The Sweetest Things: A Quirky Small Town Romance (Starlight Harbor Book 1)

by Bria Quinlan

  She’d said her piece.

  And, honestly, even if it cost her a little trouble in the short run, she was glad she’d done it. It was over, and—

  “What is going on with you?”

  Her mother burst into her bakery, her standard brightly dyed linen scarves over her equally bright flowing sundress, a rush of color and energy.

  “What do you mean?”

  “My Google alerts are going crazy. I thought it was your brother at first. Sometimes I think I need to stop following him. Really, there’s only so much a mother should know about her son’s sex life—even as free-spirited as I believe my liberal soul to be—“

  “Mom.” Lyra glanced toward the sky, wondering if help was coming. “What’s with the Google alerts emergency? Is something going on with Rion?”

  “At first I thought you got another write-up about the wonderful cake you did for the Taste of Maine event, but then it was just…oh, honey.”

  Her mother was giving her the someone died look. Which she never actually used when someone died, so Lyra wasn’t overly worried.

  Her mother enjoyed drama. Or, as she’d put it, the excitement of a shifting chi fed her soul.

  So yeah…worry, schmorry.

  “Your Yelp page rating is down to a 1.4.”

  Lyra shook her head. “That can’t be right. It was nearly a five-star rating with over sixty reviews last time I looked. That was like three weeks ago when I checked the summer hours were correct.”

  “Well, honey. You must have ticked off a New Kid on the Block or something.”

  “Mom, they’re…okay, never mind. I get your point. But, really. It must be a glitch. It happens. There’s no way it could have dropped like that. It would take—”

  Lyra froze midsentence, the horrible comments from that horrible site flashing through her mind again. Turning away from her mom without a word, she hurried back to her tablet, already knowing what she’d find. And yes, her mom and Google alerts were right. Her Yelp page had been attacked.

  It wouldn’t be such a bad thing—well, it would be, but not horrible—if the town and the state travel sites didn’t use the Yelp ratings and top reviews as their listings.

  Anyone who visited Starlight Harbor while it was being attacked would get the Yelp rating…on Yelp, the town, the state, and the top travel site.

  Basically, it was like the atomic bomb of review attacks.

  She put in a report for abuse and stared at the screen, watching the 1.4 drop to a 1.3 as she did.

  Opening up the Evil Article again, she typed in a demand—no! A challenge.

  Hey, Mob Boss,

  Call me.

  Starlight Cupcake

  .

  4

  Mob boss?

  Spence was pretty sure that whatever was happening on his website was not the full extent of what ticked off the cupcake grandmother.

  He should have just closed this down instead of reading all the comments live. Grandma Cupcake got doxxed, and who knows what else people were doing—obviously creating false orders, which, he was sure, his people thought was just a prank.

  But, she had a point. What if she bought all that food, hired help, and created huge orders for these catered affairs people were claiming they had?

  He wasn't sure what he’d find if he kept digging, but the words mob boss didn’t make him confident that was all of it.

  If it got out that his site went after some innocent old grandmother who sold cupcakes in some tiny little backwater Maine town, he’d be destroyed. He'd never get out of debt, let alone sell his site for enough that he could focus on a real career as a travel reporter.

  The only offerings he’d get were from people with no scruples looking to create post-Reddit world sites where doxxing was standard and click bait ad-heavy slideshow reads were the norm.

  While he wasn't exactly a crusader himself, he'd hate that something he created became a weapon to hurt people.

  Pulling up her company’s website, he was relieved to see that at least she hadn't been hacked. He put a Google alert on her company name. If anything went awry, he’d know as soon as Google knew. He couldn't keep checking… Next up was her Yelp page, but that should be—

  Holy crap.

  He'd seen all the reviews along the side of her website and they were amazing. He doubted that she’d been able to get any of those if she really was a 0.7 rating on Yelp.

  No wonder she threatened to find a lawyer.

  Okay, so a town lawyer. What the heck was a town lawyer?

  No matter how backwoods this lawyer was, he couldn't afford any fight—even if it was some My Cousin Vinny Northern New England type thing.

  At least he had a contact at Yelp. It was going to just about kill him to admit this was his readership’s doing, but he had to get in front of this mess as soon as possible. He’d just sent financials to both the companies who had expressed interest in buying him out, and he had a feeling that a phone call was not going to fix it.

  There was only one option.

  Spence glanced at the clock and pulled up his phone’s GPS.

  It was going to be a long night.

  5

  Lyra turned off her phone and website. That seemed to be the only way she was going to manage taking care of her regulars and getting ready for the next Holidayer weekend.

  Of course, she’d swung back to her WWVD focus when she’d seen her Yelp page. If that guy—Spence Côte—wanted to declare war?

  All right, then, she’d declare war.

  She had already put a phone call in to the person who could most help her fix this before she’d opened that morning.

  Not to be a cliché or anything, but her big brother could fix anything. And if he couldn’t, her sister knew people.

  Okay, okay. Her sister denied constantly that she was CIA, but she sure did travel to places where she was “unavailable” a lot, so Lyra was going with spook.

  And, of course, neither of them were available. Rion’s manager said he’d get back to her. Her sister’s number just went straight to voicemail.

  That wasn’t suspicious.

  She was thinking about locking up since the post-camp kid stream had finished, when the bell over the door rang and Vivian strode in with their friend Skye, the deputy sheriff.

  “Your mother came by.” Skye grinned.

  Right. Her mom.

  “Whose rear needs to meet my boot?” Skye went on in her typical no-nonsense cop voice.

  “I’m so sorry. My mom seems to think you can do anything.”

  “Please. It’s totally okay.” Skye snorted. ”I mean, I can do anything as far as your mom is concerned. But, no. I can’t drive to whatever basement this guy is working out of and—and I quote—drag him by the ear back here to jail and keep him there until he apologizes like a gentleman and whole spirit would. She also said he must be a Leo or a Sagittarius.”

  “Of course.” Lyra snorted as she headed toward the door and threw the lock, flipping the open sign to closed in one practiced move.

  Skye dropped down at their table and pulled out a piece of paper with a bunch of notes on it.

  “I can’t arrest anyone. But I did get his IP address location from the domain his site is listed under. Also, I put in a call to a friend who knows everyone.”

  “Awwww…” Vivian gave her an overly-awed look. ”You mean, you called Dev down in Boston and asked him what all that meant and he just did it?”

  “Hey, I got it done, right? Now we know that Spence Côte lives in New York—Upstate, not city—and we can check out the harassment laws specifically for there and here.”

  Vivian gave her an agreeable nod.

  “Guys. I may have posted again telling him to call me. There may have been name-calling involved.” Lyra was a little worried she’d overstepped the line there.

  Vi looked fascinated by this idea. She all but rubbed her hands together. “What did you call him?”

  “Well, I started with jackass…”


  “No,” they both shouted at Lyra as Vivian crossed around the counter to take out a red velvet cupcake and a blonde brownie bar and poured three cups of tea as Lyra paced the shop from front to back. While her friend wasn’t looking, Vi slipped ten bucks in the tip jar, because, yes. Besties still paid for food.

  “I deleted it.” She looked a little disappointed in herself at that. “But! I did tell him he was a bully. And then after everything went nuts, I called him a mob boss.”

  Skye snorted tea out her nose.

  “Really? That was your go-to biggest insult?”

  “Well, he was getting his people to create all this havoc to try to bring me down. So, mob boss.” She bit into Vivian’s red velvet cake, enjoyed a second burst of sugar for the day, then handed it back. “And then the article disappeared.”

  “Wow, you must have really ticked him off to get him to lock down his site.” Skye made some notes in her little cop notebook.

  Vivian once accused her of doodling just to look important. Skye was so incensed she’d held the notebook up and flipped pages to prove there were no doodles. Of course, she did that from three feet away because of confidentiality issues. She wanted to make sure she did it by the book.

  Lyra wasn’t sure there was a code in “the book” about disproving doodle rumors, but okay.

  She was just glad they were getting along, doodles notwithstanding.

  Those two had had a rough start when Vi came back to town. Things smoothed out quickly when Skye saw that Vivian wasn’t going to be the troublemaker her reputation shouted she was. Vi was okay with Skye when she saw she wasn’t out to get her. Now the doodle comment would be a joke, not a dig.

  “Maybe.” Lyra glanced down at her tablet, wondering if the comments would ever come back up. “But he could have responded. I mean, I put my email there and my website in that little form.”

  They both stared at her for a long minute before Skye lowered her head to the table and slowly beat it against the wood.

  “I don’t suppose you put your home address, cell number, and social security digits, too?”

  “Of course not!”

  Skye got up and headed toward the door. “Be right back. Work stuff. Just have to check in.”

  She was already reaching for the walkie clipped to her shoulder as the door fell shut behind her.

  Vivian stared at Lyra with a serious look Lyra wasn’t sure what to do with.

  “I screwed up with the whole no-one-knows-you-on-the-internet thing, right?”

  Vi gave her head a slight nod, obviously biting her tongue.

  “But the boxes said they wouldn’t be shown to anyone. I thought that meant that no one would see them except that guy who—” Lyra stopped, a blush of red rushing up her cheeks, making her strawberry-blonde hair stand out even more. “You know when you’re so angry, like ticked-off angry, and you just don’t think straight and then you don’t even realize you weren’t thinking straight until much later when—as my mom would put it—the chickens are coming home to roost.”

  “Oh, honey.” Vivian reached out and took her hand across the table. “You just described like half of my life.”

  “No. You grew up fast, but look how good you’re doing.”

  “Lyra, you stood by me before. And you even kept in touch when I was gone. But…I was too ashamed to let you know every stupid thing I was doing. Trust me. Not thinking straight and putting your email address somewhere is small potatoes. You’re going to have to work harder to catch up with me in the screw-up hierarchy.”

  She gave Lyra’s hand a quick squeeze as the front door opened and Skye came back in and threw the lock again.

  “Sorry about that. Forgot to check in.”

  “Or you alerted all your little deputy people that I basically told my new arch enemy where I lived and to make sure that his minions didn’t just show up at my house and harass me?”

  “Yes.” Skye gave her a quick grin. ”Or that.”

  “What would I do without you guys?” Lyra reached out for both her friends’ hands and gave them a squeeze. ”This adulting thing is really hard.”

  Vivian snorted and pushed out of her chair. ”Try it with a kid.”

  “Come on. Let’s get some real food and maybe one of those adult beverages.” Skye tucked her chair in and waited for Lyra to grab her bag.

  “Finally! An adulting upside!”

  6

  This was not what he expected. Absolutely nothing like he could have even pictured.

  Where were the inflatable Santas and the piped-in Christmas carols? The fake snow and the tourist-herders dressed as elves? The streets had signs like Main and Water. The stores missed out, too. Not one The Book Elf or Jolly Baker puns.

  The only pun he could see was Ms. Cupcake’s shop—The Sweetest Things—and that was a normal bakery pun. No bad Christmas wording involved at all.

  Even the decorations were mild and tasteful.

  He looked closely as he drove through, spotting where things were tucked away and assuming they came out for events.

  So, it wasn’t Christmas every day?

  He was surprised how few pictures of the town were online. The town itself didn’t do much in terms of advertising its Christmas thing. How did anyone stay in business like this?

  Couldn’t these people see he was doing them a favor? All it got him was attacked on his own site.

  He shook his head, completely off mission after driving through the night to handle the cupcake lady himself.

  Slowing down, he let the traffic jam subside—a mama duck and her little squad of ducklings following along behind her.

  He was annoyed by how charming that was.

  He was not here to be charmed. He was here to make sure he wasn’t getting sued, fix any damage that had been done, and try to make peace with the outspoken baker.

  He didn’t even have any posts for today. He put up an old flashback favorite—a first time he’d ever done that except the time his brother had been in the hospital—and turned the comments off.

  Yeah. He did that.

  And so of course his Twitter feed had blown up with people commenting about the lack of comments.

  But, low priority.

  He turned on to the small square, the GPS telling him to follow around the far edge and that his destination would be on the right.

  Instead of parking immediately, he did a loop, drove down to the water then back up, and went over to the inn pictured on that town’s website and around. Basically got a vibe for what the town was like and…stalled.

  Yup. He was stalling.

  Maybe he should have brought the little baker flowers as a peace offering or something.

  Instead, he sucked it up and parked in front of the shop two doors down from The Sweetest Things.

  Putting the car into park, he noticed the third cop car he’d seen. Did they have high crime here or something? Or maybe a quick visit from a local celebrity. Kennebunkport, Castle Rock, Camden…all popular places for famous people with lots of money…or, you know, presidents.

  Hopping out of the third-hand Corolla, Spence swung his messenger bag over his shoulder and headed over. There was a small, tiny hope in his heart that this drive was a waste of time. That he’d be in and out with everything solved, and maybe a box of pastries for his mom.

  His gut was not as hopeful.

  Pushing into the bakery, he switched his sunglasses for his actual lenses. It was cooler than he expected with its east-facing picture windows and huge ovens. Comfortable. He was betting no matter what it was like outside, it was always comfortable in here.

  Grandmothers typically had that ability, though. Like a Nana Superpower or something.

  Little tables were scattered around the room, each with a couple of surprisingly cozy-looking chairs, as if the owner wasn’t going to rush you out the door just because you took your last bite of that delicious-looking cake in the pastry display.

  How many layers did that thing have? Eight? Nine
?

  He honed in on it, nearly dropping to his knees to get a look at its gooey perfection.

  “That’s a triple chocolate with raspberry layer cake.”

  “No.” Spence took his phone out and shot a couple pictures from a few different angles. ”It’s a work of art.”

  He was about to say he’d feature it in an article if it tasted as good as it looked, then remembered why he was there.

  Probably not the way to start this conversation.

  He straightened, rising past the cakes, then the cupcakes, then cookies, right up past the counter display to… the most beautiful thing in the shop.

  “Oh. Hi.” He glanced around, afraid he was about to make an ass of himself in front of the pale-haired angel.

  She was all of five-four, with tiny freckles dancing across her pale, pert nose and the fairest strawberry-blonde hair he’d ever seen. She wore a dress with straps showing off the baker’s strength of her arms and attractive swish to her skirt.

  “Hi.” She flashed him a smile. ”Can I help you?”

  “Oh. Yeah. Hey.” Spence glanced around, trying to figure out what to do next.

  It dawned on him that he had driven all this way with the most basic plan ever. Walk into the bakery, apologize, figure out how to fix things, mention the Yelp thing was being taken care of. Hope no lawyers were involved yet.

  Come face-to-face with an angel?

  Not on the list.

  This was not the small town, cozy grandmother he’d expected to find. Where was the owner while all this was going on?

  “So, is your…mom here?” he asked, figuring it was probably a family business.

  “My mom?” She looked at him like he might be a little nuts. ”No. No, she's not here. Why are you looking for her?”

  Wow. He hadn't expected to have to track the woman down. But, this was a small town. He’d find her pretty quickly. Or maybe she could just run over here and they could meet.

  “Well, yeah. I had to talk to her about some business. I just expected to find her here.”