Get You Good

by Rhonda Bowen

  “Good morning, Dean,” Sydney said, trying to force some enthusiasm into her voice.

  She was not a fan of the way Dean kept showing up in her office unannounced. She knew that it technically was his office and his space, but it still irked her. That and the fact that she had heard through the family grapevine that Dean and his wife had made a down payment on a house. He sure was spending money fast.

  “Don’t worry, this time I have good news,” he said, jumping up. “I actually wanted to show you something.”

  Sydney set her notes from the morning meeting on her desk cautiously.

  “OK. I’m listening.”

  With his iPad in hand, Dean moved over to the couch, beckoning Sydney closer.

  “Check this out,” he said, pulling up some pictures. “I went to see some spaces this week. Tell me what you think.”

  Sydney didn’t have time for this. She had a business to run, more clients than she had seen in years, and desserts to replenish for her walk-in customers. She didn’t have time to consult with Dean on properties for his studio. But he had gone out of his way to work out a deal for Sydney to stay at Decadent. The least she could do was support him in his own dreams.

  “OK, show me what you’ve got,” she said.

  “All right, this one is on the east end.” He flipped through some pictures of a small storefront. The front area was small and a little dingy. The second room off the first was larger, but gray and poorly lit.

  Sydney wrinkled her nose.

  “You don’t like it,” he said.

  “Well . . .”

  “OK, forget that,” he said quickly. “Here’s another. This one is more north of the city. Near Sheppard Avenue and Yonge Street. It’s a bit newer, and comes with kitchen equipment and display cases.”

  Dean flipped through the pictures of the admittedly better-looking space, not noticing the confusion on his sister’s face.

  “Now, it is a bit smaller, but it’s the price of staying in the city. . . .”

  “OK, Dean, these places look more like storefronts. Shouldn’t you be looking for somewhere more enclosed for your studio?” Sydney asked.

  “Studio?”

  “Yes,” Sydney said. “Isn’t this what you’re showing me?”

  She watched Dean pause, then swallow hard.

  “These aren’t for me, Sydney,” he said. “They’re for you.”

  It was Sydney’s turn to pause.

  “Excuse me?”

  Dean put the iPad down on the couch in the space between them and rubbed his sweaty palms on his pants.

  “These are potential new locations for Decadent.”

  “Oh my God . . .” Sydney’s head was spinning, but Dean kept talking, his words speeding up as if he was trying to get everything out while she was still in shock.

  “They’re great locations, Syd. Me and Sheree checked them out ourselves. They get lots of traffic, both come with kitchen equipment so you wouldn’t have to buy a lot of new stuff, and the rent is pretty reasonable. . . .”

  “What’s going on, Dean?”

  “What do you mean?” he squeaked.

  “Don’t play games with me.”

  “I found a buyer.”

  Dean might as well have pulled the pin out of a grenade and tossed it into the middle of the room. The level of shock that Sydney was experiencing would have been about the same.

  “I know this wasn’t what we planned,” he said, getting up and pacing. “But me and Sheree have been talking about this, and we agreed this was an opportunity that we couldn’t pass up.”

  “You and Sheree?”

  “Yes,” Dean continued. “Sheree and I met with the buyers. They are willing to pay above what we thought this place was valued, and they are willing to pay everything upfront. No long-term payments, no installments. One solid money transfer. It would be a smooth exchange, and I know it’s not what we planned, but I feel like this is the best for every—”

  “Dean, we had an agreement!”

  “I know you’re disappointed, Syd, but . . .”

  “Disappointed?” Sydney repeated. “I was disappointed when you walked in here and told me you were thinking of selling Decadent. I was disappointed when you made it clear you couldn’t even wait long enough for me to get the money to buy it outright. But this, Dean? This is not disappointment.”

  Dean tried to explain again, but Sydney could barely hear him over the steam pouring out her ears.

  This was not happening.

  This was definitely not happening. Not after the perfect weekend she had just had. Not when things were finally starting to look like they were going her way. She was on her way to owning the shop she loved and she had someone in her life she really cared about. Heck, she was even getting along with all her sisters and her mom. And then this happened. Her brother had walked into the office and told her he had a buyer for the store.

  “Dean, this is crazy,” Sydney said. “We had an agreement. I signed it. You signed it. You received our payment on our portion of the store. It’s already done.”

  Sydney laughed a little. What was she getting so worked up for? She was safe. She had a legal agreement binding her to the store. Dean couldn’t sell without her.

  “Actually, it’s not that simple,” Dean said slowly. “I talked to my lawyer, and he said the agreement states that within one week of signing either party can opt to dissolve the arrangement. In any case, the filing of the paperwork is not yet complete, so . . .”

  “So you’re saying that the law compensates for your irresponsibility.”

  “Sydney . . .”

  “You took our money, Dean,” she said, jumping to her feet. “The money that we pinched and scraped to pull together as soon as possible because you needed to have it.”

  “I know and you’ll get it back. All of it. Plus, I’ll help you with whatever you need to get set up at a new location—”

  “I don’t care about the money, Dean! I care about this shop. This is all that I have. Don’t you get that?”

  “Yeah, Syd,” Dean said, his face hardening. “You had this shop. You had Dad all the time before he died, you had your dream. And what do I have? Nothing.”

  “I worked hard for this,” Sydney snapped. “I sacrificed everything to make sure this place stayed afloat, even after dad was gone. . . .”

  “Yeah, ’cause you thought it would be yours, too, right?” Dean sneered. “Admit it, Syd. You hate that Dad gave this to me. You probably even hate me.”

  Sydney shook her head. “I don’t hate you, Dean. But I hate that you went about getting what you want like this. When did you even go looking for a buyer anyway? Were you going behind my back to do this all along?”

  “Of course not!” Dean said, his brows furrowing deeply. “You really think that I could do that?”

  “I don’t know, Dean,” Sydney said, folding her arms. “I didn’t think a week after you sold me a percentage of the business that you would try to sell the whole thing out from under me to someone else.”

  “I didn’t plan this,” Dean said, throwing up his hands. “But I got an offer I couldn’t refuse. I guess people heard we were thinking about selling. A couple days ago I got a call with an offer from a holding corporation that owns a similar line of pastry stores. I don’t remember the name, something nice or something delicious . . .”

  Sydney felt her heart fall into her stomach. “Something Sweet?”

  “Yeah, I think that’s it,” Dean said absently.

  “You sold to our competition?”

  “What?”

  “That’s why they’re willing to pay above value. So they can put us out of business.” Sydney squeezed her eyes shut. “You sold our father’s life’s work to his competition.”

  Silence hung in the room as the magnitude of what Dean had done dawned on both of them in equal measure.

  Sydney turned away. She couldn’t look at her brother. Because at that moment, all she wanted to do was put her hands around h
is ignorant neck.

  “Maybe it’s not that bad,” Dean tried after a long moment. “We didn’t sell the brand. You can still use the name Decadent and run the business somewhere else. The space is not the business.”

  “This space is the business,” Sydney countered, whirling around to face him. “We’ve been here for twenty years. Twenty years, Dean. This is where people know us. You think we can just change locations and continue business as usual?”

  “What the hell is going on in here?” The door burst open and Lissandra flew inside Sydney’s office where Sydney and Dean were squared off on opposite sides of the room.

  Neither of them answered or even looked at their sister.

  “Well?” Lissandra asked, her tone riddled with annoyance. “I mean, it’s not like we have a floor of customers who can actually hear you!”

  “Tell her,” Sydney ordered, nodding toward Lissandra but keeping her eyes on Dean. “Tell her how you want to go back on our agreement and sell the store to someone else.”

  The door slammed shut under the pressure of Lissandra’s anger. “What?”

  Dean looked back and forth between his two sisters nervously and at the door, which was out of his direct line of access.

  “Lissandra, just listen—”

  “No, I don’t need to listen to you,” Lissandra said, her finger pointed at Dean. “I’m about tired of listening to you. You just need to answer one question: Are you trying to sell this store.”

  “It’s not about Decadent, it’s about—”

  “You’re not answering me, Dean,” Lissandra hissed, stepping closer to her brother. “Are you trying to sell this store to someone else?”

  Sydney watched her brother swallow and take a step back.

  “Yes. But . . .”

  “You stupid, selfish little bastard. . . .”

  Lissandra lunged toward Dean, but Sydney grabbed her before she could rake her nails across her brother’s face. Dean took the opportunity to scramble behind Sydney’s desk, out of Lissandra’s reach.

  “I am so sick of catering to your spoiled little behind. . . .”

  “Lissandra!”

  “You better have my money, you little prick, or I swear I’ll . . .”

  “Lissandra, stop,” Sydney said more forcefully, physically moving her sister much farther away. She was managing to hold her off so far, but Lissandra had more than a couple of pounds on Sydney and she knew she wouldn’t be able to contain her sister for much longer.

  “Dean, leave.”

  He didn’t need to be told twice. Before Sydney could turn around, she heard the door open and close behind her.

  “Lissandra, you need to calm down.”

  “Let me go.”

  “Lissandra . . .”

  “Let me go!”

  Sydney let her sister go, and Lissandra immediately charged out the door. A few moments later she came back, her face still stony in anger.

  “How could you let him leave, Syd?” Lissandra snapped, glaring at Sydney. “How could you let him do this?”

  “Let him?” Sydney snapped back. Her anger with her brother was still burning inside her. If Lissandra didn’t watch herself, she was going to get scorched.

  “Yes, let him.”

  “And what exactly do you think I should have done?” Sydney spat. “Thanks to our father, Dean is the owner of this store. Dean’s name is on the deed for the property. Dean is the one who gets to decide what happens.”

  “But we own it, too,” Lissandra insisted. “We gave him that money. He can’t go back on us.”

  “Actually, the law says he can,” Sydney said. She sank into her chair, drained. “The filing of the papers hadn’t been completed yet, so he still could dissolve it—money or no money.”

  Lissandra shook her head and began pacing. “This can’t be it. He has our money. There must be something we can do. There must be a way we can sue him. . . .”

  “No,” Sydney said firmly. “I am not taking my brother to court.”

  “But Sydney—”

  “No, Lissandra,” Sydney said, the disappointment and shock at her sister’s suggestion evident in her voice. “It doesn’t matter how bad we feel about this, this is our brother. Our family. We don’t do that.”

  Lissandra folded her arms and pouted, making it clear she disagreed.

  “This place means as much to me as it does to you,” Sydney said. “But I will not split our family up any further than it already is. I’m already dodging calls from Jackie because of this whole thing. How do you think she would react if she heard we were planning to sue Dean over the store? Daddy would roll over in his grave.”

  She sighed. “This is not the legacy he wanted for Decadent.”

  Lissandra sat down across from Sydney, still pouting. “So what are we supposed to do, Sydney? Just give up?”

  Sydney ran her hand over her eyes tiredly.

  “I don’t know, Lissandra,” she said finally. “I don’t know anything anymore.”

  They sat in silence as the weight of the situation fell on both of them.

  “So he already found a buyer.”

  “You’ll never guess who.”

  “Don’t tell me . . .”

  “Samantha and her people.”

  Lissandra swore. “And they’re willing to pay?”

  “Above the asking,” Sydney said.

  Lissandra swore again.

  “He’s giving our money back.” She shook her head. “Can you believe he came in here, showing me some tired storefronts that we could move to? Said he was trying to help.”

  “I’ll tell him what to do with his help.”

  Sydney looked around at the office that she had shared with her father for several years and used on her own since Leroy died. The eggshell blue made the windowless room look brighter than it actually was. Books on food, pastry making, and decorating lined the bookshelves on one side while a large board covered with pictures of specialty cakes and creations, catered events, and favorite customers hung on the other. This place was her life. The one thing she could depend on to be there and to be the same. She couldn’t imagine not coming here every day. What would she do?

  The air in the room suddenly felt thinner and Sydney’s chest hurt as she struggled to breathe. She bolted up from her seat and grabbed her purse.

  “I have to go.”

  “You can’t go now, Syd,” Lissandra began. “We have to deal with this. . . .”

  Sydney grabbed her iPhone in response. “I’ll be back later.”

  As she went through the door, she heard her sister call after her, but she didn’t stop. She barely smiled as people called out to her on her way through the doors to the parking lot. Her cell phone rang as she started the car. It was Thomas, Decadent’s accountant. He had probably heard from Dean and wanted to know what was going on. But Sydney didn’t want to talk to anyone right now. So she shut off the phone and pulled out of the parking lot. She didn’t know where she was going, but anywhere but here would be good enough.

  Chapter 12

  “Anywhere” turned out to be the backyard behind the house. After driving around for what felt like hours, it became her final stop. Still dressed in her clothes from work, Sydney slipped through the back door into the gated yard behind the house. She looked around the ground at the thin layer of grass that was bucking the winter and holding strong. The time for barbeques and evenings out back was long gone with the fall, but Sydney didn’t care. She couldn’t think of anywhere else to be, so here she was.

  The empty wrought-iron benches beckoned to her, but she chose the tire swing instead. It had survived their childhood and was still useful as a source of entertainment for kids on the rare occasions that there were any at the house. She dusted off a thin layer of leftover leaves before fitting her legs through the hole and making herself comfortable. At the right angle her feet didn’t even touch the ground.

  She took a deep breath of the crisp, dry air and noted that yesterday’s clear blu
e skies, which had today become gray and murky, were an uncanny reflection of the way her life had suddenly changed in only a few hours.

  As the tire moved gently in small circles, Sydney wondered for the hundredth time what she was going to do. The one thing she had feared the minute Dean had come home was the very thing that was happening. She was losing the shop. But it was much worse than she had anticipated. In her worst-case scenario, Dean had just assumed ownership of the store and run it into the ground. Sydney could have dealt with that. She would have let him crash and burn first, but then she would have helped him figure out how to run Decadent. Then they would have done it together and everything would have been fine. But never had she imagined that she might literally lose the store—that it would no longer be in the family but belong to someone else. She didn’t have a plan for that.

  “Want some company?”

  Sydney twisted the swing around and found Hayden standing by the door, his hands in his pockets and concern in his eyes.

  “What are you doing here?” She let the tire turn her around as the swing righted itself.

  “I called you several times on your cell, but it kept going straight to voice mail,” he said, walking over to where she was. “I got worried, so I called the shop. Lissandra told me what happened.”

  He stooped down in front of her. “I’m sorry, Syd.”

  She realized tears had begun to run down her face. Hayden reached over and gently wiped them away with his thumbs.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Sydney said, her voice cloudy. “If I had known this was coming like a year ago, then I could have planned for it. I would still be upset, but I wouldn’t feel so . . . so . . .”

  “Blindsided?”

  “Yeah,” she said, nodding. “How am I going to fix this in a couple weeks? There’s no time to find a new space, to let all our customers know we’re moving, to change all our stationery and business cards, and reschedule all our orders, to move all the equipment—that’s if Dean didn’t sell all of it with the store. Plus, I know Samantha, and she’s just going to swoop in and steal all our clients with our location. . . .”

  “Easy, Syd,” Hayden said, taking her hand and squeezing her fingers. “One thing at a time. . . .”