“Somebody looks tired today,” Brandy remarked when Ellie walked in fifteen minutes after noon on Sunday.
“I’m sorry I’m late.” She snagged her apron from a nearby peg and started tying it on. “I overslept.”
“It’s fine. We’re still half an hour shy of church letting out so things are pretty slow. Are you okay?” She eyed her baking assistant, noting the flushed cheeks, the bright eyes. “You look a little … peaked.”
“Is that what they’re calling it these days?” Ellie gave her a grin that ended in a confused expression. “I had a late night, which is good. Great, in fact.”
“The dysfunctional boyfriend?”
“No.”
“That explains why you look as confused as you do happy.”
“I’m not confused. It’s just … this guy was different. Not different, like love of my life or anything crazy like that,” she rushed on. “Different as in not my type. He was a cowboy and you know I don’t do cowboys. It was just … I don’t know, one minute we were looking at each other and the next, there was just this heat … It was intense. Way more than anything I’ve ever felt before.” She shook her head. “Totally ridiculous, huh?”
“Totally,” not. Brandy knew that sort of heat. She felt it every time Tyler McCall glanced at her.
“I mean, I was drunk so that’s probably why my memory is a little skewed. I’m sure I’m making it out to be way better than it really was.”
“Probably.”
“Seriously, no man can be that good, right?”
“Right.” Wrong, her conscience chided, memories of her own hot cowboy whirling in her head. “So, um, who is this guy who’s rocked your world to the point your head is all but spinning? Do I know him?”
“I…” Ellie caught her lips as she seemed to think. “That is, no. You don’t know him.” She smoothed the apron over her. “We should really get to work.”
Brandy thought of the past few hours spent piddling around the bakery. Hours spent trying not to think about Tyler McCall and those few parting moments with him last night and the all-important fact that she was actually starting to like him.
“We should definitely get to work,” she told Ellie, handing the woman a bar of chocolate. “We’ve got to get a batch of chocolate cupcakes out to fill the case. The girls’ choir loves my chocolate ganache and they’ll be letting out just after one so I want to have plenty ready and waiting. All that singing makes them hungry.”
Brandy spent the next hour mixing and baking and frosting. She slid the last cupcake into place just as the doors swung open and a whopping two customers walked in.
Betty Dupree and her neighbor, Eliza Jamison. Both women were in their eighties and lived over at the senior center. Every Sunday they rode the bus to church just down the street and walked over for muffins and coffee—along with the other two dozen residents—to eat and talk and wait for their ride back to the home.
“Decaf for me, sugar,” Betty said when Brandy went to fill her mug. “I’m watching my caffeine.”
“Me, too,” Eliza chimed in. “On account of it aggravates my heart condition.”
“You don’t have a heart condition,” Betty pointed out.
“Maybe not, but too much caffeine makes me feel like I do. My heart starts racing and I get all hot around the collar.”
“That’s not caffeine. That’s lust. You got a hankering for that new Wayland Carmichael. He’s the new beefcake over at the home,” Betty told Brandy. “Doesn’t live there yet. His daughter just brings him over for dominoes every afternoon. He’s fresh meat and Eliza here is sweet on him.”
“Am not.”
“Are, too.”
“Ladies, have a muffin,” Brandy said, distracting the women from their bickering. “I just made a fresh batch.”
“I hope you didn’t make too many,” Betty said, taking the plate that Brandy slid across the counter. “On account of the rest of the ladies decided to stop off at the doughnut shop instead of coming here.”
“But the bus picks you guys up here,” Brandy reminded the woman.
“Not today. Our driver is anxious to try this new French thing the doughnut shop is doing called a beignet. It’s all the rage in New Orleans. Since Missy Stevens’s grandma relocated here after Katrina, she’s been teaching Susie Mae all her Cajun baking secrets. That’s where the habanero jelly came from. Anyhow, they was handing out samples this morning during Sunday school, so a whole mess of us decided to go over after church. The driver, too, on account of his grandma is Bernice Vernon, who’s the one leading the switch from muffins to doughnuts. I swear the woman ain’t got no loyalty.” She glanced behind her at the windows and the pair of old men who hobbled past. “See there? Headed after one of them fancy beignets. It’s shameful, I tell you. Downright shameful.”
“That’s what’s wrong with men today,” Eliza chimed in. “Always wanting something fancy when they could have what’s right in front of them.”
“Don’t mind her,” Betty added when her companion turned and headed for a nearby table. “She’s just upset because Wayland likes Genevieve Flowers. She’s that woman from Austin. Moved here with her grandkids until she got too old to get around by herself and now she’s at the senior center. She wears a fresh daisy tucked behind her ear every Sunday to church. Drives the men wild on account of it masks the mothball smell and makes her downright irresistible.”
“That would do it,” Brandy said, turning to fill a cup of coffee for Betty.
“None for me, sugar,” the old woman waved an arthritic hand. “Not on account of I’m sweet on anybody. The stuff just don’t sit well on my stomach anymore. Why, I used to have a cast-iron constitution. Could eat those fellas at the VFW under the table when it came to chili night. One time I ate six bowls in a row of Merle Jaggart’s Chile From Hell. Washed it down with an entire glass of your daddy’s hooch, too. Now I can’t even eat a can of Wolf Brand. And don’t even get me started on what I can’t drink. It’s a good thing all that brew died with your grandpa, bless his soul. It did, didn’t it?” she asked, one penciled-in eyebrow arching ever so slightly. “You and your sisters aren’t taking over the family business, are you?”
“Not at all, Miss Betty. I’ve got my hands full here.”
“Of course you do. And it’s a good thing, too. I’d hate to see any one of you girls blow yourself up like that James Harlin. And speaking of blowing”—she touched her stomach—“I think I need to use your little girls’ room. That tapioca I ate this morning is grumbling like Old Faithful.”
When Brandy motioned toward the small restroom near the door to the storeroom, Betty shook her head. “Saw Melvin Abercrombie waltz straight in there right as we come in. Based on the fact that he went back for double tapioca, I’m sure he’s going to be a little while.”
“You can use the employee restroom just on the other side of the kitchen.”
“This way?” Betty asked as she followed Brandy’s directions and rounded the counter. “My, my, it’s something back here what with all the cakes and pies. Why, it’s like I’ve died and gone to that great big Dolly Madison in the sky…” Her words faded as she disappeared into the back room.
Brandy turned back in time to see yet another handful of seniors stroll past the bakery, headed down the street to Brandy’s competition.
While she’d seen the breakfast rush slowly dissipate, watching the same thing happen to her Sunday brunch bunch made her feel even worse.
And that much more determined to get her mash into the hands of Kenny Roy’s moonshine connection before her meeting with Foggy Bottom Distillers on Friday.
After Betty returned and Brandy got her set up with a cup of tea, a blueberry muffin, and two Tums, she spent the next few hours dealing with the handful of customers that found their way into the bakery.
It seemed the girls’ choir wasn’t half as excited about the chocolate cupcakes as they were to try the chocolate-filled doughnuts down the street. Ditto for the men’s prayer circle, who traded their usual apple bread to stroll past toward the doughnut shop. Brandy fought down the anxiety and tried to keep her thoughts positive, but by the time she handed over things to Ellie and grabbed her keys and purse, she was sucking down a few Tums herself.
Forget waiting around for Kenny Roy to call her. She needed to make something happen. And she needed to do it now.
* * *
“Do you know what time it is?” Kenny Roy demanded when he hauled open the door and found Brandy standing on his doorstep.
“Three o’clock on Sunday afternoon,” she told him, her gaze shooting past to the dim interior of the house and the shadow stretched out on his living room couch.
“You have to be shittin’ me,” he growled, glancing up and shielding his eyes from the sun that blazed overhead. “Where do you get off banging on a man’s door at all hours of the morning?”
“Again, it’s not morning and I wouldn’t have to bang if you had opened the first hundred times that I knocked.”
“Damn nut job,” he muttered, moving to close the door.
But Brandy was quicker. She shoved her foot in the open doorway and bit back a wince when the wood hit her big toe. “We need to talk.”
“I told you I’d get back to you.”
“That’s not good enough.” She pushed her foot even more firmly in place, and Kenny Roy frowned.
“You know I could call the cops.”
“Please do. I’m sure they’d be very interested in that garden in your bathtub,” she murmured, remembering Tyler’s words from the night before. “Listen, all I want is a name. You don’t even have to talk to them for me. I’ll do that myself. I just need to know who.” When he hesitated, she added, “They’ll never know I heard it from you.”
“Really? And how do you figure that?”
“It’s a small town. I come from a long line of moonshiners. I could have gotten their name from my granddad. He knew every moonshiner in the county, and then some. He could have given me the name and I just so happened to track them down myself.”
“That’s real weak.”
“True, but it could work.”
He seemed to think. “And if it doesn’t?”
“They still won’t know it’s you. My lips are sealed. I swear.”
He wiped a hand over his bleary eyes and she knew he was at least considering it.
“You like muffins?” she added, desperate to tip the scale in her favor.
He seemed to think. “I could eat a muffin every now and then,” he finally said.
“What if I can guarantee you free muffins every day for an entire month?”
“Throw in a few of those triple chunk brownies and you’ve got yourself a deal.” She nodded and he added, “The Silver Dollar.”
“That’s a bar, not a person.”
“It’s all I got. My connection makes a delivery at the Silver Dollar out on Route Six every Sunday afternoon just before sundown. The bar’s closed then, but the back door is open. He stops off and drops off. He’s the only guy I know personally in the operation. You talk to him and he can hook you up.” He eyed her. “That, or mess you up. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“Don’t worry about me.” It’s not as if she meant to go in with guns blazing. No, she was just going to watch and gather some information. Then she would pick and choose a time to approach and plead her case.
“That was some really good hooch you came up with,” he added. “I hope it’s worth all the trouble you’re about to find yourself in.”
“Me, too,” Brandy murmured as she descended the porch steps, walked over to old Bertha, and headed back to the bakery.
She spent the next few hours closing down shop for the day, prepping for Monday morning and listening to Ellie talk about how she wasn’t in any way attracted to Tyler McCall’s hot-looking rodeo buddy.
She’d finally broken down and mentioned that her hookup had been none other than the cowboy they’d seen with Tyler at Kenny Roy’s that first night.
“I mean, I knew he was good looking, but he was even hotter when I got an up-close-and-personal look,” Ellie said. “I was like, wow you’re something, and he was like, wow, so are you, and bam, the next thing I know we were going at it like a couple of rabbits.”
“Too much information,” Brandy told the woman, placing a tray of bread loaves in the warmer before checking the timer on the oven.
“I know, I know. I don’t usually kiss and tell, but this is different. I just can’t help myself. Do you know I even mentioned him to Betty when she was poking around back here looking for the bathroom? Spent ten minutes listening to her tell me what a hellcat she used to be back in the day before her stomach started acting up and she got bunions.” Ellie shook her head. “What bunions have to do with a sex drive, I’ll never know, but Miss Betty seemed convinced there is a direct correlation.”
“That’s crazy.”
“Exactly, which shows you just what a number this guy is doing on me. I was actually taking pointers from Miss Betty. I don’t know, I just feel like the more I talk it out, the more I can understand why I can’t stop talking about him.”
“Maybe you’re talking about him because you like him.”
“Are you freaking serious?” Ellie gave her a horrified look. “I don’t even know him. It was just a one-night stand.”
Sometimes that’s all it takes.
The thought floated through her mind before she could stop it. A ludicrous notion because it most certainly took more than one night of sex—or even a few dozen—to really know someone.
It took talking, connecting.
Which she’d done last night with Tyler McCall.
“I really need to get out of here,” she blurted. To get her mind on something more productive. “Lock up for me?” she asked Ellie.
“You know it. Say, maybe I can see what Lila thinks.” She turned toward the back room where the short, squat woman stood icing coffee cakes for the following morning. Lila was a no-frills kind of girl when it came to looks. Her hair lay straight and limp, her face free of makeup. “Not that she has lots of experience, but it doesn’t hurt to ask.” Ellie headed for the kitchen, and Brandy grabbed her purse.
She pushed Tyler to the farthest corner of her mind and walked out to her car.
The sun was just shy of dropping below the horizon when she pulled up to the Silver Dollar Bar & Grill.