Page 33 of Sweet Home Louisiana

“I can’t have…pie…with a supplier,” she went on.“It would be a conflict of interest to keep buying from you and you’d lose this contract.”

“I think I would be okay with that,” Brody said.

“We need to talk.”Sawyer finally interrupted them.“I just got a call,” he told Maddie.“And I’ve got a tour waiting.”

She gave Brody a little smile.“Sorry to cut this short.But thank you for understanding and for taking that ten percent off our bottom line.”

Brody straightening with a frown.“Now I don’t know if we agreed—”

“A verbal agreement doesn’t mean anything down here anymore?”Maddie asked.

“I didn’tsaythat we were going to have a discount, either.”

“Cookies,” Maddie said to him with a big smile.“We should sell cookies in here.That’s perfect.My grandma makes amazing cookies.”She looked at Sawyer.“Shaped like alligators and turtles.”

“Love it,” Sawyer said.

Brody frowned, looking between them.“Fine.Five percent.That’s the best I can do.”

“Oh, I don’t want melted Snickers bars anymore,” Maddie said.“It’s cookies.”She said it to Sawyer rather than Brody.

“We gonna sell them or just have it available?”Sawyer asked, looking mildly amused.

Maddie wrinkled her brow.“I’ll have to think about it.”

Brody sighed.“Fine.Ten percent.”

Maddie shook her head and came around the counter.“No.”

“No?”Brody asked, letting her lead him to the door.

“No.”She pulled the door open for him.“That wasn’t a negotiation technique.I really want to sell alligator cookies instead.”

“But…” Brody scratched his head.“Are we going to have pie then?”

She nodded.“You should totally go have pie at Ellie’s.The huckleberry is my favorite.”

“By myself?”

She smiled up at him.“Don’t worry.With Ellie, Cora, Jerry, Leo…you’ll have lots of company.”

With a resigned sigh, Brody headed out of the door.Maddie’s smile dropped as she shut the door and turned back, returning to the front counter.

“So now we’re not going to have any candy for sale?”Sawyer asked.

“Two weeks of us selling cookies instead and Brody will come back and give me twenty percent off our bottom line,” she said.“Of course, by then the cookies will be a huge hit and we won’t buy as much from him.But that’s his own fault.”

“I’ve known Brody since we played football against each other in high school,” Sawyer said.

Maddie nodded, her attention on her laptop screen.“Yeah.He should have paid more attention in math class.Or maybe you shouldn’t have hit him so hard in the head.”

Owen could see that Sawyer was fighting a smile.That in and of itself was nearly a miracle and he wanted to kiss Maddie for it.

Oh, who was he kidding?He wanted to kiss Maddie period.

“Okay, so we have another similar situation that we need to discuss,” Sawyer told her.

Owen folded his arms and leaned back against the wall to watch.Sawyer was a grumpy, intimidating guy who got his way ninety percent of the time.The only time he didn’t was when Ellie didn’t agree with him.But now Maddie was here and Owen had a feeling that, at least for this month while they were business partners, Sawyer’s percent might drop into the eighties.

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