AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Tell me more about that. Having seen your sketches for the community center I thought you might be a painter.”
“Oh thanks for saying that. I do some sketching and painting but mostly for fun. I don’t want to sell it; it’s too personal. But I made my mom a set of everyday dishes for her fiftieth birthday and she really loved them. And some of her friends said they’d liked them and would pay for them. So I started making dishware.”
He followed her through her house, closing the door behind him. She set the box on her kitchen table and put her hands on her waist as she turned to look at him. “Do you want a drink? We have wine and maybe a couple of beers left over from Ollie’s last visit. Also soft drinks, water and hot beverages.”
“I’ll have a glass of wine.”
“Great.”
“So you started making plates…how did that turn into a boutique? I’m not seeing the connection,” he said.
“Well, I was selling my plates through a co-op but they closed and myself and the other artists who some did jewelry or handmade clothing and stuff like that were all looking for a new place. I went to my dad and asked him to cosign a business loan and he said I love you but you need a plan so no.”
“Smart man. What did you do?” he asked as she handed him a glass.
“Salut,” she said, clinking her glass to his. “I sat down and figured out how much money we’d have to make to afford the kind of place I wanted to have. Cosima was visiting for the summer and she wanted to get away from the tasting room so we thought if we had a wine bar that would draw people in at night and the boutique if we stocked the right items would bring them in during the day.”
“And the rest is history?”
“Yeah. It was like once we knew what we wanted we found the right people to partner with. Jock was still in New Orleans too with his restaurant so we brought food in from his place during the lunch hours.”
“So tell me about the video? How did the dream turn into you screaming at one of your staff?”
She took a big sip of her wine. “We’re going to need to sit down for that story. Let’s go out on the porch. It shouldn’t be too cold back there. My parents gave us an outdoor heater.”
He followed her outside and she took a long time settling in and he realized this was not an easy thing for her to talk about. So why was he asking? He didn’t have an answer for that—just knew he needed to know.
Chapter Nine
Angelica wasn’t sureexactly the how of her screaming at Veronica had happened. She looked over at Max and for all his strength and determination—his very alpha persona—he wasn’t someone who was ever not in control. Even when they’d been making love that had been apparent to her.
How could she explain her own lack of control in that moment? He reached over and put his hand on hers. “I’m not asking so I can condemn you, I’m just curious. I can’t make this fit with that woman.”
He gestured around to the neat little town house she shared with Cosima. The backyard had been landscaped by the two of them. Angelica’s mom’s family had been farmers and they all had a natural affinity for growing things.
She shrugged but she did sort of know. “Partially it’s down to two things. I’m a perfectionist and like everything to be the best it can be—maybe irrationally so. Secondly I always expect that everyone feels the same way about me as I do about them.”
He rubbed his thumb over the back of her knuckles sending a shiver of sensual awareness up her arm. She turned her hand over under his so that his finger was tracing her palm.
“What do you mean by that last part?” he asked. “Right now I see you as someone I respect and enjoy spending time with.”
She smiled at his words. “Me too. But sometimes I feel like I might be friends with someone and they might view me as an acquaintance or even just a coworker. And that’s what happened with Veronica. I thought we had a closer bond than we did. I was very blunt with her, as you might have noticed I can be.”
He gave a dry laugh and glanced over at her. When their eyes met he arched both eyebrows. “You can be a tad direct.”
She pulled her hand back and wrapped her arms around herself. “Veronica didn’t like it. She also thought since I was selling her items in my shop that she didn’t have to adhere to things I asked her to do.”
“What happened?”
“I told her if she didn’t change her products, I wouldn’t be able to sell them,” Angelica said. “I could have worded it better. Cosima and I had decided to go to a more net-zero approach to our shop and Veronica imports the base for her products from China. I wanted her to change her base and she said that it would impact her profit,” Angelica said.
Veronica had to support her family and Angelica had understood that but when it came to light that one of the companies that Veronica had been using as a supplier was using child labor, Angelica had pulled all of her products from the shop. She’d planned to speak quietly to Veronica about it and possibly offer to cut their commission but instead Veronica had come into the boutique during a private event for the mayor and his fundraisers and made a public scene.
“So I sort of lost my cool and let her have it, not even thinking that anyone would be filming, and in the end we both lost. She didn’t win her civil case against me, so she didn’t get a payout and once I explained in open court why we’d pulled her products…well she had to change her online shop name. I had to sell the boutique because no one wanted to support me after it looked like I was a bully. And to be fair I was very angry and said some unkind things.”
In retrospect there were many things that Angelica now felt she should have done, but she hadn’t. Maybe she should have consulted more with her family and Cosima. “After the video went viral, I was lost and questioning everything about myself. How had I turned into the woman in that video? Also, I really hadn’t been the kind of friend that Veronica needed. So I just sort of retreated.”
“And ended up in Whiskey River,” he concluded.
