Close to You

Chapter One
     
    Like every morning in the six months since
she’d opened Grounds for Thought, Eve Alexander peeked from the
kitchen window to check on her bookstore café. Gleaming espresso
machine. Sparse stacks of books specially showcased through the
inviting space. People drinking and reading.
    Her dream come true.
    And, like every morning, she
had the same thought. She was insane .
    Shaking her head, she picked up a tray of hot
scones and carried it out to the front, careful not to get her
heels caught on the knotty wood flooring.
    Her friends teased her for wearing her
impractical fancy shoes in the café but a girl had to have
standards. Besides, she loved them—and she had a backup pair of
flip-flops in the kitchen in case her feet began to hurt
badly.
    “ Watch out,” Eve warned her
barista Allison.
    The older woman stepped out of the
way and inhaled deeply. “Clotted cream and orange. If I outgrow my
wardrobe, you’ll have to give me a raise.”
    “ You deserve a raise regardless.”
Eve set the scones to cool on a rack strategically placed so
customers could see and smell them. “I don’t know what I’d do
without you.”
    “ The word whimper comes to
mind.”
    “ No kidding.” Eve couldn’t
afford to have someone else on staff yet, but Allison had offered
to work for practically nothing, just to have something to do other
than watching TV and gardening. Having Allison saved her from
working twenty-four/seven but, even better, offered her friendship.
“How’s it going out here?”
    “ It’s been steady this
morning. People seem really interested in the book club. We’re
going to need more flyers.”
    “ Great,” she said, perking
up. She’d started the book club two months ago, to pull more
revenue in. Last month she had eighteen attendees—eighteen people
who bought not only the book they were discussing but also drinks
and pastries. This month she was hoping to double
attendance.
    “ The idea you had to do a
singles night is excellent too,” Allison said. “God knows it’s hard
to meet anyone unless you hang out in a bar.”
    “ What do you know about
dating?”
    “ I may be happily married,
but a lot of my friends are getting divorced and starting over.
They talk, sometimes too much. Unlike you.”
    “ I don’t have anything to
talk about.”
    “ My point exactly.” Her
barista got a calculating look in her eyes. “I hear online dating
is all the rage.”
    “ My best friend Freya did
that, and don’t even think about putting up a profile for me behind my
back.”
    Allison exhaled. “Killjoy.”
    Her cell phone rang, and Eve reached
into her apron pocket to answer it. The glow from Allison’s praise
melted away when Eve saw it was Charles on the phone. She groaned.
“I have to take this.”
    The older woman shooed her away. “Go
talk in the kitchen. I’m fine out here.”
    Nodding glumly, she waited until she
was in the kitchen and out of Allison’s hearing to answer. “Hey
Dad. What’s going on?”
    “ I got your check for this month’s
rent. It was late.”
    “ It should have only been a day
late.”
    “ Late is late,
Evangeline.”
    She put a hand to her temple. She’d
thought it was bad when her father was her boss—it was ten times
worse having him as her landlord. “I missed the mail deadline and
sent it a day later than I meant to. I’m sorry. Next time I’ll just
drop it off.”
    “ You can’t go around stiffing
money to your business partners.”
    “ Dad, I didn’t stiff you money. I
just—”
    “ I knew this store of yours was a
bad idea,” he continued, speaking over her. “You work all the time
and are in debt up to your eyeballs.”
    “ It’s not that bad.” It was, but he
didn’t know it. He thought she’d invested all her savings. She
hadn’t told him that she’d taken a second mortgage on her condo
too. And there was no way in hell she was telling him that she was
thirty days from bankruptcy.
    “ It was a mistake to encourage you
by leasing that property. I shouldn’t have let you convince
me.”
    She hadn’t asked him to take the lease out for
her—it’d been his idea to lease it and rent it to her. But she
wasn’t sure she would have qualified for it on her own, so she went
along with it.
    Mistake. Big mistake.
    “ You should come back to work for
me,” he said. “I’ll give you your old job.”
    “ Thanks, Dad,
but—”
    “ I’ll even give you a small
raise. You’ll have the same title though, director