Diamonds and Dirt Roads

by Erin Nicholas

  Okay, now that was a little close to the situation with Jill possibly. She really was a brat. Evan’s gaze dropped to her ass again.

  “He does,” Liz said with a nod. “Except that Evan isn’t the settling-down type.”

  “Oh?”

  “He enjoys dating, but he doesn’t take anything too seriously,” Holly said as if Evan wasn’t standing right there. “In fact, there have been many times over the years that his grandfather has said that the only thing Evan takes seriously is not taking anything seriously.”

  His grandfather had definitely said that. Still, it was not okay that his mother’s best friend was warning his girlfriend’s sister that he wasn’t a good risk. “Holly,” Evan started, “I don’t think—”

  “Well, then, everyone knows where he stands and no female hearts are getting their hopes up for a diamond ring, right?” Cori interrupted.

  Whoa. Evan looked at her. But she was staring Holly down. Still, that was…the most defense anyone had given him in a long time.

  “I mean, if Evan’s always been the fun-loving guy who doesn’t get serious, then the girls who…go out with him…” she said, clearly indicating that she didn’t mean only going out with him, “…shouldn’t be surprised when he’s that same guy the next morning, right?”

  Yep, she knew exactly what Holly was getting at. And it was definitely getting harder to fight the urge to kiss her. Evan could feel the surprise radiating from Holly and he had to bite back a grin. He turned, grabbed a chair from the next table, and pulled it up between Hank and Walter. This was getting good.

  The guys scooted a little to make more room and, almost as if she did it on autopilot, Cori grabbed a cup from behind her, filled it with coffee, squirted caramel syrup into it, and then added a swirl of whipped cream from the dispenser she’d obviously brought from New York. He grinned and lifted the cup for a sip. Then sat back in the chair, crossed one ankle over the other knee, and waited for the show to go on.

  “Then your sister is aware of who he’s going to be…in the morning?” Holly asked.

  Holly gave him an irritated look, but he’d perfected not reacting to jabs about his personality and habits years ago. If he could withstand digs from his own grandfather, Holly had nothing in her arsenal that could get to him.

  “Oh, no doubt about it,” Cori said. “Evan’s been very up-front about what he wants from Ava.”

  Well, that was true enough. Evan sipped again. And the girl made delicious coffee.

  “Your sister doesn’t take things seriously either?” Holly asked. “She has a penchant for…sprinkles…too?” Her tone and the way her eyes dropped to the coffee cups on the table in front of her, made it clear that sprinkles meant all kinds of unflattering and unserious things.

  Cori leaned over and shook some sprinkles on top of Evan’s cup. “Oh, Evan doesn’t want sprinkles from Ava.” She mimicked Holly’s tone perfectly on “sprinkles”, making it just as clear that she knew that Holly had meant it as an insult. And that Cori didn’t care.

  And it was true that he didn’t want, or intend to get, sprinkles of any kind from Ava. Sure, he’d entertained the thought of a fling when he’d had her pushed up against the front door of her apartment and had been kissing the hell out of her. But then again, that had actually been Cori. And her sprinkles were a whole other thing.

  Holly sniffed. “Well, Evan definitely needs fewer sprinkles in his life. He needs…”

  “Plain coffee?” Cori supplied when Holly trailed off, unable to complete the analogy.

  Evan had to cough to hide his chuckle. The men around the table were all watching, obviously taking mental notes to share with everyone they ran into later. Even Noah and Brynn had stopped painting to turn and watch. Liz looked a little uncomfortable, but she was watching Cori with a hint of admiration. And Diane had inched closer to the door.

  A flash of irritation went through him. Just once, he’d love for his mother to stand up to someone. Even if it was him. She had never told him not to do something or that she was displeased with him. She’d left the stern lectures to his grandfather. She’d never once grounded Evan or even withheld his allowance. He hadn’t been a bad kid, but he’d, as Holly pointed out, never taken things very seriously—including school and chores and schedules and rules.

  “I was going to say, he needs a nice girl to settle him down,” Holly said.

  Cori shrugged. “I get it. But the thing is, when you combine coffee and sprinkles, the coffee doesn’t make the sprinkles less fun. The coffee becomes sweeter and more enjoyable because of the sprinkles.”

  “What are you getting at?” Liz asked, her eyes narrowing.

  “Evan is the sprinkles,” Cori said, as if it was obvious.

  Evan swallowed his coffee down the wrong pipe and coughed hard. Hank reached over and thunked him on the back, without ever taking his eyes off of Cori and Holly.

  He was the sprinkles? But as he coughed again and finally cleared some of the coffee from his windpipe, he realized that yeah, he was.

  “Well, ‘sprinkles’ can make a big mess,” Holly pointed out with a frown.

  Evan’s eyes, and everyone else’s, dropped to the table where there were sticky spots of whipped cream and caramel, and sure enough, several stray sprinkles all over the surface. Evan had to admit that he was impressed that she’d been able to make that analogy.

  “No doubt about it,” Cori agreed. “And if you can’t deal with the potential mess, you shouldn’t choose sprinkles for your coffee in the first place. Or whipped cream. Or caramel syrup. You should stick with black coffee. In a cup with a lid. And one of those ring thingies that keep it from being too hot to hold.”

  There was a beat of silence after that comment. And the insinuations.

  God, he really liked her. The thought seemed to jump out of nowhere and smack Evan in the face. But yeah, he really liked Cori Carmichael.

  “But you go for…sprinkles?” Holly asked.

  Cori laughed. “Oh, I always want sprinkles on my whipped cream.”

  Heat shot through him at that seemingly simple, but oh-so complicated—and hot—comment. And Evan realized that he had a not-at-all-small crush on his fake girlfriend’s sister.

  “But there’s so much more under all the toppings, right honey?” Hank asked with a wink.

  Cori smiled, but shook her head. “No, not always. Sometimes it’s just the fluffy, fun stuff.”

  As her words sank in, Evan felt his hand squeezing his mug so hard, he was shocked it didn’t crack. There was so much meaning in what Cori had just said. He had no idea if everyone else in the room heard it, understood it, felt it. But he did.

  And holy shit, he wanted to grab her and hug her and tell her that when the whipped cream and sprinkles were as good as hers, they became their own underneath.

  “Maybe you and Evan both need to think about taking things more seriously,” Holly finally said.

  Okay, enough was enough. Evan shoved his chair back and stood.

  But Cori was already talking, “I think Evan and I have a lot in common, but, I wouldn’t say I don’t take anything seriously. I mean, there’s food. I really love food. And there’s Robert Downey, Jr. I don’t joke around about him. And,” she said, her smile fading as she met Holly’s eyes directly, “there are my sisters. I take them and their happiness very seriously. I’d feel sorry for anyone who screwed with that.”

  Holly’s eyes widened, Liz coughed, and Diane glanced toward the door as if wondering if she could escape. Evan opened his mouth to interject—though he had no idea with what. Especially considering that he really liked the whipped-cream-loving Cori, but he felt a definite jolt of damn when she got serious and came to her sisters’ defense.

  Suddenly, fortunately, there was a loud crash from the kitchen, followed by a fervent, “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

  Evan saw Cori wince slightly, and the men around the table all picked up their cups, while Brynn and Noah returned to painting. All as if this wasn’t the fir
st time they’d heard those things from the kitchen.

  Oh, yeah. The reason Parker had called Evan down here in the first place.

  “And that would be my lovely girlfriend now,” Evan said, breaking into the tense moment and hoping like hell they could now move on. Because that urge to hug Cori wasn’t getting any weaker.

  “Good Lord,” Holly said.

  “Yeah. She’s a firecracker,” Evan said with a tight smile.

  There was a loud crash that sounded like metal hitting tile. Then another few expletives. Then it was quiet. The whole shop seemed to be holding its breath for a moment. Then Cori said, “Okay, who needs more coffee?” and three hands at the table shot up.

  There was another loud crash from the back and Evan had to admit that, whatever she was doing in there, Ava had great timing.

  “Should someone go check on her?” Diane asked, her eyes wide.

  Cori and Brynn exchanged a look, then Cori set the coffeepot on the table, Brynn turned on her stool, and they quickly did rock, paper, scissors.

  “Dammit,” Cori breathed when she did scissors to Brynn’s rock.

  Brynn just grinned and went back to painting.

  “Sure,” Cori said with mock brightness. “I’ll go check on her.”

  “Tell her we’d love to meet her,” Holly said, moving to another table and pulling out a chair. “And I don’t care for whipped cream or sprinkles, but I would love some plain black coffee.”

  “Shocker,” Evan heard Cori mutter.

  Then she opened her mouth to say something louder, but Evan took her elbow and turned her toward the kitchen. “They probably don’t have enough cups, Holly. They weren’t expecting to have customers today.”

  “Oh, they’ve got a bunch behind the counter,” Ben said, pointing. “Cori had to bring her collection down here because Ava told her she didn’t want them taking up all the space in the cupboards at Rudy’s place.”

  “You have a cup collection?” Evan asked Cori.

  “Just one from everywhere I’ve traveled.”

  He didn’t let go of her elbow, enjoying touching her way too much. “How many?”

  “Forty-seven.”

  He let out a quick laugh. “And you brought them all here with you?”

  “I’m going to be living here for a year. Of course I did.” She smiled. “The bright side is that we don’t have to buy cups for the pie shop. And considering we have no money, that’s awesome.”

  “Son of a bitch!”

  He and Cori both sighed.

  “You sure you don’t just want to go in and talk to her?” Cori asked, hopefully.

  Hell no, he wasn’t going in there alone. He gave her a look that his mother and friends couldn’t see. “Maybe you could take over for her back there while she comes out and chats for a bit,” he said. That wasn’t ideal either. He wasn’t sure Ava was in a mood to make a good impression. And this would be their first real public appearance. In front of his mother. And two women who really wanted him and Ava to not work out. This was going to be great.

  “But the kitchen is Ava’s domain,” Cori protested.

  “Nice try,” he said, for her ears only. “But no dice.” Evan started for the kitchen with her elbow still in hand. “I’m sure Ava will appreciate your help,” he said for the room.

  He was definitely not facing Ava alone.

  Cori sighed, but let him steer her into the kitchen. “Help yourself to coffee,” she called out behind her.

  “She has chocolate syrup too,” Walter said.

  “Of course she does,” Evan thought he heard Holly mutter.

  They stepped through the swinging door to the kitchen just as the back door to the kitchen slammed shut. The swinging door bumped Evan from behind as he and Cori stared at the back door.

  Ava had just left.

  And the kitchen was a disaster. There were bowls and spoons and measuring cups scattered over the countertops. There were four open egg cartons, all empty. There was a pile of apples next to the sink and the cupboard door under the sink was hanging open and water was slowly dripping from one of the pipes. The top of the oven was covered in pies. Or what should have been pies. Three were clearly burnt. One looked fine but had a hole dug out of the middle, as if someone had tasted it, and immediately abandoned it. And there was a fine dusting of flour over…everything.

  “Wow,” Evan said simply.

  Cori blew out a breath. “Yeah, she really sucks at this.”

  “And you’re not helping her?” Damn, the skin on the inner side of her elbow was really soft and warm. And she smelled amazing.

  Cori grinned at him. “Are you kidding? Did you hear the crashing and swearing?”

  “Yeah, you could be helping her not swear and throw things, couldn’t you?” he asked. If he had to guess he’d say Ava had thrown the metal mixing bowl that now lay on its side against the far wall.

  “No way,” Cori said. “She needs to yell and swear and break things.”

  “You want her doing that?”

  “That girl has so much emotion wound up tight inside of her she’s about to burst,” Cori said. “This is therapeutic.”

  Evan looked around the room. “She’s really this bad at cooking?”

  “She had to Google ‘whisking’,” Cori said with a grin.

  He turned to face her. This woman who had defended him to Holly, who seemed to just get him, who thought she only had fluff to offer. “You know how to whisk, though.”

  “Ava likes to figure things out for herself,” Cori said with a shrug.

  “Did you even offer?” he asked, somehow knowing she hadn’t.

  “She’d still look it up to be sure I was right.”

  Evan shook his head. “Then you tell her that you’re right and insist she start trusting you.”

  Cori swallowed and stared up at him. “There might be a better way,” she said with a shrug.

  “A better way to whisk?” he asked. “Better than your way?”

  She nodded. And he knew that she knew that this wasn’t about whisking. And that she wasn’t talking about Ava doubting Cori’s knowledge or skill. He suddenly hated that Rudy was taking this woman out of the kitchen, where she could show off her talents and get enthusiastic. Instead, she was adding and subtracting columns of numbers.

  What a waste.

  Evan’s phone dinged in his pocket and he reluctantly let go of Cori to reach for it. It was a text from Parker.

  Come remove this woman from my kitchen.

  Oh, boy.

  “Ava’s over at the diner. In Parker’s kitchen,” he told Cori.

  Cori looked around the room. “Okay, tell him to send her home. She’s had enough of this for the day.”

  Evan typed that in and sent it, then paused. “If she goes home, she can’t meet Holly and my mom.”

  Cori lifted a brow. “Do you really want her to in this mood?”

  Of course he didn’t.

  Parker responded She wants eggs. She came and took butter earlier. I’m not supporting the grocery bill for that pie shop.

  Evan sighed. Send her home or keep her busy. She can’t come back over here. My mom’s here.

  What am I supposed to do with her?

  Teach her to whisk something. Evan grinned in spite of himself as he sent that and tucked his phone into his pocket.

  “If they don’t meet her now, they’ll find her somewhere else, another time, when I’m not around,” Evan said to Cori. “I’d feel better if I was there to mediate the situation.”

  Cori pulled her bottom lip between her teeth. Her eyes roamed over his torso from shoulders to waist.

  Evan felt his body stirring, even with just her eyes on him. “Cori?”

  She stepped forward and ran her hand over his chest. “Take your shirt off.”

  Uh. Okay. Who was he to argue with…

  Cori shrugged out of the shirt she was wearing over her tank top.

  “Um, what are we doing?” Not that he was protesting.
r />   “Take your shirt off,” she repeated. Then she stripped her tank off.

  And Evan’s only thought was should have grabbed the whipped cream gun.

  When he still hadn’t moved, Cori stepped forward and started unbuttoning his shirt. His gaze dropped to the amazing breasts that were now cupped in peach silk. He’d subconsciously memorized the shape and feel of them when he’d seen them under the tank top and then had them pressed against his chest in New York.

  Yeah, he wasn’t going to be able to do something as complicated as unbuttoning.

  “Cori?”

  She looked up at him as she freed his last button and ran her hands up over his ribs to his shoulders where she pushed the shirt off. “Yeah?”

  “I really like your sprinkles, but is this the best time for this?” And when will be the best time, because I can be available whenever.

  Her mouth curled into a half smile. “I like your sprinkles too, Counselor. But right now we need to convince Holly, and everyone else, that you’re crazy about Ava’s sprinkles.”

  Ava. Right. The reason that there wasn’t going to be a best time for him and Cori. Fuck.

  She reached behind her and grabbed a plastic measuring cup. She threw it on the floor, where it bounced and then slid up again the oven. “Dammit.” She looked around, grabbed a glass bowl and chucked it, sending it arching and then crashing into the floor. She smiled at that. “Better.”

  “What the hell are you—”

  But all thoughts of, well, everything else in the world, were obliterated by the feel of Cori’s hands untucking the T-shirt he wore under his dress shirt and sliding up underneath to touch his bare skin.

  “I really need you to take this off,” she said, her voice huskier than it had been before.

  And he officially didn’t care who walked in or who thought what or even what was going on. Because Cori was going to reach behind her and unhook her bra next. Evan reached behind his head, grabbed the back of his T-shirt and yanked it off.

  Cori’s gaze tracked over him and she started to lift a hand, but seemed to think better of it at the last minute. Instead, she held her hand out. “Can I have it?”

  “My T-shirt?”

  She nodded and he handed it over. Her eyes stayed on his chest as she put her hands through the armholes of his shirt and then pulled it over her head. So no naked breasts. Great.