Fairytale Ambrosia (The Knead to Know Series Book 2) Read Online Free PDF

time, his grin was small and sincere. “I have complete faith in you.” He stood up. “And speaking of being a lowly human, I’ll get out of your hair. They’re expecting me at the shelter.” He clapped a hand down on my shoulder. “I know it’s hard, but we’ll figure all of this out, Maggie. That’s why we met.”
    “You can see that?”
    “Since the day I met you, I’ve never had a doubt.”
    Something fluttered in my chest again, but I squashed it down. I wasn’t ready to move on. I liked Boone a lot. But my heart couldn’t take being hurt again, not yet. I didn’t know how long it would take to get over Baker, but until I was, it wasn’t fair to start anything with someone else. My ex-boyfriend, Baker, had been a lot of things to a lot of people. To me he was the person who introduced me to the Abyss, who made me laugh and sometimes cry, but above all else he’d been my closest friend—and I had to kill him. I was still trying to figure out how to move on from that.
    I met his eyes. “I’ll do my best.”

Chapter 3
     
     
    “It isn’t the same world it used to be,” Emily von Brandt said in her shaky voice. “Children used to be respectful. When I was young, we didn’t even know what gluten was. We took responsibility for our actions. When I was young—”
    “No one cares, Emily,” Mr. Court said. “Let’s get on with this. I don’t want to be out all night.”
    “Why I never…” Mrs. von Brandt shook her head, taking a dainty bite of her third cookie bar.
    “Can I get anyone more coffee? Water, perhaps?” I asked.
    There were a couple nods, so I headed to the kitchen. “Have you met Garrett, Maggie—from the newspaper?” Emily called out and I cringed. I had met him and it hadn’t gone well. At all. “He’s a handsome boy.”
    The better I got to know my neighbors, the more I understood that normal meant very little and was entirely subjective. Tonight we had Emily von Brandt, who had a massive sweet tooth and liked to sit on the sidewalk outside of her first floor apartment, weather permitting, to keep an eye on the neighborhood. She talked to everyone who walked past her and kept talking even after they were gone. Then there was Alfred Court, who was so curmudgeonly that I couldn’t help but like him, though he had no filter and said absolutely anything he thought. He had pretty much offended everyone within five minutes of stepping through my door. He called my bakery a candy-colored nightmare. Then there were Betty and Harold Lawrence who owned the travel agency named Golden Years Getaways that specialized in senior tours. They were both in excellent shape, dressed well, and seemed very nice. However, Betty had stolen all the sugar packets out of the glass jar on the table when she thought I wasn’t looking. Megan Bishop and Stephanie Donovan hadn’t revealed their weirdness yet, though Stephanie’s T-shirt read Wiccan and Proud. They’d opened a candle shop, Beeswax, across the street a few months before I came to the neighborhood, and were the closest to my age. They had been in the bakery a couple times already, but I hadn’t had a chance to get to know either of them. And finally there was Vinny Fabrizi, who owned Vinny’s Italian restaurant.
    I freshened Vinny’s coffee last, then took my seat next to him.
    “You haven’t been to my restaurant yet,” he said, raising a wooly black and gray eyebrow at me, over his lively brown eyes.
    “I will. I promise. I’ve been so busy with the bakery, but once things settle down, I’ll be in. I want to see everyone’s store.”
    He considered me for a moment, his whole body turned toward me. Finally he nodded, taking my hand. “When? I will make you something personally. Beautiful food for the beautiful girl.”
    I grinned at the old charmer. “How about next week?”
    He shook his head. “Next week? No. Too far. Tomorrow.”
    “Um, I have plans,” I lied. This couldn’t have been a worse time to pretend to