Page 6

"You find this funny" He remarks in a voice so calm it circles back around to being hilarious. Daisy relaxes against the counter looking delighted and entirely useless. Ollie appears to be calculating which country he'd move to.

I clear my throat and attempt something resembling dignity. "Would you like to finish the inspection?"

He looks at me for a long moment, then at the flour coating his shirt, then at the windows full of spectators, and when his gaze returns to mine something flickers in it that I can't quite name.

Then he closes the folder.

"The inspection is complete," he says.

"Already?" I ask, and he confirms it, and I feel guilty immediately — maybe more than a little — because his voice has gone clipped and controlled and I did just laugh at him in front of half the town.

"No violations," he adds, meeting my eyes, and relief hits so hard my knees nearly weaken. I hadn't realized until this moment how badly I needed to hear those exact words.

"Thank you," I manage, and he gives a short nod and turns toward the door. The bell jingles as he leaves, and the moment it closes conversation explodes through the bakery — questions and laughter and customers sharing their favorite moments of the catastrophe while Daisy starts talking and Ollie starts apologizing again. I drop my face into my hands because I know exactly what happens next. By tonight everyone in Maple Hollow will know. By tomorrow they'll be retelling it with embellishments.

And yet despite all of it — the humiliation, the audience, the fact that I laughed at an official Council inspector during a formal review — the image of Brock Winn standing in a cloud of flour looking like a grizzly refuses to leave my head. Which is unfortunate, because every time it surfaces I start smiling again.

4

BROCK

The problem is not the bakery. The problem is that I keep thinking about it — or more specifically, about a woman laughing so hard she nearly cried while I stood in the center of a flour explosion. The memory resurfaces for the fourth time that morning against my will, and I sit back and stare at the ceiling of the small apartment the Council rented for my stay. I've conducted hundreds of inspections and dealt with difficult business owners, argumentative ones, ones who threatened lawsuits and ones who actually filed them, and none of them followed me home afterward. Yet somehow Juniper Bell has managed to occupy space in my thoughts after a single visit, and before I can hold back, a quiet chuckle escapes me at the memory of her trying and failing to suppress that smile. The sound is unfamiliar enough that it takes a second to recognize it. I haven't laughed in weeks.

The realization is annoying. I reach for the inspection file and open it to Sweetbell Bakery, because work is useful and work doesn't laugh at inspectors. Everything checks out — permits, safety compliance, equipment maintenance, storage procedures, no violations, nothing remotely close to what the complaints suggested — which brings me back to the real problem. I spread the reports across the table and read through them again, three formal complaints and multiple anonymous submissions with different accusations pointing at the same target, and the more time I spend with them the less sense they make. The complaints are detailed enough to trigger reviews and specific enough to sound credible, yet every inspection clears her. Every single one. I pull the financial records next, and what catches my attention isn't the decline itself but the timing — the complaints begin appearing shortly before the financial deterioration becomes noticeable. Not after but before. Questions tend to bother me until I answer them, and these ones have no answers in the paperwork.

The decision to return to the bakery had seemed reasonable when I made it. Standing outside it now, I'm considerably less certain.

The bell sounds as I step inside, the scent of fresh bread filling the room, and Juniper looks up from the counter where she's arranging pastries. Surprise crosses her face first, and then the dangerous amusement follows.

"Inspector," she greets, her tone entirely too innocent.

"Ms. Bell," I reply, and her smile widens immediately.

"I have a question," she announces, and I know I should leave but instead I ask what it is. She folds her arms against the counter and tilts her head with a certain confidence that reaches me with awe.

"Have you managed to remove all the flour?"

"I have." I respond.

"Are you certain?" she asks, her expression entirely too serious for the question. "Only you missed a patch yesterday — just there," and she gestures vaguely toward her own hairline.

"I did not."

"You absolutely did," she insists. "I was concerned. Genuinely."

"You were not genuinely concerned," I reply.

"I was," she retorts, pressing her lips together against a smile. "You looked like a grizzly bear that wandered through a bakery explosion and couldn't find its way back out."

The image appears in my head — the flour, the customers, the absolute disaster of it — and against all reason a laugh slips out. A real one, not a polite exhale or a brief professional huff.

Juniper freezes entirely. Her eyes widen as though she's just witnessed something historically significant, and then she points at me.

"You laughed," she says, almost accusatory.

"I'm aware," I reply.

"No — you actually laughed," she repeats, leaning forward slightly. "I wasn't sure you could."