Recharged Page 2

  “With your code.”

  “What’s my code,” she demanded. If she had heard of manners before, she certainly wasn’t big on using them.

  Sighing, I set my cup of coffee down on the table. Mina shot me a knowing look, that could loosely be interpreted as, ‘Fire this bitch.’ If only, Mina. If only.

  I walked behind the register, and keyed in my own code.

  “I don’t remember what yours is,” I told Kelly. “But you can use mine for today.”

  She nodded and looked askance. Yeah, I thought, you should be embarrassed.

  With a huff, I moved across the bakery and took my seat next to Mina once more.

  “Don’t,” I interrupted Mina before she started. Mina’s relatively recent but deeply felt grudge didn’t need more airtime. And it definitely didn’t need to be uttered so loudly in Kelly’s vicinity. Kelly was one of the two people who Mina did not get along with.

  “But she’s such a—”

  “I know.” We all knew. Nothing to be done about it.

  “And her boyfriend—”

  “Yeah.” Zach. Mina’s other arch-nemesis. He was a weirdo too, and also done up like a bad metal band, gauges, tattoos and all. And whereas Kelly was reasonably quiet, he was brash and raucous. This wouldn’t be my problem, if it weren’t for the fact that he’d made Zoe’s his new haunt. He hung around the bakery every day, except for his frequent clove cigarette smoke breaks. That was how the grudge had developed between Mina and the pair — close quarters.

  “But he creeps out the customers,” Mina whined. Another fact. But not one I was in the mood to address.

  “And, and,” she continued, pressing the point, “I bet Kelly gives him free cookies.”

  I sighed, “Yeah, probably. But I give you free cookies too, so I can’t exactly begrudge her that.”

  The phone blared loudly. I’d sprung for a landline, thinking that it was more professional than using my cellphone. I also didn’t mind the old-timey touch of a good rotary. I was a vintage girl at heart.

  Kelly remained stationary, even though the phone was all of two feet away from her gray-painted nails, and I made eyes at her across the space.

  “You gonna get that?” I questioned loudly. She shrugged. Shrugged. As though she was a guest, and not a goddamn employee.

  “Fire her,” Mina whispered fiercely. I held up a hand, stopping the argument in its tracks, and walked my ass back to the counter from whence I came. With my eyebrows arched meaningfully in Kelly’s direction, as if to say ‘Look, here’s how you do your job,’ I grabbed the ringing phone off its pedestal.

  “Zoe’s Cakes and Bakes, how may I help you?”

  “Yeah, hey,” a tinny voice on the other end replied. “This Zoe?”

  “Sure is.”

  “Good, good. Listen, I’d like to order about, say, fifty cakes.”

  I dropped the phone, and it clattered on the counter. Kelly and Mina’s heads shot up, as if they’d heard a gun go off.

  Fumbling, I palmed the phone once more, and managed to squeak out, “Pardon, sir?”

  “Yeah, fifty should do it.”

  My mouth beat my brain to the punch, and I asked, “Why, uh, do you need fifty cakes?” Stupid, stupid Zoe. Just take the nice man’s money!

  “Corporate retreat.”

  That, at least, made sense. We were about twenty miles away from oil land and the corporate headquarters of several of the biggest refineries in the country. Lots of mouths to stuff with cake.

  “Okay sir,” I said, gaining my composure. “And when do you need these cakes by?”

  “Thursday.”

  My palm, slick with sweat, almost dropped the phone again. Thursday?! That was less than a week away. If I’d had a team of ten people, I could barely have done it. But just me, a no-good teenager and a couple of guys who swung around occasionally to help keep the ship running? Impossible.

  “We can definitely have it by then,” I found myself saying. At what point, I wondered, had this mouth decided to turn traitor on its owner? Fifty cakes in under a week? Made almost entirely by me? This was sheer madness.

  Or, more realistically, it was sheer desperation. The loan payments were due soon, and I was already behind on last month’s. This would be, without a doubt, the biggest influx of cash I was likely to get for a good long while. The winter months meant fewer people on Main Street to wander into the bakery. I cursed myself once more for opening a shop during the time of year with the least foot traffic. A total amateur move.

  “How would you like to pay?” I asked. I’d resigned myself to the actuality of this crazy operation.

  “Cash, upfront.”

  My ears perked. This meant I could maybe even afford to hire the boys for help, thank God, and maybe buy myself a full set of groceries for once. Eating something besides ramen? Yum.

  I rushed the man through the rest of the details — size, flavors, etc. — jotting down notes as we went. Eventually, he said he had a meeting and had to hop off the line. I slowly put the phone back in the cradle.

  “Who was that?” Mina queried immediately.

  “Yeah, who was that?” Kelly added. Mina scowled in her direction.

  I replied, “A big order. A huge order.” The sheer quantity began to loom large in my eyes, like a threatening ax swinging slowly back and forth over my neck. Had I really just agreed to that? I was screwed. If I jumped into action right this minute, maybe, just maybe, I would be able to meet the demands.

  Crossing to the coat rack, I grabbed my jacket and keys. Mina and Kelly tried to pry information from me, but I was out of it, busy running calculations. Ten pounds of sugar, gallons and gallons of milk, maybe twenty cartons of eggs… the numbers slipped and slid through my mind like pigs in oil.

  “I’ve gotta pick up ingredients,” I told the women. It was true, we didn’t have nearly enough in stock for all those cakes. “Kelly, hold down the fort. I’ll be back in an hour. Maybe two.”

  Mina called out, “But she’s not equipped to handle this—”

  “I totally am,” Kelly interrupted with a smack of her gum.

  “Sort it out between you two,” I ordered. “I’ll be back later. Don’t let the place burn down, okay?”

  They opened their mouths, ready to question my decision, but I was out the door before either could press further.

  I had a big damn job to do.

  CHAPTER 3

  Dylan

  “Ma, I’m headed out for the day, you got Danny?” I called out.

  “Yes, dear.” My mother, a staunch Midwesterner who wore exclusively floral button-ups and practical jeans, walked out of the kitchen and into the living room. On her hip, she balanced my little boy, who was looking up at me with perfect sky-blue eyes.

  “Dada?” he gurgled. Right now that was the only word in his vocabulary, but we were working on it. When I got home from my job, which was usually just minutes before his bedtime, we practiced making animal sounds and naming colors. I was pretty sure he was ready to say ‘blue’ and ‘moo.’

  “Good kid,” I said, patting his fine blond hair. “Yeah, it’s Dada. And Dada has to go to work now, so be good to your Gran, okay?”

  He lolled his head back and stared up at the ceiling. Fourteen months was too young understand the concept of capitalism and etiquette, I guess.

  “What have you got planned for the day?” I asked my mom.

  “You know, the usual,” she replied with the wave of her hand. “Clean the house, take Danny to sing-along group, watch my soap.”

  “You don’t have to clean the house.” It pained me to imagine her scrubbing my floors with rubber gloves. She was well into retirement age, at which point I figure you should never have to scrub another floor in your life. Besides, a man was meant to provide for his mother in her golden years, to make sure she got the same wonderful treatment she’d given him as a boy. It twisted my heart that I couldn’t give her such comfort.

  “I know that, kiddo,” she replied. “But
you’re pulling extra shifts for this ball of joy.” She jostled Danny, craning her head in his direction. “And that’s an honorable cause if I’ve ever heard one. So, I’ll manage. You do what you have to do. Get home safe.”

  I thought fleetingly of putting up a fight, and gave in. She was a tough old broad, and when she set her mind to something, it was as good as done.

  “Thanks for everything, Ma. You’re my rock. It hasn’t been easy since, well, y’know.”

  “I know.”

  “So… thank you. For looking after Danny and everything else. Love you.”

  She reached in and gave me a big kiss on the cheek, leaving a mark in her signature bubblegum pink, a branding I used to rub off every day before school.

  “Love you too,” she replied.

  An insistent honk sounded, the tell-tale sign that Thomas had pulled up all of ten seconds ago and was already impatient.

  “Gotta jam,” I told her, and ducked in for one more peck on my kid’s head. “Be good, Danny, make your dada proud.”

  I grabbed my jacket, hat and holster, and was out the door, pacing across the front lawn to the squad car. As always, Thomas or Tom, Tommy, T-Dog, dealer’s choice was in the front seat, drinking cheap take-out coffee from a Styrofoam cup. Two sugars, no milk.

  I walked to the passenger side and slid in.

  “Hey old man,” I said with a grin as I buckled my seatbelt.

  Tom looked at me with a half-kidding scowl that slid the ends up of his enormous, bristly mustache flush up to his nose. “Who you calling old?”

  He was one of those guys who looks like he was born fifty years old with a stick of gum in his maw and a smoker’s voice. Incidentally, he was only forty-three, hated gum and had never smoked a cigarette in his life.

  When I joined the force about three years back, one of the younger guys had warned me about Tom, said he was an angry son of a bitch and to watch out. I was assigned to be his partner. We didn’t speak for the entire first week until I at last summoned up the courage to ask him if I could put on some music. He gave no response, so I took it as a ‘yes’ on and turned the channel to sixties rock. Tom nodded his approval, and we’d been friends ever since.

  “Anything good on the scanner?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

  “Nope. This lil’ ol’ town is as tame as it was the day before. Quiet, sleepy, crime free.”

  I groaned, knowing what this meant but hoping I was wrong. “Highway patrol?”

  “Affirmative.”

  Highway patrol was the worst. We were required to pull over a certain number of drivers to make the state quota. Since there were only ten cops total in Fallow Springs, each cop had to pull over a shit ton of drivers to hit said quota. It was a pointless task, and one that made me the bad guy, even though I’d gone into the career to be the good guy.

  Though that being said, I knew firsthand just how important highway patrol was to saving lives. Or at least, trying to save them.

  “How’s Paula?” he asked, referring to my mom and blessedly interrupting my dark train of thought. We’d grown close enough that our whole families were on a first-name basis.

  “Same old, same old. Tougher than a cockroach during nuclear fallout.”

  “And Danny?” he continued with a small smile. Tom had a special, unexpectedly soft place for my son, whom he occasionally brought bags of candy and stuffed animals. The dirty secret about Tom is that he’s really just a teddy bear.

  “Gets bigger every day. He’ll be taller than his pops by the time he’s twelve, I’d reckon.”

  Tom eyed me up and down. “You think he’s gonna top six-foot-three before he’s even a teenager?”

  “Doctor say his growth rates are off the charts.”

  “Good. That’s what I like to hear.” Tom gave a satisfied nod and sipped at his convenient-store coffee. “I’ll pass it on to Gladys.”

  Gladys, Tom’s wife, had become equally involved with Danny, and had recently knit him a soft baby onesie.

  “Aw shit,” Tom said, smacking his forehead. “I knew I’d forgot something.”

  “What?”

  “Our anniversary, it’s this weekend, and I gotta get her a gift, maybe some roses, and—” he veered off from his sentence abruptly, and I felt my fingers begin to tremble. “Never mind.”

  “It’s okay, really, I’m fine.”

  He shook his head, and let a meaty hand drop on my shoulder. “I know fine, kid, and you ain’t fine.”

  He was probably right, but a cop car was hardly the place to talk about it. I gently loosened myself from his hand and put on our radio station. Led Zeppelin’s dissonant chords filled the car. Which was good — I’d about had my fill of talk.

  “Where we posting up?” I asked at last, once enough time spent in silent rumination had passed. Sometimes our four-door reminded me of a monastery, except with two country boys for monks.

  “The usual.” With that, he took a sharp left at the intersection, and drove a few more minutes before eventually pulling over on the side of I-94, right near a snow-capped pine tree. The tree offered just enough protection so that we wouldn’t be too visible to oncoming drivers. Tom grabbed the radar gun from the back seat and powered it up.

  “I’ll hold it today,” he offered.

  Those were the last words we said for the next few hours. Neither of us was big on chitchat, and we’d blown through our polite small-talk reservoirs years ago. Now, we were generally happy to just sit in peaceful silence and appreciate the nature around us.

  The sun rose higher and higher above the trees until at last it was ten. Snow twinkled beneath the rays. A stray squirrel, who hadn’t had the presence of mind to get his ass cozied up in a tree, darted across the lanes. Poor little fellow. Sometimes, on days like this, I’d bring a bag of nuts to feed the hungry ones with, the squirrels that hadn’t prepped for the severity of Wisconsin winter.

  A few cars drove by, but none speeding or even boasting outdated license plates. I settled deeper and deeper into my seat, anticipating a painstakingly long day. The car was getting hot, so I undid my jacket. Life as a cop could be thrilling — I’d been in my fair share of on-foot chases — but more often than not, it looked like discounted meals at the local IHOP. I was philosophically prepared to have one of the more boring afternoons a cop can have. The mundane stuff was just as important as any blockbuster tackles.

  That is, until I watched an old Chevy go past. It didn’t click up on the meter, but it did have —

  “A broken brake light,” I said urgently, smacking at Thomas’ fleshy forearm. “I saw a broken brake light.”

  “Yeah?” he asked sleepily. “Where?”

  “Red Chevy, just drove past.”

  “‘Spose we oughta get it?”

  “Think so.”

  He revved up the engine, hit the sirens — this was his favorite part, even after decades on the force — and shot after the Chevy. With no other cars in sight, the driver knew to pull over pretty quickly. We slowed to a stop.

  “You want this one, or should I?” Tom questioned.

  “I got it.” I needed to stretch my legs.

  Jacket open and hat firmly on, I swung open the door, and walked the twenty feet to the ancient Chevy. Frankly, I wouldn’t generally pull someone over for a broken tail light — I try to be a decent guy — but at this time of year, nights got dark and stormy, and a light being out had real consequences.

  “Hey there, officer,” a delicate voice spoke.

  I began to speak, and ground to a halt, realization dawning on me.

  I was face-to-face with the most beautiful woman to ever waltz through Fallow Springs.

  CHAPTER 4

  Zoe

  I saw red and blue lights flashing in my rearview mirror and my stomach flipped, catapulted and dropped so hard I thought it might fall out of my ass.

  No way. No fucking way could I be getting pulled over. Not today, when I had the biggest order in the history of my shop to wrangle. That
just didn’t make karmic sense. Shit like that didn’t happen to good girls like me. Hell, I hadn’t even got a parking ticket before, let alone been flagged by the police. This was almost legendarily bad timing on their part. I would’ve thought it was a prank show, if any crew in their right mind would film in the boonies.

  Couldn’t a girl just catch a break?

  That thought gave me an idea. I’d seen women do it in movies before, and theoretically I knew it was a tool in my arsenal, but… could I manage it? Moreover, was this a great moment to test out what was an iffy theory to begin with? I reminded myself that I needed to get the trunk of groceries back to the bakery so I could begin working on the order. I was on a mission, as it were, and failure was just not an option. My life, quite literally — okay, like, sort of literally — depended on it.

  I had no choice. I had to flirt my way out of this ticket.

  In my rearview mirror, I saw a man get out of the passenger door of the cop car, and even with the ‘objects in mirror may be closer than they appear’ distortion, I could tell that the flirting wouldn’t be too much of a burden.

  Because this cop was hot. Like, male stripper, Vegas revue hot. James Dean hot. Paul Newman hot. Except he surpassed the strippers, and Dean and Newman. He was in a class all his own. Saliva pooled in my mouth, and I swallowed it rapidly. Wouldn’t do to actually drool over him — not very flirtatious.

  His black denim — was that regulation or was he just a badass? — clung tightly to his thighs and was slung low on his hips, supported by a belt that also had a holster, which butted against his thigh. A cowboy hat dipped down, covering his eyes, but I could still make out a strong jawline with a small cleft in the chin that showed through his medium stubble beard, not to mention cheekbones higher than Mount Sinai. An aquiline nose and full lips rounded out the face.

  After a walk that seemed to take long enough for me decide that I was going to have to tone down the flirting I was thinking of, he arrived at my car.

  He leaned in with a grin and nudged the top of his cowboy hat up, revealing a dazzling set of ice blue eyes framed by full, chocolate lashes.