Playing With Trouble (Desire Bay 1)

A sting shot through her heart. Of course he was. The entire town loved Jacob Lock, and he was the kind of man that had an open invitation to anywhere.

“So let me get this right,” Jake said to Mannie, and set the little girl in his arms down. “You blew off a job that brings in thousands of dollars a month from one of our longest-standing customers to bring flowers over here?”

Mannie’s mouth dropped open, and he looked like he was ready to wet himself. Honestly, so was Laura. She’d never seen someone look so beyond angry. It was more than raw fury, it was disappointment. Which hit her own rib cage hard, and she felt the need to explain.

“I asked them to help me,” Laura said, which was true. Okay, she’d told them, was more like it. “And they can still do the job today. It’s not even three in the afternoon yet.”

Jacob’s icy eyes hit her. “You can’t do this,” he said.

That made her own anger rise and that fire she had been chasing burn hotter. Jacob needed to stop telling her what to do and stop underestimating her. “Yes, I can. They’re my crew, too.”

“No,” he said. “They are people who work for Baughman Home Goods.”

“Which I’m a part of.”

“Don’t you get it?” he snapped in a low whisper and closed in on her so only she could hear his words. “You won’t have anything to be a part of if you keep this up. We’ll go under.”

“No, we won’t,” she said with shock. She’d seen the bank account. They were stable. In the black. Surely one order being late this one time wasn’t an issue. Was Jacob trying to get a rise out of her? Scare her into his goals of always putting the warehouse first?

Well, she wasn’t going to give in to that.

“The finances are stable. The cost analysis great. You just don’t like that I have a different goal for Baughman Home Goods.”

“You’re right,” he said. “I don’t. Because it’s not what your father would want.”

“What he wants is for us to figure it out and show him who should run the entire shop as a whole,” she snapped. Everything Jake and her father had built was wrapped up in the warehouse. Hell, it was wrapped up in Jake’s house, too. But the flower shop was the only part that remained of her mother and her past, so she was clinging to it. The part she knew. The part that had anything to do with her and gave her hope. Because Jacob was right—she didn’t know anything about the warehouse.

“Look,” Jake said, clearly trying for calm. “Your little flower endeavor aside, it’s bad business to be unreliable to your biggest client. He pulls his business and we’re a grand shy from being in the red every month. We already have to earn back the five grand you took. That’s a man’s one-month salary, you know.”

She swallowed hard. She had no idea that this one order brought in so much revenue. She’d never meant to cause a problem. She was trying to make this all work. Trying to take the business to the next level, to bring in more revenue, not less.

She wanted to say this to Jacob, but he’d already stomped away, clearly uninterested in anything she could have said.

“What the hell were you thinking?” he said quietly to Mannie.

She didn’t know if Mannie was trying to keep quiet, but Laura heard him clear as day when he leaned in to Jake and said, “She’s the boss, too, boss. We had to do as she said.”

With that, Jake’s eyes hit hers again, and she didn’t like the feeling that came with being on the receiving end of a glare like that.

“We’ll leave now to get the sawdust,” Mannie said.

“Don’t bother, I took care of it.”

“We took care of it,” the little girl with pigtails announced. “And we rode in the dump truck with Uncle Jake!”

Laura smiled. She was cute. And Uncle Jake had a nice ring to it. Made him softer than he was currently being at the moment.

“Uncle Jake?” the other little girl asked. “I’m hungry.”

Jake nodded. “Let’s get home then, kiddo.”

Mannie and the guys followed him out, and no one said a word to her. Laura looked around at the empty bar. She was once again alone, only this time she was surrounded by flowers and wondering how badly she might have just screwed up, all while trying to figure out a way to stay above water.

Because if she was one wrong move away from sinking the company, maybe it, the town, and Jake were better off without her.

“No,” she whispered and traced her finger along a dahlia perched on the vase nearby. The silky petal reminded her of when she and her mother had made bouquets from the garden every weekend. There wasn’t a single dahlia that was alike. All so different in size, color, and composure. You never knew exactly what you’d get. Which was why she’d loved them. Why her mother had loved them. Why Walt had a garden full of flowers waiting for her mother. At least, he had before he’d sold it.

She just wanted to stop feeling so small. Her mother had been larger than life and the strongest woman she knew. The past ten years felt like a track she’d gotten lost on. And now Laura wanted to somehow feel her presence. Feel her love.