I cock my head to the side. “You know.”
“Oh?” His voice is low and gravelly and his eyes linger on my lips as I stand there unmoving. I think he might kiss me again. I think part of me might want him to kiss me again. Instead, he steps back. “I have to go. I have to be someplace.”
I clear my throat. “Hot date?” I blurt out, immediately regretting my choice in words. Shit. Was there an edge to my voice? Did I sound jealous?
I’m a hundred percent not jealous. The opposite of jealous, in fact. I hope he’s going on a hot date. Maybe that will get him out of my hair.
Killian's expression is smug. “Why?”
“No reason. Anyway, I have to go. To swim. With Chloe.” When we walk out front, I see Chloe sitting at one of the tables doing her homework. “Did you get those math problems done?”
“Two,” Chloe says.
“We said five.”
“Math is boring,” she complains.
Behind me, Killian grunts. “Maybe East is right. You probably can’t do math. It’s probably too hard for you.”
I whirl around to look at him. Did he just say that to my kid, the kid I’ve been gently encouraging to do math even though she hates it?
“Oh yeah?” Chloe asks, sitting straight up in her chair. “This is easy stuff.”
“Put your money where your mouth is, kid."
“That’s it,” I interrupt. “Mr. Saint is leaving.”
“I can’t put money in my mouth,” Chloe says. “It’s dirty. There are germs crawling all over it.”
Killian laughs. “It’s a figure of speech. It means, You want to bet?”
“Mom says I’m not allowed to bet.”
If I could breathe fire, Killian would be completely incinerated. “We need to go to swim,” I say, putting Chloe’s math homework into her bag.
Killian shrugs. “Guess you don’t want to prove me wrong, then.”
Chloe jumps down from her chair and follows Killian to the door as I shove the rest of her stuff in her bag. “I’ll totally prove you wrong."
“Well, I don’t believe you can do that math. A quarter says it’s way too hard for you.”
Chloe scoffs. “Pfft. You’re wrong and I’m right. Two quarters."
“Don’t believe it ‘til I see it.” Killian winks at me as he walks out the door.
After swim class, I buckle Chloe into the car to drive home. “Hurry up, mom."
“Why are you in a rush all of a sudden?”
“I need to get my homework done.”
12
Lily
On the sidewalk outside the store, two older women are exiting the bakery carrying to-go cups of coffee in their hands. “I had to see it with my own eyes,” one says. “Connie said she heard he was working here.”
The other woman clucks her tongue disapprovingly as she makes eye contact with me, then quickly averts her gaze. “I think he’s been to prison,” she whispers. “That whole family is no good. Anyone who has any sense knows to stay away from the Saint boys."
“They did help get Letty and Barbara Jean’s property back from the mining company. And Peggy and Lou think him working here is funny."
“Even so. You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.”
They give me a sideways glance before turning and walking down the sidewalk, tongues still wagging loud enough for me to hear them continuing to gossip. The way one of the women glances over her shoulder as they talk, I’m sure they want me to hear what they’re saying.
Catty old shrews.
Connie C. said she heard he was working here.
They’re talking about Killian.
I think he’s been in prison. That whole family is no good.
A pang of possessiveness rushes through me. How dare they talk about him like that? Those nosy old biddies. Lipstick on a pig?
I pull open the door to the bakery with more force than I intend, more annoyed than I should be by what I overheard. I thought that the town gossips had been running their mouths and speculating about my past just because I was new in town, but apparently it doesn’t matter if you’re new here or if you’ve been in this place forever.
I despise stuff like that.
I’m so irritated that I’m halfway across the store before I realize the store is eerily quiet. There’s a long line of customers, but not the regulars who’ve been coming in for months; these are students from a nearby college and people in town like the old ladies outside, the women from the hair salon and the church. The ones who have shunned the bakery as if everyone who comes in this place is infected with the plague.
Two women standing beside each other in line whisper, and then glance up front to the register where Opal rings up a customer, like they’re afraid of being caught talking in class. I look around my bakery, watching as a regular customer wipes his table with his napkin, and then brings his used cup and saucer toward the front of the store. Stopping him, I take the dishes from his hands. “You know I’ll get that for you, Dan,” I say.