by Sey, Susan
Picture Me and You
A Devil’s Kettle Romance
Book One
Susan Sey
Author's Note:
A FEW THINGS you should know before you dig in:
1. Devil’s Kettle is not a real town.
2. It is, however, a real thing located in a real state park right here in my beloved Minnesota.
3. Writers are shameless thieves, and the name was too good not to steal. So was the disappearing river, which is why I grabbed them both, made up a town to go with them and set a trilogy there.
4. If you’re curious about the real Devil’s Kettle, check out my website where I’ve posted photos of me and some intrepid friends (shout out to the Women Scouts of Grand Marais!) checking it out. I’ve also posted a list of all the books I’ve ever written along with some large-ish photos of my face. You’re welcome.
5. Speaking of gratitude, reviews are always welcome. So if you just love Jax and Addy (and I hope you do), go ahead and tell the whole world by leaving them a positive rating or review.
6. Again on the subject of gratitude:
Inara gets props because she loved the turkeys from day one and never wavered.
Bryan gets props because he reads my first drafts and has never once asked for a divorce.
Claudia and Greta get props because they tell everybody their mom’s a writer, and not just when I go to the grocery store in my pajamas.
Okay, that should do it. Happy reading, readers!
Preface
MARRIAGE HAD TAUGHT Addison Davis three things, all of them surprising.
Number one? Her husband hadn’t liked her very much. Not by the end, anyway, and this was a shock because everybody liked Addy. Certainly nobody disliked her. They couldn’t. She was just too darn likable, and that was no accident. That was a superpower. Normally it took a chemical spill or some alien DNA to produce a bona fide superpower but Addy had come by hers the old fashioned way — she’d sweated and bled for it. So when it came to people-pleasing, Addy wasn’t just good. She was a ninja. Marriage should’ve been a snap.
It wasn’t.
It had been a horrible mistake, actually. She knew that now. She’d said as much to Diego once, and he’d agreed. In fact, he’d seen her horrible mistake and raised her a terrible wife and a lifelong disappointment. She couldn’t disagree.
That said? Lifelong wasn’t always the same thing as forever. Sometimes it wasn’t even quite two years. Diego had turned out to be the live fast, die a legend type. That had been surprise number two.
And surprise number three? Addy was one heck of a widow. Maybe Diego hadn’t cared for her, but his family adored her. And she adored them right back. They were her family now. Her second chance. Her permanent address. They were simply hers, and she intended to keep them. To make them as happy as they’d made her. As happy as she’d tried to make Diego.
This time, however, she was succeeding. And why? Celibacy. The whole family worked better, she’d discovered, now that she wasn’t having sex with anybody in the family.
She really should have remembered that.
Chapter 1
Devil’s Kettle, Minnesota
Lake Superior’s North Shore
Late May
Addison Davis surveyed the empty dessert plates littered across the Wooden Spoon Diner’s retro-chrome bakery counter and felt faintly ill. She was, she acknowledged sadly, a slut for pie. A shameless sugar whore. And her jeans — nasty, judgy things even on Addy’s better days — weren’t going to let this lunch go unremarked.
That said? She didn’t regret a bite. Why would she? When your guilt-o-meter was scaled for real mistakes (like, say, an impulsive elopement, a predictably disastrous marriage, or a shamefully happy widowhood), dessert for lunch barely nudged the needle.
Gerte Torsen, the pink-cheeked pie pusher who owned the Wooden Spoon, whipped a napkin from the dispenser on the counter between them and handed it over. “Well? What did you think?”
“I think you’ve ruined me for all other pie, that’s what.” A little dollop of cream clung to the edge of one of the plates, and Addy looked firmly away from it. Forget about it, she told her stomach. We’re done here. She took the napkin and patted her lips.
“But which one should I offer for Devil Days?”
“Good heavens, Gerte. Ask a mother to choose a favorite child, why don’t you?”
Gerte dropped her chin and gave Addy a look that sliced her sugar buzz bloodlessly in two. Addy sat up hastily, surprised at herself. Addy’s own sainted mother-in-law might be Devil’s Kettle’s undisputed alpha female but Gerte was easily the first runner up, and woe to the pie-drunk fool who forgot it.
She cleared her throat cautiously. “But if I had to choose?”
“You do.” That was steel glimmering in Gerte’s grandma-sweet voice.
“The North Shore triple berry, then. No question.”
Gerte smiled smugly. “I knew you’d like that one.”
“What’s not to like?” Addy widened her eyes appreciatively. “Raspberries, gooseberries and wild blueberries, all harvested within five miles of Devil’s Kettle? I’d be over the moon with the local angle alone. But that crust?” She shook her head in wonder. “Gerte, the crust. It’s like angels kissed it.”
“That’s the butter.” Pleasure pinked those round cheeks, and a reluctant fondness pooled in Addy’s chest. Gerte might be a little touchy about her social status, but it was hard to judge her for it when she was standing there in a frilly apron, genuinely blushing over a compliment to her pie crust. “Lainey wanted me to switch to shortening last year when dairy prices went so high but I said why don’t you just take me out back and put a bullet in my brain?”
Addy blinked at the bloodthirsty turn of phrase, then took in the wicked amusement dancing in Gerte’s eyes. She suppressed a sigh. Suckered again. Darn that frilly apron.
“She actually said that,” Lainey called from the kitchen. “Put a bullet in my brain, why don’t you?” The Wooden Spoon featured an open floor plan — tourists loved to watch the bakers work — and Addy could see Gerte’s daughter rolling out traditional Norwegian lefse as she spoke. A few years older than Addy’s own twenty-five, Lainey was one of those cleanly-engineered Scandinavian beauties Minnesota was famous for, as angular as her mother was round. She worked the potato-based dough into tissue-thin sheets with the same rolling pin her grandmother — and her grandmother’s grandmother before her, probably — had used. The tendons in her forearms flexed and released with an intensity that Addy had always found mildly terrifying. Then again, at least Lainey didn’t hide it behind a frilly apron. That was a point in her favor as far as Addy was concerned.
“I said, what if we just replace part of the butter with shortening?” Lainey went on. “You’d have thought I suggested murdering orphans.” She rolled her eyes, and Addy knew without question that Lainey didn’t struggle with pie sluttery. Not if she could dismiss real butter so easily.
“Taste costs,” Gerte said, her round little chin going ominously stubborn.
“Everything costs.” Lainey lifted a sheet of dough with a long, thin paddle and transferred it to a traditional round lefse griddle with a casual flick of the wrist that suggested any fool could do it. Addy knew from disastrous experience that this was not so. “We’re running a business here, Ma. You want to make art? Diego’s gallery is right down the street.” She jerked her sleek blonde head toward the diner’s plate glass window, indicating, of course, the shrine to Addy’s late husband that took up the entire next block. “Go for it.”
“I doubt the gallery has any more customers than we do at the moment,
” Gerte said airily but her baby-fine brows drew together as she gazed out the front window. “Not with this weather. Land sakes, I think those are snowflakes.”
Addy followed Gerte’s frown to the empty, wind-blasted curve of Main Street. In the harbor beyond, a brave handful of boats bobbed at anchor, dodging what Addy would’ve easily agreed were snowflakes had it not been almost June.
“Summer comes hard this far north,” she said encouragingly. “But it always comes eventually, right?”
Lainey went back to her lefse in grim silence.
“Sure, honey,” Gerte murmured, her eyes on the snowflakes. “Sure.” The bless your heart was silent but Addy heard it nonetheless. She was new, not naive. Everybody in town had a granny who’d tell you about the year the ice was hardly out of the harbor before it was September again. Back when Devil’s Kettle had been rolling in fish, iron ore and virgin timber, this wasn’t a huge problem. These days tourists were the only natural resource left, so skipping vacation season wasn’t an option. And Addy, as the CEO of the town’s annual tourist bash, knew it better than anybody.
“People will come even if summer doesn’t,” Addy said firmly. “I promise.”
Gerte shook off the uneasy moment and sent Addy that deceptively sweet smile again. “Devil Days isn’t until August anyway. The seasons will’ve changed eighteen times by then.”
“And so will our menu if you don’t make up your mind about the pie, Ma,” Lainey said darkly. “We only have three months until Devil Days, you know, and the ad deadlines are sooner. If we’re late getting our menu to the Dispatch again, I’m going to let you explain it to Nan.”
“Ouch.” Addy gave Lainey a wince that wasn’t entirely theatrical. Nan Davis — Addy’s sainted granny-in-law — owned the local newspaper, and occupied the number three spot on Addy’s list of Women Not To Be Trifled With, right behind Gerte.
Gerte sighed and began clearing Addy’s pie plates. The whole lot of them. And that little dollop of cream was still there, calling her name. Oh, mercy.
Gerte said, “When do you need everything, honey?”
“As soon as possible,” Addy told her apologetically and looked away from temptation. Again. “I’m having a Devil Days app built this year, and de-bugging that kind of thing takes forever. I think it’ll be worth it, though. People like having all the info in their pockets these days. Plus an app will free us up from print deadlines.”
Gerte smiled sleekly. “From Nan, you mean.”
“That, too. Though, Nan being Nan, I’d stay on her good side if I could. Speaking of whom—” She glanced at her watch and winced. “Cripes. I was supposed to be in her office twenty minutes ago, negotiating ad space. She’s going to kill me.” She jumped to her feet, reached for her bag and muffled a delicate belch. “Pie for lunch, though.” She grinned. “Worth it. Bury me with a slice of that North Shore triple berry in my sticky hand, will you?”
“You got it.” Gerte laughed. “Meantime, you’ll want your strength if you’re going to beard your granny in that lair of hers.” She grabbed a to-go cup, filled it with coffee and pressed it into Addy’s hand. Oh, help. Addy hated coffee but what kind of ingrate refused a mug full of graciousness and generosity? Her manners were rewarded when Gerte also handed over one of her signature sugar cookies — a spoon-shaped affair with a thick dollop of frosting in the bowl end. “There you go. Come home with your shield or on it, Spartan.”
Addy laughed helplessly. “Pie for lunch, now a cookie with my coffee? I think I’m in heaven.” She paused, struck. “Wait, is this heaven? Did Nan get me already? Am I dead?”
“Oh, go on.” Gerte chuckled and flapped a dishtowel at her. “A little pie for lunch never hurt anybody.”
“Yeah, yeah. Tell it to my jeans.”
“Pish.” Gerte dismissed this with a jerk of her soft chin. “Men like women with a little meat on them.”
“Great,” Lainey muttered from the kitchen, looking conspicuously skinny.
“But I don’t want a man,” Addy told Gerte. She meant it, too. In the kitchen, Lainey went after another ball of lefse dough with her ferocious rolling pin and something that sounded like lucky you. Addy wisely ignored this. “After Diego? Who would I want?”
Gerte didn’t have an answer for that — nor did Lainey — and silence fell. It happened a lot whenever Addy invoked her late husband’s name, that moment or two of reverent silence. She assumed people used the time to say a short prayer of thanksgiving to whatever deity had blessed womankind with a man like Diego, however briefly. And if people assumed her steadfast rejection of romance since his death was the result of having been utterly ruined for mortal men by his astonishing beauty and electric talent, well, she was hardly going to disabuse them of the notion. Cheerful widowhood worked for her. Why trade it in for keeping tabs on her butt?
Finally Gerte cleared her throat. “You’re a pretty enough girl, Addy,” she said kindly. “And young yet. There’ll be somebody else for you one day.”
“Could be.” Addy shrugged doubtfully. “I’m not going out of my way to find him, though.”
“Maybe he’ll find you.”
She laughed. “He’ll have to.”
Then the door jingled open and Jax walked in.
Chapter 2
A BITTER WIND came in with him. It blasted the hair off the back of Addy’s neck and shot her crumpled napkin off the counter. She made a dive for it.
She heard Jax say, “Hey, Gerte.”
“Hey, Chief,” Gerte sang and Addy — now on her hands and knees between the stools — could all but hear the older woman’s cheeks going pink again. Jax flirted with Gerte shamelessly, and as a result she loved him with the same happy, helpless devotion Addy reserved for pie.
“Hey, Jax,” Lainey called from the kitchen. “How’s the fire fighting business?”
“Slow,” he said. “Just the way I like it.”
“You must be the only person in this town who can get away with an attitude like that.” She sighed. “The rest of us have to pray for tourists.”
Addy straightened in time to catch the look Lainey sent her, like the eternal winter and ensuing tourist drought were her fault. She sent back a reassuring smile and turned to her brother-in-law, now striding toward the diner counter. She grinned in spite of herself. Good old Jax. He didn’t look a thing like Diego, thank God. At not quite six feet tall, he was only a comfortable handful of inches taller than Addy’s own five-five, and was as ordinary as his brother had been extraordinary. With a messy thatch of chestnut-brown hair that sneered in the face of combs everywhere, a proud beak of a nose and warm hazel eyes that all but disappeared when he laughed, Jax was the anti-Diego. And Addy loved him for it.
“Hey, Jax,” she said cheerfully. She waited for him to grin at her the way he’d grinned at Gerte and Lainey. The way he grinned at everybody, actually, all warm and friendly and charming. Because maybe Jax wasn’t beautiful like Diego — like any of his siblings, honestly — but he was charming. Evidently, when people weren’t struck stupid by the very sight of you, you developed other skills. Conversation. Compassion. Charm.
He didn’t smile at her, charmingly or otherwise.
She sighed. Jax’s refusal to like her was the one burr under the comfortable saddle of Addy’s life. Oh, he didn’t dislike her. He just didn’t like her. He never had. Which baffled her, because he liked everybody, even his family who viewed him more as a curious aberration of the gene pool than a beloved son.
“For heaven’s sake, Addy,” he said instead. “What are you doing here?”
“Having pie for lunch.” Her own smile didn’t budge. She was no quitter. “It was work related so don’t judge.”
“I’m not judging.” He lifted easy hands. “Your dirty little sugar habit’s no concern of mine.”
“Amen, brother.”
Something flashed across his face, something bleak and so brief she almost didn’t catch it before it disappeared into his customary equanimity. Oh for cryin
g out loud, had she really just called him brother? Not only did he seem to resent the relationship, but her only slim claim to him as her brother had died nearly four years ago with his brother. And maybe she didn’t miss Diego but she didn’t usually toss him willy-nilly into conversations with people who were still obviously grieving him.
“Being well aware of your sugar habit, however,” he said, recovering smoothly, “I can’t imagine why I didn’t start here.” He sent Gerte a twinkling look. “Guess Addy can’t resist you any more than I can.”
Gerte snickered and flapped her dishcloth at him. “Oh, go on with you.”
“Start here?” Addy asked. She retrieved her abandoned coffee and spoon cookie from the counter, suspicion uncurling in her stomach. “Start what here?”
“The search.” Jax folded his arms and gave her that same fake-warm not-smile he’d been giving her since she’d met him. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”
“You have?” She blinked, astonished. Even running across her accidentally seemed to put him out. Why on earth would he go looking for her?
“Your on-line calendar said you were supposed to be meeting with Granny Nan at the newspaper office nearly half an hour ago. She’s pissed at you, by the way.”
“Nan’s always pissed at somebody.” She waved that away and narrowed her eyes at him. “Wait, you looked at the family calendar?”
“That’s what it’s for, isn’t it?”
She shook her head slowly. “Gerte said I wasn’t dead yet.”
He frowned at her. “Of course you’re not. Why would you be?”
She glanced across the counter at Gerte. “You’re absolutely, positively certain I’m not dead?”
Gerte studied her with pursed lips. “Pretty sure, hon.” She snapped open a white paper bag and turned her attention to Jax. “The usual, Chief?”
