“And now”—Macy opened her bottle and downed a fourth of it before coming up for air—“you roll over and agree to meet a man for pizza when he asks with a lame excuse about picking your brain. Girl, Travis is just like Justin and Neal, only he’s got a little different angle. He’s trying to woo you into selling him our shop.”
“He can ‘woo’ away,” Grace said. “And for your information, I only said I’d meet with him to shut him up. It’s going to be a one-and-done deal. And I also wanted to give Lisa and Carlita something to talk about other than you and Neal. I’m killing two birds with one stone.”
“You are one devious woman,” Macy said and threw up her hand for a high five. Grace slapped it and took another drink of her tea. “They keep promising they won’t come back in here, but we see them almost every day.”
Sarah pushed Macy’s feet to the side. “You’re taking all the room.”
“Am not.” Macy pushed back. “And, honey, they couldn’t resist returning to the place that’s got the best gossip in town right now. Rumors are like air and water to them: if they don’t get a good portion of both every day, they’ll wither up and die.”
“Think we’ll get the blame if Mr.Money Pants doesn’t put in a factory?” Sarah asked.
“Probably,” Grace replied, and shrugged. “We might even go back to only making half as many doughnuts as we’ve had to do since all this started. Please keep this Friday thing under your hats. I don’t want Audrey to know about it. She gets so dramatic about every little thing.”
“Amen to that,” Macy agreed.
“Yep.” Sarah finished her tea, stood up, and began cleaning. “Our worlds have sure changed in the past few weeks.”
“Mama used to say that change was good for us,” Grace reminded them. “She said it kept life from getting boring.”
“I’d take a little dose of boring right now,” Macy said. “Do y’all realize that for us—mentally speaking—March came in like a lamb? I was getting married. Even though we didn’t know it, Sarah was falling in love at the time. Audrey hadn’t gotten caught with contraband at school yet. Is it going to go out like a lion—creating more havoc in our lives?”
“Good Lord, I hope not!” Grace shuddered as she stood up and tossed her empty bottle into the trash and then dragged the can over tothe far end, where Sarah was cleaning up a mess. Crumbs were all over the table, the four chairs, and the floor. “How could anything be worse than this month has already been?”
“That other-shoe business could happen,” Sarah reminded her.
Grace shook her finger at her sister. “We’re not going to let any more shoes drop. We’ve had enough.” But down deep inside, she didn’t believe a word of what she said.
Chapter Ten
Never had a project like this, but I’m not complaining,” Lucy said as she and the other ten members of the think tank set about comparing the doughnuts. “I can already tell you after the first bite that the Devine pastries beat these two, but Calvin said the owner isn’t ready to sell.”
Lucy was one of those medium-height, brown-haired, green-eyed women who would blend so well into a crowd, no one would ever notice her. She wore glasses, with lenses almost as thick as Travis’s, and had a gravelly voice like a longtime smoker. She was the first one he had hired when he decided to incorporate a think-tank crew, and she’d told him in her interview that she had never smoked or done drugs. “I love my mama, my boyfriend, and Jesus—but I do drink a little,” she’d said. He had hired her on the spot, and now she was the supervisor on the first floor, answering only to Delores, Calvin, and Travis.
“I’ve never known you to test out a business like this before making an offer on it, but I guess you have your reasons,” Lucy said.
His grandfather was back in his head.And what are those reasons? Be honest with yourself.
Travis thought of the way the vibes danced around him when he was in the doughnut shop and wondered if Grace felt the same. Was this cat and mouse game she played for real, or was she trying to tease himinto a higher price for her company? Or was she sincere in her refusal, and there was electricity between them both?
“What is it about the dough that’s so different?” he asked to get his mind off the other questions. “I can’t put my finger on it. I need help figuring out if I’m right or not. I would imagine most places have a standard recipe, but my friends down in that area tell me the Devine Doughnut Shop makes the dough in small batches by an old family recipe.”
Calvin reached into one of the Devine boxes and picked up a whole doughnut with frosting and sprinkles.
Delores slapped his hand. “Not a one of us need to eat whole doughnuts.”
“You’ve been talking to Maggie,” Calvin moaned.
Travis chuckled under his breath and then picked up a fourth of a glazed doughnut from one of the local pastry shops and ate it. He took several sips of hot coffee and then ate a piece of one of the same type from Devine. “There is definitely a difference. The one from Devine is a little lighter, a little sweeter, and the dough itself isn’t quite as stark white.”
Delores ate a piece of one with chocolate icing from a different local shop and then a little bit of one from the yellow box. “You’re right. What makes the difference is the bread recipe. Should we send some of these”—she pointed toward the yellow boxes—“off to be analyzed?”
“No, I’m not ready for that step in this process just yet,” Travis answered. “Grace told me that the shop isn’t for sale, but we all know that everything has a price.”
Audrey seemed to float into the house that Wednesday afternoon. Her face was all aglow with a brilliant smile, and she danced around the living room to music that was only in her own head.
Grace looked up from one of her mother’s old cookbooks. “What’s got you so happy?”
“Did a good-lookin’ boy ask you to the prom?” Sarah asked.
