Red Red Rose Read Online Free

caffeinated. Supply and demand, the key to any successful
business like mine, and in Bellingham there was no shortage of demand. Our
doors had only been open six months and already we were seeing the kind of
profits that would have us in the black much sooner than I anticipated. It
helped that my financial backers went by Mom and Dad and had a zero percent
interest rate on the small business loan I’d taken out to get up and running.
As long as business kept up, I’d have that paid off in no time and really be
able to start turning a profit.
    The
pride in my success was only dampened by Emily’s absence. More than my business
partner, she was my marketing and advertising expert and a big part of the
reason the doors here were ever swinging. She’d been in from the moment I
pitched her my idea when it was nothing more than scribbles and doodles on the
back of a takeout menu. For a business major and a marketing major who’d been
wasting their degrees after graduation waiting tables at Nicki’s on the
waterfront, it was our chance to strike out, to take a risk and do something
that could be great, and it was. A year of planning went into our business designs
before we ever signed the lease on this building, and it was months more of
planning and preparing before our grand opening. It was all paying off, but
without my partner and friend here, the success tasted more bitter than sweet.
    At
closing time, I had Nina, another of my girls, who’d come on shift to replace
Cassie at three, hit the open light and we started collecting the trash bags.
    “Hey
Danny, we’re closing up shop for the night,” I called to our last customer. His
eyes lifted from his laptop screen and he pushed his glasses up his nose,
scanning the now empty shop.
    “That
time already?”
    I
let out a soft chuckle, “Yep, you’ve only been here for eight hours today. I
swear you’re here more than most of my employees.”
    He
brushed his brown, shaggy curls out of his face and started packing up his
laptop and the paperwork spread out around him. “Sorry, I hope I’m not in the
way. I just like coming here. The atmosphere is good for my creativity.”
    “You
know we don’t mind having you here. You’re keeping me in business.” I smiled.
He’d started coming in not long after we opened and never left. He had to be in
his late twenties, and worked for one of the big tech companies in Seattle.
Whatever he did for them, he could work remotely. Most days he did that from
the shop. This wasn’t the first time I’d had to give him a shove out the door
at closing time. He could lose himself in his work for hours, only coming up
for refills on his quad shot, white chocolate, caramel mocha– extra caramel. I
didn’t know what would kill him first, the caffeine or the sugar.
    “Thanks,
Nora.” He swept the last of his stuff into a messenger bag. “See you ladies
tomorrow.”
    I
followed him to the door. “Have a good night, Danny.” I locked it behind him
and helped Nina finish up closing tasks.
    “Where
are you parked?” I asked her, grabbing the large, combined trash bag.
    “I’m
out front, but I’ll walk with you out back to take the trash out.”
    We
gathered our coats and purses and I set the alarm before we left through the
back door. I dumped the bag in the dumpster, and Nina and I walked to my car so
that I could drive her around front to hers. With a couple bars and taverns
around, and with everything going on, I didn’t like the idea of her cutting
through the alley alone. Once I’d dropped her safely at her chariot, home was
calling my name.
    It
was only a ten minute drive from the shop to the house Emily and I rented on
Fairhaven, just off the water. It was a cute blue house, set back from the road
in the privacy of trees. At night, it almost gave it an eerie feel, made all
the more so knowing I would be walking into an empty house, no roommate waiting
for me. It didn’t help that I realized as I pulled down the drive to