Chapter 1
Chapter One
Missy
I had dough all over my apron and flour on my face, and my fingers were so slippery with butter and oil that whenever I tried to flip the button on the secondhand industrial mixer that I’d purchased less than a month ago, they kept sliding right off.
Once I finally managed to flip it, the machine made a loud clicking noise and refused to move.
“Do not do this to me,” I warned the machine and the universe at the same time.
In response, it started up, groaned once, loudly, clicked… and stopped.
I smacked the side of the metal machine with my palm. “I swear, I will toss you into the dumpster if you quit on me on opening day.”
As if offended and worried, the mixer suddenly sputtered back to life, coughing flour dust into the air like it was taunting me. The thing had it out for me. I didn’t trust it, but still, I’d take what I could get.
That’s when the oven beeped behind me.
Not a good beep.
A something-is-wrong kind of beep.
The “you’re doomed” sound that all metal objects make before exploding or turning off for the last time.
I spun around just in time to see the display flash a hostile error code and then go black.
“Oh great,” I muttered. “Just what I need. Appliance mutiny.”
Everything had worked fine the last few weeks as I’d gotten ready for today. They’d been perfectly nice machines since I’d purchased them. Why today? Why now?
It was just my luck, that’s why. Murphy’s Law.
I heard the back door open and when I glanced over, all my tension disappeared.
My brother Max walked in. Technically his name was Wyatt Maxwell Sharpe, but he was Max to me and anyone he liked.
Beside him, his wife of a little over a year, Cora, glided through the doorway like the dancer she was. The duo moved as if they were entering a stage on opening night of The Nutcracker instead of the kitchen.
Since they were both diehard professional ballet dancers, it made total sense.
Even at four in the morning, they appeared chipper and happy. Then again, both of them used to rise this early for practices all the time.
Max and Cora were far too graceful for my little bakery.
My brother had studied dance all his life, thanks to our parents’ history and the fact that they had started Sharper Image Dance Company years before I was born.
Still, Max had defied them by joining the army shortly after graduation.
His military training made him move like every step had purpose.
But his dance training made those steps ridiculously smooth.
His rich honey-colored eyes scanned the room with that familiar mix of big-brother worry and silent amusement.
He wore a fitted black winter coat over a dark T-shirt and looked effortlessly artistic and annoyingly put together. Cora and Max had left the city for the slower life in Silver Cove and were in the process of opening their very own dance studio a few doors down.
Cora would run the local studio while Max ran my parents’ baby in New York. It didn’t require him to be there twenty-four seven, but it was clear he was pulling all the strings now. Especially since my parents, who were currently getting a divorce, spent most of their time bickering about money.
But I digress. I was happy that Sharper Image Dance Company was coming to Silver Cove, even if our parents were dead set against it.
When they had put Max in charge, they had made the mistake of giving up too much control.
Which meant Max could do as he pleased. And currently, he and Cora were dead set on making Silver Cove their home.
Cora hurried over and enveloped me in a hug, ignoring the fact that I was covered in flour. “We heard the stress in your text messages so we decided to head over and help out where we could.”
“My texts weren’t stressed,” I insisted.
“They had caps lock on,” Max said, already dropping to one knee in front of the still-beeping oven like he was disarming a bomb.
“I’m not panicking,” I argued as my voice hitched.
He shot me a look, his eyebrows fully raised. “You just practically said that in all caps.”
Cora gently pried a dough-covered spatula from my grip. I didn’t even know I was still holding it. “We will help. You just breathe,” she said with a reassuring smile.
“I am breathing,” I said and realized at the same time that I was feeling light-headed.
“Sweetheart, mental breathing doesn’t count,” she said warmly.
I gulped in a few breaths, as if proving it to her.
The bell chimed again and I stopped myself from throwing something at the door. I did not need anyone else seeing me like this.
If it was a customer, I was about to fake an emergency and shut the doors for good.
But it wasn’t a customer.
It was Cade. There wasn’t a day growing up that I didn’t remember Cade being around. We went to the same school. Attended family functions together, even though we weren’t related. We even went on family vacations every year side by side.
If Cade was here, that meant Max had called in reinforcements.
Cade stepped into the kitchen like a six-foot-four avalanche of calm and competence.
His dark hair was ruffled from the wind outside on this brisk early spring morning in Maine.
His broad shoulders filled out a gray T-shirt under the thick flannel he wore, which looked unfairly good on him.
The only thing missing was the tool belt that usually hung low on his hip.
His gaze swept the room, then landed on me.
And lingered.
Cade was everything Levi had never been.
Levi had been business-handsome and always wore a tailored suit.
He’d been soft around the middle, and his blond hair was thinning already at twenty-four.
Still, Levi had been handsome enough to win my heart, not to mention he’d been a smooth talker.
He had always known just what to say to me and, for that matter, anyone else.
Cade, however, was sculpted, strong, agile, and impossible to push around.
He often said the wrong things at the wrong times.
He’d grown from a chubby kid into a ruggedly handsome hunk that most women drooled over.
He looked like the country man next door that you wanted to bring over to fix your broken sink, then spend the entire time drooling over him while he worked.
Man, I was losing my mind. I tried to snap it back into the enormous task at hand, but then noticed Cade’s mouth curved as he smiled that stupid grin at me.
“Rough morning?” he joked, and I wanted to toss something heavy at his head. Then his eyes moved to my apron and I looked down at the flour, butter, and dough explosion that was all over my body.
“Define rough.” I groaned.
As if to answer, the oven’s loud beeping stopped suddenly behind me.
Cade glanced over at my brother. “Max said you might need backup.” He walked over and began looking at the machine that he’d installed a month ago. “I’ll take a look at it.”
“I didn’t say she needed backup,” Max corrected. “I said she might cry.”
“I’m not going to cry!” I almost shouted as my eyes started to burn. Okay, so I may have been on the verge of crying before they arrived.
The three of them paused and turned in unison to look at me. I raised my chin slightly and threw up my hands. “Not now at any rate.”
Cade’s eyes softened a little, and I noticed concern mixed with that warm something I kept pretending I didn’t notice whenever he looked at me.
“Don’t worry,” he said gently. “We’re here now. I’ll take a look at this, then you can spend the rest of the morning bossing us around like usual,” he teased.
And despite the chaos, the disasters, and the possessed appliances… I grinned.
I had hired a woman named Meredith Kennedy to help in the kitchen, but unfortunately she had already arranged to be in Boston for her son’s wedding the week of the bakery’s opening.
I still needed to hire someone to work the front.
Maybe two someones? I guess I was waiting to see how well opening day went before looking for employees.
Cora walked over and grabbed one of my spare aprons and tied it around her perfect dancer waist. “Where do you need us?”
I blinked at her and thought for a moment. “Um… everywhere?”
Max snorted as he grabbed a broom and started cleaning up the flour mess. “That tracks.”
Cade straightened from turning the oven back on and rolled up his sleeves. He shot me a look that made my stomach do a slow, traitorous flip. “Give me ten minutes,” he said. “I’ll get this beast running smoother than the two of you dance.” He motioned to Max and Cora.
“Nothing is that smooth,” Max said, and winked at his wife.
I had Cora take over filling the trays of cut donut dough as well as moving trays from the oven to the cooling racks. She moved trays, lined parchment paper, and organized the baked goods in the cooling racks like she’d been working in bakeries her entire life.
I jumped back to working with the dough, shaping, rolling, filling, folding, my hands moving on muscle memory alone as butter melted, sugar browned, and cinnamon and vanilla scents filled the air.
Cade, who apparently had secret oven-repair superpowers, managed to get the temperamental beast humming again. “You’re welcome,” he said, patting the panel like he’d just revived a soldier on the battlefield.
“Thanks.”
“I’m a god when it comes to fixing things like this,” he joked.
“Hey, you were the one who broke your dishwasher trying to ‘fix’ it in high school,” I pointed out. “God?” I snorted. “More like dweeb.”
He grinned but then winked at me. “I’ve grown since then.”
I wanted to disagree, but I knew all too well how much he’d “grown.”
The kitchen got into a rhythm with Max reading orders off my scribbled prep list, Cora filling and sliding trays in and out of the oven, and Cade fixing all the machines that had decided to revolt that morning, or cleaning up after they’d made a mess.