Stirring Up Trouble Read online

  “My daddy warned me that boys would try to use me to get to my family. I tried to avoid that by being the unobtainable girl who all the boys wanted and none of them could have. I guess that’s when my attitude first started. To keep the boys at arm’s length, I developed this air of superiority that bordered on downright snobbery. It was easier if people thought I didn’t date anyone because no one was good enough for me.”

  “Sounds lonely,” Emmett noted.

  “I was used to being lonely. I’ve been lonely my whole life. I think that’s why I fell so hard when Joel came to Rosewood. He was a friend of Blake’s from Auburn. They played football together, and whenever Blake came home for a long weekend or a holiday, he brought Joel with him. He was handsome, and so much like my brother—a talented athlete, a charmer, and better yet, he was practically family-endorsed. Everyone loved him. I was a senior in high school at the time and I was smitten. He seemed to like me, too, and asked my father for permission to court me. It was so old-fashioned, but I loved the idea of it.

  “While he was at school, we texted and talked on the phone. I felt like I really got to know him well. When the spring semester ended, he came home with Blake again to attend graduation for Mitchell and me. That night after the party, he took me out to a secluded spot on the lake away from the house. He’d packed wine and brought a blanket. We hadn’t really discussed moving forward in our physical relationship, but the more wine I drank, the better an idea it became. He was touching me like I’d never been touched before and I liked it. But then he started getting more aggressive.”

  Emmett stiffened. He didn’t like where this story was going. He hadn’t even heard all of it yet and he wanted to track this Joel guy down.

  “I tried to get him to slow down, but he kept insisting that it was okay. I started to wonder if he’d put something in my drink. I’d only had wine once, but I didn’t remember it being that strong. My arms and legs were too heavy to fight him off and I couldn’t seem to form the words to tell him no. If I didn’t concentrate really hard, I knew I would black out, so I fought to stay focused.

  “When I managed to ask him to at least wear a condom, he told me no. He said I was his golden meal ticket. I guess since he’d drugged me, he believed that I wouldn’t remember what happened or what he said, but he told me that he was going to knock me up and things would be set for him. I guess he thought we’d have to get married to avoid scandal if I got pregnant and my dad would give him a job, and he could just sit pretty and live off my family’s money.

  “The next thing I knew, my brothers came out of nowhere. Mitchell told me later he’d noticed I was missing and had this gnawing worry he couldn’t shake. We joked that it was that twin connection people always talk about, but whatever it was, I’m grateful for it. He grabbed Blake and they went looking for me. They found me just in time. Blake beat the shit out of Joel. Even Mitchell took a few swings, and that’s not his thing at all.”

  “Were you okay?” Emmett asked, wrapping a protective arm around her. “Did he hurt you?”

  “No, he didn’t, thankfully. More than anything, he taught me a lesson. After that, I told myself that I’d never let myself get in that kind of position again. I decided that when I started dating more seriously, I was going to avoid this problem by only dating men who had more money than I did. If they were rich, they didn’t need to use me for money or family connections.

  “I also decided that I was never drinking again. The wine had led me to make stupid decisions, and once I was drugged, there was no getting out of it if my brothers hadn’t saved me. I hadn’t had a drop of alcohol since then until our celebratory drink the other night. I didn’t even drink in Paris because I was there alone and afraid of what might happen.”

  “Why did you choose that night to finally break your own rule?” he asked.

  “I guess I wasn’t afraid of you. That might have been ignorant on my part, but I felt like I was in a safe place. I also intended to just have one glass for celebration’s sake, but that didn’t exactly work out,” she said with a laugh. “I don’t know why, but you make me break all my rules.”

  Emmett felt like an idiot. All this time, he’d thought she was just spoiled and only wanted the kind of man who could give her the lifestyle she was accustomed to. That she thought she was too fancy for his bar and his patrons. Instead, it was a hard-wired defense mechanism.

  “I think you should break all of your rules. Forget about what you think you should do, and just be who you want to be. Stop hiding who you really are, because from what I’ve seen, I think the person you are is wonderful.”

  “You always seem to be exactly who you truly are,” Maddie said. “You put yourself out there. Aren’t you afraid of getting hurt or doing something stupid?”

  Something stupid like lying about who he was to everyone around him while preaching to her that she needed to stop living a lie? He had the sudden urge to tell her the truth about his background and who he was, but he knew that was a bad idea. For one thing, she seemed so sensitive to a man’s lies after what happened with Joel. If she’d built up a level of trust in Emmett, would admitting to the truth make things worse, even if it was a fairly harmless lie?

  Was it wrong to keep that part of him a secret? He’d had gold diggers cross his path over the years. He’d pegged Maddie to be one of them, just entertaining herself with the likes of him until someone rich showed up. But he was wrong. She liked Emmett for who he was. Or at least, who she thought he was. It was unexpected, but he really liked that about her. He wasn’t ready for that to change.

  “I learned a long time ago that the past is the past. You can’t change it; you can only grow and move on from it. You got hurt. I’ve been hurt. It’s just life. But you’ve got to open yourself back up to the good things, even if it might come with some of the bad.”

  “You’re right,” she said at last in a small voice.

  Their painful pasts hung heavy in the air between them after a long silence. Emmett didn’t want her to start her day with that on her mind. “Well,” he said, “I am happy to inform you that I have no intention of impregnating you.”

  “Well, that’s good,” Maddie chuckled.

  “And, I also have no interest in your money. I know you don’t have any.”

  Maddie gasped, rolling onto her back to look up at him in the dark. “What are you talking about?”

  “You’re mortgaged to your eyeballs between the bakery and this house. For all I know, you owe your father a kidney, so using you for your money is pointless.”

  Maddie was putting out a tray of Friday’s special pain au chocolat when the door chimed. She looked up and was surprised to see her grandmother in the bakery. She wasn’t sure if Granny had visited since the grand opening during the summer.

  “Granny,” Maddie said. “What brings you to the bakery?”

  “Marilyn Gallagher had surgery yesterday and is home from the hospital. I wanted to take something by the house, but Cookie had the morning off to attend her niece’s Halloween party at school. I haven’t toiled away in a kitchen for years, Lord knows what an inedible mess I’d make, so I thought the better decision was to pick up something from you.”

  That made sense. The mayor’s wife and Granny had been friends for years. That was an important enough event for her to venture from the house. She seemed to be getting out more lately. Maddie liked to see that. She hated the idea of her grandmother getting older and being homebound. It just flew in the face of her independent streak.

  “What would you like to take her?”

  Her grandmother walked along the display case, eyeing all the items available. “Do you have a loaf of the banana bread that hasn’t been sliced yet?”

  “I do, there’s one in the kitchen.”

  “I’ll take that. She and Otto can eat it for breakfast with their coffee.”

  Maddie went into the kitchen
and grabbed the loaf of banana bread on the cooling rack. She wrapped it in plastic so it wouldn’t dry out and put it in a box. “Anything else for you?”

  “Actually, wrap up one of the chocolate croissants for Winston. I know he likes those. I’m going right home after I drop off this bread, so I’m sure he’ll enjoy it as a treat before dinner tonight. I’ve been out of the house more in the last few weeks than I have in a while. It seems like things keep coming up but never on the same day.”

  Maddie slipped the croissant into the new paper treat sleeves she’d ordered. They were still pink and still had the gold “M” monogrammed on the front, but they were significantly cheaper than the boxes for single items. Turning toward the register with her grandmother’s purchases, she knew she couldn’t pass up her chance to ask about Granny’s recent visit to Woody’s.

  “I know. I’ve seen your car go by a couple of times. Did you go to Woody’s the other day? I could swear that was your Caddy parked out front.”

  Her grandmother was uncharacteristically silent for a moment. She seemed to be considering her words and started digging through her purse in a thinly veiled stall tactic. “Oh, yes,” she said after a moment, retrieving her credit card. “I remember now. I went by to speak to Emmett about a project at the house.”

  “You went to him?” That wasn’t the answer she was expecting, nor did she think it should take her grandmother that long to come up with it. She said it very convincingly, however. If it were true, Maddie supposed there wasn’t anything she could say about it. If her grandmother sought out Emmett for a job instead of the other way around, she couldn’t blame him for that.

  “Yes, of course,” Adelia said with a furrowed brow. “Carpenters don’t exactly go door-to-door offering to build things, you know. I’d heard from a few folks that he did nice work. With everything going on between the two of you, he was fresh in my mind, so I wanted to see if he was available.”

  “Was he?”

  “Not at the moment. I had a limited window for the project and between the bar hours and his community service, he said time was a little tight for a project of that size. I think we’re going to try to schedule something for next year.”

  “It’s funny, he hasn’t mentioned working on something for you.”

  Her grandmother narrowed her blue gaze at Maddie. “It’s probably because he isn’t, yet. I’d also asked him not to mention it to anyone, including you. I didn’t want one of you to accidentally ruin the surprise. It was supposed to be a birthday gift for your mother. I wanted him to line her closet with cedar and put up more shelving and shoe storage this week while she was away on her girls’ trip. There just wasn’t time. I may try again when she and your father go on their anniversary cruise in the spring.”

  Maddie handed her grandmother her receipt, feeling foolish for being so suspicious of Emmett. He’d given her no reason to think he was after anything other than a relationship with her, and yet she’d concocted a whole elaborate scenario in her mind. Joel’s betrayal was a gift that kept on giving long after she wished she could forget all about him.

  “All right, dear, you have a good afternoon.”

  “’Bye, Granny,” Maddie said. She watched her carry her bag out to the car and drive off in the direction of the mayor’s house.

  The timer went off in the kitchen and Maddie rushed in to pull cookies from the oven. She didn’t need to waste her time thinking about imaginary problems when she had a real batch of two-hundred sugar cookies to make for the Halloween festival.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Even though it was a Saturday, Emmett opted to keep Woody’s closed on Halloween until after the Trunk or Treat and the movie in the square was over. Normally he opened at eleven, but between his community service in the morning and the town activities happening in the evening, it just didn’t make sense.

  Besides that, he didn’t need people with alcohol in their system trying to navigate their cars around a thousand pedestrians. He tried to keep an eye on folks to make sure they could get home safely, but even the slightest delay in reaction time could make a difference if a little Ninja Turtle suddenly ran into the street.

  Instead, Woody’s would be throwing its annual costume party starting at nine. With the bar closed, it gave him time to decorate and prepare, and gave him the freedom to leave and participate in most of the town activities as well.

  After decorating the library with Maddie, doing up the bar was easy. Joy even showed up early to help.

  “Are you wanting the motion-detector skeleton on the bathroom door?” she asked.

  “No!” he said adamantly. “That thing moves and screeches at people. If it goes off on their way into the restroom, they might wet themselves.”

  “Ooh,” she said with big eyes. “Okay then. How about I hang it on the door to the back room? That will keep folks out of there.”

  “Perfect.”

  It turned out that Joy was a Halloween freak, so he’d turned over the reins to her where the party was concerned. He’d thrown one last year, but it was really just a glorified costume party with two-dollar drafts. Joy had taken it to the next level. She was getting food catered in, so there was a cover charge at the door that the new bouncer, Dré, would collect. People were encouraged to dress up and they were having a costume contest later with prizes. The whole place was covered in spiderwebs, skulls, and old, flickering LED candles. The jukebox was loaded with spooky songs. She’d even come up with a list of Halloween drink specials including witches’ brew, white zombies, and dragon’s blood.

  Emmett was going with it. It sounded fun. And, if a bunch of folks came to the bar for the party when the movie was over, it might be a lucrative night for them, too.

  “So, is your girlfriend coming to the party tonight?” Joy asked after the last decoration went up.

  Emmett shrugged. “I don’t know. That’s pretty late for her. The bakery isn’t open tomorrow, but she’s so involved in the festival tonight that she’ll probably be exhausted.”

  “That’s a shame.”

  “What about you? Do you have a special Stormtrooper or Wolfman coming to see you tonight?”

  Joy chuckled and turned away. “Not a chance. This town isn’t ready for the likes of me yet.”

  Emmett looked down at this watch. The party at the library started at five thirty with the Trunk or Treat starting at seven. It was getting close to time to head to the square.

  “Are we good with the food?”

  “Yes,” Joy said, whipping her notebook out of her back pocket. “I’ve got platters of sandwiches, fruit, cheese, and veggies in the refrigerator. I’ve got a bunch of chips to dump in bowls. There’s a big Crock-Pot of little smokies in barbecue sauce heating on low. The guy at the Pizza Palace is going to bring a tray of hot wings and garlic knots at nine thirty. When we’re ready, we’ve just got to set it all up on the table with the skull-covered tablecloth. I’ve also got a bunch of matching plates, utensils, and napkins with skulls on them stashed under the bar.”

  Emmett was pretty amazed. She’d gone above and beyond for tonight. He’d never attempted to do food at Woody’s, even though he had a full, industrial kitchen in the back. Getting a cook and worrying about everything that went with food service was a headache he wasn’t ready to take on. But maybe someday. He’d see how tonight went for a start.

  “Okay then. Do you think we’re ready to lock up?”

  Joy looked around and nodded. “I think so. I’m going to go home, get in costume, and grab my goodies to hand out. Shall we meet back here about eight forty-five?”

  “That works. What costume are you wearing tonight?”

  “A zombie cheerleader,” she said brightly.

  That’d be interesting. “Nice. Just make sure you have both your arms intact. You’ll need them to bus tables.”

  “Ha-ha,” she said flatly as she slipped into her c
oat. “What are you wearing?”

  “I’m coming as Han Solo.”

  “Interesting choice. Geeky, yet also badass.”

  “Get out of here,” he said, tossing a bar towel at her.

  Joy laughed, catching the towel in the air and tossing it back at him. “See you at the witching hour.”

  Emmett did a few last things around the bar before he locked the front door and headed upstairs to his apartment. Choosing a costume he could work in hadn’t been as easy as he’d hoped. He didn’t want a mask or anything covering his face or hands. He couldn’t wear anything that was too hot or hard to move in. It was amazing how much that had limited him. No superheroes. No big gag costumes. Nothing hot and furry.

  In the end, he went with Han Solo. The costume was fairly simple, comfortable, and as close to real clothes as he could get while still being dressed up. And really . . . Joy was right. Was there a more badass option? He didn’t think so.

  It didn’t take long for him to slip into the costume and strap the blaster to his hip. For fun, he’d bought a candy pail that was shaped like Darth Vader’s helmet, so he filled that with candy and headed out to meet Maddie on the square.

  By the time he got there, it was just about time for the Trunk or Treat. Cars were already lining the square and filling all the parking spots along the shops and in the lots of the courthouse and the library. Since it seemed pointless to take his truck, Emmett was planning to just walk around and hand out candy to kids as he passed them.

  “Han Solo!” someone shouted over his shoulder. Emmett turned in time to see Grant and Pepper coming toward him. They were dressed like the Avengers, with Pepper in a skintight Black Widow costume and Grant wearing a Hawkeye outfit, complete with bow and arrow.

  “Don’t you look handsome,” Pepper said. “Did you talk Maddie into wearing the slave-girl bikini?”

  Both Grant and Emmett broke out in laughter at the same time. “Uh, no,” Emmett said. “I have no idea what she’s wearing. We didn’t discuss it. I’m not sure we’re in the matching-couples’-costume place quite yet.”