Well, he wasn’t wrong about that. I sat back on my heels and stared at the cubic foot of rust it had taken me an hour to scrape. And frankly, two days was probably generous if we did it ourselves.
“And I have a real job,” Liam continued. “A full-time job that I need to work at.” He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut momentarily. “The truth is, my mother is going in for surgery in a few weeks. With Neil leaving the country, I just don’t have the bandwidth to keep Beefcakes afloat, be there for her, and rush in on all this—” He gestured at the truck.
My heart squeezed for him. “What if I handle all of it?”
He glanced at me, brows furrowed. “You’ll handle all of it?” He started ticking off reasons one by one on his finger. “We don’t have a permit. We don’t have working appliances in the truck—hell, we don’t even have the hookups for appliances. We need the truck inspected for health and safety. We need a menu, price list, zoning maps of where we’re allowed to park… and that’s just what I can think off the top of my head.”
I gulped. Holy hell, he was right. It was a long list for 10 days. I squared my shoulders. “I do my best work under pressure. I will take care of all of that in the time you are working at Beefcakes. All you have to worry about is having enough baked goods to earn us…” I squinted my eyes, thinking about the cost of materials for baking. “Maybe $350 a day to start with? Assuming that we can keep cost on the lower side and do most baking off-premise.”
Liam folded his arms, bouncing the scraper against the side of his ribcage as he regarded me carefully. “You’re really going to handle everything else? All I have to do is put a menu together and bake the items?”
I so badly wanted to bite my bottom lip… but I knew he’d see that I was bluffing if I did that. Instead, I tipped my chin higher and nodded. “That’s right. I think we should schedule a time soon… tomorrow maybe… to go over the menu and the prices we are thinking so that you can plan accordingly for what to make ahead of time.”
“You know three hundred and fifty dollars sounds really low, right?”
I sighed. “Yeah… but for a soft opening, it will look better to sell out and leave people wanting than to have products go bad and waste money if we don’t sell. Then we can add more moving forward.”
Liam nodded approvingly and dropped his folded arms. “Good point, Dyker.”
“Thank you. I do have them, occasionally.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he laughed, then nodded to the rust. “You missed a spot.”
I frowned at the burnt sienna color mocking me at the bumper of this stupid truck. “I hate this,” I grumbled and dropped back down to a crouch to continue scraping.
“Oh, come on. It’s not so bad. My mom always used to say singing makes the work go by faster.”
Singing? What the hell? Liam had clearly never heard my terrible singing voice, otherwise he wouldn’t have mentioned that. “Uh—you can sing if you want to. No one wants to hear my cat-scratch voice wailing Lady Gaga. Besides, I’ve already pulled a Britney and flashed the entire condo unit. But go ahead and sing if you want to, dude.”
He thought a moment and then started singing, “Rubber ducky, you’re the one—”
Heat flushed to my face. “Oh my God! I knew you saw my duck underwear!”
He threw his head back, laughing uncontrollably.
I grabbed the bucket of water and threw it on him. He didn’t even try to fight it as the dirty water splashed across his body. Instead, he laughed harder and shook his head, spraying water from his hair in every direction.
Gripping his shirt, he tugged it over his head, wringing it out between his fisted hands while I tried with all my willpower not to stare at his muscled bare chest and abs. Holy shit. Who knew Liam Evans was hiding a body builder’s muscles beneath his clothes? “Awww. Chloe. You know… you do make bath time lots of fun.”
“I hate you,” I grumbled and threw the towel that was on the pavement next to me at him.
Liam caught the towel with one hand and used it to wipe his face. “Ten days, huh?”
I nodded, swallowing a knot in my throat. “Let’s open a week from next Wednesday. That’s actually a little over 10 days.”
“Still pretty tight,” Liam sighed. “But if anyone can do it, it’s you.”
I grabbed the scraper and got to work on that rust. Liam was right… ten days was tight. But I’d be damned if I proved him right about that.
11 Chloe
It actually only took a day and a half of rust-scraping once I got moving. And that was with me working on it almost non-stop Sunday and all morning on Monday. It was one week later, and I was behind the wheel of our beautifully painted, freshened, and safe food truck.
I pulled up in front of Beefcakes, checking my watch. It was 3:00 p.m., which meant they would be closing soon. Sometimes, they even sold out of baked goods and closed early.
I rolled down the window, leaning my head out to try to sneak a glimpse of how busy they were inside. Not terribly, from what I could tell. There were only a few cars in their parking lot. I hoisted my torso out the window, craning my neck to get a better look, and as I did so, my hand on the steering wheel slipped. My palm landed dead center of the wheel and landed hard on the horn.
Which maybe in most towns wouldn’t
