8. Ivy
— ? —
Ivy
The county decided to repave Main Street in the middle of my busiest season.
Three weeks of jackhammers and detour signs and dust clouds that settle on my front windows every afternoon.
The tourists hate it. My regulars hate it.
I hate it most of all because it means the road crew has adopted Wildflour as their unofficial cafeteria, and while I appreciate the business, twelve hungry men in work boots track a lot of mud across my clean floors.
“Six coffees, four danishes, two of those egg things,” the foreman calls out as they pile through the door at eleven thirty. “And whatever else looks good.”
“Coming up.” I’m already pulling cups, sliding pastries into boxes, running the register with one hand while Joss handles the pass. It’s a rhythm we’ve perfected over months, the two of us moving around each other like dancers who’ve memorized the choreography.
Most of the crew is fine. Polite enough, tip decently, say please and thank you. But there’s one.
There’s always one.
His name is Wade, according to the embroidery on his vest, and he’s decided that my bakery is a hunting ground and I’m the prey.
“Looking good today, sweetheart.” He leans on the counter while I’m ringing up his order, close enough that I can smell the cigarettes on his breath. “That apron really does something for you.”
“That’ll be fourteen fifty.”
“Come on. Not even a smile?”
“Fourteen fifty.” I hold out my hand for the cash, keeping my face in that neutral zone between polite and get the hell away from me. “You’re holding up the line.”
He makes a show of fishing for his wallet, taking his time, letting his eyes wander in ways that make my skin crawl.
“You got a number? Maybe we could grab a drink sometime. After you’re done playing baker.”
“I don’t put my number on the receipt, but I’ll double-bag the danish.”
The guys behind him snicker. Wade’s jaw tightens.
“Feisty. I like that.”
“Fourteen fifty.”
He slaps a twenty on the counter and doesn’t wait for change, just grabs his bag and walks to a table by the window where he can watch me work. I can feel his eyes on me for the rest of the rush, tracking my movements, waiting for something I’m not going to give him.
Joss catches my eye from the pass. You okay?
I wave her off. Fine. I’ve handled worse than Wade.
The lunch crowd thins out around one, and I’m restocking the display case when he comes back up to the counter. The rest of the crew is filing out, heading back to their trucks, but Wade hangs back with that smile that’s supposed to be charming and just reads as threatening.
“Last chance.” He leans over the counter, close enough that I have to step back to avoid contact. “One drink. What’s the harm?”
“I said no.”
“You said a lot of things. Didn’t hear a real no in there.”
“Then you weren’t listening.”
His hand lands on my wrist, fingers wrapping around the bone with just enough pressure to make a point. “Come on. One drink. I don’t bite.”
I go very still.
The bakery is quiet now, just me and Joss and the last few customers finishing their coffees. I can feel them watching, feel the shift in the air, that collective held breath of people witnessing something they don’t want to be part of.
“That’s a no.” I keep my voice steady, loud enough for the whole room to hear. “It was a no three sentences ago. You just weren’t listening.”
I pull my wrist free with a sharp twist and set the pastry box I’m holding down on the counter hard enough to make the display case rattle.
“Your order’s done. Have a nice day.”
An ugly mix of embarrassment and hot anger washes over Wade’s face. The shift doesn’t go unnoticed by his crew, who are now watching from the doorway and moving uncomfortably as the room’s laughter suddenly targets their boss.
“Whatever.” He snatches the box off the counter. “Stuck-up bitch.”
He walks out with the rest of them, and the door swings shut, and I let myself breathe for the first time in five minutes.
“You okay?” Joss is at my elbow, her face tight with concern.
“Fine. Just another day in the service industry.”
But my hands are shaking when I pick up the rag to wipe down the counter, and I hate that. I hate that a man I don’t know and don’t care about can make my hands shake in my own shop.
The bell above the door chimes again, and my whole body tenses.
It’s Kurt.
He stands in the doorway looking like he just walked into the wrong scene of a play. His eyes sweep the room, catching the tension still hanging in the air, the way Joss is hovering protectively at my side, the rag twisted tight in my hands.
“What happened?”
“Nothing. What are you doing here?”
“It’s Saturday. I’m here to pick up Maddie for my hour.”
I glance at the clock. One forty-five. Fifteen minutes early.
“She’s in the back with Amelie. I’ll get her.”
“Ivy.” He takes a step toward me, and I hold up a hand.
“Don’t.”
“I saw him grab you. Through the window.”
“And I handled it.”
“That’s not what I’m saying.”
“Then what are you saying?”
He stops. His hands clench at his sides, then release. For a second he looks like he wants to do something stupid, something heroic, something that would require me to be the kind of woman who needs rescuing.
I’m not that woman. I never was.
“Nothing,” he finally says. “I’m not saying anything. You handled it. I just wanted you to know I’m here. If you need me.”
“I don’t need you.”
“I know.”
He stands there, hands in his pockets, neither pushing nor demanding anything, yet his quiet presence feels more unsettling than if he had charged out the door after Wade like an enraged bull.
The old Kurt would have made a massive scene, demanding to know who the man was and throwing around threats of lawsuits to protect his wounded pride.
This Kurt just waits.
“Maddie,” I say again. “I’ll get her.”
I walk to the back without looking at him, and I tell myself the heat in my chest is just leftover adrenaline from Wade. Nothing else. Certainly not gratitude for a man who stood in my doorway and didn’t try to save me.
Certainly not that.
When I come back with Maddie on my hip, Kurt is exactly where I left him, studying the menu board like it contains the secrets of the universe.
“Here.” I hand her over, and she goes to him without crying this time. “Back by three.”
“Back by three,” he agrees.
He leaves with my daughter in his arms, and I watch them through the window as he straps her into the car seat he bought. He’s getting better at it. Faster, more confident, learning instead of just performing.
The rest of the afternoon passes in a blur of routine. All the small, repetitive tasks that make up a life I built with my own hands.
Kurt brings Maddie back at exactly three, not a minute late. She’s asleep in his arms, her head resting on his shoulder, while a heavy, uncomfortable ache tightens in my chest at the sight of it.
“She passed out about twenty minutes ago,” he says quietly. “We were looking at ducks.”
“There’s a pond behind the inn.”
“She liked the brown ones best. Kept pointing and making this sound, like a tiny foghorn.”
Despite myself, I almost smile. “She does that.”
“It’s the best sound I’ve ever heard.”
The sincerity in his voice catches me off guard.
I take her from him, careful not to wake her, and he stands on my porch like he wants to say something more. His mouth opens, closes. Whatever it is, he swallows it.
“Same time Wednesday?”
“Same time Wednesday.”
He nods and walks back to his car. I watch him go, this man I used to know so well and don’t know at all anymore. He glances back once before he gets in, and I pretend I wasn’t still standing there watching.
Joss heads out at four with a wave and a promise to see me Monday. I finish the closing routine alone, the way I’ve done a hundred times before. Mop the floors, lock the register and turn off the lights.
I’m locking the front door when I see it.
Wade’s truck. Parked across the square, engine off, facing the shop.
He sits in the driver’s seat and simply watches, staring at my windows as the daylight fades around him.
My keys freeze in my hand.
It’s probably nothing. He’s probably waiting for someone, killing time, scrolling his phone. There are a hundred innocent explanations for why a man might be parked across from a business he visited earlier.
But the way he looked at me when I pulled my wrist free. The way his face went ugly when the crew laughed. The word he spat at me on his way out the door.
Men like Wade don’t like being embarrassed. They especially don’t like being embarrassed by women who should have known their place.
I finish locking up and walk around to the stairs up to our place above the bakery. I don’t run. I won’t give him the satisfaction of seeing me run.
But I lock that door too, and I check it twice, and I stand at my window with the lights off, watching Wade’s truck sit there in the darkness like a promise of something I don’t want to name.
Maddie stirs in her crib, and I go to her, grateful for the distraction. She settles back to sleep with one hand wrapped around my finger, trusting and small and completely unaware of the world outside her window.
I stay there longer than I need to, listening to her breathe, not thinking about the truck in the square.
After thirty minutes, he starts the engine and drives away. I tell myself that’s the end of it.