Cole closed the gap between them and towered over her. “I can win any way we play it. I’m just making something clear.” He straightened. Turned on his friends. “You’re either with me or against me.”
He strode to the range door and shut it hard behind him.
“Well, hell,” Jamie said. “Don’t that take the cake.”
Sunshine resumed her walk toward the counter, fury building within her at every step. He was going to do everything he could to undercut her, wasn’t he? Whether or not it was fair. She’d have to think of a few tricks of her own.
Her hands were shaking as she prepared the meals, but more deep breaths helped keep her panic at bay. Most of the preparation was simple—the chili was bubbling on the stove already, and she’d done as much prep work on all her offerings as she possibly could. Less than fifteen minutes later, she was able to serve all the meals.
“It looks great,” Cab said loudly.
“Yum.” Ethan surveyed his pizza with interest, although when he spied a piece of artichoke heart he squinted at it as if unsure what it was.
As usual, Kerri was the most enthusiastic. “I know I’m going to love it.”
Sunshine resisted the urge to hover while everyone took their first bites, but she didn’t go far either, making the rounds of the room and straightening up tables and chairs that were already straight. If she wasn’t careful, Cole was going to ruin her business before it had a chance to flourish. The men might eat here today, but after what he’d done, they’d be afraid to come back. She had to convince them Cole couldn’t hurt them.
Then it hit her—she’d fight fire with fire. Slipping back behind the counter, she pulled out a pack of printer paper which she’d been using to make lists and jot down recipe ideas since the day she moved in. She pulled out a roll of tape, too, and began to tape sheets of paper together end to end. When she’d created a banner large enough to satisfy her, she used a black marker to write, “Sunshine’s Scones and Six Packs!” Underneath that headline, she made a chart similar to the one Cole had made on his whiteboards. Instead of shooting categories, however, she made her own ten events. She labeled one Compliments. She labeled another one Adventurousness. She labeled a third Vegetables and a fourth Clean Your Plate. When she was done, she carried the whole awkward quilt of paper squares over to her own side wall and tacked it up under the high windows.
“What’s that?” Jamie called out.
“It’s my own contest. You can get points, just like in Cole’s.” She demonstrated, pointing out the categories. “If you say something nice about your meal, you get a point.” She used the marker to jot down each of their names and gave them each a point. “Every time you try a new entrée you get a point.” She gave them each another point. “Every time you try a new vegetable side dish you get a point.” Cab got a point, which made the sheriff grin. “Every time you clean your plate you get a point. The winner with the most points at the end of the contest gets a six pack every week for a year.” She shoved the cap on the pen in triumph.
“Beer? For real? I thought you were vegan.” Rob leaned forward.
“Beer is vegan.”
“Hot damn,” Jamie said. “This vegan stuff ain’t so bad.”
Chapter Eleven
Cole took a steadying breath and let it out slowly while firing the Glock 30 at a target his previous rounds had already torn practically to shreds. Ammunition was expensive, and he was going through it like a house on fire, but when he’d seen his friends in Sunshine’s café, something had gone off inside him until he lost his cool. Didn’t they know what they were doing to him? Did they want him to lose?
He stopped firing when he ran out of rounds and automatically went through the precautions that had been drilled into him since childhood. Put on the safety, check the action, place the pistol on the counter before turning around. He was the only one in the range, though. Everyone else was helping Sunshine steal his future right out from under him.
If they didn’t come to shoot afterward it would be his own damn fault, too. Yelling at her like that—and at them, too.
For the first time he considered what he’d do if he lost the range. He couldn’t open a new one and what else was he good for except running a business? He thought of the tenants in the apartment buildings. What would they do? Would they find homes elsewhere or would it be the final blow to some of them that left them truly homeless?
Thirty minutes later, he couldn’t stand anymore to be alone with his thoughts. He opened the door to the front room and found his friends still lolling in the chairs around Sunshine’s mismatched tables. Several of them seemed to be on their second meals.
“Cole—you gotta try this pizza!” Ethan said.
“Pizza with fake cheese? I don’t think so.”
Ethan pulled the slice he was about to bite into away from his mouth. “Fake cheese?” He looked to Sunshine for confirmation.
“It’s not fake—it’s just not made from cow’s milk.”
“Sounds pretty fake to me.” Cole came out from behind his counter and approached the table. “How much other fake food have you served my friends?”
“None of it is fake.” Sunshine came out from behind her counter too. “It’s alternative.”
“An alternative to eating real food.” He spotted Jamie’s plate. “What the hell is that?”
“Zucchini. It’s a vegetable.”
“I know it’s a vegetable.” Was he even having this conversation? The closest thing to a vegetable he could ever remember seeing Jamie eat was the French fries at the Burger Shack.
“I’ve got artichokes on my pizza.” Ethan held one out.
“My cauliflower ain’t half bad, either. Sunshine did something lemony to it.”
She’d gotten the sheriff to eat a vegetable? Cole’s anger was building again. He knew why all his friends were following her lead like puppies; that slinky outfit she was prancing around in had mesmerized them. Every curve of hers was on display and all that long, blond hair. It was enough to drive a man wild.
His gaze landed on a makeshift banner she’d hung on the wall. “What’s that?”
“It’s my Scones and Six Packs contest.”
His fingers bunched into fists. No way. She wouldn’t.
“It’s awesome. All you have to do is eat things to rack up points,” Rob said, polishing off the last of what looked to be some kind of rice dish.
“Let me guess; the grand prize is a six pack every week of the year.”
“You got it,” Sunshine said sweetly.
“You can’t do that.”
“Why not? It’s a free country.”
“It’s not a free rifle range!”
“The rifle range starts over there.” Sunshine pointed to his makeshift counter and the door behind it. “Over here it’s my café and my café is definitely free.”
“Oh yeah?” He’d taken just about all he could handle. First she’d hijacked his business, then she hijacked his friends and now she wanted to hijack his contest? He strode to the counter, grabbed a muffin from a pile she must have just lifted from a baking tin and hurled it across the room.
Cab had pushed his chair back when Cole started shouting, and he stood up just in time for the muffin to peg him in the forehead. He didn’t flinch. He brushed the crumbs from his shirt, peered down at its remains on the floor and carefully stepped past them.
“We got a problem here?”
“Yeah, we’ve got a problem.” Anger overcame Cole’s common sense. Two steps brought him to Sunshine’s banner. He jabbed a finger at it. “Why the hell do I see your name listed here, Cab? What did I tell you about eating in her restaurant?”
Cab crossed his arms. “You’re telling me where I can and can’t eat?”
“Better stay in my café, Cab,” Sunshine said. “Cole’s running a dictatorship over there.” She waved a hand toward the other side of the room.
“I’m not running a dictatorship. I’m running a business,” Cole exploded. “A business tha
t’s going to go out of business if you keep this up.” He jabbed the banner again. “But maybe you all don’t care. Maybe you’ve got another indoor range to shoot at. Maybe an indoor range is a stupid, God-damned waste of time!”
He had never been one for dramatic exits before, but he crossed the room before anyone could answer him and slammed the front door shut behind him.
There was no sense staying at a business that had no customers. No sense watching Sunshine make a mockery of everything he’d built. He’d go home where he could be by himself.
But when he entered the apartment there were signs of Sunshine everywhere. He sagged against the door and gave in to the awareness that had been growing ever since she arrived.
He wasn’t going to win.
“Well, heck,” Ethan said. “Didn’t mean to make Cole so mad.”
“He backed himself into that corner,” Rob said.
“But it’s true, ain’t it?” Jamie said. “If Sunshine wins, Cole loses.”
“And if Cole wins, Sunshine loses,” Ethan pointed out. “No offense, Sunshine, but your Aunt Cecily had a mean streak, didn’t she?”
Sunshine sighed as she got the broom and began to sweep up the muffin bits. “You know, I haven’t been able to figure that out. She was always so nice to me. Sounds like she was nice to Cole, too. I think she made too many promises to both of us, and didn’t know what to do in the end.”
“Maybe she expected you to figure out how to do things fairly between yourselves,” Cab said, sitting back down again.
“How? I’d buy Cole’s half of the business if I could, but I don’t have any money for that.”
“I don’t know where else Cole would put an indoor range, anyhow,” Jamie said. “It takes a pretty special building.”
“It would be easier to move the café,” Ethan said.
Sunshine blinked. She shouldn’t expect Cole’s friends to take her side, but somehow she hadn’t expected them to give her the boot, either.
“No one’s saying you have to move,” Cab told her. “Just that it might be easier.”
“Cole doesn’t have the money to buy me out, though,” she said. “Doesn’t matter,” she added bitterly, her former excitement and happiness about opening day suddenly disappearing like a puff of smoke in the wind. “Look around you. You’re my only customers. I’m going to lose anyhow.”
“You won’t lose,” Kerri said loyally. “You need more advertising, though. No one knows you’re here. Let me whip up a brochure for you this afternoon and you can start delivering them to people tonight. Laundromats, gas stations, places like that.”
“You’d do that for me?”
“Of course I would. But the guys are right; maybe you and Cole need to think of another way to sort this out.”
“Time for me to get back to work,” Cab said. “Hang in there, Sunshine.”
Chapter Twelve
Cole was seated at the dining room table, beer in hand, when the door opened much later that night and Sunshine let herself in. She came to a halt when she spotted him there.
“Go ahead and yell,” she said tiredly. “But there’s not much to be angry about. I only had two more customers after your friends went home.”
An unexpected jolt of pity shot through him. He’d been angry for the first few hours, but he’d had plenty of time to simmer down over the course of the afternoon and evening. Was he really angry at Sunshine? Or was he angry at himself for not having saved anything for a rainy day and not having much in the way of future prospects, either? Angry because he hadn’t paid enough attention in the early days and stopped his father from sucking every last dime out of the business? Angry because far too many people depended on him to make this work?
“Business can be slow.”
She nodded, walked by him into the kitchen where he heard the sink running and returned with a glass of water. She set it on the table by him and went to fetch her laptop.
“Checking your e-mail?”
“Coming up with a new plan,” she said. “I was so worried about having the menu and tables and chairs ready, I didn’t plan a marketing campaign. It’s time for me to start.”
“What do you have in mind?” Cole was proficient with a computer, but he wasn’t exactly adventurous with it.
“I’ll start with social media. I’ll post fun images of my food, my daily specials, coupons, things like that. Maybe I’ll put my Scones and Six Packs contest online, too.” She shot him a look as she sat down.
“Great.”
“I can’t find the rifle range online,” she said a moment later.
“I’ve never gotten around to it.”
“You should at least have a website with your hours on it—things like that.”
“Never learned how.”
“Huh.” She bent over her computer, typed furiously for a bit, then bit her lip and frowned, as if hunting for something. Whatever it was, she found it and got busy again. Just when Cole thought she was letting him know she was done talking for the night, she turned the laptop around. “There. What do you think?”
Surprise washed over him at the sight of the website she’d just whipped up. It was plain—just the name of his business with an image of a rifle range that kind of resembled his. It listed his business hours—Sunshine must have memorized them—and some of the services he offered. He squinted. “And an on-site café?”
“An on-site café is a terrific sales point.” She grinned at him.
“An on-site vegan café isn’t quite as much.” But when her grin faded away he felt a pang of regret. “Seems like the guys liked your food,” he added.
“I think they thought it was all right,” she said thoughtfully. “But they would prefer burgers and steaks.”
“They would.”
Her shoulders slumped. “I need to get the word out to the vegan crowd that I’m here.”
“Or you need to change your menu.”
“That’s like me saying you should offer dance classes in the range.”
He thought about that. “Okay, scratch that. You need to make your vegan food more manly.”
“Manly vegan food.” She tapped her finger on the table. “That’s a great name for a cookbook. Speaking of which, have you ever considered making videos?”
“I’m not sure I follow that transition.” Sunshine was awfully cute working away at her computer. Alone with her he was all too aware of her curves. If only they weren’t mortal enemies, she’d make a terrific girlfriend. He stood up and moved to her side of the table. Sat down in the chair beside her.
“Well, you know a lot about guns, right?” she said.
“Firearms? Sure I do.”
“What if you made videos about various things and established yourself as kind of an expert?”
“I don’t know about being an expert.”
She fixed him with a look. “Here’s the big secret, Cole. No one is really an expert. You just decide to be one and hustle until you can convince everyone else. If you posted a video each week and used social media consistently, you might just build up a following. People would know about you and your range. They’d drive farther to come see it and shoot here.” She smiled saucily. “And I’d get more customers for my café.”
“I see. It’s all a dirty trick to steal my building.” He elbowed her playfully.
“It’s my building.” She elbowed him back.
He leaned against her elbow, impervious to her pokes, and stole a kiss.
“Hey!” She pulled back and Cole cursed. Sunshine lifted her hand to her mouth. “What was that for?”
“For being so damn sexy all the time.”
Her eyes went wide. “I’m not a bit sexy!” He raised his eyebrows and to his amusement, she actually blushed. “I don’t try to be.”
“Some women don’t have to try. They just are. You’re one of them.”
His praise seemed to fluster her all the more. Cole figured he’d just found Sunshine’s Achilles heel. “That body of yours
just keeps on going, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
Cole wasn’t sure he did, either, but it sounded dirty and she was practically climbing out of her seat with embarrassment. “If you took off your clothes, you’d stop traffic.”
She rolled her eyes. “Anyone nude stops traffic.”
“But you nude would be heaven on earth.” He stumbled to a stop, heat warming his own cheeks. He’d given himself away there, hadn’t he?
Sunshine straightened. “You’re trying to get me into bed.”
“No, I’m not.” He moved back.
“Yes, you are. You think if I sleep with you I’ll stop competing with you. You think you’re so hot that I’ll let you win.”
“Well, am I? Hot enough that making love to me would turn your head every which way around?” He bent forward again.
“You’re not even remotely hot,” she scoffed.
Ouch. But wait a minute, Sunshine didn’t seem to be able to meet his eyes. Maybe he was remotely hot, after all. He reached back and pulled his T-shirt over his head.
“What are you doing?”
“Giving you a better look.” He stood up. Flexed his bicep and stuck it close to her. Sunshine cringed back. “Feel that.”
“I’m not feeling that.”
“Scaredy-cat. You’re afraid that if you touch my muscles you’ll get so turned on you’ll jump me.”
“Fat chance.”
“Prove it.”
Sunshine was getting angry. She tapped a finger on his bicep. “There? Satisfied?”
“Not hardly.” Cole didn’t know what had taken possession of him, but he’d tried everything else and all it got him was failure. He was determined to succeed at this. He lifted Sunshine bodily out of her seat. “Pretty strong, huh?”
“Put me down.” He set her on her feet and she glared at him. “You’re acting like a caveman.”
“You’re acting like a coward.”
“How can you say that?”
“Because you won’t touch me, that’s how.” He made the muscle again. “Go on.”
With a theatrical sigh, Sunshine lay her hand on his bicep. A wicked smile curved her lips suddenly as she began to pet it. Then she bent close and before he could pull away, she rubbed her cheek against his bicep like a cat.
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