Smashwords version Sweet Surrender (12 page)

Rafe laughed even harder, clutching his stomach.

“And seriously, they’re going to just…keep doing it? Even though
we’re right here in the store? My best friend is a hussy and your brother is a
manslut.”

“That about sums it up.” Rafe was wheezing with laughter now. “Did
you see the looks on their faces? Did you see they got chocolate all over the
files in your inbox? ”

“Yes. I hate you,” Poppy said glumly.

“No, you don’t. You want me to take you upstairs and paint you
with strawberry finger paint and lick it off.”

“Well, aren’t you self confident. Maybe if-“

Something came rattling through the open front door, rolling on
the floor and coming to a rest in the middle of the bakery. Something metal and
pineapple shaped.

“Down!” Rafe bellowed. He threw his body on top of hers, and
knocked her down behind a display case. Seconds passed, and nothing happened.

“It’s a grenade, but apparently it’s a dud,” Rafe said, still
covering her with his body.

“A grenade?” Poppy cried out, horrified. “Apparently, but not
definitely, it’s a dud?”

“I’m pretty sure it’s a dud.” They waited for at least a minute
more. Even with a potentially explosive device a dozen feet from them, Poppy
couldn’t help but be aware of Rafe’s muscular body pressing against hers, his
arms circling her protectively.
Finally he stood up and helped her to her feet.

Then he hustled her down the hallway, pausing to bang on the
office door.

“No! Go away!” Viola yelled.

“There’s a grenade in the bakery! Get out here now!” Rafe yelled back.
Poppy could hear muffled swearing behind the door.

A minute later, a disgruntled looking Jeffrey and Viola stumbled
out of the room, hair and clothing disheveled. disheveled.  Viola’s black lace
dress was on backwards, Jeffrey’s shirt was buttoned up wrong, and he had
chocolate around his mouth.

“Wipe that chocolate off your face, it’s disgusting. I think the
grenade’s a dud, but we’re still going to have to call in the bomb squad, and
we need to exit out the back door. I’ll go tell the bakers,” Rafe said.

Minutes later, a fleet of police cars came
barreling towards the store, sirens wailing , and the bomb squad showed up not
long after. Soon a gawking crowd formed outside the store.

As Poppy stood across the street watching the
bomb squad remove the dud grenade, someone tapped her shoulder from behind.

She turned to face Henry Chenowith, whose
brow wrinkled with concern as he spoke to her breasts. “I just want you to know
we’re all behind you, Poppy,” he said. “The chamber of commerce has called an emergency
meeting tonight, to address these attacks on your store. It starts at seven
p.m.”

After the bomb squad left, Viola and Jeffrey
went to the hardware store down the street to buy paint, and painted over the
graffiti. Then they disappeared down the hallway into the massage demonstration
room, and Viola didn’t even try to hide the fact that she had grabbed a
vibrating lollicock, a pair of licorice handcuffs, and a strawberry flavored
g-string. And Jeffrey didn’t try to hide the enormous grin on his face.

“You’re a couple of perverts! Get a room,
like normal people!” Poppy yelled after them, but her only answer was the sound
of the door to the massage room slamming shut.

“You’re just jealous,” Rafe murmered in her
ear, his strong, warm arms folding around her. “You wanted to be the first one
to try the licorice handcuffs.”

“Oh, shut it,” Poppy said, wriggling out of
his embrace as a group of businessmen walked in the door. “Actually, I’m just
annoyed that she’s going to be in the back for the next couple of hours and I’m
going to have to deal with all of these customers.”

“And that I was right and you were wrong?”

“That too.”

She pasted a smile on her face for the rest
of the afternoon as she served the steady stream of customers who flowed in to
the store, but her stomach was churning with worry.

A grenade? How much longer could she go on
like this? She’d promised Penelope that she would help her run the store – but
was it fair to Viola, and the bakers, and to her customers, to keep the store
open under these circumstances? Was she putting everyone at risk?

Of course, if she was no longer running Sweet
Surrender, she had no reason to be in Port Rollins anymore.  And that meant
goodbye to Rafe and an abrupt end to their affair, which of course had to end
anyway, but she’d been hoping to at least have him for the summer.

A dull lance of pain pierced her heart at the
thought of saying goodbye to him, and she bit her lip, leaning against the
glass bakery counter.

Rafe, who had stayed in the bakery all
afternoon, noticed the look on her face and walked over to her.

“Hey. What’s on your mind?” Rafe put his hand
on her arm, and she turned to him, downcast.

“I’m wondering if I’m putting everyone’s
lives at risk by keeping Sweet Surrender open.”

“There will be a police car stationed on this
block for at least the next few days. And we can make a decision after that.”

Poppy nodded, and turned away, her heart
pounding. So that bought her a few days.

He said “we”, she thought, feeling slightly
giddy and also very afraid of how happy that made her.

The chamber of commerce meeting was packed
that evening, with several dozen business owners in attendance, along with
Officer Renault.

Coffee and pastries were set out on a table
at the back of the long rectangular room, and Viola glanced at them scornfully.

“We totes should have brought the
refreshments,” Viola said, picking up a blueberry muffin. “Look at this. It
isn’t shaped like anything.”

“It’s shaped like a muffin. That’s how normal muffins are shaped.
 Working at Sweet Surrender has warped you for life.”

“Pretty sure I was like that when I started there.” Viola bit into
it and then tossed it in the garbage. “Our muff muffins are better.”

Poppy sighed and shook her head. “Don’t get used to your new
career in bakery porn.  We’ve got about seven more weeks left before
Penelope takes over again.”

“Don’t remind me. Sadface,” Viola scowled.

Martin Gotschall waved at them from across the room and came over
to say hello.  “Terrible thing about these attacks,” he said,  biting into
a muffin. “Wow, these are terrible.  I hope they catch the person who did it;
it’s really bad for the property values in the neighborhood.”

Viola gave him a dirty look. “Yes, and it would also be bad if he
actually, you know, kills somebody.”

Gotschall looked alarmed. “That would be terrible for property
values.” He turned away and melted back into the crowd, and Viola stared at him
as he walked away, frowning.

“What?” Poppy asked.

“I don’t know. There’s something familiar
about him. Something’s setting off alarm bells in my head, and I don’t know
what.”

Rafe watched him go. “He’s not the guy that I
saw in Poppy’s apartment. Wrong build.”

“I know he’s not. Still…” she shrugged
unhappily and turned away.

During the meeting, Henry Chenowith proposed
the formation of a neighborhood watch committee, and Officer Renault agreed to
be the police department liaison.

Then Rafe stood up to address the crowd.
“These attacks are putting everyone in danger. Who knows who ‘ll target next?”
he said. “If we all put our heads together, maybe we can come up with the
information that will put him away.  What do we know about the person carrying
out the attacks so far? He’s homeless, and he’s been targeting Sweet Surrender
frequently, so I’m guessing he’s staying somewhere in the area, most likely in
the abandoned buildings near the river.”

A man in the audience stood up. He was a
portly Italian with wavy black hair frosted with streaks of silver.

 “Robert Marcone, I own Marcone’s
Restaurant.  I’ve seen him talking to another guy, with long stringy hair.  
The guy with the stringy hair, he seemed to be getting the tall skinny guy all
worked up.”

“I’ve seen the skinny guy, the one who always
leaves the flyers on windshields, walking East on 39
^th
street,”
another man volunteered.

Officer Renault nodded. “Okay, this is good.
There’s a cluster of empty buildings on 39
^th
street, by the
waterfront. We can patrol that area, have a SWAT team search the buildings.”

Amelia walked up to Viola and Poppy with a
half eaten muffin in her hand. “I’m glad you guys didn’t get blown up. Hey,
your muffins are way better than these. If I ever need a caterer, I’m hiring
you.”

“Catering!” Viola’s eyes lit up. “We could
cater!”

“If you think I’m driving around town
delivering vagina cakes and penis pops, you are truly off your rocker,” Poppy
informed her, but Viola and Amelia were already walking away, raptly discussing
the possibilities.

After the meeting adjourned, Rafe walked up
and slung his arm around Poppy’s shoulder, and leaned down, his hot breath
caressing her ear.

“We’re making really good progress in the
hunt for this guy, but he’s still out there.  I think you need a bodyguard
tonight,” he murmured.

“But who’s going to guard my body against
you?”

“Nobody. You will be completely at my mercy.”

The pretty redheaded owner of a jewelry store
glanced at them from across the room, smiling when her eyes lit on Rafe, and
looking puzzled when her gaze rested on Poppy. Poppy looked away, but she could
still hear her mother’s voice in her head. “Men just don’t love fat women like
us….”

She took a deep breath. She was here for the
summer. Rafe was by her side now. He wanted her, and he was offering her a
night of panty-scorching, multiple orgasmic sex, and then she could fall asleep
in his strong arms with his warm breath in her hair.

She looked up at him and flashed him her
sweetest smile. “We’ll see who cries for mercy,” she said.

“You are just insanely cheerful today. It’s
not natural,” Poppy said.  She and Viola were taking a break at the Daily Grind
coffee shop down the street from Sweet Surrender, while Jeffrey minded the
store for them.

The endless blue sky stretched into eternity,
and puffy white clouds hung suspended overhead, like a flock of lazy sheep.
Viola idly doodled obscene stick figures with chalk on the chalkboard table
top, and Poppy, scowling, used her napkin to erase the dirty parts before
anyone saw.

“Smoking hot sex will do that for you.  After
I babysat last night, Jeffrey picked me up at my aunt’s house and took me back
to his place, and I made fun of his Yuppie furniture, and then he made fun of
my piercings, and then he threw me down on his stupid leather sectional couch
and fucked me senseless.”

“Viola!” Poppy gasped, glancing around to
make sure there was nobody close enough to overhear.

Her phone chirped, but she ignored it. She
could see the bakery from where she was sitting, and since it didn’t seem to be
under attack, she doubted it was anything urgent.

“Oh, Poppy, you’re a peddler of pornographic
puff pastry. You don’t get to be a prude any more. And by the way, why aren’t
you insanely cheerful too? Isn’t Rafe slipping you the beef salami, on the
regular?”

“Hmmmph.” Poppy picked at her croissant. “It
can’t last, you know.”

“What? That’s why you’re not glowing like
someone who’s gotten the best nookie of her life? Because you’ve already
decided it won’t work out?”

“I’m leaving in what, six or seven weeks? I
have a job. I have a scholarship. I can’t give those up. It’s five hours away. 
Me living halfway across the state, and Rafe here in a city full of stick-thin
beauty queens, throwing themselves at him with open legs?” She could hear the
bitterness in her voice as she said it. She didn’t care.

“What does he say about it?” Viola asked,
stirring her coffee.

Poppy’s phone rang again, but she ignored it.

“He says we should try to make it work. He
says people do long distance relationships all the time, and I could come find
a job here after I graduate, and he has lots of connections so he’d help me.
But of course he’d say that; he’s a nice guy and he doesn’t want to hurt my
feelings. Then as soon as I leave he’ll forget I ever existed.”

“My God, I love you, Poppy, but you are a
moron. I’ve seen the way he lights up when you come in the room. He looks at you
like the sun rises and sets with you. And this is coming from me, and I’m the
most cynical bitch on the planet.”

“Don’t, Viola.” Poppy was near tears as she
shook her head and tore her croissant to pieces. “I can’t afford to hope, I
really can’t.”

“What?” Viola snapped suddenly, but she
wasn’t talking to Poppy, she was talking to a man sitting near them, who had
been glancing at his newspaper and then glancing at them.