And while I adore my grandfather—he’s the last of the really good men in the world, I swear he is—I don’t intend to insult my cousin in front of him.
“Is the new guy cute?” Pearl asks as she carefully selects a piece and moves it, knocking one of Grandpa’s pieces off the board.
Grandpa grunts while my entire body has anoh my god, yes, reaction to the question.
“What does that have to do with anything?” Grandpa asks.
“Sabrina’s single. If he’s cute—”
“You didn’t ask if he was single.”
“Oh, honey, if he’s not, that’s solvable.”
I force a laugh I don’t feel. “Miss Pearl, I amnotseducing a man to get the family café back. Sorry, Grandpa. I have my lines.”
“This is war, Sabrina,” Pearl replies. “You need to use all of your feminine wiles on him.”
Grandpa grunts again and takes his turn.
“What are you doing?” Pearl says to him. “Are you trying to throw this game? If you didn’t want to play, you should’ve just said so.”
“If you wanted to play this game, you’d quit talking about my granddaughter’swiles.”
Pearl looks at me.
I hold up my hands in surrender. “Okay. Okay. I’m clearly a distraction. I’m going. But here. I snuck some lemon scones out of the kitchen today.”
There’s nothing guaranteed to make this entire room of senior citizens move faster than the promise of my grandma’s scones. Jitter, who was happily panting on his back while getting all of the love from three different friends at once, whimpers, flops to his belly, and slinks behind a pink flower-patterned couch to get out of the way of the mad rush of senior citizens.
Poor puppy’s tired after a good day at doggy daycare.
“You pay for these?” Grandpa asks.
“Getting fired for stealing on the new boss’s first day wasn’t in my plans, so yes. I paid for them.”
One more old man grunt.
The only other time I’ve seen him grumpy was when Grandma died.
He’s hurting. Bean & Nugget was a part of his family too. Hebuiltit, and he lived long enough to see Chandler squander it.
Wonder if he heard too that the new owner is planning to completely change everything.
I hope not. But I know it’s a legitimate possibility. My friend told me he knew he wasn’t the only contractor in town who was contacted about getting a quote.
Other people will be talking about this soon enough.
I kiss Grandpa on his puffy white hair and squeeze his shoulder gently. “Don’t give up on me, okay? I won’t let anything happen to Bean & Nugget, even if it’s not ours anymore.”
“We have faith in you, Sabrina,” Pearl says.
I’m talking big talk, and I don’t know if there’s enough faith in the world for me to pull this off.
I know I need to apologize to Duke—toGrey, as he asked everyone else to call him today. I know I need to get on his good side. And I know I need to use every tool at my disposal to stop him from ruining Bean & Nugget.
So after visiting Grandpa, Jitter and I head to the grown-up version of the clubhouse that Laney, Emma, and I hung out in all the time after Theo dubbed us theugly heiressesin grade school.
Silver Horn isn’t a treehouse in my grandparents’ backyard though.
