Page 1 of Tangled with the Tight End

one

NORAH

As I loadboxes of cookies, pastries, and cupcakes into a moving cart, my mom walks through the door. At nearly 55, she looks young, there are some silver streaks in her short hair and the wrinkles on her face have grown more prominent over the last few years.

“Good afternoon, dear.” She marches over and kisses my cheek. She’s lost weight since I took over ownership of the bistro after she and my dad retired, leaving her quite fetching in her jeans and dark blue puffer jacket.

Clearly, she’s not sampling the products as frequently as she used to, and I might’ve taken over that habit as well as the shop.

“Good afternoon to you, too, Mom.” I smile as I breeze past her, adding another white box, labeled Lips & Hips Bistro, on top of the other containers.

The eatery was named Evergreen Bistro, but when I brought it out last year, I changed it to Lips & Hips Bistro and redesigned the logo. It went from a simple gray rectangle to a black oval with ornate hot pink lettering and the silhouette of a sexy female chef.

“On your way to the lodge?” My mom leans against the island and watches me.

“Yes, I’m on my way out the door.”

When she doesn’t say anything else, I turn and study her. Her eyes fill with worry. “What’s wrong?”

She sighs and unzips the front of her jacket to the base of her neck. “We made a mistake selling you the bistro.”

“What?” My heart skips a beat. “Why? I realize I’ve changed some things and added some new menu items, but business is going well.”

I rotate my shoulders as tension shoots down my spine. Not that everything doesn’t ache at this point as I’ve been baking since 3 o’clock this morning and barely had any sleep. “And the shop at the lodge is selling amazingly. It’s only been three months, and I’m making a profit.”

“That’s what’s wrong.” Her face is pink as the heat in the kitchen tinges her cheeks. But she’s in Mom Lecture Mode, so she doesn’t have time to walk to the other side of the kitchen and hang up her coat. “You’re too busy. All you do is work. When your dad and I retired, we anticipated grandchildren to babysit.”

“Well, that’s not happening anytime soon.” I ache to rake a hand through my hair, but I need to get on the road, and with another box left to fill, washing my hands would take too long. And from the sound of this conversation, I’m losing a good ten minutes already.

Unless I can distract her.

“You and Ethan broke up almost two years ago.” She unzips the jacket the rest of the way and sheds the outer garment to expose a thick sweater. The temperature the week before Thanksgiving at Evergreen Lake is cold on the outside and warm on the inside, so it’s prudent to dress in layers. “He was such a good boy.”

A good boy? Seriously? I fight not to roll my eyes and fold my arms over my chest. “He was the one who refused to move back here after college. Did you want me to stay in Las Vegas?” Aswe talk, I fill the last box with premade sandwiches, soups, and containers of pasta.

“No. No, of course not.” She marches to the wall and hangs her coat on the hook beside mine.

“Besides, he’s married, and they’re expecting a baby.”

“That’s the problem. You should be married and expecting a baby. Eden is married with a one-year-old.”

You’ve got to be kidding me. After all those years of, ‘If your best friend jumped off a bridge, would you do the same thing?’ and now, she’s using peer pressure to force marriage and children on me?

God, my neck hurts. I rotate my shoulders and drop my arms to my sides. “Maybe marriage isn’t for me.” I stomp across the floor, toss my clear plastic gloves into the trash, and shove the hot water on. The water splashes into the stainless-steel sink as I wait for it to change from cold to at least lukewarm before using it.

While I understand her desire for grandchildren, there aren’t many prospects for baby daddies at Evergreen Lake. I’ve known all the men in this town since grade school, and the only one that appealed to me was Ethan McDaniel. We dated from sophomore year of college to our senior year, but he had different goals in life. I missed the quaint small town we grew up in, and he’d rather have bamboo shoots shoved under his fingernails than show up for more than Christmas.

“How about Sawyer?”

I pump the soap lever with so much force that the bottle slips out of my hand, dropping into the sink with a clank. Sawyer Mitchell? He ate glue in kindergarten. Gross.

Okay. Fine. He likely hasn’t eaten glue in twenty years, but still. “That’s not happening, Mom. Just because you’re friends with Sawyer’s mom doesn’t make us a love match.”

As I scrub my hands, I sigh. Maybe that’s what I need, a matchmaking service. Is there a matchmaking service for men looking to start over in a scenic mountain town in Nevada with an ambitious cook? One who loves cream cheese pinwheel pastries of any flavor, cranberry chicken salad sandwiches…and is ten pounds overweight?

And let’s not forget dealing with a future mother-in-law who’s obsessed with her daughter and having future grandchildren.

“He’s a nice guy.”

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