My stomach clenched reflexively, the way it always did when I heard that, but Bobby was still talking.
He jerked his thumb in the direction of the pumps and grinned. “You can help me get Morris into the front of my truck, and I’ll drive him back to town.”
And just like that, I could breathe again. Because this was Bobby, and he wassafe.
“Yeah, no problem,” I said with a laugh and followed him outside.
CHAPTER 4
LEE
“Goose Run, though?” Tyler asked doubtfully as we turned off the highway at the gas station and headed for the town itself.
“Wait until you see the place,” I assured him. “And okay, yeah, the owner’s a little quirky, but the money’s better than at South Hill. Plus it comes with good health insurance.”
The health insurance was the real win for Tyler since he and his wife were currently trying for a baby. It was still a hell of a gamble, though, because who knew if the bakery would even be in business six months from now? But when Bobby Merritt had asked me if there was anyone I wanted to bring on board to help run his new bakery, I’d thought of Tyler straight up. He knew his way around a kitchen, he was a good guy, and we worked well together. Plus he also thought Henry at South Hill Bakery was an asshole.
I’d already been to Goose Run once to scope the bakery out and set up the day after we got back from vacation, and I couldn’t help glance over at Tyler as I drove, waiting to see if his first impressions of the town were about the same as mine.
From his increasingly dubious looks, they were. The furrow in his brow got deeper with every rusted-out car body we passed on the side of the road.
So the drive into Goose Run wasn’t exactly picturesque, but the town itself looked nice enough, especially as we got closer to Main Street. All the stores must have been built about a century ago, with their brick facades and awnings. We passed a pretty wooden church painted white, and there were signs that the little town was actually flourishing—there were shrubs and flowers in planter boxes along the sidewalk, what looked like a new children’s playground being installed in a little park by the church, and a couple of guys in a truck doing roadwork by the elementary school. Also there was activity in Main Street—most of it was open for business. There were a few empty stores, but they all had SOLD stickers plastered on their doors and windows. Unlike so many small towns in the area, Goose Run looked like it might be heading in the right direction instead of the wrong one.
“Okay,” Tyler said, nodding as I pulled into the small parking lot behind the bakery. “Okay, I don’thatewhat I’ve seen so far.”
“It gets better,” I said with a grin.
We walked around the front, and Tyler blinked at the sign hanging from the awning and then at me. “Gobble de Goose? Seriously?”
I unlocked the door and let us in.
The front of the store was bright and airy. We weren’t a sit-down cafe, but there were a couple of tables and chairs near the long windows that looked out onto Main Street so the customers had somewhere to wait for their drinks, and the entire back wall was taken up by the counter and the empty display cases. The front of the counter was covered in tiny bright tiles, and the top was polished wood. It looked modern and sleek. The first time I’d visited, there’d been an empty space for the point-of-saleterminal, but there was a screen there now, and it looked hooked up and ready to go. The espresso machine was new too. It was a gleaming chrome monster of a thing with more buttons than NASA’s launch control center, and it was magnificent. Bobby had assured me he’d hired the best barista he knew to run it.
“Come on through,” I said to Tyler, and we stepped around the back of the counter and into the kitchen.
“Holy shit,” Tyler said. “Holyshit.”
That had been my reaction too, because I’d never seen a work area so new and shiny. The area wasn’t super big, but the light bounced off what felt like a million stainless steel surfaces—a pair of brand-new prep tables gleamed, as did the large industrial sinks over in one corner, the two stand mixers, and the mid-sized floor mixer that was big enough to run a large dough. There was a giant walk-in fridge, rows and rows of sheet pans stacked and gleaming in their rolling racks, and a pile of bread pans waiting to be lined and prepped for baking. There was an industrial-sized gas range that had never been used. Both the rack oven and the deck oven were pristine and flawless, without so much as a fingerprint on their surfaces. The whole place looked like an equipment showroom. It was almost blinding.
“Is this stuff all… new?” Tyler asked reverently. “Like,newnew?”
“Yep,” I said.
“Okay, so is this Bobby guy insane or just really rich? Because nobody buys new stuff,” Tyler said.
I’d asked myself the same thing. “Both, I think? I tried to tell him that everyone uses refurbished equipment, but he insisted on a completely new setup.”
I’d only known the guy for a hot minute, but I’d already figured out that once Bobby got an idea it was best to just go along for the ride. And hey, Bobby obviously had money and avision, and if he wanted to put both those things into a bakery and was willing to let me have control, who was I to argue? And hewaswilling to let me take control, was the thing. One of the first things he’d said to me when he’d offered me the job was, “I don’t know a darn thing about running a bakery, but I don’t need to. I just need to know ifyoucan run it.”
“Sure,” I’d said, with a confidence that was eighty percent optimism and twenty percent newly unemployed desperation. “Give me some decent staff and equipment, and I’ll make sure it’s a success.”
And just like that, I was the new manager of Gobble de Goose. A week later I still couldn’t quite believe it, and I was now seeing that disbelief reflected in Tyler’s eyes.
“This is fuckingamazing,” he said and gave a low whistle. “Jesus, Lee.” He headed for the walk-in and opened the door. “Holy shit.”
Yeah, the walk-in was stocked already, and the flour that Bobby had ordered on my recommendation? None of the generic shit that we’d used back in South Hill. This was premium cake flour, the stuff that Henry had refused to buy because “nobody can tell the difference.”
Bullshit.
