Parker was just watching her with a mix of wonder and trepidation. “I was just messing around one night,” he said, gesturing toward the notebook. “I don’t have any plans to do elaborate, creative things at the pie shop.”
He might not have plans, but he had thoughts along those lines.
She nodded. “But you could,” she said. “I know you think this is a sandwich and burger town, but you’re not just a sandwich and burger chef. It’s okay for you to have something else besides the diner.”
“I love the diner.”
“I know. Everyone knows,” she assured him. “And making pork and peach pies next door to the diner doesn’t mean that anyone will doubt that.”
He took a deep breath. “I don’t know.”
She gave him a smile. God, the way he treated her was addictive, but the way he treated the town and his father’s legacy was equally so. Even as it was incredibly frustrating. “Okay, so let’s start smaller. You have had thoughts about the food at the pie shop?”
“Of course.”
“I mean beyond how sucky my pie has been.” She grinned. “You’ve thought of adding to the menu?”
“Yes.”
“So how do you think you should start? Cori will be adding the specialty pies—the s’mores and stuff—what do you want to add?”
He shrugged. “Just simple stuff. Blueberry, strawberry.”
She nodded. “Makes sense. Most people would expect a pie shop to have those, so that probably wouldn’t rock Bliss’s foundation too much, right?” She resisted an eye roll. He was so careful with them. And she understood. Mostly. His business model had worked for a long time. Messing with it was risky. And he liked what he was doing too. But she knew he was capable of so much more.
“They might even survive adding chocolate silk,” he said dryly.
Ava gasped and put a hand to her chest. “Are you sure?”
Parker sighed and turned to plate the frittata. “I’m not being ridiculous. People here like the things they like.”
“Of course they do,” Ava agreed. “Because what they have and like is so good.” She meant that. And not just at the diner. “But that doesn’t mean they can’t like other things.” She looked down at the plate he set in front of her. It looked and smelled delicious. “Parker, this is about you too. So you make a new pie that they don’t like. Big deal. You try something else. I get that people come to the diner expecting certain things and you want to give that to them, but they don’t really expect anything specific from the pie shop.” She took a bite of the frittata, briefly registered that it was amazing, and went on. “That’s one bonus of having the pie shop in such a state of change. They don’t have set expectations yet. They know things there are going to be different. And they weren’t that devoted to it in the first place. This is your chance to stretch your chef wings. Let them see what you can do. Maybe pork and peach won’t be a big hit. It may never replace the jalapeno burger, but at least you have a chance to try it.”
Parker took a bite, chewed, and swallowed. “Maybe.”
Maybe. She could totally work with maybe. She took another bite of the frittata, thought about what she wanted to say, swallowed, and took a breath. “You know, I understand wanting to follow in your father’s footsteps.” She looked up when he didn’t respond. He was just chewing and watching her. She laid her fork down. “My whole life, as long as I’ve been old enough to understand even the smallest bit of what he did for a living, I was all about doing what he did. It was the only way to be close to him and to really spend time with him. And he was successful. So I just focused on doing things his way. But…” She pulled in a long breath. “Then I come here, and I find out that he wasn’t truly happy until he left there. He had to leave behind everything we did together, everything he taught me, everything I was working for, to really find what he wanted.” Her throat was tight and she had to work to swallow.
Parker set his plate to the side and braced his hands on the counter again. “Rudy...” He stopped and frowned. “That wasn’t about you, Ava. He didn’t leave you.”
She lifted a shoulder. “Maybe not. Maybe it wasn’t directly about me.” She knew he hadn’t left because of her, but he had still left, and found happiness, away from her. But she was starting to understand that Bliss, and the people here, kind of did that to a person. She didn’t think Rudy was looking for happiness when he’d come here, but it had found him. And she was glad. “But the point is,” she went on with Parker. “I get what it’s like to want to do things his way because of whatever you saw in him, in what he was doing. But maybe that’s not all he wanted for you. Just like the company wasn’t all Rudy wanted for me.”
Parker shook his head. “This is exactly what my dad wanted. It was what he brought us here for. What he built for us.”
“But he didn’t have five years of sitting around in the pie shop with Hank and Walter and Ben and Roger,” she said dryly. “Maybe he would have figured out that this isn’t perfect for you.”
Parker didn’t agree. But he didn’t argue either.
She pushed her plate to the side and grabbed the notebook and pencil again. “So maybe we start with offering one of the savory pies once a week or something.”
“Huge waste of good food if they don’t come in,” he commented, picking his plate up again. Well, that wasn’t a no.
“So you make one. And if it doesn’t sell, we’ll just have it for dinner.” She lifted a shoulder. “It all sounds amazing to me.”
“Yeah?”
She looked up. “Of course.” She frowned. “But you have to give them a chance to come around, you know. You can’t just make it once and decide it’s a failure.”
“If you eat it, I’ll keep making it,” he said.
That made her smile. “You will always have at least one huge fan of your off-the-menu offerings,” she told him.
He gave her a look. “I’ll show you off-the-menu.”
Her pulse stuttered, but she laughed and held up her hand. “Hang on, we’re planning here.”
“We are planning here?” he asked.
“Yes.” She gave him a smile. “You’re about to tell me about all of the other pie ideas you have.” She pointed at the notebook. “I know these aren’t all of them.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I know you.” And it hit her that she really did. At least a lot better than she had a few weeks ago. A lot better than she’d ever expected to know him. “I know that you can’t not think about this stuff.”
He took a long time to answer. Finally, he said, “And since you can’t not plan and scheme, I will tell you that I can make almost anything into a pie.”
She lifted her eyebrows. “Yeah? I mean, I was thinking something like pot pies. And hey, pizza is called pizza pie, right? We could do a whole line of gourmet pizzas.” She bent her head again. “You could turn traditional sandwiches into pies. You could do a Reuben. Oh, maybe a meatball. And that mortadella and cheese thing you made me. They could be just individual pies. Like the size of pot pies. But pot pies seem kind of boring, right? Do you have pot pie on the diner menu? It wouldn’t be direct competition, just another option. I guess we should stay away from the sandwiches that you already do. But we could start just a lunch thing with them. At first.”
“Ava.”
She looked up. “Yeah?”
“Stop.”
“I…” She frowned. “What?”
“Take a deep breath,” he said. “And think about what you’re saying. You’re getting carried away.”
She did as he asked and breathed deeply. Then she said, in her very best negotiator voice, “This is why it’s great you have a few months before the shop is officially yours. We can iron all of this out before I…” She trailed off. Something she’d never done in her negotiator voice before.
“Before you leave,” he filled in after a beat.
Yeah, she was leaving. In eight months. To go back to New York. All of this planning…sh
e wouldn’t see it actually in place and working if they didn’t do it now. And she wouldn’t be here to eat leftover pork and peach pie. Unless he started making it now.
But this is what she did. She put plans into place. She gave people resources to make things happen. And she did it all from afar. Where she only saw the results on the bottom of a spreadsheet. And that was good enough. Carmichael Enterprises would be backing the pie shop. She could still track if things were working or not.
But that felt very empty suddenly.
“I really want to help make this happen,” she told him, meeting his gaze. “I’d love to see all of this in place before…then. And I think it’s very possible.”
He pulled a deep breath in through his nose. A number of emotions crossed his face.
Then he pushed away from the counter and started across the kitchen. He got to the doorway of the laundry room and looked back. “You coming?”
“Where are we going?” But she was already off the stool.
“Outside.”
“Why?” But she rounded the edge of the island.
“Because you’re making me want to throw eggs against the wall. And I’ve got a better idea. The reason I brought you out here in the first place.”
“The sex and the greenhouse wasn’t the reason?” she asked, following him through the laundry room to the back door.
He waited for her to slip the boots on again, then held the door open for her and stepped out after her. “No. The greenhouse was definitely not the reason.”
Right. Because that was very personal for him and he hadn’t intended to share that with her. She felt a rush knowing that he had anyway. “What about the sex?” she asked.
“I knew the sex would happen,” he admitted as he headed across the yard. “But that wasn’t the main reason.”
Huh. The possibility of sex with him had been a huge reason she’d gotten in his truck. She hurried to keep up with his long strides.
He strode past the greenhouse to a cluster of bushes and trees about twenty yards behind it. He stopped next to a tree that now lay on its side. He bent and picked up a pair of plastic goggles and four work gloves from the ground. He handed her the goggles and one pair of gloves. “Here.”
She took them both, with no idea what was going on. “Uh, Parker…”
“Put them on.” He pulled gloves on as well, settled another pair of goggles on his face, and picked up a chainsaw.
A chainsaw.
She’d only seen them in movies. And because of those movies, she was suddenly slightly concerned. “Uh, Parker…” she started again.
“You like to break things? You’re going to love this. You get to destroy an entire log, but in the end, it’s actually productive.”
“Productive?” She was already pulling her gloves on.
“Very. You get the tree out of the way and you get firewood out of the deal too.” He knelt to the ground and started the chainsaw.
As the saw started with a grinding growl, Ava put her goggles on. She couldn’t believe it, but she was excited about this.
Parker showed her how to use the saw and soon she was holding the thing herself, cutting through the log, and feeling like a badass. And he was right, it was better than breaking eggs. It was loud, it took some real muscle, it was dirty, and the wood pieces flying around gave her a rush. Reducing a big tree trunk that was in the way to small logs and scraps that could be tossed aside was highly satisfying. She thought she might even have a blister from it. She got blisters occasionally from new shoes, but this was totally different. Totally better.
She cut through the last of the log and shut off the saw. She pushed her goggles to the top of her head. “What else can I cut up?”
He laughed and shook his head. “You liked it.”
“I did.” She looked around. “Do you ever have to blow stuff up?”
He took his gloves off, holding them in one hand while tucking the other in his back pocket. He looked so sexy out here on the farm, in his blue jeans and work boots, dirt streaked across his cheek, and that look of amused what-am-I-going-to-do-with-you on his face. “I’ve never blown something up and can’t think of a reason I would need to. But maybe you could hammer something sometime.”
No explosives. Well, okay. She set the chainsaw on the ground. “So now what?”
“Now I’m ready to talk about a reasonable starting point.”
“For more sawing?”
“For the pie shop.”
Okay. Reasonable. She could be reasonable. What was a reasonable starting point that would get them to individual mortadella and cheese pot pies for lunch on Tuesdays at the pie shop by the end of the just-under-seven months she had left here?
“How about we start with adding blueberry and strawberry?” She pulled her gloves off. “Made with berries from your strawberry patch. That’s a great advertising angle.”
He frowned. “I don’t want an angle.”
“We have to let them know that we’ve added strawberry pie,” Ava said. “And it’s really great that you can do it with fresh berries even when they’re out of season. Maybe there’s someone who only likes strawberry pie and so has never come into the shop before. We have to tell them about the changes before we can expect them to come give them a try.”
“So we’re going to hang flyers up around town?” he asked, the note of skepticism hard to miss.
She thought about that. Bliss had a small weekly newspaper and a website, but actually, putting signs up might work best of all. That was how people found lost dogs, sold bicycles, and advertised yard sales after all.
“Yes,” she decided. “We put up big red, strawberry shaped signs all over, advertising the strawberry pie.” She glanced toward the greenhouse. Would he let her take pictures of it? It was one of his personal havens but would be such a great advertising tool. “Oh! I know! You add a limited time strawberry salad at the diner. Have you had it before? It’s spinach and candied pecans and feta and strawberries. Balsamic dressing. It’s amazing.” She wished for that notebook on his counter. “You add it for one week, also with spinach and strawberries from your greenhouse. It comes free with every entrée. Then with their bill, we give them a little flyer about the strawberry pie next door.”
Parker sighed. “No.”
She looked at him. “No?”
“No.”
She stood a little straighter. “You give them the salad automatically. For free. Then you don’t have to worry about them ordering it—or not. Everyone will take at least one bite. And then they’ll realize how amazing it is and will keep going.”
“No.”
“Parker—”
“I don’t have time to pick a bunch of spinach and strawberries and make extra salads with everything, even for a week.”
“Oh.” She nodded. “Of course not. I’ll do that part.” Yes, that was good. She could do that part. He didn’t have the time, but she did. And if she could finally get an apple pie to turn out, she could surely put together a salad that didn’t require cooking. She frowned slightly. At least, she didn’t think it would require cooking. She needed to make a note about learning to make candied pecans. Or where to buy them. Parker would probably balk at that, but sometimes it was easier to get forgiveness than permission.
She made a mental note to add research how to know when strawberries are ripe and how to pick strawberries on her list.
“What?” she asked, when she noticed him watching her with a weird expression.
“You’re going to pick spinach and strawberries and make salads at the diner?”
“Yes. If that’s what you need to get this going. I can do that. You’ll have to make the pie though.”
He looked like he wanted to say something, but he just shook his head.
“You’ll consider it if I can get the stuff picked and salads made?” she asked.
“Tell you what,” he said, leaning to take the gloves from her. He tossed them to the ground with his gloves and the goggle
s. “I will let you give out samples of the strawberries—berries cut up in little plastic cups—in front of the diner and talk about the pie. If,” he added as she opened her mouth, “you wear your short red skirt and red heels with a black blouse and stand right in front of my window where I can see you the entire time.”
He wanted her to dress up like a strawberry? “Should I get a green hat to go with the outfit?” she asked.
“As long as that sweet ass,” he said, pointing at her butt, “is in full view while I work.”
“You want to use my sweet ass to sell your pie, Mr. Blake?” she asked. But she couldn’t deny the little thrill that went through her. He wasn’t doing it exactly as she’d suggested, but he was entertaining thoughts of making changes and doing more at the pie shop. This was awesome.
“No,” he said. “But it will make me less grumpy about the whole thing.”
She smiled up at him. “Well, in that case, I’ll do whatever I can.”
“To sell pie.”
“To make you happy.”
He made a little growling noise at that and muttered something that sounded like “who needs food?”. He scooped her up in his arms and carried her back to the house and up to his bedroom. Where he proceeded to make her forget all about strawberries and chainsaws and to-do lists for the rest of the night.
17
Being swept off his feet wasn’t bad. It wasn’t bad at all. In fact, it was something he could get used to.
Parker leaned back into the buttery-soft leather of his seat and stretched his legs out. As if there weren’t enough nice things about traveling in a limo, the extra space for his legs was definitely a plus.
High Heels and Haystacks: Billionaires in Blue Jeans, book two Page 25