Iris in Bloom: Take a Chance, Book 2 Read Online Free PDF

sit down and stay awhile crowd.
    She sprinkled icing sugar over her fresh-from-the-oven lemon bars, their sharp-sweet scent overpowering the bread dough as she cut them into perfect squares with a large pizza wheel.
    She headed out front to refill the bakery case and, since there were three people in the line, immediately put the tray down on the back counter and took over barista duties while Dosana took orders and money.
    “Busy morning,” she said, when the rush was over. “You should have called me.”
    “Didn’t want you to burn anything.” Dosana turned to her. “We need more staff.”
    “I know it seems like that now, but what if this is only a short term thing? I don’t want to hire someone and not be able to keep them.”
    She shrugged. “I guess. In my business courses we talk about things like that.”
    “Let’s see how it goes. If we’re still as busy in a month, then I’ll think about hiring someone else.”
    “Okay.”
    She slipped surgical gloves on, opened the case and rapidly refilled the lemon bars.
    “Would you mind if I use the bakery for a project I’m doing for my marketing class?”
    Dosana was pursuing a business degree.
    “Um, I guess not.” She wondered what that would involve and how much confidential information she’d have to offer.
    The bell rang signaling another customer and Geoff McLeod walked in. “Let’s talk about this later.”
    He was dressed for school in brown khakis, a cream denim shirt and tie. All he needed was a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches and a pipe to complete the cliché. And yet the look suited him. She found the rumpled intellectual look ridiculously sexy.
    “Good morning,” he said.
    “Morning.”
    “Are those lemon bars?”
    “One of my many specialties,” she told him. “Here, try a bite.” She’d cut off the edges and so she sliced him off a piece of the edge, picked it up with her gloved fingers and placed it on a square of parchment paper and handed it to him.
    He popped the treat into his mouth and moaned in appreciation. “Oh, that is good.”
    “Want one?”
    “Of course I want one. With coffee.”
    While she was filling his order, Dosana took the now empty tray back into the kitchen. Geoff leaned in and said, “I never got your number. So I could call you about dinner.”
    “Oh, right.” After Tara the physically gifted physicist had monopolized him for the rest of the night of the vegan potluck, she’d wondered whether he even remembered he’d asked her for dinner.
    “I was wondering about Thursday night?”
    “Thursday?”
    “Comes after Wednesday?” His eyes had the most wonderful way of gleaming when he was amused.
    “I, yes. Sure. Thursday’s good.”
    “Great. I’ll pick you up at seven.”
    “Pick me up?”
    “Don’t people do that anymore? I’m surrounded by high school kids all day. It’s hard to tell what adults do.”
    “Yes, of course. I only live a couple of streets over.” And she wrote down the address for him and her phone number.
    “Great. Thanks.” He held up his cardboard coffee cup in a toast. “I’ll see you then. Well, I’ll see you every day probably when I come in for coffee.”
    The bell jingled like laughter when he opened it to leave, then stood back holding it open for the woman coming in. An attractive woman in her fifties with blond hair streaked with gray that they paid a fortune for in New York, jeans that showed a still hot bod and a jean jacket worn with a hand woven scarf. Iris knew the scarf was hand woven because she’d bought it for her mother for her birthday, in Daphne’s favorite blues and greens. “Hello,” her mother said beaming at Geoff. “It’s Geoff, right?”
    “Yes. Daphne, hello.”
    She was impressed that he remembered her mom’s name since he’d only met her briefly at the vegan potluck, then realized that as a teacher he must be good at remembering names.
    “I’m so glad I ran into you. I’m having a few people over on Saturday night