Stirring Up Trouble

by Andrea Laurence

  Emmett stopped, his eyes narrowing at his lawyer. That was serious. No wonder Logan had jumped to come with him to court today. Law school meant years of hard study. At one point, he’d considered it himself, but he took the financial route instead. Logan had gone through all that for revenge? There was more to this story than he was letting on. Maybe after a couple of beers he could get Logan to spill the whole sordid tale.

  “I’m sure she’ll be plenty unhappy over that sentence,” Emmett said. That wasn’t the best way to start off when the whole point of this extended exercise in torture was for them to get along. “Really, I wish he’d just sent me to jail. A day or two in prison is preferable to spending a whole month scrubbing penises off the wall with that woman.”

  “Well, you could always fail to appear for service. That’s an automatic contempt charge and you’d spend a night in jail for sure. Probably wouldn’t get you out of the community service in the end, though, so as your lawyer, I wouldn’t recommend it.”

  “I know,” Emmett said with a resigned sigh. “There’s no getting out of this. If there was a way, I’d have thought of it by now.”

  “Sounds like you two are having quite the battle.” They stopped on the sidewalk outside the diner. “Pepper told me a little about it. Maddie’s got you in a tight spot.”

  “That’s one way to put it.”

  Emmett looked over Logan’s shoulder in time to see the Chamberlains spill out of the courthouse and onto the sidewalk. They were talking all at once, although Emmett couldn’t hear what they were saying. Just when he thought they might all load into Norman’s car and drive away, Madelyn spotted him. She quickly hugged her family and started down the sidewalk toward him.

  Crap.

  Logan glanced in the direction Emmett was looking. “Uh-oh. Here she comes.”

  “Yeah, Logan, can you give me a second here? Order me some coffee and I’ll be in in a minute.”

  “Sure thing.” Logan clapped him on the shoulder and went inside the diner.

  Emmett stood patiently, waiting for the storm. He slipped his hands into his pockets and forced his muscles to relax. He felt like he was strung tight as a drum, but he wouldn’t show that side of himself to her. He liked her to think he didn’t care about any of this. It made her cheeks flush an angry pink that traveled down her neck and disappeared into her blouse. For a moment he considered exactly how low the flush might go, but that wasn’t helpful. It was bad enough he had to spend twenty-four hours of community service with her. Doing it with an unwanted erection would make it that much more unpleasant.

  Madelyn stomped across the street, stopping a few feet away. She looked irritated, with her classic features drawn into a frown. He didn’t know why she’d be upset with him. He’s not the one who chose the sentence, and he certainly wasn’t excited about the outcome, either.

  “You look smug,” she noted.

  “Do I?” Emmett stretched his face muscles to erase the offensive expression. “I must be excited about my opportunity to serve my community.”

  “Please,” she snapped, crossing her arms over her chest. The movement pressed her breasts up and he could see a hint of cleavage at the V of her conservatively buttoned blouse. “You can’t possibly mean that.”

  He shrugged, knowing it would irritate her. “I don’t have a problem with it. I’d prefer not to serve the time with you, but you can’t have everything the way you want. It is a punishment, after all.”

  She snorted. “You think I want to spend it with you? It’s bad enough I’ll have to close my shop repeatedly over the next month. Doing it to pick up trash with you is just adding insult to injury.”

  “Look at the bright side. You could’ve gone to jail. I don’t think prison orange is your color.”

  Her nose wrinkled at him. “He wasn’t going to send us to jail. Judge Griffin is friends with my grandmother. He’d never do that. At least not to me,” she noted pointedly.

  Boy, Fancy Pants sure thought highly of her social status. He took a step closer to her, invading her personal space. She tensed as he got closer, recovering in time to lift her chin defiantly to look up at him.

  “Maybe,” he said in a low voice that only she could hear. “You might have enough family influence to wiggle out of anything, but I’d wager that even the Chamberlains’ power has its limits. You can bet your sweet ass that if we get arrested for fighting again or cause a scene in public while we’re serving our sentence, the judge won’t be as lenient on either of us. You heard what he said about us getting along. Like it or not, you and I have to find a way to coexist or you’re going to find yourself baking cookies at the Tutwiler Prison for Women.”

  Madelyn flinched when he said that and he was glad. She wasn’t the kind of woman who belonged in a place like that, but she needed a wake-up call. He’d seen her kind before, when he lived in Florida. Some people thought they were above the law, and when they discovered otherwise, it was a hard crash landing to reality. Madelyn was a spoiled brat used to getting whatever she wanted, but if she kept pushing their feud, she would give the judge no choice but to try to scare her straight. Then they would see how much influence her family really had in town.

  She recovered quickly, an expression of boredom crossing her face. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, taking a step back.

  “Don’t be so presumptuous,” Emmett snapped. “We get arrested again and I guarantee you it’s a done deal. Logan says that Judge Griffin doesn’t play around, and I don’t intend to see how far I can push him. I don’t know when this exciting adventure in community service starts for us, but I’m going to be smiling the whole damn time. You’d better do the same, because you’re not dragging me down with you.”

  The bored expression slipped away, showing a flicker of vulnerability he didn’t expect to see. She swallowed hard, forcing his gaze to watch the elegant line of her throat. When he focused back on her face, a wide, insincere grin had spread across it. “Is this good enough?” she asked.

  Even though he knew she didn’t mean it, he was nearly struck dumb by the brilliance of her smile. She’d never smiled at him before. She was always irritated or trying to aggravate him. This smile was enough to light up her whole face, softening her hard edges and making her even more beautiful, if that was possible. It made Emmett want to make her smile for real, to see if a true smile could be even more impactful. A part of him hoped not. His pulse was already spiking and his nerve waning.

  “It’ll do,” he managed to say. “Might want to practice in the mirror until it looks like you mean it.”

  The smile faded and she rolled her eyes. “I’ll look into that, but there are only a couple of days to practice. After you left, the court clerk said we’re supposed to report to her on Wednesday afternoon for our first assignment. We’re to be there at three and serve until six.”

  That wasn’t too bad. The bar didn’t open until five during the week. Joy usually worked on the weekends, but maybe he could get her to cover until he could get there. Or, worst-case scenario, he could delay opening by an hour without too much trouble.

  “Hopefully, I won’t see you until Wednesday.”

  Let the games begin.

  Chapter Seven

  “Blake, I need a responsible, industrious teenager.”

  Blake looked up from his desk and frowned at Maddie’s sudden arrival at his workplace. She knew she didn’t pop in very often; this was actually her first visit to his new office in the recently reconstructed Rosewood High School gymnasium, but this was important. She didn’t need him being grumpy about it.

  “That’s nice,” he said without missing a beat. “I need a half-man, half-octopus running back with eight arms and sticky suction cups on his fingers so he can’t drop the ball.”

  Now it was Maddie’s turn to frown. “I’m being serious, Blake. I need help at the bakery.”

  “I’m being se
rious, too. If I didn’t know better, I’d think my boys were rubbing Crisco on their hands before every game.”

  Maddie took a few more steps into his office and settled into the guest chair facing his desk. Her gaze strayed to the bookshelves with plaques and trophies, including the one Blake and his team had earned last season when they went to the state championships. They came in second, which was no small feat, but that gave Blake something to shoot for. He never liked to settle for less than number one.

  A drive for perfection ran in the family—drilled in by their father. All the kids seemed to be pretty goal-oriented in their professional lives. Well, except for maybe Grant. Grant seemed immune to the family trait, probably because he didn’t give a damn what Daddy thought.

  She ignored Blake’s retort and continued. “I would put an ad in the newspaper, but I don’t have time to wait for someone to respond. I need someone to start as soon as possible.”

  Blake dropped his pen and a wicked smile spread across his face. “Yeah, I heard someone’s going to be scrubbing dick graffiti off the walls to pay for their crimes against the city.”

  Maddie winced at her brother’s crude attempt at humor. “Do you really have to be so coarse? I’m doing community service, yes, and I need someone to watch the shop in the afternoons and on weekends when I have to serve.”

  Blake sat back in his chair and gazed thoughtfully at the ceiling for a minute. “I’m not sure I’m going to be much help, Maddie. All my boys are at football practice after school and even if they weren’t, you couldn’t pay me to eat something they baked.”

  “What about your students? Do you have someone in your health or PE classes? Or someone I can talk to? Do they even have a home economics class anymore?”

  “They have one, although now I believe it’s called family and consumer sciences. You’re in luck, though. I think Mrs. Nelson is teaching that class right now. Let’s walk down there and see if she’s got any shining stars.”

  Blake pushed up from his chair and Maddie followed him down the corridors of the high school. It hadn’t been that long since she’d roamed these halls like she owned them. She’d been popular; she’d had a lot of friends; classes weren’t too hard. The only downside was that high school was a poor preparation for the real world. Reality wasn’t so great once she got out into it.

  They stopped at a classroom near the school cafeteria. Blake spied in the window for a moment, waving when he caught Mrs. Nelson’s eye. She gestured for them to come into the room. There were about twenty-five students in the class, each of them busily working in pairs around stand mixers. Big bowls of flour, sugar, and other ingredients lined the front of the room, from where they’d taken their measured portions back to their mixers. From the looks of it, they were making chocolate chip cookies.

  “Coach!” Mrs. Nelson greeted Maddie’s brother with a slight blush rising to her nearly fifty-year-old cheeks. All the men in the family had that effect on women. Well, all but Simon. He seemed to get the short end of the stick when it came to the Chamberlain sex appeal.

  “You’ve picked the perfect day to stop by. The class is making chocolate chip cookies for the football team.”

  “That’s great. I know the boys will love it.” Blake smiled and waved to the kids as they baked. “Brenda,” he said quieter, “this is my sister Madelyn. She owns the bakery downtown.”

  Brenda Nelson broke into a big grin when she looked at Maddie. She hadn’t been teaching here when Maddie roamed the halls. “Oh, yes. Your cream puffs with raspberries are almost a religious experience. It’s lovely to meet you.”

  Maddie beamed at the praise. At her French culinary school, she’d been number one in her class when it came to puff pastries. “Thank you. I’m glad you like them.”

  “Brenda, Maddie came by today to ask if I knew of any teenagers who might be interested in helping her at the shop. I figured if there was anyone who would know the right kid, it’d be you.”

  Brenda’s blush deepened, and Maddie tried not to roll her eyes. Her brother certainly laid it on thick.

  “I’m looking for someone to come in after school for a couple of hours. Maybe some hours on Saturday if they can. I wouldn’t need them to do any baking, at least to start. They’d be minding the counter and the register, so they’d need to be trustworthy enough to handle the money.”

  Brenda nodded and glanced around the room at her students. “Hmm . . .” she said thoughtfully. “Gertie?” she called out. “Could you come up here a moment, please?”

  Maddie watched as a thin mouse of a girl came out from behind one of the mixers. She had pale skin and long, almost white-blond hair, with chunky glasses that covered half her face.

  “Gertie Perkins is my best student. She’s Beverly Perkins’s granddaughter,” Brenda explained.

  Maddie could see the resemblance to the women’s boutique owner, although she’d always assumed that Beverly’s platinum-blond hair had been the work of Redken, not nature.

  Gertie finally reached the front of the room. “Yes, Mrs. Nelson?”

  “Gertie, this is Madelyn Chamberlain. She owns the bakery downtown and she’s looking for some help in the afternoons. I told her you’re my best student and I thought you’d be a great fit. Would you be interested?”

  She was, Maddie could tell. The minute she realized what Brenda was asking, a spark lit up in the girl’s light blue eyes that even her big glasses couldn’t hide. “I’d love to,” she said with a grin. “My last class gets out at two thirty, so I could get there by two forty-five or so, after I stop by my locker and walk over to the square. How many hours would you need me?”

  “The shop closes at five thirty, so that would be the earliest. If you can stay to help clean up and prepare for the next morning, maybe until six or six thirty. I don’t want it to interfere with your homework.” Even as Maddie said it, she could hear her mother in her voice. Helen always encouraged them to be active after school, but only if it didn’t interfere with their studies.

  “That would be perfect. When do you need me to start?”

  “Well, I understand you’ll probably need to talk to your parents and such. If you can come by today after school, we can fill out some paperwork and I’ll give you a tour of the shop. Then maybe you can start tomorrow?”

  A cloud of white powder shot into the air over one of the mixers and one of the students hollered in surprise. “Incorporate the dry ingredients slowly!” Brenda shouted. “Will you excuse me?” she asked before rushing toward the back of the classroom to aid her finely dusted student.

  Gertie just smiled and shook her head. “You can’t rush that part,” she noted with sage wisdom in her voice. “I’ll be by today after school. I’ll text my parents—they’ll be fine with it. My mom has mentioned me looking for an after-school job now that I’m sixteen, but I hadn’t gotten around to it yet. This sounds great.”

  “Who has their cookies ready to bake?” Brenda called from the back of the room. “Those of you who are ready, let’s carry those trays into the kitchen and get them in the oven.”

  “That’s me. I’ll see you this afternoon,” Gertie said, and with a wave, she headed off to bake her batch of cookies.

  As they headed out of the classroom, Blake thanked Brenda. “And there you go,” he said to Maddie. “You’ve got your responsible teenager. I’d even wager that one could help you with the baking.”

  Maddie was very particular about her baked goods, but he was right. Gertie looked like she knew her way around a mixing bowl. “Thanks for your help. At the very least, she should be able to help me through the next few weeks.”

  “No problem. If you happen to see that teenage octopus running around town, be sure to send him my way.”

  Emmett was pretty certain the situation couldn’t get any worse. He had a criminal record. He was losing money because he had to close the bar to serve some of his communit
y service time. He still owed the city of Rosewood three thousand dollars in fines. He also had twenty-four hours of time with Maddie to look forward to. Things seemed pretty darn crappy if you asked him.

  But he was wrong.

  Standing at the base of the Rosewood water tower with a gallon of paint and a sack full of rollers, he knew things had just gotten much, much worse.

  He’d never given much thought to the water tower. It was there, looming over the cityscape of Rosewood like the Space Needle in Seattle. Large, silent, and forgettable. And it had certainly never crossed his mind how one might get up to the top of it. Why would anyone not associated with the water company want to do that?

  Standing at the base of the tower now, he found that the method of scaling the water tower was the only thing on his mind. As best he could tell, a spindly steel ladder running along one of the tower’s legs was the answer. How the hell would he be able to climb that thing while carrying paint? The Penis Picasso, at least, just had to carry up a can of spray paint, not a gallon of exterior-grade latex.

  “Well, we’d better get to it. I don’t want to climb down in the dark,” Madelyn said.

  The dark? Shit. He hadn’t even considered that possibility. How could this be a viable punishment? One of them could get killed climbing up this thing.

  “If you’ve got the paint, I’ll carry the rest.”

  Emmett tore his gaze away from the tower to look at Madelyn. She seemed annoyed that he wasn’t responding to her the way she expected. “I don’t see how we’re going to get any of it up there. I need both hands to climb.”

  “Here.” Madelyn reached for the gallon of paint and settled it into the canvas bag she’d brought with her. She tucked the brushes and rollers in with it and slung it over her shoulder. “Done. Let’s go.”