Page 6 of For Butter or for Worse
His dark eyes search my face for a moment. “Sorry you wasted a trip.”
“I’ll buy it from you.” Those words jump from my mouth before I can hold them back.Buythe bakery? With what? My savings account is enough to keep me fed for maybe a year, but that’s about it. I still need to find health insurance and a place to live, neither of which will come cheaply. I was banking on the bakery being a gift.
Yeah, I had an awesome job within a multi-million-dollar company, but all my money went to my apartment and to the lifestyle I adopted alongside Lane. I never thought I would lose it all.
King watches me for a beat, studying me intently before he folds his arms. “You want to buy Uncle Bill’s bakery?”
No. “Yes.”Shut up, Georgie!“I know you don’t want it.”
“How do you know?”
“You always hated that bakery. You complained about it every day.”
“A decade ago.”
Okay, so maybe he has a point, but I can’t imagine this man has changedthatmuch over the last ten years. He might be grown up and manly now, but I’dbet the old Royal Kingston is still in there. The one who never failed to get so annoyed when I’d spend all day with Bill at the bakery and then shut up when I offered him a snickerdoodle or a cherry tartlet fresh out of the oven. I’ve always been able to persuade King to do things; I just need to find the right motivation.
“Well?” I reach forward and take hold of his hand. I try not to let it hurt too much when he pulls away without hesitation. “It might take me a day or two to get the loan figured out, but I’ll buy it and take it off your hands. I get the bakery, you get a bunch of money. Win win.”
He’s considering it. I know he is. King could never resist a quick buck, and that bakery is probably worth a decent amount. Granted, I have no idea if I could get a loan, but that won’t stop me from—
“I can’t.” King pushes up to his feet, leaving me in a heap on the floor. “Can’t sell it to you, Georgie. It’s a family legacy.”
I jump up as well, even though I’ve folded maybe ten shirts in total, which is nothing compared to the pile still waiting. This is more important. “Are you kidding me? No one loved that bakery as much as I did. Is this because I refused your proposal?”
“Did you refuse? I remember you saying a whole lot of nothing.” He moves to the other side of the store and grabs a surfboard from the rack where they’re all lined up.
Again, he’s right, and we should probably talk about the whole proposal thing instead of arguing about the bakery, but my mind is fixated on this and won’t let me stop pushing. “King, please. I’ll pay more than it’s worth.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
I follow him out the door and watch as he rests the board against the outside of the shop like some sort of display. “Come on.”
“No, I…” He grits his teeth, folding his arms once more as he turns to face me. “I literally can’t sell you the bakery. Or even give it to you. Uncle Bill did something weird with his will, and the bakery has to stay in the family.”
“Oh.” The fight drains out of me as I consider that. Is that even a thing someone can do? I don’t know enough about law to really question it, but King seems genuine. “That seems a little…” Stupid. That’s what it is.
King shrugs. “It’s Uncle Bill. What did you expect?”
I expected him to leave me the bakery, like he always said he would, but I keep that to myself. He probably decided I was thriving up in New York and didn’t need it. After all, I never gave him a reason to believe otherwise.
“I could hire you to run the place,” King says, but before I can even consider the idea, he cringes. “I can’t afford you. Not without dipping into my profits from the surf shack, and…” His eyes roll over me. “Not doing that. You’re too fancy.”
I can’t decide if his assessment of me is a compliment or an insult. “I can lower my salary expectations.” But even as I say that, my mind starts running through all the updates the bakery needs to be successful. I’m pretty sure the salary from working a whole Willow Cove tourist summer would barely be enough to cover the costs of the badly needed renovations. There’s no way I could afford making those changes unless I’m actually owning the place and have the profits at my disposal.
King narrows his eyes. Back when we were dating, he had this habit of reading my mind. It was always cute and endearing, but right now I don’t like the way he seems to be seeing the dollar signs running through my head.
“Can’t you find some sort of loophole?” I ask weakly.
He huffs a laugh. “So you can change everything about Uncle Bill’s bakery?”
See? Mind reader. I grimace. “I wouldn’t changeeverything.”
“That’s not what you said to your friend this morning.” Rolling his eyes, he heads back inside and drops down to continue folding the shirts I left behind.
I’m not making myself sound great. I know that. But I spent the last year butting heads with Lane, trying to make our relationship work, until he decided our personalities clashed as much as our opinions on the best way to make buttercream. He was too hard-headed to listen to my ideas, and I endured it because I thought our relationship, both romantic and professional, was worth the concessions. It clearly wasn’t.
He not only dumped me on TV but also strong-armed me out of the bakery franchise on the technicality that it’s his name on the ownership documents.
