The Bachelor Baker

After he lost his job he thought that would be the push he needed to get it started. So he’d gone to the bank for a loan. But the bank had turned him down, stating that his down payment wasn’t large enough given the current economic condition of the town.

His hopes had been revived when he’d heard about some mystery person with a large amount of money who was looking to start new businesses in Bygones. That hope had been extinguished in favor of outsiders. The committee was looking for new blood. New ideas.

Why had a local like him, who had way more invested in Bygones, been turned down in favor of someone who wasn’t from here, who couldn’t possibly care about the town the way he did?

Bunch of city slickers like Melissa Sweeney. He gripped the steering wheel of his truck, stifling his humiliation. In spite of his antagonism to Melissa as City Slicker Baker, he couldn’t stop noticing Melissa was an appealing woman. She was the first girl he had felt any kind of attraction toward in a while. In another time and in other circumstances he might allow that feeling to go somewhere. But not now.

He had no job and no prospects.

Nothing to offer her.

Chapter Two

“I may as well warn you—Trent’s mother wants to meet with us to talk about another change to the dessert menu.” Gracie Wilson ran her fingers through her short brown hair, artfully disheveling her cute pixie cut as she blew out a sigh. “And she was talking about adding a tea right after the church service. Said it was a courtesy for the people who attended the service who we didn’t invite to the reception.”

Melissa caught a curious note in Gracie’s voice. “Is everything okay?” she asked. “You seem upset.”

Gracie waved off Melissa’s concerns. “I feel overwhelmed by all this fuss and bother. Mrs. Morgan is all about pink and girlie and I want things simple. I can’t believe how much planning she’s been doing. Plus, I wish we would have kept the wedding on a Saturday, the way I originally wanted. I just think she wants as many people there as possible.”

“A Sunday wedding will be very nice,” Melissa said, putting her hand on the young girl’s arm in a gesture of commiseration. “And if it’s any consolation my mother had been planning my wedding for years. In fact, before she died, she gave me a folder with ideas she collected.”

“I didn’t know your mother was dead,” Gracie said, her voice full of consternation. “That’s so sad.”

Melissa waved off her concern. “It happened five years ago.”

Gracie was quiet, then she leaned forward. “Have you met anyone since you came here who would give you a reason to pull that folder out?”

“I’ve met lots of people,” Melissa said, being deliberately obtuse.

“You know what I mean.” Gracie leaned closer, grinning, her previous funk disappearing behind her usual bubbly personality. “What do you think of my boss? Patrick Fogarty? Isn’t he just a dream?”

“He is good-looking.”

“That sounds like a brush-off. So, have you met someone else then?”

Just then the door opened. When Melissa looked up she had a sense of déjà vu.

Brian Montclair stepped into the Cozy Cup Café followed by an elderly man, tall, slender, wearing a golf shirt and plaid shorts. His hair, a thick shock of white, was neatly brushed and his blue eyes sparkled. He had the same widow’s peak as Brian, the same blue eyes. Melissa guessed this was Brian’s grandfather.

Brian glanced her way, then he hesitated a moment and she wondered if he would come up to her and accept her offer. Instead he turned to the man he was with.

“Grandpa, what did you want to drink?” Brian asked him.

Gracie glanced over her shoulder, then turned back to Melissa, grabbing at her arm, her eyes wide. “Oh. My. Goodness. He likes you,” she said in a stage whisper.

Melissa shot her a frown. “What? Who?”

“Brian. He totally likes you.”

Melissa resisted the urge to roll her eyes but lowered her voice, too. “That man has been nothing but cranky to me, especially when...” She stopped herself there, figuring someone like Brian wouldn’t want Gracie to know about her offering him a job.

But Gracie didn’t catch her vague sentence; instead, she looked back just as Brian glanced their way. Then she turned back to Melissa, her eyes wide with pleasure. “See? He is checking you out.”

“He’s wondering what you’re whispering about.”

“He’s acting like my brothers do when they like someone.”

As a sister of five brothers, Gracie could be considered an expert on male behavior. Melissa, growing up the only child of a single mother, had no such experience on which to base her judgment.

However, she figured she knew how a man would act if he was attracted to someone. The first thing Jason had done when he met her was flirt with her. Then give her his phone number. When they dated, he made her believe she was the only one for him. That he would always be there for her. They talked about starting up a new business together—a bakery in St. Louis. She moved to be with him and make their plans. But just when everything seemed to come together, he left her with her money, her dreams and a broken and disillusioned heart.

Melissa pushed the dark memory aside. She had her bakery now and her own chance to prove herself. Depending on anyone to fulfill her or to support her plans was a waste of time and emotion.

Brian reminded her too much of Jason. A bit arrogant and a bit controlling. No thanks. She was her own boss now, in charge of her business and her heart, and she wasn’t letting anyone in on either one.

Then the door of the shop opened again and Mrs. Morgan swept in.

“Oh, dear,” she heard Gracie whisper as Mrs. Morgan walked toward them, clutching a binder identical to the one Gracie had on the table in front of her.

“Good afternoon,” Mrs. Morgan said. “Sorry I’m late.”

She held out her hand to Melissa, her red fingernails flashing. Her hair, a delicately washed silver, hung in a stylish pageboy around a face that defied her actual age. Her silky brown dress seemed unnecessarily formal for a casual meeting in a coffee shop, but Melissa was slowly learning Mrs. Morgan placed much stock in appearances. She didn’t so much sit down as ease into the chair in one fluid motion. “What have I missed?” she asked, glancing from Melissa to Gracie.

“We were talking about some of the changes you wanted to make.” Gracie’s voice grew small in this woman’s presence.

“Gracie said you wanted to add a tea with snacks for after the service,” Melissa said, taking over, hoping to ease the sudden tension. “However, this will substantially change the cost.”

Gracie spoke up. “I don’t know if my father wants—”

“You don’t have to worry about the money,” Mrs. Morgan said. “I told your father we would cover everything.”

“But—”

“Please. I don’t want to hear about it anymore.” Mrs. Morgan smiled, but the tension around the table had increased.

And when the café’s door burst open, Melissa jumped.

“Melissa,” a worried voice called out. “I need you to come to the bakery.”

Melissa turned to see Amanda scurrying toward her, twisting her apron around her hands, her face a grimace of concern. “The oven quit working and all those cupcakes you put in aren’t baking.”

“Did you call Alan?” Melissa asked, her mind scrambling. “He was the one who installed the stove and oven.”

“He can’t come until tomorrow,” Amanda said. “He’s working in another county today. What are we going to do?”

Melissa bit her lip, her mind racing. The cupcakes were for a conference in Junction City. If the organizers there liked what she had to offer, it could increase business for the bakery and maybe raise the profile of Bygones and the new businesses here.

And Mrs. Morgan was still waiting.

“So the oven won’t go on at all?” Melissa asked, taking care of her first priority.

Amanda shook her head, her brown ponytail bobbing.

“I’ll tell Brian. He’s really handy. I’m sure he can help,” Gracie said, then, before Melissa could protest, jumped to her feet as if relieved to have a reason to escape. She hurried over to where Brian sat with the older man and murmured something to him. Melissa looked away when she saw him frown, but then Brian strode over.

“Something wrong with your oven?” he asked.

“It doesn’t work,” Amanda said before Melissa could protest that everything was fine, which it wasn’t. She didn’t want Brian in her bakery. Especially not after the way he seemed to treat it so dismissively. “Could you come and fix it?” Amanda asked.

“Sure. I’ll have a look at it.”

“It’s fine. We can manage,” Melissa said, holding up her hand as if to stop him.

Brian shot her a frown. “How? Amanda said Alan can’t come till tomorrow. Can’t bake your fancy cakes if your oven doesn’t work.”

Melissa stifled another protest at his blunt assessment of her situation. Much as she didn’t like it, Brian was right.

“Okay. You can come and have a look at it,” she said, relenting.

“Thanks. I think.”

As Melissa held his steady gaze she caught the hint of a mocking smile teasing one corner of his mouth.

Her heart did a slow flop at the sight. Then she caught herself midreaction. Was she crazy? The man clearly didn’t like her or her bakery. Why was she even the least bit attracted to him?

Because, she thought as she strode out of the coffee shop, in spite of her innate need for independence and her burning desire to make her own way in the world, there were times she wondered what it would be like to have someone beside her.

Just not this guy, Melissa reminded herself.

* * *

“So I relit the pilot light.” Brian pushed himself away from the oven and, brushing the dust and crumbs off his shirt and pants, picked up his tools and got to his feet. “The oven should work now.”

It hadn’t taken him long at all to get Melissa’s oven going. The thermocouple wasn’t working so all it took was a quick run down to the new hardware store. Thankfully, Patrick there knew his stuff and had one in stock.

Replacing it was a simple job, but it made him feel useful again. Something he didn’t feel so often these days.

Melissa looked at the oven, then back at Brian as if she wasn’t sure she should believe him.

“Are you sure it will work?”

“Of course I am.”

“Okay.” She turned the knob of the oven, listening.

Brian heard a reassuring whoosh as the gas ignited.

“Great. Wonderful,” she said. “I thought I would have to start all over with the cupcakes.” She turned to Amanda. “Can you get them out of the refrigerator and put them in the oven? They’ll take a little longer to cook because they’re cold so adjust the time by about fifteen minutes.” Then she turned back to Brian with a grateful smile that didn’t help his equilibrium.

Something about this woman made him feel edgy, and he didn’t like feeling that way.

“Thanks again. I appreciate the help,” she said, giving Brian a grateful smile. “So, what do I owe you?”

“Nothing.” He’d only been here twenty minutes and half of that time was spent getting the panels off so he could get at the broken thermocouple.

“No. Really. I insist on paying you. I would have had to pay Alan and you saved my cupcakes. So how much?”

“I’m not that busy,” he said with a shrug. “It’s not like you dragged me away from my job.”

“All the more reason to pay you,” she said. “I’m sure you could use the money.”

Brian felt a sliver of cold slip down his spine. Bad enough that the comment was partly true.

That she was the one to say it only added to the humiliation piling on him the past few days. He thought the final straw had been her offering him a job in the bakery, but this was worse.

He turned away from her and the only sound in the heavy silence following her comment was the hollow thunk of the lid of his metal toolbox falling shut. Then the snap of the clasps.

“I’m good” was all he said, yanking the toolbox off the floor.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean... It came out wrong.”

His only reply was to turn and stride out of the bakery, his booted feed thudding on the floor.

He headed down the sidewalk toward his truck, dropped the toolbox in the back of his truck with a heavy clang, then glanced back, checking for his grandfather.

A couple of minutes later Grandpa came walking down the sidewalk, a frown on his face. He was probably going to give him a reaming out for walking out on a lady, Brian thought, jingling his keys.

He knew he had been rude, but her comment was ruder.

However, as Grandpa drew close, the only expression Brian saw on his features was sympathy. Which was humiliating.

They got in the truck and drove out of Bygones in silence.

When they got home Brian parked the truck in front of the house and turned to his grandfather.

“Will you be okay on your own for the next hour? I need to get some work done.”

Thankfully his grandfather simply nodded and as he headed to the house, Brian went to his already tidy garage to clean up. He really didn’t have any work to do, but he needed some time alone. Time to think.

He rearranged his tools on his worn workbench, then pulled out a broom, wishing for the umpteenth time he had a bigger garage to work in. A truck could barely fit inside the space. He needed room for a hoist and a lift and a much larger space for tools. He could only take on a few small jobs because of the lack of space.

Unbidden came Melissa’s voice and her painful words. “...you could use the money.”

He attacked the floor with the broom, sending what little dust was left flying as he struggled to dislodge the shame crawling through his belly at her words.

And the anger they created.

The ringing of his cell phone pulled him back from his frustration. He looked at the number. It was his old high school friend Kirk.

Kirk used to live in Bygones and work with Brian at the factory. When he got laid off, he and his pregnant wife, Abby, moved to Junction City. Kirk got a job driving a long-haul truck for a trucking company. He’d told Brian, if he was interested, he could get him a job there, too.

“So I called my boss and told him about you,” Kirk said when Brian answered. “Told him you might be looking for a job.”

Brian felt a lift of anticipation. Long-haul trucking wasn’t the kind of job he wanted, but then, neither was working at a bakery, which, right now, was his only other option. “What did he say?”

“The only work he could get is relief work. You’d get a few trips a month, but if you do good with that, you might be able to work it into a full-time position.”

“And how long would that take?”

“Half a year. Maybe more. Depends on how things pick up.”

“I can’t live off those kind of wages.”

“You can’t live off what you’re getting now. But you could totally live with me and Abby.”

Brian glanced over the yard that had been his home since he was born. Large trees shaded the house to his right. Some of them had been planted by his parents when they were still alive. Some by his grandfather, who owned the property when it was still a farm. Ahead of him lay the pasture he and his father had fenced two years before his father died.

He and his sisters had inherited the farm when his parents died. They subdivided the yard site off what was left from the farm. Brian got the house and ten acres. The girls got the money from the sale of the land. Everyone was happy. Though the girls didn’t want to live in Bygones, they were thrilled their childhood home would still be available for them.

When Brian worked at the factory he often imagined the day he would drive back to the house he had grown up in to find his wife waiting for him, their children running down the driveway toward him just as he and his sisters did when their father came back from working the fields. But Brian was twenty-nine now and no closer to the family he had always dreamed of. And now he had no way of supporting this phantom family.

Even if he took this job in Junction City.

“That would mean selling my place. I can’t afford to pay rent and the payments on here.” The thought of selling a place that had been in his family for four generations stuck in his throat. “Let me think about this for a while,” Brian continued. “I don’t want to make a hasty decision.”

“I know, but I’m still telling this guy about you. Send me your résumé and I’ll give it to him. Maybe something else will come up in his branch in Concordia.”

Brian bit his lips, then nodded. “Okay. I’ll do that. Thanks for thinking of me.”

“Hey, what are friends for? I’d love to work together again. Just like old times.”

“Yeah. Like old times.” Brian doubted anything would be like old times. Life was moving on and things were changing.

Brian said goodbye and dropped the phone in his shirt pocket, his thoughts chasing each other around his mind.

Should he take this job? Was he being foolish hanging on to this place, clinging to the hope that Randall would start up the factory again?

Can you turn your back on your childhood home? Your father’s childhood home?

He had to be realistic. Do what needed to be done. If the part-time job turned into a full-time one, then he couldn’t let sentiment interfere with the reality of making a living.

Please, Lord, help me to let go of my worries. Help me to know what I should do.

“Are you busy?”

His grandfather’s quiet request broke into Brian’s prayers.

“No. Just thinking too much,” Brian said, giving his grandfather a wry smile. He grabbed a plastic lawn chair and set it down in front of the garage. “Here. Have a seat.”

His grandfather eased himself into the chair, his hands resting on his bony knees as he looked out over the yard. “Many good memories here,” he said. “I miss this place.”

“Do you regret moving away?” Brian asked, leaning his shoulder against the doorframe, his arms crossed over his chest, his own thoughts still spinning.

“I moved because I couldn’t face the thought of living in Bygones without your parents around. It was hard enough after your grandmother passed on, but after your parents died, I wanted to leave this place behind me.”

Brian’s mind ticked back to that horrible time after the car accident that had killed his parents. He was still working at the plant when it happened, though his sisters had lived away from Bygones for a number of years by then.

Holly and Louisa had always said that Bygones would be a blip in their rearview mirror once they graduated. Both had held true to that promise after high school.

Brian had never understood his sisters’ desire to live in the city. He needed to stay here. He craved the security he got from his job, his community of friends and his faith. He needed the quiet he could depend on receiving when he stood outside and watched the clouds chase each other across a broad expanse of Kansas sky.

He had always wanted to stay in Bygones and raise his family here. That had always been his main goal in life.

Now the promise of a job lay before him.

Part-time work, maybe, and you’d have to move in with Kirk and Abby and move away from here.

The only other option available to him right now was the bakery job. That he even considered it showed him how far things had fallen in his life and his plans.

“That was a hard time,” Brian agreed, pushing his negative thoughts aside. “I understood why you wanted to leave.”

His grandfather sighed. “It was hard. Especially coming so soon after your grandma died. But I think I made my decision to leave too hastily.”

Brian wasn’t surprised to hear the yearning in his grandfather’s voice. Every time Brian visited his grandfather at the home he lived in, all his grandfather could talk about was Bygones.

“You do love it here,” Brian continued. “Lots of memories.”

His grandfather smiled, leaning forward in the chair as he pointed out the apple trees in the orchard. “I remember planting those with your grandmother. We planted the rootstock, and she budded them. Then she tended them and pruned them. Always were her trees. Used to make the best pies and applesauce from them.”

“She loved gardening, didn’t she?”

“Oh my, yes. All the shrubs and plants around this place were ones she put in.” He carried on, telling Brian stories he knew by heart. With each story Brian heard the love and pining in his voice for this place that held so many memories.

He should move back here.

The thought settled into Brian’s mind with a certainty he couldn’t shake off. But he wouldn’t say anything yet. Not until he figured out exactly how he could support them if he stayed.

He watched his grandfather walk back up to the house, pausing at the orchard and smiling. Then he carried on, reaching out to touch the shrubs lining the driveway, stopping to stoop over a blooming dahlia, looking up as crows danced and darted on the gentle wind.

He belonged here. That much Brian knew.

You could take that job in the bakery. Then he could stay.

Brian cringed at the thought, but at the same time the idea wouldn’t leave him. His options were growing narrower and narrower.

He blew out a sigh, his practical mind fighting with the vision he’d had of his life. Never, in any iteration of his thoughts and dreams, had working at a bakery been part of that.

Even as he sorted things out, he sensed with each passing minute he edged closer to the decision he couldn’t avoid.

Behind all of those thoughts came another chilling one. He would be working with Melissa.

Who would be his boss.

Chapter Three

Brian stood in front of the bakery early Saturday morning, hands planted on his hips as he looked at the gold swirly logo on the window. This was it. His last chance.

As he pushed open the door, his mind flashed back to the last time he was here.

“You could use the money.”

Melissa’s words still stung but the problem was, she was right and that was why he was here.

He swallowed his pride and stepped inside the bakery, a buzz above his head announcing his arrival.

He glanced around the inside, his eyes ticking over the wooden shelves covering the wall to his right. They were filled with loaves of freshly baked bread lined up haphazardly, as if someone was in a rush to put them out.

The glass cases to his left held cookies, squares, cupcakes and stuff he didn’t even recognize but figured he would soon.

A movement in the back of the bakery caught his attention and then, there was Melissa, wiping her hands on a towel, a welcoming smile on her face.

That faded when she saw him.

Great beginning, he thought.

“Can I help you?” she asked, her voice polite but cool.

His throat closed off as the words stuck, but he forced them out.

“I need to talk to you. About the job.”

Melissa frowned, her head tipped to one side as if she wasn’t sure who he really was.

“If it’s still available, that is,” he added.

“It is. For sure.” She wiped her hands a bit more, then laid the hand towel aside. “When can you start?”

As if he had anything else going in his life.

“Now.”

She hesitated. “As in right now?”

“I thought you needed help.” Dread clutched at his stomach.

“I do. I do...” She caught the side of her lip between her teeth, as if thinking.

“Did someone else get the job?”

“No. Not yet. I have to talk to Mr. Eversleigh yet.”

Brian wasn’t sure what that was about, but he was surprised at his relief.

“I can start Monday if you prefer,” he said.

“No. May as well start right now.” Melissa brushed her hands over her apron and gave him a polite smile. “Come into my office and we can get some of the paperwork out of the way and get you started.”