’m not saying it’ll be easy to see you and Liam as a couple… but with enough time to adjust, Neil and I will learn to deal with it. We’ll have to.”
“Well, brace yourself,” I said. “The whole town is going to think Liam and I are an item after tonight.”
“Because of the news story?”
“That… and we ran into Dan today at Greico’s.”
Elaina’s wet eyes went wide. “Oh…”
“With her,” I added.
“Uh-oh. What’d you do?”
I winced. “Liam and I pretended to be a couple… to make him jealous.”
“Do you want him to be jealous?”
“No… yes. Kind of.” I dropped my face into my hands. “I don’t know, Elaina. Seeing him with her… I just… Am I going to be alone forever?”
I felt Elaina’s hand reach across and hold my arm. “You’re not alone. You have Mom, and Dad, and Tanja, and me—”
“Oh yeah?” I asked, dropping my hands to the counter. “Are you going to make me come four times in one night?”
Elaina scrunched her nose, looking momentarily stunned. “Jesus. Could Dan make you come four times?”
“No,” I admitted. Most nights, I was lucky to have one orgasm with Dan. “But it would be nice if someone could.”
“I bet I know someone who could,” Elaina whispered and glanced across the lawn where Liam was walking toward us. The line had dispersed and I noticed that he had put the closed sign up.
I shot to my feet, standing. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he shrugged. “We’re sold out.”
“Of…”
“Of everything.”
“Everything, everything?”
He nodded, his goofy grin growing. “We did it,” he said. “Or rather… you did it. You practically did everything for this Chloe. All I had to do was bake some stuff and help out behind the counter.”
“We did it,” I exhaled as a whole new set of tears flooded my eyes. Relief. I might actually be able to pay my mortgage this month if we can keep up at this rate.
“We did it,” Liam repeated and curved his arms around my waist, lifting me off the ground in a hug. He swung me around, those large hands of his encasing my body, causing a pool of heat to swirl in my belly.
Over his shoulder, I saw Elaina give me a knowing smile and a wink before standing and walking to her car.
If you like him, you should go for it. Elaina’s words rang in my ears as Liam’s scent filled my senses and his dizzying embrace encompassed me.
I did like Liam. I liked him so much that I couldn’t risk losing him.
20
Liam
From the corner of the room, the TV hummed with talk show chatter that I barely paid any mind to… until my own voice echoed through the bakery.
I groaned and an unwelcomed flush heated across my cheeks. “You’re not really going to watch this, are you?” I asked, glancing at Chloe, whose eyes were glued to the TV.
“You aren’t?”
We’d filmed the afternoon talk show a few days ago down in Boston…it was pretty popular in New England, hosted by three women who were local celebrities. “I’d rather perforate my ear drums,” I grumbled. It wasn’t that I didn’t want the food truck to succeed. Hell, I didn’t even mind doing the interviews. They were kind of fun. But as my laugh boomed through the speakers of the TV, I cringed. “I sound like an idiot.”
Chloe’s brows lifted and she regarded me carefully from where she sat beside me. “You sound adorable. And sexy. The public loves you.”
“Maybe.” Doubtful. “But if Neil and I don’t hire a manager soon, I’m going to go delirious with my lack of sleep.”
She stuck her tongue out at me. “You’re no fun.” Pouting, she grabbed the remote control beside us on the table and clicked the TV to mute, putting subtitles up instead.
It had been a little over a week since our change in schedule with the truck, and I was busier than I’d ever been in my life. Beefcakes was slammed, with lines around the block to place orders. We had expected business to die down after the excitement of the reality show wore off, but it seemed the opposite was happening. Chloe’s social media campaign for the bakery was working well. Maybe too well. We weren’t prepared to handle that amount of business. And it wasn’t just walk-in business; she’d set up online orders on our website for easily shipped baked goods. The good news was, she marked up the price for those, making the return on investment insanely high. The bad news was, it was more baking. More baking that I didn’t have the bandwidth for.
Add onto that, The Dump Truck was thriving, too. We were selling out of our baked goods every night, typically before midnight. Which afforded me at least three hours of sleep before I had to wake up and do it all again. I bought a cot and put it in our office in the back of the bakery and had taken to collapsing onto it as soon as I was done baking for the day, not even bothering to go home for my naps.
Yep. Business was great, but with only about four to five hours of sleep a day, Mom’s surgery that was scheduled for this week, and Neil leaving for Budapest the day after her surgery… I was running on fumes. I needed help. Badly.
Neil, Chloe, and I sat at the table in the bakery after closing. Finn cleaned up around us, taking on a larger role at the bakery as we needed the help. He was a freaking champion. He happily filled in with anything we needed as long as he didn’t have one of his mysterious “appointments” that he refused to divulge more detail about. Even still, whether he was sweeping the floor, baking, or handling the register, he did it all without complaint.
We had interviewed ten people and still had about ten more to go. Most were competent. But so far, only two were good.
I sighed and scrubbed my hands over my face. “I wish we could hire two people, not just one.” Ideally, we needed to hire not only a manager to help me run the business, but also an employee to take over some of Finn’s tasks.
Chloe gave me a compassionate glance and bit her lower lip. “Can you?”
Neil sighed, flipping through the resumes on the table. “Fiscally, it makes more sense to start with one employee. Someone who can bake and learn our recipes, but who can also be a manager of the bakery.”
“But…” Chloe looked between us, her brows creasing. “That’ll only be the equivalent of what you already have after Neil leaves town. You’re going to be just as sleep-deprived and stressed because the work won’t be split any differently—”
I put my hand on her knee and squeezed gently. Her gaze dropped to my hand and I felt her palm drape over my knuckles. Excitement skimmed over my skin at the contact of her fingers tracing circles over the back of my hand. She was worried about me… and that warmed my heart. “It’s only for a few weeks,” I said. “Then Neil will be back and we’ll have this extra manager.”
I caught my reflection in the mirror behind the register. Holy shit, maybe Chloe was right. I barely recognized myself at first glance with my paler than normal skin and the dark, bruised circles beneath my eyes. This week had been rougher than normal because I had taken the early morning shifts so that Neil could pack and get ready for his trip. But it was clear that I needed more than the short bursts of sleep I was getting. I cleared my throat. “We’re closing both the truck and the bakery for the two days after Mom’s surgery,” I said. “I’ll have a couple days to catch up on rest then.”
“You seriously think you’re going to rest well for two days while your mom is in recovery? But fine. Let’s say you have two nights of the best sleep of yo
ur life. Neil’s gone for weeks.” Chloe’s eyes were cold as ice as they traveled from me to Neil, then back again. “You’re killing yourself. You can’t survive on four hours of sleep a night.”
I shrugged. “Sometimes it’s five…” But I saw her point.
“Something needs to change, and you know it.” She blinked and her cobalt blue eyes locked onto mine. The chemistry between us had shifted in the last week in a way that I couldn’t quite define. Her eye contact lingered longer, her touch, softer, her voice, husky and needy.
And hell if I didn’t like it.
Chloe’s phone buzzed across the table, breaking the moment, and she jumped, tugging her hand away from mine. Standing, she tucked her Bluetooth headphones into her ears and headed for the front door. “I’ll take this outside,” she said.
“Our next interview isn’t for another thirty minutes,” I called after her, grateful for the break.
I stared after her as she gently closed the door. The sunshine reflected off her golden ringlets and she gathered her hair off the nape of her neck, securing it into a high ponytail. She paced on the sidewalk out front, moving with the lithe grace of a dancer.
Neil’s cough ripped me from my wandering thoughts. I startled, snapping my gaze toward my brother in a feeble attempt to cover the fact that I’d been gawking at Chloe through the window.
He leveled me with an amused smirk. “Dude,” was all he said.
“What?”
“Ask her out already,” Finn called from over by the register. “The whole town already thinks you’re a couple. You might as well receive the perks.”
I snorted, dropping my eyes to the stack of resumes in front of me and shook my head. “Shut up.”
“He’s right,” Neil said. “Save yourself time and just ask her out.”
Heat flamed in my cheeks. “Trust me guys, she doesn’t…” Doesn’t what? Want me? Well that wasn’t quite true either. She did want me. At least, I was pretty sure of it. But she made a promise to her sister. A promise that I would never ask her to break. I thought way too highly of her to come between her and Elaina. “She’s got too much on her plate right now. And for the record, so do I.”
Sugarlips (Beefcakes Book 2) Page 14