Close to You
Authors: Kate Perry
Kate Perry
Close to You
Praise for Kate Perry’s
Novels
"Perry's storytelling skills
just keep getting better and better!" –
Romantic Times Book Reviews
"
Can't wait for the next in this series...simply great reading.
Another winner by this amazing author."
–Romance Reviews Magazine
"Hot!
Recommended!" –
Bookpleasures
"Exciting and simply
terrific."
–Romancereviews.com
"
Kate Perry is on my auto buy list."
–Night Owl Romance
"A winning and entertaining
combination of humor and pathos."
–Booklist
Other Titles by Kate
Perry
Return to You
Perfect for You
Playing Doctor
Project Daddy
Project Date
Marked by Passion
Chosen by Desire
Tempted by Fate
www.twitter.com/KatePerry
Close to You
Kate Perry
© 2012 by Kathia Zolfaghari
Cover Graphic © Gina Sanders –
Fotolia.com
Smashwords Edition
This is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's
imagination or are used fictiously and are not to be construed as
real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or
persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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 of
marketing.”
“
I just opened my shop,
Dad. You didn’t raise me to quit.”
He huffed. “I didn’t raise
you to be crazy, and this is crazy, Evangeline. A
donut
shop?”
She gritted her teeth. “It’s a café,
with pastries, not donuts.”
“
Then what are the books
about? It makes no sense.”
“
It makes perfect sense.”
She only stocked a dozen or so titles, but she switched them every
week, sometimes based on a theme. People loved recommendations.
“I’m catering to my clientele.”
“
You could have picked a
less expensive neighborhood to open this place.”
“
I live here, Dad.” Right
in the building above Grounds for Thought, actually. She’d coveted
that storefront ever since she bought her condo. When it became
free, it was like a sign.
And Laurel Heights was the perfect
neighborhood for her type of shop. A little ritzy, with lots of
well-to-do retirees and women who hung out during the day while
their kids were at school. She’d made the perfect cozy place for
them to hang out. Just like she’d always dreamed.
Now her dream owned
her
.
“
Have you talked to
Claire?” her father asked out of the blue.
Eve stiffened. Here it
was—the part where he compared her to her perfect older sister. The
sister who’d gone to Stanford, graduated
summa cum laude
, married the greatest
guy, had the most adorable little girl, and managed a foundation
for children in Africa infected with HIV.
Mother Teresa had nothing on
Claire.
It would’ve all been easier
to take if Claire weren’t so damn
nice
. Claire never lorded her
superiority over her. In fact, if Eve needed anything, she knew she
could go to her sister.
Which made her all that much more
determined to prove she could make this work on her own. “No, I
haven’t spoken to Claire in a couple weeks. Aren’t they in
Rwanda?”
“
Tunisia.” There was some
rustling, and then he cursed. “Damn it, I need to go interview this
person.”
“
Another marketing
director?”
“
Yes,” he
grumbled.
“
The new one you hired
quit? Does that make three?”
“
If you came back, I
wouldn’t have this problem.”
It’d probably help if he stopped
yelling at them too. “I’ll talk to you later, Dad. I love
you.”
He mumbled an
incoherent
yeah, you too
and hung up.
She slipped the phone into
her apron and checked on her chocolate croissants. Taking them out
of the oven, she automatically put in a
a
tray of almond croissants. Then she
dropped her head into her hands and took a deep breath.
She was trying not to give in to
negativity, but things were bad. Really bad. In thirty days she’d
have no money left, and her credit was already on its way to being
maxed out.
She was on the verge of
losing everything: her business
and
her condo.
Worst case, she knew her parents would
take her in, but she’d rather stab a knife in her heart than crawl
home defeated. She could already hear her dad telling her over and
over again how lacking she was compared to her older
sister.
She needed another six months of cash.
In six months, she’d be in the black. But banks were tight with
their money, especially when it came to lending to a broke
baker.
She needed a miracle.
Shake it
off
. Picking up the tray of croissants, she
pasted a smile on her face and went out front. When she saw Freya
standing at the counter bouncing the small pink bundle strapped in
front of her, Eve’s fake smile morphed into a genuine one. “Hey,
you’re up early.”
“
The kid wouldn’t sleep.”
She looked down at her baby girl and cooed. “Yes, Mae, I love you
so much, even when you wake me up pre-dawn.”
“
My younger son only slept
six hours a day.” Allison laughed. “But it gets better.”
“
When?” Freya asked
disbelievingly.
“
When they go off to
college.”
“
I can make it better now,”
Eve said. “Go sit and I’ll bring you a cappuccino.”
“
Hurry, because I’ll fall
asleep if I get too comfortable.” Soothing Mae, she went to sit in
one of the cushy chairs in the window.
Plating a scone to go with the
cappuccino, Eve asked Allison to hold the fort and joined
Freya.
“
A scone,” her best friend
said reverently, immediately popping a piece in her mouth. “I knew
there was a reason I went to so much trouble for you.”
“
Trouble?”
Freya reached into a pocket and held
out a folded scrap of paper.
“
What’s this?” Eve opened
and read it. There was a woman’s name and number written in Freya’s
crisp handwriting.
“
You know that my sister’s
boyfriend is a chef, right? Well, Max knows someone who knows
someone who knows Daniela Rossi.”
