Baked with Love

by Erin Wright

  So just how did someone her age get the money to buy a building, to renovate said building, and have enough money to live off while renovating said building? It wasn’t like he was an old man looking down at her like she was a child – he was fairly sure they were close to the same age, although he’d never asked her – but that just made him more qualified, in his ever-so-humble opinion, to know how much cash someone their age could reasonably be expected to have.

  And there was no doubt about it – Cady had a lot more than that.

  Just when he thought he had at least a little bit of her figured out, another mystery popped up and proved all over again that she was nothing but one big question mark.

  After some last-minute back and forths, they settled on a battle plan, but Gage realized that more than the tools he’d brought with him that morning, there was a whole list of supplies that he needed to make this project a go. “Wanna head down to the hardware store with me? I’ve got a list a mile long of supplies to buy, and I’m going to need your credit card to make it happen.”

  She bit her lip hesitantly. “The owner…he doesn’t seem to like me much. Not to mention, it seems like Home Depot or Lowes would be cheaper than Long Valley Hardware prices, right? Wouldn’t it be better to drive to Boise instead?” There was a hopeful lilt to her voice that his dick happily matched. The idea of spending hours in the truck driving to and from Boise and maybe grabbing a bite to eat while there…

  But unless his self-control levels had magically increased in the last ten minutes, spending that much time in Cady’s presence seemed like a truly bad idea, no matter what his dick was trying to tell him.

  “Couple of things,” he said slowly as he forced his brain to think through the situation and not just be overruled by parts considerably south of it. “Nothing will win Mr. Burbank over faster than you spending money in his store. He may not appreciate you quite literally darkening not just the doorway of his business but all of his business, but seeing you shop local will go a long ways in making him willing to move past that. Second, we’d need to take my truck – we can’t fit some of the longer pieces of wood into your tiny Jeep – and my truck doesn’t get the best gas mileage, so by time we drive to Boise and back, the chances of us actually saving money by shopping at a big box store are pretty damn small, not to mention the time wasted just driving.”

  He waved his hand dismissively. He didn’t want to make it sound like gas money was going to make or break him, because it wasn’t. Not only that, it wasn’t the true issue here.

  “I’m going to level with you,” he said seriously, and waited for her to nod her understanding before he continued. More than anything else, he had to make her get this. “If you’re gonna make it as a business owner here in this valley, the one thing you’ve gotta understand is how much it means to local merchants that you shop here whenever possible. Need a prescription? There’s a pharmacy across the street. Need flowers? There’s Happy Petals just down the street. Almost anything you need, you can find right here in Sawyer or with a quick trip over to Franklin.” He leaned against the counter, one leg crossed over the other as he did his best to explain to a big city girl what it was like to try to thrive in a world of Amazon and eBay and 1-800-Flowers. “The thing is, it’s hard for a small-town merchant because the locals expect them to always be there just in case they need something right at that moment, but they are otherwise willing to wait two days for some giant internet company to send them whatever they need so they can save that fourteen cents. Then when the small-town merchant closes up shop, the locals complain about how there are no shops in town and they have to drive so far to buy anything, without realizing that they were part of the problem to begin with.”

  He knew it was a long diatribe. He knew Cady didn’t deserve to get the brunt of that particular lecture, but still…if she was going to fit into small-town life, she had to understand this. Running to Boise for every little thing would kill off her business faster than anything else. If she didn’t think her fellow Sawyerite business owners would notice…well, it was up to him to disabuse her of that notion real quick.

  “Wow,” she finally said. “I didn’t know…” She trailed off. “Growing up in Boise, I just didn’t realize,” she continued after a long pregnant pause. She turned her golden brown eyes up to him. “In Boise, no business owner would notice where another business owner shopped, but I’m starting to think that here, they notice if I sneeze and don’t say ‘Excuse me’ afterwards.”

  “They do,” he broke in to assure her. “Everyone notices everything. There’s not much else to do in a small town but that.”

  “Grand,” she said sarcastically, shoving some wild curls off her forehead. There was one long strand that seemed to be stuck to the side of her face, though, and Gage’s fingers itched to brush that one away too.

  He clenched his hands into fists and kept them by his sides.

  Nothing would drive her away faster. Nothing.

  Perhaps he should look at getting that tattooed somewhere…

  “Anyway, it only makes sense that Mr. Burbank would notice if I came back from Boise with my Jeep loaded to the brim with building supplies. Local, it is,” she sighed, not exactly looking thrilled with the idea. He wasn’t sure he could blame her. Burbank was not a fan of hers, and didn’t try to hide that fact from anyone at all, let alone from her. “So, do we drive your truck down to the hardware store?”

  He shook his head. “It’s only a block and a half down the street. If we get anything too large or heavy, we can grab my truck and bring that back. But it’s best for you to be seen walking down the street, loaded down with plastic bags marked Long Valley Hardware. Every business owner who sees it will nod approvingly.”

  She laughed. “I had no idea buying screws was such a public action,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “I’m sure glad I have you here to help me out with this. After my Watson’s Electric debacle, who knows what other mistakes I might’ve gotten myself into without your guidance.”

  Not meeting her eyes, he flashed her a grin while looking somewhere vaguely to the left of her head. “What kind of friend would I be if I didn’t help?” he asked rhetorically.

  He was beginning to hate the word “friend,” he really, really was…

  Chapter 13

  Cady

  Despite what she hoped was an outwardly cavalier attitude about this little outing, inwardly, Cady was quaking in her boots. Well, tennis shoes to be exact. But no matter the footwear on her feet, the idea of walking into Long Valley Hardware again and seeing Mr. Burbank…

  He hadn’t exactly been friendly the first time she went over there, and that was before she cost him a full day of sales. Based on his anger that day, he didn’t seem like the understanding or forgiving type, and she doubted he’d had a major personality change in the last month.

  By time they’d walked the one and a half blocks to the hardware store, Cady felt like her chest was being tightened in a vise and she couldn’t seem to get a full breath into her lungs. He was probably going to yell at her – again – for being such an idiot for hiring Watson’s and really, what could she say in her defense?

  Dejected, she trailed Gage into the store, the stacks of items for sale piled haphazardly on every conceivable surface and some, she noted with surprise, were even hung from the ceiling. Mr. Burbank clearly took Waste not, want not literally. How had she missed ladders being hung by cables from the ceiling last time, let alone the inflatable kiddie pool?

  She hadn’t realized it then, but looking back on it, she was sure she’d still been stuck in that awful hazy world where nothing had seemed quite real. What else could explain her complete lack of observational skills? She’d thought she’d already changed and grown so much by that point – look at her, buying a business, selling her parents’ house and cars and personal items, and moving into an apartment in Sawyer – but just between then and now…

  She had changed. Relaxed. Opened up. Stopped being quite so ter
rified of every little thing.

  “Hey, Gage!” the older man said gruffly, walking up from the back and wiping his hands on a grease rag. “What’re you—”

  He caught sight of Cady then, and his pleasantly gruff – gruffly pleasant? – demeanor changed at the drop of a hat. “Miss,” he practically growled in what could be charitably termed a greeting…if one was feeling charitable.

  Cady wasn’t so sure she was.

  She nodded in return, but didn’t say a word. Did he really have to be quite such an ass? It wasn’t like she’d killed someone when she’d knocked out the electricity. No long-term damage had been done.

  “So Cady here is wanting me to do some carpentry work on her building,” Gage said smoothly, as if he was completely oblivious to the stand-off happening between her and the shop owner, “and she put together a list of items we need to make that happen. Cady, you got it?”

  She nodded and dug into her back pocket. The sooner she could hand the list over to Gage and let the two of them get to work gathering it all up, the sooner she could escape from this place. Gage’d seemed to think the older man would appreciate her shopping at his store, but Cady was beginning to think he’d been a mite bit optimistic. Mr. Burbank looked like he wouldn’t appreciate anything more than the two of them leaving.

  Or at least her leaving.

  But when she went to hand the list over to Gage, she realized he’d casually walked off and was inspecting a display of power tools. He was clearly expecting her to work together with Burbank to make this happen while he just stood around and waited.

  She shot a death glare at Gage’s back and then turned to the grumpy store owner with a sickly smile, holding the paper out. “Here’s what we came up with.”

  He took the proffered list and, pulling his reading glasses down from the top of his balding head, he began scanning it. Grumbling something under his breath that she was sure she didn’t want to hear, he wandered off to begin gathering items up.

  Cady paused for a moment, chewing her bottom lip, torn between wanting to stand next to Gage and just wait for everything to be gathered up, and going to help gather the items. After all, Mr. Burbank wasn’t her servant, here to do her bidding, but it wasn’t like she knew the place and—

  With an inner groan, she forced her feet towards the most promising aisle for wood glue, getting grumpier by the minute. If she was helping to look for items, shouldn’t Gage be helping, too? Debating between two choices, she finally snatched a bottle off the shelf and marched it back up to the front. Sure, he was there as an unpaid volunteer to help her out, but standing up at the front and leaving her by herself to deal with a crotchety old man wasn’t exactly a lot of help in her not-so-humble opinion, and—

  “Got the wood glue?” Mr. Burbank asked briskly, interrupting her thoughts. She nodded, and he checkmarked it off the list. “Just one item left – I’ll go grab the clamps.” And the older man headed down a different aisle, leaving the two of them behind.

  “What are you up to?” she whisper-demanded to Gage. “You’re abandoning me all alone to deal with this guy. I thought you were supposed to be helping me.” She tried to keep the accusing tone out of her voice.

  Okay, fine, she didn’t try very hard. She felt downright betrayed by him, to be honest.

  “Burbank is headed back up here,” was all Gage said. She gave him a second death glare and then turned back to the taciturn old man with a patently false smile on her face. Mr. Burbank began sorting out the pile of items to ring them up, but there was something about the set of his shoulders…

  Was it possible? It almost seemed like he wasn’t quite as pissed as he had been before.

  She kept a smile pasted on her face as she quickly ran through what was happening in her mind.

  Gage was trying to force the two of them to talk to each other, that much was obvious. But what was surprising was that it seemed to be working, or at least Burbank didn’t seem quite as happy-happy-joy-joy about the idea of ringing her neck as he had before.

  Huh.

  She was used to being scared of everyone and everything – at least, everyone in possession of a penis and past the age of puberty – but as she looked at the cranky old man standing in front of her, she realized that in this case, she could be fairly confident in the fact that he wasn’t going to jump the counter and try to rape her. You never knew for sure, of course, but he didn’t seem like the type and anyway, she had Gage by her side. Mr. Burbank would never try something with her wall of muscles behind her.

  So, she decided to try extending an olive branch. See how far that got her. The worst that could happen was he could grab the branch and whack her over the head with it.

  “How long have you owned the hardware store?” she asked him as he made his way through the pile of items.

  “Since 1985,” he said gruffly.

  Dead silence.

  Cady had never considered herself to be the queen of small talk, and that had only gotten worse over the years, not better. Sometimes, she could hide this fatal flaw from others if they were super chatty – Emma Dyer being a great example of that – but Mr. Burbank…

  Nope, he wasn’t helping the situation, not one bit.

  The only semi-intelligent comment she could think of to say was that she was born in 1985, so he’d been doing this as long as she’d been alive, but that just didn’t seem like a great idea. That’d only encourage him to continue to look at her like a little kid, not something she needed any help with.

  Before she could come up with something else to ask – anything at all – he unexpectedly added, “Always thought my boys would take it over from me but all three moved away from Sawyer, and so far, they ain’t had any grandkids that’ve made noise ‘bout taking over either, not like Gage here did with his grandparents.” He jerked his head towards Gage. “So I just keep working away. I s’pose I’ll just be here until I keel over one day in Aisle 2.” He snorted a little at that. “Joke’s on them – after I’m gone, they’ll have to deal with this store after all, even if it’s just to sell it all off.” He chortled at the thought, and then rattled off the total.

  Cady smiled and nodded, sliding her card through the machine. Good manners dictated that she respond in some way to his comments about his sons but nothing appropriate came to mind, and then the moment had passed to say anything at all. Taking the receipt, she gathered up half the bags – the lighter half; her momma didn’t raise no fool – and headed for the door.

  “Good luck,” the crotchety old man called out after her, but in that moment, he didn’t seem nearly so crotchety as he had before.

  “Uh, thank you,” she stuttered, pushing her way through the glass front door and holding it open with her back until Gage made it through with the rest of the bags. She looked at his straining muscles and felt a flash of guilt at the sight. She really had left some heavy bags for him.

  But he didn’t say a word about it and fell into step beside her as they headed back down the street.

  “He doesn’t expect women to know a damn thing about construction supplies, does he?” she asked once they got far enough away from the store that geriatric ears wouldn’t be able to overhear her. Damn the chauvinistic pigs of the world. It wasn’t like she was some sort of expert, but she did know which end of the hammer to use, despite what Burbank seemed to expect. Cady’s dad had done a few projects with her over the years, teaching her the basics. She wasn’t about to put herself in charge of building someone a house, but she knew the difference between wood glue and cement glue.

  “Not at all,” Gage said cheerfully.

  “And you knew that me helping look for supplies and being the one to talk to him would impress him.”

  “Yup,” Gage affirmed, just as cheerfully.

  “You could’ve let me in on the plan,” she complained, shifting the bags in her hands. Even as light as they were, they were starting to dig into her palms.

  “Don’t take this personally, Cady, but you’re not
a clutch player.”

  Finally, they were back at her store, having walked right past the Muffin Man. Her stomach rumbled at the glorious smells drifting out of the bakery, but she chose to ignore them for the moment. “‘Clutch player’?” she repeated. She set the bags down for a moment – glorious relief – and dug her keys out of her pocket, unlocking the door to the Smoothie Queen to let them back in.

  “You know, for working with athletes for years, you sure don’t know any sports terms,” Gage said dryly, following her inside.

  She shrugged. “I told you, sports just aren’t my thing. The last thing I should’ve done was go into sports medicine.” She rolled her eyes at herself. “The advisor for the major was cute, and I thought…well, anyway. So. What is a clutch player?”

  Gage was already unloading the bags on the counter, spreading out the supplies to get ready to work. “When a player can come in at the last moment and save the game. A clutch player does well under pressure, and you, Cady Walcott, just don’t fit that description. You tend to freeze up. I figured that the less you knew about the plan beforehand, the less you could worry and stew about it and screw it all up. Better to surprise you with the deets and let you figure it out on the fly. Less chances of you doing or saying something you didn’t mean.”

  She crossed her arms and gave him a death glare for the third time that day. He really was on a roll.

  “Your confidence in me is overwhelming,” she said sarcastically.

  He had the good grace to look a little guilty at that. “You have plenty of things you’re good at,” he rushed to reassure her. “Most women don’t know what a jigsaw is, unless you’re talking about puzzle pieces, and talking through what to do here…you had a couple of good ideas that I hadn’t even thought of. But dealing with people you don’t know well isn’t a talent that tops the list for you. There’s nothing wrong with that – I have plenty of things I’m not good at.”