We’d come to a truce about the business, deciding that working together was smarter and more natural than fighting against each other’s ideas. That was where this truce ended, though. Brady was all power, heat, and male sexiness that I wasn’t prepared to wrangle. It would be like a baby tiger trying to take down a fully grown elephant. It wasn’t going to happen.
I flicked the bathroom light off and decided a guy like Tieg Tulip I could wrangle. He was about to pick me up for my twenty-ninth date in my twenty-ninth year of life. I had no illusion that it was going to be the date of a lifetime. I gave it better than a fifty-fifty chance that it would also be the last date of my twenty-ninth year of life for two reasons. His name was Tieg Tulip, and Amber was the one who set us up. Amber might be my best friend, but she would never make an excellent matchmaker.
I grabbed my purse, and a light sweater from the kitchen table then locked the door behind me. I had no intention of letting Tieg know that I lived above the business. I’d done that one time in the past, and it took weeks of ignoring someone knocking on my door to get them to stop. If I didn’t hit it off with Tieg, and let’s face it, I wasn’t going to, I didn’t want him to know where I lived.
Sure, he’d know where I worked, but then everyone knew that. Guys usually shied away from making a scene in a public place, too. They preferred private space for that. I rolled my eyes thinking about the fit Jerry had thrown when I finally had to spell out for him just how disinterested I was in dating him. He was one of the few bright ones who figured out that I lived above the bakery and had climbed the stairs one night while half-drunk to knock on my door. I still don’t know how he made it back down the stairs while drunk and angry without breaking his neck, but somehow, he had.
“Well, if it isn’t the fluffy cupcake,” a sugary sweet voice said from behind me. I sighed. Great, as if things weren’t bad enough with Tieg Tulip, now I had to deal with McFinkle.
“Darla,” I said dryly, leaning up against the front of the bakery. “A delight, as always.”
“I hear you’ll be doing the cupcake bake-off again this year,” she said, her nose turned up in distaste. “I think it’s getting a little worn.”
“You may think whatever you’d like, Darla.” This woman was getting on my last nerve. She could have opinions, but I was tired of always being at the brunt of them.
She flipped her hair haughtily and stuck her nose up in the air the way she always does. “Won’t matter. This year, I have the winning recipe. I hope you’re ready to get the pants beat off you. Not even the fluffy cupcake, you, not the business, can top this. It’s going to be epic.”
“I look forward to the competition,” I said, no emotion in my voice whatsoever. Darla could tell me that the sky was green, and I would say she was right. I learned at the ripe old age of six not to trust her or to argue with her. Darla has to be right about everything, and I wasn’t going to be her punching bag more than I already was.
She hiked her bag over her shoulder and sneered at me. “Maybe you should let Brady be the face of the business at the bake-off instead. He’s more, what’s the word,” she motioned her hand around as though searching for the proper way to express herself, “visually appealing than you are.”
“That’s two words, Darla.”
“Two words that describe that fine specimen to a T. I would worry if I were him that those hips and ass of yours swinging around could just knock those cupcakes right off the table.”
“I’ll make sure to send him the memo.”
With her nose in the air and a stick up her ass, she strolled down the street, not even caring that she just ruined my night. I shook out my shoulders and pushed off the wall of the bakery. No, I won’t give her that power. Whenever she comes around calling me names, my mood always plummets, and I couldn’t keep doing that. I was getting better about not engaging with her in an antagonistic way. I had to get better at controlling the way her words hit me, too. It would never be easy, but in the long run, it would always be worth it.
A man strode up the street dressed in a short sleeve dress shirt, open at the collar, and a pair of dress shorts. My gaze strayed to his feet, relief filling me when he wasn’t wearing sandals with socks. He was wearing perfectly acceptable black Nikes—score one for Tieg Tulip.
He pulled himself up short in front of the bakery and thrust a bouquet of, yup, you guessed it, tulips, out to me. “Haylee, I presume?”
I accepted the tulips and smiled. “Tieg, I presume?”
“Of course, who else would bring tulips?” he asked, as though I was a tulip short of a bouquet.
Off to a good start.
I pushed back the eye roll threatening to escape and offered a smile instead. “Who else, indeed. I’ll put these in the cooler inside, and then we can head out?”
“Oh, no,” he said, shaking his head. “You can bring them with us. That way, everybody knows I’m a gentleman.”
Blink. Blink.
I was infrequently at a loss for words, but Tieg Tulip had managed it in our first two minutes together. Propelled along the sidewalk by his beefy mitt, I struggled to find something to say to put the night back on track.
“Amber says you’re a science teacher?”
“Ag-science,” he corrected, as though I should know there’s a difference. “I teach small animals and dairy science besides my duties running FFA.”
“Exciting,” I said with fake enthusiasm, even though it sounded a lot like watching paint dry to me. “As a baker, I don’t know where I’d be without my farmers and their fresh eggs and milk.”
“You’d be working somewhere else,” he answered logically.
I bit back a sigh and plastered a smile on my face. “Without a doubt. So, where are we going for dinner?”
“We can eat at a restaurant any day, right?” Tieg asked, and I got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. “I put together a little private picnic at the lake instead. You won’t believe the goodies I’ve got in my basket.”
I was pretty sure, considering our already bizarre conversation, that I would believe it. I was also sure I wasn’t going to be a huge fan of said goodies.
I STROLLED THROUGH the park on the way back to my apartment but paused halfway through, wondering if that was Haylee sitting at a picnic table near the community dock. I tipped my head to the side in fascination. Was that a bouquet of tulips stuck between the slats of the table? She sat across from a guy who looked like the love child of sasquatch and an Abercrombie and Fitch model. Curious, I walked closer, glad the guy had his back turned to me.
When I got a little bit closer, I could see it absolutely was Haylee sitting there with some sort of bento box in front of her. Whatever was going on, her hunched shoulders told me she wasn’t enjoying herself. Her eyes met mine, and what they said had me strolling over to them.
“Oh, hey, Haylee,” I said casually. “I didn’t know you were out and about tonight.”
The look of relief on her face told me I’d read the situation accurately, even from thirty yards away.
“Brady!” she exclaimed with a little too much excitement. “What a surprise.”
“Beat it, buddy,” the guy said, swatting at me like a fly. “We’re on a date.”