Eat Your Heart Out: A Romance Charity Anthology

by Skye MacKinnon

  I blush at the memory. “Dad was so mad at Mr. Grimes for giving me a ride into town. And Missy gave me the apricots and pretended we had an account at the store so that I wasn’t embarrassed about not having any money.”

  I was only six. What did I know about money? At least I knew where to get apricots.

  “You got that independent streak from your daddy, and I can’t tell you how proud we always were of you for it, even though it baffled the both of us. I was raised to lean on a man, and your daddy wanted nothing more than to be the one I leaned on. And it worked beautifully, right up until he passed.”

  Her eyes glitter with unshed tears. I slide off my stool to give her a hug, but she holds up a hand. “Sit yourself down. I’m fine. I just need to say this.”

  I sit down, starting to get worried. “Mom, are you okay?”

  She glares at me. “I’m fine. This,” —she waves a hand between the two of us— “is part of the problem. I was so lost without him. I’d never had to hold myself up before, let alone anyone else. I let you take on far too much responsibility around here. The farm. The business.”

  “I was happy to do it, Mom. I loved the farm. I still love the farm.”

  “That’s not the point,” Mom snaps, and I sit back, shocked by her sharp tone. She gives me an apologetic smile. “The point is, when things went bad, and I didn’t have your daddy to lean on, I leaned on you instead, and you let me. By doing that, I taught you not to lean on anyone else, because you never leaned back. I know you saw I didn’t have it in me to hold you up, and truly, that’s my one regret as your mother.”

  She holds up a hand, and I close my mouth, biting back the denial I want to spit in her defense.

  “I know why you’re really mad at Gibson, and it has nothing to do with him trying to help with the contest. You’re mad at him because, for the first time since your daddy passed, you leaned on a man. More than that, you wanted to lean on a man, on Gibson, and you’re mad as a wet hen about it.” She spears me with a look. “Letting someone you love take care of you isn’t weakness, McKenna Leonora Brooks. You can’t do everything yourself, and a good man who truly cares about you wouldn’t let you try.”

  I stare at her, my mouth hanging open. “I...I didn’t say anything about love,” I stammer.

  “Didn’t you?” she says, her voice a challenge. “You let him put Clive in his place over his idiotic haggling. Oh yes, I heard about that. Darrell was all impressed about it, said that was the moment he knew you’d chosen, because you didn’t slap Gibson down over it. And Gibson flew his entire marketing department up here from five different states to help you win a pie contest.”

  She finishes wiping down the countertop and shakes the cloth out over the trash can, then straightens and looks at me. “Sure sounds a lot like love to me.”

  “Five states?” I ask, desperate to deflect

  “Oh yes, I looked him up. I know all about Gibson Hall. He’s a good man. Sure, he’s a good businessman, and a good employer, but he’s a good man too. His teams are spread all over the country, which is how I know they came in from five different states. Five states, McKenna, just to help us with a pie contest. Don’t get me wrong. I know about the loan, and I know all about the contracts and how important this contest is, but it is not a national chain of successful clubs catering to a very, let’s say, niche clientele. And don’t think I don’t know you’re trying to change the subject, young lady.”

  I swallow, then slump on my stool. “I can’t love him, Mom,” I whisper.

  “Oh, nonsense, honey,” she says. “You already do.”

  “No, Mom. I mean, I can’t. I can’t risk my heart like that.”

  She draws herself up, her face hard, but then her expression softens. “Oh honey.”

  She puts her arms around me and it’s all I can do not to start crying again. She sighs and pulls back. “Come into the living room. I want to show you something.”

  I follow her into the living room, feeling hollow-eyed and wrung out, and she pushes me down onto the sofa, then grabs one of the old family photo albums from the shelf and comes to sit next to me.

  “I’ve seen your wedding photos before, Mom.”

  “I know. This is a different album.” She opens it up. It’s full of photos of her and Dad, both together and separate, sometimes in groups. “This is our gang from high school. Your dad ran with a different lot, but I kind of pulled him into my group. My friends weren’t so sure. After all, he rode a motorcycle.”

  We giggle at how Dad was apparently a bad boy back in the day, and she turns the page. “There it is. I couldn’t tell you now what it was. He got rid of it when you were born. Bought his first truck instead. I felt kinda bad, you know. He was giving up a piece of his freedom, but he told me having me and you gave him wings, and he didn’t need the bike anymore to fly.”

  “Oh wow.” Who knew Dad was such a romantic?

  “Right? I pretty much swooned on the spot, I can tell you.” We laugh again, and she turns the page. “This is what I was looking for.”

  It’s her and Dad, standing next to a large bowl of what looks like punch, in someone’s backyard. There are kids running in the background and smoke drifting through the air, probably from a barbecue.

  “You two look so happy,” I tell her, watching her fingers trace the shape of Dad’s face. “How long had you been together at that point?”

  She smiles and I can see her swallowing back the tears. “This photo was taken the day we met. At the very moment we first set eyes on each other.”

  “What? No way!” I stare at the picture. The way those two people are looking at each other, such soft tenderness on their faces, you’d think they’d been together for years.

  “Yes way,” she says. “I was getting myself some punch, and I felt someone standing next to me, and I said, ‘I’ll only be a second’. He said, ‘Take all the time you need’. There was something about his voice…I turned and our eyes met, and that was it. It was like I’d known him forever, and when I mentioned it later on, a lot later on, he said it was the same for him.”

  She stares at the photo for a moment longer, then turns to me. “Sometimes love is a long drawn-out thing, that takes a while to mature, like wine or cheese. And sometimes, it happens just like that.” She snaps her fingers. “I loved your father with all my heart until the day he died, and I miss him every single day. But I had twenty wonderful years with him, and I don’t regret a single second of any of them. I can honestly tell you, my darling daughter, that I wouldn’t trade a heartbeat of that time just to save myself the heartache of losing him. Because that was love, true love, and it was worth the devastation of losing him too soon.”

  I stare down at my mom and dad, so young, knowing in that same instant that they’d found The One and never turning away from that knowledge.

  “Oh God, Mom,” I whisper. “What have I done?”

  Chapter 14

  Gibson, whose last fuck evaporated around the time he left Valentine Lake...

  I’m standing in my office in the Stanford Building, one of the most expensive pieces of real estate in the city, poring over tech specs with Flynn. It’s been three days since I left Cherry Picker Farm, and I’m working hard to put it behind me.

  Whatever ‘it’ was. A vacation? A fling? An aberration?

  A mistake?

  It feels like a mistake. Anything that leaves me with this rock in my chest that makes it hard to breathe must have been a mistake.

  “What kind of cabling did you have in mind for the staff quarters?” asks Flynn.

  “Same as for the rest of it,” I snap. “Employees are humans, too.”

  I feel the weight of his eyes on me, but I don’t look away from the plans, even though they’re starting to go blurry. We’ve been at this for eleven hours now and my eyes are tired, but I want the basics covered today. Then I can hand this off and go back to figuring out how to bury the asshole city planner who’s still digging his heels in over the Regina’
s permits.

  “I get that, but I don’t think the staff need the same spec cabling as you’re planning to install in the business lounge,” says Flynn, and this time I do look at him, if by ‘look’ you mean ‘death glare capable of burning his eyeballs out of his fucking skull.’

  “Yes, they fucking do! How can they upload complex assignments, or watch videos for their courses, if they haven’t got access to the right network infrastructure?”

  Flynn stares at me, his eyebrows drawn together. “What are you talking about? What courses?”

  I open my mouth to slam him, then close it again. I count Flynn a friend, but I’ve just realized I’ve never actually told him about my employees’ benefits package. It’s not the kind of thing I talk to people about. It’s not there to be talked about. It just is.

  For the moment I ignore the fact that I told McKenna about it. That’s not relevant right now. Or ever.

  I take a deep breath, hold it for ten, then release. “Part of my staff benefits package is educational support. If they want to further their education, I pay for the course, materials, whatever else they need, and they get paid time off if necessary to attend classes, take exams, etc. With a location this isolated, I’m anticipating not everyone will be local, and even locals might not have great infrastructure at home.”

  Which is an understatement. I can get faster internet on my phone than I can on Valentine Lake’s WiFi.

  “Either way, staff need access to the same internet and hardware infrastructure the clients will benefit from.”

  I give Flynn a sideways look, just daring him to say something about strippers not needing much in the way of education, but he just looks pensive. I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen him look so thoughtful.

  “That’s a really good idea,” he says. “Way to go, Hall.”

  He claps me on the shoulder, but I shake it off. “I don’t do it for the attaboys. I do it because it’s the right thing to do.”

  “Okay,” is his only response, and I glare at him again.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  He grins, and my fists clench. He looks so fucking smug, and I just want to punch…what? One of my closest friends? Seriously?

  What is wrong with me?

  “I’m sorry, man.” I turn and drop into a chair. “I don’t know what’s gotten into me lately.”

  He leans on the table. “I gotta admit, I thought you’d be a lot more chilled after having finally gotten laid. What happened?”

  I narrow my eyes at him. Flynn, being Flynn, just smirks at me. Finally, I roll my eyes and give in, telling him what happened, culminating in McKenna kicking me out of her house.

  It hurts, reliving the whole thing. The humiliation of dragging an entire department halfway across the continent, all the way in Carey’s case, since she’s based in New Orleans, for a woman who kicked us all out within the hour.

  I don’t know how I thought Flynn was going to react, but I didn’t expect him to roar with laughter.

  “Fuck you, man,” I snarl as he doubles over, dropping into a chair because his legs no longer support him. “It’s not funny.”

  He wipes his eyes and shakes his head. “Are you kidding me? It’s hilarious. Did you seriously not see that coming? She’s the only woman you’ve ever met who isn’t even slightly interested in your money. You said yourself she’s the most independent person you’ve ever met. You really thought producing your marketing and R&D teams, without permission, without even telling her in advance, was going to make her happy? Gibson, you’re a great guy, but you’re a fucking idiot.”

  So helpful. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome,” he shoots back with a grin. “So what are you going to do about it?”

  I raise an eyebrow. “Nothing. She made it pretty clear she wasn’t interested.”

  He snorts with disbelief, then laughs again. I’m about to kick his shitty ass out of my office when he holds up his hands.

  “J, my man, what’s the first rule of kink?”

  “What does that have to d—”

  “What is the first rule of kink?”

  I roll my eyes at him. “Safe, sane, and consensual.”

  “Not that one.” He reaches out and slaps the back of my head.

  “Ow.” Fucker’s got long arms. Fucking gorilla. “What are you talking about?”

  He bobs his head about until I make eye contact, then holds up a finger. “Whatever someone protests the loudest that they absolutely don’t like, is in fact their deepest desire,” he says.

  “That is not the first rule of kink,” I point out, and he waves my perfectly valid point away.

  “Whatever,” he says. “It’s definitely up there. Anyway, my point is, your girl wouldn’t have got so mad if she didn’t care. And she definitely wouldn’t have got so mad if she didn’t want you to care.”

  I freeze. Like an irritating, surfer dude bolt from the blue, I realize he’s right, but it goes deeper than that. McKenna doesn’t just care. She started to lean on me, to trust me to catch her when she fell. For someone who’s so incredibly self-sufficient, that must have freaked her the fuck out.

  She and her mom both thought her dad would be around forever, and then he left, and she had to pick up everything, even her mom.

  I can’t even imagine what that was like. My mom was always on her own, and she was an absolute powerhouse, but she didn’t have a problem with letting me take care of her later on, when I was able. McKenna’s mom leaned on her daughter right when McKenna needed to be able to lean on her. She’s probably terrified of being left alone, without any kind of support, like her mom. She was able to solve it for her mom, but who’d solve it for her?

  No one.

  “Fuck.”

  Flynn’s grin widens and he claps me on the shoulder again. “There you go.”

  I drop my head in my hands. “She was just starting to trust me.”

  “Yup.”

  “And I let her push me away.”

  “Yup.”

  “I’m an idiot.”

  “Yup.”

  I groan. “You could deny it,” I grumble.

  “I don’t lie to my friends.”

  I glare at him, but my heart isn’t in it. “What a mess.”

  “Yup.”

  “I swear to God, man, one more time…”

  “I’m just messing with you, man. Anyway, it is a mess, that’s for sure. Question is, like I said, what are you going to do about it?”

  Chapter 15

  McKenna, on potentially the best but possibly the worst day of her life…

  It’s the day of the contest, and I’m about ready to crawl out of my skin with the stress. Mom’s been baking solidly for the last few days, and I don’t think I ever want to eat another Poor Me Pie, but I have to agree with her—it’s our best shot at winning the contest, especially given the fact Bunny Hughes has suddenly acquired some serious baking skills. I have no idea how it happened but I was in the general store yesterday and Lulu gave me a sample. I nearly threw up, it was so good.

  Light, flaky pastry. A filling that tasted like it was sent directly from Heaven. Not that I think it’s better than Mom’s, but it’s close enough to perfect that I don’t know how the judges will choose.

  I’ve been doing my best not to think about Gibson, or that awful fight. Much as I’ve come to realize that he might have had a point, it’s too late to call him now. If I’d called him immediately, maybe it would have been okay, not that I even know how to contact him. I’d have to go through his company’s main switchboard, and what are the chances he’s told them not to put my call through?

  Or, even worse, they’d have no idea who I am and…what am I’m going to say? I’m his vacation fling and I want to get back together? Oh yeah, I’m sure they’ll be falling over themselves to put me in touch with their billionaire boss who probably has women calling all day every day in an effort to get his attention.

  I admit it—I’m scared to call. Scared
he’s washed his hands of me for good. I’ve pushed him away twice now. What guy is going to keep trying after that? Not him. Why would he? He’s too smart, and too amazing overall, to waste his time on me. There must be a million women out there who’d give their left arm to be on his.

  I’m an idiot, and it’s too late to do anything about it now. If I call him now, especially if we lose the contest, it’ll just look like I’m using him as a financial backup plan, and that’s the last thing I want from him. His money was never what attracted me to him. It was everything else, and now it’s too late.

  I did talk to Mom about pie crusts, though. We did some research and it looks like Gibson had a point about perception and bias based on appearances. So we decided to work on the pie’s curb appeal, and that’s what she’s been experimenting with since; a variety of decorative crusts to really make her pie stand out before the judges even cut into it. Initially, she did the Cherry Picker logo in pastry, a pair of cherries behind a fancy CP monogram, but then we remembered it’s a blind tasting and that would probably disqualify her most excellent entry.

  Eventually she went with multiple pairs of cherries, hanging from a branch that curves around the top side of the dish. It took some doing to get the baking time and temperature right so that the decoration was as perfect as the rest of the pie, but we got there in the end.

  Okay, she got there in the end. I just handled quality control on the results. And yes, I have spent most of the last four days drunk as a skunk on cherry liqueur. Why do you ask?

  As we hand our pie over to Candace, who’s collecting all the pies for judging, her eyes bug out as she stares at Mom’s pie, the pastry cherries gleaming in the sunlight.

  “Well, if this isn’t the most perfect pie I’ve ever seen in my life! Marianne Brooks, you are a witch in the kitchen!” Candace beams her signature smile and takes the pie into the tent where all the other pies are hanging out, ready to be judged.