Cori looked down at the pie, then at her sisters. “It’s homemade crust?”
“Yep. And,” Ava added, “I paid her to adapt the recipe to make it something that would be exclusive to us. She won’t make it any other time, even on her own.”
“How did she adapt it?”
“I have no idea.”
Cori couldn’t help but grin. “Okay, we have an exclusive, homemade crust that you have to bake.”
“And fill,” Ava said.
Cori and Brynn laughed. “That’s gotta count. At least partially,” Cori agreed.
Ava smiled, but she looked earnest as she said, “It’s just that if Dad wanted me to learn about creating the product from scratch, I’m doing that. I know about making pie crusts now…I just suck at it. And I am making the pies—at least I’m putting them together. But I’ve also realized the weakness in my process, and I’ve fixed it. It’s resourceful.”
Cori shook her head. “No wonder you always get your way in the board room.”
Ava gave her a smile. “Well, maybe not always.”
Yeah, well, ninety-eight percent of the time was pretty much always.
“We have pie now,” Brynn said. “When can we open?”
“How many crusts to do you have?” Cori asked.
“A dozen,” Ava said. “I figure that’s optimistic for our first week.”
Cori would love to debate that, but she thought Ava might have a point.
“Okay, but you’re going to have to hide the pie filling cans,” Brynn said, pointing at Ava. “You know Parker will be all over that.”
“Ugh,” Ava said, with an eye roll. “Don’t worry, I’ll figure that out. But you—” she said, pointing a finger at Cori’s nose, “—have to keep your trap shut around Evan.”
Cori dug another scoop out of the pie and said, “No worries.”
She chewed as her sisters shared a look.
“What’s that mean?” Ava asked.
“Evan is avoiding me. And vice versa.”
They shared another look.
“Why?” Brynn asked.
Cori took another bite and shrugged. “Because I was myself,” she said around the mouthful of deliciously flaky crust and sweet-and-tart filling.
“And what’s that mean?” Ava asked.
Cori swallowed. “A nice guy steps up to help me and my sisters take care of the crazy-assed crap our crazy-assed father put in his crazy-assed trust and what did I do? I flirted, I kissed him, I fell for him, and then when he gave me a ride home, while I’m pretending to be my sister don’t forget, I climbed into his lap and had an orgasm.”
Brynn started choking and Ava’s mouth, literally, fell open.
Cori took the final bite of her pie and seriously considered taking another piece. She chewed as she watched her sisters process everything.
“You had an orgasm just sitting on his lap?” Brynn asked.
Cori swallowed and pushed her plate away. But not too far. “Well, Evan helped.”
Brynn nodded. “Okay, that makes more sense.”
Cori snorted, in spite of the fact that she was feeling stupid and sheepish.
“So he helped. That’s good. What’s the problem?” Ava asked. “Why is he avoiding you now?”
“Because—” She blew out a breath. “I brought a St. Bernard to the party,” Cori said.
There was a pause, then it was Ava that snorted. “Oh, honey, that’s not what you did.”
“It is,” Cori said. “He wanted me there. I’m not saying that he didn’t. But he didn’t realize that I always get carried away.”
“You made out—and very well from the sounds of it—with a guy you like, who really likes you. I sincerely doubt he regrets anything about it,” Ava said.
“Then why didn’t he keep going?” Cori asked. The question had been nagging her ever since. Evan Stone didn’t seem like the type of guy to pull back from a very clear offer from a half-naked woman. Hell, he’d slept with Jill and he said that he’d known, even at the time to some extent, that he shouldn’t have. “After the dog debacle, Dad escorted me out of the building immediately before I could cause any more damage,” Cori said. “The other night Evan got me out of the truck as quickly as he could. He didn’t even unbutton his shirt.”
Brynn was biting her bottom lip and looking unsure.
“Maybe it was just that it was our driveway and we weren’t too far behind and…” Ava trailed off.
“It wasn’t the right time or place,” Cori filled in.
“Yeah,” Ava agreed.
“Yeah.” That was the story of her life. It seemed she had a lot of trouble finding the right time and place to be herself.
Instead of hanging out at the house or trying to kill time at the diner or heading to the bar in the next town, Cori spent “movie night” in the kitchen at the pie shop. She wasn’t supposed to be the one creating the pies for the customers, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t be in the place at all. And it definitely beat hiding in her room or, worse, joining Evan and Ava on the couch for their date night. In their living room, there would be no reason for Cori to stand in for Ava, and even though she knew nothing was really going to happen between Evan and Ava, seeing Evan after the whole…thing…the other night did not sound fun.
But having the pie shop kitchen all to herself was perfect. She could experiment with some new pie ideas and, for the first time, feel like she was working while Ava was relaxing.
And she was being supportive. She’d made Ava and Evan two kinds of popcorn and had put extra pillows on the couch, because you couldn’t have a good movie night without pillows and popcorn. Everyone knew that.
It wasn’t until she had the pie ready for the oven that she realized that Evan was here with her anyway. She’d made Nutella bacon pie.
With a sigh, she slid it into the oven. Well, it wasn’t like Nutella and bacon was a bad idea. Ever. But it was annoying that even when she was trying to be good and stay out of the way, all of the things she really wanted wouldn’t leave her alone. She couldn’t leave Bliss the way she used to leave places when she started to feel restless or in the way. She could hang out at the house with them, but she’d never been very good at resisting temptation. Which Evan Stone most definitely was. And, evidently, she wasn’t very good at distracting herself.
She did the dishes, and then looked around. The quiet was nice. Time alone was nice. Living and working with her sisters meant they spent a lot of time together. Having a break was great.
Really great.
Super great.
Oh, who was she kidding? Cori sighed. She was the social one. She’d lived alone here and there, but she did prefer roommates. It often worked out to sublease from someone since she tended to not stay in one place for the entire length of a typical rental agreement. Hell, she could use some more noise and conversation that wasn’t about pie and paint. At the house, her sisters were busy and kept to themselves unless she made them come out of their rooms/offices and socialize.
Cori wandered to the front of the shop, taking in the new paint and cushions and curtains. It was looking really nice and there was no way this wouldn’t be a huge surprise to the people of Bliss when they came in. If they came in. She blew out a breath as she turned in a circle. People had to come in. Because she and Brynn and Ava needed the money. That wasn’t a position any of them had been in before, and it felt strange having to worry about paying bills. How did they bring in more money? How much could they bring in? If they only brought in so much, what should they spend it on? They needed to take care of the essentials, of course. Thankfully, the cost of living in Bliss was very low, and the few hundred dollars in the bank account were keeping the lights and water on at the shop. But the bills would keep coming, and then she really would like to buy some less-than-essentials. New pie pans. A bigger mixer. Of course, Rudy had gotten by with a hand mixer for years…
Cori shook her head. If it wasn’t Evan on her mind, it was Rudy. Or both.
&n
bsp; She sat down at one of the tables and checked out the shop from that perspective. They needed something on the walls behind the front counter. Maybe a framed inspirational poster. She laughed. Okay, maybe not. But framed artwork would be nice. And she really wanted to put a chalkboard menu up. And then she’d need colored chalk. Lots of colored chalk. She loved colored chalk. Well, colored everything.
But chalk—colored or otherwise—was way down the list of priorities.
They had to make the shop profitable, and the adjustment from not-a-financial-care-in-the-world to where’s-the-grocery-money-going-to-come-from was taking a while. They all had personal accounts and credit cards. They weren’t supposed to use those for the shop—they were using the business account and the new card Cori had gotten for that—but their own checking accounts were keeping the fridge stocked and the utilities on at the house. They were secure, not homeless or starving, but they definitely had to figure the shop stuff out. They had some time, but they were going to need it.
And she knew that had been her father’s plan.
They needed time to realize that it was not a game. That it was real. And important.
And the thing was, it was becoming both of those things. Far faster than she would have ever expected.
Cori pivoted to look out the front window from the table. The curtains had turned out great. They were white with cherries, strawberries, lemons, grapes and blueberries. They weren’t making strawberry or lemon pie. Yet. And probably wouldn’t be making grape pie. Though she did intend to use grape jelly on some of the peanut butter and jelly pies. Still, the curtains were great and appropriate. And what she liked the best about them was that she and Brynn—and Noah—had made them together.
Okay, Dad, you might have known what you were doing.
Rudy Carmichael had been a brilliant businessman. But now Cori was starting to think that maybe he was just brilliant.
Cori rested her chin on her hand and studied the view outside her window. Her window. That didn’t sound as strange as it should. The shop was at the east end of Main and she could see the edge of the park from here. The park was huge. It ran through the middle of town with Main Street bordering it for five blocks and then continued seven more blocks to the man-made lake at the edge of town. There was a walking/running/bike trail, a playground area, three picnic and barbecue spots, and an impressive enclosure at the center that could be used for birthday parties and reunions and such.
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.”
Diamonds and Dirt Roads Page 21
