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Maddie relented with a frown of displeasure. She certainly didn’t want to let him in, but she couldn’t h
ave him coming back when the bakery was open. With her luck, he’d come back just in time to put on a show for Miss Dotty or Miss Vera and then the whole town would know about it.
She reached out and flipped the dead bolt on the front door. Once it was unlocked, she took a large step backward to put as much space between them as possible. It wasn’t just anxiety that forced Maddie to move away as Emmett came in. It was a different kind of self-preservation. Men, especially the larger, more intimidating ones, always made Maddie nervous. She wasn’t a small woman, but she wasn’t particularly strong. She liked to maintain a large bubble of personal space from most people.
Emmett fell into that category as well. Even though he wasn’t physically menacing—even in anger—she knew he could be dangerous in other ways. He was too sexy. Too rough around the edges. Despite his charming smile and physical ease, he was the last person Maddie should be attracted to. For one thing, they came from two different worlds. Maddie made it a rule to date men who had more money than her family did. That way, she didn’t have to worry that they were just interested in her for her family fortune. Emmett looked like the kind of guy who would blow his last ten bucks on a beer and a burger and pass out happy. Not exactly the kind of guy she was used to.
For another thing, Emmett was a peddler of the stuff she despised the most: alcohol. Legal as it might be, it was a toxic liquid that turned good men into monsters and smart women into fools. She personally hadn’t touched the stuff in more than eight years and for good reason. Alcohol made the bad ideas sound like great ones and dropped all the protective barriers a girl needed to keep herself safe.
There was no way she could let herself get involved with a man who not only drank but made a living providing alcohol to others. A loud, obnoxious living.
As the door swung shut behind him, Maddie crossed her arms protectively over her chest and fixed her gaze on the empty bakery case beside her. If she looked him in the eye, she might get lost in their green-gold depths and let down her guard. Emmett was exceedingly handsome for a man so irritating. She couldn’t allow a decade of loneliness to make her weak and vulnerable to his charms.
“Well,” she said. “I let you in. What do you want? Make it quick; I have a lot of baking to do.”
“Don’t let me stop you. We can talk in the kitchen just as easily.”
“Fine.” She turned and headed back toward the kitchen, watching anxiously over her shoulder as he followed her. “Wash your hands,” she demanded as he reached the sink just inside the doorway. She didn’t want to think about what sticky, nasty things he’d have on his hands after a night at the bar. “And put this on.”
Emmett reached out in time to snatch the hairnet she launched at him out of the air. “Really?” He looked at it with dismay, making Maddie even more determined he needed to wear it.
“Health department requirement,” she said. Technically, his hair was short enough, but she wanted him to have it on. If he looked a little silly, this conversation might be easier. For her, at least.
“You’re not wearing one,” he challenged.
“My hair is pulled back in a tight bun. Come on, put it on and get to talking.” Maddie turned her back to him and loaded her earlier batch of muffins into the oven. She checked the other one, noting there were only a few minutes left for today’s special—pain au chocolat. The dark-chocolate-stuffed croissants were one of her best sellers.
“Why did you call the cops on me, Madelyn?”
Maddie stiffened at the sound of her formal name. Only her grandmother and a handful of other people ever called her that. Apparently, Emmett had never said her name before. If he had, the chill of goose bumps wouldn’t have rushed over her skin at the mere sound of her name on his lips.
She tried to focus on setting the timer for the muffins and finally turned back to face him. Somehow, even the hairnet couldn’t make him look less handsome. It was so frustrating. “I called the cops,” she said as coolly and calmly as she could, “because Woody’s was breaking the sound ordinance. It was after ten.”
“You couldn’t come across the street? You couldn’t dial the bar instead of the cops and speak to me about it directly?”
“I’ve tried that and it hasn’t gotten me anywhere. I was already losing hours of precious sleep because of your loud music and rowdy patrons. I wasn’t going to go out of my way to get dressed and come across the street because you had obnoxious drunks in the parking lot.”
“I didn’t know I had obnoxious drunks in the parking lot. Once they step outside, I have less control over what happens.”
“Please,” Maddie said. “What do you think is going to happen out there? You think those liquored-up fools are going to sit quietly on the stoop and chat about literature and current events?”
“It’s a bar,” Emmett said. He strolled into the kitchen and plucked a raspberry out of the bowlful she’d rinsed and set aside for a puff pastry she was planning to make later that afternoon. Before she could complain, he popped it into his mouth. “It was a bar before you moved in across the street, I’ll add. It’s not like I showed up and ruined your pristine street. What did you think it was going to be like when you moved in?”
“I thought that you would run your business in a civilized, respectful manner.”
“So I’ll put up a sign. I’ll remind people to be respectful in the parking lot. If they don’t listen, then what?”
“Then I’ll call the cops again. And again. And again. Until it stops. I need sleep. I try to be in bed by seven or eight because I get up at three in the morning. I can’t listen to your thumping music and laughing drunks until two a.m.”
“Impossible,” he muttered. “You’re asking for the impossible. It’s like moving in next to the firehouse and complaining that they turn on the sirens.”
“At least if I was woken up by sirens, it’d be for a good cause. Some woman declaring her love for tequila is not worthy of disrupting my sleep.”
“It costs me five hundred bucks every time the sheriff tickets me for a sound violation.”
Poor, pitiful Emmett. Maybe if he had to raise his prices to pay the fines, people would drink less. That was fine by her. “Then you’d better do something about it before you put yourself out of business.”
Emmett took a deep breath, but it didn’t help. She was completely unreasonable. “It doesn’t have to be this way, you know.”
