Heather's Challenge [Cattleman's Club 4] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting)

by Jenny Penn

  “All she ever does is hurt you. She’s been hurting you since the first time you met when she ruined your bicycle. You remember that bicycle, don’t you? The one that you saved a whole year’s worth of allowance to buy?”

  Heather hadn’t known that, and for the first time, she felt a little guilty having ruined the bike. After all, bikes could cost over a hundred dollars. Her Barbie hadn’t been that expensive.

  “It’s all right, Sandy,” Alex tried to reassure his sister. “It was a long time ago and I gave as good as I got.”

  Had he?

  Not really. Not like she had. For the first time, Heather felt the weight of guilt settle around her heart. She’d thought he’d just been amusing himself and had thrown away the only thing she ever really wanted—the happy-ever-after they could have had.

  “And what about now?” Sandy demanded to know. “And what about what she’s asking you to do now? Or are you going to lie to me and tell me there are just going to be two people in your marriage?”

  “Sandy—”

  “This is what broke you up before.” Sandy gazed up at him beseechingly, her tone imploring as she pleaded with him. “Remember? She didn’t want only you. You weren’t enough. Can you really live with that? Can you really share your wife with your best friend and be happy?”

  And is that what Heather really wanted? Two husbands? That wasn’t even legal. She didn’t know how that would work. And what the hell would she say to Taylor? To her dad? Heather could feel her breath catching, coming in shorter, faster bursts as questions continued to pile up.

  Alex pried his sister’s fingers free of his shirt and gripped them in his own as he explained in a tone that was both firm and frustrated. “It’ll be different because Heather loves us both this time.”

  She did? Wasn’t it a little soon for that?

  “You’re deluded if you believe that,” Sandy whispered sadly before wrenching her hands free and shoving around Alex to flee out of the kitchen.

  Heather watched her go, her gaze catching on the sight of Konor lingering just inside the doorway. He looked worried, though Heather wasn’t sure if it was her or Sandy that he was most concerned over. It didn’t matter. This situation had grown too complicated, too serious, and she was suffocating under the weight of it all.

  It was just supposed to be about sex, Heather reminded herself. Of course, Alex couldn’t even do that without confusing things. That thought brought a sad smile to Heather’s face as she glanced over at Alex. He frowned back at her, holding her gaze for a moment before heaving a sigh and shaking his head.

  “Go on and say it.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Those two words appeared to catch Alex off guard. While he clearly had a response the prepped for what he thought she was about to say, he didn’t seem to know what to do with what she actually said. His mouth opened and closed, once, twice, and a third time with a scowl that matched the confusion in his tone when he finally did manage to get a word out.

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry,” Heather repeated, taking a deep breath and rising out of her seat to confront both Alex and Konor as he came sauntering up. “I am sorry about what happened with Hugh. I’m sorry that when I found out about the bet between you and GD that I didn’t trust you enough to give you a real chance to explain instead of just attacking you. That was wrong of me.”

  Heather paused, giving Alex an opportunity to respond, but he just stood there glaring at her and looking far from pleased. That made no sense to her. Looking for answers, she glanced toward Konor, who shrugged and offered her nothing more than a half smile as the silence began to grow awkward and pointed.

  It felt like Alex was waiting for her to say something more, but she had nothing and grew uncomfortable enough speak without thought and fill the silence with some inane babble that would have, no doubt, ruined the moment, if Tina hadn’t burst into the kitchen, calling out for Heather.

  Using the interruption as an excuse, Heather fled, leaving Konor and Alex to sort things out between themselves.

  Chapter 22

  Alex watched Heather flee and heaved a heavy sigh. The woman was intent on driving him nuts. Not that that was anything new. Glancing over at Konor, he caught the frown his friend was aiming in his direction.

  “What?”

  “What?” Konor repeated as if the question offended him. “What do you mean, what? I should be asking you that, like what the hell is going on here?”

  “Hey, I didn’t do anything you didn’t tell me to.” Alex held his hands up, not about to take the blame for whatever had Konor riled up.

  No doubt it was his plans. The man was always planning things and then getting mad when nobody followed them. Eventually it would seem like Konor would learn to give up on the planning, but more often than not, he just got mad. That’s what he was right then.

  “I didn’t tell you to get engaged to the damn woman,” Konor snapped.

  “That wasn’t my idea. Heather—”

  “Oh for God’s sakes, she wasn’t serious!” Konor’s face flushed with his outrage, every muscle in his neck straining as he snarled at Alex. “Jesus, Alex, you know better than that, and I know you better than that. So you want to tell me what you’re really planning on doing with your grandmother’s ring?”

  Alex didn’t have an answer for that question. He, honestly, didn’t know. He was operating on instinct and, clearly, completely out of control.

  “Alex?”

  “What? Oh, yeah.” Alex shook his head, throwing off his wayward thoughts as he tried to focus on the moment, but he had nothing. Nothing to say. Nothing to give. “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean you don’t know?” Konor all but choked on his words as he gaped at Alex in amazement. “Are you or are you not planning on proposing to Heather?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “Well you better fucking figure it out, because there are a lot of people who stand to get hurt if you don’t,” Konor snapped.

  Alex didn’t have an answer for that one. All he had was a pain in his balls, a sick feeling in his stomach, and an ache in his heart he just couldn’t explain. He needed time and distance from both Konor and Heather to figure things out.

  Thankfully, he had a whole shift to consider everything thanks to one of his deputies calling in sick. That also gave him a quick excuse to flee.

  “I got to get to work.”

  Following that thought right out the door, Alex left Konor standing there glaring after him.

  * * * *

  With all his plans shot to hell, Konor threw caution to the wind and winged it for the rest of the night. Surprisingly, things went amazingly well. At least, they started off that way.

  Actually, it started with kind of a sad tale as Taylor explained that his mom almost never got to enjoy the holidays with him because she was always got stuck working, which is what she apparently planned to do late into that night.

  That revelation had given Konor the opening to volunteer to help. While Heather had been a little hesitant when he’d first offered to help her, the sheer quantity of work left her little choice but to accept assistance. For his part, Konor hadn’t appreciated how much had to be done until she started explaining that she had some big orders for the following day.

  “Holidays like Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day…” Heather shook her head as showed him all the orders on the big cork board hung behind her desk. “They’re the worst.”

  “Really?” Konor cast a quick look in her direction. “I would have thought Thanksgiving and Christmas would be your biggest holidays.”

  “In total volume, maybe,” Heather conceded. “But they’re small orders and people pick them up over a several days. Barbecue and picnic holidays when churches and families throw big parties all have big orders, and they all want to pick up on the same day, normally all within an hour or so of each other. It makes for a hell of a rush.”

  “I can see that.” Konor could also se
e what she meant about big orders. Most of the forms he glanced at had several items listed on the ticket and almost everyone wanted at least a dozen of everything they’d order. “This is amazing. You plan on getting all this done tonight?”

  “Most of it.” Heather already sounded tired as she sighed and turned away from the board. “I made the dough for the cookies over the past week. They freeze well and so does the pie crust along with all the pastries, but the breads...they all get prepped the night before so they can rested and be baked in the morning.”

  That comment had Konor frowning as glanced around the small, cluttered kitchen. Most of the space was taken up by fryers, ovens, cooktop, and work tables. There was one small freezer hidden behind the boxes of supplies stacked up haphazardly all around, but Konor knew from experience that it only stored the food needed to fill the bakery orders. There wasn’t room left for baking and it dawned on him in that moment that he hadn’t seen any baking equipment. When he’d made that observation to Heather, she’d smiled and nodded toward the back door.

  “Come on, I’ll show you where everything is kept.” She led him down an aisle formed by the boxes piled along the side, and out the back door to cross the narrow alley to the building on the other side as she explained the situation.

  “About seven years ago, the bakery orders grew so much I had to give most of my kitchen space to it. That’s when I started renting this space from Mrs. Lowdry.”

  Fumbling with the keys, she finally managed to get the other door open and flipped on the switch to reveal a tight packed storage room filled with four regular-sized freezers and three small refrigerators. There were also large standing mixers along with proofing ovens and racks and racks filled with stainless steel trays.

  There wasn’t any room left over for work tables and no sink to be seen. Konor didn’t need to ask how she managed. That became obvious as she began to wheel things across the alley and back into The Bread Box’s kitchen.

  While the whole situation seemed odd to him, it was clear that Heather had accepted it. She didn’t complain about a single thing, or make any comments about a plan to fix the lack of space. When Konor pressed, she just shrugged and said she hadn’t come up with a solution yet.

  That sounded like a challenge to him.

  While she went back to her customers, he began rolling all the large mixing equipment and supplies across the alley and back into the real kitchen. With every step his mind churned until a glimmer of an idea began to form. It grew clearer as Heather had him pull out the long logs of frozen cookie dough from the freezer.

  They stacked them on one of the racks to be moved into the kitchen’s main refrigerator. They needed to be moved so they could thaw enough by morning to slice. So did the pastries, though they didn’t need to be sliced.

  It became clear over the next several hours that there wasn’t just a lack of space, but a lack of equipment. Heather had more business than she actually could manage. From the looks of things, she was barely keeping up. That’s where Konor knew he could really help.

  By the time she’d closed up for the night, he had a full scale vision for how the future should look. Not that he dared to broach the subject directly. Sensitive to the fact that Heather might be hesitant to let somebody else have control over her business, Konor knew better than to be so forward.

  Knowing that she wouldn’t trust him until he proved himself first, he paid studious attention as she showed him how to mix up a batch of enriched, leavened dough. It would be formed into hot dog and hamburger buns tomorrow morning. By morning, she really meant later that night, because Heather had to be back by four a.m. to have everything ready to be picked up by nine when the deliveries needed to start rolling out.

  “You deliver?” Konor repeated, shocked by that revelation. “I didn’t even know you had a van.”

  “We don’t,” Heather huffed as she shoved at a rack laden with several dozen dough balls toward the refrigerator. “But when churches or large groups put in big orders, they want it fresh and they wanted it delivered. Who am I to say no?”

  “The baker without a van,” Konor retorted, stepping up to take over the rack.

  It really wasn’t that heavy but it was that old and the wheels stuck, not wanting to turn as they ground over the tile floor. Still, it didn’t require any deep breathing for him to push it along. In fact, he even managed to continue to interrogate Heather as he shoved the rack into the large refrigerator.

  “And technically you’re the only baker,” Konor pointed out as he pushed the rack to the very back of the cold room. “I mean, where else are they going to get their buns?”

  “From the grocery store,” Heather answered sourly. “And trust me, those buns are cheaper.”

  “And not as good. People pay a premium price for a premium product.” Konor may have never taken a business class, but that statement seemed intuitive, to him, at least, if not Heather.

  “Please.” Heather snorted and shook her head at him. “You can’t be that naïve.”

  “I can’t?”

  “Okay. I can’t,” Heather corrected herself, seeming oblivious to the amusement lurking in Konor’s tone. “I have a son to provide for. I can’t simply piss off my customers, so I have to make do.”

  The grim fear hidden in that statement had Konor’s smile fading as he considered how long and hard Heather had struggled to hold her family together. He knew those hardships well having been raised by a single mother. There was always the conflict between wanting to have time for her child and needing to earn the money to care for the kid. Bearing that stress alone could undo just about anybody, but fortunately for Heather she wasn’t alone anymore.

  “And you make do by…” Konor pressed, eyeing the inviting sway of Heather’s ass as he followed her back out of the refrigerator.

  “Normally packing up my hatchback for smaller order, but tomorrow Andy will make the deliveries using his mother’s mini-van.”

  “You borrow your busboy’s mother’s mini-van?” Konor about stumbled over his own feet as he found himself shocked into laughing at that revelation. From the frown Heather shot him, she clearly did not appreciate his sense of humor.

  “It works out well enough,” she retorted defensively. “All her seats fold down and I can lay plastic out across the hold back and stack it full of racks. And it’s not like vans are cheap, you know? Even used, a good van would run twenty thousand. I don’t have enough deliveries to justify that expense.”

  Konor didn’t think she’d spend the money even if she did. He was beginning to suspect that his woman was cheap, which he figured wasn’t the worst sin. At least, she wasn’t likely to bankrupt him. Drive him crazy—that was a different matter, because he suspected her comments about the cost hid a truth she was trying to avoid confessing to.

  “Wait a minute.” Konor came to a stop to pin Heather with a hard look. “You don’t mean ‘borrow’. You mean ‘rent’. You pay Andy’s mom to borrow her van.”

  Heather flushed a guilty red and bristled defensively. “Like I said, vans aren’t cheap.”

  “But they can be free,” Konor shot back, reaching for his phone.

  “What are you doing?” Heather rounded on him, eyeing him suspiciously.

  “Calling a friend.”

  “What friend?”

  Konor didn’t answer but lifted the phone to his ear and waited for the other end to be answered. It took five rings but finally a gruff voice grunted into the phone.

  “Hey, man, what’s up?”

  “Hey, GD!” Konor shot a smile at Heather, whose frown hardened with that revelation.

  “Why are you calling him?”

  “Is that Heather?” GD asked him at the same time before dismissing his own question with a snide tone. “Oh, wait, don’t tell me. You’re celebrating, right? I hear congratulations are in order.”

  “Give me that phone!”

  Konor ducked Heather’s attempt to lunge for his phone, dancing around a box of paper prod
ucts as she crashed into them. “Then you also heard they should be directed at Alex…and, technically, that’s not a done deal.”

  “Why am I not surprised?” GD sighed.

  “Damn it, Konor, give me that phone!”

  Heather tried again to snatch the phone but only ended up latching onto his arm as Konor passed it from one hand to the other. He managed to get it up to his other ear in time to catch GD’s next question.

  “And why is Heather cussing at you?”

  “Because she doesn’t want you to know she’d been renting Andy’s mother’s van to make deliveries instead of simply asking you to borrow one for her.”

  “Damn it, Konor!” Heather released his arms to curl her fingers into cute, little fists but she didn’t hit him. She did, however, kick him before turning to storm away.

  “Andy?” GD repeated back, sounding completely confused. “Who the hell is Andy?”

  “The bus boy—Andy Bell’s.”

  “Oh God, that little booger-picker?” GD groaned in disgust. “Put Heather on the phone.”

  “Don’t give that thing to me!” Heather snapped, waving Konor away.

  “GD wants to talk to you,” Konor insisted, trailing after Heather as she weaved her way through the maze of boxes back toward her desk.

  “Yes, but I don’t want to talk to him.”

  “Tell her that’s fine. That I’m calling Miss Bell’s and telling her not bother to show up tomorrow.”

  “And, trust me, he doesn’t want to hear from me,” Heather shot over her shoulder before turning to slash bun dough off the master to-do list with an angry motion.

  “Then you’ll have a van here tomorrow morning?”

  “Because if I did talk to his big, bald ass, I might be like to tell him that I don’t appreciate his interference in my life.”

  “Well, duh,” GD shot back. “And you can tell little missus bossy-pants, that I said she’s welcome.”