Page 38 of Cupcake of the Month
Rob embraced her. A muffled, “I love you,” slid its way into Jordan’s hearing before he went up the path to the Inn.
She put her glove on her hand and smacked it with her fist. “Let’s play.”
“Rob and Wendy, sitting in a tree,” Brandi sang. “Doing more than K-I-S-S-I-N-G.”
“Oh, stop,” Wendy said, but not before red crept up her cheeks.
“Oh, my,” Jordan breathed. “You’re blushing.”
“She’s blushing? And I can’t see it?” Sebastien asked.
Brandi shoved her tablet in Wendy’s face.
“Yup, that’s definitely a blush.”
Wendy covered her cheeks with her palms, her mitt taking over her face. “I am not. I’m too old to blush.”
“When was the last time you saw her turn as red as our ballcaps?” Jordan asked Brandi.
“I think it was the last day of never.” Brandi slapped her knees. “Hot damn. Thinking of the man makes you blush. What did he do to make that happen, hmmmm?”
“Can we talk about something else, please?” the usually unflappable Wendy asked. “Let’s play ball.”
“Oh, fine, Cheeks McBlushington.” Jordan decided to give her a break. She might need one herself, later.
Sebastien’s gaze left the tablet’s camera for a moment. “I have to go, too. I’ll try to come visit soon.”
“Bye, Prince Charming,” Jordan said. Brandi blew a kiss, and Wendy waved from over her cousin’s shoulder before Brandi closed the cover.
Jordan picked up the bucket of balls, and the women strolled past the rec room on their way to the peach orchard.
“I love you guys,” she said. From the softball field in college to potential bankruptcy, from a blue-eyed and dark-haired former lover to the same blue-eyed, dark-haired almost-current affair, from the comfort of having a drink to a leap off a cliff into the unknown, she could face anything with her friends at her back.
“You can’t be that drunk,” Brandi said. “You barely had onefinger of whiskey.”
Jordan laughed. “No, I mean, really.”
The women did their ritualistic handshake from the days when they played college ball, tapping fingers and elbows and ending in a high five. Soft breezes shook the branches of the peach trees, bringing down a cascade of leaves. Jordan stood behind the makeshift home plate and crouched behind Brandi, who was ready to hit. Wendy selected a ball from the bucket at her feet and assumed her pitcher’s stance. She brought her glove and ball together, then whipped the perfect pitch right to Jordan.
Girls’ night had begun.
“So. You know I’m being sued. This is why.” Jordan tossed the ball back to Wendy and let out a deep breath. “I gather information from interviewing employees, like if they enjoyed their job and trust the management, if they felt their skills were being utilized, what they thought of the corporate culture – things like that.”
“Like you did with us over the summer,” Brandi said. “To help us manage the Hall.”
“Right. Their answers were confidential, and I gave the owner an overall view of the information. The jerk tried to guess who had made negative comments, and then fired them. I think he already had it planned when he hired me. There’s no way he could have gotten it from my information. It’s an analysis of the data trends with no identifying information. It can’t be traced.”
Wendy pitched a ball and Brandi swung. The ball hit Jordan’s glove with some punch still left in it.
She tossed it back to Wendy. “I’m being sued for breach of contract by the employees who lost their jobs. They shut me down when I tried to explain how that wasn’t possible.”
She had scoured her files afterward, making sure she hadn’t accidentally sent the owner the wrong report or had forgotten tocode the employees correctly. There was nothing to find.
“But you’re not the one who fired them,” Wendy said.
“And why are they suing you?” Brandi asked. “Not him?”
Her friends’ loyalty warmed Jordan’s heart. They always had her back. “See, that would make more sense. My lawyer says the fact that the owner also fired people who were happy will prove I didn’t do anything wrong. He tried explaining my job to their lawyer, but she responded with a ridiculous settlement offer. She was enjoying the publicity and news crews staking out my house too much.”
