She had never believed in gimmicks. She wanted to appeal to everyone across the board.
“I don’t have an accent,” Danni protested with alacrity.
There was just the barest hint of a smile curving the corners of Stone’s mouth. How could a proverbial “Georgia Peach” think she didn’t have a Southern accent?
“Yes, you do,” Stone countered.
Ginny looked from one adult to the other and seemed very quickly to pick a side. She backed up her new best friend loyally and even moved a little bit closer to her, taking a couple of steps in her direction.
“No, she doesn’t, Daddy,” Ginny pronounced solemnly. “She sounds just like you and me. Well, me anyway, ’cause you don’t really do much talking, Daddy,” his daughter informed him.
Danni pressed her lips together to keep back her laugh, not wanting to hurt the little girl’s feelings—or offend Ginny’s father.
“Looks like I have a defender,” she said with a warm smile. Danni ran her hand affectionately over the little girl’s curly hair. If things had gone another way, she might have had a child of her own by now, rather than just her own cooking program.
Hey, things don’t always work out the way we plan, a voice in her head reminded her. Focus on what you do have, not what you don’t.
It was an adage her father had been fond of repeating often and she had to admit that it had helped to see her through some pretty rough times in the last couple of years.
Since the woman was apparently sensitive on the subject of accents, Stone let the matter drop—except for one consequence that had raised its head during the discussion. Ginny had been really quick to come to Danni’s defense. He had to admit he’d never seen his daughter take to anyone as fast as she had to this woman. Not that Ginny was exactly shy, but this had to be a new record, even for her.
“She really seems to have taken a shine to you,” he commented to Danni.
“The feeling is more than mutual,” Danni assured both father and daughter, winking at the latter as if they had some sort of secret between them.
Ginny was apparently eager to show her father what they’d been up to while he’d been working. The girl looked toward the oven that was currently housing not just the fruit of their effects, but the really delicious aroma that came along it.
“You wanna try the pie we made?” Ginny asked her father, looking ready to simply leap out of her skin with enthusiasm.
He wasn’t sure whether to say yes or no, neither was he certain if the offering was his daughter’s to make.
“I think that Danni has other ideas for the pie.” He assumed it was going with the woman to the cable studio, to be part of her program; the “after” photograph used to encourage people who ordinarily burned water not to give up.
“No, I don’t,” Danni corrected him cheerfully. “I thought it might be a good experience for Ginny to help me prepare and bake a pecan pie and then find out firsthand just how good it can turn out.” She looked at the little girl, who already needed no encouragement—or any elaborate traveling directions—to make a beeline for the stove.
Taking a pair of embroidered pot holders from a drawer, Danni opened the oven door and then very carefully removed the chocolate pecan pie. She placed it on top of the stove to cool.
Noting the eager expression on the little girl’s face, Danni cautioned, “It has to cool off first, honey. If you try to sample any of it now, you’ll wind up burning your tongue.”
Putting her hands behind her back, Ginny rocked back on her heels and said innocently, “Wasn’t gonna try to eat it now. Not even one tiny piece,” she declared, holding her small thumb and forefinger up and just a sliver apart to show just how small a piece she had no intentions of having.
Thoroughly amused, Danni continued the dialogue between herself and her Muppet-size assistant. “I see that you’ve thought this all out very carefully, haven’t you?” Danni said to her, addressing Ginny the way she would another adult.
Her method completely won over Ginny’s heart. “Yes, ma’am,” she agreed.
Danni finally raised her eyes to look at Ginny’s father and saw the very strange expression on his face. She made no effort to try to fathom what was behind it. That would only be a waste of time.
“Is there something wrong?” she asked.
Stone shook his head, still watching his daughter. “Not a thing. I was just thinking that I’d never seen Ginny respond to anyone the way she does to you.” He made no effort to hide his unabashed wonder.
That was probably because—she would have placed a silent bet on the fact that—there wasn’t overly much female traffic going back and forth from Stone’s house. He appeared too serious, too wrapped up in his work, to have time for “recreational activities” she believed one of those TV fix-all pseudo doctors had called it.
“Would you like to sample a piece once it cools off?” Danni offered.
He saw no reason to demur. The aroma was causing his stomach to almost contract in anticipation. “Sure, why not?” he agreed off-handedly, then added, “But you’re sure we’re not in your way?”
“What ‘way’?” she asked. “I’m not doing anything except talking to you—and baking with a really good assistant,” she added, flashing a wide smile at Ginny. “And for the record, if you feel like maybe doing a little more—gutting, is it?” Danni asked, referring to what he’d just told her he’d just finished doing to her back bedroom.
Stone nodded, confirming the term she’d just used.
“If you feel like doing a little more gutting today, there is another dish I thought that my willing assistant and I could try our hands at—but only if you have some work to do,” she stipulated.
He had, technically, the whole house to work on. He just had to pick a spot. “You could make one hell of a negotiator, you know?” he said to her, then let her know that he had plenty of rooms to choose from for his next gutting.
“Sure,” he told her agreeably. “If you really have more to do and my daughter’s ‘assisting’ you hasn’t pushed you over the edge yet—”
“It hasn’t,” she quickly interjected, not wanting to give Ginny anything remotely scary to think about late at night. “And it won’t,” she added with certainty, earning the little assistant’s undying love right then and there.
“Then yeah, okay, I can do some more gutting,” he agreed. “I thought that I’d do the bathroom off the back bedroom next, unless you’d rather I did another area instead.”
That happened to be the only bathroom on the first floor. She decided that perhaps a question regarding timing might be in order right about here.
“How long between when you gut them and put them back into working order?” she asked.
Stone thought about it for a moment. He had no intentions of being vague or promising something he wouldn’t be able to deliver on.
“Well, that really all depends on the size of the room that we’re talking about,” Stone qualified.
“The bathroom,” Danni reminded him, nodding in the general direction of the room he’d told her he would do next.
That bathroom was considered a three-quarter model since there was no tub, only a shower. “I’d say about three, four days tops.”
That sounded reasonable to her. She could certainly put up with that time frame. Going up and down the stairs more frequently was good for her, Danni told herself. It forced her to exercise her legs, never a bad thing.
Danni nodded her approval then said, “Go for it,” out loud.
Stone didn’t have to be told twice.
As he left the kitchen, in the background, he heard his daughter ask, “What are we gonna make next?”
“How do you feel about chicken potpie?” Danni asked her.
“I don’t know,” Ginny confessed honestly. “What is it?”
He didn’t see the woman’s smile, but he heard it in her voice. Though his back was to Danni just as he went into the hall, the smile in her voice had brought out
one in kind to his lips.
“Absolutely delicious,” Danni told her.
That was more than good enough for Ginny. “I like delicious,” Ginny told her. “Let’s make it!” she cried with enthusiasm and anticipation.
Stone picked up his sledge hammer and went back to work, marveling about what he’d just witnessed.
No matter how good a pastry chef the petite, sexy blonde was, she was really wasting her time at it. From the little bit he’d witnessed today, he could swear that Danielle Everett could be a really great child whisperer.
In the limited amount of time the woman had been with Ginny, she all but had the little girl wrapped around her little finger, ready to do anything she suggested.
He’d never seen anything like it before.
The tempting aroma of the cooling pie seemed to follow him all the way to the rear of the house. He could almost feel his mouth watering.
As he closed the door to minimize the noise of what he was about to do, he also deliberately sealed himself away from the tempting aroma that was wafting from the kitchen.
Even so, with the door closed and the aroma presumably barred from entering, he found that his mouth wouldn’t stop watering.
He worked faster.
He had no other choice.
* * *
When Stone was finished and made his way back into the kitchen some ninety minutes later, he was rather spent and convinced that he now smelled far too gamey for mixed company. His new plan was to collect his daughter and go home, certain that by now Ginny had probably worn through all of the woman’s steady nerves and that Danni in turn would be more than happy to see his truck pulling out of her driveway with Ginny strapped into the rear passenger seat, in a car seat.
“Daddy!” Ginny cried eagerly when she saw him coming into the room. “Are you finished for real this time?”
“I’m finished for real this time,” he echoed instead of immediately telling his daughter that they were going home.
He saw the eager expression on his daughter’s face. Was that due to what she’d been doing these last ninety minutes? Most likely it was, which made the woman with her nothing short of a real miracle worker.
Ginny ran up to him, no doubt very excited about what she’d been doing these last few hours. She moved in to hug him, then abruptly stopped and wrinkled her nose.
She gazed up at him with horror. “You smell funny, Daddy.”
“That’s just the scent of honest toil,” Danni called out to Ginny from the far side of the kitchen. She was rummaging through the refrigerator. “Right?” she asked, making eye contact with Stone.
“Right,” he agreed.
At least she wasn’t wrinkling her nose at him, he thought. Whenever Elizabeth was around him right after he finished up a job, she’d flatly tell him that he needed to clean up first before he did anything else. Especially if he intended to do it around her.
“I’ll just take Ginny and we’ll get going,” he told Danni.
“But, Daddy, you have to try what we’ve been making first. Danni said it was a late lunch. Your reward for all that hard work you did.”
It was obvious that Ginny was quoting the woman, her new idol.
“I don’t think that Danni wants to be around someone who smells like a barn,” Stone said, trying to usher his daughter toward the front door.
“‘Danni’ knows how to make herself heard if she wants to,” Danni informed him with an amused smile, as she walked toward him and his daughter. “However, if you feel uncomfortable about being a wee bit, um, sweaty,” she said tactfully, “you’re more than welcome to take a shower in one of the bathrooms upstairs. Ginny and I will wait until you come down again before eating,” she promised. “Won’t we, Ginny?”
“You bet!” Ginny cried.
“You’re serious?” he asked Danni.
“Of course I’m serious. I can stop smiling and say it again with a frown if that would be more convincing,” Danni offered, doing her best to suppress the grin trying to steal over her lips.
A shower would help, but that wasn’t the total answer. “Even if I take a shower, my clothes aren’t exactly fresh.”
“There’re some clothes in a box in one of the upstairs bedrooms. You can’t miss it. The box is in the middle of the room. You might find something there that’ll fit you.”
That sounded a bit odd to him.
“You just happen to have some spare men’s clothing that might fit me?” he asked incredulously.
The clothes had been some of the last ones she’d bought her father. Up until now, she hadn’t been able to force herself to give them away to some charity where they would do some good.
But she’d finally crossed that sentimental hurdle and was ready to move on—to some extent. However, she didn’t really want to go into any of that in detail, at least not yet.
“I just happen to be packing them up to give to charity. They’re all still in good condition. I think they’re pretty much your size.” Her father had been a big man. He’d always made her feel safe, that nothing bad could happen to her while she was with him.
She only wished that it had worked in reverse.
“Feel free to take anything you find there,” she added.
He still hesitated, not wanting to take anything away from someone else if they were in greater need than he was.
But then Ginny delivered the winning argument. “Go, take a shower, Daddy. So you can come back down and taste the yummy stuff Danni taught me to make. Hurry, Daddy, before it gets all cold.”
Danni smiled at him. “I believe you have your orders, Daddy.”
He nodded and hurried away, absently wondering why hearing Danni call him that somehow felt really right.
He was probably just tired, Stone told himself.
Chapter Seven
Stone was back downstairs less than fifteen minutes later, his hair still damp and rakishly unkempt.
Returning to the kitchen, he found that the small, circular table in the nook had been set. His daughter was currently seated at one of the place settings and, miracle of miracles, she remained still.
Well, still for Ginny, he mentally amended.
“Daddy!” Her small face lit up when she saw him. “Now can we start?” she asked not him, the way he would have expected, but the woman setting out three small, perfect, golden-crusted potpies. No doubt prepared from scratch, they still had heat, not to mention tempting aroma, wafting from them.
“Well, that was a first,” Stone murmured, sitting down on one side of his daughter.
“You don’t take showers?” Danni asked.
“I don’t take showers in other people’s homes,” he specified. “Especially not other people’s homes that I’m working on.”
After she finished putting out what she and Ginny had made for this rather late lunch, Danni sat down on the other side of Ginny—which also happened to be right next to Stone.
She liked his slightly messy and curly hair like that. It made him look more boyish and not quite so serious.
“You know, you could have taken longer,” Danni told him. “Ginny and I would have still waited for you.”
Stone realized that she was looking at his hair as she spoke. Probably thought he should have dried it before coming down, he guessed. There was a hair dryer plugged in just next to the sink, but he didn’t feel quite right about using it. It was bad enough he’d had to use her towel to dry himself off. He couldn’t get over feeling as if he was imposing.
“The shower was long enough,” he told her matter-of-factly. And then he transformed into her contractor instead of a guest at her table. “I did hear some clanging coming from the pipes when I ran the hot water,” he mentioned.
By the expression on Danni’s face, he guessed he wasn’t telling her anything new.
“I forgot to mention that the other day. It does that every time I take a shower or use the hot water in my bathroom. If I run cold water—” she waved her hand in the air “�
��nothing.”
He nodded. What she’d just described wasn’t that rare a problem. “I’ll look into it when I’m remodeling the master bath,” he promised. “Most likely, the pipe just needs to be bracketed down better.”
As he talked, Stone sank his fork into the potpie on his plate and took his first tentative bite, his mind still on the noisy pipe.
The moment his taste buds kicked in and stood at attention, his mind did an instant about-face. Surprised, Stone looked down at the meal before him. The potpie was still rather hot, but that wasn’t what had captured his attention. He was far from a discerning food critic with a delicate palette, but he wasn’t one of those people who just ate to live, either. And even if he had been, the first bite he’d taken registered with quiet fanfare.
“This is good,” he told her, making no effort to hide his surprise.
A smile played on her lips in response. “You were expecting to be poisoned?” Danni asked him, amused.
Stone raised his eyes and they held hers for a moment as he weighed his answer.
“Honestly?” he asked her.
Okay, this can’t be good, not if he says it that way. Danni braced herself for what she thought had to be a strange answer. “Yes.”
“I was actually expecting not to have any feelings about the food one way or another,” he told her. Stone could see by her expression that Danni just couldn’t relate to that sort of indifference when it came to food. “For the most part, food’s pretty much just fuel to me. The decent kind of food I’ll finish without noticing. The bad kind I’ll notice and stop eating.” He nodded at the potpie as he took another hefty forkful. “But this is really good.”
Danni smiled broadly, more than a little relieved that she had managed to make something he enjoyed eating. “Thank you.”
“No, really good,” he emphasized with gusto, as surprised as she was that he was making this admission. “Which is unusual, seeing as how it’s meant to be a soupy kind of thing and I don’t really like soup.”
“It’s not soupy,” Danni protested with a laugh. “This is what potpie is supposed to be like.” She thought for a second, then felt she’d found the perfect analogy for this he-man type. “Just think of it as stew with a crust,” she suggested.
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