Page 5

"Good," he replies, and I focus on him.

"That's all I get?"

His attention shifts to me. "What did you expect?"

"A compliment, maybe," I admit, and he tells me he hasn't reviewed them yet, which irritates me mostly because it's reasonable. He takes the files and begins actually reading them — not flipping through pages or pretending — and the silence stretches while I tap my fingers against the desk and he writes notes with a focused patience.

"What are you writing?" I ask, and his pen pauses.

"Notes," he answers.

"The inspection kind," he adds before I can respond, and I gaze at him long enough that he returns calmly to the paperwork. The man has the personality of a very large brick wall.

When he finishes the records we move into the kitchen, and Ollie notices us immediately — his eyes widening, then narrowing, then widening again in under three seconds before he disappears into the pantry. Coward. The inspection continues through storage shelves, ingredients, equipment, and workstations, Brock checking everything with a thoroughness that is genuinely painful to witness. At one point he crouches beside a mixer examining something I can't even identify.

"Find anything exciting?"

"No," he responds without looking up.

"Disappointing," I say, and he asks whether he should be disappointed, and I say no, and he asks why I brought it up then. Fair point. I hate fair points, especially from him.

He stands and makes another note, and I watch the careful precision of it — the complete absence of wasted motion — and realize he isn't trying to impress anyone or intimidate anyone. He's just doing his job, which should make him easier to tolerate and somehow makes him harder to argue with, which is significantly more annoying. "You've had multiple complaints filed against the bakery," he says.

"Trust me, I'm aware," I retort.

"Most business owners aren't this calm about it," he observes, and I let out a laugh, the sound surprising even me.

"Who says I'm calm?" His gaze settles on mine and a long moment passes before he says "fair enough," and the answer reaches me unaware — no lecture, no judgment, just acknowledgment — and for some reason that bothers me more than either of the alternatives would have.

Before I can decide why, the front door opens and Daisy walks in carrying a bucket of flowers. One look at me, one look at Brock, and the dangerous smile appears — the one that usually ends with me regretting something.

"No," I say immediately.

"What?" she replies, all innocence.

"Whatever you're thinking," I tell her. She beams and says good morning to Brock, who nods politely and addresses her by name. Her eyes light up immediately.

"Oh, he knows my name," she exclaims, and I groan, and she ignores me completely.

A few minutes later, Ollie emerges from the pantry carrying a large sack of flour just as I reach for another from the opposite shelf, and for one terrible second neither of us notices the collision course.

Then we both do but it's too late. The bags meet with a sharp sound and a seam splits and white powder erupts into the air — across the counters, across the floor, across me and Ollie, and directly across the huge guy.

Silence falls over the entire bakery. A cloud of flour drifts slowly downward, and Brock stands in the center of it, motionless, his dark hair and shoulders and shirt entirely white.

Then Daisy snorts, and that's the end of any hope of dignity. A customer near the window laughs, another follows, and the bakery erupts.

Ollie goes pale.

"Oh no," he breathes, and I clamp a hand over my mouth because I absolutely cannot laugh at a Council inspector during an official inspection, I cannot, I will not⁠—

A strangled sound escapes me. Brock's gaze shifts in my direction, flour falling from his hair, his expression perfectly serious and perfectly composed and completely dusted in white, and I lose the battle entirely. The laughter comes out undignified and tear-inducing and completely beyond my control.

"I'm sorry," I gasp. "I'm genuinely trying."

His eyes narrow — not angrily, but with the suspicious focus of someone deciding whether to be offended — and that somehow makes everything worse. Around us the bakery roars, and through the windows I can see people on the pavement have stopped walking to look inside. Maple Hollow has probably never received a better gift than this.

Brock brushes flour from one shoulder, which accomplishes absolutely nothing.