“Hag,” he called in the direction of the door.
“Curmudgeon!”
Another jangle of the bell and she was gone too, leaving him to his thoughts. Thank Christ. As he cranked on the industrial stand mixer to cream the butter and sugar, he considered the audiobook he’d begun playing before the shop opened that day.
A new release by Sadie Brazen:My Kangaroo, My Kidnapper: A Dark Shifter Romance. Which was an inexplicable title, since the main woman in the story, Riley, had gotten kidnapped in the sunshine in fuckingAustralia, so how dark could it be?
Molly had been in rare form, though, before he’d reluctantly switched over to jazz that morning. Breathless and convincinglyterrified—with just theslightesthint of horny—as the kickboxer-kangaroo asshole shoved Riley in his pouch and hopped off.
Molly’s Australian accent was spot-on too. No surprise there. But was that marsupial motherfucker meant to be the hero? Because... no. Hell, no. Didn’t matter what special features the prick’s prick had. Dude was intoabduction.
That Sadie Brazen had a wild goddamn imagination.
Must be why people read so many novels, he guessed. Because real life was so predictable. Few kangaroo kidnappings. Fewer guppy-men with fins on their dicks.
Besides a September flu outbreak, nothing unexpected ever happened in Harlot’s Bay. Especially not to a cranky, solitary bastard like him. And halle-fucking-lujah for that, right?
Two days later, sitting at the kitchen table of her small LA bungalow, Molly pushed the power button on her laptop and waited for the endless updates to finish loading.
Her shoulders hurt, and she rolled them. Rotated her stiff neck. Drank her tea with honey, doing her best to stay present in the moment. Be mindful. Get hygge with it.
Any minute now, the relaxation would begin.
Any... minute... now.
She’d slept an hour longer than usual, as befitted the first morning of a four-week vacation. Since workers would be arriving tomorrow to address the roof and plumbing issues—guided by a casual friend of hers who happened to be a contractor—best to take advantage of the last peaceful day she’d have for a while.
Those upcoming home renos were, of course, the entire reason she was taking such a lengthy vacation in the first place. An audiobook narrator neededquietabove all else, and even the best in-home recording studio couldn’t entirely eliminate the sounds of hammering and power tools buzzing and whirring and squealing through metal and wood.
She’d put off the repairs too long. They’d become urgent and overwhelming and freaking expensive, and she wanted to get them done in one fell swoop so she could ignore the entire issue of renovations again for another decade or two afterward.
Something else would probably go wrong the week after the workers left, though. Houses built an entire century ago needed continual upkeep to stay functional. Too bad she loved hers so much. The location at the foot of the Hollywood Hills—well, more like the shin; getting to her home required surmounting a brief but steep incline—was convenient and gorgeous, and even the constant traffic wasn’t particularly bothersome for someone whose commute was approximately twelve feet from her bedroom.
Moving would require disassembling and rebuilding her studio elsewhere. And wherever she went wouldn’t contain the memories this home did. Her beloved grandparents had lived here for over fifty years, her one geographical constant in a rootless life. They hadn’t left until a decade ago, when they’d sold the home to her for far below market value and moved to a much cheaper, equally sunny town in Arizona.
Blasting her from this place would require...
She didn’t know what would suffice. Nothing had done the trick so far. Not the upkeep costs. Not the bitter memories of her failed marriage contained within these walls. Not even her doctor’swarning that she needed to eliminate sources of tension however she could, because the insomnia was getting worse, her blood pressure kept creeping up, and her headaches had turned increasingly vicious.
“Think about moving somewhere with less upkeep,” Dr. Janus had urged at Molly’s last checkup. “And if you won’t do that, at least go outside more. Have a picnic in Griffith Park. Walk along Venice Beach. Sit in your backyard and try to whistle with a blade of grass. Whatever it takes to lower your stress level.”
Only mountain goats would find her backyard a comfortable seating location. Besides— “Are you telling me to literally touch grass?”
“I suppose I am.” Looking pleased with herself, the doctor straightened her shoulders. “It’s all very Gen Z of me. My daughter would be proud.”
“No, she wouldn’t.” Molly could safely say that, having met the preteen at Vons when the young woman was reluctantly accompanying her mother on a grocery run.
“No, she wouldn’t,” Dr. Janus agreed. “But I’ll tell her anyway. I enjoy making her roll her eyes and call mecringe.”
“That’s fair,” Molly conceded, and the appointment had ended without an actual, definite plan for stress reduction. Which hadn’t dismayed her in the least.
As it turned out, the thought of planning for stress reduction caused stress too. Irony!
Hopefully she wouldn’t even need a plan, since a heady, vacation-induced rush of relaxation should be arriving and flushing away all the cortisol in her system. Any minute now.
Another sip of tea didn’t do it, sadly. Neither did a few more rotations of her neck.
Conceding defeat, she glanced down at her laptop. There. Finally. The updates were complete, and she could check her email. There shouldn’t be any urgent messages, given her empty September calendar. But maybe a publisher would write to book one of her two remaining free slots in December, or—
