“Thank you.” Come to think of it, Claire hadn’t eaten. She took the bag and opened it. “Ham and swiss? My favorite. You want half?”
Jane shook her head. “I ate at the inn.”
“Knock, knock.” Maxi opened the screen door, careful to latch it behind her. “I brought you a salad.”
“Thanks.” Claire’s answer was muffled since her mouth was full of sandwich.
“Oh, I see you’re already eating.” Maxi smiled at Jane. “Great minds think alike.”
“I appreciate them both.” Claire put the salad on the table and took another bite of the sandwich. While still chewing, she grabbed the bowls of frosting and set them on the table next to their respective cupcakes. “Okay, I figure we can each take a flavor. Maxi you get lemon raspberry, Jane you can do the red velvet, and I’ll do the chocolate mocha. I use a pastry bag so that the frosting is a big thick swirl.”
Claire loaded her bag and demonstrated how to frost the cupcakes, twirling the bag so the frosting spiraled up in a thick swirl then pulling the top to a peak. “Got it?”
“Yep.”
Claire watched them focus intently on the task. Jane was more meticulous, calculating the swirl so that it was precisely even. Maxi more creative. Claire started in on her own.
“I passed Hailey on the way down here. She’s still driving that car,” Maxi said.
“I asked her about it.” Claire set her cupcake down and picked up the next. “She’s just waiting for hers to be fixed.”
“That’s not what Frank told me.” Jane looked at Claire over the top of her cupcake. “He said her car needed a lot of work, and she can’t afford it. That’s her grandfather’s car she’s driving now.”
Claire frowned. “Why would she tell me that she was just waiting for Frank to fix it?”
“Pride. And maybe she didn’t want to worry you with all this going on.” Maxi gestured to the cupcakes spread out on the table.
Worry bloomed in Claire’s gut. If Hailey was concerned, did that mean she thought Sandcastles might lose business? For Claire to worry was one thing, but if others did too…
“Well, nothing to worry about at all now that you’re teaming up with Bradford Breads. That must be a relief,” Jane said.
Claire’s fist tightened, and frosting surged out of the bag in an unsightly blob. “Where did you hear that?”
She put the unsalvageable cupcake down on the table.Great, one less piece of inventory for the sale.
The messy frosting blob didn’t seem to bother Maxi though. She pulled it in front of her and started peeling off the paper wrapper. “We get to eat the mistakes, right?”
“Yes, eat the mistakes,” Claire said to Maxi, but her eyes were on Jane, who now looked confused.
“Rob told me. He came over to Tides earlier.”
Interesting, now why would he do that if he wasn’t supplying them with bread? Claire’s gaze fell on the flyers.Aha!He’d probably brought her a flyer for his shop, likely trying to get his posted in front of Claire’s.
Claire grabbed the flyers from the counter and handed them to Jane. “Here are those flyers. I suppose you already put the one for Bradford Breads up.”
Jane frowned. “Huh?”
“You said Rob was at Tides…”
“He had promised to bring the pamphlets on the memory care facilities the other day, so he was dropping them off. He didn’t bring any flyers though.” Jane took the flyers from Claire.
“And he said we were working together?” How presumptuous. Claire specifically remembered saying she would think about it before she’d turned him down outright earlier in the day. He must have visited Tides before that.
Jane scrunched her nose. “No, not exactly. He said that he’d offered and you seemed as though you were coming around to the idea.”
Claire crossed her arms. “Well, I’m not.”
“Why not?”
