The Merchant of Venice Beach Read Online Free

was surrounded by other unusual little stores. Compared to her neighbors, the Bun’s inventory of teas and books was actually pretty diverse. There was a shop that sold only candles, another that was dedicated solely to prisms, and there was a kite store, to name just a few of the oddities in the immediate environment. There were also a few new restaurants popping up on the boardwalk, running the gamut from chrome monstrosities to quaint little cafés with European-looking courtyards. One of the restaurants had a pet possum, which ran around between the feet of surprised patrons. At night, Corky was often mistaken for a rat, and the relieved guests were so happy to find out they were not being menaced by a rattus domesticus that they forgot to call the health department.
In all honesty, if it were anywhere else, the shop would probably be considered an eyesore, but the Bun was chicly ramshackle. Or at least it was in Suzanna’s eyes.
The building itself was an oddity in Southern California architecture. It looked more like an old-fashioned house from the New England coast. White, weather-beaten shingles covered the entire two-story house. Suzanna’s pride and joy was the round tower tucked into one corner. That turret was the focal point of the Bun and drew people like a homing device. A wide porch stretched from one end of the structure to the other and looped enthusiastically around one side. A massive door stood at the top of five steps—the staircase could easily manage several people coming and going, all with books or pastries in their bags. The door served both the tea shop and the bookstore. It wasn’t until you were inside that you determined your destination. To the right was the tearoom, to the left, the little book nook.
The teashop was cute without being cloying. The walls of the tearoom were a very pale mountain laurel, not pink and not lavender and, while Suzanna had lots of china, none of it matched. She pretended it was a design choice, but in reality, she hadn’t had a ton of money to drop on cups and little plates. Most of her stuff came from Big Lots and Goodwill.
Suzanna was determined to put her mark on the place when she bought it, but she had no money, so decorating the Bun was a challenge. Besides having no money, the building itself presented something of a decorating challenge. The shop was oddly shaped. It had a couple of . . . well, to call them rooms would be a highly inflated statement. They were more like a couple of alcoves, which would be great if Suzanna and the guys were running a romantic little hideaway, but very few people have their smoldering tête-à-têtes in tearooms.
After much deliberation, Suzanna blew her entire decorating budget on long, slender rectangular sketches of antique-looking flowers that she found in a thrift shop. One of her tea drinkers who was very handy with calligraphy added some great swirly descriptions of the flowers. When she framed them and finally got them positioned among all the windows, Suzanna felt the whole room come together. Fernando always called them the Stations of the Carnations, which only amused Catholics, but that never seemed to stop him.
The other side of the store had a different vibe altogether. The basic atmosphere was rustic, with redwood bookcases lining the walls. Books overflowed from the shelves and more books were stacked in every corner and heaped in hemp baskets that dotted the narrow aisles. Customers probably thought there was a method to the madness, but in reality, there was only madness.
Although Suzanna owned the place, she had always been the first to admit it took the three of them to make a go of things. Fernando worked as the chef and supervisor in the tearoom (providing both the “bun” and the “scone” half of “the Epic Scone”) and Eric managed the books (providing the “epic”). Currently, Eric was studying to get a BA in business management through UCLA night courses, which might make him better with