Hometown Hope: A Small Town Romance Anthology

by Zoe York

  Maybe she should start doing the books here. She’d been doing them at home when Ava and Brynn went to work. But the adding and subtracting didn’t take long. Here, at least she’d have something nice to look at while she pretended the work took longer than it did. The view outside the window was pretty and inside it smelled like sugar and coffee and…pie. Crap! Cori shot out of her chair and ran to the kitchen where her pie was hopefully not too done.

  She pulled it from the oven just in time. She set it on the cooling rack and tossed the hot pads on the counter. Then she turned and surveyed the kitchen. The kitchen that still perplexed her.

  It really did look like a kitchen in a home. A big kitchen, but still very…homey. Which was the root of the confusion. This was Rudy’s kitchen. Ava had been working so hard to figure the pies out, that she hadn’t changed a thing. This was what their father had surrounded himself with purposefully for almost five years. It was where he’d spent his last days.

  And the best way to describe how that made her feel was perplexed.

  She’d looked through the house, but there was mostly just normal house stuff—dishes and furniture and a few books. But no papers or photos. Parker had told Ava that the guys had cleaned out Rudy’s clothes and shoes. But there was no indication that they’d taken any personal items out of the house.

  And that didn’t perplex her. Prior to moving to Bliss, Rudy had lived in a professionally decorated penthouse with expensive furniture and artwork and no personal touches. In Bliss, he lived in a…house. A comfortable, homey house that had no professional touches. But also didn’t have many personal touches.

  Prior to Bliss, he’d worked in a professionally decorated office with expensive furniture and artwork and no personal touches. But now, looking around the pie shop, Cori saw personal touches. Sure, the furniture and appliances were someone else’s, but he’d clearly preferred these over buying restaurant-grade stuff, and he didn’t have any connection to the appliances that had cooled and cooked his food before moving here. He’d had cooks to do all of the prep. She doubted that he’d set foot in the kitchen in his penthouse more than a handful of times, if that. Yet, in Bliss he’d not only gone into a kitchen on a regular basis, but he’d actually had two kitchens. And had spent most of his time in one of them. This one. With the regular bowls, the beat-up wooden spoons, the pot holders with cows on them that he could have easily bought at Target—and the idea of Rudy Carmichael in a Target made her almost giggle—the shop was more like a home than his home in New York had ever been. Was it possible that this place had turned into the home he’d never had? One that he’d always, on some level, wanted?

  The pie was still too warm to eat, so Cori was stuck with a situation that rarely turned out well for her—she had time on her hands and nothing to do.

  On impulse, she headed for the “office”. The closet with the folding table in it was as far from Rudy’s office in New York as he could have gotten. She pulled the door open. No way had he worked in here. Of course, from the looks of his books, he hadn’t done much office work at all.

  But still…she couldn’t help but wonder what else might be different here. She regarded the middle drawer in the file cabinet with her arms crossed. They hadn’t opened that one. They’d—she’d—assumed that it only had an empty tape dispenser or a broken pencil in it. Or nothing in it.

  But now, if she opened that drawer and there was nothing there, she’d be disappointed. She couldn’t lie. She wanted this place to have been different for Rudy on every level. When she was a little girl and had gone to his office and had opened his drawers, they’d been full. They’d had fancy pens in them and engraved stationary and everything had smelled like leather. If this drawer had nothing in it, that would be different, she supposed. The broken phone and stapler were different. But she wanted…more different.

  And if that drawer smelled like leather, she was going to be upset.

  She glanced over at the pie pans, rolling pin, and canisters that held flour and sugar. Okay, there were lots of differences. There wasn’t a gold gilded clock or a gold gilded lamp or anything that was gold gilded anywhere in the building. Maybe the town.

  Rudy had made pie. For his friends. True friends, not business acquaintances. Men who knew nothing about, well, anything Rudy did in New York. He’d had coffee every day with men who made their livings running the hardware store on Main, teaching science at the high school, farming, and building houses and barns. Rudy Carmichael had nothing in common with these men. But they mourned his passing more than people who’d known him for over forty years.

  She blew out a breath and reached for the drawer of the cabinet.

  It was empty. Except for three photos, all obviously printed off from the internet. Her hand shook slightly as she reached for them. The top one was of Ava from an article about her winning a women in business award. The next was Brynn’s photo from the lab’s website. And the last was of Cori.

  Her heart flipped.

  This one was from her Facebook page. Which meant that not had he gone looking for it, but it was completely candid. She was standing on a mountain with a huge grin with lots of white, sparkly snow behind her. She remembered that day. But she barely remembered the two girls with their arms around her. She’d spent a winter at that resort working in the shop where they rented out skis and snowboards. It had been one of many jobs and places she’d lived temporarily, and she’d never made a point to keep Rudy updated on where she was, but it looked like he’d found her. At least once.

  She wondered if Ava and Brynn remembered the day they’d had their photos taken. Probably not. What they were wearing and where they were posed were the same as a hundred other days in their lives.

  She looked at her photo and then at her sisters’ photos. They were so different.

  But her smile was bigger.

  She wondered if her dad had noticed that.

  Cori sniffed. Okay, this place was not what she’d expected. But she’d always liked surprises and she thought she was ready for a few more.

  She pulled her phone from her back pocket and dialed. A minute later the man she wanted to talk to most at the moment answered.

  “Hey, Hank. It’s Cori. I was wondering if you and the guys were available for some pie and coffee and conversation.”

  She somehow managed not to go straight to Evan’s house after her two hours of pie and conversation with Hank and the guys.

  Well, she did go straight to Evan’s house. She’d heard so many stories about her dad that her head was reeling, and for some reason, she’d thought that Evan would love to know.

  But she’d kept herself from actually knocking on his door. His house was at the end of a short dirt road—she didn’t miss the symbolism of that, at least the symbolism in her mind—and she’d stood at the end of the road in front of his house for a good ten minutes. But she hadn’t gone any closer. Or knocked on his door. Or thrown pebbles at his windows. Or called him.

  She’d been proud of herself.

  But the whole stuck-here-for-a-year thing was rubbed in her face three nights later. Because Ava had decided to have a game night. And apparently game night included Cori. And Brynn and Parker and Noah. And, of course, Evan. In fact, she was seated straight across from him at the dining room table, trying to avoid looking at him while Brynn considered her poker hand.

  Not looking at him was incredibly hard. Harder than not knocking on his door. Because she really liked looking at him. And because she really liked how he looked at her.

  Finally, Brynn laid down her straight flush.

  “It took you that long to put those down?” Cori demanded, then laughed. “You were just making us sweat.”

  “The sweet ones are the ones you have to look out for,” Noah said, smiling as he watched Brynn scrape her winnings toward the already huge pile of chips in front of her.

  “There’s more to me than you might guess,” Brynn said cheekily. The cheekiness was aided by the beer she was drinking, bu
t it was absolutely as cute as it would have been without the drink. She narrowed her eyes then. “You didn’t let me win, did you?”

  Ava laughed. “I should let you think that.”

  “You let her win sometimes?” Noah asked.

  “They let me win so it feels better than me just beating them all the time,” Brynn said.

  Ava laughed. “You’ve never drawn the long straw without help.”

  “But every spelling bee you’ve ever won was because I let you,” Brynn told her.

  Cori gave a low whistle. Ava knew that but they’d never said it out loud.

  Ava sighed. “Yeah, okay. But I really was a better public speaker.”

  “Still are,” Brynn agreed. “And I beat you at every science fair.”

  “What did you win at?” Evan asked Cori.

  Dammit, now she was going to have to look at him. She gave him a tight smile. “Against my sisters? Nothing. Ever.”

  “You guys never let Cori win at anything?” Evan asked Brynn and Ava with a frown.

  Oh, boy, that little bit of protectiveness was way too nice. “It wasn’t like that,” Cori said.

  Ava laughed. “Cori would never have let us help her win anything.”

  “Yeah, we were all in that spelling bee,” Brynn said, slurring spelling with bee slightly. “We all got up there and since they went alphabetical by last name, we went in a row. Ava spelled hers right, I spelled my first one right, and then Cori got up there and got the word macaroni. She spelled it wrong on purpose. The very first word.”

  “You added an extra C or something?” Parker asked.

  “Oh no,” Brynn jumped in enthusiastically before Cori could reply. “She spelled it i-h-a-t-e-t-h-i-s and then took a bow and walked off the stage. Right up the center aisle.”

  Parker snorted. “Not into spelling bees, Cori?”

  “Not into performing for our dad,” Cori said, before she really thought better of it.

  “What’s that mean?” Evan asked, with another frown.

  Cori sighed. These guys all thought Rudy was amazing and she was starting to understand that maybe he had been. Here. With them. But he hadn’t always been, and if these guys were going to be their friends, then they needed to know where the girls were coming from. “That was our fourth-grade spelling bee. It was the first time that our dad came to any of our school stuff. And it was when the three of us were up against each other. He was really into us being better than everyone else. And he was into which of us was smarter and tougher and better under pressure. I wasn’t going to stand up there and compete for his entertainment.”

  Everyone was quiet for a few seconds until Ava lifted her glass of beer and said, “From then on, I was good at all the big public stuff and Brynn was good at all the behind the scenes stuff.”

  “And Cori was good at…” Evan asked, clearly wanting her sisters to fill in the blank.

  “Making sure we never missed a scary movie and knew every move to every popular dance and that we each colored our hair at least once.”

  Cori felt a little catch her chest at the way her sister was looking at her. It was an expression full of affection, and for a second she felt stinging in her eyes.

  “Only because she was letting you both be all kick-ass and—”

  “Evan,” Ava interrupted. “It was awesome. We loved all of that.”

  Cori pressed her lips together to keep from saying anything, or grinning, at the look on Evan’s face.

  “What color?” Noah asked into the awkward moment.

  “What color what?” Brynn asked.

  “What color did you color your hair?”

  Brynn grinned. “I had black stripes for a while.”

  Noah lifted a brow.

  “And I was a redhead for a while.”

  He nodded slowly. “Nice.”

  “She rocked that red hair,” Cori said.

  “I’ll bet.” The look on his face was thoughtful. “But I like the blonde.”

  Brynn blushed at that. And Ava laughed. “I was just going to say that your poker face is scary, Nerd Girl,” Ava told her. “But maybe it’s not as rock solid as I thought.”

  “Shut up,” Brynn muttered, still blushing.

  “Seriously though, I might need you at the negotiating table,” Ava said.

  “Well, maybe I can just come to a meeting some time and pretend to be you,” Brynn said. “Like Cori’s been doing.”

  Cori felt her cheeks flush. Everyone thought Brynn was the sweet one, but she’d just thrown Cori under the bus to get the attention off of her and her reactions to Noah. Wow. Cori turned to Parker, desperate for another topic. “Well, I guess if game night is supposed to be a date, then it’s you and me, huh?”

  Parker opened his mouth to reply, but Noah and Brynn said, simultaneously, “This isn’t a date.”

  “Well, hey, you can be my date then, Brynn,” Parker said, and Cori wanted to kiss him.

  But Noah scowled at him. “What’s that mean?”

  “Nothing,” Parker said with a shrug. “Evan and Ava are a pair and Cori isn’t my type. So if you’re not gonna date Brynn, then maybe I should.”

  “Hey,” Cori protested, not really caring but unable to let it go by without comment. “Why am I not your type?”

  “You’re too much fun,” Parker said.

  “And that’s bad?”

  “I don’t like to have fun.”

  Cori snorted. “Oh, then you need someone like me.”

  “He’s fine.” The two firm words came from Evan.

  Cori couldn’t help but glance at him again. It would be really nice if he’d stop talking. And getting offended on her behalf. And acting possessive. Like he was now. He was watching her intently. And he didn’t look happy. Yeah, well, she wasn’t happy either. Though, she had to admit that she didn’t feel unhappy. Just kind of…unsatisfied. Tense. Itchy. Yeah, itchy fit. Itchy like her clothes were too tight and scratchy and in the way. Like she wanted to take them all off. And have someone…scratch her itch. Someone with big, strong hands and long fingers.

  She cleared her throat. Parker had long fingers. Hell, Noah did too. And he did manual work with his hands. If Brynn wasn’t going to date him, maybe Cori should.

  Of course, she didn’t want to.

  “And you’re not supposed to be dating anyone,” Evan said.

  And then there was that. “Well, then it’s a good thing this isn’t a date for anyone but you and Ava,” she said.

  He looked like he was about to reply, but Noah said, “Yeah, you don’t need to date Brynn,” to Parker. “This is date night for Ava and Evan. Only.”

  Okay, this was sufficiently distracting. And entertaining. Cori leaned in. “But Brynn is supposed to be dating,” she pointed out. “And she hasn’t even started.”

  “She’s got plenty of time,” Noah said, still scowling.

  Brynn’s cheeks were bright red. “We just got here.”

  “Well, and you’ve been busy,” Cori said. She paused, then added, “With painting, and sewing, and stuff.”

  All things that Noah had been around for.

  “Right. Exactly.” Brynn sat up straighter. “Should we play again?” She started shuffling.

  “Sure.”

  “You bet.”

  “Ava and I are just getting our signals down,” Evan said.

  “Signals?” Brynn asked.

  “Sure, the ones we’re using to cheat,” Evan said, giving that teasing grin that made Cori want to take her clothes off and climb right back into his lap, regardless of the fact that the last time had been kind of a bust.

  “You’re cheating?” Brynn asked.

  “We’re trying,” Evan said.

  Brynn laughed. “Neither of you have won a single hand.”

  “Well, we’re still figuring it out.” He gave Ava a wink and Cori shot to her feet.

  “Who else needs a refill?” Cori honestly wasn’t sure how much more friendly, not-a-date-but-kind-of-a-date poker she cou
ld take. At least without more vodka and pomegranate juice. Or beer. Since that was what was being served tonight.

  She took orders and headed for the kitchen with empty glasses and bottles. She rounded the corner into the kitchen and put a wall between her and Evan and all that fucking charm he just couldn’t shut off. It didn’t matter that Ava seemed unaffected by it all.

  “Do you need help?”

  She squeaked as Evan pushed through the door right next to where she was leaning. She straightened quickly and managed to not drop anything. “Nope, I’m good,” she said, moving toward the sink.

  “You can’t carry all of that by yourself.”

  “I’m very strong.” She set the glasses down. “And have wonderful balance.” She turned to face him, leaning against the edge of the sink. “And I’m incredibly flexible.”

  Yeah, okay, she maybe shouldn’t have said that. That was taunting him. Or poking him. Or something. But honestly, she was lucky that was all she’d said.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  She lifted a brow. He was going to apologize for tossing her out of the truck?

  “I thought tonight would be a good idea. Something fun for Ava that I’m guessing she doesn’t do often, or ever. But not public. But not just the two of us.”

  Oh, that. Cori shrugged. “Hey, I’m all for game night.”

  He watched her for a long moment. Then said, “But you didn’t have anything to do with this game night.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, we’re playing poker and eating chips and dip and drinking beer,” Evan said.

  “So?”

  “So, you made strawberry popcorn for us the other night.”

  Cori swallowed hard and crossed her arms. “You didn’t like it?”