Nat bit her tongue until it hurt. She’d lost her temper with Dad, and look how that had turned out. She couldn’t afford to give the Queen General any more motivation to speed up her campaign to destroy Bliss Bridal. “And how long will it take?” Natalie asked.
“I’m afraid the power of that knowledge has not been vested in me.” Marilyn drummed a finger against her lips. “Although I may have heard speculation that it’s usually only a week.”
“Only?” Natalie squeaked.
“Once the weather clears,” the Queen General said. “I have work to do. I’m sure the mayor or the public works department will be able to answer your questions.”
Screw the mayor and the public works department. Natalie needed a place for her customers to park and a reason to lure them into the store.
The Queen General gave a regal nod toward the door. Natalie was dismissed.
Like hell. She sucked in a lungful of courage, but two things stopped her.
The first was the QG’s don’t do it glare, tossed over her shoulder with the practiced ease of a woman with a lifetime of experience in ruling the town her ancestors had founded.
The second, though, was inspiration.
The QG wanted to play dirty?
Nat could play dirty.
She spun on her heel and marched out the door—more confidently than petulantly, Nat liked to think—then got back in her car, drove to the parking lot across the street, and held her head high all the way back to Bliss Bridal, through the rain, across the shop floor, and back to the office.
The phone number was easy enough to find. And that drumming of her heart—that was satisfaction.
Satisfaction at not taking that woman’s shit anymore.
The phone rang once. Twice. Halfway through the third ring, a pleasant voice answered. “Deppert County Health Department, where may I direct your call?”
“I have a complaint about a food establishment,” Natalie said.
“One moment.”
Nat crossed her legs, her foot jiggling, listening to Michael Bolton on the hold music. Her pulse surged until her arms tingled. She could hang up.
Forget revenge.
Keep to the shadows, let the QG walk all over her.
There were two months to Knot Fest, and then she’d never have to see the QG again.
But being divorced didn’t make Natalie a thing. She was still a person. And Marilyn had pushed too far.
Michael Bolton went silent. “Deppert County Health Department. This is Susan. How may I help you?”
Natalie sat straighter. War, she reminded herself. This was war.
Still, she dropped her voice. And added a country twang to it. Because she never could shake the feeling that Marilyn had eyes and ears inside Bliss Bridal. “Hi, I was just in Heaven’s Bakery in Bliss, and I heard one of the girls ask the scary older lady if they should toss the frosting that was out overnight, and she told them no, that they should use it as samples today. Is that sanitary?”
The silence on the other end of the line was so loud, Natalie could hear her own pulse.
“Susan?” she said after a minute.
“Heaven’s Bakery?” Susan repeated.
“Yes, ma’am.”
So Natalie hadn’t technically heard that conversation. Today. Or exactly like that. But Kimmie had mentioned once over drinks at Suckers that Heaven’s Bakery didn’t always refrigerate their frosting—something about its safety because of the chemistry that was over Natalie’s head—and Kimmie had also let it slip that not refrigerating the frosting was against health department code.
“Heaven’s Bakery in Bliss?” Susan repeated again.
“Yes, ma’am.”
There was another long pause, and then Susan’s sigh echoed through the phone. “Your name?”
“I’d prefer to remain anonymous,” Natalie said.
“Yeah, me too,” Susan grumbled.
Natalie’s conscience gave a kick. She kicked it right back. There were always casualties in war. Marilyn didn’t hesitate. Natalie couldn’t either.
“Tell me again exactly what you heard,” Susan said.
Natalie repeated the story—it wasn’t exactly a lie. She answered a few more questions—maybe adding that she’d sampled the frosting before hearing the conversation and that her stomach hurt now, to completely sell the story—then hung up.
Take that, Queen General.
So Nat’s heart was still pounding, and her conscience still warbling out a feeble protest, but for the first time in weeks, she had something to smile about at work.
Smile?
Make that laugh.
Outright glee trickled out of her body. She tossed her short hair back and shoved up out of the desk chair, then turned to the door.
Her father stood there.
His lips were parted, his eyes pained, bewilderment making the wrinkles around his eyes stand out. “Dad,” she stammered.
He cut a pointed glance to the phone on the desk.
The tidal wave of shit, shit, shits rolling through her head were too many for her to count. A chill pebbled goose bumps down her arms.
His shoulders drooped. He blinked a couple times, shook his head.
As though he couldn’t believe how low Natalie had sunk.
“Guess you’re right after all,” he said sadly. “New owners are probably the best thing that could happen to the old shop.”
He turned and walked out the door, leaving her alone. Alone, and miserable with her utter incompetence.
Chapter Seven
CJ HAD WORKED a variety of bars—from a rooftop joint in Brazil to a polished study in an Irish castle hotel, to holes in the wall in a variety of holes—and Suckers sat in the middle of the spectrum. It smelled faintly like latex and stale beer, but the floors were clean and, despite the funky music and the pimpin’ purple, red, and silver décor, the clientele—heavy on the ladies tonight—was the dependable Midwestern stock that didn’t cause a lot of problems.
Felt good being back in his element. Slinging bottles, flipping tops, shooting the shit with the guys and charming the ladies. It had taken him less than ten minutes to convince Huck to hire him. He suspected not dropping Marilyn Elias’s name had helped seal the deal. After about five minutes into his first shift tonight, he rediscovered his groove. One step closer to feeling normal again.
With positive cash flow back in his bank account, he was also one step closer to his next adventure. He’d be able to afford a ticket to Utah long before Bob was done with treatments, which meant he could also save up enough to tackle some of the more advanced climbs. Have a good bit ready for whatever he decided to do next. Maybe he’d finally get around to the Great Barrier Reef late this year.
Until then, he was gainfully employed and happy about it.
Mostly.
Huck paused on his way past with a plate full of potato skins to nod toward the female-dominated crowd. “Ladies’ night helping you out with that little problem yet, boy?”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about.” CJ was already plotting revenge for whomever made his extended dry spell public knowledge. He would’ve preferred that it wasn’t mentioned at all.
“Not so fast,” His Holy Pompousness said from his seat at the end of the bar. “I put my money on next Monday.”
CJ passed Basil an iced tea. “Does God approve of your betting on my unwed sexual activities?”
“God knows you’ll fornicate anyway. The money goes to charity if I win. And I suppose I could look the other way if a few minutes of a woman’s company made you more bearable.” He took a sip of the tea, scowled, then pushed it back. “Put a hit of grenadine in that.”
Huck pointed at Basil. “You go on and tell that sister of yours I want in for tomorrow. Anything after midnight tonight counts.”
CJ took a moment to bask in the memory of a rogue chicken pooping on Cinna’s head when she was seven. If he started a bet about her sex life—he shuddered—he’d be labeled a perv. Sh
e opened a pool on CJ’s sex life and took a cut of the bets, and she was a brilliant businesswoman.
Jeremy shut the cash register in the corner. “Leave the man alone.” He jerked a thumb at the kitchen. “Order’s up.”
CJ delivered a basket of jalapeño poppers to a clique that looked like a sorority reunion at the top of the bar, took three orders from the waitresses, then collected credit cards from another group who were heading out. On his way back to the computer, he checked on the blonde two seats up from Basil. When she’d arrived, she slung a soft ivory overcoat onto the stool to her right and set her purse on the stool to her left. Waiting on friends, CJ had guessed. But it had been thirty minutes, and she wasn’t looking around for anyone.
Instead, she was pulling her locket along its thin gold chain, subtly shifting away every time someone approached her space bubble.
His sister Sage did that too. In Sage’s case, it was claustrophobia.
CJ nodded to her almost empty wineglass. “Refill?
“Not just yet.”
“Hungry?”
“Still deciding.”
“Holler if you want something.”
Her eyes flickered, openly studying him, and his gut clenched like it did when his sisters got the same look.
She wanted something. Whatever it was, he wouldn’t like it.
He retreated to the computer to run the cards, but watched while a clean-faced girl with a white glob stuck in her curly, dishwater hair popped in between the blonde and Basil. Blondie pulled her coat off the stool, and Curls slid onto it. There was something vaguely familiar about her. Blondie did another subtle shift, gave herself more personal space, but smiled comfortably at Curls. “Kimmie...?” Blondie fluffed her own straight, shoulder-length hair.
“Hey, Lindsey.” It took Kimmie another hint or two before her hand flew to her head. “Oh, pumplegunker.”
Eleven sisters, and he’d never heard that one before.
While he ran the third card, Kimmie worked at the goo. “We had to toss all our buttercream and start over after a surprise health department inspection yesterday,” she said. “Guess I got some on me. I knew that fortune cookie was trouble.”
CJ had too many sisters to touch that and too much wisdom to try to understand. Still, he stepped away from the computer to offer her some napkins. “What can I get you?”
An uneven pink stain spread up her cheeks, shaped like a sideways map of Africa. She flashed an awkward, toothy smile back at him. “I had a dream about you last night,” she said. “You were a llama, but I still knew it was you. You had your name on your trunk.”
There was another something none of his sisters had ever said to him.
Pretty sure that was something no human had ever said before.
“A luggage trunk, or an elephant’s trunk?” Lindsey asked.
“Elephant’s trunk.” Kimmie pulled a blob of frosting out of her hair and smeared it across the napkin.
Lindsey nodded as though this was normal.
CJ scratched his jaw. “Huh.”
Kimmie’s eyelids flared. She dropped the napkin and grabbed the edge of the bar, smearing the buttercream on the shiny surface. “Oh, no,” she whispered.
“Yes?” he said, painfully aware that whatever was wrong, it would be worse than if he had an elephant’s trunk.
“My mother’s gonna spit lemon juice when she finds out you’re working here. Oh, no, no, no. This’ll be worse than the chocolate ganache catastrophe of ’09.”
Kimmie’s familiarity clicked. Despite the obvious personality differences between mother and daughter, CJ couldn’t unsee it.
He retreated half a step. Basil’s chin dangled so low it hid his collar in a rare appearance of the Holy Look of Disbelief.
Kimmie was a young Queen General. She didn’t have the presence and the outfit, but there was no mistaking the solid jaw line, the high cheekbones, and the slant of her blue eyes.
The warmth in them had fooled him.
Lindsey was watching CJ again, and he had enough experience with women to know what her scrutiny meant this time.
He wasn’t being judged on being an honored widower in Bliss. He was being judged on being a human being.
And she wouldn’t give him more than one shot to do it right.
Tough crowd. Shouldn’t have mattered, but there was something about Lindsey that put CJ on extra edge.
“Man’s gotta work,” he said to Kimmie.
Kimmie’s head wouldn’t stop shaking no. “I like coming here. I don’t want it to close down. Did you apply at the country club? Or Melodies? You like karaoke, right? It’s not always bad. Some of the brides and bridesmaids sing pretty decent. Sometimes. Mom would get you a job either place. Obviously she’d prefer the country club, and then we wouldn’t have to worry about her expressing her displeasure by making the earth swallow Suckers whole. We’re already on thin icing after that health department visit yesterday.”
“Your mother can’t control the jaws of hell,” Lindsey said with exaggerated patience.
“I’m pretty sure she can.”
CJ looked to Basil, but His Holiness didn’t correct Kimmie.
Jeremy elbowed in with a basket of nachos for the two women. “She can’t.” He pointed to Kimmie. “Ain’t your mother’s place to say where a man can and can’t work.” He switched his focus to Lindsey. “A woman either.”
“No arguments there,” Lindsey murmured.
“She gives Natalie any shit, you let me know.”
Lindsey gave a single nod, but she had one eye on CJ, and he was positive she caught his head whipping up toward his fellow bartender.
“Any more than usual, or any at all?” Lindsey said.
Kimmie paused in her headshaking. “She’s always giving Nat trouble. You know how it is. Mom gets all I now pronounce you the divorced outcast on the committee, and Natalie gets all Bite me, and Mom gets all Does your mother know you talk like that? and Natalie gets all Bite me harder, and then we go home and do it again next week.”
Lindsey pulled a nacho chip out of the basket. “Knot Fest is a beautiful celebration of marriage inside and out, isn’t it?”
Her dry delivery should’ve been funny, but CJ was having a hard time shaking the paranoia that had come with knowing these women—and Jeremy—were on Team Natalie.
“Hush,” Kimmie said. “She’ll hear you said that, and then she’ll make it worse for Nat.”
“Like hell she will,” Jeremy said.
“She will,” Lindsey said on a sigh. “And she’ll blame Nat, and Nat will let her.”
CJ inched down the bar. Still had five drinks to make, and this conversation was going places he didn’t need to go too.
Kimmie hopped off the stool. “You know what? I have to go. If Mom finds out I know you’re working here, this’ll be worse than—well. It’ll be worse. And I don’t need worse.”
“Stay.” Lindsey gesture at CJ with a nacho chip. “Tell her you were here to convince him to play in the Golden Husband Games.”
His Holy Obnoxiousness laughed. Actually laughed. “Good luck with that.”
Kimmie leaned back into the bar, glancing between CJ and Basil. “Would you play?” she said to CJ.
He grabbed two glasses, shaking his head.
“Pumplegunker,” Kimmie said again.
The reflection in the mirror showed Lindsey patting the stool Kimmie had vacated. “Sit. Have a piece of coconut cream pie. Work on him some more.”
Lindsey, CJ decided, was evil. Sort of like another woman—hell. He turned around. Looked closer. Patrician nose like a guy CJ had given a ride home to the other night. Brown eyes—lighter in color, but with the same undisguised judgment he’d seen on another woman recently.
And the same sharp pink lips that had turned his world inside out Saturday night.
Jeremy’s favorite customers were the Queen General’s daughter and Natalie Castellano’s sister.
This shift had just turned to shit.
> But CJ had been in enough shit in his life to know it was better to shovel it than wade through it. “How’s your nephew?” No sense pussyfooting around it.
Lindsey’s lips curved into a smile. “Brilliant, adorable, and perfect. Runs in the family.”
Nope, CJ wasn’t touching that one.
“Mom’s bringing you cupcakes tomorrow,” Kimmie said to CJ. “To thank you for being such a great representation of everything a Golden Husband should be. Somebody posted the fountain thing up on the blog. Now Mom’s talking about making a special float for you in the Bridal Mar—you know what? I was leaving. Right now.”
Jeremy gave a guy across the bar the just-a-minute sign. “Sit, Kimmie. Coconut cream pie’s fresh. Extra coconut.”
She groaned, but she slouched back onto the stool. “She’s going to salt my caramels if I can’t talk you into playing.”
“And you—” Jeremy poked CJ. “Play.”
“Don’t think so.”
“I’d play,” Jeremy said. “And I’d win.”
“With a stand-in wife?” CJ said.
“If that’s what it took to show the world what she meant to me. Tell you what, I’d kick your ass too.”
Probably would.
That didn’t bother CJ.
But knowing CJ himself would’ve made a similar declaration five years ago put a crimp in his gut.
“You’d win if you were playing with another woman,” CJ said. That part, he felt confident calling bullshit on.
“Ain’t about winning. It’s about honoring her.” A grin broke Jeremy’s dark stare. “Still kick your ass though.”
“Shame you can’t put your money where your mouth is.
“Nah, but you can. Do it. Show the world what she meant to you.” He gave Kimmie a nod. “That help?”
These people were all nuts. “You ladies need drinks or not?” CJ said.
Neither Kimmie nor Lindsey answered. Kimmie had the grace to scrunch her nose like she was contemplating the question.
Lindsey, though, brushed her hair over her shoulder, all the while maintaining her overtly critical gaze. “You did love her, didn’t you?” she said.
Cheap shot.
Loaded shot.
Almost hit its mark. Didn’t quite, but it still left him this side of rattled.
Blissed (Misfit Brides #1) Page 10