Stirring Up Trouble

by Andrea Laurence

  She was making her way back into town and opted to cruise by the bakery before going home. It was closed today, but she liked to check in and make sure everything looked all right.

  As she rounded the corner, Maddie frowned. The lights were on inside the shop. She knew for certain she’d turned off all the lights when she closed up on Saturday afternoon. Curious, she flipped off her headlights and pulled into the parking space out in front of the salon next door. If something was going on, she didn’t want to tip anyone off to her arrival.

  Her heart started pounding nervously as she climbed out of the car and started toward the shop. She could be interrupting a burglary in progress.

  Standing at the edge of the brick wall, she peered around the corner to see into the shop, but most of the light was coming from the kitchen in back. Had Gertie told someone that she sometimes kept the deposit in the freezer?

  Maddie caught a blur of movement inside. The person moved past the doorway too quickly for her to see who it was. But then they came back around and stood facing away from the door. The motion, and the white-blond ponytail, were unmistakable. She was rolling out dough on the counter.

  Gertie. What on earth was she doing at the shop at ten on a Sunday night? She had school tomorrow.

  Maddie reached for the front door and found Gertie had left it unlocked. That was dangerous if someone knew she was in there alone. With a frown, Maddie stepped inside, being careful not to scare her. “Gertie?”

  Her employee’s head popped out from the kitchen, a look of panic on her face. “Miss Maddie! Hi, um . . .”

  “Gertie, what are you doing here so late? You’re not even supposed to be working today. I gave you your own key to make things easier, but I never expected to find you here in the middle of the night.” Maddie took a few steps toward the kitchen and realized she was rolling out a batch of cinnamon rolls.

  “I thought I would come in tonight and get a head start on a few things for tomorrow. I like being in the shop after hours, when I can bake and not worry about things.”

  Maddie didn’t like the sound of that. “Worry about what things? Are some of the customers giving you trouble when I’m not here?”

  “Oh, no,” Gertie said with large, pale eyes behind her dark frames. There was a smidge of powder on her nose that nearly blended into her pale skin. “Everyone’s been very nice to me. I’m not used to that; I like it.”

  Gertie shifted her gaze down, away from Maddie’s eyes. Her movement revealed gray circles under the young girl’s eyes. She looked like she wasn’t sleeping much. Something was bothering her.

  Maddie flipped the lock on the bakery door and walked over to Gertie, taking her hand. “Come on,” she said. “We’re going to the tea room.”

  “Why?” Gertie asked as she was half dragged up the stairs.

  At the top, Maddie flipped on the lights, revealing the large open space she hoped to develop one day into its own tiny restaurant. “For tea,” she said at last. She plugged in the electric kettle and filled it with water at the sink in the small kitchen to the left. “Have a seat.”

  Without argument, Gertie sat down in one of the chairs circling the nearest table. She waited there silently until Maddie came back to the table with two cups of tea. She handed one to Gertie and sat down in the seat beside her. “Tell me what’s going on.”

  Gertie avoided her gaze for a minute, stalling by taking a sip of her tea. “I’m having some trouble at school,” she said at last.

  “Trouble with classes?”

  “No, trouble with some of the other girls.”

  Maddie immediately felt her stomach sink. Grant had hit the nail on the head. She might not be roaming the halls of Rosewood High any longer, but some new, popular, and unpleasant girls had taken her place. “Are they being mean to you?”

  Gertie nodded. “It started with giggles and pointing in the hallway. Then one day, a girl complimented my shirt and asked where I got it. When I told her it came from a thrift store, she said she wasn’t surprised, and all the other girls started laughing. Then one day, one of the girls called me Gertie the Ghost—I guess because my hair and skin are so pale. They got a laugh out of it, but the name stuck. Now, nearly everyone calls me that. I get heckled on my Facebook wall. They post pictures of Casper the Ghost there, but they put big, chunky glasses like mine on him. There’s some photoshopped picture of me going around on Tumblr where I’m all in white and floating across the football field.”

  Maddie felt awful for her. She could see herself in the cruel taunts of the other girls. “I’m sorry, Gertie. That’s not nice of them.”

  “Well, at first I couldn’t care less what those little divas thought of me. But since it spread, it’s almost constant. Hardly anyone talked to me before, but now the only people who do are just setting me up for a laugh. I sit alone at lunch. I walk home alone after school, then just sit on my bed and rehash all the things I could’ve said or done differently. I just feel so . . . isolated from everyone and everything. Your bakery is the first place I’ve found where I don’t feel like that. Customers talk to me. They never tease me or call me names . . . I know I’m not supposed to be here longer than I’m scheduled and I don’t expect you to pay me, but I like being here. I like to just get away.”

  “Is your house not comfortable for you, either?” Maddie asked.

  Gertie shrugged. “My house isn’t very peaceful lately. My parents fight a lot. I think they’re going to get divorced soon. I heard my mom say she was going into town to talk to Logan Anthony about something. I know he’s a lawyer; he’s got the big sign up on the side of Grandma’s shop. I think my dad is trying to hold out until I graduate high school, but I don’t know why. They just make everyone miserable by staying together.”

  Maddie felt worse with every word that came out of Gertie’s mouth. She didn’t have any safe place to be except this shop. She hated that for her, but she was glad that Gertie felt happy here. It had wounded her to hear Grant accuse her of being the kind to pick on Gertie, because it had been true. She wouldn’t dream of it now, but it hadn’t been long since she was that mean girl. She just hated it for her. Gertie was too sweet a girl to go through all this.

  “Well, Gertie, you can come to the shop whenever you like. You don’t even have to work while you’re here. If you just want to come up to the tea room to do homework and listen to your iPod, you go right ahead. Maybe after a while we can look at increasing your hours, if that’s what you want. But for now, if you need to get away, just come on over. Or if I’m home, come see me at my house.”

  “Really?” Gertie perked up in her seat.

  “Absolutely. I’m just around the corner.”

  “Thanks, Miss Maddie.” Gertie sipped her tea, a faint smile curling her lips.

  “Listen, I know what you’re going through at school. I’m ashamed to admit that when I was your age, I was the one picking on other kids. I don’t know what made me think I was better or that I had the right to make those people feel bad all the time. I wish now that I hadn’t.”

  “Did you ever apologize to any of them?”

  Maddie shook her head no. She’d apologized to her brother, but never to Pepper as she’d promised. Or to Ivy. Or to any of the other kids at Rosewood High who she had made miserable. “I should. In the meantime, I want to help you. Trust me when I say that ignoring it helps. It might get worse before it gets better, but if they don’t get a rise out of you, they’ll lose interest. I know it’s hard to play it off, but killing them with kindness may be the way to go.”

  “And if that doesn’t work?” Gertie looked at her with hopeful eyes.

  “Then we’ll bake up a tray of special brownies for you to share with the kids at school.”

  “Really? I have to be so nice that I’ll take them treats from the shop?”

  Maddie shook her head. “I said special brownies.”

/>   “What makes them special?”

  An evil smile curled Maddie’s lips. She reached out and patted Gertie’s hand. “Chocolate Ex-Lax.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Emmett pulled his truck out of the alley between the bar and the fire station and literally drove it across the street to Maddie’s driveway. It seemed silly, since they could’ve walked over to his truck together, but this was a date. Despite their history together, he wanted to do this right.

  The hardest part so far had been deciding what to wear. He was balancing on the edge between trying to impress her and not giving too much of his past away. He’d seen her eyes light up at the courthouse when she’d seen him in his Armani suit. He could tell Maddie had an eye for quality and was both impressed and confused by his appearance that day. It was an older suit, not his best by any stretch, but he’d felt he needed to wear a suit to court and he didn’t have anything else.

  He opted tonight for a nice pair of dress pants, a long-sleeved dress shirt, and a corduroy blazer, since it was getting a little chilly in the evenings when the sun set.

  He’d faced the same challenge in deciding where to take her tonight. Rosewood had only three options. The diner and the pizza place weren’t appropriate for a date once you got out of high school. Whittaker’s was fancy, but that was what she’d expect. He liked keeping Maddie guessing. It had taken some thought, but he’d come to a nice compromise.

  He knocked at the front door and waited. The porch light came on a moment later and the door swung open. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the sudden brightness, but once they did, he was stunned by the woman standing in front of him.

  Emmett had seen Maddie at the bakery—usually wearing a pair of khakis, a polo shirt, and a frilly apron, with her hair in a bun. For community service, she’d donned jeans and a fitted T-shirt appropriate for getting dirty but still clinging to her curves nicely. But not once had he ever, ever seen her looking like this.

  The bun was gone, her long chestnut hair falling in shiny waves around her face. Her striking blue eyes were enhanced by a smoky shadow and cat-eye liner, and seemed even bluer than normal because of the cobalt color of her dress. It was asymmetrical, wrapping over her right shoulder and gathering tight around her tiny waist, clinging to where it ended just above her knees.

  He couldn’t stop his gaze from traveling from head to toe, taking in the pink-painted toenails that peeped out of her nude pumps and coming back up to admire the plump sparkle of her lips.

  “Wow” was all he could manage.

  Maddie laughed, reaching for her purse and stepping out onto her porch with him. “Did you think I was going to wear my apron tonight?”

  “No,” he said with a distracted shake of his head. “But I hadn’t anticipated this, either.”

  He took a deep breath and tried to blow out the arousal that had suddenly built up inside him. While he was very thankful he hadn’t opted to be obtuse and take her to Pizza Palace, he was now wishing he’d opted for something closer to home. That long drive with her inches from him was going to be torture.

  “You look nice, too,” she said, reaching out to stroke the arm of his jacket. “The surfer has gone chic.” Maddie locked the door and turned back to him. “So where are we going?”

  “It’s a surprise,” Emmett said with a wide grin as he offered her his arm to escort her to the truck. “Rest assured it’s a restaurant that takes reservations, so at the very least, you won’t be facing sticky plastic tablecloths or disposable utensils.”

  Maddie arched an eyebrow at him as they walked together. “Interesting.”

  Emmett opened the passenger door, holding her hand to help her up into the cab of his dark gray Dodge Ram Lone Star. Once she was settled in, he shut the door and rounded the truck to get in the driver’s seat.

  Emmett didn’t have a ton of miles on his truck. Since he didn’t have a commute and almost everything he needed was within walking distance, he only ever drove it to go out of town or to take the occasional fishing trip. Despite being three years old, it still had that new-car smell. When he shut his door, he was surprised to find a new scent lingering in his cab. Lavender. Maddie’s signature scent.

  This time, when he took a deep breath, it didn’t help. It just made his awareness of her more acute. He wrapped his hands around the steering wheel and focused on the road. Fortunately, it didn’t take as long to get to the restaurant as he thought.

  They turned off the highway down a narrow, winding road that cut through the trees. When they reached the clearing, he heard Maddie draw in a surprised breath. He was glad to get a reaction out of her. She’d lived in Paris, after all, so he anticipated she would be hard to impress. The restaurant was called the Pearl on the River. At one time, it had been a plantation home, much like the home he knew Maddie had grown up in.

  Over the years, Pearl’s had taken on a slightly more magical and playful identity. There were hundreds of tiny white twinkle lights in the trees and shrubs. Topiaries had been shaped into animals that lurked in front of the house and along the edge of the gravel parking lot, luring diners off into the woods. Large wind chimes on the porch struck low, unexpected tones that drifted on the breeze and bronze pinwheels spun in the garden and hung from branches. You almost expected to see fairies dancing through the garden.

  “Have you been here before?” he asked as he helped her out of the truck.

  “No, I’ve never even heard of it.”

  “Good,” he said, taking her arm and leading them toward the front porch. There were maybe ten other cars in the parking lot, but he knew that was because the restaurant wasn’t huge. It had only a few tables, but it was a special experience. That was what he’d aimed for tonight.

  Emmett opened the screen door and held it for Maddie. Inside, the home was dark with golden antique lighting, overfilled bookcases, assorted statues, paintings, and half a dozen doorways leading to mysterious places that begged to be explored.

  Ahead of them, a woman was waiting at a hostess stand. “Mr. Sawyer?” she asked, and he nodded. “We’ve got your river-view table ready for you.”

  She escorted them through what was once the living room and through a set of double doors at the back of the house. There, they stepped out onto a large deck that had been entirely glassed in like a conservatory. There were about a dozen tables there, all of them filled except for a table for two by the window. Once they were seated, they both looked out the wall of glass at the river rushing by. A massive oak tree hovered over the glass enclosure, large glass lightbulbs hanging from it and mingling with the glimpses of stars above them. The lights also extended across the river itself, zigzagging over the water, creating a sparkling effect as the ripples rushed over rocks below.

  “I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s amazing. I hope the food is good.”

  Emmett picked up the one-page printed menu and hoped the food was good, too. As a small boutique-style restaurant, they had a fresh menu that changed daily. Tonight, they had their choice of a handful of dishes with either beef, chicken, pork, salmon, or a vegetarian dish with a stuffed, roasted acorn squash.

  When their waiter arrived, Maddie chose the salmon and Emmett opted for the beef.

  “Would either of you be interested in some wine this evening?”

  Emmett was about to suggest a wine to Maddie that would pair nicely with her fish, when she shook her head and the waiter disappeared. “I forgot you don’t drink. Not even the occasional glass of wine?”

  “No. I haven’t had the best experiences with it in the past. I like to be fully in control of my decisions at all times.”

  “But then you can’t blame bad choices on alcohol,” he said with a smile.

  “Or maybe I just don’t make as many bad choices.”

  The waiter returned with salads and a basket of warm bread. They both lost themselves in food and conversation
, enjoying their time to just relax and appreciate each other’s company. It’d been a long time since Emmett had done anything like this, and he was pretty sure Maddie hadn’t unwound since the day she bought the bakery.

  “This is nice,” she said, echoing his thoughts halfway through their dinner course. “I haven’t been out on a date in a long time. I work almost constantly. Then add to that that most guys can’t grasp the idea of me being in bed by seven or eight every night, or that I get up at three.”

  “I’m keeping you up a little late tonight, I know,” he said. “It’s my only night off, and we had to wait until the shop closed.”

  “That’s okay. Once in a while is fine, it’s the general lifestyle that most people can’t understand.”

  “I know what you mean. The bar’s only closed one day a week. I’m up at three a.m., too, usually, but it’s because I haven’t gone to bed yet. I’m asleep when the rest of the world is awake.”

  “It sounds like our schedules are damn near incompatible for carrying on anything serious.”

  “That’s not true. We have twilight together. It’s not normal, but I’m not really sure anything about us is average.”

  Maddie smiled. “I was never raised to be average. I was raised believing that I was special and could do anything I wanted to do.”

  “What drew you to baking?” Emmett asked.

  “It certainly wasn’t the hours,” she said with a chuckle. “I just remember as a kid loving the idea of creating something that made people happy. Daddy has a sweet tooth, and knowing I could bake for him and he liked it always made me feel special. It’s hard to compete in a big family, you know, especially when your older brother is a football hero and your twin is a genius. I had the benefit of being Daddy’s little girl until Hazel arrived, but baking made me stand out. The idea of going to Paris and learning how to make such perfect, delicate creations was the ultimate dream. Not just to make regular, everyday cookies, but to make cookies that amazed people.”