“I’ll be there in fifteen,” I said and then I hung up. I looked at Mia and then the technician. “I’m sorry, but I have to go.”
“What happened?” Darcy asked.
“I don’t know—but it’s something to do with the bakery.”
I took the towel from the technician and dried my feet. “I need to pay.”
“I’ve got it,” Mia said.
“You can’t keep paying for stuff,” I said.
“Sure I can,” she said. “Don’t argue with me.”
I slid into my flip-flops and grabbed my purse. “Thanks. I—yeah. Thanks.”
When I arrived at the bakery, Jazz and Brielle were already there, standing in the back alley with Eddie. Jazz had tears streaking down her cheeks and Brielle’s color was high, and she was clearly pissed. Eddie was six-feet-tall, jacked like a bodybuilder, but a giant teddy bear of a man who loved to bake.
“Was anyone hurt?” I asked.
Eddie shook his head. “No.”
“Then it can’t be that bad, right?” I demanded.
“It’s bad,” Eddie said bleakly. “The ceiling over the bakery collapsed.”
I blinked. “It what?”
“Collapsed,” Brielle repeated. “A pipe burst upstairs, and the weight of the water collapsed the ceiling. Eddie turned the water off at the street so it’s not flooding anymore, but the damage is done.”
Without a word, I stalked into the bakery, my feet sloshing through water on the floor.
It looked worse than when it was under construction. The counters were covered in wet debris. Plaster littered the floor, and the ceiling had a gaping hole.
“What do we do?” Jazz sniffed. “This place is completely unusable.”
I didn’t bother answering as I moved deeper into the bakery to the main room. I took the photo of my father in his shop off the wall and hugged it to my chest as if I could keep it safe.
“Brooklyn?”
I turned to see Brielle, Jazz and Eddie staring at me. Jazz’s eyes were still watery, but she’d found the means to compose herself.
“First thing’s first,” I said. “I’ll call the insurance company and file a claim. And then…”
“Then?” Eddie repeated.
“Then we need to sit and discuss how the hell we’re going to pull off Imogene Oglethorpe’s wedding.”
“This sucks!” Jazz stated. “This sucks so hard I can’t even—”
“You can fall apart later,” I stated. My phone rang and I answered it. “Hey, Mia.”
“Hey,” she said. “What happened? Is everything okay? Was anyone hurt?”
“No one was hurt,” I said. “But, no. Nothing is okay. A pipe burst upstairs and now I have a massive hole in my ceiling and the bakery has flooded and my kitchen is completely unusable.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah. I gotta go. I have to call the insurance company.”
“Let me know how I can help.”
I swallowed a lump of emotion. “Thanks. At the moment there’s nothing to be done.”
“I’ll check in later.”
I hung up with her and faced the group again. “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. Brielle, Eddie, will you please move the important paperwork from the office to the back of my car?”
“Sure thing, Brooklyn,” Eddie said.
I tossed him my keys.
Brielle and Eddie headed toward the office, leaving me alone with Jazz.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Jazz asked when we were alone.
“That this was Kurt?”
She nodded.
“Yeah. That was my first thought.”
“He won’t stop,” she said. “He won’t stop until he pressures you into selling the building.”
“I know.”
“I hate saying this, I really do, but—”
“I’m not selling,” I stated. “I refuse. You can’t let bullies win.”
“That’s not what I was going to suggest,” she said. “But we don’t have the means to get him off our asses…”
I sighed and rubbed the back of my neck.
“Kurt’s destroyed property now. What if it—what if he becomes physical? You’re pregnant. Come on. You know this is too much to be coincidence…”
“I know what you’re getting at. I’ll tell Slash.”
I wasn’t sure how Slash would handle any of this, but I knew he would.
At that moment, I didn’t care what he was involved in. I wanted to save my business. I wanted Kurt to back off, and I wasn’t a big enough shark to make that happen.
“I need to call the insurance company,” I said.
“God, what a clusterfuck.”
I nodded. “I need to un-cluster this fuck, like, immediately.”
Two hours later, Jazz, Brielle and I were at my house. The insurance company had been called, the claim process had been initiated and the insurance company was sending an agent out in a few days to assess the damage.
“We need a kitchen,” Jazz said.
“Thank you, Captain Obvious,” Brielle said, dunking her tea bag a few times and then removing it.
I held my own cup of herbal tea. It was meant to be soothing, but it wasn’t having the desired effect.
“Don’t take that tone with me,” Jazz said.
“Hey, before you start fighting with each other, don’t,” I pleaded. “We’re all we’ve got right now. Besides, Jazz isn’t wrong. We do need a kitchen. A big kitchen. A commercial-sized kitchen.”
“So, we’re definitely not bailing on the wedding,” Brielle said. “Good.”
“Hell no, we’re not bailing,” I remarked. “Aside from actually liking Imogene and wanting to make her wedding beautiful, bailing on her wedding would be it for the catering company. We’d crash and burn without even getting off the ground.”
“That fucker,” Jazz seethed.
“That fucker—oh, you mean Kurt?” Brielle asked.
I nodded. “Let’s not go down that road. I’m handling it.”
“You’re handling it? What’s that mean?”
I sighed. “It means I’m taking it to Slash.”
“No shame in admitting you need help,” Brielle said quietly.
“Yeah.” I shook my head. “Back to the kitchen issue.”
“Want me to talk to Seb?” Brielle asked. “He might let us use the kitchen at the restaurant at night after they close. We could bake during the night and sleep during the day? We could swap our hours.”
“It’s a clever idea, but it won’t work,” I said. “We need commercial walk-in refrigerators. We need space that isn’t going to be taken back by someone else in the morning. We need a commercial kitchen space that’s truly ours if we’re going to get this done. And we need to be able to come and go as we please. We can’t really work around a restaurant’s service schedule.”
“We can rent a commercial kitchen,” Jazz said, pulling out her phone. She opened her screen, and after a few minutes, she said, “Jesus, they want two hundred and fifty to three hundred and fifty an hour to rent a kitchen. And we need a place for a week, twenty-four hours a day?”
“Out of the question,” Brielle said. “Even though Imogene’s budget is substantial, we’d be in the red.”
“There’s a solution,” I said. “I know there is.”
“What is it?” Jazz demanded.
“I don’t know yet; I’m still thinking.” I glared at her and then took a sip of my tea.
There was a knock on the front door.
The three of us looked at each other.
“Did we actually order the garlic bread and cheese pizza?” Brielle asked.
“I thought that was just an idea. I don’t think we followed through,” Jazz said.
“It’s Mia!” Mia called through the closed door. “I know you’re home—your car is out front!”
I got up from the couch and went to open the door. Mia, along with all the Old Ladies, was standing on the steps.
“I’m having a very big sense of déjà vu,” I remarked, but immediately stepped back to let them in.
“We tried to stay out of your business by giving you some space,” Joni remarked. “But clearly, we failed.”
“Thanks for failing.” I smiled, my lip trembling. “I think I’m about to lose my shit.”
“Who wants tea?” Brielle asked, hopping up from the floor.
“How about a bourbon?” Darcy remarked. “I feel like this is going to take bourbon.”
“I don’t have liquor in the house,” I said. “Slash doesn’t drink, and I’m pregnant.”
“I’d forgotten about Slash not drinking.” Darcy shrugged. “Tea would be great.”
“Okay, what’s the plan?” Mia asked.
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” Jazz said. “The bakery is completely unusable, and we need a commercial kitchen. We could rent one, but we need it for a week, and it would cost an arm and a leg.”
“And a kidney,” Brielle added as she set the filled tea kettle onto the stove.
“A commercial kitchen,” Linden repeated. “You mean like a hotel kitchen?”
“Exactly like a hotel kitchen.” I blinked.
Mia let out a light laugh.
“What’s funny?” Jazz asked.
“My husband happens to be good friends with the owner of the Dallas Rex Hotel,” Mia said.
“You’re kidding,” I said. “I used to work for the Rex Hotel in Manhattan. Your husband knows Flynn Campbell?”
“Yep. Let me make a phone call and see what we can do,” she said.
“Holy hell, what a small world,” I said.
“Super small,” Mia agreed. “Hang tight. I’ve got this.”
“You’re getting slaphappy,” Jazz said to me.
An uncontrollable giggle escaped my mouth. “I’m loopy. Between the adrenaline dump this morning and the excitement of Slash coming home…”
“Your hoo-ha misses his ding-a-ling?” Jazz asked.
“Yep, it so does,” I said with a laugh.
The Old Ladies had left a few hours prior. Everything at The Rex was set. Mia had made a phone call, and The Rex had agreed to let us use a kitchen that they were almost finished renovating. It wasn’t supposed to be back in use for another few weeks, and everything we needed for baking and storing what we made was already up and running. We’d meet the manager of the hotel the following morning to do a walk-through of the mostly finished kitchen, and then we’d be able to hit the ground running. It was a huge ask of the hotel, but the club had strong ties to Flynn Campbell and the hotel manager knew it.
“I think you should tell him about the bakery when you’re naked on top of him,” Brielle said. “Men are much more amenable to hearing bad news when women are on top of them naked.”
“Yes. Shove your breasts in his face,” Jazz agreed.
I sighed. “I’m so tired. And I just don’t know if I have the energy to have this conversation with him. Not when I have to be up at the ass-crack of dawn and drive to The Rex.”
“God, it’s a haul and a half,” Jazz said. “Don’t get me wrong—I’m super grateful Mia knows important people. She totally saved the day, but I don’t know how I’m supposed to commute and juggle all the other stuff.”
I heard the distinct rumble of a motorcycle, and I couldn’t help the tripping of my heart.
“Well, that’s all she wrote,” Brielle said. “Slash is going to be here in a few seconds.”
The two of them got up. “Good luck,” Jazz said.
“Thanks.”
Slash was pulling his bike up to the curb as Jazz and Brielle headed to their cars. They waved at Slash but didn’t linger. I stood in the doorway as I waited for him to park and cut the engine.
He climbed off his bike and sauntered up the walkway to the front steps. Without a word, he pulled me into his arms and buried his face in the crook of my neck.
“You smell like cake batter,” he mumbled.
I sighed and leaned into him. All the adrenaline I’d been running on drained out of me and my legs felt wobbly.
Slash pulled back. “Gotta talk about some things. Don’t we?”
“Who called you?”
“Duke. It should’ve been you.”
“Why? I had my hands full already. And I knew I would tell you when you got home.”
Before I could move, he gently reached out to grasp my chin between his thumb and forefinger. “I’m sorry about your bakery, and I’m sorry I wasn’t here.”
I frowned in confusion. “You couldn’t have prevented it.”
He paused. “No. But I could’ve been here to help.”
“I got it sorted.” I wrenched my chin from his hold and walked inside. He followed and shut the door.
“You’re pissed.”
“Damn right I’m pissed,” I said. “That building, that bakery, is my everything.” I moved into the kitchen and leaned against the counter. “Do you want to shower? Get comfortable before we have this conversation? There’s something I need to discuss with you and—”
“Now.”
“What?”
“We’ll have the conversation now. Everything else can wait.”
“Okay. But you have to promise me something.”
He raised his brows and waited.
“You can’t get mad at me for how I chose to handle things.”
His expression soured, but he cut his head to one side in agreement.
I took a deep breath and told him about Kurt Antol, about my suspicions even though I didn’t have any substantial proof. I explained his offer to buy the bakery and Ella’s story about how her business had failed so similarly to mine.
I mentioned the Smith Corporation and that I hadn’t been able to figure out who was behind the entity or how to get them to back off.
Slash curled his hands into fists by his sides and then he began to pace. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
“I’m telling you now,” I said evasively.
“Brooklyn. Why?”
“Because I hate admitting I can’t figure out a solution to a problem. Because I’ve been nothing but a financial drain on you since we got together.”
“This fucker is targeting you and you were worried about being a drain? Christ, woman.”
“Slash, listen to me. Dumping this shit in your lap means I’m a fucking hypocrite, and I hate that.”
“Hypocrite? What do you mean?”
“I mean I had to wrap my head around the club and your illegal activities, and here I am, needing help, which means I’m asking you to fix this. And I don’t care how you fix it anymore; I just want it fixed. That makes me part of something I’ve never been part of before.” My shoulders slumped. “I’m so tired. I’m getting my ass handed to me by this guy. I don’t have the right weapons to deal with him.”
He didn’t say anything for a long time, and I finally met his gaze. His jaw was clenched and a muscle in his cheek began to tick.
“Slash?” I whispered.
He moved toward me so quickly I barely had time to register it before I was backed up against the counter, caged in his arms.
His hazel eyes glittered with resolve. “You’re lookin’ at the right weapon.”