Page 6 of Accidental Fiancé

I shrugged. “Okay, sure. I’m a busy guy, but that isn’t even our best stuff.”

“How’s that?” Will asked.

“Our best products come from our prosthetics and mobility devices. That’s the shit I’m proud of. The products in your bathrooms and medicine cabinets pays the bills for helping to develop all of that, so thanks for keeping us in business.”

“What do you mean?”

“Products for the disabled community have a lot of overhead. R&D, customization, training, materials—all of that is pricy and the backend cost of those products runs high. Since we try to provide them at the lowest cost possible, those costs are offset by the shampoo, the body wash, the boner pills, and everything else we make. The more of that stuff you buy, the cheaper we can make custom prosthetic legs for veterans.”

“I’m a humanitarian and even I didn’t know that,” Lewis joked.

Beyond the crowd I spotted Victor Clyburn. As I started to wave him over, a flash of teal blue caught the corner of my eye before the rest of the package, and I couldn’t look away.

Long, curly brown hair draped down her back, and the dress clung to her round ass. My breath caught in my chest. I would have known that ass and that hair anywhere. She pivoted to her left, and there stood Maggie Bryant, stuck in a sea of awful, a forced fake smile on her face. It wasn’t the kind of smile the others wore. This one was made out of uncomfortable desperation.

Hell hadn’t frozen over so there was no possible way she had become friends with Chloe Foster, Emma Gonzalez, or Harmony Piedmont, no matter how many years had passed since theyused to torment her. There were forgivable things in the world, and then there were the things they had done to Maggie.

She was trapped, and just like in high school, I had to help her. “Excuse me. I see someone I need to catch up with.” I left before they could say a word.

-

Chapter 3

Maggie

“Emma, Harmony. Hi.” I knew the walls weren’t actually closing in on me, but that did nothing to stop the feeling.

Emma Gonzalez was still one of the prettiest people I’d ever met in person. Jet black curly hair that sat perfectly at her shoulders the way I wished my curls would. Whenever my hair was cut short like hers, it just frizzed out instead of laying tame. A long time ago, I might have asked her for the secret to well-managed curls, but those days were long gone.

When she first came to Rosewood, we were friends for about two weeks. But then she figured out I was not on the top tier of the social hierarchy when Chloe came around to make fun of my discount store notebook. Emma and I drifted apart after that, but she was always kinder to me than any of the so-called cool kids. Not kind enough to stand up for me, but she never piled on like the others did.

Her smile was genuine when she spoke. “Hey, Maggie.”

“Maggie, hi,” Harmony said, brown eyes glowing with malice. “Heard about your little bakery. That’s too bad, honey. I’m sure it would have been a big success.”

All thoughts dried up in my head. My voice went hoarse. “What?”

She shrugged, smirking at Chloe. “No secrets among friends.”

Chloe smiled. “That’s right, Maggie. No secrets. So, was it for the insurance money? You can tell us.”

My head swirled. I wasn’t even sure what she was asking. “I don’t… huh?”

“Well, I mean, come on. Fires don’t start by accident.”

Emma said nothing. She just sipped her champagne and looked uncomfortable.

The fire had been one of the worst days of my life. All that work. All that hope. The freedom my bakery had offered was gone. Every drop of my sweat and tears couldn’t put out that raging fire, no matter how hard I tried to stop it. I stood there, crying with a garden hose, hoping that somehow it would be enough after the extinguishers had been exhausted.

The firefighters said they were lucky to put it out before it spread to the buildings next door. Even now, I could still smell the smoke. Flour had a distinct smell when burning. Kind of flat and sour. Not quite like bread, but almost. These days, burnt toast smells like cremated dreams.

It had only been a few months since I’d lost my bakery, and I had been struggling financially ever since. But I couldn’t tell them that. Why give them more ammunition? I was already the butt of their jokes.

Still, I tried to find my voice again. “Flour is… it’s flammable. And combustible. When you see flour puffing around a bakery at three in the morning during deliveries, that’s the most vulnerable time. When the bags are being dragged in it’s almost impossible to keep the flour from leaking out. It’s too fine. So, it ends up hanging in the air. And when it’s suspended in the airlike that, all it takes is the wrong spark at the wrong moment, and there goes your dreams.”

Chloe’s wild stare darted over my face. “And I’m sure the fat insurance payment made up for that, right?”

“No,” I rasped. “It didn’t.”

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