Candy Crush (2 page)

She stood up and turned around, realized
what he was doing and huffed out a sigh. She stalked past him, her
nose in the air. The cocker spaniel trotted along beside her and
Brandon followed behind, not feeling the least bit guilty for
ogling.

Gabriella turned the key in the lock, opened
the door and then quickly stepped to the side, presumably just in
case a raccoon really did come flying out at her. The dog trotted
inside and Brandon stepped in front of the door and stuck his head
inside, his eyes sweeping from side to side, taking it all in. He
glanced back at Gabriella, who had made no move to follow suit.

“Did you know what kind of condition it was
in when you bought it?” he asked.

“No,” she admitted. “I bought it over the
internet. The pictures were definitely old. All the letters were
still on the sign and there were displays in the windows.”

“Brace yourself,” he said as she finally
stepped in front of the door and peeked over his shoulder.

***

Gabriella ignored the heat radiating off his
body and the smell of soap and some sort of citrus shampoo. She was
close enough that if he turned his head and leaned in, it would be
the perfect setup for a first kiss. Gabriella had no interest in
kissing any man, especially not a man as outrageously sexy as
Brandon Sarantos.

She shivered a little because the
temperature had dropped with the setting sun, and it couldn’t have
been more than fifty degrees, yet Brandon looked completely at ease
in his shirtsleeves.
He’d be like having my own personal furnace
in bed.

Gabriella mentally chastised herself for
thinking such fanciful thoughts and focused on the interior of the
business she’d bought less than a week ago. She stepped into a
large room, approximately forty feet wide by sixty feet deep. There
was a door at the back of the room. According to the online
description (which she was not sure she believed, since everything
else in that ad appeared to be a lie) the door led to a small
storage room and a restroom. Beyond the storage room, there was
supposed to be a door leading outside, where a staircase led up to
the apartment that was situated above the candy store.

The main room was trashed. Paper littered
the floor, display cases lay on their sides, posters drooped off
the walls and she could see bits of old candy lying in piles here
and there. The cash register sat on a small counter to the left of
the front door, and it was tipped on its side. A thick layer of
dust covered everything.

“Oh my,” Gabriella said as she put a hand
over her heart. Her dog snuffled an old piece of candy on the
floor. “Butter,” Gabriella said sharply, and the dog trotted to her
side.

“Your dog’s name is
Butter
?” Brandon
asked in disbelief.

“Yes,” Gabriella said with a little lift of
her chin. “My second cousin named her.” Her tone dared him to tease
her.

“Your second cousin is demented.”

“My second cousin was four at the time. I
was rather impressed with her ability to make the connection
between the color of Butter’s fur and, well, butter.”

Brandon did not look as if he found that
very impressive.

“Come on,” he said abruptly. “Let’s go get
you something to eat. This can wait.” He put his hand on her
shoulder and turned her toward the street. Butter trotted back to
the tree she’d been sniffing earlier and squatted next to it.
Brandon pulled the door closed, turned the key in the lock, and
handed it to Gabriella.

“Thank you,” she said, feeling a little
shell-shocked. Actually, she was feeling
a lot
shell-shocked.

Much to her own surprise, she let him guide
her down the street. After the relationship she’d had with Miguel,
Gabriella had made a pact with herself to never trust another man
again – at least not one who was not related to her.

Yet, here she was, two thousand miles away
from home, alone, and within ten minutes of her arrival, she met
what had to be the town’s sexiest man and was walking down a nearly
deserted street, alone, and was about to have dinner with him. To
make matters worse, she was fully aware of her pact, fully aware of
his sexuality and his blatant, not the least bit subtle interest in
her – at least in her body – and instead of turning and running –
possibly screaming – to her car, she continued to walk with him.
She attributed her lack of sound judgment and reasoning to the
shock of seeing first hand what she’d purchased, without doing the
proper investigating first.

And the fact that she was starving.

They walked two blocks to a pizza parlor
that appeared to be the only sign of life on the entire street. A
brightly lit sign in the plate glass window proclaimed, “Main
Street Pizza – the best in town.” Inside, it was filled with black
vinyl booths and small square tables covered with red and white
checked plastic table clothes. Gabriella did a quick count and
found that ten of approximately forty tables were occupied. Not
overly busy, but busy enough that Gabriella felt she could relax a
little. Nothing bad could happen while she was dining in a public
place with a virtual stranger.

“It really is the best in town,” Brandon
said as he held the door, inviting her to step inside. Butter
trotted in and, tail wagging, rushed up to the first person she
spotted.

“What about Butter?” Gabriella asked.

“Don’t worry about it. I know the owners.”
Gabriella pulled a leash out of her purse and bent over to clip it
to Butter’s collar, and then followed Brandon to a booth wedged
between the wall and a small jukebox. She noticed that most of the
people in the room waved and called out a greeting as he
passed.

She began to question her decision to choose
to move to a small town. She had thought she could get lost in a
small town, but really, small towns were notorious for everyone
knowing everyone else’s business.
This is a mistake
, she
thought as she sat down and looped Butter’s leash around the table
leg. Butter dropped to the floor next to her chair and put her head
on her front paws.

A perky dark haired, blue-eyed waitress
bounced up to their table and said, “Hey Brandon,” and gave him a
full wattage smile. Gabriella felt an annoying pang of jealousy,
which was silly since she just met the man less than an hour ago,
and she fully intended to ditch him just as soon as she had a full
belly.

“Hey Brittney. I’ll take a Corona in a
bottle. What would you like, Gabby?”

Gabriella glared at him and said, “A glass
of wine. House red, please.”

“Okay, I’ll be back in a jiff.” Brittney
dropped two menus on the table and bounced away.

“Don’t call me Gabby,” Gabriella hissed to
Brandon as he opened his menu and began idly perusing it.

“Okay. How about Sweet Pea?”

“What?”

“Sweet Pea. It’s a southern kind of
nickname, since you’re obviously a southern bell. That accent is
sexy as hell.”

He glanced up from his menu and gave her a
heated look. She blinked and sat back in her chair. A shadow loomed
over their table and Gabriella and Brandon both looked up.

“Somebody said there was a dog in my
restaurant, so I had to come out to take a look. I should have
known it was you, Brandon.” The woman was nearly six foot tall,
with thick black hair that was cut into a short, curly bob. She was
big boned but she carried it well. She wore a red t-shirt with Main
Street Pizza embroidered over the left breast pocket and a pair of
black jeans. A white apron was tied around her waist, and it was
smeared with lots of red splotches. Gabriella guessed she was
probably in her sixties.

Brandon grinned and stood up and hugged the
woman. He turned and nodded toward Gabriella. “Aunt Korina, this is
Gabriella. She just bought the candy store. That’s her dog, Butter.
She’s harmless.”

“Which one, the dog or Gabriella?” Aunt
Korina asked him, and then she turned and thrust her hand at
Gabriella. “Nice to meet you, Gabriella. I like the dog’s name. Her
fur is the color of butter. How long are you planning to stay in
town?” Gabriella shook the hand Korina offered and tried to keep up
with the questions she shot out like rapid-fire bullets.

“Well, since I bought the candy store, I was
sort of thinking it was a permanent arrangement,” Gabriella said in
confusion.

“Huh,” Aunt Korina said. “Between that candy
store and Brandon, nothing is permanent.” Brittney returned with
their drinks and Korina stepped to the side. “I gotta get back to
work. Stop in anytime, Gabriella. Twenty percent discount to all
Main Street merchants. Just let whoever’s at the register
know.”

“Thank you,” Gabriella said with a smile.
Brittney stood next to the table, pencil poised over the small
notepad in her hand.

“Do you trust me to order for you?” Brandon
asked, and Gabriella nodded. Since the owner, and probably cook,
based on her apron, was his aunt, Gabriella figured Brandon really
did know what was best on the menu. He turned to Brittney. “Large
BBQ chicken pizza, thick crust please, and bread sticks.” When
Brittney walked away, he said, “The bread sticks are worth it.”

“Brittney seems to like you,” Gabriella
commented before she could stop herself.

“She’s my cousin. Well, she’s my cousin’s
kid, so I guess she’s like a second cousin twice removed or some
crap like that. In my family, she’s a cousin.”

“So your aunt owns the pizza parlor?”

“Yep. For forty years. We’ve all worked here
at one point in our lives. Some never leave.” He nodded at the bus
boy, a man in his early forties, with greasy black hair and sallow
skin. “Poor Aunt Korina can’t say no to her relatives.”

“Why do you and Korina seem to think I’m
only here for a short time?” Gabriella asked him.

He leaned back, draped his arm across the
back of the booth and took a swig of his beer. He watched her for a
moment before responding.

“Rumor has it that candy store is jinxed.
The same family owned it for something like fifty years. And then
the last son who was running it died, and supposedly the family
fortune disappeared with his death. Of course, it’s just a rumor
that there ever was any sort of fortune, since there was never any
proof the money existed.”

He paused to take another pull from his
beer. Gabriella sipped at wine and patiently waited for him to
finish his story.

“He died seven years ago. Since then, there
have been five different owners, and none has lasted more than six
months. It’s been empty for nearly two years. My job is to make
sure that the downtown storefronts are rented and look good at all
times, so that candy store is kind of the bane of my existence,
since my office is directly across the street and I have to look at
it every time I sit at my desk. It’ll be nice to have it open
again, at least for six months or so.”

“I’m not leaving in six months,” Gabriella
insisted, even though she’d given herself that very same deadline
only an hour earlier. “Why does everyone leave anyway?” She didn’t
believe in jinxes and superstitions. The cold hard facts of reality
were bad enough.

Brandon shrugged one shoulder. “Varies.
Vandalism, robbery. Sometimes enough small accidents happen to
freak them out and they pack up and leave. The latest one just
disappeared. He was a nice older man. He stuck it out the longest,
and then he just up and walked away. The police suspected foul play
but they were never able to prove anything. He’s never resurfaced.
His family didn’t do anything with it for the longest time.
Finally, just a few weeks ago, they managed to get him declared
legally dead so they could sell the candy store. And now here you
are.” He spread his arms wide in front of her and winked.

“Sounds like a lot of bad luck. Or maybe
just some bad kids running around town. Hopefully, they’ve
graduated and moved on.”

Brandon nodded. “That’s what the cops
thought, too. But all of the local deviants always had airtight
alibis. Looking out of town didn’t seem to make sense, since it was
always specifically the candy store. They didn’t think out of town
vandals would come to our small town and purposely vandalize a
candy store.”

“So what’s the theory?” Gabriella asked in
spite of herself.

“That the candy store is jinxed.”

Gabriella pursed her lips. “Do you believe
that?”

“I think I like the fact that it will no
longer be a blight on my main street. Do you have an ETA for
opening day?”

Brittney returned with a pizza stand and the
pizza. She put them both in the middle of the table and handed
Brandon a pie server. Korina was right behind her. She stepped up
and placed plates, napkins, Forks and a basket of bread sticks on
the table.

“So when are you planning to re-open the
candy store?” Korina asked, echoing Brandon’s question. Brandon
served up slices of pizza while Gabriella answered.

“Well, honestly, I didn’t expect it to be in
such a state. I was planning on a little dusting and rearranging
maybe, but that place looked like it’s going to need some serious
work.” She looked at Brandon and he nodded his agreement.

“So I have no idea. It would be nice to be
open by mid-October, so I could take advantage of Halloween. Maybe
I could have a Halloween-themed grand opening,” she said as she
stared off into space, picturing it in her head.

Brandon and Korina exchanged a look.

“Brandon, you should rustle up your brothers
and your cousins to help. It will shorten her time frame
significantly if she doesn’t have to do it all herself.”

Brandon looked like he wanted to argue, but
Korina quelled him with a look. “Call them. Tomorrow. Have them
over to that store on Saturday morning. Can you wait that long,
Gabriella?” She turned to look at Gabriella, who had been observing
their exchange with some interest. It was amusing the way Korina
bossed Brandon around like he was a kid, and fascinating the way
Korina stepped up and offered her family to help, after having met
Gabriella twenty minutes prior.