Fierce at Heart (The Kincaids of Pine Harbour)

by Zoe York

  Adam snorted. “I don’t need a babysitter. But you’re welcome to come along if you want to see how a grown man buys a property that actually includes a functional kitchen.”

  Functional was about the only adjective for it, but he was grumpy now.

  Will grunted. “Right. Sorry. I channeled Owen a bit too much there.”

  They all did it. “One of these days, you’re going to realize I’m almost thirty and can do things on my own.”

  “Like buy groceries?” Will had the good grace to look chagrined.

  “Exactly.”

  Josh picked up the T-bone pack. “So are these celebration steaks?”

  “Nah, those were just because I’m sick of your obsession with chicken breasts. Get cooking.” He waved his beer bottle at his brothers. “And I told you two first because we know Owen will have big opinions, be stubborn in his concern. I’m telling him next, and I expect your support. Baby brother or not, I can take you.”

  “I’m so scared,” Josh drawled, but he grabbed a cast iron pan and set it on the range in Will’s island.

  Chapter Six

  Waterfront Centre was quiet at six in the morning. The arts and community hub in downtown Toronto, right on the edge of Lake Ontario, would be buzzing in an hour.

  Isla stood back from her table and took a picture for her nascent Instagram account. She had seventy-two followers, and she loved every single one of them. And one of the most recent followers was a certain firefighter from Pine Harbour.

  Her hand-painted bake sale banner made her happy every time she looked at it, and she hoped it sparked in customers the same sweet nostalgia it gave her—of high school fundraising, of picking out treats to take home to family. And maybe one to snack on immediately.

  Her offering today was a variation of what she’d tried in the last three pop-up events. Her best ever chocolate chip cookies were only a quarter each, which barely broke even. But that was a part of her marketing plan. Hook them with the twenty-five cent cookies, then earn her profit off the higher-end offerings. Today that was a pistachio and raspberry tart, a sinful Black Forest brownie, huge Rice Krispies squares with visible marshmallows, and apple cider muffins.

  Technically, Isla had graduated from culinary school in June, but as part of their supported transition to working in the industry, grads interested in running their own businesses had been invited to participate in four pop-up market events over the summer. This was the final one, and she was excited about it. She was also nervous, because her business plan was still sketchy at best for how to move forward and make the pop-up bake sale a viable job for herself.

  Her phone vibrated, and she glanced at the screen.

  One like on her newest photo, a selfie with the bake sale sign behind her. The like was from Adam. That made her laugh.

  Isla: You’re up early.

  Adam: At work. One hour left in my shift.

  Isla: So I shouldn’t call you when I’m done here and wake you up?

  Adam: You could.

  Isla: Or you could call me when you wake up, so I’m not the bad guy.

  Adam: You wouldn’t be. But okay, I will. Good luck today. It looks amazing.

  That vote of confidence lightened her step, and she finished her setup with enough time to sit down and drink some tea from the thermos she’d brought.

  Then it was go time.

  Sales were slow to start, but built over the morning. She sold out of chocolate chip cookies at ten-thirty, which was the earliest yet. Making a mental note to up that volume by twenty-five percent for the next sale, she grabbed the brightly coloured sold-out sign and set it on the tray.

  Rice Krispies squares were next to sell out, with only a few of the muffins and the brownies remaining when the pop-up event ended in the early afternoon.

  But her raspberry tarts…she did some quick visual math. She’d broken even on them, but her optimism had gotten the better of her. Those ingredients were too expensive to not have a higher sales percentage.

  She quickly boxed up the remaining tarts, two to a container, then took them around to the classmates who she might want to partner with in the fall.

  “Do you have any leftovers you want to trade for tarts?” she asked at each table, grateful to those who said yes. “Do I have your card? Here’s mine. Let’s keep in touch.”

  By the time she had everything packed back into her car, she had enough food to eat like a queen for a few days. An excellent save on those expensive ingredients. But her happy mood didn’t last long. When she logged into her computer to do her accounting, she saw an email from the coordinator at the college.

  Congratulations on completing the summer pop-up program. We wish you all the best in your culinary business. Attached is a flyer on the vendor packages for the different market spaces we used. We have secured a discount for our graduates…

  The rest of the email was filler, so Isla scrolled to the attachment and opened it up. All of her fragile hope deflated when she saw the monthly rental fees charged by the locations they’d used—even with the discount offered for the first year, it was more money than her gross revenue had been on any of the bake sales so far.

  In the other room, her phone rang.

  Shaking, she left the computer behind and dug through her bag. By the time she found it, the call had dropped.

  Adam.

  Adam, who had just bought a house, who had a career, who was turning his life around.

  She couldn’t talk to him right now. She wasn’t up for cheerleading today.

  Her phone slipped from her hand and bounced on her bed before landing, screen up. She stretched out beside it and closed her eyes.

  The worst part was that Adam—a random Army acquaintance who she’d had a one-night stand with—was the closest thing she had to a confidant right now.

  Isla didn’t make friends easily. Not close friends, nobody she could bounce business talk around with. Jackass had ruined those kinds of conversations for her, but even before her marriage, she’d been tight-lipped. A career army officer at that point, she’d been a woman in a man’s world, where everyone learned to say what was expected. Opinions had to be pre-filtered against the possible, the preferred.

  She was so tired.

  Her eyes were hot. Sad.

  Something else her marriage had stolen from her—the ability to cry.

  Beside her, the phone vibrated again.

  Swallowing hard, she forced a smile onto her face, because expression affected tone, and answered it. “Hello.”

  “How did it go?”

  She squeezed her cheeks wide. “Great. Turns out, pistachio raspberry tarts are a bit of a hard sell, but everything else performed better than expected.”

  “Baking math, how exciting.”

  That softened her smile into something real. “I like it. It overwhelms me sometimes, but once I figure out the perfect ratio on the other side of the frustration, there’s nothing quite like that sense of accomplishment.”

  “Better than planning a successful reconnaissance mission?” Adam dropped his voice and dug into a memory she’d forgotten.

  She closed her eyes and listened to his voice, letting him carry her back to Afghanistan. Just for a second. She didn’t want to dwell in the past. “You’re very good at bolstering morale, aren’t you?”

  He narrowed in on the wrong part of the question. “Wait, is your morale low?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She groaned. “Nothing. Toronto’s just insanely expensive and I don’t know where I’m going to take my business next. It’s not important.”

  “It’s critically important. And I say that as your official morale booster.”

  “Are you everyone’s cheerleader, or am I a special sad case?”

  “I don’t think you’re a sad case.”

  “Clearly I haven’t told you enough about my ex-husband.”

  A choking cough suggested Adam hadn’t been expecting her to say t
hat. “Uh, do you want to?”

  “I prefer not to think about him.”

  “Same.”

  That made her laugh. “Glad we’re on the same page. But there’s a limit to how much my morale can be boosted when the real damper on everything is the debt I wound up shouldering in the divorce.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Can I ask a strange and overly familiar question?”

  “Sure.” She rolled onto her side, then pushed herself up to sit. Whatever Adam would ask, she trusted on a bone-deep level it wouldn’t be too invasive.

  “Do you see yourself ever getting married again?”

  She barked. Out loud. Sharp and caustic. That wasn’t overly familiar, but it was ridiculous. “Never.”

  “Never ever?”

  “Love made me exceptionally stupid. I won’t ever make that mistake again. I don’t even…our night together? That was the first time I had sex in two years. Thank you, by the way. It was a lot of fun.”

  “I aim to please.”

  “And I just feel like, okay, that was a good dip of the toe. I’m good for a while. I don’t need to do that again for another year.”

  “I’ll make a calendar reminder.”

  “Adam!” She giggled. Then stopped. “Wait, you’re not serious. Right?”

  “Of course not.”

  She exhaled in relief.

  “I don’t need a calendar reminder to know you want to bang me again in three hundred and thirty-five days. I’m pretty sure that will just stick at the top of my to-do list…” He trailed off. “Yes, I’m kidding. I know you aren’t interested in a repeat, and that’s fine.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Listen, I know that the answer is going to be that you aren’t interested, but I’ve been carrying something around for a few days that I want to tell you about. Not sex related, I promise,” he hastened to add. “There’s a cafe for sale here.”

  “In Pine Harbour?”

  “Right on Main Street.”

  Isla opened her mouth to protest that she couldn’t move to his town and start a bakery, but it was so ridiculous an idea she didn’t even need to counter it. Besides, it was funny, and she didn’t have a lot of amusement in her life. So she humoured him instead. “Tell me more.”

  “It’s a nice building, at the end of a block. I haven’t been inside it in years. It’s not really my type of place. The lady who owns it is known for her pies. She serves breakfast and lunch, and it has a little gift shop. It’s where ladies of a certain age meet for tea. But she hasn’t had any luck in selling it, because there’s a big diner on the other end of town, and Pine Harbour doesn’t need two restaurants.”

  “You’re really selling it,” Isla said dryly.

  “The thing is, the cafe could be converted to a commercial bakery space pretty easily. It has glass cases for your chocolate chip cookies and whatever else you want to have in your daily bake sale. I’m guessing the kitchen is already set up for—”

  Guessing. That’s exactly what he was doing. He’d gone out and bought a house—on a whim—and now he thought she should do the same with a whole business?

  She should never have told him about her struggles in finding the right next step for her business. The worst part was that it was no longer funny, because she could picture it.

  A little shop on Main Street. Brightly painted sign in the window. Bake Sale! And beneath that in smaller letters, New Treats Daily.

  She should have been even more brutally honest. Told Adam how her ex destroyed her credit, that she wouldn’t qualify for a mortgage or a business loan no matter how good her plan was, and it hurt to even fantasize about the dream of having her own bakery.

  That wasn’t in the cards.

  Maybe she could sell cupcakes on Instagram. That was enough—for now. She would build to the dream, down the road.

  “Isla?” Adam’s voice broke through her thoughts, and she realized she’d stopped listening. “Do you want me to send you the link for the listing so you can look at it yourself?”

  He was so earnest and kind.

  She scrubbed her fingertips against the tension in her temple. “Adam—”

  “It’s a dollar.”

  “What is?”

  “The cafe.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The owner is a grandmother who wants to retire, and can’t bear to see her cafe shuttered. It’s been for sale for a year with no bites. So she’s dropped the price.”

  “To a dollar.”

  “Yes.”

  Isla’s heart clawed its way into her throat. “No. It’s too good to be true.”

  He exhaled. “Yeah. There is a not-so-small catch.”

  “What is it?”

  “We would have to get married.”

  Two days later, Isla could still hear the strain in Adam’s voice. He followed it with an apology, and an explanation. He didn’t know how to tell her, but also didn’t ever want to regret not telling her, because it seemed like a perfect, imperfect opportunity.

  She understood.

  It was an impossible deal for her to make, though, no matter how tempting the dream might be. And she had dreamt of a little Main Street storefront that night, and the next.

  There was a part of her that was making it a little too magical, a little too perfect, she decided, so she searched for Pine Harbour real estate.

  She’d declined Adam’s offer of the link.

  No, she didn’t want to look at the listing. She couldn’t marry her friend just to be able to buy a cafe for a dollar.

  It was absurd.

  But here she was, two days later, clicking on the photo gallery. It was a cafe for women of a certain age, that was for sure. Stuffed with tables and floral decorations. But maybe those women of a certain age might like brownies instead of scones.

  Her eyes ran over the fine print, the special condition on the listing to encourage someone from within the community to take it over. Residents of Pine Harbour and their immediate family members are encouraged to apply for an owner-offered rebate. Eligible buyers able to commit to continuing the sale of locally made baked goods to community for a period of no less than three years…

  Three years.

  This wasn’t just getting married to sign a contract and then quietly getting a divorce. Her second divorce in as many years, what a record that would be. But no, this contract would mean that she would need to stay married to Adam for three years, running a little shop called Bake Sale for three years, and live with him in his new house.

  For three—

  She grabbed for her phone, pausing only to quickly do a calendar check in her head, but Adam should be awake.

  He answered on the first ring, a happy sounding, “Hey.”

  “Why do you want to marry me? Stay married to me for three years?”

  He coughed, then muttered something to someone in the background.

  She flushed, biting her lower lip as she listened to him move, as she heard a door open and then close.

  “Okay,” he said slowly. “I’m alone now. So…hi. Are you looking at the cafe?”

  Embarrassed heat swirled through her lower belly. “Yes.”

  “I didn’t mention the three-year part because we didn’t get past the do we want to get married part, which seemed to nullify all that followed.”

  “It’s a long time to pretend to be married.”

  “I wasn’t planning on pretending anything.”

  She gripped her phone, confusion mingling with the embarrassment now. A riot of uncomfortable emotions, and she still clung to an undefined something that drove her deeper into the conversation. “I don’t understand.”

  “You need a bakery for cheap. And an official morale booster, I’d like to point out, which is built right into the job description of a husband.”

  Not in her experience. “But that’s why I should want to marry you. What do you get out of it? For three years.”

  “At lea
st three years,” he corrected. “Are you already planning on leaving me?”

  “I’m not planning on marrying you!”

  “But you’re looking at pictures of the cafe, right?”

  “No,” she muttered. “I was. Now I’m on the Pine Harbour website.”

  He laughed, and it was so warm and soft it made her insides quiver. What a sweet, naïve summer child he was, that he thought two friends could just get married and all their problems would go away. Except he still hadn’t answered her.

  “I don’t understand. If you want to get married, why not…start dating with that goal in mind? I’m sure there are no shortage of nice girls who are more local to you and willing to, you know, actually fall in love with you.”

  He didn’t answer right away.

  She waited. She wasn’t going to let him off the hook. It was a fair question.

  “I don’t want to get married,” he finally said. “Not to just anyone. But I’ve been carrying around the idea of being married to you for a few days, and I like that just fine. In fact, just the other day, I had a very clear personal realization that my brothers think I need to find a wife who will be a good influence on me, change me, and I don’t want to be changed. I’m happy with what my life is turning into. I have a job, I’m getting a house. For a long time, I didn’t have either of those things, and I did that all by myself. Frankly, it’s all I want to focus on for the next few years. What better way to ensure I can focus on that than skip to the good stuff with you?”

  “What’s the good stuff?” Her mind unhelpfully offered up a flash of his mouth on her body, his head buried between her legs. Lovely, but not on the table. “I don’t...I can’t get romantically involved again.”

  “I know. This isn’t about sex. The good stuff is having a partner in crime. I realized that my brothers are thirty percent right. They look at me and they worry. I bristle at it, bark that I’m just fine, and we go in this cycle. It’s not the end of the world, and I know it comes from a place of love. But even though you have seen me at my worst, you don’t look at me and worry. That’s…Isla, if you married me, I would finally shake the whole Kincaid Kid reputation I haven’t deserved in a decade. And a pretty nice roommate—who is both pretty and nice.”