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She snickered then peered down at herself. “Yeah, I bet I’d make grown men cry.”
Maybe for a taste of her. . . .
Jenny was everything I wasn’t.
She was slender, didn’t dip her hand into the cookie jar at will—the woman had more willpower than I did hips, and my hips seemed to go on forever—and her face looked like it belonged on the cover of a fashion magazine. Even her hair was enough to inspire envy. It was black and straight as a ruler.
Mine?
Bright red and curly like a bitch. I had to straighten it out every morning if I didn’t want to look like little orphan Annie.
I’d once read that curly-haired women straightened their hair for special events, and that straight-haired women curled theirs in turn, but I called bullshit.
Curly-haired women lived with their straightening irons surgically attached to their hands.
At least, I did.
My rat’s nest was like a ginger afro. Maybe Beyoncé could make that work, but I sure as hell didn’t have the bone structure.
“I think grown men would cry,” I told her dryly, “if you asked them to.”
She pshawed, but there was a twinkle in her eye that I understood. . . . She agreed with me, knew it was true, but wasn’t going to admit it. With anyone else, she might have. She had an ego–that was for damn sure. But with me? I think she figured I was zero competition, so she felt no need to rub salt in the wound, too.
I plunked my elbows on the counter and stared around my domain as she bustled off and started clearing the tables. It was her last duty of the day, and my feet were aching so damn bad that I didn’t even have it in me to care.
This owning your own business shit?
It wasn’t easy.
Not saying I didn’t love it, but it was hard.
I slept like four hours a night, and when I wasn’t in bed, I was here. All the time.
Baking, cooking, serving, and smiling. Always smiling. Even if I was so sleep-deprived I could sob.
Jenny’s actually a life saver.
My mom used to be front of house before. . . .
I sucked down a breath.
I had to get used to thinking about it.
She wasn’t here anymore, but just avoiding all thoughts of her period wasn’t working for me. It was like I was purposely forgetting her, and, well, fuck that.
She’d always wanted to have a teashop. It had been her one true dream. Back in Ireland, when she was a little girl, her grandmother had owned one in Limerick. Mom had caught the bug and had wanted to have one here in the States. But not only was it too fucking expensive for a woman on her own, it was also impossible with my feckless father at her side.
I didn’t want to think about him either, though.
Why?
Because the feckless father who’d pretty much ruined my mother’s life, wasn’t the only father in my life. My biological dad hadn’t exactly cared about her happiness, but once he’d come to know about me, he’d tried. That was more than could be said for the man who’d lived with me throughout my early childhood.
“You look gloomy.”
Jenny’s statement had me blinking in surprise. She had a ton of dishes piled in her arms, and I’d have worried for the expensive china if I hadn’t known she was an old pro at this shit. Just as I was.
We could probably earn a Guinness World Record on how many dishes we could take back and forth to the kitchen ofEllie’s Tea Rooms. I swear, I had guns because of all that hefting. My biceps were probably the firmest part of my body.
