AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I cast a longer look at the metal plates, trying to convince myself this isn’t a bad dream.
They’re thin, maybe nickel or hammered steel, the small mystery numbers engraved on top.
They were in my desserts.
The desserts I thought Haute was serving to happy customers.
The desserts heswore up and down he was going to sell.
Ugh.
Where do I even start?
“I don’t… I don’t get it,” I stammer out. My thoughts are a tangled mess and words come broken. “He… he told me they were going on the menu, didn’t he? I thought he was selling them. He’s done likethreepickups this week.”
“I checked, sweetheart,” he says grimly. “They’re not on the menu. Nothing besides the muffins at breakfast time.”
My head throbs.
“Holy. Shit.”
“Yeah. That’s the long and short of it.”
My heart beats like a racing hummingbird.
I’ve never been so dumbstruck in my life, aside from the day Dex came barreling in and demanded an engagement.
But he kept telling me without really telling me that there was something suspicious about Forrest Haute, didn’t he?
I never believed it.
I neverwantedto believe him.
The deal he offered was too good, and it felt like something I earned because he loves our product that much. Not just an easy handout because he knows Dexter.
In my wildest dreams, I thought it could even put the Sugar Bowl back on the map.
Stupid dreamy-eyed schmuck.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
“Junie!” Dex growls my name. “I know it’s not what you want to hear, but I’m going to get to the bottom of this if it’s the last thing I do.”
I know he means to be reassuring. And yeah, part of me feels glad he’s being his overprotective beastly self because it means he still cares.
But the Sugar Bowl ismyresponsibility. And now I’m letting it down, along with everyone who works here and Nana’s legacy on top of it.
She trusted me, and here I am walking straight into the weirdest trap I never could’ve imagined.
Holy hell, I’m being used.
I’m beingplayedlike a fiddle.
Like a total freaking tool.
I don’t usually get angry, but now I can’t stop it.
It’s a hot, heavy, swollen feeling, like sitting on pine needles. It makes me throb toward the sky and pulls me into the ground.
