like Hughâs?â I asked, encouraging her. Jeremy and Phoebe had run separate businesses, but they must have collaborated. Plus, Nicola needed to know I was listening.
âThatâs right.â Nicola offered me a biscotto. I demurred. She shrugged and kept eating. It was remarkable that she managed to pack away so many goodies. Unfortunately, she caught me noticing and gave me a defensive look. âI havenât tasted sugar for months. Jeremy had all of us on his âclean eatingâ plan.â
Aha. The same healthy-eating kick Phoebe had mentionedâthe one championed by Jeremyâs trainer, Liam Taylor. I doubted weâd get along. His approach to eating would give me nightmares.
âCome by Primrose,â I offered. âIâll hook you up.â
Nicola laughed, that awkward moment between us forgotten. âI might just do that, if youâve managed to improve things already. I heard the baked goods really went downhill at the shop after Jeremy hired away all Phoebeâs bakers. But maybe he wanted to get a jump on consolidating their assets for himself before the divorce papers were served. Who knows with him?â
I almost choked on my latte. â Divorce papers? â
âYou didnât know?â Nicola looked perplexed. âI thought that was why Phoebe needed your helpâbecause Jeremy had poached all the talent on her staff. She was at risk of being exposed as a talentless fraud. They had epic fights about who owned what, who was responsible for what, and whose fault everything was.â
âFights?â I hadnât known about any marital discord. Even the staff at Primrose hadnât gossiped about Phoebeâs marriage.
Of course, I didnât know if Nicola was trustworthy or simply bitterâeager to bad-mouth her former boss. I did know that I didnât much care for her take on Phoebe. Calling Phoebe Wright a fraud was putting a pretty harsh spin on things.
Wealthy people routinely started boutiques, candy stores, art galleries, and moreâbusinesses that produced an income but were actually hobbies. If you could do the same, wouldnât you?
On the other hand, the staff at Primrose was surprisingly green. And they were mostly newcomers to the shop. Hmm.
Maybe, just as Phoebe had pretended to be âworking outâ new recipes, sheâd pretended to be âtemporarily shorthanded,â too. That had been her excuse for needing my troubleshooting skills.
I didnât like the idea that sheâd hidden her true problems from me. But then, someone like her would value privacy and propriety, wouldnât they? Her personal life wasnât my business.
âAs I said, Jeremy wasnât an easy man to deal with. Iâm sure he stole away those bakers out of sheer spite.â Nicola looked me square in the eye. âHe was mean, Jeremy was. Before he died, he found time to blackball me in the industry, just because I corrected one little typo. Now Iâm unemployable.â
âBut you have other skills,â I tried. âYour degree?â
âDidnât get me a job before Jeremy and canât now, either.â
âCan you bake?â I hoped to cheer her up. âIâll hire you.â
âThanks, but I need to think about my next move more carefully this time. I jumped into that job with Jeremy, and that was a disaster, to say the least.â Nicola shifted her gaze to the tabloid paper lying beside my latte. She gave me a semi-smile. âYouâre lucky you never knew him, Hayden. I certainly wish I never had. Weâre all better off now that Jeremy is gone.â Then she thanked me for bringing her things, took them upstairs with her, and left me behind with more questions than answers . . . and more food for thought than Iâd counted on getting.
Also, a major appetite for cake. I ventured to the caféâs counter and bought a wedge of triple-layered mocha, then
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