Page 36 of Sweet and Salty

“Then you’d better lock down your date.” Frannie sips her coffee. “Maddy Olmstead wants to set him up with Emma Larson.”

A pang shoots through me. Emma Larson is Opal’s niece and owns the bookstore in town. She is beautiful, tough, and in her late twenties. “Emma’s too young for him.”

“I’ve heard older men like younger women,” Frannie says.

“Are you sleeping with an older man then?”

Frankie rolls her eyes, completely ignoring my jab. “You keep changing the subject.”

“Says you. You’re auditing this entire conversation. Can we stop talking about this?” I finish redirecting the camera and shoot the last few takes for the stop-motion cake-decorating video. “Thank heck this thing is done. How are you? Itching to leave now that you’ve been here a whole two weeks?”

Despite her coffee cup still being half full, Frannie walks over to the machine and refills it. “It’s nice to be home and see Davey. I’ve been doing more training with search and rescue. It’s been okay.”

“Do you think you’ll stick around?” She’s coming to the wedding tomorrow, but neither Mom nor I have heard of her plans for afterward.

She tosses her hair over one shoulder, her mouth pressed in a thin line. “You still have tigers to make.” Frannie gestures toward the balls of black and orange fondant. Ugh. She’s right. “So who in the world would try to poison Lucretia Borgia with green acorns? It’s such a weirdly specific choice.”

I’ve been thinking of that all day. My hand cramps from holding the piping bag too long, so I give myself a quick break and go for a coffee of my own. “I saw Joel Hostetler the other day, walking down the street. He was like two blocks away, and I could feel the hate lasers beaming from his eyes.”

“Gross. Of all the people in this town who deserve superpowers, it is not Joel Hostetler.” Frannie adds another penguin to the menagerie growing beside her. “Is he even smart enough to do something like that? I know you need to keep livestock away from yew and holly and stuff, but oak trees? They’re everywhere. They could have blown in on the wind, right?”

I shrug and sit beside her to roll fondant animals until my fingertips fall off. Maybe Frannie is right. Not all brides shouldhave carte blanche. But I like Daisy and Tanner. They’re so fricking in love. It’s like a Hallmark movie. “I don’t know. They were all clumped together, like someone had dropped them there, and if it had been a weather thing, wouldn’t they have been in the pigs’ pen too? I don’t really want to think about it.”

Frannie nudges me and hands me some black stripes she cut. “Just take care of yourself, hon. We need our Mama Bear happy. You deserve it.”

“I am happy.”

We work in silence for several long minutes, the sounds of the café beyond us muffled behind the curtain that hangs between front of house and the bakery area. Snow Patrol plays on the speakers per Frannie’s request.

“You’d be happier if you had some smoking hot sex with Jesse,” Frannie says.

Snow Patrol is not loud enough to drown out her screech as I pipe frosting all over her hands.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Jesse

I fallinto a rhythm over that week, staying in Laura’s garage apartment.

I wake up, feed the animals, shower, eat, open the hardware store, work until close, and then go home to eat something from the well-stocked freezer. Laura said to help myself, since this is the freezer where her leftovers and experiments go to die. If these are the failed recipes, I can’t imagine how good the food is that she actually serves in her cafe. The tomato soup tastes of down-home Southern sunshine and sweet herbs. The shepherd’s pie is as rich as a good Cabernet. The slutty brownies are some sort of magical combination of brownie and cookie with coffee and crispy rice treats. I eat an entire pan of them one night while pretending to watch reruns of early 2000s TV shows on my laptop.

Friday night, I bypass the last frozen bag of slutty brownies and pull out an aluminum tray of chicken pot pie. My grandma always used biscuits to top hers, but Laura’s has a thick piece of what looks like herbed puff pastry.

No shade to my grandma, but I think Laura’s chicken pot pie might win.

My phone rings as the oven preheats. Time for my monthly check-in. “Hello, Marshal Stryke. How are you this fine Friday?”

“You sound unusually chipper.” I almost hear Harbor narrow his eyes in suspicion. “What’s wrong? What did you do?”

“Nothing. I’m keeping my head down, going to work, and then coming home.” The timer on the oven dings, and I slide the casserole in. I hate to admit it, but it’s nice, having an oven that works. In the past week, I’ve only had time to run by the shack and throw out more moldy furniture. Nothing is getting fixed there any time soon, and so far the Drydens haven’t sent anyone out to inspect or repair anything.

I’m shockingly unbothered by it.

“St. Olaf working her spell on you yet?”

“Of course not.” I think of Laura, who goes for runs every morning in these tight pink yoga pants that make me wish those rumors about us that I’ve heard around town are true. I glance outside at the setting sun, the rays bright over the horizon, illuminating the tree line and the barn. “This is a temporary solution.”

“Is it? I heard through the grapevine you moved in with Laura Marshall. You don’t want to mess with the Marshalls, Jesse. They’re a beloved clan, and they’re tight.”

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