She planted her hands on her hips, her lips twisting into an irritated scowl that somehow didn’t lessen the beauty of her classic features. The flush of anger made her high cheekbones rosy and her bright blue eyes glitter as she stared him down. “I tried being nice. I tried to talk to you about it like an adult and you pretty much told me to suck it.”
Emmett swallowed a snort of derision despite how badly he wanted to laugh in her face. He got the feeling that would just ratchet her attitude up another few notches. If that pole up her ass got any higher, she’d choke on it. How could a woman so beautiful and talented be so miserable to be around?
That wasn’t exactly how that conversation had gone down. She hadn’t asked nicely. She’d flittered into the bar making demands, then, when he wasn’t receptive, stomped out in a huff. She might think he was just some bum who spent his twenties partying on the beach before he scraped up enough pennies to buy a bar, but she was wrong. He’d run with the big boys in Florida. He knew her type, through and through. Fancy, high-maintenance women who turn their nose up at everything and everyone.
He wasn’t about to get pushed around by Madelyn or anyone else. He might be an outsider, as far as Rosewood circles were concerned, but he wasn’t stupid or willing to be intimidated by their silly social constructs. If they knew the truth about him, folks would certainly treat him differently, especially this stuck-up little princess. But he liked living this life. It was simple, easy. At least until she started making trouble for him.
“I
’m sorry Madelyn, but that’s simply not true. I have no interest whatsoever in having you suck it.”
Maddie gasped, her cheeks going from rose to crimson. “How dare you!” she shouted.
“What?” he baited. “Are you upset because I dared to make a dirty joke in your highfalutin shop? Or are you insulted because I don’t want you?”
“Get out!” she shouted. “Get out right now, or I’ll call the sheriff again.”
Emmett rolled his eyes. This chick had no sense of humor whatsoever. Her attitude grated on him, and no matter how sensible her argument might be, the way she spoke to him made him want to dig in his heels and fight her at every turn. Whatever he could say or do to get her spun up was fine by him. She already thought he was an ass; there was no reason he couldn’t fulfill that prophecy for her.
He boldly reached out to the tray of cooling cinnamon rolls and snatched one before he turned and walked out of the kitchen. She sputtered behind him, but he didn’t pay any attention to her. She could bill him. She’d just cost him five hundred bucks, she could spare a three-dollar baked good.
“This isn’t over, Fancy Pants!” Emmett shouted as he continued out of the shop and strolled down the dark, quiet stretch of First Avenue back to the bar. He absentmindedly munched on his pilfered pastry as he crossed the street and unlocked the bar’s side door that led upstairs to his apartment.
When he’d bought Woody’s Bar, he’d bought the whole building. It was a perfect scenario, really, with the bar downstairs and a private apartment above. It needed some work to get everything the way he wanted it, but once it was done, it provided him the easy life he’d hoped for when he left Florida to come to Rosewood. The town was small and pretty quiet. Most of the people were friendly enough. He could walk almost anywhere, and he’d even had the time to indulge in his woodworking hobby since he’d come here.
Life in Florida had gotten way too hectic for Emmett. He’d spent years getting a degree in finance so he could go into investment banking and work for a large firm in Tampa. He wanted to manage the big portfolios and earn the equally big salary so he could get the waterfront condo and the convertible he’d always dreamed of. But when he had all of that and more, he realized that it had made life too complicated. He worked long hours; he barely slept; he was in a constant state of hurry. What was the point of this life when he couldn’t enjoy it? That’s when he decided to leave it all behind and go in search of a slower pace.
Now, he went to bed at dawn, slept most of the day, and spent his evenings in a fun atmosphere of music, laughter, and sports. His patrons came to Woody’s for a good time, and he was happy to give it to them. In the three years he’d owned the place, there’d been only one physical fight and one argument. Aside from that, the patrons were as easygoing as he was.
At the top of the stairs, Emmett used his least sticky hand to open the door and step into his kitchen. He tore off a paper towel and laid it on the granite countertop before he set down what was left of the roll. There wasn’t much. It was damn tasty. He hated that. She was such a miserable person, he’d hoped her food would taste the same way. Instead, it was light and fluffy, sweet, decadent, with just the right ratio of spices and glaze. It was the most perfect cinnamon roll he’d ever eaten.
He supposed he couldn’t expect anything less from Madelyn. Her high standards apparently applied to her food, not just to everyone else.
He hadn’t visited the bakery since Madelyn took over. Emmett had gone a couple of times before Estelle Townsend died. She was a sweet older lady—the kind you expected to make tasty cakes and cookies because she was pleasant and plump and always had a smile on her face. Madelyn simply didn’t fit that mold. With her hair pulled back into that tight bun and her constant frown of displeasure, she seemed more likely to start barking at people in French for daring to breathe on her culinary masterpieces.
He could do without that. And he had, until she started nosing into his life. He hadn’t gotten a single complaint before she’d moved in across the street. Woody’s Bar was surrounded on three sides by businesses, so most nights those stores were closed. The pizza place stayed open later on the weekends, but the hardware store was closed. The fire station was manned 24/7 by people who needed to stay awake, so they didn’t care about the noise.
That just left the narrow strip of houses on Daisy Drive. The old Victorian with the wraparound porch and big bay window was the closest, but it’d been empty until recently. Now it was Madelyn’s house.
He knew she didn’t go by her formal name, but he couldn’t make himself call her Maddie. Maddie was what you called a woman who was sweet and fun-loving. She was far too self-righteous for him to call her Maddie. When he was growing up, his grandmother had a friend named Madelyn. Emmett wasn’t certain if it was spelled the same, but they were definitely cut from the same cloth. His grandmother’s best friend had been a wealthy widow with a distaste for everyone and everything. She was old money; migrating to Florida from New England in search of better weather for her husband’s ailments before he passed.
She’d always looked at Emmett like he was a bit of wildlife that had gotten in the house. A piece of dog shit on her shoe that she couldn’t fully get off. Emmett hadn’t been a poorly behaved child. He never knew why the woman didn’t care for him. But he knew whenever Madelyn came over, he wanted to go to a friend’s house to play.
That was one difference between the two Madelyns. The gifted baker didn’t look at him like dirt, despite what words came out of her mouth. She looked at him in a way that made him more curious than he wanted to be. Sometimes, her pert little nose would turn up and she’d watch him from beneath her dark lashes like she expected him to try something funny. Other times, when she thought he didn’t see her, there was the heat of open appraisal in her eyes. It was usually followed by a squirm of discomfort.
He wanted to laugh at her predicament. Poor little rich girl. What to do about an unwanted attraction to an unsuitable boy? The secret knowledge that she was both disgusted by him and attracted to him at the same time made Emmett bold. It was a weakness he could exploit if she insisted on pressing him over the noise issue.
Emmett finished off the last of the sweet roll and tossed the napkin into the trash under the sink. Checking the locks on the front door, he headed down the hallway to his bedroom. Until he switched on the lights, the room was dark as night. He’d professionally installed in each window blackout panels that wouldn’t let a single beam of sunlight through it. They also muffled the street noise—something Maddie should look into.
He wasn’t unsympathetic to her plight. As a day sleeper, the whole world conspired against him. Between postal deliveries, telemarketers, and the sirens of the fire station next door, there were plenty of attempts to wake him up. The difference was that none of those people were breaking the sound laws because it was the middle of the day. He had to suck it up, and Maddie needed to learn to do that, too.
In his bathroom, he switched on the light and cussed when he saw himself in the mirror. He still had on that damn hairnet. He ripped it off and tossed it into the wastebasket.
He made quick work of brushing his teeth and stripping down to his briefs to go to bed. As he crawled between the sheets in the darkened room, he tried to figure out what he was going to do about this issue with Madelyn.
He didn’t want Woody’s to be a public nuisance, even if he enjoyed irritating her. He would put in an effort to keep things quieter during the week, but there wasn’t a lot he could do on the weekends. To drum up more business in the fall, he was kicking off some special events at the bar. People rushed in to watch the college football games, then disappeared. To keep them at Woody’s, he was bringing in a live band on Friday nights. Saturday, after the last game, they were doing karaoke.
Thursday nights were now ladies’ night, where they could get any drink on the menu for two bucks. That was probably in direct correlation to the noise level the night before. He’d had a whole swarm of college girls come in from Gadsden. As college girls tended to do, they went from white wine spritzers to tequila shots. That was a bad combo, if you asked him. Yes, he had to pay a hefty fine for the noise, but at the very least, the cops ran off most of the girls before they started puking in the gravel parking lot.