I expected him to leave me the bakery, like he always said he would, but I keep that to myself. He probably decided I was thriving up in New York and didn’t need it. After all, I never gave him a reason to believe otherwise.
“I could hire you to run the place,” King says, but before I can even consider the idea, he cringes. “I can’t afford you. Not without dipping into my profits from the surf shack, and…” His eyes roll over me. “Not doing that. You’re too fancy.”
I can’t decide if his assessment of me is a compliment or an insult. “I can lower my salary expectations.” But even as I say that, my mind starts running through all the updates the bakery needs to be successful. I’m pretty sure the salary from working a whole Willow Cove tourist summer would barely be enough to cover the costs of the badly needed renovations. There’s no way I could afford making those changes unless I’m actually owning the place and have the profits at my disposal.
King narrows his eyes. Back when we were dating, he had this habit of reading my mind. It was always cute and endearing, but right now I don’t like the way he seems to be seeing the dollar signs running through my head.
“Can’t you find some sort of loophole?” I ask weakly.
He huffs a laugh. “So you can change everything about Uncle Bill’s bakery?”
See? Mind reader. I grimace. “I wouldn’t change everything.”
“That’s not what you said to your friend this morning.” Rolling his eyes, he heads back inside and drops down to continue folding the shirts I left behind.
I’m not making myself sound great. I know that. But I spent the last year butting heads with Lane, trying to make our relationship work, until he decided our personalities clashed as much as our opinions on the best way to make buttercream. He was too hard-headed to listen to my ideas, and I endured it because I thought our relationship, both romantic and professional, was worth the concessions. It clearly wasn’t.
He not only dumped me on TV but also strong-armed me out of the bakery franchise on the technicality that it’s his name on the ownership documents.
I need this. Working with Bill at Kingston’s over the summer after I turned thirteen was the first time I ever felt like I had any sort of say in my life. One, my parents were busy with their research and didn’t ask how I spent my days when we were in Willow Cove, so they had no idea I was in Bill’s kitchen. And two, baking was something I was good at. Something that brought excitement to my life. The rest of the year was all about school and grades, but summer?
I took that passion and did everything I could to make a career out of it, and Lane took it all away in a moment, pulling the rug out from under me.
No one can plan for something like that.
King and I spend the next few minutes folding shirts in silence, the air thick with tension. I’m still not completely over the shock of seeing full-blown adult King, and I’m sure he wasn’t planning on running into me, of all people. I don’t know what to do now or where to go, and I hate that. I like having a plan. A direction. This compass-less life I’ve been living the last couple of weeks has left me feeling like I’m drifting out to sea.
And I’m terrified of the ocean.
“I wish there was a way to help you,” King says after a while. It seems to take a lot out of him to speak the words out loud, but his mama raised him to be a good man. Now that we’ve settled a bit, it’s obvious that that side of him is coming out. “But Uncle Bill was clear in his will. It has to stay with the Kingstons.”
“But you’re the only…” My words trail off as the realization hits me way later than it should have. He’s the only Kingston left. First his dad, then his mom, and now Bill…
King is entirely alone.
He looks up and meets my gaze. There’s sadness in his expression, but it’s not like my epiphany is news to him. He knows very well that he’s alone, and he almost seems to be okay with it. I’m not sure if I believe him. I knew him when his mom died, and I know how deeply he feels things. Losing Bill must have hurt him so much.
“Sorry,” I whisper.
He shrugs. “If I could give you the bakery, I would, but short of adopting you into the family, I don’t—”
“That’s it!” I accidentally toss a shirt at him again because of the idea that just popped into my head.
He catches it, nothing but confusion in his face. “What? Adopt you? Last I checked, you’re a grown woman with two very much alive parents, Georgie.”
Maybe there’s a way we can both win here, at least temporarily. He wouldn’t have to be so alone for a while. “Not adopt, per se, but similar. It’s a way to get me into the Kingston family.”
He’s still not getting it, one thick eyebrow high on his forehead as he stares at me like I’m talking crazy.
I am talking crazy. Absolutely. But it might be my best option, and I don’t have a lot of those.
I see the exact moment it clicks, and while I expected him to dislike the idea, I hoped for better than complete and utter disgust. His eyebrows shoot down, his jaw clenches, and for half a second he looks like he might throw up.
Then his features soften as he calms. Considers. And I hold my breath as he opens his mouth to say, “Absolutely not. If you wanted to marry me, you should have done that ten years ago. Time for you to leave.”
Chapter Three
King
She doesn’t leave. Not that I expected her to. But I hoped. Oh, how I hoped.
Getting to my feet, I shove t-shirts anywhere they’ll fit and move to the other side of the counter to put something between me and Georgie.
As I knew she would, Georgie follows, rambling as she goes. “Okay, but it would work! Just listen. If we get married, I’ll technically be family, and then you could sell me the bakery. It’ll be like cheating the dumb system, and we don’t even have to do anything other than get the marriage license to make it all legal. I would be a Kingston, and you wouldn’t be alone, and everyone wins. We get married, transfer the bakery to me, and then we get divorced. Simple!”
There is nothing simple about it. “You want to get married so you can buy a bakery. Do you have any idea how crazy that sounds?”
“People get married for far less.”
“Ha!”
Today has been one nightmare after another, and it’s not even one o’clock. It’d be really nice if I could wake up and discover it’s one in the morning and I still have a couple hours to sleep before I have to be at the bakery. And hopefully then I wouldn’t burn several batches of cookies because I’m so distracted by Georgie’s sudden appearance that I can’t concentrate on anything right now. It’s like my mind is stuck inside a wave that won’t stop rolling. Everything is foggy, and I’ve got a monster headache that popped up when I pulled yet another blackened batch of cookies out of the oven two hours ago.
Meg looked like she was reconsidering her interest in me by that point, which isn’t exactly a bad thing. Not having cookies to sell is a bad thing, and a few of the locals weren’t pleased when they stopped by and only had lumpy muffins to choose from. I’ve been lucky that they’re still willing to show up every day even though Meg and I are nowhere close to Bill’s equals in the kitchen, but today may have driven them all off.
My stomach churns thinking about the bakery falling to ruin because I can’t keep it alive.
