by Zoe York
“Our volunteers will devour them.” He took the box from her, and then casually picked up some of her business cards from the box by the back door.
“Hey,” she said just before he opened the door. “Thanks. For everything. You’ve been the best support through all of this.”
He gave her a mock salute. “Just doing my duty.”
But it wasn’t just anything. And the next day he was back in the kitchen, with more soup, fortifying her in more ways than one.
She wasn’t as cranky as she’d been the day before, the numbers didn’t swim quite as much before her eyes, so when he sat across from her and said, “Run me through everything”, she took a deep breath and did exactly that.
It wasn’t just the ordering math, it was keeping track of dates in weeks to come, because as the holidays approached, her suppliers’ calendars would shift, and if she didn’t stay on top of what she needed, she could run short.
As she talked, he set calendar reminders in his phone, and they buzzed on hers as well.
By the time she finished her soup, they had a calendar gridded out until February, and Adam looked justifiably proud of himself. “I’m good at keeping track of moving parts. You be the genius baker I know you are. I’ll keep an eye on the boring admin stuff.”
“I like the admin,” she protested.
“I know. And I like making that admin a little easier for you. I helped in the office at the moving company sometimes.”
“Thank you.” She sighed. “I needed help and I didn’t know how to ask.”
He wrapped his arm around her. “Or you didn’t know who to ask.”
“Maybe that, too.”
He brushed his lips against her temple. It was friendly and kind, and he’d done the same gesture more than a few times over the last few weeks.
Maybe it was the lack of sleep. Or the profound appreciation she felt toward him. Or maybe the stars were in the right-wrong position, but the brief contact of his mouth on her skin felt different today.
It felt right in a deeply disturbing way. Way too right. Definitely also very wrong.
That talented, kind, good mouth. On her bare, sensitive skin.
She twisted away and busied herself in tidying up the papers. “I think we’ve got it all sorted now,” she said brightly.
She wasn’t allowed to have feelings for her husband. That wouldn’t do at all.
Adam liked having a woman as a roommate. His house smelled instantly better, for one thing. There were more vegetables in the fridge. And every so often, Isla laughed in a full-throated way that filled him with a curious lightness. Having grown up in a house full of boys, all moody and struggling at the best of the times, it was a startling change of pace.
And privately, at home, Isla was nothing like the tough Captain Petersen who had befriended him years earlier. She had more make-up and home spa things than he ever thought possible, for one. And she loved curling up on the couch and watching television with big reactions. Horror movies terrified her, but she kept watching them with only one eye open. Reality shows made her mad enough she would yell at the screen—but not turn them off, no matter what.
It was all just a lot of fun. When he wasn’t working, he found himself joining her on the couch, each of them under their own blanket. He knew that when he was at the station overnight, Isla often worked late, revising her business plans over and over again, planning ahead to the next summer. She wanted to be ready for the tourists with a social media campaign—and the perfect lineup of treats to maximize on that visibility.
She told him all about it, often while they made dinner together.
One of his favourite things about living with Isla was the way she gravitated to working with him on something. When he lived with his brothers or Stevie, they’d always taken turns cooking. It was a chore none of them minded, but a chore nonetheless.
But Isla loved being in the kitchen, made it joyous, and that was infectious.
And she made dishes he would never have considered himself—like a vegetable tart.
“I thought it would be good with a salad. Is that okay? Do you want me to cook up some chicken breasts?” He made a face, and she laughed. “Okay, no chicken.”
“Josh is going through a weight-lifting phase—nothing wrong with that—but it was nothing but plain chicken breasts over at Will’s place. I’m chickened out for a while. A veggie tart sounds great.”
“I never got into the chicken and spinach routine,” Isla said as she dug out the peppers and asparagus. “And giving up bread has never been an option for me. But my intense weight training days are behind me, anyway.”
“You lifted?”
“Doesn’t everyone in the army? We all go through the Crossfit phase, the heavy lifting phase, the running phase.”
“Guilty on all three counts.”
“It’s utterly fascinating when you’re in the midst of it, and horribly boring when someone else is doing it.” She tossed him a package of goat’s cheese. “Do you want to chop veggies or make the dough?”
She liked to give him the choice, even though they both knew he would chop. It was an in-joke that had developed, that he was intent on getting his knife skills down pat, something she didn’t even care about.
“Show me again how you do the onion.”
She rolled her eyes. “You can do it however you want.”
But he wanted to do it right. He knew his way around a kitchen, and he wanted to improve.
She quickly peeled the outer skin off the onion, then made slices in it, from one end almost to the other. “Hold here,” she instructed. “When you curl your fingers, create a lot of tension. That will pin the onion down. Give it a go. Quarter turn, then slice again, and you’ll get diced onion, or minced, depending on how close together your slices are.”
He chopped into it, and she leaned closer, her voice soft. “Keep it consistent. Good. You’re a natural. Stop asking me for guidance when you know exactly what you’re doing.”
“Maybe I do it just so you’ll praise me.”
She laughed, and he’d been joking, but maybe there was something to it.
He’d had more compliments in a few weeks of living with Isla than he’d ever had in decades of living with his brothers.
She pulled a bowl from the fridge and lifted out a ball of dough. Just as she started kneading it, her phone vibrated on the counter next to Adam.
He did a double take at the name on the screen. “Are you expecting a call from someone named Jackass?”
She whipped around, “What?”
He held up the screen.
“No.” She sighed. “Ignore it. That’s, uh…my ex.”
“Ah.”
“I haven’t heard from him in almost a year.” She turned and returned to her kneading with extra vigour.
Adam wouldn’t want to be that dough right now.
Smack. Whack.
“You don’t need to call him back.”
“I’m not going to.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“No.” The answer was swift. But it was followed by another sigh. “I dunno. Sorry.”
He squeezed her shoulder. “Don’t be sorry. It’s fine.” He paused a beat. “If we ever break up, can I request a nickname?”
She snorted. “Like what?”
Laughing was better than sighing. He put an extra flirty spin on his first suggestion. “The One Who Got Away?”
“That’s a little long,” she said, playing along.
“How about, The Best I Ever Had?”
“Five-word compliments are not nicknames. Also, we want it to appear on the screen so my third husband can ask me who it is, right?”
She was joking, and he had started it, but that landed differently. A little too close to his feelings, when yes, that is exactly what could happen at some point. Their relationship had started out as transactional, sure, fake or pretend, although he didn’t like either of those words to describe a very real friendship.
But he’d gotten used to her being in his life and sharing a home together. Building a life together. The thought of her not being his wife one day was unfathomable. And yet he had no right to get tangled up in those feelings, he knew that. Evidence A for that fact was that Isla had no idea how her joke felt in his chest.
Now she rolled her eyes. “Come on, Adam. You know it’ll be something sweet. Like, I’d put you in there as The Rock.”
He pushed away his swirling thoughts and smirked at the sweetly funny name. He had to keep it light. “Let the next guy think you have a secret past with Dwayne Johnson.”
She winked. “You are my rock, though.”
Now he was grinning for real. “That’s really nice.”
“I’m really nice.” She nodded her head towards his bowl of chopped veggies. “Bring that over here. And put my phone on silent so we aren’t interrupted again.”
Chapter Twelve
The bakery was closed on Mondays, the one day of the week that Isla got to sleep in, and she loved waking up leisurely. She checked her messages as she lay in bed. Her Instagram account was up to a hundred followers.
A skittering at the window caught her attention, and she turned her head just in time to see a mouse duck out of view on the other side of the pane of glass.
She climbed out of bed and caught sight of Adam in the driveway. It was cold out now, but he wasn’t wearing a coat. He had a heavy sweater on, and work gloves and a wool toque on his head. He was unloading drywall from the back of his truck.
She drew the blinds closed and quickly got dressed in equally warm clothes. When she emerged from her bedroom, two sheets of drywall were stacked in the hallway, and the door was open for Adam to carry in the last sheet.
“What’s all this?” she asked when she stepped outside.
He turned and waved. “I didn’t wake you up, did I?”
“Nope.” She crossed the lawn. “I think we have a mouse, by the way. He tried to get in my window.”
“This place is a shithole. We probably have more than just mice.”
“Hey,” she protested. “I love this house.”
“And I love that you love it.” He flipped the bird at the second storey. “But I’m not feeling that charitable towards it at the moment. My shower this morning was the final straw for the wall in the upstairs bathroom. It crumbled on me.”
“Oh, no!” She looked at the drywall. “Another emergency repair?”
“Yeah. And I bought new tile because it was on clearance. I guess I’m spending my days off this week doing an impromptu renovation.”
“We can share the downstairs bathroom,” she offered. “And I can help with the repair.”
“It’s your day off, I’ve got it.”
“Will it go faster with a second pair of hands?” She propped her hands on her hips. “You helped me at work. Let me at least carry stuff.”
He stopped and gave her a slow, appraising look. “I can’t argue with that, I guess. Grab that box of tile.”
She followed him all the way upstairs, and after setting the tile down on the landing, she peaked into the bathroom.
The tile wall behind the tub had a gaping hole in it, and grout and shattered ceramic chunks littered the floor. “Oh, damn.”
He leaned against the doorframe and crossed his arms over his chest. A crowbar in his hands made him look fearsome, very capable of bringing the bathroom to heel. “I’m going to start demolition. There’s another pair of work gloves in my truck. Can you grab those, and bring up the plastic garbage can from the back?”
She nodded and slid past him. “RIP, old bathroom.”
His laughter echoed around her as she dashed down the stairs, and then she heard a shattering crunch just before she hit the porch. He wasn’t fooling around.
His truck was unlocked, and she hopped up into the driver’s side. She saw the gloves on the dashboard, and when she reached for them, she noticed a couple of her flyers sitting on the passenger side, neatly paper clipped together with a note. Drop off at the long-term care centre.
She sat down and picked them up, her fingers tracing his neat handwriting.
He was helping her in more ways than she knew. Why wasn’t he telling her about where he was leaving the flyers? Had she given him the impression she didn’t want help?
Maybe there was a part of her that had really wanted to do it all herself, but that was human nature. Same as Adam’s first instinct to waive her offer with the bathroom.
She put the flyers down, grabbed the gloves again, and got out of his truck.
But those thoughts kept swirling through her head as they knocked down the walls, as Josh arrived with a trailer for Adam to put the construction rubble in, as they demolished and swept and vacuumed.
By the end of the day, they had the bathroom back to studs and ready to be re-built.
“We make a good team,” Adam said as he brushed dust out of his hair outside after dumping the final bin of rubble into the trailer. His breath puffed in front of him.
“You did most of the hard work. You get the first hot shower.” She beamed at him. “And I’ll put the kettle on. Do you want tea? Hot chocolate? I’ve been practicing making these hot chocolate bombs that melt in the cup.”
“Yep, that. Sold. But you can have the first shower if you want.”
She pushed him back into the house. “Go. I’ll get one later before bed.”
He kicked off his boots, then headed down the hall into her bedroom. The shower hissed to life, then the bathroom door clicked closed.
She heated up some leftovers for dinner at the same time as she made the hot chocolate, and when she heard Adam reappear in the hallway, she turned to tell him that she had food on as well. She caught the curve of his bare back, broad and muscled, naked down to a low-slung towel wrapped around his hips. He disappeared into the shadows at the front of the house, and an unexpected memory slid to the front of her mind. Adam, sprawled naked in an overpriced hotel room, a sheet barely covering what that towel covered now. How beautiful he had been as she watched him sleep, how young and sweet he looked that morning. She hadn’t known then that he would become her best friend. She’d only known he’d been very good for a lonely part of her soul, and she couldn’t want too much of that goodness.
Now she turned back to the stove.
It wasn’t news to her that her husband was hot. It was just unexpected that she noticed in a blushing, strange kind of way.
Her alarm was so freaking annoying. She smacked her phone twice before she found the snooze button.
After the sleep-in the day before, and a thought-disrupted night of tossing and turning, Isla had to drag herself out of bed and into the bathroom. She blinked blearily at her reflection, then washed up. She braided her hair, then pinned up all the loose strands. Quickly and efficiently she transformed herself from a grumpy sleepyhead to a professional-looking baker.
It had snowed overnight, and she pulled on her winter coat and heavy boots for the short walk. Even as the weather turned, she still loved this part of her day.
At the bakery, she traded her coat and boots for the chef’s jacket and clogs she kept there.
Chocolate chip cookies in first. They were the fastest, and she needed more of them than anything else. Then cupcakes.
Fifteen minutes before she needed to open up, she took a quick break to eat a bit of breakfast herself, then washed her hands and headed out front to flip the sign.
Weekdays weren’t nearly as busy as weekends. There was a pattern to the day. Steady drop-ins for the first two hours, almost always wanting a dozen of something to take to a workplace. And then it was quiet for the next three hours. She would get better traffic here if she served coffee, she knew that, and she thought back to the point Adam had made about knowing who to ask for help.
Her own confession that she didn’t like to ask for help grated. She didn’t find any pride in that, so she packed up a to-go tray featuring her newest treat addition, marshmallow dream squares
.
She put up a back in fifteen minutes sign, locked up, and marched across the street. Catie was alone in the salon, working on her computer in her real estate corner.
“Hey neighbour,” Isla said, holding the treats up. “I come bearing gifts for a favour.”
Catie’s face lit up. “I just made a pot of tea, can I interest you in a cup?”
The tension Isla had been carrying between her shoulder blades eased, and she sat down across from the other woman. “That would be great. So, uh, you mentioned something when you brought Olivia in the first time. You thought the owner of the diner might have an espresso machine he’s not using?”
“Oh yeah, almost certainly. Frank never throws anything out.”
“And he doesn’t want to use it?”
“Frank hates latte culture. He thinks it’s a waste of time for his employees to make fancy coffee when a drip machine makes a whole pot at the press of a button.”
“But people want fancy coffee,” Isla protested.
Catie shrugged. “And he’ll be happy to send them your way if you want to serve it. Do you want me to introduce you? We could go there for lunch later.”
“I would be eternally grateful.” Isla took the cup of tea the other woman handed over. “Thank you.”
“Milk or sugar?”
“Neither, I’m good with it like this.” She nudged the box across the desk. “A token of appreciation.”
Catie opened the box and snatched out a marshmallow square. “You can bribe me for introductions to anyone in this town any day of the week.”
Isla didn’t know what to expect of Frank, who she had yet to meet. She was prepared for the request to be met with reluctance, or for his price to be too high, but what she wasn’t going to do was leave the question unasked.
She returned to the salon later, after closing the bakery for the day. Catie was finishing up with a hair client, so Isla sat in one of the waiting area chairs and picked up a magazine. It had been weeks since she’d last done her hair in anything other than braids and ponytails.
Maybe she’d get Catie to give her a blow out one of these days and surprise… Isla frowned at herself and pushed that thought away. She didn’t need to worry about her hair, or looking good for anyone.
