Triple B. Baking Co.

  Triple B Baking Company

  Book One in the Hearts of Braden Series

  Michel Prince

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system-except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a magazine, newspaper, or on the web -without permission in writing from the author.

  Editor: Leanore Elliott

  Cover Art: Danielle Doolittle

  Triple B Baking Company

  Book One in the Hearts of Braden Series

  Copyright © 2015 Michel Prince

  Smashwords Edition

  Michel Prince

  Copyright © 2015

  PUBLISHER

  Michel Prince Books

  Chapter One

  Moving to a small town, Merryn Sota learned several things. First, learn your exit number on the main interstate because if nothing else, you’ll always know how many miles away you are from home. The number matches the mile marker, so it’s easy math. Second, everyone knows everything about you, but don’t care enough to pass judgment. They also assume you know everything that ever happened in the town, because everyone does. Third, the town gets quiet around eight, not because people are sleeping, but because they respect the ones who may be. Fourth, you never hear of a family going hungry, you also never hear of how every table got the food. It just happens.

  The most important thing Merryn learned came soon after she opened the Braden Buttery Bites Bakery or as the locals renamed it, the Triple B Baking Company. Necessity dictated she start a batch of chocolate chip cookies no later than ten to eleven because at eleven, Austin Larsen comes in for his daily sandwich. Tuesday through Sunday and he would probably show up on Mondays, if the bakery was open.

  “See you next week,” Sam, the delivery guy called to her as he wheeled his dolly through the swinging doors of the storeroom.

  Soon, she heard the sound of chimes from the bells above the front door.

  Merryn reviewed the inventory from her supplier as she arranged the shelves in her storeroom. Fifty-pound bags of flour and sugar were stacked neatly while sweet confections took up the shelves above her. The fresh food would be delivered anytime and she could go back to baking.

  Expecting Ken any moment with the delivery, she checked her watch and sprang up. Having not started the daily batch of chocolate chip cookie mix, she would have to go for a small batch to at least get started.

  Although Austin was her most loyal customer, he was also strangely annoying. Everyday, through snow, rain, sleet or sun, he arrived promptly at eleven and smelling of fresh pig shit. The occasional truck might roll through town and overtake the air for a moment or two, but having a farmer immune or ignorant of the smell he exuded had become a constant battle.

  When he first came in, she was shocked to even have a customer, so the last thing she wanted to do was throw him out. Since he only came in for a few minutes got a sandwich and left, she’d taken to the baker’s best weapon, fresh baked goodies. Also, for someone she saw daily, she knew very little about him. Everyday it was the same thing, egg salad on honey wheat with a piece of lettuce. He’d place a five on the counter and leave without taking his change.

  Moving to Braden, Iowa and finding an empty storefront was as much circumstance as fate. She did more by accident than most could by design, but with enough money to live on comfortably, an older SUV in need of a transmission and a desperate need to get away, the sleepy little town found her as much as she had found it. There wasn’t much further away from everyday than Braden.

  Scooping mounds of dough onto the baking sheet, she placed them in the oven and started a fresh pot of coffee for her lunch customers. It hadn’t taken long for Merryn to realize Braden was too small to support a shop with only baked goods. Once soup and sandwiches were added to the menu, the shop took off.

  “So, this weekend…” Kristy one of her three employees began. “…I was going to switch with Summer, but she can’t.”

  “The whole weekend or just one day?”

  “Harrison wanted me to visit him at Drake.”

  “M-hum,” Merryn replied as she crossed her arms.

  “I figured maybe—I don’t know.”

  “I’ll call Bea and see if she’d like to come in.”

  “Oh, thank you.”

  The bells chimed again and Merryn went out front. “Morning Austin,” she smiled and inhaled the coffee percolating before being assaulted with the smell of money. The local nickname of pig shit. “What can I get for you today?”

  “Egg salad on wheat.”

  “Coming right up.”

  His deep brown eyes peeked at her through sandy blond lashes that matched the hair sticking out from under his ball cap. At six foot one, he had to lean down to eye the glass case full of fresh baked goods as his long arms rested on top.

  For a moment, she actually thought he might indulge. “Can I interest you in something sweet today?” she asked in vain, as she sliced thick pieces from the loaf, then used an ice cream scooper to place two mounds of egg salad on the bread. “I’ve got some fresh macaroons maybe a slice of pie?”

  “No ma’am,” his stock answer rolled from his tongue.

  She felt his eyes on her as she spread out eggs and placed the lettuce leaf. He did it every time, but she didn’t feel like he was watching her while looking for a mistake or as if he thought she would spit in his food. The biggest thing she noticed was if she turned, so did he. It took her a few months to realize he really was looking at her and she wasn’t paranoid.

  “Not even a cookie?” she asked after wrapping his sandwich up and returning to the display case. One time she’d included the cookie with his sandwich, only to see it sitting on the counter after he’d left.

  “No thank you,” he replied without a hint of malice before placing a five-dollar bill on the counter and taking his sandwich. The daily tip was nice.

  “He’s such a creepy old guy,” Kristy said as the two women watched him leave.

  “He’s my age isn’t he?” Merryn asked and Kristy’s face flushed.

  “No, he’s a good ten years older.”

  “Way to suck up,” Merryn said as she snapped a towel at the twenty year old.

  “He’s forty two, if he’s a day,” Darryl Cox, a regular grumbled as he placed his cup on the counter for a refill. The old weathered face of her favorite customer smirked as he tapped the cup twice.

  “Be glad you have the ability to stand up and annoy me,” Merryn teased the ninety year old who could probably kick her ass in a foot race while she filled up his mug.

  Jenny, from the bar down the street, rushed through the door setting off the chimes again. “I screwed up big!” she exclaimed as she started grabbing the few bags of buns Merryn had on the shelf then turned to her with a frantic look in her eyes. “Please say you have more?”

  “I do, but Buddy told me he’d rather walk through a snowstorm naked, than buy my buns.”

  “No, he didn’t.” Jenny chuckled until she saw Merryn’s face. “Why would—he likes being an exhibitionist.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “This whole thing about you stealing his business?” she mocked. “Please, he needs to get over that. Outside of Darryl here, who have you taken from our lunch crowd?”

  “I frequent both establishments equally,” Darryl grumbled from his cor
ner.

  “You only come into the bar to gossip,” Jenny replied as she plopped the bags of buns on the counter.

  “What do you think he does here?” Merryn asked. “At least, you get the good drunk stories.”

  “Well, there is that. Anyway.” She sighed. “We just had a big group come in and…I forgot to order buns.”

  “I have some cooling in the back. But half are pretzel buns.”

  “Shit, well I’ll tell him I was trying something new out.”

  “Alright, I’ll sell ‘em wholesale to you,” Merryn said and led Jenny to the back. “How long do you think he’ll be pissed at me?”

  “Buddy?” Jenny laughed and helped run the buns through the slicer. “I heard there’s a kid from first grade he wants to beat up if he catches him around town.”

  “A first grader or a kid he went to school with?”

  “Still yet to be determined.”

  The women chuckled and Jenny paid for the buns before heading out and holding the door open for Merryn’s charity cases.

  “Hello Merryn,” Kayla called only to be scolded by the teacher who brought them down to the shop. “Ms. Sota…geez, she lets me call her Merryn,” Kayla grumbled under her breath to her two cohorts in crime, the twins Brandi and Ayzlee.

  All three girls had convinced Merryn to let them sell her pies through the school. Merryn sells them for eight dollars in the shop, but will sell them to the girls for five dollars a piece with the proceeds paying for their field trip in the spring. The children at the school can take preorders just in time for Thanksgiving which in a way helps Merryn too, since she won’t have to guess and have left over pie.

  Today, the three fifth grade philanthropists were bundled in thick downy coats. Kayla in yellow and the twins in matching electric blue. Even with scarves and hats the girl’s cheeks were flushed from the four block walk from the school to downtown.

  Their teacher, Mrs. Kennedy, was keeping one eye on the girls and another on the display case of treats. The robust fifty year old was another constant customer with a see-sawing diet that had her bouncing between Merryn’s fresh salads to her decadent five layer chocolate cake. Today, it appears a fruit tart might just balance the scales. The fruit did allow for the discussion of health.

  “Ms. Sota we have all the orders and money for the pies,” Ayzlee, the shorter of the two non identical twins, said while a mittened hand passed Merryn a pile of slips.

  Merryn flipped through the orders.

  “We added them all up. All three of us,” Brandi chimed in. “Well, and Cody, but he just did it, so we’d have odds.”

  “Odds?” Merryn asked.

  “Three girls, one boy and one teacher, so we could make sure the totals are right.”

  “Gotcha, odds,” Merryn said with a wink. “Now, how many extra pies did you want me to make?”

  “Extra?” Kayla asked.

  “Yes, just in case. I can make a few extras in case someone forgot to order one.”

  “We told them no late orders,” Brandi said proudly with her arms crossed. “It wouldn’t be fair to those who were responsible.”

  The twins had a three-year-old brother, responsibility was a big word they used as much as possible to show people they were very mature.

  Both Merryn and Mrs. Kennedy stifled smiles.

  Luckily, Merryn only had to deal with kids on a fleeting basis, not like poor Mrs. Kennedy. “Well, thank you ladies, you’ve given me a ton of work and I’m happy I could help you guys out.”

  “Yeah,” Kayla said as she leaned over the counter. “Remember, the people are picking them up at noon on Wednesday, when we get out of school.”

  “I have my deadline,” Merryn teased as she leaned over the other end of the counter, then booped Kayla’s nose.

  She giggled and the ten-year-old slave driver returned to school...after the three girls got a cookie and Mrs. Kennedy purchased a tart.

  * * * *

  With the jingle of the bells over the Triple B, Austin let out a gust of air and he could breathe again. When he first wandered into Braden Buttery Bites, he didn’t think anything of the action. He was reading the menu when Merryn came through the back part of the store and he’d been caught staring. How could he not? Hourglass form, not the current one, but the curves that originally made the figure popular. Some would call her a bit hippy, but he liked a woman whose curves defined her body. With long black hair that she’d pulled into a ponytail that came out the back of a baseball cap, she walked toward him with the most beautiful smile he’d seen in years. The crystal blue of her eyes caught him in a trance and he knew he needed to turn away.

  Since then, eye contact with her had been at a minimum. She’d learned his name, but in Braden that’s like learning the name of the street. With a thousand people in town, most of which graduated from Braden High, strangers were rare. He’d learned Merryn’s name two days after she’d bought the abandoned store.

  Originally, when the downtown had first been built it had been a dried goods store. Outside, below the front window five metal hitching posts were still attached to the wall. He wasn’t sure if Merryn even knew they were from the time before sidewalks.

  Austin had never lived anywhere but Braden. He’d never traveled further than the corners of the bordering states, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Illinois. Although he’d been accepted to college in Texas, he didn’t visit it. Instead, he’d sent tapes from his baseball games and they offered him some money to play. Not good enough to get scooped up by a minor league team, he’d wanted to play and maybe get a degree that didn’t involve agriculture.

  “How you doing today Austin?” Laurie, his mother’s nurse asked as he entered her small white house on the corner two blocks up from downtown.

  “I’m good,” he replied as the screen door snapped shut with a rattle. Sliding his boots off, his thumb stroked the egg sticker that locked the white paper in place before placing the sandwich on the counter.

  “How is she?”

  “Today is better than yesterday,” Laurie replied as she smoothed back her mousy brown hair that had fallen from her ponytail. “I was able to get her up and into the living room. She’s watching her programs.” She wandered back into the kitchen.

  Austin had known Laurie for most of his life. Two years ahead of him in school, she’d always had a calm demeanor and had been one of his mother’s best students.

  “Hey ma,” he said trying to hide his sadness over the sight of her in her current state.

  Her blue gray eyes registered him with happiness as he sat next to her in the matching brown recliner. Harriet Larsen had been the science teacher at Braden High for over three decades when a stroke claimed her independence. At first, they were hopeful she might be able to recover, but as the days turned into weeks, it was clear that even though her mind remained, her motor skills would not return.

  His hand curled around her thin wrinkled fingers. The softness brought on by lack of use mixed with Laurie’s or one of the other nurses’ hand massages. He could still hear his mother complaining in broken words barely making it out of the left side of her mouth of the decadency. A hard farmer’s wife, Harriet had told Robert Larsen she would marry him, but she was leaving the farming to him, because she belonged in the schoolhouse.

  “What’s the subject today?” he asked as he sat back and watched an older episode of Nova. “Universe expansion, huh? Maybe I’ll come back tonight and take you out to a field.”

  His mother’s eyes closed for a minute.

  “I talked to Trinity last night,” he said, mentioning his daughter. “She said physical science is cool right now, they’re studying some sludge stuff. Chemistry of some sort or another. You know I only liked bio or I could tell you more.”

  He spoke to her for the next hour as she ate her lunch and Laurie was able to take a break. Luckily for him, his brother handled dinner with his mother most nights since he was a lawyer just outside of Waterloo, so coming back to town every night was fi
ne for the bachelor.

  “You heading back out?” Laurie asked.

  “Yeah, you know how it is with farm work.”

  “Do you think after she passes, you’ll keep the farm going?”

  Austin swallowed hard at the thought of losing his mother. Even though his brother took dinner duties, he tended to come into town or at least call to make sure she had a good night. Being single made it easy keep his mother as the center of his life.

  “I only ask because it seems everyone is selling their farms off to Zackary Pork.”

  “It’s fine, they’ve approached me. I’ve lost quite a few guys over the years to them. They’ve got half of Iowa farming for them. Didn’t Bill sell?”

  “We’ve got an extended lease until the kids graduate high school. It was a pretty nice deal actually.”

  “Let’s hope it’s a ways off.”

  “Yeah, I love this job.” Laurie placed her hand on his forearm. “I just know how expensive it gets with twenty four hour care.”

  “She wouldn’t be happy at the farm and you do things I can’t.”

  After, the five mile drive to his farm, Austin came back to his world. Or more importantly, his reality. His world had been destroyed years ago. At this point, he was surviving because he didn’t know what else to do.

  * * * *

  Merryn wasn’t sure exactly why she wanted to know more about Austin. Maybe it was because she saw him everyday. Or maybe, it was because she’d finally settled in Braden, but he had a way about him that stirred something in her.

  To others, buying a business in a town would mean she’d found a home, but the reason she lived in the apartment above her shop wasn’t for convenience. A home would be too permanent. A business could be sold or transferred, but a house was something you turned into a home. Newly single and far from wanting to change that status Merryn enjoyed going to bed when she wanted to, instead of on her husband’s schedule.