Sweet as Pie

by Alicia Hunter Pace

  “Don’t lie to me, Christine,” Jake said. “Sherman’s army couldn’t blast you out of here. You’re all shined up and ready to meet your public.”

  “It’s your public, and don’t call me Christine. Do you want your teammates and coaches to see me looking like I just rolled out of bed?”

  “You don’t look like you just rolled out of bed even when you have.”

  “Oh, you are sweet.” She beamed at him and they landed in a group hug.

  Christine said, “Let’s see where you live.” It looked like he was going to do that walk-through, after all. Lucy Kincaid was one thing, but Christine Champagne was another.

  He picked up two of the bags his father had carried in and led them to the living room. Christine gasped. “Jake, this is beautiful.”

  “You like it? I’ve been doing a little decorating—picked up a few things at Walmart.”

  “Sure you did.” Damn, Christine. You’re on to me.

  Walking through his house was like a trip to a foreign land. There was stuff everywhere—benches and tables in the hallway, lamps, globes, clocks, crystal liquor decanters on silver trays. By the time they got to his parents’ room, he was worn out just from looking at it all.

  “So tasteful,” his mother said. “Very English country.”

  “Yeah.” Jake opened the door to their room. “That’s what I was going for. I looked at some books and said, ‘That’s just my style.’ Masculine English country, you understand. Then I called Walmart and had them round up everything in their masculine English country section. They’ll do that for you at Walmart, if you’re Jake Champagne.”

  She ignored him completely. “I don’t know who did this, but it’s wonderful.” She walked around the bedroom, touching things as she went—the bed with the red checked covers and four hundred pillows, chest with a big pitcher and bowl, and rocking chair by the window.

  Jake hauled one of the suitcases onto one of the luggage racks, as his father did the same. “I guess we can put the other one on the chest at the end of the bed.” He needed more luggage racks if his mother was going to be visiting regularly. It wasn’t Lucy’s fault that she didn’t know Christine Champagne did not travel light.

  “Oh, flowers!” Christine bent to smell the yellow roses on the bedside table. He owed Lucy big for that.

  “Uh, yeah. Did you know they have yellow roses right at Walmart—in the feminine English country section.”

  Christine laughed. “Do you think I fell off a turnip truck yesterday? You didn’t get these flowers.” She frowned a little. “Evie didn’t get them, did she?”

  Had he heard her right? “No, why would you think that?”

  “No reason.” She opened her train case, pulled out a brush, and drew it through her perfectly smooth hair.

  “The decorator put them there. She brought a crew with her.”

  Christine nodded with approval. “Nice job. Are you hungry? I brought you a chicken pot pie.” That was good news. His mother could make a decent chicken pot pie. She retrieved the bakery box from the foyer and headed toward the kitchen. “I assume the kitchen is through here. Do you have the makings for a salad?”

  He should have bought some groceries. “If you can make salad from beer, yogurt, popcorn, CLIF Bars, and cheese. I think there’s cheese.”

  Christine laughed as she entered the kitchen. “This is gorgeous.” She set the pie on the counter.

  “Nice,” Marc said, walking straight to the espresso/coffee maker. “Did this come with the place?”

  “No. I bought it so you’d have coffee when you’re here. We can make some, but we’ll have to figure out how to work it.” Except he didn’t have any coffee...unless... Maybe decorating a living space included buying groceries. He opened the pantry. No such luck.

  “I have to say your interior designer has exquisite taste.” When Jake looked up, Christine had taken down one of those fancy pots and was inspecting the little acorns on the handle.

  “Oh. Evie picked those out—or at least she put me on to them. She said they were too expensive, but I bought them anyway. They look good in here, don’t you think?”

  “Did she now?” Christine said. She shifted her eyes toward Marc and set her mouth in a line—not like she was mad, but like she was considering. Finally, she spoke. “Marc, will you go to the supermarket and get some salad makings? And don’t forget the dressing.”

  “Sure.” Marc reached into his pocket for his keys.

  “No, Dad,” Jake said. “Let me. You just got off the road. I should have bought some groceries anyway.”

  “No, Jake,” Christine said. “I want to visit a little with you.” Hellfire and brimstone. He knew what that meant. She was about to lay down the law to him about something. That hadn’t happened in a while. She slid onto one of the stools at the eating counter, met Jake’s eyes, and pointed to the seat next to her. “Get a bottle of pinot grigio, too, Marc.”

  “Anything else?” Marc asked.

  “Uh, better get some coffee,” Jake said. “And cream and sugar.”

  Once Marc was gone, Christine pointed to the bakery box on the counter. “We picked this up when we dropped Anna-Blair and Keith off at Evie’s shop.”

  Evie had made him a chicken pot pie. Maybe this meant she wasn’t mad at him, after all. Maybe she was tired and he had misread the whole thing. He pulled the box toward him and opened the lid.

  No Santa and his sleigh this time, but what he saw made him laugh. She’d decorated the top with crossed hockey sticks, stars, and the stylized yellowhammer bird that was the team mascot. There were words, too: Go, Sparks, #8!

  “This is great!” he said. “I’ll have to thank her.”

  “Do that,” Christine said. “She wouldn’t take any money, though I tried to insist on paying her when I ordered it. I’ll pick up a little gift for her.”

  Disappointing. Evie hadn’t just made it on her own.

  “She went to a lot of trouble to decorate it,” Christine said.

  “She does that,” Jake said. “Bees, if there’s honey in it; peaches, if it’s a peach pie; scenes for different seasons. She really is an artist.”

  Christine smiled. “Evie looked wonderful, better than I’ve ever seen her. She’s let her hair grow, and her makeup was beautiful.”

  “She does look good,” Jake agreed.

  Christine put an elbow on the counter and leaned forward. She was going in for the kill. “Jake, you aren’t thinking of getting involved with Evie, are you?”

  He hadn’t known what to expect, but not that. “No. Of course, not.” And what if I was? But he wasn’t. “You know how it is with Evie and me. We’re friends. And it’s nice to have someone from home here.”

  Christine nodded. “I’m glad to hear it. Because you know that wouldn’t be wise.”

  “No.” But why? There are reasons. I just can’t think of them right now.

  “First of all, she’s Channing’s cousin.” Right. That was one of the reasons. He didn’t need to worry about remembering the rest of them because his mother was going to name them. “It would be a little strange, don’t you think?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “Second, she’s Keith and Anna-Blair’s daughter. They’re our best friends—your godparents.”

  Like he didn’t know that. “And their land adjoins ours. In medieval times, you’d have married us off as toddlers.”

  He laughed, but Christine did not.

  “Don’t even joke about that, son. You think I don’t know how you’ve been acting since Channing. I probably don’t know the extent of it, but I know enough.”

  That shouldn’t have surprised him. She read The Face Off Grapevine. At a loss, he shrugged. He certainly wasn’t going to tell her he’d made a bet that he wouldn’t have sex for three months. He would prefer his mother think he had never had sex and never would.

&
nbsp; She shook her head. “But I don’t want to talk about that.”

  Thank you, Jesus.

  “It’s been a hard time for you. At least you didn’t rebound and run off to Vegas. That happens sometimes.”

  “You didn’t need to worry about that.”

  “Well, I did worry,” Christine said. “So did Marc and your grandmother. Olivia. Addison. We all worried. Blake maybe more than anyone.” She closed her eyes and bowed her head.

  Yes, he would have worried about that, like he worried about everything that concerned Jake. Blake liked Evie, always had. Jake covered Christine’s hand with his own. “But it didn’t happen.”

  “No. But, when you get tired of running the streets with a different girl every night, you probably will rebound. You will almost certainly get involved with someone who will get you from point A to point C. Jake”—she placed her other hand on top of his—“that can’t be with Evie. You can’t hurt her.”

  “How do you know it wouldn’t be Evie who hurts me?” It was a valid question.

  “Surely you’re not that dense,” Christine said and let her eyes rest on the chicken pie.

  “Well, I never was at the top of my class.”

  Christine frowned and looked like she was going to say something else, but Marc came through the door with his arms full of groceries. “I got eggs, bacon, and the stuff for pancakes. I’ll make breakfast in the morning,” he said.

  “Good.” Christine popped up from her seat. “I didn’t think of that, but Jake will need breakfast.” She wouldn’t have, given that she took her breakfast in bed—breakfast prepared by someone else. “Jake, do you have a salad bowl?”

  “Let me look and see.” If he didn’t, he was sure there was a copper pot that would do. “How do you feel about eating your breakfast off a paella pan?” He was reasonably sure he didn’t have a tray.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The dining room of the historic Laurel Springs Inn had an old-fashioned, elegant, country-club feel to it, though the food was better than any country club Evans knew. Those places always worried too much about golf and liquor and not enough about food. She’d dropped her parents off here earlier, gone home to change, and was now back to meet them for dinner.

  It was filled to the brim with hockey players eating with their families. At least she didn’t have to worry about seeing Jake here. By now, Christine was probably spoon-feeding him chicken pot pie.

  Her gut tightened at the thought of that pie. She hadn’t intended to decorate it, hadn’t intended to go one extra inch, let alone an extra mile, for the man she was so mad at. But then it had looked plain compared to the other pies. It was professional integrity that made her add the crossed hockey sticks. Then, it needed a little something more, so she’d tried her hand at cutting out the Yellowhammer logo freehand. That had taken three tries, and during the process, she’d begun to think about why she was angry at Jake. She’d already faced that he hadn’t done anything wrong or behaved any differently than he always had.

  She sometimes forgot that he’d been a good friend to her in a thousand ways—like the time their cotillion class had gone to a fancy Chinese restaurant and he’d quietly moved to sit beside her and help her when she couldn’t get the hang of using chopsticks.

  He had simply failed to meet her expectations—and she was the only one responsible for her expectations. And she only had herself to thank for letting him push her into going to his condo to cook instead of Crust. If it had been Ava Grace or Hyacinth who’d behaved as he had, she wouldn’t have given it a thought. They were her friends—and so was Jake. That was all he would ever be.

  Usually, when she talked herself out of her anger, she felt relieved and happy, but this time she was left feeling flat, empty, and sad. So she had kept embellishing the pie with his name, number, and stars, until it was decorated up like a Victorian side table.

  Needing some distance before she talked to him again, she’d let Jake’s calls go to voice mail yesterday and she had not called him back. Too bad she couldn’t lock herself in her house until the team left on Sunday.

  Keith Pemberton stood when she approached. Her father had been to Miss Violet’s cotillion classes, too. Then he smiled at her, like he always did, and he hadn’t learned that from Miss Violet. It came straight from the heart. Though no one had ever admitted it, Evans knew that, after two girls, she was the child who was supposed to be a boy—the one more try. They never acted like they regretted her, but she wondered how much they would have celebrated a boy.

  He held her chair. “You look nice, Evie.”

  “Thank you, Daddy.” She’d changed into a simple amber linen shift and even gone to the trouble of digging out a topaz bracelet. “You think this is an improvement over my chef’s jacket with flour all over it?” It had been splattered with chocolate, too.

  “I’m proud of you for getting your hands dirty. I just wish you’d do it closer to home.”

  Here we go. But she didn’t panic at the subject the way she used to. It had become a ritual for them to have the same conversation every time they saw each other.

  Right on cue, her mother pitched in with, “There’s always room for you at the bakery,” but without any real conviction. If she’d had conviction, she would have brought it up the moment she’d entered Crust. That had happened before. The discussion had eventually taken on a lighthearted tone as her parents became more accepting of her decision to not return home. It had been a while since Anna-Blair had reminded her that they had sent her to culinary school with the expectation that she would go to work in the family bakery.

  “Room for me—not so much for my way of doing things.” Evans looked around. She spotted Wingo with an incredibly attractive couple who looked too young to be his parents. Luka Zodorov strolled in and joined Logan Jensen and his family.

  No Able. That was good. She was prepared to like him—did like him. But he was coming on entirely too strong. He’d called once yesterday and texted her twice today.

  She had told him she’d go to that breakfast because she was angry with Jake, though she wanted to go. Of course she did. And there was no reason Jake should care. Therefore, there should be no awkwardness.

  “I know.” Anna-Blair brought Evans back to the table. She put one hand out, palm forward, and took a sip of her wine. “You want to specialize—to make artisan pies, not cookies from a mix, plain old birthday cakes, and a thousand of my other sins.”

  “Not a thousand.” Evans grinned at her mother. “More like a hundred.”

  Keith laughed. “To be fair, Anna-Blair, you don’t sin as much as you direct the sinning.”

  Anna-Blair grimaced. “That’s not true. I made brownies and thumbprint cookies when Carabeth had that stomach virus.”

  “That must have been a real emergency,” Evans said, looking at the menu.

  Anna-Blair’s voice took a serious turn. “If you ever decided you wanted to come home, I’d let you have it—run it like you wanted.” She swallowed. “Maybe. Mostly.”

  “You’ve never done anything mostly in your life.” Evans laughed and tried to change the subject. “I might have the shrimp and grits.”

  “You never know,” Anna-Blair said breezily. “I might be tired of the bakery business. I think I’ll have the shrimp and grits, too.”

  “You’ll never be tired of having something to run. Since you’ve aged out of Junior League, the church flower guild can’t keep you busy enough. And rush only happens once a year.”

  “Tell you what, baby girl. You just come on home.” Keith winked at her. He was a winker, always had been. “There’s a building down the street from the bakery. I’ll buy it for you. You and your mama can fight it out.”

  “We’d be the talk of the Delta for sure,” Evans said.

  “Might be good for business,” Anna-Blair said. “People would come from miles around to see it.�
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  “People would come from miles around to eat my pies,” Evans said.

  “That’s my girl,” Keith said.

  Just then, the server set a glass of wine down in front of Evans. “Merlot,” he said.

  “I ordered that for you,” Keith said. “I thought you’d want steak. Would you rather have something white?”

  She took a sip of her wine. “I’m secure enough to drink red wine with shrimp.” And she was, but right now, that seemed like the only thing she was secure about.

  Keith nodded and addressed the waiter. “Shrimp and grits for the ladies, and I’ll have the filet, rare, with the blue cheese-stuffed baked potato. Caesar salads all around?” He looked from Evans to Anna-Blair.

  “Sounds good,” Evans said, “and I’d like a side of the mushrooms with garlic and sherry.” If Jake had been here, she would have never ordered mushrooms. Though he’d never said so, his dislike for them was so intense she could tell it was hard for him to watch people eat them.

  Keith brightened. “Good idea. I’ll have some of those, too. Anna-Blair, how about you?”

  “No. I’ll just have a bite of yours.”

  “Not likely.” He addressed the waiter. “Three orders of the mushrooms.”

  She should have known better than to fall for a man who didn’t like mushrooms. Her daddy loved them. She ought to look for someone more like him.

  Might as well take care of some housekeeping. “I thought that after dinner, you could take me home so you can use my car while you’re here.”

  “Are you sure?” Keith asked. “I don’t want to leave you without a car.”

  “I’m sure. I usually walk to work anyway.”

  “Christine and I are going shopping tomorrow for some things Jake needs. I still can’t believe Channing threw him out with the clothes on his back.”

  And I can’t believe, after all we bought at Williams-Sonoma, that there’s a thing left that Jake needs.

  “Now, Anna-Blair,” Keith said. “I think it was Jake’s choice to leave without his things and Channing sent a truckload of stuff to Christine and Marc’s. So it wasn’t quite like that.”