Red Velvet Revenge Read Online Free Page A

said.
    Angie looked like she wanted to kick him. “Well, that’s just stupid.”
    He shrugged. “I just report the trends. I don’t make them up.”
    Mel felt her stomach twist with anxiety. She loved her cupcake bakery. Yes, she made special-order cakes, too, but she really just loved the compact size and perfection of the cupcake. She didn’t want to turn Fairy Tale Cupcakes into Fairy Tale Whoopie Pies.
    “Well, the invite is wide-open,” Slim said. “The rodeo is in two weeks. If you folks want in, you just give me a holler and I’ll make room for you.”
    “Oh, we want in,” Marty said.
    “Marty!” Mel and Angie said at the same time. “We need to discuss this.”
    Marty stuck out his lower lip in a full-on pout, and Mel frowned at him.
    “That’s not going to work,” she said.
    He huffed and slouched into the booth across from Oz.
    Mel rolled her eyes. Honestly, why was it that all of the men in her life had the emotional maturity of twelve-year-olds?
    Tammy checked the delicate gold watch encrusted with diamonds on her wrist. “Oh, Slim, we have to get going. We have that meeting with the Chamber of Commerce.”
    “Oh, right,” he said. He smiled at the others. “She keeps me on task. I don’t think I could function without her.”
    Tammy gave him an adoring smile, and Mel decided that the Hazards were one of the nicest couples she’d ever met.
    “Thanks for the ride,” Mel said. “You really saved our bacon.”
    Slim grinned. “Are you kidding? For cupcakes, I’d have driven you all the way down to Tucson.”
    They left with a wave, and Mel realized they had been the only visitors in the bakery all day. The afternoon stretched out before her, and she thought of the stack of bills sitting on the desk in her office.
    “Oh, Mel,” Slim called to her from the door. “Just so you know, the rodeo draws about twenty-five thousand visitors.”
    The door shut behind him with a thud that masked the sound of Mel’s jaw hitting the black-and-white tile floor.
    Twenty-five
thousand
?
    She spun around to face the others, and she was pretty sure she had dollar signs shining in her eyes.
    “Angie, get Sal on the phone. We need an update on the van, stat.”
    Mel spent the afternoon planning for the cupcakepalooza that would be the rodeo if they could manage to pull it off. Marty was giddy, Oz was just happy to have his van being worked on, Tate was dubious, and Angie was oddly quiet.
    “So, this whole plan is dependent upon Oz’s van being functional,” Tate said.
    “Yeah, and Sal says it’s doable,” Mel said.
    They were sitting at the steel worktable in her kitchen. She had a notebook out and was making a list of the bakery’s most popular cupcakes. She figured the best way to manage the rodeo crowd was to keep it simple with just four varieties of cupcake that hit everyone’s sweet spot.
    “So, you’re just going to close the shop for the week and take off,” Tate said.
    “Tate, we are in a lull of epic proportions. The mercury has hovered around a hundred and fourteen for the past week, and there’s no break in sight,” Mel said. “No one wants to eat a cupcake right now. They only want frozen foods.”
    “Maybe you should freeze your cupcakes,” he said.
    “Angie, back me up,” Mel said. “You were just saying that we should close for a week or two.”
    Tate turned from Mel to study Angie. “You wanted to close? Any special reason?”
    Mel could have kicked her own behind. Tate and Angie had been her best friends since junior high school. The three of them had bonded over a love of old movies and junk food. Unbeknownst to Mel, Angie had carried a torch for Tate for years.
    Like Mel, Tate had been completely oblivious right upuntil Angie landed herself a rock-star boyfriend. Now he stood pining on the sidelines while she tried to figure out whether she was going to move to Los Angeles to live with Roach or not. He had never managed to gather up the courage to tell her how he