The Heiress Takes A Husband

Mitch glanced up at his office door. His adoptive father, Jordan, stood there. He debated telling him he couldn’t go today.

But they went for coffee every morning together. Had been doing so since Mitch joined the firm six years ago.

Unfortunately, they usually went just down the street to the Main Street Bakery, and he had not forgotten Brittany telling him her grand reopening was today.

Mitch took his jacket off the back of his chair, stood up and shrugged into it. Using the mirror on the back of a closet door, he straightened his tie. His eyes had dark crescents under them.

“You look tired, Mitch. Is everything all right?” Jordan asked.

“Sure,” he said.

But the truth was, it wasn’t. He felt like he hadn’t slept a wink since Saturday night. Haunted by the taste of her lips, the fire in her eyes, the toss of her head. Haunted by his own behavior.

The last thing he needed to do was go to her bakery and see how she was blundering along, her idealistic dreams on an inevitable collision course with cold, hard reality.

And he doubted if he could make himself stay away. He’d been tempted to drop in all morning. It was an unsettling feeling for a man as accustomed to control as he was, to be so tempted, to feel so pulled to the very thing that most threatened his control.

“Did you enjoy yourself Saturday night?” Jordan asked him, as they strolled down the street.

Mitch slid him a look. “It was okay,” he said noncommittally.

“Those triplets are beautiful, every one of them, but Brittany seems to have an extra—” He paused looking for words.

“Spark?” Mitch suggested drily.

“That’s it! She seems on fire with life.”

“Whatever.”

“You didn’t like her?” Jordan asked. “She seems like such a nice girl.”

“Dad, you aren’t matchmaking are you?”

“Of course not.” This said too quickly.

“Because it would be beneath you. I think Mrs. Pondergrove is a bad influence on you. That’s the type of thing I can see her doing.”

“Angela only wants people to be happy.”

“I’m happy just the way I am. You can pass that on to Angela, if you happen to see her.”

“Mitch, to be frank, you don’t seem to have much of a life. Work. Those kids at the community center where you volunteer. A man needs more than that.”

“Well, not this man.”

“Monica made you bitter,” Jordan decided.

Being jilted at the altar had a tendency to do that. Mitch said nothing.

“Why don’t you just get to know the Patterson girl a bit? What would it hurt?”

“She’s looking—with a frightening single-minded purpose—for something quite different than me.”

“Happiness?” Jordan suggested.

“Marriage!” he replied, as if this answer should have been obvious to his father.

“She’s a lonely kid in a strange town taking on a whole new set of circumstances. She’ll need a friend.”

“Fine, send old Angela over to visit her.”

“I don’t like it when you refer to Angela in that tone of voice. She’s a good woman with a kind heart.”

“Sorry, Dad.” A good woman with a kind heart, and a meddlesome way.

“Would you look at that?” Jordan said with amazement as they approached the bakery. “Is that a lineup?”

It was a lineup, going right outside the door, and curving in front of the newly lettered front window. Heavenly Treats.

“It’s good to see her doing so well,” Jordan said.

But Mitch, not blessed with the same spirit of undaunted optimism as his father, quickly realized the line wasn’t moving forward. Several people left in disgust. He suspected, not that she was doing well, but that she wasn’t coping with even the normal crowd.

“Let’s go somewhere else,” Mitch said.

“Slip in there and see what’s going on,” Jordan said. “Maybe you can help her out.”

Mitch shot his father a look that Jordan ignored.

“How could I help her out? I don’t know anything about bakeries.”

“Neither does she.”

Mitch saw the set of his father’s chin, and drew in a deep breath. There were some occasions when you didn’t argue with Jordan Hamilton.

“Excuse me,” he said. Drawing in a deep breath, he shoved his way through the little bottleneck in the doorway, ignoring the irritated looks he got.

Inside, the smell of fresh paint overpowered the smell of baking.

The paint job was probably the worst he’d ever seen. The wallpaper was on crooked, the patterns unmatched. Black and white posters of Humphrey Bogart, Marilyn Monroe and James Dean had been hung at random, he suspected over the worst of the paint job. He thought she’d achieved a kind of wartime café ambience, as if everything was a little shaken because of the last bombing, but they were bravely open for business anyway. He somehow doubted that was the atmosphere she’d been aiming for.

The few little tables were already covered with dishes that had not been cleared away.

The brand-new tablecloths, pink with an overlay of lace, had coffee stains and crumbs on them. The fresh flowers, stems of daisies, drooped.

The customers were cranky.

And there she was, behind her counter, a white apron, with spilt coffee on it over a dress that looked like it was meant to be worn at a summer church picnic—on second glance, he realized it might be just a touch too sexy for the church picnic—her hair falling out of its neat ponytail, her mascara smudged, a look of determined cheer on her face that was faltering.