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)
I knew what she meant.
How did my place get so fucking popular?
“I have no clue, to be honest,” I admitted. “I was actually at one of the lowest points of my life when it happened. I’d just divorced Rachel after fuckin’ years of wanting to. I was miserable at work. Miserable at the bakery because I was so miserable in general. Then one little girl came in. She was twelve. But she had a following on TikTok. Two million followers. All of them watched her play Minecraft or something. Live stream or whatever it’s called. She came in, got herself a cookie thanks to her grandmother who lived here in Intercourse, and loved it so much she made a TikTok about it. One of those weird ones where you record it, and act like it’s gourmet. Literally, it was just a regular ol’ chocolate chip cookie. Hell, back then, I didn’t even make them all that fancy. Didn’t care if they were even circular when I sold them. And she made that TikTok, and holy fuck. Paired with that far away little hidey-hole that some other YouTube star made famous in our small town, everything just went boom. Now I can’t keep enough food in the place. I’m forced to take off Sundays and Mondays to replenish my stock for the week. And now I need more people.”
She handed me a plate full of quiche, with nothing weird in it that looked green—though that might be because I didn’t keep green shit in my house—and four cinnamon rolls.
Like the good boy I was, I started on the quiche first.
See, I’d never been a huge fan of quiche. It was an ‘I’ll eat it if it’s there’ kind of thing for me. Over easy eggs? Loved. Sausage in patty form, or in any form you could form it into? Hell yes.
Quiche? Big fat no.
But the moment I tasted hers, I realized two things. One, it was really fuckin’ good. And two, I apparently hadn’t been eating Gracie’s quiche before I’d formed my opinion.
“We’ll have to call this Gracie’s Quiche on the menu,” I found myself voicing my thoughts. “Is that okay?”
She was silent for so long that I got through the entire fuckin’ slice before I looked up to find her staring at me.
“You’re going to name something after me on the menu?” she asked curiously.
My lips kicked up at the corners. “Yes.”
“After me, though?” she asked, sounding dumbfounded.
“Yes.” I paused. “I’m not usually the type of person that puts a name on something that’s not mine.”
Her eyes were wide, and all of a sudden, those beautiful eyes of hers turned into a turbulent blue-green sea of breathtaking.
“I think, if you don’t mind, I’ll request something else other than my name to be on it,” she said softly. “As much as I’d like that, I wouldn’t like to serve that. And if you ever have me in the front of the house with a nametag on… I wouldn’t be comfortable with it.”
I ate another cinnamon roll practically whole, licking my fingers when I was done.
I heard her breath catch and glanced up in time to see her staring at me like she wanted to devour me.
But, alas, knowing that she was about to be my employee made me stop thinking with my dick.
For at least a few minutes, anyway.
“Do you have some sort of social anxiety thing?” I asked. “Because I hadn’t planned on you ever working in the front of the house. I’ll be paying you quite handsomely to do a lot of the grunt work, i.e., shit I don’t like doing. Like baking quiches and breads. My specialty lies in the cakes and cookie department. But, that’s not to say that I won’t have you baking your own specialty items. Those things that are made with desire are the things that taste the fuckin’ best.”
I saw her nod, then open her mouth, only to close it when I started licking my fingers clean again.
My dick, which I’d just gotten under control, went hard again.
“I heard you were mean,” she said softly.
My lips quirked up. “I think you got the advantage that no other employee or friend got.”
I could see the curiosity on her face as she asked, “How? What do you mean?”
I finished my last bite of cinnamon roll, then tossed the plate to the counter before going to the sink and deftly washing my hands.
All of her pots and pans were now residing in my sink with water in them. But certainly not clean.
That’d be one tick off her perfectness. She didn’t clean them.
I hated doing dishes.
“You got my dick, which you only got because you talked to me about books for an hour before switching to other topics that interested me,” I answered. “None of my other friends or employees have, or will ever, get that.”