LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter One

      Bobbi Lee Blanchard grasped her former boss’s hand and shook it firmly. “Thank you for agreeing to sell me the restaurant, Max. You have made me one happy Carolina lady.”

      She walked out of the kitchen of the Bayberry Cove Kettle and joined her two best friends, who were enjoying the diner’s famous apple pie. Hardly able to contain her good news, Bobbi sauntered up to their table and said in her sweetest Southern-belle-waitress voice, “Y’all want more pie?”

      “Don’t tempt me,” Louise answered.

      Vicki gently rocked the stroller next to the table. “None for me, either. It’s Cory’s nap time. You can give me the bill, though.”

      Louise gave Vicki a familiar look. The two women had been friends in Florida for years before settling in the small North Carolina town on the edge of Currituck Sound. Every time they came to the Kettle, they argued over who would pay. Today, Louise won. She picked up the check and patted the booth beside her. “Sit down, Bobbi Lee. It’s obvious you have news that you’re just bursting to tell us.”

      Bobbi stuck her pencil through a tight curl in her salon-colored wine-red hair and settled her admirable derriere next to Louise. Her two friends had it all over her in their gym-toned bodies, but Bobbi liked her figure.

      “I wondered when you were going to notice,” she said.

      “You Southerners have an expression about the kind of grin you’ve been wearing since we came in,” Vicki said. “Only I don’t use that sort of language in front of babies. What’s going on?”

      Bobbi sat straight and threaded her fingers together. “You are looking at Bayberry Cove’s newest entrepreneur, ladies. Guess who just arranged to buy this restaurant!”

      “You, our recently redheaded friend, are the owner of the Kettle?” Louise said.

      “Yes! Exactly—” she consulted her rhinestone-studded watch “—eight minutes ago, I made a deal with Max. He’s all set to start his retirement in Arizona, and he’s agreed to let me make payments on the Kettle once a month.” She smiled slyly at Louise. “Of course, I told him my very own personal attorney, Miss Louise Duncan, would draw up the papers.”

      “Oh, congratulations, honey,” Vicki said.

      “I’ll have to charge you for the legal work,” Louise said. “I’m pretty expensive. Gonna cost you a lot of slices of pie.”

      Bobbi grinned. “You got a deal, counselor. Now all I have to do is convince Mason Fletcher to negotiate a reasonable lease between him and me for this building, and I’m in business—my very own business!”

      A troubled glance passed between Vicki and Louise. Bobbi knew what they were thinking; old Mason Fletcher, whose investments included nearly five blocks of downtown Bayberry Cove, was nobody’s pushover. But Bobbi was sure she could strike a bargain with him. She had to. She’d already promised her son, Charlie, that if he finished up the semester at the junior college with good grades, she would find the money for him to go to North Carolina State. She knew Charlie would keep his end of the agreement, and nothing was going to keep her from seeing her firstborn achieve his dreams.

      “If anyone can negotiate with Mason, it’s you, Bobbi Lee,” Vicki said. She looked out the window. “And speak of the devil, here he comes

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