Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 68515 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68515 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
So that was what we did.
He made cookies, muffins, and pies while I made quiches, baked his muffins, and finished off his pies.
“Are you sure, with the snow and ice coming, that you even want to make food for tomorrow?” I asked curiously.
Jeremiah shrugged. “If it’s one thing that I know, it’s that if I can get to the shop tomorrow, they’ll come. No joke, I’ve had them lined out the door during lightning storms, heat waves, and tornado weather. If they can get here, they’ll come.”
I sighed and looked out the back window that showed the alley outside and shook my head. “Do you even want to be here tomorrow?”
He paused in his kneading of dough and said, “I don’t know.”
I smiled. “My guess is even if you want to be here tomorrow, the power will be off. And you can’t be here without power. It’ll be too cold.”
He muttered something under his breath that sounded like ‘shit,’ and I looked at him curiously.
“If the power is supposed to go out, I’ll be required to go to the power company tomorrow,” he muttered. “Or tonight, if it gets that bad. But I’ll be the last one they call.”
I looked at him curiously. “You’re a lineman, too?”
“Started out as a lineman,” he answered. “Actually, to be truthful, I started out with electrical work in the Marines. I moved from that home, got a job as a lineman, then met Rachel. When I was established enough with my job, using some of Rachel’s dad’s money, we started the power company. That’s why she got to stay on, for the most part. Her dad’s money being the seed money that started the business.”
“Ahh,” I said. “So pretty much, what I’m understanding is unless there’s some divine miracle, you’re going to have to be on call for shit to hit the fan tonight. And most likely, you won’t even be here tomorrow to open?”
He grumbled something that I didn’t quite catch, then said, “Sounds like it.”
I put the next pie into the oven, started working on cutting out shapes from the cookie dough, then said, “Why are you at the power company anymore if you hate it so much?”
He paused in his kneading, and I waited for him to look up and answer me.
Eventually, he did.
“Because,” he said. “I don’t give up control all that well. The idea of leaving that place to her that I forged out of my own blood, sweat, and tears really tears me up inside. Plus, if given a half a chance, she’d run it into the ground in a month if I let her.”
I shook my head. “Sell it.”
“Can’t.” He picked the dough up, plopped it into an oiled bowl, and moved onto the next ball of dough. “Tried. She refused. We went to court again, and it was told to me by the judge that we would both have to agree to sell.”
That sucked.
“Maybe she will one day,” I thought aloud. “But who’s to say that you have to be on call at all? You do your duties for that company. You come in when needed. But Jeremiah, I don’t know you all that well, but isn’t being a lineman a young man’s game? Excuse me for pointing this out, but you’re not all that young anymore.”
Thank god.
Because I had doubts that I would’ve found him as attractive and interesting had he not been.
“I can’t ask my guys to be out there if I’m not willing to at least be up there with them offering guidance,” he answered. “But you’re right. I don’t actually have to be there with them to guide them.”
I shot him a playful smirk that said, ‘see, I’m chock full of great ideas’ and went back to the baking.
All in all, we got everything done by seven, which was just enough time for him to open up at seven thirty.
“You want a coffee or something?” he asked as he reached behind him and took his apron off.
I glanced his way just as I was placing the last cookie onto the shelf display.
Peter and Noel, the two front house workers for today, were right beside me making the display cases look ‘TikTok’ ready, or so Noel was calling it.
Personally, I’d have thrown those bitches on the pan, shoved them in the display cases, and waited until someone ordered one before taking it off the pan.
But Noel about became apoplectic when I even suggested it.
Jeremiah had looked at me with commiseration as if to say, ‘see what I have to deal with?’ and went about his work.
That was the last thing he’d ‘said’ to me until now.
“If you would start selling coffee,” Peter sang, “then you’d have it all.”
“I don’t do coffee,” Jeremiah said, sounding like he’d had this same argument with Peter before.
And was severely tired of it.