Phoebe's Groom

by Deb Kastner

  He was having trouble sleeping, and it was all because of a certain hazel-eyed woman who’d entered his life with a gale-wind tempest that blew his hard-earned tranquility away.

  Chance tried not to care, which might work to a casual observer, but he couldn’t lie to himself. He couldn’t just go on with his life like nothing untoward was occurring.

  He couldn’t just ignore Phoebe, as much as he might want to.

  And he did want to.

  He sighed and turned the knob. This was going to be a hectic morning. Aunt Jo was running late and he’d have to take the first few orders himself, or else have Phoebe do it.

  He suspected he’d find Phoebe busy baking cakes or pies or something. She’d left the house before he was even awake.

  But he had no way of preparing himself for what he encountered upon entering his kitchen.

  White flour.

  Everywhere.

  The counters were covered with the powdery snowlike substance, and as for the floor—well, it wouldn’t be exaggerating to say there wasn’t a single spot in which he could walk that would not retain the imprint of his boot.

  His jaw dropped and his eyes widened in disbelief. His mouth tried to form words, but there was nothing.

  “I…you…” he stammered, but got no further.

  Phoebe, who was industriously rolling out dough for pie shells, looked up at him and grinned. “Oh, my. I must have lost track of time.”

  Chance lifted an eyebrow. “Apparently.”

  “I was going to clean up this—” she paused and gestured toward the floor “—mess before you got here.”

  “And how much time, exactly, did you think you would need to clean up this mess?” he asked, exaggerating the word.

  Disaster, was more like it. And he thought he was untidy when he got especially creative. She definitely won the award in that department.

  She shrugged, her smile wavering. “I don’t know. A few minutes, I guess.”

  “Seriously?” His other eyebrow rose to meet the first. The woman was certifiable if she thought it would take less than half an hour to put things to right.

  Only then did she really look around, and he could tell the very moment she recognized the true state of his kitchen, for her gaze widened considerably and the smile dropped from her lips altogether.

  “I’m so sorry,” she apologized immediately. “I was caught up in my baking and I thought it would be okay for me to use all the counters until you came in.”

  He almost chuckled.

  Almost.

  “I’m here now.” Nothing like stating the obvious.

  “And I’m getting the broom from…where is the broom located, exactly?”

  He pointed to the far corner where a small industrial cart was kept, including a mop and a broom.

  Sighing, Phoebe brushed the back of her hand across her cheek, leaving a thin layer of flour in its wake. Chance jammed his hands into his pockets to keep himself from acting on the nearly irresistible urge to wipe the flour away with the pad of his thumb. That kind of action, he knew, would be a mistake of monumental proportions on any number of levels.

  “You’re making pies?” he asked in an effort to channel his thoughts away from how attractive he found the beautifully chaotic woman.

  “I’m planning to do a few pies today and maybe a chocolate cake or some brownies. I’ve already made a few dozen cookies. I’m sticking with the tried-and-true until I see how the townsfolk feel about my baking endeavors.”

  She laughed and scrunched up her face. She almost sounded nervous, though why that would be, he couldn’t imagine. She’d baked in world-renowned restaurants and she was afraid of a few country critics here in Serendipity? Not likely.

  “Chocolate chip?” he guessed—or rather, hoped. He hadn’t had a decent homemade chocolate chip cookie in ages. His mouth watered just thinking about it.

  “Uh-huh,” she said, running the broom across the floor and creating a cloud of white dust in the process. “And some plain old sugar cookies. Everything’s in the pastry case if you want to go see for yourself.”

  His throat spasmed and he shook his head. He wasn’t ready to see a full pastry case—not yet, anyway. He wasn’t even sure he wanted to hear how the good folks of Serendipity felt about Phoebe’s baking, which he was certain they would love. Somehow admitting that Phoebe was here and that people would appreciate her cooking seemed almost like he was betraying the memory of Lindsay. How could he wish Phoebe the best when her best might be better than Lindsay’s ever was?

  His expression must have revealed some of what he was thinking, because Phoebe was at his elbow in an instant, a worried frown on her face.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked softly. “You look a little pale.”

  He scoffed and shook his head. “The only thing that’s wrong with me is that I can’t find a single inch of work space in here.”

  He sounded gruff and he knew it, but he couldn’t find it within himself to apologize.

  “You don’t want to try one of my cookies, then?” She sounded genuinely hurt, but the corners of her lips were turned down in what he thought might be a playful pout, so he wasn’t certain. He wasn’t sure about anything where Phoebe Yates was concerned.

  “Maybe later.” He picked up a dishrag just as the bell over the front door rang. “We have customers.”

  Phoebe nodded and went back to sweeping while Chance scrubbed furiously at the white-coated surfaces of the counters. His wet dishrag quickly hardened under his touch, leaving sticky clumps on the flat surfaces of the counters.

  “I don’t believe it,” he said with a groan.

  “What now?” Phoebe stopped sweeping and leaned on her broom handle.

  Chance held up the sticky dishrag. “I’ve just created papier-mâché.”

  Their eyes met and she covered her mouth with her palm as she began to snicker. He held her gaze. This was not funny. It wasn’t.

  Yes, it was.

  His lips twitched as he gave in to the low, throaty chuckle that wouldn’t be denied. Papier-mâché, indeed.

  “We could make a piñata,” she suggested, balling up a pile of flour from the counter. Her eyes gleamed as she flicked some at him. “Or we could have a snowball fight.”

  He scowled. “Don’t even think about it.”

  She shrugged, her pixielike expression hinting at mischief. “It might be fun.”

  “No way. I’m here to work, not to have fun.” He rinsed the rag and continued scrubbing the counter.

  “Well, that sounds just awful. Can’t you do both? I know I can.”

  He narrowed his gaze on her. “Why does that not surprise me? Now get busy or neither one of us is going to get our work done today.”

  She tilted her head and propped one hand on the top of the broom and the other on her hip. “I’ll make you a deal.”

  “Humph.” It would be infinitely easier if he wasn’t dealing with her at all. This was his kitchen, his domain, and she was only here by his good graces. Or more to the point, because he didn’t know how to say no to his Aunt Jo.

  “I’ll clean up the whole place and you can concentrate on getting your breakfast orders out.”

  Finally, a reasonable statement from an entirely irrational female.

  “If…” she continued.

  He groaned and tossed the dishrag into the sink. He should have known there would be a condition. There was always a condition.

  “If?” he prompted, crossing his arms and doing his best to glare at her.

  “If you taste one of my cookies.”

  He didn’t know what he’d expected her to say, but that was definitely not it. “Are you serious?”

  “Deadly. Or rather, hopefully, not deadly. I would really like to have your opinion on my cookies before anyone else asks for one. It’s been a long time since I’ve done such basic work. Maybe I’ve lost my touch.” She chuckled.

  “You have spent your entire career making fancy French pastries and you’
re worried about your cookies?”

  He was teasing her, but there was something about her expression that appeared earnest, just the hint of vulnerability in her eyes. The inherent male in him wanted to act on that hidden fragility, to protect and shelter her from whatever was bothering her. Only that was entirely unnecessary. She was psyching herself out for no reason.

  “All right. I’ll eat one of your cookies.”

  He was giving in to her demands and he knew it. It was a giant step backward, but really, how could he say no?

  She bolted from the room with almost contagious enthusiasm. He vowed then and there that despite his reticence to accept her into his kitchen and his life, he would compliment her on her baking. It went entirely against the grain for him to do so, knowing he would be creating more problems than he was solving, but he just couldn’t stand to be the one to burst her bubble.

  “Quick, quick,” Phoebe said as she dashed back into the kitchen with a tissue-wrapped cookie in her hand. She held it toward his mouth almost as if she were going to feed him.

  “What’s the rush?” he asked, taking the cookie from her and unwrapping it. It smelled amazing and he inhaled deeply, his mouth started to water.

  “The gentlemen who work at the hardware store each asked for one,” she explained breathlessly.

  “Before breakfast? That’s a little unusual.”

  “I guess it’s been a while since they’ve seen baked goods in the pastry case. Now do me a favor and taste the thing, will you?”

  Chance grinned, held the cookie to his lips, and then paused.

  Phoebe shook her hands at him impatiently. It was amusing to watch her squirm.

  Finally, when he thought she could stand it no longer, he took a big bite of the cookie.

  Chapter Seven

  STATUS UPDATE: PHOEBE YATES: I’m anxious to see how the customers at Cup O’ Jo feel about my cookies.

  JOSEPHINE HAWKINS MURPHY: They’ll love them, of course.

  Phoebe had forgotten to take a breath and her vision was beginning to fade as she watched Chance slowly, methodically chew and swallow the crisp-on-the-outside, chewy-on-the-inside chocolate chip cookie. He wasn’t in any hurry to tell her what he thought, that was for sure.

  He was purposefully torturing her. Why she had expected him to be a normal human being and kindly reassure her all was well with her little baking endeavor was beyond her. Chance was the least helpful man she’d ever had the displeasure of knowing.

  And why did it matter, anyway? She’d never once doubted her cooking ability in the past, and these cookies were made with the simplest of recipes. Then again, she’d never cared quite so much what her customers thought.

  The people of Serendipity were used to robust country cooking, which was a complete novelty to Phoebe. She thought she might be on a pretty tight learning curve trying to please the general public here. Somehow she inherently knew they wouldn’t go for the kinds of things she usually baked, and it had her worried, however irrational it was.

  It didn’t help that Chance continued to tease her—or taunt her, more accurately.

  “So?” she asked, letting her annoyance sound in her voice.

  He shrugged. “So,” he repeated, as if he didn’t know what she was asking.

  “Chance Hawkins, you’d better tell me what you think of my cookie or that will be the last one you ever taste.” She swiped for the half of the cookie still left in his hand, but he quickly pulled it out of reach, dangling it over her head.

  “Oh, you’re scaring me,” he teased with a wink.

  Phoebe backed away and picked up the broom she’d set aside earlier. “Fine. Don’t say anything.”

  She began sweeping furiously, not caring that she was making more of a mess than she was cleaning up.

  “It’s…” He paused thoughtfully. “Good.”

  Phoebe swung on him. “Good? That’s all you can say about it? It’s good? I thought you’d have more of an opinion than that.”

  He grinned. “I’m not your most severe critic here in Serendipity, but honestly, I have to tell you, the folks of Serendipity are going to love having you here. This cookie is awesome.”

  His lips twisted sardonically as he said it, and Phoebe wondered why. It was almost as if he were complimenting her despite himself.

  Maybe he was. It was her fault for asking. Awesome wasn’t quite the word she would have liked to describe her baking, but she supposed it would have to do.

  “I’ll go get the men their cookies, then,” she said, setting the broom aside once again.

  “And then you’ll be back to clean my kitchen? You promised,” he reminded her.

  “How could I forget?” she muttered under her breath but loud enough for Chance to hear her.

  She was shaking as she served the three old men their cookies. She had given them each two, one chocolate chip and one sugar, and told them the baked goods were on the house today. She held her breath as she waited for one of them to take a bite.

  Like everything else the men did, they each took a bite simultaneously, and their reactions were similarly synchronized.

  “Wow,” said one.

  “Mmm,” said another.

  “Fantastic,” exclaimed the third, drawing out the word. “Best cookie I ever tasted.”

  Phoebe chuckled. “Thank you,” she said simply.

  “No,” said the first man. “Thank you.”

  Smiling at her apparent success, she quickly took their breakfast orders, which she suspected Chance was already working on, and hurried away, though she continued to keep half an ear tuned into the way they were carrying on about her baking.

  It made her feel good that she had been able to make her customers smile. She wasn’t used to getting such direct feedback on her work. The food critic’s column in the newspaper wasn’t even remotely as satisfying as this was.

  She suspected that half the town would know how the men felt about her baking within the hour. Before she could even leave the dining area, four other customers asked to try her cookies, even though it was still so early in the day.

  As she expected, she found Chance already at the grill when she returned to the kitchen with a pile of breakfast orders. His back was turned to her and he didn’t acknowledge her return, so she went to the sink and filled a bucket with hot, soapy water to wash the counters down without the damp flour sticking to the washrag.

  Within fifteen minutes, every counter except the one stacked with pie crusts was sparkling clean. The floor had been swept and mopped, and the cleaning items returned to the service cart.

  “Well?” she asked when Chance returned from taking a few plates out to customers. “Good enough for you?”

  He scratched his chin. “Wow. That was fast.”

  “I may be messy, but I am efficient. Now can I get back to the pies I was baking?”

  “Yeah. Sure thing.” He turned back to the grill and threw on some more strips of sizzling bacon.

  Phoebe returned to cutting pie shells out of her dough but found the joy she usually felt in baking strangely absent. She’d been having so much fun earlier that she’d lost track of time. Now each moment seemed to drag. Her arms felt heavy and her neck was tight with strain.

  Chance’s presence had done more than just disrupt her day. It had killed any hope she had of getting any real baking done. Even when he didn’t say a word, his presence in the room was overpowering. She’d worked with plenty of men over the years, but none so overtly rugged and masculine as Chance. She found herself watching him when his back was turned, admiring his strong build and easy movements as he cooked.

  Keep your mind on your baking, she admonished herself silently. This was never going to work if she couldn’t keep the pastry case full because her mind kept wandering.

  She’d only just forced her mind back on her work when suddenly Chance was behind her, one hand braced on the counter beside her while he reached over her head to grab a pan hanging on a hook from the ceiling.

&
nbsp; Excuse me would have been nice. Or he could have simply asked her to get the pan for him. But no, he had to go and exert his presence by hovering over her.

  He was probably trying to intimidate her, she decided. Well, it wasn’t going to work.

  She attacked her pie-making with a new vengeance, placing rounds of dough into pie pans, filling them with fresh fruit and covering them with yet another round of dough. With the ease borne of years of practice, she used her fingers to pinch the dough together into a pretty pattern. She used a sharp knife to slice thin ridges in the middle of the dough in a spiral pattern.

  Balancing two pie plates on one arm, she used the other to reach for the oven, which she’d preheated earlier. She was about to open the oven door when Chance laid his large hand over hers, stopping her from moving.

  “Uh-uh,” he said in that low, raspy voice of his.

  “What?”

  “You can’t use the oven.”

  “Is that right?” She wasn’t annoyed, she was angry. “Then how do you expect me to bake the pies? Put them out in the sun?”

  He chuckled, but Phoebe found no amusement in the situation.

  “What I mean is, you can’t use the oven now. I have to warm up some rolls first.”

  She sighed. She wanted to argue, but what was the point? Chance was cooking the meals and she was just baking desserts that the café hadn’t had in a while anyway, so whatever he needed to do took precedence over her baking her pies.

  But still. Couldn’t he have put his rolls in five minutes earlier? Why did she feel he had waited until she was ready to use the oven to suddenly decide to make rolls?

  She couldn’t prove that theory, however, so she backed away and placed the pies on the nearest counter.

  “Those can’t go there,” Chance insisted. “I need that counter space to work on.”

  “Of course you do,” she muttered.