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Maddie smothered a grin. “Sure thing.” She slid the back of the case open and pulled out a cinnamon roll. She already had a small pastry box ready to go by the register. “That’s three-fifty.”
Miss Dotty fussed in her purse for a few minutes, and then finally pulled out a few rumpled bills. There seemed to be an endless supply of wadded up bills in the bottom of Miss Dotty’s leather Coach bag. Surely Miss Dotty could afford a wallet, but it seemed that everything just gathered in the bottom; a stockpile of tissues, pennies, receipts and stray dollar bills.
Maddie was handing back her change when her soon-to-be sister-in-law, Pepper Anthony, came into the bakery. Pepper worked at the hair salon next door.
“Morning,” she said, moving past Miss Dotty to peruse the treats.
Although they were almost family, Pepper and Maddie weren’t close. According to her brot
her Grant, it was her fault because Maddie was a stuck-up brat. But it wasn’t her fault she had high standards she held everyone—herself included—to. There was no good reason why someone couldn’t put their very best effort in every day, be it in their appearance, their job, or their attitude. Some people were just too lazy to make the cut. And she felt no reason to play nice with people she didn’t have an interest in.
Of course, now that those people were her customers and some of them would soon be members of the Chamberlain family, Maddie had to find a way to be nice to everyone. And she was trying. But it was hard. For all the grief she got from people for being mean to them, she’d had her fair share of mistreatment from others. Being a young, single daughter of the great Chamberlain family had made her a target of gold-diggers and haters alike. Only people like her best friend Lydia Whittaker understood what that was like.
“Hey, Pepper,” Miss Dotty said as she dumped her change into her purse and scooped up her cinnamon roll box. “Do you have any openings this week?”
“I’m not sure, Miss Dotty. I’ll have to check my calendar,” Pepper said. “I’m taking some treats over to the firehouse right now, but if you want to come by this afternoon, we’ll see what we can find.”
“That sounds good. I think I need a new look.”
Maddie got a large cardboard container out for Pepper’s order. Regardless of how they felt about each other, Pepper was a good customer. Maddie’s brother Grant had a sweet tooth and Pepper wasn’t inclined to bake, so she stopped in fairly often to get treats for him and the other firemen.
“I like your look,” Pepper said. “What’s prompting the change?”
“Well,” Miss Dotty said with a conspiratorial look in her eye, “I think I want to start dating again.”
Maddie froze in her tracks. Miss Dotty was a widower in her late sixties. Her stroke several years back had taken her from eccentric to downright kooky. Maddie kept waiting for the day Miss Dotty decided to streak nude through the square. The idea of her dating was a little disconcerting.
“Ever since the bachelor auction last Valentine’s Day, I’ve been thinking about trying my hand at romance again. I was disappointed, of course, when you outbid me for Grant, but I know he’s too young for me. I need to find someone like Bert. He and Vera have really hit it off.”
“Bert and Vera are dating?” Maddie couldn’t help but ask.
“Yep,” Pepper answered. “For about two months now. They got together at the Fourth of July picnic and have been nearly inseparable since then. You haven’t heard?”
“No,” Maddie said. She didn’t like Pepper’s tone, implying she was stupid somehow for not noticing. Did people not realize that she’d spent all summer getting her new business going? She’d completely overhauled the old Rosewood Bakery. Madelyn’s was on a whole other level. It was elegant and refined, featuring a new selection of French pastries she’d mastered while studying in Paris. The interior was redone with intricately designed blush and cream wallpaper and new wainscoting—which hadn’t put itself up, thankyouverymuch. The crystal chandelier was imported from Marseille.
And that was just the beginning. She was working on opening a tea shop in the room over the bakery and was already hosting princess-themed birthday parties there. She didn’t have time to worry about what others were doing, especially when it came to two old people making out like teenagers all over town. “I don’t work in the beauty shop, so I’m not privy to the town gossip. Not that I really care.”
“You should care,” Miss Dotty said. “You might be young and beautiful now, with your choice of suitors, but that won’t always be the case. Someday you may end up like me—an old, withered up widow with needs. Bert and Vera have given me hope that maybe that itch can get scratched.”
Oh dear Jesus. That was the last image Maddie wanted in her head. She took a deep breath. No, no. She was not going to let those pictures settle into her brain. It was bad enough when she found out that Bert had been responsible for the demise of Rosewood Bakery’s previous owner, who’d died from a heart attack after joining him in a night of passion.
“What can I get you today, Pepper?” Maddie said, trying desperately to shift the subject away from senior sex.
Pepper turned back to the case with a twinkle of amusement in her dark eyes. She seemed to get some pleasure out of Maddie’s discomfort. Someone should enjoy it, she supposed. “Give me a blueberry and an apple cinnamon muffin, a slice of the orange pound cake...”
“That’s Grant’s favorite,” Maddie piped up brightly.
Pepper looked at her with a deadpan expression. “Yes, I know. A cinnamon roll,” she continued, “and a Bavarian cream horn. That’s for me, so could you put it in a separate box?”
“Sure thing,” Maddie said, although she didn’t really want to. Her pastry boxes were custom made, pink with embossed gold lettering on the top. They weren’t cheap. Every time she handed one out, she watched that money slip away. She probably needed to invest in some bags for smaller items and some plain boxes, saving the nice ones for more important things. She just hated to do it. It was one of the touches that made Madelyn’s special and it was good advertising. Advertising her father insisted she didn’t need, given she was the only bakery in town.
Shaking off her father’s doubts, she boxed up Pepper’s order and rang her up. She ignored Pepper and Miss Dotty’s idle chatter while she ran Pepper’s credit card. She was about to slip the signed receipt into the cash drawer when the chime on the front door announced another customer. It was quite the busy Thursday morning.
Maddie looked up in time to see Miss Francine, the owner of the local flower shop, Petal Pushers, rushing into the door. She came by every morning with a bouquet of fresh flowers that Maddie displayed on the counter. She was clutching a bouquet of pale pink hydrangea and white dahlias, but she didn’t seem particularly interested in the flowers.
“Oh my heavens, have y’all seen it?” Miss Francine was red-faced and absolutely horrified. She thrust the bouquet across the counter to Maddie and shook her head in dismay. “It’s disgraceful.”
“Seen what?” Miss Dotty asked.
