Page 68 of The Hardest Hit

“Olivia Rose, you’ve been allowed to run wild too long. You need to come home.”

“I am home,” she said. “I’m not moving back to Georgia.” Then she hung up the phone. She wanted to cry. She wanted to throw a fit. She wanted to punch something. Instead, she made cookies.

She was putting the second batch in the oven when there was a knock on the door. She looked through the peephole and saw Evan. With relief, she flung open the door and slammed into him, hugging him hard enough that he staggered a little. He recovered his balance and hugged her back just as hard.

She realized that Mrs. Roberson from two doors down was staring at them.

“I like my boyfriend,” she snapped. “You OK with that?”

Mrs. Roberson shrugged, tightened her bathrobe belt, and went back into her apartment.

She pulled Evan inside and shut the door.

“Hi,” she said, smiling up at him, “did I know you were coming over?”

“No,” he said. “I just came. Is that OK?” He smiled, but it seemed like his jaw was clenched and his shoulders seemed tight.

“Of course it’s OK!”

He looked around the apartment. “Your wall is smaller,” he said pointing to the empty wall above the couch where she kept her brilliant ideas and notes for work taped to the wall. Frequently, notes that were taped up in the middle of the night turned out to be not as brilliant in the daytime. But they were useful at least often enough that she kept to the system.

“I took some of them to work,” she said.

He nodded, but it seemed perfunctory, like his mind was a million miles away.

“Why does it smell like cookies?” he asked, frowning.

“Because I talked to my grandfather. I’m a stress baker. The year my mom died my dad and brother both gained twenty pounds each.”

“What about you?”

“Once I bake them, they kind of make me nauseous. Like I’d be eating my own stress again.”

She stared at him. He looked a little pale. Like maybe he hadn’t had the best day either.

“Do you want a cookie?”

“I don’t want your stress,” he said, then smiled like he wasn’t sure that was funny.

“No, it doesn’t apply to anyone else.”

“All right then.”

She handed him a cookie and watched as he bit into it.

“Oh my God,” he said around the mouthful of cookie. “How do I stress you into baking at my place?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Probably call me a stupid whore, I guess.”

His face rippled into an expression of absolute fury. Then, like a magic trick, his face became calm again. “He said that to you?” he asked, and the tightness of his voice and the tenseness of his jaw proclaimed that he was not in the least bit calm.

“More or less,” she said with a shrug.

“What did he want?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s a negotiation tactic. You make someone think that theirproduct, if you will, is not valuable so that they will give in to your less-than-optimal offer.”