by Zoe York
Evan grinned. “And?”
“Maybe the best thing I’ve ever tasted,” Walter said. “Then again, I’m pretty sure Cori could make anything taste good.”
Great. Cori had a fan club. As if he was surprised. It hit him that Cori had the same openly accepting and warm air that Rudy had always had. He knew that she wasn’t aware of that commonality with her father. And he really wanted her to know that. He wondered if that was part of why these men were so drawn to her. It was clear that they were. Sure, the short shorts didn’t hurt, but Cori’s wide smile and willingness to drop her work for a cup of coffee and some conversation were definitely a lot of it.
Cori laughed. “I think the paint fumes are getting to them,” she said. Then she whispered, still loud enough for them all to hear, “I figured the fumes would get rid of them actually, but they’ve been here for over an hour.”
Evan gave her a once-over, which he made sure she noticed, then turned to where Brynn was stretching up to paint a high spot on the wall. She also wore shorts and her T-shirt pulled away from the waistband as she reached.
“Hot girls and hot coffee?” he asked. “They’re never going to leave.”
“Well, maybe we have our new marketing plan,” Cori said. “Like Hooters only with pie and coffee.”
“I’m in,” Walter told her.
“You’ll be rich,” Hank agreed.
Evan couldn’t help but laugh at the irony of that statement.
“Now you need to invest in a cappuccino machine or one of those fancy espresso things?” he asked.
“Can’t afford it,” Cori said. She tipped her head to the side. “Did you know that we’re broke, by the way?”
Ah. She’d been doing her job with the books and had made a visit to the bank. Yes, he did know that the pie shop account was dry. But Rudy had told him that the girls were supposed to figure everything out themselves. “Rudy and I—”
“Ahem.”
His mother elbowed him in the side and Evan realized he’d forgotten about the women who had accompanied him inside. Damn. But they were a great reason to not delve into the pie shop business right now. And the fact that he hadn’t warned the triplets about the financial situation. “Oh, hey, Cori, I’d like you to meet my mom, Diane. Mom, this is Cori, one of Ava’s sisters.”
“Hello, dear,” Diane said. “It’s very nice to meet you.”
“Evan’s mom?” Cori repeated. “Wow! It’s really nice to meet you too!”
“And this is her friend, Holly,” Evan said. “Her daughter Jill is a classmate and good friend of mine.”
Would Cori remember the conversation in the hallway outside of Ava’s apartment in New York? Would she realize who Jill was?
“Oh, Evan told me about Jill.” She grabbed Holly’s hand and pumped it up and down. “It’s amazing that she’s a wildlife vet. She must be so smart. He is really proud of her and the new job she’s going to be starting. I totally got sucked into that giraffe cam thing they had at that animal park in New York,” she said. “Does Jill work with giraffes?”
“Penguins, actually,” Holly said, looking a bit flummoxed.
Evan was impressed. Cori had managed to warmly welcome Holly, compliment her daughter, make Evan look like a great friend, and strike Holly practically speechless all at once.
“Oh, penguins are so cool,” Cori said. Then she flashed Evan a grin and a wink. “Get it? So cool?”
Holly actually laughed too and Evan felt a wave of affection for Cori that he couldn’t quite understand. She was…something.
“Jill and Evan have been friends their entire lives,” Liz interjected. “They’ve always been close. It will be hard for her to be away from him.”
Evan sighed. “Cori, this is Liz. One of Jill’s best friends.”
Cori nodded at her. “Hey, he must have that effect,” Cori said. “Ava was a bitch to live with for those few days when Evan came back to Bliss and we were still in New York.”
Evan bit back a smile. And the urge to kiss Cori. He had no doubt Ava had been hard to live with as they packed up their lives for a trip to Kansas they hadn’t expected and didn’t want, but missing him had nothing to do with it.
“But I’ve got to ask you something,” Cori said, moving closer to Liz and dropping her voice, even though everyone in the place could still hear every word.
The men drinking coffee at the table had gone silent. Evan rolled his eyes.
“What?” Liz asked.
“Well, in a town this size, since there aren’t that many people your age, do you all just eventually hook up at some point or another? I mean, I figure that must be the way it is.”
Clearly Cori had figured out that Jill wasn’t the only classmate and longtime friend that Evan had messed around with. Suddenly Evan had the urge to pinch her. The brat. Maybe right on the ass. Or spank her. On that ass that looked like it was made to wear cut-off denim…
Liz’s cheeks got pink, but she said, “Yeah, kind of.”
Cori nodded. “I knew it. I mean, Evan and Noah—”
She waved her hand in Noah’s direction, and Evan realized for the first time that his friend was even in the room. He had to have been out of the room when Evan had first walked in. But he was now rolling pink paint onto the wall right next to Brynn. How had Evan not noticed him coming into the room? Noah wasn’t exactly small. The ex-marine stood six-one and was wide and muscled. He was generally pretty quiet, and he supposed Noah’s training had taught him to be stealthy and stuff—Evan wouldn’t really know since Noah never, ever talked about his time in the Marines—but damn.
Of course, Cori Carmichael did have a way of pulling all the attention to her. At least his attention.
“—and Parker,” Cori went on. “I mean, you have some very hot guys here. No way would I be able to keep my hands to myself if I’d grown up here.”
Yep, she was definitely why he hadn’t even noticed his friend painting a wall pink.
Liz’s cheeks were even redder now, but she was smiling. “We do have some really great guys here.” She’d married one of those great guys she’d gone to school with, in fact.
Cori sighed dramatically. “Too bad I’m taking a dating hiatus,” she said.
“Your dad said that you really like dating,” Hank said as he took a drink of his coffee.
Cori turned to him with an arched eyebrow. “Did he now? I’m not sure it’s very gentlemanly of you to repeat gossip about me.”
Hank chuckled. “Nobody’s ever accused me of bein’ a gentleman, darlin’.”
Cori’s face broke into a huge grin. “Then you’re just my type, Hank. Too bad I’m taking a break.”
Damn, no wonder they were all in love with her. Not only was she gorgeous but she had this…light. Something that seemed to glow from inside her that made a person want to get closer.
Or maybe that was just him.
All of the men at the table laughed at that, and Roger said, “I think you’d kill him on date one, Cori.”
Hank nodded. “But what a way to go.”
Okay, not just him.
Cori laughed, without so much as a faint blush, Evan noted, and said, “Well, I kind of like you, Hank. How about we keep our relationship about dark roast and caramel syrup and keep you alive?”
Hank held up his cup. “As long as we’ve got whipped cream too, darlin’.”
Hearing Hank, who was seventy-one and widowed, call Cori darlin’ annoyed Evan. Strangely. And stupidly.
But Cori winked at Hank and said, “There’s not much that I do that doesn’t involve whipped cream.”
And suddenly it hit Evan that he was incredibly happy about her dating hiatus. He couldn’t handle Cori dating the town of Bliss. With—or without—whipped cream.
Cori focused on Evan and the ladies with him, who were all watching her with avid fascination. “But thankfully, Ava’s not taking a hiatus and she grabbed this guy right up,” Cori said, gesturing at Evan with her thumb. “I’m guessing he’s got a
waiting list of girls.”
Okay, now that was a little close to the situation with Jill possibly. She really was a brat. Evan’s gaze dropped to her ass again.
“He does,” Liz said with a nod. “Except that Evan isn’t the settling-down type.”
“Oh?”
“He enjoys dating, but he doesn’t take anything too seriously,” Holly said as if Evan wasn’t standing right there. “In fact, there have been many times over the years that his grandfather has said that the only thing Evan takes seriously is not taking anything seriously.”
His grandfather had definitely said that. Still, it was not okay that his mother’s best friend was warning his girlfriend’s sister that he wasn’t a good risk. “Holly,” Evan started, “I don’t think—”
“Well, then, everyone knows where he stands and no female hearts are getting their hopes up for a diamond ring, right?” Cori interrupted.
Whoa. Evan looked at her. But she was staring Holly down. Still, that was…the most defense anyone had given him in a long time.
“I mean, if Evan’s always been the fun-loving guy who doesn’t get serious, then the girls who…go out with him…” she said, clearly indicating that she didn’t mean only going out with him, “…shouldn’t be surprised when he’s that same guy the next morning, right?”
Yep, she knew exactly what Holly was getting at. And it was definitely getting harder to fight the urge to kiss her. Evan could feel the surprise radiating from Holly and he had to bite back a grin. He turned, grabbed a chair from the next table, and pulled it up between Hank and Walter. This was getting good.
The guys scooted a little to make more room and, almost as if she did it on autopilot, Cori grabbed a cup from behind her, filled it with coffee, squirted caramel syrup into it, and then added a swirl of whipped cream from the dispenser she’d obviously brought from New York. He grinned and lifted the cup for a sip. Then sat back in the chair, crossed one ankle over the other knee, and waited for the show to go on.
“Then your sister is aware of who he’s going to be…in the morning?” Holly asked.
Holly gave him an irritated look, but he’d perfected not reacting to jabs about his personality and habits years ago. If he could withstand digs from his own grandfather, Holly had nothing in her arsenal that could get to him.
“Oh, no doubt about it,” Cori said. “Evan’s been very up-front about what he wants from Ava.”
Well, that was true enough. Evan sipped again. And the girl made delicious coffee.
“Your sister doesn’t take things seriously either?” Holly asked. “She has a penchant for…sprinkles…too?” Her tone and the way her eyes dropped to the coffee cups on the table in front of her, made it clear that sprinkles meant all kinds of unflattering and unserious things.
Cori leaned over and shook some sprinkles on top of Evan’s cup. “Oh, Evan doesn’t want sprinkles from Ava.” She mimicked Holly’s tone perfectly on “sprinkles”, making it just as clear that she knew that Holly had meant it as an insult. And that Cori didn’t care.
And it was true that he didn’t want, or intend to get, sprinkles of any kind from Ava. Sure, he’d entertained the thought of a fling when he’d had her pushed up against the front door of her apartment and had been kissing the hell out of her. But then again, that had actually been Cori. And her sprinkles were a whole other thing.
Holly sniffed. “Well, Evan definitely needs fewer sprinkles in his life. He needs…”
“Plain coffee?” Cori supplied when Holly trailed off, unable to complete the analogy.
Evan had to cough to hide his chuckle. The men around the table were all watching, obviously taking mental notes to share with everyone they ran into later. Even Noah and Brynn had stopped painting to turn and watch. Liz looked a little uncomfortable, but she was watching Cori with a hint of admiration. And Diane had inched closer to the door.
A flash of irritation went through him. Just once, he’d love for his mother to stand up to someone. Even if it was him. She had never told him not to do something or that she was displeased with him. She’d left the stern lectures to his grandfather. She’d never once grounded Evan or even withheld his allowance. He hadn’t been a bad kid, but he’d, as Holly pointed out, never taken things very seriously—including school and chores and schedules and rules.
“I was going to say, he needs a nice girl to settle him down,” Holly said.
Cori shrugged. “I get it. But the thing is, when you combine coffee and sprinkles, the coffee doesn’t make the sprinkles less fun. The coffee becomes sweeter and more enjoyable because of the sprinkles.”
“What are you getting at?” Liz asked, her eyes narrowing.
“Evan is the sprinkles,” Cori said, as if it was obvious.
Evan swallowed his coffee down the wrong pipe and coughed hard. Hank reached over and thunked him on the back, without ever taking his eyes off of Cori and Holly.
He was the sprinkles? But as he coughed again and finally cleared some of the coffee from his windpipe, he realized that yeah, he was.
“Well, ‘sprinkles’ can make a big mess,” Holly pointed out with a frown.
Evan’s eyes, and everyone else’s, dropped to the table where there were sticky spots of whipped cream and caramel, and sure enough, several stray sprinkles all over the surface. Evan had to admit that he was impressed that she’d been able to make that analogy.
“No doubt about it,” Cori agreed. “And if you can’t deal with the potential mess, you shouldn’t choose sprinkles for your coffee in the first place. Or whipped cream. Or caramel syrup. You should stick with black coffee. In a cup with a lid. And one of those ring thingies that keep it from being too hot to hold.”
There was a beat of silence after that comment. And the insinuations.
God, he really liked her. The thought seemed to jump out of nowhere and smack Evan in the face. But yeah, he really liked Cori Carmichael.
“But you go for…sprinkles?” Holly asked.
Cori laughed. “Oh, I always want sprinkles on my whipped cream.”
Heat shot through him at that seemingly simple, but oh-so complicated—and hot—comment. And Evan realized that he had a not-at-all-small crush on his fake girlfriend’s sister.
“But there’s so much more under all the toppings, right honey?” Hank asked with a wink.
Cori smiled, but shook her head. “No, not always. Sometimes it’s just the fluffy, fun stuff.”
As her words sank in, Evan felt his hand squeezing his mug so hard, he was shocked it didn’t crack. There was so much meaning in what Cori had just said. He had no idea if everyone else in the room heard it, understood it, felt it. But he did.
And holy shit, he wanted to grab her and hug her and tell her that when the whipped cream and sprinkles were as good as hers, they became their own underneath.
“Maybe you and Evan both need to think about taking things more seriously,” Holly finally said.
Okay, enough was enough. Evan shoved his chair back and stood.
But Cori was already talking, “I think Evan and I have a lot in common, but, I wouldn’t say I don’t take anything seriously. I mean, there’s food. I really love food. And there’s Robert Downey, Jr. I don’t joke around about him. And,” she said, her smile fading as she met Holly’s eyes directly, “there are my sisters. I take them and their happiness very seriously. I’d feel sorry for anyone who screwed with that.”
Holly’s eyes widened, Liz coughed, and Diane glanced toward the door as if wondering if she could escape. Evan opened his mouth to interject—though he had no idea with what. Especially considering that he really liked the whipped-cream-loving Cori, but he felt a definite jolt of damn when she got serious and came to her sisters’ defense.
Suddenly, fortunately, there was a loud crash from the kitchen, followed by a fervent, “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”
Evan saw Cori wince slightly, and the men around the table all picked up their cups, while Brynn and Noah returned to painting. All as
if this wasn’t the first time they’d heard those things from the kitchen.
Oh, yeah. The reason Parker had called Evan down here in the first place.
“And that would be my lovely girlfriend now,” Evan said, breaking into the tense moment and hoping like hell they could now move on. Because that urge to hug Cori wasn’t getting any weaker.
“Good Lord,” Holly said.
“Yeah. She’s a firecracker,” Evan said with a tight smile.
There was a loud crash that sounded like metal hitting tile. Then another few expletives. Then it was quiet. The whole shop seemed to be holding its breath for a moment. Then Cori said, “Okay, who needs more coffee?” and three hands at the table shot up.
There was another loud crash from the back and Evan had to admit that, whatever she was doing in there, Ava had great timing.
“Should someone go check on her?” Diane asked, her eyes wide.
Cori and Brynn exchanged a look, then Cori set the coffeepot on the table, Brynn turned on her stool, and they quickly did rock, paper, scissors.
“Dammit,” Cori breathed when she did scissors to Brynn’s rock.
Brynn just grinned and went back to painting.
“Sure,” Cori said with mock brightness. “I’ll go check on her.”
“Tell her we’d love to meet her,” Holly said, moving to another table and pulling out a chair. “And I don’t care for whipped cream or sprinkles, but I would love some plain black coffee.”
“Shocker,” Evan heard Cori mutter.
Then she opened her mouth to say something louder, but Evan took her elbow and turned her toward the kitchen. “They probably don’t have enough cups, Holly. They weren’t expecting to have customers today.”
“Oh, they’ve got a bunch behind the counter,” Ben said, pointing. “Cori had to bring her collection down here because Ava told her she didn’t want them taking up all the space in the cupboards at Rudy’s place.”
“You have a cup collection?” Evan asked Cori.
“Just one from everywhere I’ve traveled.”
He didn’t let go of her elbow, enjoying touching her way too much. “How many?”
