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Fuck.
Her tears had always crushed him. Always.
“Please don’t cry, Roxanne,” he whispered. He knew he’d sounded a little desperate, a little frantic... but watching those tears slip down her face, he couldn’t bring himself to care. Or to remember they were supposed to be enemies.
CHAPTERFOUR
By seven o’clock that evening, the local anesthesia had long since worn off, and Roxie’s lip was throbbing. She’d just returned to her mountain of paperwork and mail at the café after sneaking down to the Mullins’ party, where she had peeked inside to spy on how things were going.
Based on what she’d seen, Nina had everything under control. While her second-in-command had worked numerous catering events, she had never flown solo. This was the first time Roxie had passed along the baton. The first time she’d trusted delegation. She was learning to let go of her inner control freak. Or trying to, at least.
On one hand, she was thrilled about Nina’s success. On the other, she had to admit that her pride was a little dented that everything was going just fine without her. She would never ever admit that to another soul, but it still stung. Apparently, her inner control freak was a fierce bitch.
Dog-tired but not ready to call it a night, she turned on her laptop. It was slow to boot up, so she grabbed a large manila envelope from the pile of junk on her desk. There was no mailing or return address on the front, only her first and last name in tidy block letters. Anticipating some sort of article on Comfort Food, she frowned when she pulled out an eight-by-ten picture. Of herself.
“Huh,” she muttered, her frown deepening.
It was an actual photograph, not a clipping from a newspaper or a printout of a magazine article like she’d received countless times before. In the photo, she was dressed in her customary catering uniform—a simple black dress—but she couldn’t tell which event it was from.
Her computer prompted her for her password, and she absently put the picture in a file folder labeled,Add Me To A Scrapbook. Yet another project for another day. One day, she would get her tiny office organized. One day.
Turning her attention to her laptop, she dove into the bookkeeping work she tended to neglect. After what seemed like an hour of hovering over her computer, she rolled out her aching shoulder and glanced at the clock. She gasped. Eleven? Where the hell had the time gone? She eyed the accounting software on her screen, and her nose wrinkled.
There. Right there.Thatwas the giant time-suck.
Alex, who’d joined the Comfort Food staff as a part-time employee when she’d arrived on Hudson Island almost a year ago, had taken over the responsibility of bookkeeping for six glorious months—until the beginning of November, when she’d been hospitalized with an awful case of bronchitis. The bronchitis had progressed into walking pneumonia, and then, before fully recovering, she’d given birth to sweet baby Annie.
A month and a half later, it was no surprise that Alex was still not 100 percent, especially since she now had sleep deprivation to contend with, too. Roxie prayed her friend felt better soon... for both their sakes. Alex was much more efficient with the books, hence why it was nearing midnight and she still had at least two more hours of bookkeeping to finish.
You’re thirty-four years old. You graduated with a freaking business degree from the University of freaking Washington. You can’t let a bunch of numbers beat you!
She slumped down in her chair, leaning her head back with a groan.Damn. She couldn’t tell if her inner voice was trying to motivate or shame her.
So what if she’d spent more time baking for her study groups and feeding her classmates than actually studying for her exams? She’d still passed all her classes, dammit...
But college was a million years ago, so yes... maybe a bunch of numberswouldbeat her.
“Problems?”
She jerked, and her heart tried to crawl up her throat. “Holy shit, Eli! You just about gave me a freaking heart attack!”
“Sorry. Your back door was open, so I came in to check on you.”
As Eli’s face turned red, she willed her heart rate to return to normal. “No worries.”
“Everything okay?”
Roxie waved him in and nodded. “I was having a little pity party for myself. Nothing too tragic, though.” She gestured to her laptop. “But I swear, even with a business degree, the books on this business are going to be the end of me.”
He took a seat on the extra chair on the other side of her desk. “Which business would you be referring to? Comfort Food’s brick-and-mortar or the high-in-demand catering?”
“Exactly,” she said, flouncing against the back of her seat with a dramatic eye roll for her old friend.
She bit back a frown.Old friendwas a bit of a stretch. She’d known Eli Walker and his wife, Poppy, who was Sheila’s cousin, for years, but they weren’t exactly close. Eli and Poppy owned the building at the end of the block—two down from Comfort Food—which housed both Poppy’s gift shop, Rainy Day Boutique, and Eli’s real estate office. While Roxie wasn’t the best of friends with them, as fellow business owners in a tight-knit community, it was more accurate to say they were friendly business acquaintances.
Roxie had been thirteen when she’d first met Eli, who, like Joe and Quinn, was three years older. He’d been a stereotypical, popular, all-American boy. A class president who’d played both football and baseball. But for some reason, Joe and Quinn had never liked him. So, by default, Roxie had detested him, too. Not because she’d really known him or spoken more than two words to him, but because thirteen-year-old Roxie had accepted the opinions of Joe Buchanan and Quinn O’Conner as certified truths. If they hadn’t liked someone, then neither had she.
Ahh, youth.
