Page 327 of The Maxwell Brothers
He had an ear-to-ear smile, though he did glower a bit as he said, “I was going to surprise you.”
“I know. Gran told me.”
He groaned. “Oh come on, Gran. You even ruined the fact that I wanted to tell her I’d planned a surprise.”
She smiled sheepishly. “I wanted to give the girl a heads-up.”
“And I appreciated it,” I said. It didn’t give me enough time to change and remove any traces of dough from my forehead or anything, but still, it was better than nothing.
Behind Declan were Tate and Lexi. I thought it was lovely how Tate’s eyes lit up when he saw his daughter. He put an arm around Lexi’s shoulders as they both came in.
“This place looks and smells great. And we hear you need a lot of help eating what you’ve baked,” Lexi said.
Luke, Travis, and Tyler came next. Kendra was alongside Tyler.
“Hey, no, no,” Travis said, clapping his hands once. “Everyone, please line up one behind the other and stand in the street.”
“What?” Declan asked.
“I have a plan. If people see that we’ve lined up, they’ll want to see what’s going on.”
“But I’m not open for the public,” I said nervously.
“Doesn’t matter. The point is we need to create some buzz, and the best one is the one you create yourself.”
“Was that how you created the hype around your own company?” Luke said, patting his shoulder.
“Hell, yes. You bet we did. And what do you think happened next? People started getting interested. Influencers, bloggers. Come on. There’s a gazillion Maxwells. We’re the perfect decoy group. Someone should snap a picture of us.”
Wow, he does sound like a man with a plan.
Luke patted his shoulder again. “Brother, anyone posts a picture of us on Instagram, there’s going to be at least a hundred people who know exactly who we are. Not sure if that’s going to help Liz or not.”
“No pics, then. But we still need to line up,” Travis went on.
“But I’ve got plenty of goodies for everyone,” I countered.
“And we’ll get them,” Travis said seriously, “but in due time. Go on, line up, one behind the other.”
“You know what? I think this is a good idea,” Kendra said. “You can’t give us the stuff all at once anyway. It’ll create interest, we’ll tell them when your opening is, and they’ll come back.”
Declan looked at me. “Do you already have your business insurance effective today, just in case non-Maxwells actually show up?”
“Yeah, I do,” I said.
“Oh, come on, brother, relax,” Tyler said.
Luke shook his head. “Impossible. That isn’t part of his vocabulary.”
“Hey, stop giving my guy a hard time. He’s looking after me.” And I was swooning at that. I really was. I felt like the luckiest girl on the planet right now. “Give me a minute, then. I need to go in the back and freshen up.”
“Sure,” Travis said.
“I’ll come with you,” Declan added.
“Great.”
Turning around, I headed straight to the bathroom, feeling him right behind me. When I stepped inside, he came too and closed the door, locking it.
