Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Audrey
Game night with the girls. Audrey couldn’t remember the last time she’d done such a thing.
She was glad it was happening, though, because otherwise, she would be spending tonight alone in her apartment, an absolute nervous wreck because her bakery was opening tomorrow.
Sure, it was the soft open, but she was just as nervous about that as the grand opening.
If the soft open didn’t go well, how could they possibly handle a grand opening? They couldn’t. Unless no one showed up. But she didn’t want to hope for no one showing up to her grand opening.
“Stop it.”
Audrey jerked in surprise, the seatbelt tightening across her chest at her sudden movement, and looked at Cassidy, who was driving.
“Stop what?”
“Stop thinking that you’re going to fail.” Cassidy glanced at her and smiled. “It’s going to be great. Everything’s ready. Ashley texted me that you’re all set.”
“We are. Although…”
“No.”
“You don’t even know what I was going to say!”
“The whole reason I’m driving tonight is so you can’t try to sneak away to go back to the bakery.
” Cassidy gave her another stern look before refocusing on the road.
“Everything is set. I know you’re going to be there crazy early tomorrow morning.
You’ve been working like mad all week. Tonight, you’re going to relax and have fun and be with friends. ”
Audrey huffed. “For someone who hasn’t known me for very long, you do a much better job of reading me than people I knew for years.”
“Yeah, well, trauma will do that to you,” Cassidy joked, although it wasn’t really a joke. “I’m always paying attention to people’s moods.”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to remind you of that.
” Audrey immediately felt terrible that she’d brought it up.
She and Cassidy hadn’t talked much about what Cassidy’s abusive ex had been like, but she was sure the other woman’s memories were terrible.
Audrey knew he’d been abusive while they were together, stalked her after they broke up, harassed her friends, put trackers in her shoes, then tried to kidnap her, before finally shooting David…
after which he got a knife to the throat, as David had so charmingly put it.
But those were just the facts, not what it had been like to live through all of that.
“It’s okay. Some days, everything reminds me of him. Other days, I’m totally fine. It’s all part of the healing process.” Cassidy’s voice was remarkably calm, considering what they were talking about. “The important thing is that I got away. A lot of women don’t.”
That part, Audrey could relate to, at least a little. Not that what Cash had put her through was anything like what Cassidy had gone through, but… she’d escaped the life that had been laid out for her. A life that had been slowly smothering her.
“I’m really glad you got away.”
“Me, too. Your brother saved me in more ways than one.” Cassidy shook her head in wonderment.
“Not just him, either. My friends in D.C. gave me faith in people again. They supported me when I couldn’t do anything for them in return.
Got me to safety up here. Then everyone here continued that.
I really wasn’t looking for love, ever again, but your brother is the one who made me realize I could still have that part of my life, too. ”
Audrey felt tears spring up in her eyes.
“That’s so beautiful.”
“Sometimes, it feels like I was headed toward a terrible fate, then the universe intervened and sent me to a different destiny.” Cassidy sighed. “Which sounds very dramatic, but that’s how it feels sometimes.”
“You went through something pretty dramatic, so that’s fair.”
“Dramatic and traumatic,” Cassidy quipped, making them both giggle. “It’s kind of wild that I can laugh about it now, but… some days I can. And I feel like that’s healthy.”
“Definitely healthier than drowning in melancholy,” Audrey agreed.
“Yeah, I did plenty of that already. Okay, here we are.” She pulled to a halt, parking in front of a stone house that looked straight out of a fairy tale. Audrey blinked in surprise. It even had a little turret on the left side.
“That’s Claudia’s house?” Audrey pointed. Maybe Cassidy meant the next house over.
“Yup. Unexpected, huh?”
“Definitely.” Audrey got out of the car, looking at it.
She would have expected Claudia’s somewhere more like David’s home, with clean modern lines and lots of dark colors.
Not a Thomas Kinkade painting. Even without anything blooming in the flowerbeds or on the bushes, it was a picturesque little house.
A romantic dwelling. She went to the back car door and opened it so she could pull out the tray of extra goodies she’d made for tonight—an assortment of cookies and cake pops.
She followed Cassidy up the path to the front door.
Cassidy knocked, but didn’t bother waiting for someone to come to the door, just opened it and stepped back so Audrey could pass through in front of her.
The inside of Claudia’s house matched the outside.
It was soft. Cozy. Neither of which were words she would have ever used to describe Claudia, which made the dichotomy all the more fascinating.
“Hello, come on in,” Claudia said, even though they already were in. She was standing behind a large table where Ashley and Jennifer were seated. Both of them smiled and waved. “Naomi and Yasmine should be here soon. I think it’s just the seven of us tonight. Brenda’s not coming, right?”
“She sends her regrets,” Cassidy said, and shook her head as she closed the door behind her. “I’m not sure what she’s up to tonight. She told me it’s none of my business. Not in a mean way, but she didn’t want to tell me what her plans were.”
“We’ll probably find out eventually,” Ashley said cheerfully, hopping up from her seat at the table to come around and take the tray from Audrey.
“Oh, I’ve got it… Well, thank you.” Apparently, Ashley wasn’t taking no for an answer; she’d already taken the tray from Audrey before she could finish her sentence. Bemused, she looked at her suddenly empty hands.
“No, I’ve got it, boss,” Ashley said, winking at her as she turned and headed toward a smaller table that was adjacent to the kitchen and already piled with food. There were two coolers on the ground to the right of it. “You’re going to have to get used to being in charge and bossing me around.”
“I feel like I’m being the one bossed around,” Audrey muttered good naturedly, although she wasn’t entirely kidding. Ashley seemed to have decided that her job was to handle everything but the baking and the books this week, and she was constantly shooing Audrey away from everything else.
“Go A-Team!” Ashley cheered, using one hand to move aside a bowl of chips and salsa, squishing it in with the other platters, to make room for the baked goods.
“A-Team?” Jennifer asked, raising her eyebrows and leaning forward to rest her weight on the table.
“That’s what we’re calling ourselves,” Audrey explained. “My other new employee’s name is Alexis, so all of our names start with A. The A-Team.”
“Or Triple A, but I like A-Team better,” Ashley said, returning to the table and sliding back into her seat.
“I think Seven Wonders tonight,” Claudia said, looking over the boxes she’d pulled out. “Since there are seven of us.”
“Imagine my surprise,” Jennifer muttered and smirked when Claudia shot her a look.
“Have you played before?” Claudia asked, and it took Audrey a moment to realize the other woman was directing the question at her.
“Um, no.”
“That’s fine, it’s easy enough to learn; it’s the strategy that’s hard,” Claudia said, nodding her head and starting to pull the other boxes off the table. “Go ahead and grab something to drink—the blue cooler has non-alcoholic options, and the red cooler has the booze.”
With her soft opening tomorrow, Audrey opted for the blue cooler.
She was just picking out a sparkling water when there was a knock on the door.
Like Cassidy, there was no wait before opening, and Naomi and Yasmine came in.
Both of them were smiling in anticipation of the evening, bright-eyed and happy to be there.
“Hello, hello,” Naomi said, unwinding the scarf from around her neck as she looked around the room. Her eyes landed on the table where Claudia was standing. “Oh, Seven Wonders. Imagine my surprise.”
“That’s what I said,” Jennifer replied with a snicker, while Claudia glared.
“It’s the perfect game for seven people.”
“The fact that it’s your favorite has nothing to do with it,” Naomi teased, making Yasmine laugh. Even her laugh was pretty. Delicate. The kind of laugh Audrey had always wanted.
Cut it out, green-eyed monster.
Audrey let out a slow breath and pushed a smile onto her lips.
It wasn’t Yasmine’s fault that she made Audrey feel inferior by her very existence.
Or that she was engaged to the first man Audrey had been attracted to since finding her ex in the coat closet with another woman. That was all on Audrey.
Thankfully, no one seemed to notice she was a little out of sorts.
That, or they chalked it up to it being her first time hanging out with all of them without her brother around as a buffer.
Though Cassidy did step into that place pretty quickly and sat beside Audrey.
Of course, that left the other side open, and as fate would have it, Yasmine took that seat.
Which meant that Audrey got to experience firsthand how nice she was.
Despite what Claudia said, the game was definitely confusing to start.
There were so many different cards and symbols and ways that the scoring worked.
As they played, Yasmine kept explaining in a low voice what everything was and the different strategic options.
Most of that went over Audrey’s head, but she still appreciated the effort.
She needed to kick her attraction to Mason.
She liked Yasmine.
She was not going to be that woman.