Sweet Dreams (The Bakery Romance Series Book 3) Read Free Page A

the day’s income.
    His friend Rhea had sent a plant to his house and had called him the previous night. Speaking to her had been nice. Her twins were two years old and her third was still an infant. She could only talk for a few minutes but had urged him to call if he needed anything. His buddy Toni had also called him from Chicago. Since her own father had passed the previous year, she could relate to what he was going through. He’d bonded with Toni and Rhea at a food conference four years ago. They texted and emailed one another regularly. They also kept in touch via Facebook. He’d found that since both of his friends had gotten married, their texts and emails were not so frequent.
    He’d also seen a lot of his relatives the previous day. His Aunt June had shown up at the funeral and she’d come to his house for the meal afterwards. He had not seen his Aunt June since he was a teenager when she’d come up for his mom’s funeral. It’d been weird seeing her after so many years. She looked so much like his mom, and sounded like her too. They had not seen her very much because she’d married a German and had moved out of the country. She sent a Christmas card every year, and that was about it. He’d told her that the twins had left early, confided about Leon’s drunken rage. She’d been concerned and worried about the twins. She’d promised to visit them before she took her flight home the next day. After all these years, he still missed his mom, and now his dad was gone, too. It was kind of hard to believe at thirty-three, both of his parents were dead. He was now an orphan. He shook the depressing thought away.
    He forced his thoughts back to his workday. As he’d been baking, memories of his dad haunted him. He’d found himself stopping as he’d mixed pie dough or cake batter, recalling how his father used to continuously give baking advice as they’d gone through their day.
    The noise from a loud engine broke his moment of solitude. He opened his eyes, turned and glanced across the street. A large orange, black and silver moving van backed into Adrian’s driveway.
    He opened his car door and exited his vehicle. A petite, dark-skinned woman got out of the van. She wiped her brow, oblivious to his scrutiny. She opened the back of the moving van. Seconds later, she hefted a box from the van and approached Adrian’s porch. She dropped the container on the ground, pulled a key from the pocket of her jeans and unlocked and opened the front door. She then propped Adrian’s door open with a chair.
    This had to be Adrian’s cousin. He checked his watch again. Adrian wouldn’t be home from work for another two hours. The woman hefted another box, turned, and spotted him. Their eyes locked like two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. He waved. She obviously couldn’t wave back since her arms were full. He sprinted across the street, hearing a dog bark in the distance while birds chanted from the sky. He approached the woman, his arms outstretched, ready to take her load. “You need some help?”
    She clutched her box, shook her head. “No, I’m fine. I’m moving in with your neighbor.”
    “I know. Let me help you.”
    Again, she shook her head. Sweat popped from her brow and her arms shook from the weight of the box. “No, I’ve got it.”
    He grabbed the box from her slim arms and hefted it into the house. “Where do you want this?”
    She narrowed her eyes. “I don’t even know who you are and you’re going into my cousin’s house with my stuff?” Her smooth voice brimmed with annoyance.
    He took a deep breath. Maybe he should just leave this, petite, stubborn woman to unload the whole truck by herself. He eyed the countless boxes in the back of the van. He dropped the box into the doorway as a bead of sweat rolled down his cheek and irritated his aching jaw. He probably looked awful. He wasn’t in the best of moods, and this woman didn’t know who he was. He walked toward her, offered his hand.