Total pages in book: 92
Estimated words: 89238 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 446(@200wpm)___ 357(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89238 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 446(@200wpm)___ 357(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
I answer him from the heart. “I do. But it doesn’t really matter. I don’t have a good track record with romance. When I go all in, everything falls apart. And you know it.”
I put my heart on the line with Kylie and got two hearts broken in return. And well, then there’s Hailey. Without her I would never have the love of my life in Eliza.
But the dirty little secret of my young marriage to Hailey—we were both twenty-one when I got her pregnant, and then married a week after we found out in a shotgun wedding—was that less than two years after the city hall I do, we were in the process of splitting up. When she died of a brain aneurysm, no one knew we were falling apart. Her sister didn’t know. Her parents didn’t know. My family didn’t know. Hell, I didn’t even tell Zane. Only my shrink.
Never her family.
They don’t know she was struggling as a new mom. They don’t know her postpartum blues hit her hard and for months. They don’t know she was ready to give me primary custody and that she needed a break. They don’t know any of that because none of that matters now that she’s dead.
I just don’t see how romance—big romance that you throw your heart into—can lead to anything that lasts.
21
A SWEET TOOTH
Gage
On Friday afternoon, there’s barely a second to ask if everything’s okay when Elodie and Amanda arrive at my place. My grandma offered to make chocolate chip cookies with them, then take them to the movies later since we’ll be busy at Special Edition all night.
Eliza’s waiting at the door, both for Amanda and to give Elodie the gift. The second Amanda’s inside, pressing a contraband bar of chocolate into Eliza’s pocket—which I’m pretty sure they’re going to use in Grandma’s cookies, along with the secret ingredient of coconut—Eliza hands Elodie a gift bag. “Good luck tonight. This is for you.”
Elodie peeks inside, then smiles and sniffs. “Grapefruit soap. I love it. And way better than a chocolate soap someone once gave me.”
Eliza’s nose crinkles. “Eww. Chocolate is for eating, not cleaning.”
“Exactly. But grapefruit? That’s for eating and cleaning,” Elodie adds, and she sounds like Mary Poppins, magical and bright, and I shouldn’t love that. Really, I shouldn’t. She’s not a delightful, fictional nanny. She’s a very real woman with very real needs—one who I am really in business with now.
And I can’t get in the way of her paying her bills and loans and putting Amanda through school.
Before we take off, Elodie tugs my grandma aside at the door. “Amanda’s a vegetarian. She doesn’t eat any meat at all. But she’s obsessed with cheese.”
“Well, so am I,” Grams says. “We’ll get along fine.”
We leave my house, heading for her car where she sets the soap bar in the back seat. As she drives, she’s peppy along the way, chatting about a slight increase in traffic at Elodie’s Chocolates today with some of the social buzz about the pop-up. She mentions that the woman who owns the perfume shop next door said her business has gone up too, and isn’t that great?
But Elodie’s almost too animated. Too Mary Poppins.
When there’s a break in her chatter, I say, “Hey.”
“Yes?”
“Are we good?”
She laughs, answering rhetorically with, “Why would we not be good? Now, I’ve got the playlists ready, and I need to do some chocolate prep, and I wrote out a list of—”
“Elodie, are you pissed at me?”
She slows at a light on Van Ness, tossing me a blank glance. “No. I don’t even know why you think I would be.”
“Because—”
But I stop myself. I don’t want to be presumptuous. I don’t want to be that guy who acts like he expects a woman to be out of her mind when he says we can’t do this. When we both said we can’t do this.
“Because that’s great,” I backtrack, then talk business the rest of the way.
Several hours later, I’m amped up from the nonstop lines, the chatter, and the vibe of a packed house. A tiny house, sure. But a packed one nonetheless, with crowds spilling into the courtyard, including Loretta who brought a pack of women friends who all left big tips.
It’s just after nine, and I’m mixing a Blushing Mimosa—orange juice, pineapple juice, grenadine, and champagne—and Elodie is plating some of the chocolate-covered cherries along with the raspberry chocolates.
“We’re almost out of the popping raspberries,” she whispers out of the side of her mouth, concern in her tone. “I don’t want to have to close early. We said we’d be open till ten.”
“Good problem to have,” I say as I fill a flute with the juice mixture, then top it with champagne.
“That’s not what I’m saying,” she whispers, her brow knitting.
“But the lines, Elodie. Look at the lines,” I whisper, nodding toward the crowd snaking outside the shop. “And they’re all posting. They are doing the work for us.”