by Amy Knupp
“Maybe a fluffy orange one.” Kennedy ducked her head and her hair swung forward. “Or a white one.”
“Definitely going with distraction.” Ivy sipped from her glass. “How about you Jilly?”
Jilly looked down at the table and then snapped the tortilla chip she held in her hand. “Working for you guys is a dream. What else could I want?”
“A fluffy kitty?” suggested Kennedy.
Jilly’s gold and green eyes fluttered down for a moment before she smiled, mouth together, cheeks forced upward. “I’m not sure I’m kitty material. What about your dream, Roxie?”
Roxie felt her heart twist at Jilly’s clear anxiety. “Well, if world domination is already taken, I’m thinking that I’d try to work on a cupcake that actually burns calories. The more you eat, the more you lose!”
The rest of the girls laughed, willing to go along to smooth things over for Jilly.
“Next project: Negative-calorie cupcakes. Check.” Ivy bumped her shoulder against Roxie’s. “Now tell us for real.”
She’d told the girls about her songwriting once, but there was something about saying it out loud that was hard. “I want to get back to writing lyrics. Something that makes people say, ‘Yes, I feel like that too’ or stop and catch their breath or push through whatever they’re going through.”
“That sounds beautiful.” Violet’s blue eyes once again glittered with unshed tears. “What do you need to make it happen?”
The sincerity in Violet’s voice made a lump rise in Roxie’s throat. Who had ever asked her that before? Aside from Aunt Lindy, there wasn’t one person in her family who had offered that kind of support. Sure, her parents had said they supported her, cheered when she sold the commercial jingle, but when no further offers had come, when the disappointment had continued, they’d wanted her to work on her backup plan. And her backup plan had morphed until there wasn’t much room in her life left for her dream. Until she’d gotten fired. She shifted her shoulders at the memory. Not her favorite day. It had worked out, she reminded herself, and looked around at the women around her, waiting on her answer.
“I’m not sure.” She thought about her recent efforts, balled up on yellow paper and sitting in a trash can. And Lurlene banging on her door. “Finding a space would be nice to start with.”
“A space?” echoed Violet.
“A place where I can work on music without turning down my keyboard or leaving my guitar stuffed in the closet because I’m afraid Lurlene will come over and ask what I’m doing. Where I don’t have to look at my own four walls and think about the laundry I should be doing. Where I can let my creativity loose.”
“More loose creativity,” joked Kennedy. “All of Ivy’s flying around is plenty.”
“Funny girl.” Ivy reached a hand out and covered Roxie’s. “I can understand that. I was pretty creative before, but being here in this energy, it sparked something.”
“So all you’re using now is your apartment?” asked Jilly.
“I used to rent studio space, but it got too expensive.” Roxie didn’t mention that even though she loved what she was doing with Sugar Babies, it wasn’t quite the salary she’d made working for Trident Records. Sure, she’d saved money on the bus fare every day, and not having to deal with her former boss, a Christian Grey wannabe, was an uncountable bonus, but she still had to be careful with her spending. She had a nice nest egg put away for something special, but she was determined to leave it as untouched as possible until she figured out what that was.
“There’s probably space somewhere in that beast of a hotel of Burke’s,” Ivy put in. “I’m sure he’d be willing to let you use some.”
Roxie squeezed Ivy’s hand. “Thanks, Ivy, but I don’t think a conference room is what I need.”
“Joey is on the road a lot,” said Jilly. “You could use her room if you wanted.”
Roxie started to throw her arm around Jilly, her Italian genes surging to the surface and wanting to show affection, but she wasn’t sure if Jilly was ready for that kind of thing yet. Instead she patted her hand. Jilly froze but didn’t remove her hand from under Roxie’s. “Jilly, you’re a peach. But I’m not sure that will work either.”
“I’ve got an idea,” said Violet.
“Uh-oh,” said Kennedy. “You’re in for it now.”
“Do you have anything planned for tomorrow?” Violet asked Roxie.
“Sunday is my weekly visit to my folks’ for dinner, but after about three o’clock I’m free.”
“Cool.” Violet smiled widely and raised her glass in a toast toward Roxie. “Meet me here at 3:15 and wear tennis shoes.”
Excerpt: Sweet Thing by Emily Leigh
HALE STREET BOOK 1
As the oldest daughter of one of Nashville’s elite families, Violet Calloway strives to live up to the family name. Her discerning mother taught her to choose the right clothes, the right career, and the right men. But when her father dies and leaves Violet a ramshackle building on a lifeless street, Violet starts to question whether her choices are really her own. Building Sugar Babies Bakery seems like the right thing for her and Violet thinks she may have her new life all figured out until Nick Morello steps through her doors and rocks the world beneath her feet. Too bad for her, he has a huge chip on his shoulder and the kind of swagger her mother disapproves of.
Nick Morello knows he has a lot of mistakes to make up for. His best shot at becoming a partner in the family construction business lies in the successful completion of Violet Calloway’s Sugar Babies Bakery. Get the bakery done and the rest of the business on Hale Street just might fall in line. He’s got this, he’s so got this, until he comes face to face with Violet and realizes that she may be his biggest mistake yet.
CHAPTER ONE
January
Hale Street
Nashville, Tennessee
Tiny bits of freezing rain stuck to Violet Calloway’s cheeks and slithered beneath the bright blue woolen scarf tucked neatly into her black and tan Burberry coat. The ink on the paper in her hand started to blot, and Violet quickly shoved it into her black beaded clutch. Beside the paper, tucked into the depths of the silk lining, her phone beeped, then vibrated twice, indicating a text and two incoming emails.
She’d deal with them later. Technically she was late. There was a party going on at the bar behind her, Clayborne’s on the Corner, but she couldn’t go in yet. There was something she needed to do first. Taking a deep breath and shuddering when more icy rain pelted her, Violet crossed the darkened street, taking care not to slip in the gold heels she’d put on in place of the practical black work pumps. She’d changed in her office before coming, swapping out her standard fitted black slacks and red raw-silk button-down for a black sheath dress and gold metal belt. Had to bring her A game for Daisy’s engagement party and her mother Serena’s critical eye.
Serena would be anxious and waiting, but the letter in Violet’s bag, written in her dad’s slanting scrawl — his thoughts were always miles ahead of his mouth — was long overdue for attention.
They’d buried him in December. She and Daisy had come out here to Hale Street soon after the reading of his will to look at what he’d left them. A few run-down buildings, some with tenants, some without, on a weed-choked street. The buildings were pretty, charming, but in need of complete overhauls to become useable. It had been a surprise to all of them when Daisy and Violet were given the buildings — three each. Once all the assets were tallied and the Hale project had come to light, they’d all assumed that Mickey had deeded the properties to Daisy’s fiancé, Burke Wentworth. It was his vision, too, after all.
Serena wanted her daughters to sell to Burke. Daisy had already given over control of hers to Burke, but the letter stopped Violet. She didn’t know what Daisy’s letter said; they didn’t speak of things that emotional, that raw. The words of her own letter were burned into her brain.
Make your life a happy one, little sugar baby.
I’m askin
g too much of you, perhaps. It was my dream, but I hope one day you come to love it just as much as I do.
So here she was, weeks later, on Hale Street, avoiding her sister’s engagement party by peering into crumbling old buildings and trying to figure out what in the world her father had meant when he’d said, Bring life back to the places I came from.
Violet stopped in front of the big bow window and pressed her face to the glass of the building Mickey had lived in. The room beyond was long and narrow with tall ceilings and a staircase easing up one wall to the apartment above. He’d lived up there above a hardware store with his parents and Aunt Margie as a boy, before he went to college and met Serena. He hadn’t come back, she knew. At least not right away, and she had the vague sense that was partly her mother’s doing. There was nothing of his life he’d built with Serena here. Sometime in his last year, he’d come back here with a dream. And now she was supposed to make something of it.
There was a reason she had avoided the street in the weeks since her dad died — she didn’t know what to do with it, and his letter seemed to expect so much of her.
With a sigh, Violet turned around and went back across the street to Clayborne’s. Through the foggy windows, she could see Daisy and Burke holding court in the center of the bar and her mother entertaining a tight knot of some of Nashville’s elite. Now or never, she thought, and went inside.
Ten minutes, one lecture on being late from her mother, and one tasteless almond-crusted truffle later, Violet was still trying to ignore the ding of her phone and the letter in her bag. It was hard because the phone wouldn’t shut up and she was standing in a bar where her father had a barstool dedicated to him.
The high back of the stool had a little gold plate which that read, In memory of Michael “Mickey” Calloway. Never be thirsty.
If she thought it was odd that her dad had a stool dedicated to him, it was nothing compared to the look on her mother’s face when Serena had first glimpsed the stool.
She hadn’t known, Serena.
Violet hadn’t known, either, to be fair, until Daisy pointed it out. Their mother, for her own part, had merely given a single, elegant sniff and expertly maneuvered Violet over to an elderly couple from one of Serena’s charity groups and their son. Single, of course, because that’s the only reason Serena introduced Violet to anyone these days. She’d done her duty, made the requisite inquiries about their health, the status of their current fundraising activity for the children’s hospital, and even managed to exchange a few words with the son — Howard, whose curly blond hair had kept flopping over his eyes — before quietly escaping to a corner.
Still, Serena wasn’t happy, and Violet was just glad that for now, at least, Serena’s disapproval wasn’t directed at her. It wasn’t directed at Daisy, who’d pulled off a major coup after their father’s funeral by having the decency to get engaged and take Serena’s mind off the grief. Her mother’s words, not Violet’s. No, Serena’s icy glares and the white lines bracketing her mouth were intended for Burke, who’d had the audacity to insist the engagement party take place in a “run-down bar in a seedy neighborhood.”
Plus the stool. She hadn’t liked the stool.
Violet liked Clayborne’s. She liked the stool. She used to come in sometimes with her dad on Sunday afternoons while he cheered on the Titans, and she knew he’d liked to stop in after work to shoot the breeze with Mr. Clayborne and his son, Hunter, and Burke. He’d felt alive here as he hadn’t in the grand Victorian in Belle Meade that she and Daisy grew up in. Three days after the funeral, Serena had closed and locked the doors to Mickey’s study and removed his comfy brown recliner from the sitting room. The pictures of him remained, but he wasn’t anywhere in that house anymore. And now, with her hand curled around the back of the barstool, Violet had to wonder if it had ever been his house.
“These cupcakes are terrible and Aunt Serena is giving you the stink eye.”
Violet whirled at the voice in her ear. “Ivy!” she squealed and threw her arms around her errant cousin. “I didn’t know you were coming.” She leaned in hard to the hug and didn’t let go until Ivy pulled back, grinning.
“I got some extra time off work, so I thought I’d run up here to Nashville and see my favorite cousin. Where is Daisy anyway?”
Violet laughed, her first true laugh of the night, and nudged Ivy over a bit to peer around a group of partygoers. She pointed.
“There, in the blue.”
“Who’s the stiff she’s standing with?”
Violet laughed again. “Burke. The groom. And he’s not a stiff. Well, not always.”
“The man knows how to wear a suit, that’s for sure. Daisy always did go for that type.”
The type worked well. He stood beside her sister in a navy suit that complimented Daisy’s dress, his shoulders stretching the fabric in a way that suggested he wasn’t just a pretty face. And he had a pretty face. Chiseled features, short-cropped sandy hair, and blue eyes that crinkled at the corners when he laughed. Really laughed, not the boardroom laugh Violet had heard the first few months he and Daisy were together. Violet hadn’t gotten it at first, the partnership Mickey had struck up with Burke. But she got it now. Both he and Burke shared a love of Hale Street, a place they’d both grown up, albeit a few decades apart and Burke as part of the once-grand Wentworth Hotel that sat at the end of the street. It wasn’t just the shared experience though. Burke was warm and caring and humorous when you got past the business facade. A do-anything-for-you kind of guy, and he seemed to really care about her sister. And sure, Daisy might be rushing it, but Violet was thrilled to have Burke as part of the family.
“How’d Daisy meet him anyway?” Ivy asked, snagging a crab cake off a passing tray. “She didn’t say much on the phone.”
“He and Daddy partnered on some development projects. His hotel, the Wentworth—”
Ivy snorted. “Of course.”
“Stop,” Violet admonished, used to her cousin’s snap judgments. Usually they were right on target, but she was wrong about Burke. “The hotel is at the end of this street and needs a complete remodel, and they bought up all the buildings up and down with the same idea. They wanted to revitalize the neighborhood. Mother was so mad. He didn’t tell her.”
“Oh, I love it when Auntie Serena gets her panties in a wad.” Ivy took a bite of the crab cake, and her lips twisted to the side. She held her napkin to her lips, spit, and then wadded the whole thing up. “Yuck.”“It was bad,” Violet said, ignoring the faux pas that would certainly give her mother heart palpitations. “Worse when she found out he left some of the properties to Daisy and me. She wants us to sell them outright to Burke.”
“Are you going to?”
“Daisy gave control of her properties to Burke so she can focus on the hotel.”
Her sister had a degree in hospitality management, and while Burke oversaw the hotel’s rehabilitation, Daisy was running with the management decisions and would manage the hotel once it opened.
Violet shrugged and again ran her hand over the little metal plaque, her breath catching a little in her chest. She missed her dad. With every heartbeat, she wished he were here with them tonight. He had liked Burke. He would have told Daisy how pretty she looked with her baby-fine chestnut hair curling softly around her face and the glow to her smile. He would have taken Violet aside, kissed her on the cheek, told her that her time was coming. He would have softened Serena too, bringing her around to the idea that a bar could host a successful engagement party.
“You didn’t?” Ivy asked. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” she said. And she didn’t. There hadn’t been much time until now. Mickey’s illness — pancreatic cancer — had raged through his body with a ferocity that surprised even the doctors. They’d held the funeral a week before Christmas, and then suddenly it was the rounds of holiday parties Serena insisted they all attend, Daisy’s engagement, and the endless demands of her job as a lead accou
ntant at Douglas and Douglas, a high-end investment firm.
“No time,” she told Ivy. It didn’t seem right, just then, to mention the letter.
“Well, good for you,” Ivy said into the void with a fair amount of aplomb. “Flying in the face of Auntie Serena. Always a good plan.”
It wasn’t that Violet was disobeying Serena per se, it was just that Serena hadn’t pushed her very hard to sell or let Burke handle the properties. Yet.
“It’s good to see you, Ivy.” Violet laid her head on her cousin’s shoulder, for just a second, then straightened. “Let’s get you some real food.”
“And a drink.”
Violet smiled. “Definitely.”
She led Ivy to the long bar edging along one wall of Clayborne’s. Hunter Clayborne offered a friendly wave from the far end of the bar and nodded to a tall redhead a few feet down from him, who was finishing up with other guests. The girl, wearing a fitted button-down black shirt and snug black pants, with just a mood ring for decoration, hurried down the bar toward them.
“What’ll you have?”
Violet smiled warmly and, by instinct, gently took the girl’s wrist and squeezed before slipping onto the stool with her dad’s name on it.
“It’s nice to see you again, Kennedy. I know you and my dad really connected. How are you doing?”
Kennedy’s eyes slid between Violet and Ivy, and with a nervous half grin, she pulled away to grab a towel. Kennedy had always been a bit reserved although Mickey had considered Kennedy his favorite server. She’d been friendly, for the most part every time Violet came in, but with wary eyes.
Kennedy cleared her throat. “You girls want a drink?”
“Fireball whiskey for me,” Ivy said and pointed to a tray of cupcakes sitting on the bar. “Violet, you’d better eat something first.”
Kennedy poured the shot for her cousin, and Violet went for the cupcakes because Ivy was right.
