Chapter 1 #2
Honey mentioned the idea to me a couple of times during the planning stage.
Last I heard, they were heading out on Friday and expected to be gone for two weeks.
Considering Honey should be packing in between prepping the bakery to close for all that time, I can’t imagine why she’s wasting any calling me.
Before I can find out why, she asks, “Where are you right now?”
“On the corner of Ivy and Hawthorne, out back.”
I can hear Honey’s brain whirring as she places the address. “Are you dumpster diving again?”
“Hey. Don’t knock it. When you got a job like mine, you gotta keep the profit margins up any way you can.”
“By selling the stuff you pick out of the trash?”
I shrug though she can’t see it. “One supe’s trash is another raccoon’s treasure.”
“Shouldn’t you be at your store then, selling it?”
My store doesn’t actually have a name. I tell everyone I’m the sole proprietor of a junk/oddities/antique store which basically means I have all sorts of knick-knacks that I’ve gathered throughout the years in countless dumpsters all over the country.
The sign says ‘antiques’ on the door. The window opens up on tables and shelves of everything you can manage.
It’s kind of like a glorified garage sale inside, but it comes with a basic apartment built over the cramped store, plus a surprisingly reasonable rent that I usually make based on one or two good scores a month.
Like the charmed compact. Once I clean it up and find the right witchy buyer, I should be able to pay rent for the next few months which means I can spend more time hunting than prowling around a store, hoping I don’t intimidate any prospective customers from coming to me.
“You know how my hours are,” I say.
“I do. They’re even more unpredictable than Witches ‘n’ Things, and their sign says something about the phases of the moon.”
Exactly. “I open when I feel like it. If you really want to buy one of my treasures, stop on by then. I’ll make you a good deal.”
“So… what you’re saying is that you’re very flexible with your work schedule?”
I hop down from the dumpster, landing lightly on my boots as I narrow my eyes in suspicion. “Maybe. Why?”
Fifteen minutes later, after Honey convinces me to stop by her bakery so we can chat in person, I get the answer to that when she gives me an impish smile and says, “I need a favor.”
“No.”
“You haven’t even heard what it is yet!”
True. I hold out my hand. Honey sighs, then reaches inside of her display case. She grabs a chocolate croissant, pauses, then adds a cream cheese danish. She must really be desperate if she’s bribing me that much just to hear her out.
I bite into the cream cheese danish, gesturing for her to make her case.
“Max and me are leaving on Friday.” In two days. “I need someone to watch over Gus while I’m gone.”
I nearly choke on my treat. “Your emotional support rat? Honey, your baking is good. It’s not ‘babysit the rat’ good.”
Honey uses her pointer finger to stroke the top of the wild opossum’s head.
On the back counter, she keeps a lopsided bag of flour that she refers to affectionately as Gus’s ‘throne’.
Gus is curled up on top of it, his pink tail wrapped around his furry body.
He’s been asleep since I let myself in through the back door, though I’m pretty sure the little bugger is faking it.
He’s not a rat. I know that. He’s an actual opossum that Honey rescued when he was a joey.
He didn’t have a mother and, somehow, he decided that a woman who can shift into an opossum counted.
He’s been her sidekick ever since, and I guess I thought that Max’s idea to have a cabin just for him and Honey didn’t mean that they’d leave Gus behind—or that Honey would let him.
I guess that makes sense. Shifters don’t often follow human traditions like weddings or honeymoons, but the sheriff is determined to prove himself the best mate for Honey.
He wanted to give her his sole attention for a bit instead of having to split it between being the sheriff of Moonburrow and the Alpha of the Moonshadow Pack.
“It’s only for two weeks,” she begins.
I don’t care if it’s for two hours. “Why don’t you bring Gus with you?”
“I was going to, but Gus says he’d rather stay here. He thinks I need time with my wolf and he’s probably right.”
I forgot about that. Honey is convinced that she can understand Gus. Not in an ‘Gus can speak’ way, but more like she gets him in an opossum-to-opossum way.
“You could leave him with Riordan,” I point out, mentioning Max’s older brother and his right-hand wolf. “Deputy Lick-My-Balls is already babysitting the sheriff station while Max is gone, isn’t he?”
Honey nearly chokes. “Please stop calling him that.”
I think about it. “Nah.”
“Riordan can’t. He’s in charge of the pack while Max is away. The sheriff station, too,” Honey adds since Riordan Lobo is also the deputy to Max’s sheriff. “He doesn’t have time to stay here at the bakery with Gus.”
Hang on—
“Bakery? What do you mean, bakery? If I agree to this insanity… and I’m not saying that I am… I’d bring the rat to my place to watch him.”
“Opossum,” Honey corrects automatically.
“And I was hoping you wouldn’t mind opening the bakery for a couple of hours every morning for me while you’re keeping Gus company.
” Before I can shoot her down again, she quickly hurries to say, “I know I’m asking a lot.
But I don’t want Grandma Jean’s bakery to be closed for that long, and it made no sense hiring someone for only two weeks.
But if you could come in, bake a couple of trays for my morning customers, make sure Gus eats…
I’ll give you half the profits and my eternal gratitude. Max’s, too.”
I could do without the gratitude. Half the profits, though? “Baking isn’t my thing. You sure you want another poison scandal?”
I’m just busting Honey’s chops. After Declan was found dead behind Honey’s bakery, a victim of a poisoned cupcake, word in Moonburrow was that the sweet opossum shifter did it.
Now everyone knows she was innocent, but when you remember the time she accidentally served charmed cupcakes to her customers…
“I’ll have my big commercial fridge full of batter and dough all ready to go.
Same with some proofed bread dough that’ll just need to go in the oven.
If you follow the baking instructions and sell only a few different products a day, you don’t need to know how to bake.
Besides, I didn’t when I came here. It’s not that hard.
I know you can do it, Roxy.” She reaches up, absently tugging one of the twin braids resting on the shoulder of her pink t-shirt.
“I wouldn’t ask you if it wasn’t important to me. ”
Ah, hell. “And Gus?”
As if he heard his name—or he gave up on pretending to sleep in order to ignore me—Gus pops his head up. He stretches, blinks at me, then slinks closer to Honey’s elbow.
I look at him.
He hisses at me.
I glance at Honey and gesture at him, like, see?
She pats his rump. “He’ll be no trouble at all. I promise. He actually likes you.”
I call bullshit. “He once bit my wrist when I was grabbing a scone from the display case.”
“You startled him.”
“He attacked me.”
To prove my point, Gus’s little black ears arrow back as he bares his fangs at me.
I wait for Honey to glance away as she grabs a spiral bound notebook from the counter before I let my raccoon peer through my eyes, showing Gus that my fangs are at least bigger than his.
If the opossum’s fear response was triggered and the foot-long critter dropped then and there, playing ‘possum’ in front of me, I would’ve told Honey to forget it.
My days of terrorizing Virginia opossums are behind me, and when Gus cocks his head, his little pink nose twitching before he scampers back onto his flour throne as though we’ve come to an agreement, I nod at the little rat.
Okay. Maybe this might work.
Honey waves the book in front of me. I shove the remaining half of the chocolate croissant I’d been nursing into my mouth. After wiping my hands on my jeans, I snag the book, flipping it open, skimming page after page while I finish eating.
In Honey’s perfect penmanship, I see a detailed listing of Gus’s likes and dislikes, what he eats, when he sleeps, followed by all of the recipes she’s prepped organized by temperature and length of baking time.
“Everything I need to know to do this is in this book?”
At my casual question, Honey’s whole face lights up. “Yes. And if you need me, Max says we’ll have service so you can always call.”
Crap. Rookie mistake, Roxy. You got her hopes up, and now you’ll be a real ass if you refuse.
I arch an eyebrow. “For half the profits?”
“You stop calling Gus a rat and I’ll give you everything the bakery earns those days past cost of ingredients.”
I think it over. “Half the profits works for me.”
She thinks I’m teasing. And maybe I am.
But when she reaches out, laying her hand on the sleeve of my t-shirt, and says, “You’re the only one I could ask to do this because you’re the only one in town I trust,” I lose some of my usual smart ass attitude.
I glance over at Honey, seeing the earnestness in her pretty purple eyes and scoff. “No one trusts a raccoon.”
She doesn’t let my scoff offend her. “Except me, I guess.” Her gaze darts over to her sidekick. “And Gus. I know he does.”
And I know she’s fucking full of it. At least, when it comes to the wild opossum, she is.
Honey? Somehow, in the years since we both tried to break free of what Onancock expected of us, she became someone that I can trust.
I exhale roughly. “Fine. But if your opossum figures out how to start a cult or something while you’re gone, you can’t blame me.”
Perched on his flour throne again, Gus chitters proudly like he fully intends to found three.