From Scratch Read Free Page B

Maggie’s hips as she swayed with the beat. She had an unconscious grace he hadn’t noticed before, or rather, he hadn’t let himself notice.
    From the first moment she walked through the door with his childhood friend, Jane, to enquire about renting the empty building, Sean was struck with her unique beauty and presence. Her smile and unabashed enthusiasm for her new business kindled a desire he could not fan to flame. Instead, he quickly shoved his instant attraction to her onto the back shelf of one of the many cubicles in his brain and plopped her into a folder marked business associate. He was her landlord. He wasn’t her friend. He couldn’t be her boyfriend.
    They were in a business relationship and that was all it should ever be. His brothers trusted him to run their joint properties with professionalism. They would not appreciate him making nice with the pretty baker. Actually, they wouldn’t care about the landlord-tenant issue and would probably love for him to make nice with the pretty baker. Then they would have something to hold over his head. One could not underestimate the power of a good burn amongst brothers regardless that two out of three were in their thirties. That’s what brothers did. Hassle. Tease. Burn. They might be too old for noogies behind the barn, but they would never be too old for sibling harassment.
    Sean wasn’t about to give the two yahoos he shared DNA with any softballs to pummel over the back fence of his ego. And yet, at this particular moment, watching Maggie clean up the kitchen, he was having a hard time remembering all of his sound reasons for his not-mixing-business-with-pleasure rule.
    But whether or not he should date Ms. McKitrick wasn’t why he was here tonight.
    He shifted his focus to the parking lot. He needed to talk to Maggie about upping the security, maybe putting in a couple cameras or motion detectors that would be directly tied to the station. He began mentally making a list of the necessary improvements to ensure her safety. It wasn’t just because she was renting his place. He’d feel the same need to protect any of his residents. He was the police chief. This was his town. The safety and security of all of the residents was paramount. Sure, that was it.
    ~*~
    Maggie lifted a soapy hand and reached for a scrub pad. The faint whirring sound of the drill laid over the woeful tones of a trumpet solo. Jazz warmed her soul. The woeful tunes were an outward voice to her inward pain and nothing she had musically experienced before or since rivaled the peace she found in the melodies. She squeezed the scrub pad to eliminate some of the excess water before attacking the burned caramel coating a large cookie sheet. She was thankful to have the culinary interns, but they were both still learning her ovens and their timing was not quite right.
    Today, Anna-Beth, a perky twenty-two-year-old from Portsmouth, Ohio, tried to make a new recipe she was developing for caramel apple cookies. She misjudged the temperature in the convection oven and the cookies ended up as a giant, charred slab of caramel without a speck of recognizable apple to be found. Nothing had been salvageable. Instead of the chewy, apple goodness Anna-Beth promised, Maggie was left with pruned fingers as she attempted to rescue the sheet, scrubbing the pan back to shiny.
    The sound of steel wool against metal scraped at her ears, but she released a dreamy sigh. She was living her dream. She owned her own business in a town that was starting to feel like home. Life was peaceful and calm with the exceptions of a certain landlord and unexpected envelopes.
    When she opened the package from Florida that morning, her mind had skittered through various exit strategies. She always had a plan. She had multiple. Today’s message sent her from high level future concepts into deep dive tactics. She’d run dozens of scenarios through her mind before noon, all while playing happy hostess to her unaware patrons.