the books for my bakeries here.”
“I would love it,” she said. “I usually work for a vendor because there’s less conflict of interest. Speaking of which,” she continued as she rummaged through her bag, “I’m out delivering contracts to all the vendors right now.”
“Gotta go,” Jack said. “My secretary’s called fifteen times and she’ll probably get on the PA system if I don’t show up.”
Without another word, Jack speed-walked across the bakery’s porch and headed up the trail to the front of the park. Gus wondered why he’d ignored the phone calls for the past hour, but she imagined there was a lot she didn’t know about Jack and his business. Perhaps Evie showing up was the convenient exit he’d been hoping for.
“I’ll come by later when I’m done,” Evie said. “This is the best job offer I’ve had. Especially since the airbrushing stand didn’t work out last year and I’m no good at scooping ice cream. Numbers I understand.”
* * *
LATE THAT AFTERNOON, Jack locked the men’s room door and leaned against it, eyes closed, for a full minute before heading for the sink. Cold water rushed over his hands as he scrubbed them mercilessly. Warm water would’ve been better for washing away the grease and construction dust he’d picked up on the latest inspection of the Sea Devil, but he needed to cool off. He stared at the rivers of water rolling over his fingers, imagining all his problems sluicing away.
“Gotta get a grip,” he said. Jack dried his hands, smoothed down and buttoned his sleeves, rolled his shoulders. He refused to look at his own face—his father’s face, thirty years younger—in the mirror.
Dorothea waited for him outside his office door. Her desk straddled the space between his office and the one that was formerly his father’s. No one used Ford Hamilton’s office now, leaving Dorothea half-adrift.
“One of the vendors stopped in to see you while you were out on the Sea Devil.”
“Which one?”
“Augusta Murphy.”
Jack considered Dorothea for a moment. She had to be in her late fifties and had worked for Starlight Point for decades. Maybe if he asked her advice? Maybe she knew all the things his father hadn’t told his own son about the way he was doing business. Doubtful.
“Very tall and very pretty.”
Jack smiled for the first time in hours.
“She also seemed very mad.”
His smile vanished.
“Is she coming back?”
“Wants you to come to her bakery in the hotel. Seems to think she can tell you what to do with your time,” Dorothea said. She grinned at Jack. “I thought that was my job.”
“I planned to stop by the Lake Breeze this afternoon anyway. I want to see if it’s close to being ready for opening weekend. Guess it wouldn’t be much out of my way to see what she wants.”
“I told her not to count on it.”
“Thank you, Dorothea. I’ll see what I can do.”
* * *
WHEN JACK ZIPPED over to the hotel on one of the many loaner employee bicycles they kept all over the Point, he hoped to have a chance to talk to Gus alone. He’d been up late worrying about the vendor contracts. His father had always negotiated those, giving Jack only a vague idea of where that income fit into the general scheme of things. He hadn’t even known Aunt Augusta’s was replacing the retired baker until he’d grilled his mother over lunch downtown. Sadly, he was beginning to realize his mother had only a cursory idea of how Starlight Point ran.
Looking in from the outside, everyone probably figured he was privy to all his father’s business decisions. If they only knew. To write up the formal contracts, Jack had researched some boilerplate industry standards, pulled out five years’ worth of Starlight Point contracts and run the ideas past the foods manager. Jimmy Henry had raised his eyebrows when Jack wanted to review the fees and profit share from the vendors.
“Never looked at those before,” he’d said. “Your father only asked me when he thought one of them might cut into our sales. Generally, we get the sit-down business and the vendors get the stand-up. Full-service restaurants are ours, snack and drink stands are theirs. Worked that way for years.”
“I know, but what do you think of the rent and the percent of the profits we charge? Could we get away with raising them?”
“Search me. Can’t speak for any of them and haven’t seen their returns. Maybe they’ve been making out like bandits all these years. Maybe you’ll break ’em if you raise the rent and they’ll all pull out. Wish I could help you, but I run our sit-downs and only get involved if someone competes with my restaurants,” he’d repeated, as if washing his hands of the issue.
“Worried about any of these vendors competing with us?”
“Are they the same ones as last year?”
“All except for the three bakeries. New owner.”
Jimmy had shrugged. “Bakers are bakers.”
When Jack entered the hotel lobby, he wondered if Jimmy had ever met Gus. Perched on the check-in counter addressing a group of twenty or so people, Gus did not look like an average baker.
The room shifted in his direction when he entered the lobby. His tie was loose, his suit coat flapped and he had a rubber band securing his right pant leg. Like his father, he always wore a suit at work, but getting his pants caught in the bicycle chain two summers ago had been enough to teach him a lesson.
He sat in a plush lobby chair, pulled off his black dress shoe and jerked off the rubber band. Everyone watched him. It was as if the guest of honor had entered a surprise birthday party half an hour before anyone expected him.
Gus strode across the lobby, the group right behind her, and stood so close Jack couldn’t get up without looking really awkward. He hadn’t gotten his shoe back on, and now he felt exposed, trapped. Please don’t let there be a hole in my sock. At five foot eleven, Gus was already imposing. And gorgeous. Her eyes were bright, her cheeks flushed, hair a little wild.
“Thank you for coming to our meeting,” she said tersely. Each word dripped with ice.
Jack relaxed in the chair, draped an arm across the back and crossed one leg over the other. His black dress shoe knocked against Gus’s shin but neither of them gave an inch. If she wanted to unleash some kind of righteous fury on him about the contract, he wasn’t backing down in front of a lobby of vendors.
“Didn’t know it was a formal meeting,” he said.
“It is now. We want to talk about these terms.” She waved the contract at him. The twenty or so other vendors behind her had similar white papers clutched in their fingers. No one looked happy. Even the ones who’d been here for years. Maybe he’d gone too far. But now he was stuck.
“Go ahead,” Jack said coolly, his glance returning to Gus’s face. “Talk.”
She
