Chapter 3
“You’ve done good here, kid,” the wizened old man said as he and Serena walked out of The Menagerie hours later. “I had my doubts, but you’ve done good,” he repeated. “I suspect my Addie will want to bring the book club here some mornings.”
Serena smiled in response, enjoying the pulse of the late spring sun on her face.
Addie was Otis’ great granddaughter and had been Serena’s rival during the summers she spent in Cottonwood.
They’d been what you could best describe as frenemies.
She was pretty sure Addie wouldn’t be darkening her door, or handing over hard-earned coin, unless it was at gunpoint.
“That means a lot coming from you, Otis. Thanks for stopping by and for your honest opinion. Tell Addie they’re welcome, and if she can let me know in advance, I’ll reserve the west parlor, no charge.”
He pulled on his old-school Diamondbacks baseball cap.
“She’ll like that,” he said solemnly, then shuffled down the sidewalk to where his ancient orange pickup was parked.
Guys like Otis, who were about eight hundred years old, didn’t like to get boxed into places like parking lots.
Especially not without power steering. Serena wondered how he managed to even stop the hunk of rolling steel, since she was pretty sure it didn’t have power brakes either.
She stepped back into the foyer, turned the open sign to closed and locked the front door with a sigh of relief.
It had been a hell of a day, capped off by Otis’ visit.
After she’d situated the feed store gossip crew, as she called them in her head, with coffees, her insurance rep had shown up unannounced, saying the company was considering canceling her coverage because of ‘fire code concerns in a building this old.’
She’d understood his worries when he viewed the front-of-house. The century-old Victorian with the eclectic decorations and even funkier vibe certainly wasn’t the norm for an eatery.
While her assistant Gena handled the register, she’d walked him through to the repurposed kitchen that was the exact opposite of what the customers saw, with its top-of-the-line gleaming stainless appliances and an electrical panel that had been installed by a very expensive electrician.
When she’d taken over The Menagerie she’d decided to go big, in case the business plan changed. So even though they served a limited menu now, they had room to expand. Significantly.
The adjuster had finally left after enjoying a gratis cup of coffee and pastry, waving off the company’s initial concerns as resolved. She was pretty sure he’d become a regular.
Then Mrs. Fullbrook had appeared and given her daily, pointed critique of the pastries being stale, even though they’d been made that morning by Gena and the woman very well knew it.
She was cranky because Serena wasn’t using her niece for the baked goods.
Alice Fullbrook was many, many things, but a good baker she was not.
By now Gena was used to it and pointedly ignored the woman when she came in, which infuriated Mrs. Fullbrook even more.
Otis and his crew had settled in for the rest of the morning, chatting amongst themselves and watching everything with eagle eyes.
It was business as usual and Serena loved every single second of it, even when it frustrated the hell out of her.
Repurposing The Menagerie had been a gamble. As a curiosities, a.k.a. junk, shop, it had been an institution for decades and locals didn't take well to change in this old neighborhood.
Down the road in Cottonwood where all the tourists went?
Sure, that kind of thing was just fine and brought revenue into the town's coffers.
But the village of Rimrock Creek was different.
Doing anything to change the four square blocks of businesses that catered to locals trying to escape the fray that surrounded Sedona Red Rocks country wasn't well received at all.
The only reason she'd gotten away with it was because she'd been a known quantity, having spent her teenage summers with her aunt working the shop and running wild in the hills beyond town. Thwarting Addie at every turn. Even the thought of it brought a smile of remembrance. Addie had given as good as she’d gotten, so Serena considered it a draw.
When she’d returned to Rimrock Creek six months ago, this time as a full-time resident, she’d used her skills in public relations to lobby the women at the little library four doors down and the old men like Otis who held court in the feed store a block over.
The fact the village didn’t really have a gathering spot beyond the feed store had worked in her favor. The out-of-towners who’d tried to open a diner a few years ago had learned the hard way how insular the village could be, and the storefront was still sitting vacant.
It had taken time and a lot of talking, free coffee and free baked goods, but she finally felt she’d turned a corner. Winning over the Addies of the world would be the cherry on top.
She and Addie hadn't been frenemies simply because of their age.
It had mostly been because of Walker. He'd chosen Serena over Addie that final summer and in return Addie had made it her mission in life to torture Serena.
But always with a toothpaste-bright grin and nothing that could truly be held against her.
Serena thought of that summer and smiled.
It'd been more than worth Addie’s hate. She and Walker had spent a glorious three months with each other.
Had been each other's firsts--and not only when it came to sex.
They'd truly loved each other, in the way that only seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds could.
Now, she had more than a little regret that they'd made the unspoken decision to keep things friendly instead of rekindling their romance.
They were both trying to establish themselves in the community; she was trying to break out as herself, not Madeline's niece, and he was working to regain trust after the horrific shootout at the ranch that’d thrown the community into upheaval not two weeks before she arrived.
Thank goodness no one had been killed, but from what she’d heard it'd been a close thing, and the scandal of a multimillionaire coming to town and trying to murder one of the owners of the ranch had barely stopped being the topic of local gossip and speculation within the last month or so.
So yeah, neither of them had time for the complications of a relationship.
But it didn’t stop her from appreciating his long lean body, and the fact that he had aged like fine wine.
He carried the weight of his time in the military well, and even though he was only in his late thirties, like her, the gray hair beginning to show at his temples gave him a sexy gravitas she appreciated on a very feminine level.
She understood the weight of responsibility all too well.
Her devotion to building the business right from day one had given her almost no downtime, so she still hadn’t watched the movie Walker and his friends had been a part of.
And every time she saw him in the flesh she wondered why she hadn’t made it a priority. Shouldn’t she have?
Gena hollered from the back and pulled Serena’s mind away from Walker. And instead of thinking of her past, she looked around the room and appreciated her future.
"I'm out, boss," Gena poked her head around the doorjamb, dark curls a riot around her pretty face now that she’d pulled it out of the bun she kept it in to serve.
As a single mother, spending time with her son Jackson was always paramount.
Gena and Jackson lived with her mom Carmen, a teacher at Cottonwood Elementary, so childcare was built in, and Carmen adored her grandson.
Serena was happy she'd found the woman and that they worked together so well. "Enjoy your days off, and say hi to your mom for me.”
Because the business was so new, she and Gena were still figuring out flow and the best working hours, but being there at five a.m. to start finishing the pastries and protein offerings they’d prepped the night before was solid, except on Wednesdays and Thursdays, when Serena was on her own.
She hung her apron on the vintage iron spinning coat rack, which had been painted turquoise blue, and smiled at the decor as she did.
She'd kept the 'eclectic' decorating when she'd reimagined the building's function.
A mix of taxidermy and the funky art her aunt had collected in her youth adorned the walls, lit by a collection of mismatched chandeliers that ranged from crystal to papier mache.
A half dozen tables in every imaginable style dotted the living area, coupled with chairs that were just as offbeat.
Three parlors branched off of the main room and still contained the ‘best’ of the curio shop’s collections.
Each of those rooms also had a single six-seat table and sideboard.
They went mostly unused, but Serena had high hopes and was thinking about converting one into a mini library that doubled as a comfy workspace but hadn’t gone that far.
She’d even repurposed the old jewelry case into a counter and kept her aunt’s collection of jarred coins and seashells and costume jewelry on the shelves behind the register along with pretty gift boxes she used to package purchased treasures.
It didn't seem like any of the chaos should work, aesthetically, and she'd had to deploy all of her skills in public relations to describe it on the application to open an eatery before the health inspector had shown up for his inaugural look-see.
But once you were here, in the space, it felt like you were visiting a favorite aunt who was a bit on the kooky side.
That described Madeline Blackstone in a nutshell, and Serena missed the woman every single day. Her aunt’s around-the-world cruise excursion was a few days short of a year long, with eight more months before her return.
Madeline had been a kind of mentor to Serena when it came to ... becoming.
The woman gave exactly zero shits about what anyone thought of her, her crazy store or the way she conducted her life. While Serena hadn’t quite risen to that level of awesomeness, she had figured out how to best use it in her corporate life, at least until she’d walked away from it.
Her career and her shiny life in Dallas seemed so distant now. But every time she thought of it fondly, she remembered the ulcer her corporate PR job had given her. Remembered the breakneck speed everything moved at, where everything seemed to be about work, even your relationships.
Remembered the dickheads she'd had to work with, both as peers and as clientele.
Roaming hands and innuendo had been alive and well in her industry, and after fifteen years of trying to land clients without tearing up the sheets with them, she'd been exhausted. Tired of trying to unconsciously fulfill her father’s expectations, tired of failed relationships that made her wonder how much her cold-ass excuse for a father had passed on to her when it came to allowing herself to be vulnerable. To anyone.
When Aunt Madeline decided to embark on one last world tour and deeded the old Victorian, which included the upstairs living quarters, to Serena, she'd taken it like the gift it was.
Her benefactor still had a house up on the hill in Jerome that was as funky as the shop she'd established over the course of forty years, before the wineries arrived and tourists flocked to the red rocks of Sedona and the art district in Jerome.
Serena strode into the kitchen and performed a quick walk-through, making sure everything was shut down. She trusted Gena implicitly, but it was still her shop, her home, and the routine made her feel settled after a long day of being on her feet.