Home > The Heartbreaker of Echo Pass(7)

The Heartbreaker of Echo Pass(7)
Author: Maisey Yates

   “Oh it’s fine,” Iris said.

   “We always used to cook together,” Sammy said, looking down at her baby’s beautiful, fuzzy head.

   “And now you have Astrid to take care of,” she said. “It’s fine.”

   “I do have Astrid take care of,” Sammy said, “but that doesn’t mean I can’t cook dinner.”

   “Well, I just want to... I want to help when I can.”

   Because she was going to have to tell them all tonight that help was going to be a lot less common.

   The front door opened, and Iris heard the sound of the dogs rushing in. Their nails clicking on the hardwood. And then she heard three pairs of boots walking along with them.

   “Can we not have the dogs in?” Iris asked, mostly just because it was what she always asked.

   It was futile, at this point, to complain about the small pack having free run of the house.

   She just didn’t want them under the dining room table, or in the kitchen. But at this point, the dogs had won, and there was no sacred space for humans. And there was simply no enforcing it with Sammy as mistress of the house anyway.

   Iris rolled her eyes, and took the pans of meat loaf into the dining room, setting them with the rolls and salad that were already on the table.

   She also had an icebox cake ready to go for dessert. Lemon with vanilla cake and candied citrus peel, which was a family favorite.

   She was gratified by the sounds of anticipation that her sister Rose, her fiancé, Logan, Ryder and Sammy made as they surveyed the table. West, Pansy and West’s half brother, Emmett, joined them a few moments later, and made more proclamations of joy around the food.

   It was almost enough.

   Almost.

   But she couldn’t help but be conscious of the fact that everyone was paired off except for her and the teenage boy.

   And it was things like that that just left her a little bit depressed.

   She waited until they were halfway through the meal to make her pronouncements. Her reality might not be cheering. Her pronouncement was.

   She might feel stagnant here in this familiar environment, but she wasn’t. She’d gotten her deal.

   “I did it,” she said. “I made an agreement with the owner of the building on Grape Street today, and I’m going to be opening a bakery.”

   Everyone stared at her like she had grown a second head.

   “Well,” she said. “Say something.”

   “That’s fantastic!” Rose said. “I knew that you could do it. How did you manage?”

   “I...baked a plate of cookies and hiked up to the top of the mountain.”

   “I have no idea how that got you a bakery,” Rose said.

   “They are very good chocolate chip cookies, Rose,” Iris said, sniffing.

   “Good for you,” Pansy added. “You’ve been wanting to do that for so long.”

   “Yes,” she said. “And in exchange, I’m going to be giving my landlord twenty-five percent of the profits, and cleaning his house. And making him dinner. And dessert.”

   “What?” Ryder asked, his eyes narrowing.

   “Well, he was charging a lot for rent, so I went to negotiate.”

   “Iris,” Ryder said. “You don’t even know who this guy is. Do you?”

   “No. His name is Griffin Chance. He’s from California, I think. But he lives here in town now. Well, not in town, he lives up Echo Pass. And well, let me tell you, he is in need of someone taking care of some things for him.”

   Everyone was staring at her like she’d grown cloven hooves, and was currently grasping her fork between the splits.

   “I don’t feel comfortable with it,” Ryder said.

   West was eyeing her closely, but as her brother-in-law, probably didn’t feel like he could offer his opinion freely. Logan, however, as a surrogate brother who had known her all of her life, was clearly not so encumbered.

   “I don’t like it at all,” Logan said. “The whole thing is weird. He might be some...some pervert, who likes to watch people clean his floors, you don’t know.”

   Horror stole over Iris, as she tried to imagine what that could even mean. Especially applied to the large, muscular bearded man she had met earlier today.

   What sort of...perversion was related to floor cleaning? She didn’t know.

   She wasn’t afraid of him, though.

   He was a very large man. If he decided to harm her in some way, she wouldn’t have any recourse, and even though for some reason she felt she could trust him, she wasn’t entirely sure that could be enough. Maybe she could carry bear spray...

   “Well, it’s too late,” she said, emphatically. “I made a deal, and I start tomorrow. And... I’m excited. Because it’s the first thing I’ve ever done for myself, and I went and made the deal, and I’m not boring.”

   “Nobody said you were boring,” Pansy said.

   “You think I am. Because I needlepoint and knit, and Rose thinks that I should date a man in khakis.”

   “Are you still mad about Elliott?” Rose asked.

   Irritation and something that felt deeper stabbed at her chest.

   “I’m not mad,” Iris said. “I was never mad. It’s just... Look, I’m doing something for myself. And I’m excited about it, and I don’t need commentary from a man who got his best friend pregnant, another man who slept with my sister even though she’s a decade younger than him and he’s known her since she was a child, and finally, from my sister’s landlord, who is also an ex-convict who seduced her and stole her innocence.”

   The three large cowboys at the table had the decency to look chagrined, so there was that. And she could tell that none of them had expected quite such a definitive display from her. Well, they didn’t know everything about her.

   “That was different,” Ryder said.

   “Completely different,” Logan agreed.

   “How so?” she pressed.

   “We are not potentially secret serial killers,” Logan said.

   “West might have been.”

   Pansy gave her husband a sidelong glance. “She has a point.”

   “How did I get dragged into this?” West asked. “I didn’t say anything.”

   “You thought it,” Iris said.

   “You definitely thought it,” Emmett agreed, in the fashion only a younger brother could.

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