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“Y-you . . .” she stuttered, “are enjoying this, too. You could’ve backed down, but you’ve only made it worse. Don’t make me out to be the bad guy.”
“Yeah, but every time I piss you off it costs me five hundred bucks. You haven’t had to lay out a dime.”
“That’s not true,” Maddie argued. “I bought a china cabinet I didn’t even need just so I could get it delivered.”
Emmett groaned and threw his hands into the air. “It’s impossible to reason with someone who goes to these kind of lengths just to spite me.”
“To spite you?” Maddie said, her voice rising an octave in aggravation. “I just want you and your merry band of drunks to shut up.”
Emmett leaned into her, getting mere inches from her face. She could see the faint gray circles and lines of weariness around his mossy-green eyes. He wasn’t sleeping and it was her doing. She wa
s pleased and horrified by that fact. They were both miserable, but both too stubborn to back down.
“This merry band of drunks was here first!” he declared.
“I’m tired of this,” Simon complained, separating the two of them with his arm. “Sheriff Todd is tired of this. You two need to work this out and stop wasting taxpayer time and money policing your little squabble.”
“Little squabble?” Maddie shrieked.
“Yes. And I can think of only one way to resolve this.”
Maddie’s brows drew together in confusion as she watched her brother reach for his belt. Before she could react or even come to terms with what was happening, Simon clamped the cold steel of a handcuff around her left wrist. She could only stare at it, agape, as he reached over and did the same to Emmett’s right wrist.
“What the hell?” Emmett said, reacting far faster than Maddie had been able to. “What are you doing, Simon?”
“I’m ending this. Tonight.” There was a finality in Simon’s voice that she didn’t like.
“The joke is over, Simon,” Maddie said. “Now, take these off.”
“I will. I’ll be back at six a.m. when I get off my shift.”
Maddie’s jaw dropped in horror as her brother turned and walked out of the bar without so much as a backward glance. She wanted to run after Simon, to talk some sense into him, but she couldn’t with a blond, two-hundred-pound anchor attached to her arm.
“Oh my God,” she groaned as she let her gaze travel over the handcuffs to where Emmett was shackled to her. “What are we going to do?”
Emmett eyed their wrists and shrugged. He seemed mildly irritated, but not at all agitated by the situation. It was infuriating how he didn’t seem to react to the things that made her blood pressure skyrocket. “My first suggestion would be to do shots to take the edge off.”
Shots? “Um, no. I don’t drink.”
“Suit yourself.” Emmett reached across the bar with his free hand for a bottle of whiskey and poured himself a short glass, slamming it back in one gulp.
“Now what?” she asked.
“Well, I guess you’re going to come help me behind the bar.”
“Excuse me? I’m not a waitress. I’m a classically trained pastry chef.”
He didn’t seem impressed. “That’s nice. I’m not a waitress, either. I’m a bartender, and tonight, that means you are, too. Come on.”
Emmett tugged and Maddie moved. There was no negotiation. He had a good seventy pounds on her, and unless she wanted the handcuff to rub her wrist raw, she had to follow.
Tonight, Maddie was a bartender. But after the bar closed, she’d make certain that Emmett took his turn as a baker’s assistant.
Chapter Four
“What are you doing?”
Maddie’s sharp, critical tone was the last thing Emmett needed after more than six hours of being handcuffed to the woman. It was barely five in the morning on a Saturday, the time when he would normally kick back, watch a little television, and unwind before going to bed. Instead, he was in the kitchen of Madelyn’s Bakery attempting to make cookies.
