The Copper Valley Bro Code Series: Volume 1, page 57
“Your bird is truly filthy.”
Leave it to the teenager to put it so eloquently.
“Pop. Nobody cheated in softball.”
“She tried to take your manhood off!”
“It was an accident,” Bailey insists. “If she’d been trying, we’d still be out there scavenging for his little swimmers.”
“Bailey Sophia Williams.”
“Just saying, Annika always does what she says she’s going to do. Also, I checked her calendar, and she didn’t have it penciled in to take anybody’s nuts off. If she didn’t schedule it, she didn’t do it on purpose.”
That makes so much fucking sense, and it soothes a few of my feathers to know she’s still as organized as she once was.
“And you think my bird’s rude,” Pop grumbles.
“Speaking of rude,” Maria says, “Bailey’s right. It was rude of Grady to steal her idea for tres leches donuts. So maybe we shouldn’t be sitting here handing out samples. But maybe we can all call a truce since we’re even. Unless there’s something else bothering you, Grady?”
That’s definitely guilt gnawing at my gut, because I shouldn’t have stolen their idea.
And I don’t know why I’m being such a shithead.
But I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be a shithead to anyone else.
And she’s asking if I want to talk about my feelings for Annika.
Which I definitely do not.
I grunt, because I don’t like where my thoughts are going. “I’m going back to work. And Pop, you should too.”
“I don’t like riffraff in my town.”
“You live here,” Bailey points out.
“Bailey,” Ms. Williams says again. “Hush your mouth, or I’ll feed you to that dog.”
“It’s a goat, Mama.”
“Oh. That’s not a Rottweiler-poodle mix trying to eat that dinosaur bone?”
“Unfortunately not, but these hallucinations are awesome. It’s a mostly-white goat, with one horn missing and a big brown patch over his eye, and he’s trying to eat Roger’s tennis shoes.”
“Likes garbage,” Pop says.
“Pop. Don’t you have a mini golf course to run?”
“Left your grandmother in charge so I could come walk your goat.”
“Fucking goat,” Long Beak Silver squawks.
The sun’s beating down on all of us. Roger’s sweating while he bats Sue away and dribbles cinnamon roll samples onto Ms. Williams’s hair. She’s swatting the crumbs away like they’re bugs.
And a sudden memory of Annika running from a swarm of honeybees down by the lake hits me so hard and fast that I nearly grunt in pain.
I was carrying two paddleboards from the parking lot to the lake in the middle of the Blue Lagoon nature preserve when she came shrieking up the short path, yelling for me to run, run, her black hair streaming behind her, eyes wide, legs pumping furiously, arms just as hard.
We were heading into junior year, and I’d been dating someone, but I’d seen the sheer terror in her eyes and I’d known in that minute I’d do anything to protect her, and that I needed to quit dating anyone else so long as Annika Williams had a pulse and still walked this earth.
Couldn’t protect her from the bees, though, and we both got stung several times over.
She cried.
Said she didn’t want to kill the bees. It was her fault for going where she wasn’t supposed to.
That was the Annika I knew.
Soft-hearted. Strong, yeah, and fucking determined to prove she and her mama were both worthy and someone despite the ways society looked down on them—I’ve never met anyone more determined once she set her mind to a task—but compassionate to her core.
Which is part of why I never understood why she wanted to go into the Army.
She wasn’t built for battle.
Built for standing up for herself, yeah. For defending her mom and her sister, of course.
But built for war?
No.
Not my Annika.
She couldn’t even kill a bee without crying.
And now she’s trying to kill my bakery.
Which means I have a choice.
Fight back against the one woman who’s still under my skin ten years later, or let her win and watch my bakery go down the drain.
“Sue. Get down,” I order. “Pop, go back to work. And you three—good luck. You’re gonna need it.”
I take my goat’s leash and yank him down the street, back to my bakery. He’s not happy with me, and he stops to try to eat flowers, a flagpole, and a stack of cannonballs piled outside the Shipwreck Gift Shop next to my bakery.
I give half a thought to taking Sue home, but he’d probably eat through the fence to go sniff out more cinnamon rolls.
Which means he’s just going to have to come with me today.
While I fight fire with fire.
10
Annika
By one o’clock, I know something is going on, because I’ve had a steady stream of people in from out of town asking for cinnamon rolls. Bailey isn’t answering her phone. Nor is Mama, but then, she hasn’t yet mastered swiping the screen to answer when she can’t see it.
Her sessions with her mobility specialist, who helps her re-learn how to do all the things she used to need her sight for, haven’t yet progressed to mastering the smartphone again.
She’s trying, but she all but threw the damn thing across the small house when the voice assistant thought she wanted to dance the Macarena this morning.
Mama and the voice assistant don’t see eye-to-eye right now.
And that was a terrible thing to think about my blind mother.
It’s amazing how often I don’t even realize I’m thinking about seeing, but having Mama blind now has opened my eyes—dammit, did it again—to just how much I take my sight for granted.
I’ve just sold the last cinnamon roll to a blond woman about my age, maybe a few years older, in a pink pantsuit and large sunglasses who’s carrying a Prada handbag that almost certainly isn’t a knock-off—very unusual in these parts—when someone stops outside the bakery window with something that looks baked and sugary, but most definitely did not come from Duh-Nuts.
I’m about to dismiss the sight, since Rise and Grind is right down the street, and while their baked goods aren’t homemade—yet—they do sell muffins and pastries, except two other people stop beside him, all of them with identical sample-sized pastries in hand.
This is either a birthday party that I wasn’t invited to, or something sinister is going down in Sarcasm.
The sunny dining room is mostly empty for the moment—just a mom and her toddler enjoying an early afternoon chocolate chip monster cookie now that the lady in pink has gone—so I wash up quickly and peek out the front door.
There’s a truck in my parking lot.
With a tall, dark-haired, dimple-cheeked man wearing a tight black pirate T-shirt, faded jeans, and boots, leaning against the tailgate, handing out—I squint closer—donuts?
He is.
Grady Rock is in my parking lot, handing out samples of his donuts.
“What are you doing?” I march over there so hard, I leave dents in the concrete sidewalk. “What the hell, Rock?”
His eyes are hidden behind aviator sunglasses, but I know he’s looking straight into my eyes by the way my skin shivers from under my fingernails all the way to my belly button.
“You hand out samples in my town, I hand out samples in yours,” he says.
“What are you talking about?” I snap.
“What am I talking about?” he repeats like the fact that I’d ask is an insult to his intellect. “I’m talking about giving you a taste of your own medicine. Don’t like it? Then keep your damn spies out of my town, and the same goes for your damn cinnamon rolls.”
“Mama,” I mutter.
That’s where Mama and Bailey went. And Roger, to drive them.
They’re in Shipwreck.
Taunting Grady and stealing his customers.
I’d feel bad, except instead of handling this like an adult, he’s brought his truck, his dimples, his goat, and his donuts to my territory.
And I’d be willing to bet they’re tres leches donuts that he’s never served before. Bailey made me sit with her while she scrolled through the entire Crow’s Nest social media feed last night to prove that not once in the last three years has he ever sold tres leches donuts, which is all the proof she needed that he made them just because she suggested it.
And now she’s worried he’s going to steal her bubble waffle idea too.
I like to give people the benefit of the doubt—especially people who used to be my best friend—but I’m becoming more convinced by the minute that she’s right.
Especially since he brought his goat, which is leashed to his rearview mirror, like he’s making some kind of statement about goats also being his, despite Sarcasm’s team being named the GOATs.
And he’s still missing that our GOAT actually stands for Greatest Of All Time.
Still, his goat strains the leash and bleats indignantly at me like it’s hungry and I’m denying it fresh cupcakes.
Or possibly like it, too, is accusing me of sending spies and thieves to Shipwreck.
“That’s right,” Grady drawls softly. “Your family thinks they can steal my customers.”
“So you’re fighting a teenager and a disabled woman.”
“That teenager is more devious than my grandfather and his parrot put together.”
“You’re a grown man. And you’re fighting with a teenager.”
There are no signs of his dimples as he glowers at me in the late July heat. The half-dozen people crowding around his truck slowly back up.
“Didn’t realize he was a Shipwreck shithead, Annika,” one of them mutters. He eyes the donut sample, takes half a bite, moans in pleasure, then winces and throws the rest on the ground and crushes it with his boot, the pain in his face telling me just how highly he regards me if he’s willing to sacrifice an orgasmic tres leches donut.
“That’s what I think of your baked goods,” he barks half-heartedly to Grady, still eyeing the donut like it’s the second coming of fresh chocolate chip cookies, which we all know are the best pastry in the universe, except when I bake them.
The goat bleats again and pulls so hard on its leash that its front hooves leave the pavement.
A few more of the gathered crowd apologizes to me and either stuffs the last of the donut samples in their mouths, or cringe when they, too, throw the rest of their sample to the ground and back away toward their cars or their shops or wherever they came from.
Grady’s brows are so low, they’ve disappeared beneath the top rim of his sunglasses, and his mouth is flatter than my first drill sergeant’s high-and-tight haircut.
I always thought his dimples were sexy, but I can’t deny what broody, seething, wound-up Grady is doing to my nether regions. I haven’t been this hot and bothered since my favorite planner line announced Wonder Woman-themed stickers and pages.
He jerks his head toward the back of my bakery.
Like he wants to talk privately. Away from my Sarcasm supporters and his goat.
I’m all in for a private conversation right now, because I’m about done with this stupid fight, but I also know Grady, and I know how hard he worked to carve out something that he could be the best in.
He grew up in the shadow of his little brother, who had the bigger personality, the bigger brain, and the bigger talent. And while I know he’d do anything for Cooper, that doesn’t mean he’s immune to having feelings about being the less successful Rock brother.
Not that anyone likes to swallow their pride. Grady’s just always had to fight for his place, and I get it.
I’m moving in to where he excels.
I’m pulling a Cooper on him.
Plus, heat always makes him cranky.
It’s why his mom always kept popsicles in her freezer during the summer.
“Can you keep an eye on the shop for me?” I ask the guy nearest me before I realize it’s Birch, Roger’s son.
Should’ve known by his height and bulk, but I wasn’t paying attention.
He swivels his gaze between me and Grady. “Don’t know that I want to leave you alone with this guy, Annika.”
A muscle in Grady’s jaw flexes beneath the dark shadow of early stubble, and I swear I get a hot flash. But just in my breasts. Whatever that is between my legs, it’s definitely not a hot flash.
“Ten years in the Army, Birch,” I say. “I’ve got him.”
I almost miss the flick of his gaze over my body and the slow grin that starts, but I don’t miss the growl Grady aims his way, despite being completely out-matched since Birch has at least four inches and fifty pounds on him, or the way the goat suddenly goes nuts.
“Oh, for god’s sake,” I mutter, and I turn on my heel and march to the alley behind Duh-Nuts.
“Stay, Sue,” Grady orders, and I feel him following me.
Ten years ago, we would’ve been piling into his beat-up, rusting truck to head down to the lake for a dip in the heat.
Today, we’re headed for some air-clearing next to the trash cans.
I turn slowly when we’re both tucked behind the building, and I blow out a slow breath to calm my racing heart.
Arguing and I don’t really get along, and Grady might not be the only one of us who struggles with pride.
Although, if I’m being honest, I tend to embrace mine rather than struggle with it. I’ve earned it, dammit. I went from growing up in a rented single-wide to being a successful staff sergeant in the Army, a college graduate, a homeowner, and now co-owner of a small business.
You don’t make leaps by apologizing.
So meeting him halfway will be hard, but I need to do this.
Liliana was right.
I want my best friend back. Life’s hard enough right now.
I open my mouth, but before I can get a word out, he’s in my face, boxing me against the wall and giving me emotional whiplash.
“Seriously, Annika? Using a disabled woman and a kid to steal customers? That’s the kind of shit I would’ve expected from some other Sarcasm asshole, but not you.”
I shove him, because he’s too close, and too pissed, and his apparent need to not make up sacks me in the gut and makes all my good intentions disintegrate. “That’s what you think of me? That I’m the kind of person who’d do that?”
“Racking me in the nuts wasn’t enough. What’s next? Beating my sister at the banana pudding game? What happened to you?”
“What happened to me? How about what happened to you? Quit with the Neanderthal show and think for a minute. What the hell do I have to gain by racking you in the nuts and spying on your bakery?”
“Closure? More customers? How the fuck should I know what’s going on in your head?”
I shove him again, but he’s a solid block of angry granite that doesn’t move. “Maybe because you were my best friend? Maybe because people don’t change that much? Maybe because I know you’re standing here having a temper tantrum because you don’t like change and you don’t like competition and you don’t like that I left, but you don’t know how to deal with it other than yelling at me. You can’t be bothered to think about the fact that my entire life is upside down and even if I am being an asshole, I deserve a little leeway from the one person in this entire world who’s ever understood me as well as I understand myself?”
Fuck, I’m shouting.
And his nostrils are flaring.
I know what the Grady Rock nostril flare means.
It means he’s about to shove off this wall and walk away and put my face on a dartboard so that when he’s out of ideas, he can throw darts at my nose and plot decadent creations that’ll show me that he’s the best, because he’s physically incapable of admitting that he’s hurting and he’d rather lash out than admit that he’s upset.
And it’s making me hot and achy in my clit at the same time that my heart’s cracking in two, because he was my best friend.
He got me through high school. He shared so much of himself with me, and I confessed so many things to him that I’ve never told another soul.
That I hated myself for wanting to be better than my mama, when she was the best mama in the world.
That I was afraid of the Army, but I knew I needed to spread my wings, and it was all I could afford.
That I was terrified of snakes and I wanted a pet bulldog more than I wanted a baby sister.
That I didn’t know if I’d ever be the kind of girl that men were interested in, and that I cared that someone find me attractive, but I needed to be able to stand on my own two feet more than I wanted to be wanted, and I had plenty of time to grow up before I fell in love.
He got parts of me that I’ve never shared with another person.
And now he’s nothing more than another Shipwreck shithead.
“We could’ve done this better,” he says, his voice thick and choked with something I can’t read, but I don’t miss the subtle accusation that it’s my fault.
“No, you could’ve done this better. Because nothing about me being back is about you. Except in your head. Call me when you’ve gotten over yourself, and maybe we can be friends again.”
“Fuck friends, Annika. You know what I want. You know what I always wanted, but you wouldn’t give it to me because you never trusted me enough.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
I’m not prepared for the sudden assault of his lips on mine, but after the initial shock, my body reacts before my brain can catch up.
And I don’t want to talk about my heart.
Because this—this kiss, this possessive, demanding, invasive kiss—yes.
Yes.
I did.
I wanted it too.
I wanted to kiss him in high school and be so much more than friends, which is the only thing I ever kept from him.
But I didn’t want him at the expense of risking my future the way Mama gave up her own to have me.
I glide my fingers into his thick, soft hair and let his tongue tangle with mine, our teeth clashing, his hard thigh nestled between my legs right where I want it, pressing into my clit and making my nerve endings stand up and do the wave, his fingers biting into my hips, everything hot and wet and messy but ohmygod so right and so wrong.
