half smile on his face, her father arched one brow.
“Yeah? What about your job?”
“Um, I just quit.” Well, Genna wrinkled her nose. That was eloquent. Any chance he’d clued in to how excited she was by her shaking tone?
“You what?” Looking as if he was going to burst a vein, he didn’t wait for her to repeat the obvious. Instead he stabbed one finger toward the mayor’s door. “Then get in there and ask for it back.”
“I don’t want it back,” she said quickly, pushing the words through her nerves, knowing she had to take a stand or give up her dream altogether. “I quit because I’m going to bake full time.”
Her father sighed. He took off his Sheriff ball cap, ran one hand through his still-thick hair as if trying to comb away a headache, and tugged the cap back on.
“Genna, we’ve discussed this.” His tone shifted from angry to reasonable. So reasonable that Genna was almost nodding before he’d said another word. “You’d be dealing with complete strangers day in and day out. You’d have no stable income, no insurance, no sick pay. You simply don’t have the experience or the knowledge to run your own business.”
And he had no respect for her, Genna wanted to yell. But that’d get her nowhere.
“This isn’t some impulsive craze,” she defended instead. “I have a BA in business, and this is exactly what I studied for and it’s time to make it happen. I’m calling it Sugar and Spice. I’ve made arrangements with the café and three of the restaurants in town to carry my desserts. Even Mr. Jenson is going to sell my cookies from the pharmacy. I’ve got orders already, enough to carry me through the first month, possibly three. Then I can look at getting a storefront.”
A cute one over on Beeker, maybe. Right between the dress shop and the library. It’d get great foot traffic, plus there was a good-size parking lot across the street.
Summer, she promised herself. She’d be decorating her own shop by summer.
“When did you do all of this?” her father asked slowly, his fingers tapping on his belt as he frowned at her. “I’ve only been gone five days.”
A girl could get a lot done in five days when she was motivated. And Genna was. She wanted this job. And more, she wanted to prove to Brody that she could make things happen. That she wasn’t a wimpy little daddy’s girl who couldn’t stand on her own two feet.
“It’s something I’ve been dreaming about for a long time. I’ve been making notes, sketching out ideas, for years. Once I decided it was time, it was pretty easy to do,” she said, reaching into her tote for the expandable file folder filled with ideas, plans and orders that she’d shared earlier with the mayor.
She bit her lip, excited to see how impressed her dad would be with her work.
Before she could show him, though, he was shaking his head and giving her that cop look of his. The one that made a person want to confess to crimes they’d only thought of just to get him to look away.
“Have you been seeing Brody Lane?”
Genna pressed her lips together. Seeing, doing. Neither was something she wanted to discuss with her father. Especially given the way he felt about Brody.
She tried to settle the nerves gnawing their way through her stomach. She’d known word would get out. If Macy hadn’t told—and surprisingly, she hadn’t—someone else would have since she and Brody had been out in a lot more public places the last week or so.
“This has something to do with that troublemaker,” her father accused, reading her face much too well. His wasn’t tough to decipher either. Fury came across loud and clear.
“No. Starting a career is my decision, something I came to all on my own. It has nothing to do with Brody,” Genna said quickly, her fingers knotted together to keep her hands from shaking. Well, it did. But not how her father meant. “This is my dream. It’s something I’ve wanted for years.”
“And you just happened to decide it was time to make it happen this week? When I was out of town?”
That had definitely made it a lot easier.
But Genna shook her head. “I had a house filled with baked goods to find homes for. The more people I shared with, the more people talked about how they’d buy from me, the more I couldn’t see any reason to wait.”
“I can think of plenty of reasons. You go talk to Tucker and get your job back. Then we’ll sit down and go over this reasonably. You, your mother and me. If it’s the best thing for you to do, we’ll support you.”
No, they wouldn’t. They’d do exactly what they’d done every other time she’d gone to them to share her plans. They’d talk her out of it. Or they’d guilt her out of it. One or the other.
“No,” she said quietly. She untwined her hands, flexing her fingers once to shake off a little tension, then took a deep breath. “I’ve already made my decision.”
“This is that damned Lane’s fault,” her father growled. “He’s trouble. The only reason he didn’t end up in jail is because the military had him locked down and under control.”
“If he was as bad as you seem to think, he wouldn’t have made it in the military as long as he did. Nor would he be a part of the elite Special Forces, or a decorated SEAL,” she pointed out, trying to sound reasonable. She didn’t want to come across as a defensive lover. That wasn’t going to score points with her father.
“He’s just as bad as your brother was. It’s his fault Joe went the direction he did. That he found so much trouble and couldn’t climb out.”
Genna had to look away to clear the tears from her eyes. Not over her brother’s path of self-destruction. He’d made that choice and she’d cried plenty about it over the years. But that her father was so blind to his part in Joe’s choices. That he would blame someone else, someone who’d never been as bad as Joe, who’d been gone for the worst of Joe’s hell-bent-to-worthless years.
“Brody isn’t Joe. He never was.” She didn’t need to say that Joe had been raised with every privilege, often more than he’d appreciated. While Brody had been raised with nothing. No fancy toys or fast cars, no designer clothes or cool trips. Not even three healthy meals a day or a safe home. Or love. “And neither was I. But you punished me for Joe’s actions. The worse he became, the less freedom I had.”
Maybe because Joe blithely ignored every punishment their parents set. Whereas Brody had taken her father’s punishment and used it to build a life to be proud of. And that, she figured, said it all.
“I’m seeing Brody Lane. And I’ll keep seeing him as long as I choose to,” she told him quietly. Her nerves wound so tight, she felt like her hair was going to fly off. Her stomach churned, sick with nausea. But she kept her chin high and her eyes steady. “You can’t run him off this time. You can’t put me on restriction and take away my privileges.”
“You’d be surprised at what I can and can’t do.” Looking every inch the cop he was, her father seemed to tower over her. Like a threat. Or a jail sentence.
Like a light flashing in the dead of night, the truth washed over her. All of a sudden, her head started spinning. She had to stop and breathe through the dizziness.
“That’s what you’ve been doing all along, isn’t it? You didn’t like my choices, so you and Mother systematically took them away from me. You, with your rules and guidance. All along, you’ve kept me on restriction.”
“You’re being melodramatic.”
“Am I? First it was college. Then you used your influence around town to make sure I stayed between those narrow lines you drew. I lived where you wanted, worked where you chose.”
Sure, she’d realized her dad was a pain in the butt when it came to being overprotective.