The Heartbreaker of Echo Pass - Maisey Yates Page 0,8
was in disrepair, and everything was shoved into one room, and the floors were buckled. It was dim and dark, and it didn’t bother him any. But she looked bothered.
“Do you have electricity?”
“I have a generator. Sometimes I bother to run it. Mostly I don’t.”
“So, you live here...alone.”
“What gave that away?”
“All right,” she said, as if steeling herself for a battle. “All right. I will clean this place twice a week, plus provide dinner for every day. And dessert that goes with whatever I’m making at the bakery. And twenty percent of the profits.”
“Twenty-five.”
That lit her face up like a beacon. “Twenty is more than generous.”
“And no rent is something a bit past generous. And I’m not known for that. So, if I were you, I’d take a deal when one is offered.”
She looked mulish. “Fine.” Still holding the plate of cookies in one hand, she extended her other for a handshake. “Griffin Chance,” she said, “you’ve got yourself a deal.”
“Sounds good, Iris.” He grasped her hand in his, and for a moment it was like the world tilted.
She was soft. And warm.
And right then, he was trying to remember how long it had been since he’d touched another person. He’d never even had another person in this cabin.
“What’s your family name?” he asked, dropping his hold on her hand.
“Daniels.”
“Sounds to me like we’re business partners, Iris Daniels.”
“Sounds like it.”
“You start Monday.”
“That’s tomorrow,” she said. “That’s not very much time.”
“Then I suggest you get busy.”
CHAPTER THREE
IRIS WAS VIBRATING with energy by the time she got back to Hope Springs Ranch. She had done it. She had... Gone up the mountain a hausfrau and come down a bakery owner.
Sort of.
There was still so much to consider. So many things to put into place. Thankfully, she knew that the building had the facilities she needed to do what she wanted, more or less, since it had been a bakery prior to her taking over. But she was still going to have to... Well, bake more than she ever had in her life, figure out a name, figure out so many things.
And somehow, add cleaning a cabin that seemed entirely made of dirt and cooking dinner for a hermit.
He was not at all what she expected.
The cabin wasn’t at all what she expected.
Griffin Chance was a man who seemed to own real estate, and have the ability to negotiate business deals. The way that he talked about things made her certain that he was familiar with the practice.
And he lived in a hovel.
It didn’t make a lot of sense.
But she had accomplished her goal, thanks to her cookies, so she was going to go ahead and call it a win and not worry about the rest.
She scrambled around the kitchen, finishing off the meat loaf that she was preparing for dinner.
Everyone was coming over tonight. Which made her very happy indeed.
It was a strange thing, wanting to distance herself slightly from the family, while also missing them desperately.
The way they were.
Because they’d been a soft cushion for her for so many years, and deciding that she needed to move on, deciding that she wanted more, didn’t mean...
She missed it. Feeling satisfied with this.
It wasn’t comfortable to want so much.
To be dissatisfied.
“Iris.” Her sister-in-law Sammy came into the room with baby Astrid strapped to her chest. “I didn’t want you to cook dinner by yourself.”
“Oh it’s fine,” Iris said.
“We always used to cook together,” Sammy said, looking down at her baby’s beautiful, fuzzy head.
“And now you have Astrid to take care of,” she said. “It’s fine.”
“I do have Astrid take care of,” Sammy said, “but that doesn’t mean I can’t cook dinner.”
“Well, I just want to... I want to help when I can.”
Because she was going to have to tell them all tonight that help was going to be a lot less common.
The front door opened, and Iris heard the sound of the dogs rushing in. Their nails clicking on the hardwood. And then she heard three pairs of boots walking along with them.
“Can we not have the dogs in?” Iris asked, mostly just because it was what she always asked.
It was futile, at this point, to complain about the small pack having free run of the house.
She just didn’t want them under the dining room table, or in the kitchen. But at this point, the dogs had won, and there was no sacred space for humans. And there was simply no enforcing it with Sammy as mistress of the house anyway.