Year of Living Blonde (Sweet Life in Seattle, Book 1) Read online

  YEAR OF LIVING BLONDE

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Epilogue

  Return of the Jerk ~ Coming Sept 17, 2015

  Books by Andrea Simonne

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Year of Living Blonde

  Copyright © 2015 Andrea Simonne

  All rights reserved.

  Published by Liebe Publishing

  Second Electronic Edition, April 2015

  Edited by Hot Tree Editing

  www.hottreeediting.com

  Interior Design and Formatting by:

  Christine Borgford, Perfectly Publishable

  www.perfectlypublishable.com

  Cover Copyright © Xsandra istockphoto.com

  © CURAphotography Fotolia.com

  Cover Design © by

  LBC Graphics

  Chapter Nine—As the Clock Ticks appears permission of In Spite of Cupid by Haley Burke

  Chapter Eighteen—Phoenix Scorpions appear permission of Goal Mates by Tami Raymen

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the author.

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Liebe Publishing

  [email protected]

  www.liebepublishing.com

  “I WANT A divorce.”

  “One second,” Natalie calls out. The smell of citrus and sugar wafts around her as she pulls out two dozen lemon ricotta muffins from the oven and places them on a rack to cool. The convection fan buzzes loudly before she closes the oven door.

  “Did you hear what I said?”

  Natalie sets the timer for three minutes so she won’t forget to remove the cooling muffins from their pans before they turn rubbery. “Would you like one of these before you go? There are some cinnamon scones as well, though I haven’t frosted them yet.”

  “No, I don’t want a muffin or a scone! Are you even listening to me?”

  Natalie turns toward Peter. “What are you doing up so early?” She grabs the powdered sugar. It’s five in the morning, her usual baking time, but normally he wouldn’t see his first dental patient until eight.

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you.” He takes a deep breath. “I’m leaving you, Natalie. I want a divorce.”

  The words stop her. She puts the powdered sugar down. “Is that a joke?” And then she laughs. “Oh, I get it, because it’s our wedding anniversary. Very funny.”

  Peter shakes his head. “I’m not joking.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying it’s no good between us anymore. You’re never around.” He turns his head to the side, avoiding her eyes. His skin flushes the way it does when he’s nervous. “The truth is I’ve met someone. I figure there’s no point hiding it anymore. Maybe you even suspected?”

  Natalie blinks, staring at him as all the blood rushes from her head. “My God, did you just say you’re cheating on me?” The oven timer starts beeping, but she doesn’t move.

  Peter shifts uncomfortably. “Aren’t you going to turn that off?”

  “Answer me.”

  “It’s not like that. I’m in love with her.”

  Natalie reaches out to steady herself. There’s a metallic taste in her mouth, as if she’s eaten the baking powder sitting on her counter. “I can’t believe this. You bastard!” The oven timer beeps in the background with the pulse of an alarm.

  Peter seems surprised by her fury. “I was hoping we could be civil,” he mumbles.

  “Civil? You announce that you’re cheating on me on our fourteenth wedding anniversary and you want me to be civil?”

  “Come on, Natalie, the fact that you’re surprised by any of this just shows how dead our marriage really is. It sounds like you had no idea I was even unhappy.”

  “You never told me you were unhappy! I know things aren’t perfect, but—”

  “Well, I am unhappy!” he snaps. “I have been for a long time.”

  Natalie goes quiet, the awful taste still in her mouth. “What about Chloe? She’ll be devastated. Don’t you care about her?”

  “Chloe isn’t a baby anymore. She’s eleven years old now and besides, I’m not leaving her. I’m leaving you.”

  Natalie studies Peter. She realizes it’s been a while since she’s really looked at him—his tall, lanky frame, his pale-blue eyes, all of it so endearing and familiar. He’s still a handsome man. She used to worry that she wasn’t attractive enough for him, that he’d settled when he married her. But he’d always told her she was a diamond in the rough.

  She swallows and asks softly, “Don’t you love me anymore?” It’s a hard question to have to put to her own husband.

  Peter hesitates. “I don’t want to hurt you, but I think you deserve the truth. I’ve fallen in love with another woman. She makes me feel alive.”

  “And I make you feel what—dead?” Natalie tries to catch her breath. “Who is she?”

  “She’s someone I met. You don’t know her.”

  “What does she look like?”

  Peter shakes his head. “Let’s not go through this.”

  “How old is she?” Natalie asks, a hard edge to her voice. She tries to imagine this other woman and it comes to her in a clear vision. Some hot young thing with a great body who figures she’s made a nice catch for herself, snagging a successful dentist, and doesn’t feel any guilt about breaking up a family. “Peter, you’re just having a midlife crisis, can’t you see that?”

  “You’ve got it all wrong. It isn’t like that. It’s not about age.”

  “Of course it is.”

  “She’s not younger than me. She’s forty-eight.”

  “What?” Natalie almost chokes. “You’re leaving me for a woman who’s,” she stumbles over the math, “thirteen years older than I am?”

  “I keep telling you it’s not about age. It’s about the kind of life I want to live. Lena excites me.”

  Lena. Natalie tries to absorb this, tries to absorb that her husband is in love with a forty-eight-year-old woman named Lena.

  The oven alarm is still beeping and Natalie finally reaches over to shut it off. She glances down at the muffins. Ruined. She won’t be able to bring them into the bakery. After sitting in the pan so long, they’ll be too rubbery to sell.

  Peter comes over, stands beside her and leans in close. For a surprising moment Natalie thinks he�
�s going to give her a hug. She softens—is he having second thoughts? But then he’s reaching past her. He isn’t trying to hug her. He’s helping himself to a muffin.

  Natalie watches in amazement as Peter stands beside her, takes a large bite, and begins to chew. “These are fantastic. Is this a new flavor?”

  “Just what do you think you’re doing?” Natalie sputters.

  Peter stops chewing for a second. “Eating breakfast?”

  “You can’t just come in here and announce that you’re leaving me for another woman and expect me to let you eat my muffins!”

  “I can’t?”

  “No!”

  Peter steps away from her, clutching his muffin protectively. “I’m going to go then.” He looks away, but then glances back longingly at the rest of the ones in the pan.

  Natalie grits her teeth with rage. “Do you want some more of these?”

  “Sure, I—”

  “Here you go then!” She reaches down, and in a moment of fury, grabs one of the muffins and throws it at Peter as hard she can. It bounces off his eyebrow with a satisfying thump.

  Definitely too rubbery to sell.

  “Ow!” Peter looks astonished as he puts his hand up to rub his eyebrow. With his pale Scandinavian skin, it’s already turning pink. “What are you doing?”

  Still riding the wave of fury, she reaches down and grabs another muffin. This one hits him right in the middle of his forehead before crumbling into bits. Bullseye!

  “Hey, that hurts—stop it!” Peter backs away from her.

  Natalie’s next muffin gets him in the chin.

  “Cut it out!”

  Just in time, he manages to swat away the one aimed for his nose. In alarm, Peter turns and runs out of the kitchen while Natalie pelts him with muffins.

  “You’re crazy!” he yells.

  With some satisfaction, she sees that the back of his blue polo shirt is now covered with butter stains.

  “That’s right, you cheating asshole! You better run!”

  The front door slams and Natalie is left panting in the aftermath of silence. She tries to catch her breath, but then dashes to the sink, barely making it in time before she throws up.

  Natalie scrubs her face and brushes her teeth before loading the rest of the pastries and sweet breads she baked that morning into the back of her white van. Despite what just happened, she still has to work. She starts up the van and pulls out.

  A memory of her mom comes to her. It’s natural for men to want more than one woman. It’s who they come home to that matters.

  Natalie takes a deep breath. She always thought Peter was her home. To her surprise, she feels the sting of tears and quickly touches her eyes, but they’re dry as always.

  Even now I can’t cry.

  She swallows and looks out at the road. How did this happen? After all this time, she thought Peter was a sure bet—though as a gambler’s daughter, she should have known better.

  There’s no such thing as a sure bet.

  Natalie thinks about the past year, and it’s true what Peter said. Work has taken center stage and she hasn’t been home much. She and her business partner, Blair, opened their bakery, La Dolce Vita, a little over a year ago and it’s taken a lot of time and energy. Though it’s been a labor of love, they’ve worked like slaves. Chloe often came to the bakery after school, but Peter was another matter. They’ve been apart more often than together. But didn’t Peter tell her that he understood? It was the same way in the early days of his dental practice, yet somehow they’d weathered that.

  She pulls her van into the alley behind the bakery. It’s a typical overcast day in Seattle, and since they’re in the U-District, a number of college students with backpacks are walking toward campus for summer school.

  It was a stroke of luck when she and Blair found this spot. They’d wanted to open their own bakery for a while and had been searching for the perfect location. When the realtor told them about this coffee shop with a bakery attached near the University of Washington, they jumped on it even though it was smaller than what they were hoping to find. An Italian family had owned the place for years, and they’d decided to keep the name. La Dolce Vita—The Sweet Life. It seemed an appropriate moniker.

  Unfortunately, the kitchen isn’t big enough, with only two commercial ovens and as their business has picked up, Natalie has been forced to use her own ovens at home. They need to expand, and in a happy twist of fate, the space next door is available, but for some reason their cantankerous landlord is resistant. Actually, resistant is too polite a word. They can only reach him through his lawyer, who has stopped returning their letters and phone calls.

  Natalie parks the van right behind the bakery’s back door and gets out. The morning air is scented with diesel and damp cement. She props open the bakery’s back door, and when she sees Carlos, one of their baristas, asks him if he’ll help bring in the baking racks.

  It takes the two of them about ten minutes to unload everything. With the last of it, Natalie follows him inside, carrying the final large rack. The familiar scent of butter and fresh espresso from the kitchen surrounds her.

  “Thank goodness, you’re here.” Blair rushes over. “It’s been a crazy morning. Two people had birthday cake orders we couldn’t find, and I’ve been scrambling to get them done.”

  “What happened?”

  Blair, a redhead with porcelain skin and a classic preppy style, sighs in annoyance. “The usual. Zoe took a phone order and didn’t write it down. When she comes in I’m going to drag her around by that nose ring until she screams.”

  They’d recently hired two part-time bakers and one of them, Zoe, was a real space cadet. Twice now, Natalie had caught her taking a phone order without writing down a single thing.

  Blair shakes out her apron and reties it. “I’m seriously tempted to fire her.”

  “Let’s talk to her about it again. Maybe we could have Carlos take the cake orders when neither of us is available.”

  “She should be able to handle it. Carlos isn’t going to be able to manage both drink orders and the phones.”

  “I know, but you have to admit she’s doing a good job otherwise. She’s fantastic with cupcakes.” What she doesn’t say is Zoe has a young son and Natalie doesn’t have the heart to fire her when jobs are so scarce.

  Blair smiles knowingly. “You’re too soft-hearted.”

  Natalie shrugs. “I suppose.”

  “Okay, Zoe stays, but,” Blair holds up her finger, “if she keeps screwing up, she’s out on her forgetful ass.”

  “Agreed.” Natalie means to grab her white apron and start work, but instead, she sits down.

  “Are you okay?” Blair studies her with concern. “You look pale.”

  “No, I’m not okay.” She and Blair started out purely as business partners, but have become good friends over the last year. Natalie sighs. “Peter told me this morning he wants a divorce.”

  Blair’s mouth opens with surprise. “That’s crazy. Why?”

  “He’s been seeing another woman. They’re ‘in love.’” Natalie uses her fingers to make air quotes.

  “I can’t believe it.” Blair shakes her head in sympathy, then pauses. “You’re keeping the house though, right?”

  Natalie isn’t surprised at Blair’s practicality. If Peter takes the house, Natalie won’t have access to her kitchen’s large double ovens anymore.

  “Peter is moving in with his girlfriend.” Natalie struggles to get the word out. She swallows, still feeling sick to her stomach. “Chloe and I are definitely staying in the house.”

  “Is there anything I can do? Just name it. You know I’m here for you.”

  “I know. Thank you for asking. I’m mostly in shock.”

  “That’s understandable. I mean, it just happened and at least he’s telling you face-to-face. It could be worse.”

  Blair’s husband, Road, had left a goodbye note on her pillow one morning four years ago and she hasn’t seen or spoken to
him since.

  “I heard Road was in India and saw the Dalai Lama.” There’s a hard expression on Blair’s face. “Can you believe that?”

  “Who told you?”

  Blair brushes some dried frosting from her white apron. “Tori. She’s still my sister-in-law.”

  Natalie has always wondered if Blair was still in love with her husband. Why not file for divorce? Surely after four years, she could get one on the grounds of abandonment.

  Blair waves her hand dismissively. “It’s all in the past. Who cares, right? At least I don’t have to see his jerk face every day. Plus, I got full custody of Isadora.”

  Isadora is Blair’s classic green 1965 Convertible Ford Mustang. “At least we never had to fight over her.”

  Natalie imagines Blair and her husband fighting over the car as if it were a child. She hopes she and Peter won’t start fighting over Chloe or the house. At the thought, Natalie’s eyes narrow. There is no way on Earth anyone is taking away my daughter or my home. But she doubts Peter will cause that kind of trouble.

  Though, he was furious earlier. He’d come back right away and marched upstairs, reappearing with one of their suitcases. It was so quick that he must have already had it packed and hidden somewhere. He was covered in butter stains.

  Natalie tried to apologize for throwing muffins at him, but Peter never gave her the chance.

  “I’m moving in with Lena,” he informed her in a nasty tone. “Don’t bother trying to contact me unless it’s an emergency. I’m really disappointed in the way you acted about all this. I can’t believe you resorted to violence!”

  Natalie rolled her eyes.

  Watching him leave, her hand twitched at her side like a gunslinger’s, wishing she had one more muffin she could bounce off his head.

  “He’s here!” Carlos pokes his head through the swinging door into the kitchen. “Espresso Breve, table two!”

  Natalie takes a sip from her double latte. Espresso Breve is a hot guy who comes in regularly and orders an Espresso Breve, so that’s what they all started calling him.

  Since all the bakers are women, Espresso Breve is the high point of their day and usually causes a commotion. He’s tall, lean muscled, broad-shouldered, and more handsome than God. He’s also more charming than the Devil, according to everyone who’s waited on him.