The Devine Doughnut Shop(48)

Audrey set her backpack on an empty chair and stood her umbrella beside Raelene’s just inside the door. “I want doughnuts and milk. I need lots of energy for today.”

“Girl, don’t do anything stupid,” Sarah warned.

Audrey just smiled and rounded the end of the display case. “What kind do you want, Raelene? Get us a table before the next wave of customers come in here and take them all.”

“Chocolate, maple, and sprinkles,” Raelene answered, and looped the straps of her backpack over a chair.

A cold chill danced down Sarah’s spine. Sarah had always felt like Audrey was as much her child as Grace’s. She had walked the floor with her when she had colic as a baby, had read hundreds of books to her when she had chicken pox at three years old, and had cried with Grace the first day that Audrey went to kindergarten. “You are being too nice today, girl. I really hope you aren’t about to do something you’ll regret.”

Audrey flipped her blonde hair over her shoulder. “Whatever I do, I dang sure won’t regret it. White or chocolate milk, Raelene?”

“Chocolate,” Raelene called back.

Another rush of people came inside out of the rain. Grace waited on the ones who claimed the tables while Sarah filled the orders of those who were lined up, and Macy ran the cash register. Sarah didn’t even realize that Raelene and Audrey were gone until she heard the school bus rattle to a stop at the edge of the parking lot.

“Grace,” she whispered when her sister passed by on her way to get a coffeepot, “you might as well get ready for a storm bigger than the one that just hit us. Audrey was nice to Raelene, and she’s up to something that she said she would not regret—her words, not mine.”

“Sweet Jesus!” Grace groaned. “How was she nice?”

“She waited on Raelene,” Sarah answered. “There’s a storm coming, and it’s going to make a tornado look like a gentle breeze.”

“Sweet Jesus!” Grace groaned a second time. “Maybe we should go get her at school and make a run for Florida right now.”

Sarah nodded. “Might be a good idea.”





Chapter Eleven


Later that day, Grace made sure that Travis didn’t think this was a date in any form or fashion by wearing the kind of clothes she wore at the shop every day. She went straight from work in her jeans and T-shirt with the Devine Doughnut logo on the front. She was familiar with San Antonio, but when the lady’s voice on her GPS said, “You have arrived,” and she had parked right outside the tall office building, she wished she’d taken a little more time with her appearance.

“They probably won’t even let me into Butler Enterprises looking like this,” she muttered. She dug around in her purse for lipstick and a hairbrush, tilted the rearview mirror down, and pulled her blonde hair out of its ponytail. She rolled her eyes toward heaven and gave thanks for the wet wipe—left over from when she and Audrey had eaten at a rib joint—she found in the console and used to remove the pink icing from the toe of her sneaker.

“What was I thinking?” she asked herself on the way to the glass entry doors, which were etched with “Butler Enterprises” in large block letters. “Here I am, carrying a box of doughnuts. The people in this place will think I’m a delivery person.”

You were thinking that his office would be a lot smaller than this? The voice in her head that sounded a lot like her mother’s broke out in laughter. You should have done your homework on this man, my child.

Cool air rushed out when the doors opened automatically into a huge fancy lobby. Grace squared her shoulders and determined that neither Travis Butler nor any of his employees would intimidate her. She marched up to the reception desk located in the middle of the lobby and was about to tell the smartly dressed woman why she was there when Travis waved from a nearby elevator and motioned for her to join him.

She bypassed the desk but caught the look of surprise on the woman’s face when Travis met her halfway across the lobby.

“I’m so glad you could make it,” Travis said and ushered Grace into the elevator with a hand on the small of her back. “Pizza awaits us in my office.”

Grace held up the yellow box she was carrying. “And these are for dessert.”

Travis flashed a bright smile. “I’ve been looking forward to those all morning.”

His hand was so warm on Grace’s back that she was sure, if she pulled up her shirt and looked in a mirror, the print would be there in bright red. No man’s touch, not even Justin’s, had ever made her lose her ability to speak like Travis’s did on the elevator ride up to the sixth floor. In just a few seconds—which seemed like six months—the doors opened into a hallway with paintings of San Antonio on the walls. They were all signed by different artists, and all of them looked very expensive.

“Lovely art,” she said.

“My dad loved this city and commissioned several artists to paint it. I’ve always loved the way most of them saw the different places with a unique eye.” He opened the door to an office, and his hand went to her back again. “Come right in. This is where I spend nearly all of my daylight hours and a good percentage of my night ones, too.”

“Oh. My. Goodness.” Grace saw the buffet table, with its crisp white cloth and food laid out, and the small round table covered with a red-and-white-checkered cloth and set up for two people—but she ignored all that. She headed straight for the expansive glass wall overlooking the Riverwalk. “This is amazing.”