Stirring Up Trouble (4 page)

Stepping out onto her porch, she paused for a moment. The bar was overrun with people. The parking lot was full and there were cars lining the sidewalk up and down the street. There was even a police cruiser parked there. She'd seen the marquee advertising that the Maui Dragons were playing tonight, but she had no clue who they were. Apparently other people did.

She wasn't going to let that stop her. If she backed down now, Emmett would never quiet down. It'd gotten exponentially louder in the last two weeks, which made her wonder if Miss Francine had given her bad advice. She'd told her this was war, so Maddie was ready for battle, but she felt like even when she won, she was losing.

How long could the two of them keep this up? He was breaking the law; surely the fines would eventually hurt his business. As for Maddie, there were only so many protests and tea parties she could organize. If a near-daily fine from the police wasn't enough to quiet things down, what else could she possibly do?

She was about to find out.

Taking a deep breath and steeling herself, she marched across the street and through the front door of the bar. She'd actually only set foot into Woody's once before, when she tried to talk to Emmett about the noise the first time. Bars were not exactly her hangout of choice, although she knew her brothers liked to come here and watch football. Maddie didn't care about any of that.

Inside, she was immediately struck by the stale stench of beer, pretzels, and the unmistakable body odor that comes from too many people crammed into a room too small and too warm. If the police didn't work out, perhaps she could call Mack the fire chief. They had to be over capacity for a place this size.

It was also louder than she ever expected. She'd thought it was loud when she listened to the band from her bedroom, but this was a whole new experience. How these people didn't have bleeding ears, she didn't know.

Turning away from the band, she headed toward the bar to find Emmett. Before she could lay eyes on him, she found an unexpected traitor sitting on a stool and sipping a soda.

“Simon Chamberlain!” she shouted, although the music dulled the effect of the sharp accusation.

Simon turned to look at her, but he didn't seem impressed by her arrival. He set his drink down and leaned his elbow on the bar. “Evenin', Maddie.”

“Don't you
Evenin', Maddie
me. I call the cops to shut this circus down and find
you
here enjoying the music.”

“I wrote him a ticket,” Simon said with a shrug that supposedly made everything okay.

“And?”

He shrugged. “And he didn't care. He promised me the set would be over by eleven. It's almost time, so why don't you go home, have a nice cup of chamomile tea, and by the time you're ready to go back to bed, the music will be over.”

“I don't like your tone, Simon. I'll not be patronized by my baby brother.”

“You say that like you're so much older than I am. Get over yourself.”

She hadn't gone to the bar to be insulted by her own brother. He was the law, and yet, he was ignoring the law to suit himself. “Whose side are you on, Officer Chamberlain? Are you taking bribes from Emmett?”

“Hey now.” Simon stood up and gazed down at her with an unhappy expression, drawing his brows together. He'd certainly grown a lot over the last few years. For so long, Simon had been the pipsqueak of the family. In high school, he shot up to the same height as his brothers, but he was thin and lean like a beanpole. It seemed like age and the uniform made him appear larger and more intimidating than she remembered.

“You might be my sister but I'm not going to let you insinuate something ugly like that,” he warned. “It's not a felony, it's a noise ordinance, Maddie.”

“Madelyn,” Emmett said, pushing between them. “Didn't expect to ever see you in here again.”

Maddie took a step back. She didn't like being that close to Emmett. He was so tall and broad shouldered he made Simon suddenly look smaller. It was bad enough she could feel Emmett's body heat radiate through his shirt, and smell the woodsy scent of his soap. That alone made her pulse shoot up and her cheeks burn. She didn't need to risk actually touching him.

“I don't want to be here,” she snapped, moving even farther away from the two men. “I'd much prefer to be asleep, but you seem determined to make that impossible.”

“I'm sorry,” Emmett said in a deep soothing voice that almost made her believe him. “Would you rather I gather twenty drunks to sing Disney songs outside your bedroom window?”

Maddie couldn't help the wicked smile spreading across her face. That had been a particularly fun day for her. She hadn't planned it that way, but when the little girls insisted on singing, she decided they were far too talented not to share it with the world. But mostly with Emmett.

“Look at that smile,” Emmett noted. “You're enjoying making me miserable. You're a beautiful sadist.”

Maddie tried to ignore the sudden feeling of lightness in her chest when he called her beautiful. The sadist part that followed should've negated the compliment, but somehow it didn't. She hadn't had a man say she was beautiful in a really long time. If only the words hadn't come out of the mouth of the last man she wanted to hear them from.

“Y-you . . .” she stuttered, “are enjoying this, too. You could've backed down, but you've only made it worse. Don't make me out to be the bad guy.”

“Yeah, but every time I piss you off it costs me five hundred bucks. You haven't had to lay out a dime.”

“That's not true,” Maddie argued. “I bought a china cabinet I didn't even need just so I could get it delivered.”

Emmett groaned and threw his hands into the air. “It's impossible to reason with someone who goes to these kind of lengths just to spite me.”

“To spite you?” Maddie said, her voice rising an octave in aggravation. “I just want you and your merry band of drunks to shut up.”

Emmett leaned into her, getting mere inches from her face. She could see the faint gray circles and lines of weariness around his mossy-green eyes. He wasn't sleeping and it was her doing. She was pleased and horrified by that fact. They were both miserable, but both too stubborn to back down.

“This merry band of drunks was here first!” he declared.

“I'm tired of this,” Simon complained, separating the two of them with his arm. “Sheriff Todd is tired of this. You two need to work this out and stop wasting taxpayer time and money policing your little squabble.”

“Little
squabble
?” Maddie shrieked.

“Yes. And I can think of only one way to resolve this.”

Maddie's brows drew together in confusion as she watched her brother reach for his belt. Before she could react or even come to terms with what was happening, Simon clamped the cold steel of a handcuff around her left wrist. She could only stare at it, agape, as he reached over and did the same to Emmett's right wrist.

“What the hell?” Emmett said, reacting far faster than Maddie had been able to. “What are you doing, Simon?”

“I'm ending this.
Tonight.
” There was a finality in Simon's voice that she didn't like.

“The joke is over, Simon,” Maddie said. “Now, take these off.”

“I will. I'll be back at six a.m. when I get off my shift.”

Maddie's jaw dropped in horror as her brother turned and walked out of the bar without so much as a backward glance. She wanted to run after Simon, to talk some sense into him, but she couldn't with a blond, two-hundred-pound anchor attached to her arm.

“Oh my God,” she groaned as she let her gaze travel over the handcuffs to where Emmett was shackled to her. “What are we going to do?”

Emmett eyed their wrists and shrugged. He seemed mildly irritated, but not at all agitated by the situation. It was infuriating how he didn't seem to react to the things that made her blood pressure skyrocket. “My first suggestion would be to do shots to take the edge off.”

Shots? “Um, no. I don't drink.”

“Suit yourself.” Emmett reached across the bar with his free hand for a bottle of whiskey and poured himself a short glass, slamming it back in one gulp.

“Now what?” she asked.

“Well, I guess you're going to come help me behind the bar.”

“Excuse me? I'm not a waitress. I'm a classically trained pastry chef.”

He didn't seem impressed. “That's nice. I'm not a waitress, either. I'm a bartender, and tonight, that means you are, too. Come on.”

Emmett tugged and Maddie moved. There was no negotiation. He had a good seventy pounds on her, and unless she wanted the handcuff to rub her wrist raw, she had to follow.

Tonight, Maddie was a bartender. But after the bar closed, she'd make certain that Emmett took his turn as a baker's assistant.

Chapter Four

“What are you
doing?”

Maddie's sharp, critical tone was the last thing Emmett needed after more than six hours of being handcuffed to the woman. It was barely five in the morning on a Saturday, the time when he would normally kick back, watch a little television, and unwind before going to bed. Instead, he was in the kitchen of Madelyn's Bakery attempting to make cookies.

After making their way through the rest of the evening at the bar and closing down at two, she'd helped him and Joy clean. Maddie seemed almost resigned to her chore, not voicing a single complaint, which made him worry that he was in for it.

Boy was he right. He thought maybe they could go upstairs to his place and nap on the couch until Simon showed up, but the minute they locked up at Woody's, she'd started tugging him down the block to the bakery. She insisted that if she had to work at the bar, he had to work at the bakery. She was probably regretting that right now, since everything he did was wrong.

Emmett looked down at the pile of dough in front of him and shook his head. He was wearing a pink ruffled apron, a hairnet, and food service gloves. Maddie had put a large bowl of cookie dough in front of him and told him to roll it into balls on a cookie sheet while she mixed up something in the stand mixer beside him. Looking over at his handiwork, he could see why she was upset. There were a sad dozen balls of dough on the sheet, all varying in shape and size. Some of them couldn't really even qualify as balls. “I really have no idea,” he admitted.

With a sigh, she turned off the mixer and used her free hand to dip an ice-cream scooper into the dough. She dispensed it into her left hand and rolled it into a neat ball before placing it on the tray. “See? Use the scoop to get even sizes. They should be about as big as walnuts and perfectly round so they bake evenly.”

“That's all well and good, except that job takes two hands and I've only got one. Every time I get started, you tug me over to the oven.”

“It's the simplest task I have for you to do,” she said, using her free hand to brush her hair out of her face in exasperation. “This isn't as easy as pouring drinks and doling out salty snacks.”

It was just like her to belittle everything he did. She might think running a bar was a ridiculous way to live, but he enjoyed it and felt good about his job. His customers were happy and he saw to it that they got home safe each night. That was more than he could say about his last job, where the bottom line was more important than the people. “You think running a bar is easy?”

She shrugged and detached the bowl from the mixer. “I don't know a thing about running a place like that, but it certainly doesn't require two years of study in Paris.”

There she went with that superiority thing again. “You know, Fancy Pants, that's your problem.”

Her eyes widened as he used his new favorite nickname for her. He didn't know why it would offend her. She was a fancy pants, through and through. She should wear that badge with as much pride as she wore that silly pink apron. “I don't have a problem.”

“Yes, you do. You think you're so much better than everyone else, but you're not. So what? You studied in Paris. Estelle was a self-taught baker using her grandmother's recipes, and you know what? Her chocolate chip cookies were better than yours.”

Maddie gasped. “My chocolate chip cookies are made with vanilla beans from Madagascar and chopped milk and dark chocolate from Switzerland!”

Somehow that was supposed to explain everything. “It's a cookie, not a piece of art that needs provenance to display in a gallery. Some people just want what's familiar. Nobody's grandma used vanilla beans from Madagascar. They used the bottled brown stuff from the grocery store with a bag of Toll House chocolate chips. Importing all that fancy stuff might make you feel special, and the cookies might be tasty enough, but it doesn't make you better because you went to all that trouble. Frankly, I think it would hurt your bottom line.”

“What do you know about my bottom line?”

“Please,” Emmett snorted. He knew more about financial management than she ever would. “You think you're going to pay back your daddy for this place while you blow money on embossed pink pastry boxes and imported chocolate? This isn't a patisserie on the Champs-Élysées, Fancy Pants. It's a bakery in Nowhere, Alabama. You might think it sets you apart to use all that stuff, but to be successful, you need to know your customer. People around here don't care where Madagascar is, much less if that's where your vanilla comes from.”

“People want high-quality products, and that's what I'm going to give them. My clientele is a little more sophisticated than yours. I suppose you're well versed in your customers and what they want, right? Beer and football.”

“Damn right, and that's what I give them.” Emmett turned to face her and leaned down so she heard every word he said. “They want a place to relax and unwind. They want some drinks. They want to watch sports and listen to music. And if they want to hear
live
music, I'll give it to them. You might think that I started bringing those bands in just to keep you up at night, but you're giving yourself a little too much real estate in my brain, Fancy. It doesn't have anything to do with you. It has to do with my business and my livelihood. You're just an unwelcome distraction.”

Maddie looked up at him, her full bottom lip trembling slightly as he railed at her. Was she upset that she wasn't more important to him? He couldn't imagine she would be. He was nothing to her—an insolent peasant.

“Earlier you said I was beautiful—a sadist—but beautiful. Am I distracting because I drive you crazy or because I'm beautiful?” she asked in a breathy voice that made his chest and his pants tighten at the same time.

Those pouty lips made him want to run the pad of his thumb across them and kiss away her frown. It was a ridiculously unhelpful thought, but like he'd said, she was a distraction in a variety of ways. He wished she wasn't so attractive because that just crossed the wires in his brain. He'd much prefer her outsides matched her annoying insides, then it would be easy to ignore her. Over the last few weeks of their war, he probably spent more time lying in bed thinking about her than he had lying there listening to her latest sleep sabotage.

She had the shiniest hair he'd ever seen. It was always up in a ponytail or a bun, which was a shame because it was like shimmering chestnut silk. He wanted to know what it would look like if it fell free around her shoulders. He wondered how it'd feel to run his fingers through it. Her skin was like porcelain and her eyes like the shells of a robin's egg. Maddie's every feature was delicate and feminine, rousing a protective nature in him he wasn't used to.

And then she opened her mouth and ruined everything.

Even now, handcuffed to her, he wondered what she'd do if he kissed her. Maybe this was his chance. It wasn't like she could get away. It'd almost be worth it to see the look on her face. And maybe once he kissed her, he'd realize there wasn't anything special about her and he could focus on something else.

“Both,” he said, inching closer to her. He expected her to pull away, at least as far as she was able, but she stayed in place. His left hand reached out for her cheek and he stroked her skin.

Maddie stiffened initially at his touch, then her eyes closed and she leaned into him. He hadn't expected that reaction at all. Emboldened by her response, he leaned forward and pressed his lips to hers. He wasn't sure what kissing her would be like, but the reality was far, far better than he ever could've anticipated. For someone so uptight and critical, her lips were soft and inviting. She molded to him without an ounce of tension in her body. She seemed to welcome his touch, even groaning softly as his free hand stroked the long line of her neck.

It was the sound that jerked him back to reality. What was he doing? She might be beautiful, but she was a total pain in the ass. She was the kind of high-maintenance woman who expected a kiss to lead to something more official and that was not at all what he was interested in. He just wanted to blow off some of their aggression in a more pleasurable fashion.

He abruptly pulled back. When their lips parted, they stayed still and close, the heat of their bodies together making the air warm around them. He could smell the scent of her skin when they were this close. It wasn't a harsh perfume, but something soft, almost like lavender-scented soap or lotion. He imagined she had a very intensive nightly ritual with expensive French skin creams. Her skin was so soft and supple, he could almost imagine what it would be like to massage a scented cream into it.

“What was that?” she asked softly.

“A kiss.”

“Why?” Her blue eyes searched his face.

“Because apparently I'm a masochist.”

Maddie frowned and her delicate eyebrows knit together. He could just see her brain whirling as she tried to figure out what he meant by that. Before she could say anything, the buzzer on one of the ovens went off. She pulled as far away from him as she could, her cheeks flushing an attractive pink like her apron. Cool air rushed between them, bringing them both to their senses. Shaking her head, she led him over to the oven, where she pulled out pans of lemon pound cake and banana bread.

Impossible women. He had a fatal attraction to impossible women. He needed some damn therapy.

Simon was waiting outside
Woody's when they arrived. He was leaning casually on the hood of the squad car, sipping a cup of coffee from Ellen's Diner down the street.

Thank goodness he was on time. Maddie couldn't wait to regain her freedom. She'd gotten only about two hours of sleep before all this started, and there was nothing she could do about it now. She would go back to her place for a shower and a cup of strong coffee, but then she had to get back to the kitchen. The shop opened in two hours and she was way behind on her baking. Having one arm handcuffed to Emmett had slowed everything to a crawl. They'd managed to make just a few loaves of sweet breads, a tray of sticky buns, and some lemon bars in three hours. She needed to get back in there and crank out about a dozen other items before the shop opened. She could only thank her stars she didn't have a wedding cake being picked up today.

“Did you two play nice?” Simon asked.

“Extremely,” Emmett replied with a smug smile on his face.

Maddie blushed bright red at his words. She couldn't help it. It was bad enough she'd let sleep deprivation lower her guard; she didn't want everyone to know what she'd done. Especially not her brother. If Simon knew, the whole family would soon know she'd made out with the local bartender, and she'd never hear the end of it. Maddie never made out with anyone, so it would turn into a huge thing. “We didn't kill each other,” she offered, “if that's what you were hoping for.”

“I don't endorse bloodshed,” Simon said. “I was just hoping you two would take this time together to talk over your issues and find a way to peacefully coexist on the same street. Any ground covered there?”

“Not really,” Emmett admitted, and he was right. They'd shared a long night together, but not one moment of it was spent discussing how they were going to learn to get along. They were both far too focused on how they would make it through the night, much less worry about the future.

“Well, you two better figure out how to play nicely or I'll do this again. Don't think I won't.” Simon pulled out his keys and unlatched the cuffs. “Free at last,” he announced.

“Thank the Lord,” Emmett said, rubbing his wrist and sighing in contentment.

Maddie scoffed at his expression of relief despite the fact that he'd taken the words right out of her mouth. “You'd think being handcuffed to me was the worst thing in the world.”

“Well, it certainly wasn't a picnic.”

“Hey,” Maddie complained. “I was being nice. I helped at the bar and, more important, I didn't once ask to use the restroom.”

Emmett's eyes widened. Apparently he hadn't considered how much closer they would've gotten if nature had called with any sort of urgency over the last few hours. “Well, thank you for your help, Fancy. The next time Joy calls in sick, I'll be sure to give you a call.”

Maddie snorted. She couldn't imagine herself working at a place like that. Being surrounded by grabby drunks was her idea of her personal hell. “Don't waste your breath, Emmett. I'm not taking another step into that dirty, stinky bar of yours.”

Emmett's eyes brightened in excitement, his face lighting up despite the exhaustion on his face. “Is that a promise? Can I hold you to your word? It's not nice of you to tease about something like that.”

“Can you two keep it down? It's six in the morning and there are houses nearby,” Simon interjected, but neither of them paid him any attention.