by Marina Adair
“The only thing I get from you is acute irritation.”
Luke glanced down at her fingers—which were desperately gripping the loops of his jeans and tugging him closer. Even worse, his hands were nowhere near her, but shoved behind his back—like a damn gentleman. “You sure about that, sweetness?”
Chapter 7
The next afternoon, Kennedy looked out the pass-through window into the front of the shop and felt equal parts excitement and panic bubble up.
The excitement came from the steady cluster of customers, all smiles and all waiting for their turn to sample one of Kennedy’s five newest creations—she was sure. She’d spent a good part of yesterday waiting for her apples to arrive, even broke down and texted Luke as to where her apples were. His response was to tell her they could talk about it over dinner—or perhaps during pillow talk.
Kennedy did what any professional businesswoman would do when their apples were being held hostage by a walking fantasy and his big green tractor—she ordered take-out and slept at the bakery. It gave her plenty of time to dream up and execute her new appleless additions to the menu. A smart move on her part, since the apples were a no-show and she was quickly running out.
Only now, it was nearing lunchtime and she was ready for a nap. The twelve-hour, uninterrupted kind. But every time she considered closing her eyes, all she could see was Luke.
In her bed.
And that was where some of the panic set in. She’d spent last night trying not to think about Luke in her bed, and this morning trying not to think about him naked in her bed. Now that Paula and Lauren had showed up to help with the customers, giving Kennedy a little reprieve, she blamed the strange fascination on sleep deprivation and grabbed a slice of pie.
“Thanks for helping me,” Kennedy said to Ali as she pushed back through the swinging doors, after delivering yet another tray of Deep Dish HumDingers to the front of the shop.
“You had me at free pie,” Ali said, taking her third piece of autumn berry pie that morning. Without bothering to use a plate or utensil, she bit off a piece like it was pizza, then groaned with contentment. “But I would have done it for the sheer fact that helping you will piss off Hawk.”
Kennedy didn’t like that she’d already made enemies in town, especially with two other businessmen whom people seemed to respect. But the thought of having someone in her corner felt really nice. Even if it was a connection based on a mutual dislike. So when Ali had knocked on the back door about an hour ago, in desperate need of coffee after pulling an all-nighter herself, Kennedy invited her in for a late breakfast—and maybe even a little girl talk.
“Well, thanks. I couldn’t have restocked the shop this fast without you.”
Kennedy looked at the stacking racks, beautifully stocked with an array of autumn delights, then to the cooling shelves to the far left, which were nearly empty.
They’d moved a lot of product already that morning, mostly apple pies but some of her newer items as well, and there was still a steady flow of customers—who might be adventurous enough to try her fig cobblers.
Needing two minutes off her feet, and with a warm and delicious-smelling mini pecan pie, Kennedy took her well-deserved break and leaned against the counter.
“So the talk about you and Luke isn’t true?” Ali asked.
Kennedy choked on a pecan. “There is talk? About me and Luke?”
“This is Destiny Bay—looking too long at someone who happens to be single is talk-worthy. Having a man’s truck parked outside your house?” Ali laughed. “I’m surprised his mom hasn’t placed an announcement in The Acorn.”
“Shhh,” Kennedy hissed, checking the pass-through to make sure Paula hadn’t heard. Thankfully, Paula was working the cash register and the crowd with equal aplomb. Fi was a no-show, claiming she would never serve customers second-rate produce.
“Wait.” Kennedy spun around to face her new friend. “Luke stayed at the cottage again last night?”
Ali paused, then grabbed a mini pie of her own and hopped up on the counter, her feet swinging. “Again, huh? So he has been at your place all week?”
Kennedy closed the swinging shutters, shielding them from the front of the shop—and prying eyes. “Two nights doesn’t make it all week.”
“It does when today is Tuesday. Monday. Tuesday.” Ali ticked the days off on her fingers. “Sounds like all week to me.”
“The first night he broke in and made me dinner.”
“Gawd…what a jerky thing to do.” Ali laughed.
“It was,” Kennedy defended, knowing how ridiculous that sounded. “He did it to play with me, remind me that I was in his house, his town, and he was just waiting for me to fail so he could swoop in and gobble up my apples.”
“Gobble?” Ali took a bite and licked her fingers. “Well, thank God it was all part of his plan to get his hands on your apples. Most women in this town would have taken Luke Callahan making them dinner as a proposal.”
Kennedy rolled her eyes. “I’m not most women, so I told him to leave and he did. Although he claims to have come back.”
You sure about that, sweetness?
Kennedy had convinced herself that he’d said it just to get to her. Only now she wasn’t so sure. What if he had slept there? In her bed?
And watched her strip?
Only to fall right to sleep—like a gentleman.
This was worse than she thought. She had no intentions of encouraging Luke, because she was done with men. But he could have at least made a move and given her the chance to shoot him down.
Gentleman, her ass.
“And last night I was here. All night.” She pointed to her pies as proof. “Nothing to talk about.”
Ali looked disappointed. “So the bloodshot eyes and dreamy expression aren’t from a night being charmed to heaven and back?”
“No,” Kennedy said, taking a big bite of pie. “The only thing getting heated in my life is pies.”
As it should be, she reminded herself.
The shutters swung back and Paula’s round face appeared in the opening. “We need a few more HumDingers.” She gave a panicked glance over her shoulder. “Make that all of the HumDingers.”
Appetite gone, Kennedy put her cobbler aside and rushed to see what was going on.
One look and panic didn’t even begin to convey what she felt. In the past two minutes the cluster had become a never-ending line.
No, not a line—more like a mob of customers waving twenty percent coupons in the air. Some of them were double fisting the discounts, which if applied solely to the HumDingers, would create a problem of gigantic proportions.
“Where did they all come from?” Kennedy asked, understanding how Walmart employees felt on Black Friday. “I didn’t print that many coupons!”
“I saw Margret Collins using the copy machine at the senior center this morning. I didn’t think much of it,” Paula said, her brow covered in a thin sheen of sweat. “I should have made the connection. Today is coupon bingo, and Margret’s been telling folks since Sunday that she was tired of losing to Louise Ferndale, said it was time to put up or shut up.” Paula lowered her voice. “And by the looks of things, bingo just let out.”
“And she went big with my coupons?”
“It’s her way of showing you support, dear,” Paula said. “Helping you succeed.”
Kennedy looked back at the crowd, which had multiplied in the past ten seconds, and wondered if it was too late to close up shop. She could already tell by a quick glance that she didn’t make enough pies. Not for this kind of crowd. “How many of those people do you think are open to trying something new?”
“I think a lot of folks will be open to tasting some new items,” Paula said, doing her best to look encouraging, then disappeared with the pies back behind the counter to help with crowd control.
“I agree, folks will try it. After all, it’s the neighborly thing to do. And I know they’ll like it, but what if they like apples more?”
“I should call Dudley just in case,” Kennedy said, hating that it sounded as if she lacked faith in her pies. “Have him bring out the riot squad.”
“Destiny Bay doesn’t have a riot squad. They have a sheriff, three deputies, and a K-9 Unit, which is just what Dudley calls his basset hound so he can bring him to work,” Ali said, coming up beside her. “Plus he’s three people back on the right in the orange jacket and camo hat, holding”—she squinted against the sun beaming through the large front windows—“six coupons.”
Ali grabbed one of the last few trays of deep dish and slid it through the window. “Please tell me you limited it to one HumDinger per customer.”
“No limits.” Kennedy closed her eyes. She was doomed.
“You’re not doomed, you have me,” Ali said, shoving another bite in her mouth, then hopping off the counter to grab an apron.
And wasn’t that the sweetest thing someone could say to her right then. Kennedy felt as if she were facing a firing squad and a woman she’d met only a few days ago had her back. “Thanks, I’m not used to someone on my side.”
“Well, get used to it,” Ali said with a bright smile. “Now, go make me some more pies to throw in that oven.”
“I can’t make more apple pies. Not with those coupons floating around,” Kennedy explained, a sense of desperation and deep disappointment filling her chest. “If I were to fulfill every coupon with a HumDinger, which takes five pounds of apples to make, two pounds being heirlooms, I would be in the red by the end of the day.”
Out of business by the end of the month.
“How much would you need to sell them for to be in the black?”
“And actually make a profit that I could live off?” Kennedy asked, prepping the mixer for a new batch of dough, hating that Luke’s offer was seeming like a sound plan. “Twenty bucks apiece. And that is with a slim margin.”
Ali sat down next to her, silent, as though pondering over a solution. Her expression completely serious, she asked, “How bad do you want to make a go at this?”
“Not bad enough to sell my apples to Luke.” Not yet at least.
“I only know of one person in town who would spend twenty bucks on a pie that Paula sells for twelve.”
“Unless he’s ordering fifty a day, it won’t help.”
“Last offer, he was willing to pay twenty-five per pie, a hundred pies daily,” Ali said and Kennedy shook her head, certain she misheard her friend over the growing chaos outside.
“A hundred pies?”
“A day.”
A small flame of excitement lit in Kennedy’s belly. By the time she did the quick math, figured out the profits on a hundred pies a day, the excitement had warmed into hope. “Do you think he’d meet with me?”
“Are you kidding? One call and you’d have him at your door.” Ali leaned across the counter and took a bite of Kennedy’s forgotten cobbler. “My Uncle Cosmo owns a number of high-end markets around Seattle, Redmond, and Portland that cater to the technology transplants. They’re super posh, super expensive, and he is super serious about selling Sweetie Pies in his stores.”
“Why would you do that?” Kennedy asked. “We barely know each other.”
“Owning your own business is hard, so us ladies need to stick together. Plus, everyone could use a good friend in their lives. I know I could,” Ali said quietly, as if embarrassed by the admission.
There was a loneliness and deep longing in Ali’s eyes that Kennedy could relate to, and she began to wonder if she wasn’t the only one desperate for connection.
Kennedy looked at the crowd again, then back to her friend, and felt her stomach warm. “I’m surprised he doesn’t already have a deal.”
“Can’t even get a sit-down to discuss it. Even asked me a few years ago to help him out,” Ali said around pie crumbs. “Seems him and Fi had a fling back when Christ walked the earth. Didn’t end well. She charged at him with her dad’s Studebaker, he luckily dodged it in time, and now every time he approaches her about her pies, she threatens to run him down and finish what she started. At this point he’s hoping she’ll forget about it, because her mind will go long before that woman lets a grudge lie.”
And just like that, all the hope disappeared as Kennedy played through each and every possible outcome. None of them good.
“So if I sign with Cosmo, I’m positioning myself against the Great Oz of Destiny Bay.” Frustration had her releasing a long, tired breath. It also had that little knot that had formed behind her right eye spreading to encompass her entire head.
“And if you don’t?” Ali asked.
“I go out of business.” Kennedy said, never one to shy away from the truth.
After a lifetime of emotional sucker punches, she’d rather see what was coming—no matter how difficult or painful the truth was. This time she wasn’t looking to duck or even get out of the way. Nope, Kennedy had sunk her entire life savings, Philip’s buyout of their condo, and every last bit of hope she had into making this shop—and her life—a success.
If trouble was coming, then she needed time to square up and take her own swing, because she wasn’t going to go down quietly this time. “Make the call.”
* * *
“Can I at least go home and shower?” Kennedy asked, taking in her reflection in the windows of the Penalty Box. She looked like Betty Crocker after a cupcake apocalypse.
Ali snorted. “We both know you weren’t going to go home. You were going to hide out in your shop all night to avoid running into your bed buddy.”
“He isn’t my bed buddy.” She stopped right outside the bar. “And I’m not avoiding him. In fact, before you kidnapped me, I was going to head home.”
“Ah-huh,” Ali said, calling Kennedy on that lie.
Not that it was a lie, really. She was going to head back to the cottage. Sometime tonight. After she was certain Luke was asleep and there was no chance for one of his run-ins. Then she would shower with the door locked, sleep on the couch, and be gone before he awoke.
Keeping her focus was essential—and that meant keeping her distance. When she was around Luke, all logic went out the window. She made impulsive decisions. Stupid impulsive decisions like almost kissing him while wearing nothing but his old T-shirt.
Just thinking about it had her lips tingling.
Kennedy fluffed her hair. When that didn’t help, she smoothed it back in a bun. “You could have at least told me I had dough in my hair.”
“If you got it out of your hair, people would just look at the pie filling on your right boob,” Ali said with a teasing grin, dragging Kennedy through the door and straight for the bar, weaving in and out of the crush of people.
For a Tuesday night, the place was impossibly crowded.
Ali signaled the bartender—who was at the other end, engrossed in a conversation with a couple of patrons. Very female and very giggly patrons. “Two glasses of champagne.”
He didn’t even move a muscle.
“Champagne?” Not that Kennedy didn’t like a glass of bubbly every now and again, but Ali looked more like a Scotch drinker. Straight up and straight from the bottle. Not to mention champagne combined with her new friend’s unusually bubbly demeanor had Kennedy feeling a little unsettled.
“Yup.” Ali clapped her hands and smiled. “We’re celebrating. Cosmo called me back.”
Kennedy stopped breathing. “And?”
“He wants to meet.”
Kennedy was overcome with emotion. Not only had Ali already called on her behalf, which was humbling in itself because their friendship was still so new, but Cosmo wanted to meet Kennedy. To discuss buying her pies in bulk at twenty-five dollars apiece. Never in her life had a Hail Mary worked out.
“He’s interested in carrying my pies?”
“Are you kidding? He was so excited when I called, he nearly wet himself,” Ali said, her excitement as real as Kennedy’s. “He would have asked to meet for a tasting tonight, but he’s working at the Portland
location this week, so he said Sunday was the soonest he could get back.”
“Tasting?” Kennedy asked, trying to stay calm. “But he already loves the pies, why would he need a tasting?”
“Because he wants to partner with you, so of course he’d want a tasting. Him sitting in the shop and eating a Sweetie Pies pie will seal this deal. Why do you look like I just said I hate dessert?” Ali asked as if Kennedy were slow.
She wanted to point out that Luke was the slow one.
For a guy who claimed to corner the market on knowing every woman’s needs, he sure was taking his sweet ass time delivering on hers. She barely had enough apples to get through the week, and if Luke didn’t drop off her next order by Sunday, she’d be cleared out before Cosmo even showed. No apples meant no tasting and no future orders.
“Hey!” Ali smacked her fist on the cedar top. “Barmaid!”
Hawk didn’t move, except to turn his head and lift a brow in Ali’s direction. His expression was one of pure irritation, with enough challenge to intimidate even the toughest of men. Not to mention the scars on his hands said he knew how to use them, and wasn’t afraid to get rough if necessary.
“You going to get me my drinks?” Ali asked. “Or is this confirmation that, with you, everything is a serve-yourself kind of experience?”
Hawk straightened to his full height—Thor minus the hammer—and Kennedy was sure he was going to throw them out of the bar—with his own hand—but instead he threw a rag over his shoulder and headed their way.
“Sorry, sunshine, tap only here,” he said, resting his palms on the bar top.
“You say that like it somehow makes cider manly,” Ali said. “It doesn’t, tap or not, it’s still the sorority girl drink of choice, Bradley.” Ali looked at the giggling co-eds who were sipping from green-tinted martini glasses. “Well, next to appletinis.”
Hawk crossed his arms, which had an array of tattoos bulging and rippling under the simple movement. “They aren’t co-eds, and trust me, they aren’t here for the appletinis.”