The Rejected Beast Bride's New Mate novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: The Roof

"They can't," I said. "He's out on bail for wrecking this place, and they bought it?"

"Cash," Wilda said. "Hallam Holdings. The old man sounded like he'd won the lottery."

She looked around the shop.

At the buns on the floor, the boards, the broken door.

Her ears drooped down her back, and for the first time since I'd known her she looked every one of her forty-one years.

The notice came the next morning.

A man from Hallam Security taped it to the plywood where the window used to be, right over STILL NOT SORRY.

Thirty days.

Quenby's was to vacate the premises by April sixteenth.

The tenant above, it said in smaller type, was to vacate with it.

Wilda took the notice down and put it in the oven.

"It's a copy," I said. "They'll have another."

"It made me feel better," she said.

Leonie came herself on Saturday.

She came at nine, at the busiest hour, so there would be a line.

She walked past the whole queue in her camel coat and pearls and stood at the counter.

The whole shop went silent.

"Clover," she said. "Let's be adults."

"I'm working, Leonie."

"I can see that." She looked at the patched case and the plywood. "Here's what I'm offering. You come home, today, and Mrs. Quenby keeps her little shop. Same rent, ten years. I'll put it in writing."

Wilda put down the tray she was holding.

"And if she doesn't?"

"Then on April sixteenth this building becomes a Hallam Security office." Leonie didn't even look at her. "Your staff will go on the street, and your regulars will buy their buns somewhere else."

Every head in the line turned to me.

The dock workers.

The wolf-kin crossing guard.

A young mother with a baby on her hip.

I thought about the bathroom floor.

I thought about Orrin's fingers under my door.

"No," I said.

Leonie's eyes narrowed.

"You'd let your friend lose her livelihood for your pride?"

"She's not letting me do anything," Wilda said. "I'd rather sell buns out of a shopping cart than have her back in your house. Next."

The young mother at the front of the line stepped up to the counter, right past Leonie's shoulder.

"A dozen cardamom," she said loudly. "And whatever she's not having."

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