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Jack had insisted on making Damon find a way to get him traded to a team in Florida. I was blown away. He was one of the biggest baseball stars in the country and he was leaving his team for me. Of course, I’d tried talking him out of it and saying I’d find a way to make things work, but he wouldn’t hear it.
Jack and Damon hadn’t been sure if it would work at first, but once the teams found out Jack was willing to take a pay cut, they’d jumped at the possibility of landing him in Florida.
It seemed like two weeks ago, all the obstacles in the world were between us. Now, I kept finding myself expecting to run into some new resistance or problem. Instead, the days just kept rolling by and the only minor worry was Ally Callaway and her recently renewed interest in legally pestering Jack with lawyers and threatening emails.
Jack and I were sitting outside the motel on a pleasantly warm day watching Griff prance around and count like a drill sergeant as Ben busted out a set of pushups. Jack had on his athletic gear because he had to head to the team facility in an hour, and I was in my Castillo’s t-shirt and a pair of jeans.
“Oh,” Jack said. “I talked to the legal team last night. They were able to trace back the program on your laptop. It was some sort of remote access thing, they said. But it led them directly to a guy, which led them to a payment from Ally a few days prior. They think it might be enough to get a judge to throw out the whole case.”
“That’s amazing. But what if it’s not?”
He shrugged. “Then we’ll keep fighting it.” Jack’s legal team had been building a case to show that Ally wasn’t trying to win Ben out of motherly love, but out of a jealous, spiteful urge to punish him for being with me. It wasn’t exactly an easy thing to prove, but it turned out she’d told her lawyers to drop the case once news broke that Jack and I appeared to separate. Then she’d hastily called them back when another story announced we were back together. Combined with hiring a hacker to sabotage our relationship, who knew? Maybe it’d be enough to convince a judge she was batshit crazy.
I leaned my head on Jack’s shoulder. “You know,” I said. “When you told me you were going to set me up with some kind of branding whizz two weeks ago, I thought you meant an actual professional.”
Jack chuckled. “You don’t think Chris Rose has the chops to help you?”
I lifted my head, then gave him a dirty look. “Do you?”
“Chris insisted. But if you don’t like the advice he gives, you don’t have to put it into practice. Just hear him out. He was really excited about getting a chance to help the restaurant.”
I nodded. “Okay. But I’m not crossing my fingers.”Chris walked into the restaurant with a sharp suit and black sunglasses on. His usually wild hair was slicked back in a somewhat neat way, but a few strands had already broken free of his hair product to fall in front of his forehead. He carried a briefcase, which he set down on the table in front of me.
I grinned. “Impressive.”
“Isn’t it?” He asked. He opened the briefcase and pulled out a sandwich, which he took a quick bite of, dusted his hands, and set back inside.
This was going to be interesting.
“Congratulations, by the way.”
Chris smiled wide. “Nobody told me how gross newborns were. But I learned to appreciate the little alien pretty fast.”
I grinned. “Please tell me you didn’t call it an alien in front of Belle.”
“Oh, no. I passed out. When I woke up, they’d cleaned all the blood and goop up. They also put a little hat on her, which really helped.”
Chris cleared his throat, then clapped his hands brisky. “Anyway. Back to business. I’d say we’ve got a branding issue here. A major one.”
“Okay.”
“Castillo’s. The last name thing is… uninspired. Especially when it makes it sound like the place is some run-of-the-mill Italian spot. What you’ve got here is a bakery. You need people driving by to know at a glance what they’re getting into. And, you’re dating a professional athlete. You could make this a bakery slash sports bar.”
I raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Aren’t bakeries usually more of a mom and pop, calm vibe? A sports bar isn’t really what I think of.”
“Exactly. Do you want to be a ‘usually’ kind of place? Or do you want to be something special?”
I had to respect a little bit of the wild energy Chris had. To tell the truth, my parents had been huge sports fans, too, which made the idea probably have more appeal than it should’ve. “Okay. So you’re saying there should be TVs in here and more of a sports theme? What about the name.”
