by Maggie Wells
Chapter 2
The bell above the bakery door hit so hard the clapper clanked rather than chimed its usual tinkling welcome. Panting and disheveled, Rosie stared at the bank of glass-fronted cases, her chest heaving. The clump of heavy boots told her the proprietor heard the bell’s alert. A moment later, Georgianna Walters popped out from around the corner, her smoky-shadowed eyes wide.
“Rosie?”
Rosie’s heart rate started to slow when she saw genuine concern overtake the annoyance etched between Georgie’s perfectly ached brows. The thin silver ring in her left brow winked in the overhead lights. Once again, Rosie marveled at the joy Georgie brought into a room. No surprise this unconventional woman had won the heart of the world’s most conventional man. For a short time, Georgie and Mike Simmons’s love affair had given Rosie a sliver of hope. If stuffy, uptight Mike could fall for a free-spirited woman like Georgie, then the object of Rosie’s own affections might wake the hell up and smell her coffee.
But he hadn’t.
He never would.
Rosie needed to give up on this impossible love once and for all.
She couldn’t quite give him up, because no matter how many times she’d been there for him, James had never been hers.
Unable to muster even the most basic of greetings, she pointed. “Gimme one of those.”
Georgie blinked once, then followed the tip of Rosie’s trembling finger to the case where the trays of pink-glazed cookies shaped like penises sat on display. Understanding broke like dawn over the other woman’s face. Without a word, she popped a sheet of waxed paper from the box on the counter, wrapped the scrap around the base of the cookie cock, and handed the victim over the counter.
Rosie strained not to snatch the cookie from her hands. She wasn’t as successful at masking the relish with which she chomped down, breaking the shaft in half. She tipped her head back and cupped the hand holding the remainder of the cookie in her hand to her mouth, making sure she didn’t drop a morsel. She wanted to devour—consume—take from him the same way he’d gobbled up everything she’d given him over the years.
“You okay?” Georgie asked, her voice gentle.
Unsure she’d be able to give a civil answer to such an inane question, she shook her head.
Heaving a heavy sigh, Georgie extracted another cookie from the tray and offered it to her. “Of course you’re not. Stupid question.”
Rosie stared at the other woman’s blue-polished nails. She hadn’t used waxed paper this time, or even foodservice gloves. Georgie’s bare-fingered grip on the cookie violated any number of health codes. Rosie had enough family members working the restaurant business to know the drill. But, when she looked up, she saw the worry in the baker’s eyes and knew this wasn’t an attempt to tempt a customer into buying another cookie but the gesture of a friend.
She chewed fast and swallowed before taking the cookie. “Thank you,” she managed to croak at last.
Georgie acknowledged the thanks with a brisk nod, then moved to the cooler of cold drinks near the cash register. Without asking, she pulled two bottles of chilled water from a shelf.
Rosie finally found the ability to blush. “I’m sorry. This is rude of me.”
She hated when her voice came out all quiet and deferential. It was her mother’s voice, but not flavored with a bit of the accent Maria could never lose. Every once in a while, it slipped out of Rosie’s mouth, unbidden.
“No need to apologize.” Georgie thrust one of the bottles into Rosie’s hand. “Does this have something to do with the baby mama?”
Rosie stared in surprise. Georgie was dead-on, but Rosie hadn’t seriously expected to find an ally when she burst into the Getta Piece bakery. She’d only wanted to find a pair of cajones to crush. After all, the baby mama in question was Mike’s sister and Georgie’s potential sister-in-law, Megan Simmons.
Also known as Megan the Moocher. Megalomaniac Megan. Or, Rosie’s personal favorite, Megan the Malignancy.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
“You know, you have bit of an accent when you get mad,” Georgie commented, cutting her apology off neatly.
The heat in her cheeks kicked up a notch. Rosie shook her head, but the gesture was more reluctant acceptance than denial. “It’s not really mine. I borrow it.”
Georgie gave a short laugh and uncapped the other water bottle. “Borrow it?”
“From my mother.” She gave a wry twist of her lips. “I was born in Humboldt Park, grew up near North Avenue and Pulaski.” She paused. “Your father was not very popular there.”
This time Georgie laughed for real. Her father, the former mayor of Chicago, had been beloved by the city’s Irish, Italian, and Polish enclaves but never quite connected with the Latino population of their fair city. More than one candidate from her old neighborhood had challenged his incumbency, but none succeeded. No, Gerald Carson, legendary operator of the Chicago machine, had been brought down by internal factions and his own hubris.
“True, but Gerry is doing well there.” Georgie was referring to her brother’s campaign to be elected to the city’s highest office, of course. “I think the English-to-Spanish dictionary I bought him for Christmas really paid off.”
Rosie couldn’t help but laugh when she pictured perfectly groomed Gerry Carson sweating and tugging at his thick chestnut hair as he laboriously translated his speeches from his diction-perfect English to the rapid-fire mutation of Spanglish of her childhood. “I guess it did.” Rosie studied Georgie for a long moment. “You are a good sister.”
“He’s a good brother.”
Georgie’s eyes shone with sympathy. “What did James do?”
“What? How did you—”
“You’re here, chomping on shortbread peens and fuming over Megan, Queen of Mayhem. I’m no mathematician, but…”
Until that moment, Rosie hadn’t given much thought to the fact that the bane of her existence was also Mike’s sister. She needed to watch what she said. Despite her color-by-numbers hair and funky style, Georgie wasn’t as freewheeling as she might like the world to believe. If what Mike said about her was true, Georgie cared deeply about the people around her, even if she did everything in her power to pretend she was tough as nails.
Rosie exhaled through her nose and the tension seeped from her bones. She and Georgie were on the same side. Of course they were. Georgie and Mike had been tripping along calmly before Hurricane Megan blew into town and tried to shake her brother’s confidence in his relationship with Georgie. At a children’s birthday party, no less. Georgie and Mike had a good thing going, even if Mike was too cautious for his own good. Their relationship was getting deeper, more real. Even from her seat on the sidelines, Rosie could see the connection between them. And Megan had seen the opportunity to get into his head.
Now she would get into James’s head. And the boys. What about the boys? Could they survive their mother’s intrusion in their young lives?
“She moved in with him.”
“James took her in, huh?”
Georgie’s question jolted her from her thoughts and plopped her right back down in reality. Sighing, Rosie bit the tip off the second cookie and chewed methodically as she nodded. “He did.”
“But what was he supposed to do, right?” Georgie turned to a rack of treats waiting to be shelved and plucked two more penises from the assortment. “She is the mother of his children.”
The soft-spoken understanding in the other woman’s tone unleashed a hot rush of tears. The unwelcome moisture scalded her eyes, but Rosie blinked rapidly, refusing to let them fall. She’d shed too many tears over James Harper. “I hate when people skirt justice on a technicality.”
Georgie laughed, then saluted her with the pink-frosted wanker. “Amen.”
Rosie sucked in oxygen and tamped down on her churning emotions. She’d cried the
day she first met him. Not because of anything he did or didn’t do, but, more disturbingly, for no reason at all. She wasn’t a crier. Never had been. Even when she was a girl. She got her backbone from her mother, a woman whose picture should have appeared next to the word ‘stoic’ in the dictionary.
But she’d cried after meeting James. Not a silent trickle of a single tear, or a delicately ladylike breakdown, but a big, fat, ugly cry. Thankfully, Colm and Mike had taken James out to lunch to celebrate the partnership and the company’s rebranding as Trident Security. She’d been invited, of course, but begged off. She’d time needed to regroup.
“He’s a fool.” Georgie brushed cookie crumbs from the corner of her mouth.
“Yes, well, he always has been.” She lifted her chin up to punctuate the statement. She didn’t need to add that she’d been one, too. For him. Since the moment she first laid eyes on him.
At the time, she’d thought the jitters the tall redheaded man stirred in her was a sign she’d found The One. Now, she wondered if all the fluttering hadn’t been her body’s attempt to batten down the hatches. The moment they left, she’d locked herself into the tiny tiled room and let the tempest inside of her out. The crying scared her. She wasn’t the kind of woman given to great big heaving sobs. She was absolutely certain the stuttering breaths were a precursor to hyperventilation, and lived in fear of fainting. What if they found her there, in the ugly bathroom with the fixtures she’d hosed down with bleach, and grout that hadn’t been white since the Nixon administration? She hated her outfit. Mike’s ex-wife had looked so chic in her beige twin-set, Rosie had bought one almost exactly like it. Except, on her, the subdued color screamed: “trying too hard.” She wasn’t the tall, willowy, law school type. No, she was strictly night school, T.J. Maxx, and practically invisible to the opposite sex.
“I cannot keep doing this.” Rosie shook her head and took another greedy bite.
Georgie leaned back against the case and studied her closely. “Keep doing what? Eating cookies? I beg to differ. I have dozens more in the back,” she added with a nonchalant wave of her hand. “Eat all you need.”
Suddenly, Rosie was acutely aware she’d stormed into this kind woman’s business and disrupted her entire day. “Oh my.” She closed her eyes with a grimace. “I’m so sorry. I will pay for them, of course. I had to get out of the office, and I didn’t know where to go, and I wanted to…”
“Bite off a certain man’s most prized possession and pulverize his manhood with your powerful molars?” Georgie supplied helpfully. Rosie must have look startled when she met her gaze, because Georgie laughed. “Please. Do you know how many of these I chow down every time I have to wait for Mike to come to his senses on stupid stuff?”
“I imagine quite a few. He’s stubborn.” Rosie gave a sympathetic wince. “You must be a patient person.”
“I’ve gained six pounds.”
Eying the baker’s curvy but slender figure, she snorted softly. “I doubt you have.”
“I have,” Georgie tossed off a sassy shrug. “I force Mike to kiss every inch of them.”
“As he should.”
“Exactly.” Georgie pushed away from the case. “But if you mean you can’t keep sitting there waiting for James to look up one day and realize you’re the one, I’m afraid you’re right. You need to move on.”
Embarrassed, Rosie shoved the rest of the cookie into her mouth and busied herself with the cap on her water bottle. “Do they all know?”
Georgie gave her a sympathetic pat and nodded. “Yeah. And before you ask, yes, James knows, too. Which makes him even more of an idiot in my opinion.”
Rosie waited for the hot flush of humiliation to come. When it did, she didn’t bother to try to hide her cheeks. What was the point? Everyone knew. Even James. And he still didn’t care.
“I have to stop this.” She spoke more to herself than to Georgie.
“Do you think you can?”
The unadulterated curiosity in Georgie’s question reminded Rosie they hardly knew one another. She’d barged in there, fueled by anger and angst, and practically flung herself at the poor woman. “I’m sorry.” The words gushed out of her as she took an involuntary step back. “I shouldn’t be here. But he kisses me then she shows up and I—”
She stopped herself by slapping a hand over her mouth.
Unwilling to be put off, Georgie closed the gap in two long strides and grabbed her wrist. “Nope. No way. You don’t get to storm in here, bite the heads off perfectly innocent peens, then cock-block me on getting the goods. I’ve been in on the vibe between you and James since the first time I saw the two of you sharing airspace. Now, spill,” she ordered.
“There’s no vibe between me and James.”
“Bullshit. What did he do? Ask you to take some dictation, then forget to press your buttons? He looks the type.”
“What type?”
“All takee and no givee,” Georgie said dismissively. “I bet he thinks the pearl candy I put in the pussy puffs isn’t even edible.”
Rosie shook her head emphatically. “Oh, no. I mean…I wouldn’t know. I mean, no.” She clamped her mouth shut long enough to inhale through her nose, then let the air out slow. Like they always say on those online meditation sessions. “What I’m trying to say is, there’s no vibe. James and I have never… There’s never been any vibe. At least no vibe on his side,” she concluded lamely.
“But he kissed you.”
“Not a real kiss. A peck,” Rosie hastened to explain. “I read too much into things. He doesn’t see me that way.”
Georgie’s cool hand squeezed her wrist. “Then he’s an idiot and needs to get his eyes checked.”
“He wears glasses most of the time,” Rosie turned her wince into a weak smile, conceding that she was giving herself away. “Contacts sometimes, but mostly glasses.”
Georgie squeezed again. “Nearsighted or far?”
Rosie didn’t have to think. She’d memorized every little detail about him. “Near.”
The other woman sighed. “Fine. He’s a blind bat without enough of a brain to see a good thing right in front of him.”
“He graduated cum laude.” The heat in her cheeks ratcheted up a notch, and she shrank into her stupid beige cardigan. “I’m the idiot.”
“No, you’re only a bit misguided.” Georgie lifted her hand and tipped Rosie’s chin up until their eyes met. “You know, in situations like these, there are really only two options.”
Rosie blinked. “Murder and suicide?”
“Makeover or a bit on the side,” Georgie corrected.
Without conscious thought, Rosie started to shake her head. How could Georgie possibly think she hadn’t already gone down those roads? Wasn’t this god-awful sweater set proof enough? “No use. I need to suck it up. Get over him. Get a new job. Find some new man to waste my life wondering about—”
She’d barely hit full-stride when George halted her with the flat of her palm. “Whoa. Whoa. Wait. The new job thing isn’t gonna fly.” She gave a nervous laugh. “Mike would go the murder-suicide route on James before he’d let you leave Trident, and I can’t have him shipped off to prison. I’m just getting him broken in.”
Rosie couldn’t help but chuckle. “He’s not easy to train.”
“Precisely. Which is why you can’t leave them.”
Instead of wrapping her in a blanket of warmth and approbations, Georgie’s adamant insistence she remain at Trident felt like a knife twisting in her gut. Miserable again, she eyed her new sort-of friend. “You don’t understand. I can’t. I can’t take this anymore.” Her free hand curled into a fist. The water bottle crackled and popped under the pressure. “I hate feeling like this. I am not this woman. I don’t want to be this woman.”
Georgie gingerly removed the bottle before she could send chilled water shooting up like a geyser. Rosie
started to turn, but the other woman caught her arm and held firm.
Damn.
Georgie Walters was small, but strong. “Makeover and new man. Just the ticket.”
“Georgie, please,” she started.
“I know a great guy. His name is Charlie, and we went to culinary school together.” Rosie opened her mouth to protest but clamped her lips shut when Georgie gave her a teeth-rattling shake. “Listen,” she continued, her voice low and commanding. “He’s still raw from a previous relationship, like you, but ready to move on. Again, like you,” she added with a pointed stare.
“I don’t know—”
“I do.”
The thread of steel in Georgie’s answer startled her. And Rosie found she didn’t want to be the one in control. For once, she wanted someone else to make the decision. Make the plan. Handle all the details she couldn’t quite trust herself to handle. Like choosing the right person to love. Running her tongue over her teeth, she savored the last traces of sweetness from the cookies she’d devoured.
“If you’re not into blind dates, there’s always the Internet or apps. I think Monica used to use MatchStix. We could sign you up.”
The thought of Internet dating was enough to push past her aversion to blind dates. “Charlie?” she asked, her voice barely more than a croak.
Georgie’s smile broke like a sunrise. “He’s the nicest guy. Owns a fondue restaurant.” She wrapped an arm around Rosie’s shoulders and gave her a hug. But it felt more like she was caught in a snare. “His place is called Chuckie’s Cheese. I took Mike there on our first date.”
Rosie gasped softly as she realized somehow, in her desperation, she’d agreed to a set-up with a giant mouse.
* * * *
James had made many, many bad decisions in his life, but the biggest mistake he’d ever made was currently draining every bit of steam from his water heater.
“Does Mommy like peanuts?” his younger son, Jeff, asked.
James didn’t bother trying to connect the conversational dots between the page the boy was coloring in his activity book and the random question. The twins’ facile young minds took leaps their mentally stiffer father didn’t bother to chase.
