High Heels and Haystacks: Billionaires in Blue Jeans, book two

by Erin Nicholas

  She joined him a few seconds later and he pushed the screened door open and let her pass in front of him. She started to turn toward his truck that had been parked in the closest spot to the building the first couple of days after Ava and her sisters had taken over the pie shop. Now he parked a spot over, leaving the closest one for Elvira, the 1937 370-D Cadillac their father had left to them. She supposed that was chivalrous. She hadn’t really thought about it before that moment, but yeah, that was nice of him.

  She took a step in the direction of Parker’s big red truck—stupidly pleased that the truck would go with her heels today—but he caught her wrist, stopping her.

  The freaking pricks of sensation went tripping up her arm and she had to resist the urge to pull away from him. It wasn’t unpleasant exactly, but it was unnerving.

  “In here.” He tugged her in the direction of the pie shop’s back door.

  “Uh…” She followed him, struck by how comfortable he was walking in and out of the shop. It made her wonder how much time he’d spent there with her father. She assumed a lot.

  Had Rudy ever slipped next door to borrow sugar? Had Parker given Rudy baking tips? She’d never, not once in her life, seen her father make so much as a bag of microwave popcorn. The idea that he’d baked pies still amazed her. Had Parker come over during his “downtime” from the diner for pie and coffee with the rest of the guys who’d hung out here on a regular basis? She’d gotten to know Hank and Ben and Walter and Roger over the last three months. Brynn handled the “waitressing” duties, as she was supposed to, and Cori joked and teased with them. But Ava found herself drifting to the front of the shop more often when they were there, or even blatantly standing near the swinging door that separated the front of the shop from the kitchen. The men loved to talk about…well, anything really. But they told stories about the town, about Evan, Parker, and Noah—the guys who had seemingly been appointed to oversee the girls’ transition to life in Bliss—and everything in between. And they talked about Rudy.

  The Rudy Carmichael everyone in this town had known was a very different man from the one who had seen his triplet daughters only every other weekend and who had clearly been more comfortable as Ava’s boss than as her father.

  The thoughts and memories of her father made it feel like someone was playing ping-pong with her heart in her chest. She went back and forth between emotions. She felt like she could never settle on just one thing—one feeling, one memory, one idea of him. And she felt a little dizzy and bruised if she dwelled on it all for too long. She’d known him as the man she’d most wanted to win over. And she had. Eventually. She knew she had. He’d never said it, but she knew it because he’d finally felt like he could leave the company, leave New York, and find some peace and happiness. He’d found it in a tiny Midwestern town, of all places. And he’d started making pies. But she believed he’d been happy here and that mattered to her. As did the fact that she’d finally proven she could run the company for him while he kicked back in Kansas.

  And then he’d made her come here.

  “There’s something you should see,” Parker said solemnly, dropping her wrist as he stopped in front of the storage room door.

  Ava wasn’t sure that was a great lead-in for a guy to use on a woman he didn’t know very well. “Oh?”

  He reached for the knob, but before he turned it he asked, “You haven’t spent much time in here, have you?”

  “The storage room? No,” Ava said. She wasn’t nervous right now. Just curious. And she thought that was an important realization. Considering how jumpy Parker made her feel, it was good to realize and admit that it wasn’t about nerves or trust. It was purely physical awareness. She didn’t like it, but it wasn’t something she was concerned about.

  He looked over at her, his hand still on the door. “Have you ever looked inside this room?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “I glanced inside. Once.”

  “Where do you keep your pie filling and ingredients?” he asked.

  She waved toward the cupboard behind her. “There is so much storage space in this kitchen it’s ridiculous. Everything’s in cupboards.”

  Apparently, the pie shop had been a dime store and soda fountain years ago. Evan said Rudy had chosen to remodel this building because it was next to Parker’s diner—and Parker’s refusal to add dessert to his menu was the reason Rudy needed a pie shop in the first place—and because he’d liked the front windows. But he’d had to put a lot of other work into it, like putting up a wall to separate the front from the kitchen, plus adding to the kitchen area. But he’d simply put in appliances, countertops, and cupboards that he’d salvaged from around town. Nothing matched in here, and none of it was restaurant quality. The stove had come from a woman who had remodeled and gotten new appliances. Rudy had bought the fridge from a guy who was cleaning out his late mother’s house. He’d gotten the countertop from a contractor who did remodels and had extra. He’d taken the cabinets and cupboards out of a house they were tearing down. And there were a lot of cupboards. Especially considering Rudy had owned and used exactly one set of mixing bowls, three wooden spoons, a couple of spatulas, a set of measuring cups and spoons, and a hand mixer. And pie pans, of course. Definitely not enough to fill the plethora of cupboards and drawers he’d put in.

  The whole thing still baffled Ava after spending time in his Madison Avenue office building in Manhattan. Everything there had been high-end, sleekly professional, and incredibly sophisticated.

  Here the fridge was yellow and the stove was white. And both had clearly seen better days.

  Parker shook his head. “Okay, so you haven’t seen this.” He pulled the storeroom door open and flipped on the light, stepping inside. He glanced back at her. “Come on.”

  “Get into the storage closet with a guy I barely know when no one is around to hear me scream? I don’t think so.” It was weird that she didn’t feel like the barely know part was completely accurate. She’d met him three months ago, and they didn’t spend long periods of quality time together, but she still felt like she knew him. Kind of.

  And then Parker did the most awareness-skittering-all-over-her-body thing he could have done. He laughed. A real, full laugh.

  She stared at him. And decided she not only would get into that storage room with him, she might not want to come back out for a very long time.

  “What’s so funny?” she asked, propping one hand on her hip.

  “I didn’t peg you for an exhibitionist,” he said, still grinning.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You want people to hear you scream.” His voice dropped lower. “And, darlin’, there’s only one reason for you to be screaming when I’m around.”

  Parker Blake was flirting with her? He had just called her “darlin’”? And her mind would not stop replaying the words only one reason for you to be screaming when I’m around. But she was a single, heterosexual woman with a decent sex drive. It didn’t mean anything special that she was responding to that. Probably. She tipped her head. “You mean screaming in frustration, right?”

  He just grinned and pointed at the metal shelving unit that occupied the east side of the room. It was filled with glass jars. “Do you know what that is?”

  She finally gave up and stepped in next to him. The room—really more of a closet— wasn’t very big. And Parker took up a lot of space. She made herself focus on the jars. The labels were handwritten and said, Apple, Cherry, and Peach.

  She frowned, then looked up at Parker. “It looks like pie filling.”

  “Bingo.”

  “This is pie filling?”

  “Rudy’s pie filling,” Parker told her.

  Her head whipped around and she stared at the jars. “He made his own pie filling?” Well, of course he had. Obviously you needed pie filling if you were making pie. But he made it and canned it and stored it?

  “How do you think people make pies around here when it’s not apple or cherry or peach season?” Parker ask
ed.

  “Oh.” She considered that. Then admitted, “I never thought about it.”

  “He picked his own. Then canned it.”

  “Huh.” So she didn’t need to go pick any fruit. Not that she’d been dying to do that anyway, but it had seemed like a way to spend time with Parker that was both business and social. As far as everyone else knew. “I think canning pie filling is going to be a little beyond me,” she said thoughtfully. Hell, she hadn’t even mastered the pie-from-scratch-thing yet.

  He picked a jar from the shelves then moved toward the door, forcing Ava to either move with him, or stand still and end up plastered against him. Which she considered for a few seconds longer than she should have needed to. She scooted for the door and moved out into the kitchen as he clicked off the light.

  “I think canning is going to be a little beyond you too,” he said, handing her the jar. “You’ll notice the labels all have the fruit as well as a number on them. Each number is a different recipe. You know that he never found the perfect one.”

  Apparently, according to Evan, Rudy had been trying to recreate a pie that tasted like his grandmother’s had when he’d been growing up. He’d never quite gotten there, though he’d tried hundreds of combinations of ingredients. For a second, sadness gripped her chest and she had to pull in a deep breath. She hated doing things she wasn’t good at, and she knew Rudy had been the same way. Not being able to recreate that recipe had to have driven him a little crazy.

  Not having a recipe here was driving her a little crazy. Literally. And metaphorically. She’d followed her father’s recipe for business since the first day she’d set foot in his office on Take Your Daughter to Work Day. And it had worked. It had turned out beautifully.

  Here in Bliss, he’d never found a specific recipe to follow. And yet, he’d been happier here than ever. But he didn’t have anything exact to pass on to her, nothing for her to replicate. Literally. And yes, again, metaphorically.

  “What do you want me to do with those jars?” she asked, looking down at the label that was clearly written in her father’s handwriting. That also made her chest tighten. She missed him. They hadn’t had a perfect relationship, but she’d always felt like she’d known him better than most.

  And then she’d met Parker and Evan and Noah. And realized that maybe she’d known Rudolph Carmichael, CEO, but she hadn’t really known Rudy. The man. The friend. These guys had. And she was jealous of that.

  “Your homework,” Parker said.

  She glanced up. “What do you mean?”

  “Take five jars, taste them, and compare and contrast. I’ll expect you to be able to discuss the similarities and differences tomorrow.”

  She stared at him. “Seriously?”

  “Seriously.”

  “You want me to make five pies and then just…taste them?”

  Parker gave a small eye roll. “Just the filling. Use a spoon. I don’t think your diet plan will suffer too much.”

  She frowned. “I wasn’t worried about my diet plan.”

  “Then what?”

  “I just—” She glanced down at the jar again. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

  There was a short stretch of silence before he said, “Put your phone away, turn off your computer, sit down and breathe. Then open the jars and taste them. Focus on the ways they’re the same and the ways they’re different. Tune in. Give it your full attention for ten fucking minutes.”

  She frowned at him and his harsh tone. “Hey.”

  “Do you deny that you’re always doing ten things at once? That you’re always working while you eat? That sometimes, two hours after a meal, you have to really think about what you ate to remember it?”

  He seemed personally offended by all of that.

  But she had to shake her head. “I don’t deny any of that.” Because he was completely right.

  “So, your homework,” he repeated the word, almost as if he was relishing it—and the idea of ordering her to do it, “is to shut everything else off and focus on what you’re putting in your mouth for a few minutes.”

  Ava had never realized what a dirty mind she had, but what you’re putting in your mouth definitely tripped off some not-very-ladylike thoughts. She swallowed and nodded. “Fine.”

  “Fine.” He gave a satisfied nod.

  “Are we going fruit picking though?” she asked quickly.

  She didn’t want to, exactly, but she had a notion that Parker wasn’t going to let her get away with just using her dad’s pie filling. He was going to want to use his own recipes for one thing. So she needed to know what her dad’s filling tasted like before she could know how Parker’s was different. And then she had to put Parker’s in her mouth too. She hid a naughty smile, shocked by herself and not about to explain why she was grinning to him.

  “Ava, I have to tell you something,” Parker said, again solemnly.

  “What?”

  “I can’t take you fruit picking.”

  She frowned. “Why not?”

  “There’s no fruit in season right now.”

  She shook her head. “But it’s spring. Things grow in the spring, right?” This was the heart of farm country in America. This is where they grew things. That was pretty much all they did here.

  “Things are planted in the spring,” he agreed. “But these things take time.”

  He was being completely patronizing. But she had to admit that her assumptions may have been naïve. She’d taken biology in high school. Hell, she could have looked all of this up.

  Then her eyes widened. “This is why Hank and the guys were all winking at each other when they talked about us going fruit picking.”

  Parker nodded and slipped his hands into his front pockets. There was a hint of a smile on his lips. “Pretty much.”

  Well, that certainly worked for the story about her and Parker being more than boss and employee. Ava hid how pleased she was with that. “Huh. Well, I guess I’m going to have some explaining to do.”

  Parker pulled in a breath, then let it out, seemingly considering something. “Tell you what. We’ll pick fruit. When it’s in season. Okay?”

  “When are apples in season?”

  “Fall.”

  Oh. Her six months of dating would be up in early September.

  “But strawberries will be ripe…in June.”

  That would work. But… “Strawberry pie isn’t on our menu.”

  “It should be.”

  She thought about that. Cori had been coming up with some specialty pies, but hers were more unique. Things like s’mores pie, and bacon and Nutella pie, and a root beer float pie. Strawberry would be different but not crazy. And it was something they could make sure everyone knew Parker had contributed. The pie shop was going to be his and Cori’s together. He needed a chance to put his mark on it too. “Okay.”

  He gave her a quick nod. “Okay, so it’s a…plan.”

  Had he almost said date?

  “Great,” she agreed.

  “Then I’ll see you tomorrow for the first lesson.”

  “Okay.” It definitely felt like her employee was making a lot of decisions all of a sudden. She frowned, but couldn’t quite work up the motivation to put him in his place. Maybe because making decisions and telling her what to do when it came to pie was his place.

  He headed for the door and she suddenly felt like she didn’t want him to leave. They’d had a nice time together. Strangely. “I thought you said you were giving the pie shop your time every other day?” she said.

  “I did say that,” he agreed, his hand on the screen door.

  “Already making an exception?” she asked, her tone teasing.

  “Well, tomorrow isn’t about the pie shop,” he said.

  “Oh.” She frowned. “What’s it about then?”

  He lifted a shoulder. “You.” Then he was gone.

  The screen door slapped shut behind him, and Ava found herself staring at it for several long seconds.

 
; She wasn’t used to being surprised. She wasn’t used to a man making her want to take her clothes off simply by grinning and laughing. And she definitely wasn’t used to being in the aftermath of a meeting or a negotiation and still feeling off-balance and like she didn’t know what the hell was going on.

  But that was all exactly how Parker Blake made her feel.

  She looked down at the jar in her hand.

  And she was going to be taste-testing pie filling tonight. And writing up an essay about it.

  Because if Parker thought he was going to challenge her to something like this and not end up with a typed essay in a plastic report cover in his hands, he didn’t know anything about her.

  * * *

  Let’s talk about loopholes.”

  Evan looked up at Parker with an expression that was part amused and part curious. “I love loopholes,” he said, setting his coffee cup down.

  Evan was a lawyer, so loopholes—closing and opening them—were part of the job. But it was also personal for him. Cori was only his girlfriend right now because of a loophole in Rudy’s will.

  And Parker was beginning to think that had been Rudy’s intent all along. To make them all really look at what they wanted and then work for it.

  “Is it really okay for someone else to be in the kitchen helping Ava? The will doesn’t say she can’t have any help at all. Just not from her sisters. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “You’re sure? Because I do not want to be a CFO in New York City.”

  “I’m definitely, completely, absolutely sure,” Evan said.

  He wanted the pie shop products to improve, and it was a smart move for the business that would be his down the road. Even if Cori called dibs on the kitchen overall, he didn’t think she’d be opposed to using his recipes. She’d come up with some fantastic specialty pies—s’mores and PB & J for instance—but Ava was still the one faking her way through the classics they were currently serving to customers, like cherry and apple.