Page 11
Jess straightened, looking into Melanie’s blue doe-eyes. The girl’s cheeks were wet, and she watched silently as a few tears trickled down to her chin.
Jess smiled softly, and to her surprise, reached out and grabbed Melanie’s shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze. This was going to be Melanie’s first birthday without her twin brother by her side, yet the girl was insistent about having all of them over for a party next week. She kept saying she wanted to fill the day with joy, in honor of Duncan.
“Of course,” Jess whispered. “Anything in particular you want?”
Melanie smiled and brushed a tear away with the back of her hand. “You’re the artist, I’ll let you decide.”
Jess nodded, her gaze lingering out beyond The War Room and into the front of the shop, already calculating the different combinations and possibilities.
“But add something purple in there,” Melanie continued. “It was…our color, on our birthday.”
“Sure, I can do that.”
“Jess?” Calvin asked as he trudged down the narrow staircase from the storage room upstairs.
Jess dropped her hand, frowning. “Ball?”
“Got a minute?”
She nodded, securing a plastic lid on top of the cake in front of her and carefully sliding it in the freezer. She glanced back over at Melanie and noticed Calvin had his arms wrapped tightly around her, whispering something softly in her ear. She nodded and kissed him on the cheek, then headed back to the front.
Jess crossed her arms. “What’s up?”
Calvin pointed to the stairs. “Upstairs.”
She rolled her eyes. “If you’re about to give me another lecture about money—”
“I’m not,” Calvin said. “Not a lecture. Something better, I hope.”
Curious, Jess followed him up the narrow stairs and into the storage room littered with boxes of extra napkins, spoons, cups, cones, and toppings. But to her surprise, they weren’t the only two up there.
Perched on top of a box was Kevin, digging into a big bowl of Black Cherry Chunk.
She scowled. “What are you doing here?”
Kevin grinned. “You know, I can’t wait for the day I see you and it’s a smile and a hello instead of immediate hatred.”
Jess shuffled from side to side. “I don’t hate you,” she mumbled.
“It’d be okay if you did,” he retorted. He winked at her, then looked back down at his bowl. “I like a challenge.”
She shook her head and looked back at Calvin. “Care to explain what’s going on?”
Calvin crossed his arms, clearly in business mode. “Jess, you know from our conversations the state of Kevin’s shop and his financial predicament.”
Jess swiftly glanced in Kevin’s direction. He wasn’t looking at her, but his cheeks were flushed with embarrassment. For a brief moment, she felt the need to protect him from this.
She crossed her arms and glared up at Calvin. “Get to the point.”
He nodded. “You said yourself that Kevin would benefit from a new way to bring in more business, and so we thought of a solution.”
Jess gestured with her hands to move this tedious conversation along.
“There’s a commercial kitchen in the back of the shop,” Kevin chimed in. “The space used to be a café, but they closed down and then Kimmy flipped it into a bike shop. She never demoed the kitchen, though. It’s still there.”
Jess could feel the cadence of her heartbeat speed up as he continued.
“When I took over, I thought about taking the kitchen out to make more space for inventory, but I don’t know, part of me had this crazy idea…”
