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“I’m nothing if not pedantic when it comes to the details of baked goods.”
“Maybe I should have hired you then.”
That at least penetrated his thick skull and made him think about something other than sex. “Why? Is Violet having a hard time?”
“Not any more than usual,” Alison said. She seemed much more comfortable with the topic of Violet introduced. “I just meant because she clearly doesn’t have any experience baking. So, all things considered, she’s doing really well. Just a couple of sunken cakes. But nothing I can’t eat.”
“Is there anything I can help her...work on at home?” He didn’t know why he was asking. He knew next to nothing about baking. As far as he was concerned cake came from the store.
“I can think of a few things, if you wouldn’t mind.”
“I actually have no idea how to help her. It just seemed like the thing to say.”
Alison laughed, and the sound was unexpectedly erotic. It fired through his veins, made him want to earn some more laughter. Possibly because he was mainly accustomed to having women glare at him, yell at him. It had been a long time since he’d made one laugh. Since one had looked even remotely delighted with him in any way.
“Sorry,” he said, finding himself smiling. “I’m really not that helpful. But I can taste-test.”
“Well,” she said, “Violet does have a cake in the back. You’re welcome to come back and...have a taste.”
“Sure.” Cake was not what he wanted a taste of. He wanted to taste that little hollow at the base of her throat. Wanted to see if her skin was as soft as he thought it might be. Wanted to see if she tasted like sugar, or if she tasted like flowers. He wasn’t really particular as long as the flavor of woman was layered beneath.
“Come on back,” she said, scurrying to the other side of the counter and opening a small, swinging gate, gesturing toward the double doors that he presumed led to the kitchen.
He saw no reason not to comply. So he did. It was tidy behind the counter, plates stacked out of view of the patrons, and napkins and dish towels neatly folded and stacked beside them. She ushered him into the kitchen, and he saw that it was no less organized. There were large mixers, a double oven lining a back wall and Saran-wrapped trays stacked in large holders, full of various baked goods.
And in the back of the room was his daughter, laboriously piping icing onto what looked like several dozen cookies.
“She’s practicing,” Alison said. “She learned a really basic technique the other day, so she gets to try it out on an order that we got for a client’s office party.”
Violet’s expression was full of concentration, and he was momentarily distracted from the strangeness between himself and Alison by it. By the intensity with which she was focused on her task. By the fact that, for a moment, his daughter look like a stranger to him. Not like a child, and not like the angry teenager he was used to seeing.
She looked content, even though she was deep in concentration and actually applying effort to it rather than just rolling her eyes and tossing out a careless whatever.
It struck him then that he didn’t know this version of his daughter at all.
“Wow,” he said, not sure what else to say.
Violet obviously recognized his voice, because she stopped and looked up. Her expression went flat for a moment, and then came a smile that he could tell was forced. “Oh, hi, Dad. I didn’t realize you were going to come by.”
“Lane was busy. So I figured I would come and get you.”
Violet frowned. “Is it time already?”
“Yeah, but if you want to finish, that’s fine. I can wait.”
“Yeah,” Violet said, “I’m going to finish.” She turned her focus back to the cookies. And Cain turned his focus back to Alison.
“Nice place you have.”
There were other women—it was all women—bustling around the kitchen, barely acknowledging him as they took cakes out of the oven and moved mixing bowls around, and colored bowls of frosting.
“Thank you. We’re working toward doing more than just selling things here at the bakery. We make desserts for special events. And supply cakes for parties, weddings. And we’re working on packaging some of our baked goods and getting them in stores. And in various showrooms. So what you see up front is only a small sampling of what happens here.”
He gestured back toward the dining area, because he wanted a chance to speak to her without Violet in earshot. She caught his meaning, and led the way back out of the kitchen. He showed himself back into the main room, grateful to get the counter between them. “You seem really busy. I really appreciate you taking the time to train Violet. It doesn’t seem like you would have a lot to spare.”
“I don’t. But, even though there were a few people back there, I’m actually short-staffed right now. And anyway, I’m kind of in the business of training women for the workforce.”
“Really?”
She nodded definitively. “Yeah,” she said, “that’s what I do. I mean, in addition to baking kick-ass pies.”
“I’ll take two,” he said.
“Two?”
“Pies. Kick-ass pies.”
“Which kind?”
He lifted a shoulder. “The kind that kicks the most ass?”
“That seems subjective.”
He really was out of practice with the flirting thing. Of course, he didn’t want to flirt with her. No, what he wanted to do was throw her down on the nearest flat surface and deal with all of the pent-up sexual energy that was roaring through his body. And he shouldn’t want to do any of that.
“Well, in your opinion.”
“Okay,” she said, making her way over to the pastry case and frowning. The concentration she was putting into selecting the right pie was a little too fascinating for him. He liked the way her eyebrows pleated together, that little crease it made in her forehead. The way her full lips pulled down at the corners.
She had been wearing makeup last night. A bright tint over the natural skin tone on her mouth. But he liked it better now. A soft wash of pale pink. He wanted to taste it. Wanted to bite it.
“I’m ready to go.”
He looked up, in the middle of thinking about how he wanted to bite Alison’s lip, to see his daughter coming out of the kitchen. Well, that was a great underscore to the first specific sexual fantasy he’d had in about a million years.
“Okay,” he said, “I’m just getting pie.”
“That’s all I’ve eaten for three days,” Violet said.
“If you’re whining about pie now, then you really can’t be helped.”
Violet treated him to a shrug that he had a feeling looked like the gesture he’d just made. “Maybe I don’t want to be.”
“Fine. Eat a salad and be sad. I’m going to eat pie.”
Alison walked over to the register and punched in the code. “Employee discount,” she said.
Violet frowned. “You don’t have to do that. Especially since I ruined that last cake.”
“I’m the one paying for this,” Cain said, “maybe consider that before you reject my discount.”
“I already told you, Violet,” Alison said, “the cake isn’t a big deal. It’s part of learning.”
Surprisingly, Violet smiled. An expression that looked both genuine and not sullen. “Thanks,” his daughter said, modulating her tone into something much softer than he’d heard in at least a year.
“Lemon meringue and blackberry,” Alison said, looking at him.
“Lemon meringue is my favorite.”
Her cheeks turned pink, and he had to admit he enjoyed that. Enjoyed the idea that she wasn’t any more immune to him than he was to her. Even if it was futile, it was a nice feeling. “Good. That’s... Good.”
“Nice to meet you,” he said. “Ready?” He directed that question at Violet.
Violet already had her phone out and was texting someone. She looked up just for a moment, just long enough to give him a dry look. “I said I was.”
“Okay, then.” He took the plastic bag that contained two pie boxes and waved at Alison, then headed out the door with Violet. “You could be a little bit friendlier,” he commented when they were back out on the street.
“I was friendly.”
“You were standing there texting.”
“I already said what I needed to say.”
He let out a long, slow breath. These kinds of conversations with Violet were futile. She had decided that he was being ridiculous, and she was going to hold on to that no matter what he said. Just like he always did, he wrestled with how to handle it. He could ground her, but then, the only thing he could ground her from was her phone.
Which was reasonable enough, except summer in a new town meant that it was her only source of social life. There was no school to go to, she had no friends around here. Anyway, she was mad enough. He didn’t want to make it worse. He didn’t want to cut her off from everyone.
That phone represented her entire life right now. And if she was a different kid in a different situation he might handle it differently. But Violet hadn’t been the same since her mother had left.
It had taken a couple of years for Violet to stop looking at him like she thought he might disappear. Like she was surprised that he’d come home. For all of that time she’d been almost supernaturally well-behaved. Quiet. And now, it was like she was making up for lost time. Like she had spent the first two years terrified that he might leave her too, and the second two realizing that he wouldn’t. Or maybe now she was testing his staying power; he didn’t really know.
All he knew was that being a parent was hard. And doing it by yourself when you knew jack shit about kids—about teenagers—was even harder.
Sometimes he looked at his daughter, at this girl who was closer to being a woman than a kid, and wondered where all the years had gone. Wondered how the hell he was standing on a street in a small Oregon town with a sixteen-year-old. Sometimes he didn’t know at all how he’d gotten here. He would have thought that sixteen years into parenthood he would feel like he knew something. Would feel like he understood the gig.
No, if anything, he seemed to be worse at it now. When she was three it hadn’t taken any work at all to get her to smile at him. Now it took an act of God.
“Do you want to go out to eat tonight?”
“No,” she said. “I’m ready to go home.”
It was somewhat encouraging to hear her refer to the ranch as home. Usually, she said something about going back to Uncle Finn’s house. This new terminology made him wonder if maybe they were making progress.
“Sure. I bet there’s a bunch of food in the freezer that Lane made.”
Violet shrugged. “I’m not hungry.”
“You will be later.”
“You don’t know that.”
He gritted his teeth. This actually did remind him of when she was a toddler. All kinds of screaming about not being hungry anytime food was placed in front of her. And of course, she would whine about not having anything to eat the minute it was taken away.
“You’re right,” he said, not doing a great job of keeping his tone even. “I don’t know that. I don’t know a damn thing.” He jerked the driver’s side door of the truck open and got in. Violet climbed into the passenger side, slamming the door hard enough that he was afraid she might have broken something in the old rig.
She didn’t say anything in response to that. Rather, she just gave him a standard eye roll and long-suffering sigh. He was tempted to tell her she didn’t know anything about long-suffering. He was pretty sure he had the monopoly on that at this point.
They drove the rest of the way back to the homestead in silence, and he was grateful. He didn’t know how to talk to her. At least, not in ways that didn’t do more damage.
When he parked, Violet got out of the car wordlessly and headed toward the house, her eyes fixed on her phone. He looked at the front door, which she slammed behind her, not waiting for him. He decided he was going to avoid the house for a while. He looked back up toward the barn that he was preparing for the two of them, a place where—he hoped—they might find a little more peace between them. Where she might see what the point of all of this was.
That he was doing it for her. For them. So that they could finally move on from everything that had happened in Texas.
He was building a life, dammit. Literally. Building them a place to live, a place to call home. One that wasn’t completely overrun with the memory of Kathleen and her abandonment.
She would see. When the barn house was finished, when she settled in here, got going at school, made some friends... Everything would be fine. He would make it fine. The lone alternative was failing the only other person on Earth who had ever depended on him. And as far as he was concerned, that just wasn’t an option.
CHAPTER FOUR (#u4c65c955-b2e9-56f0-8268-8c30bc43b85b)
ALISON WAS HAVING a hard time concentrating on the chatter at their official monthly girls’ night—different from their occasional random get-togethers for dinner simply because it was on the calendar. Which was really crappy of her since Lane had arrived with a shiny new ring on her finger, bursting to tell them about Finn proposing, and she was still thinking about her encounter with Cain Donnelly earlier.
The proposal had been beautiful, romantic and utterly spontaneous. At the lake by Lane’s house, and they’d been naked apparently. Alison wasn’t surprised. Well, the nudity was kind of surprising—she had follow-up questions about where Finn had been keeping the ring—but the proposal had been inevitable as far as she was concerned.
She’d never seen two people who loved each other more. And that had been true long before they’d gone from Just Friends to more. They were meant to be. Even a curmudgeon like Alison could see that.
And the fact it had been such a certainty in her mind was the excuse she was using for zoning out now. And feeling...well, not left out. But something.
Lane and Rebecca were excitedly talking wedding plans, the diamond rings on their fingers casting showers of sparks across the room as they waved their hands in increasingly broad gestures. Cassie was smiling, sitting there with a dreamy expression on her face, clearly caught up in the romance of it all and no doubt remembering her own wedding.
Bah humbug.
Alison wasn’t caught up in any romance. And, she didn’t want to be. And somehow, she was the last remaining single girl in her group of friends when just a year ago Rebecca and Lane had been staunchly anti-love right alongside her.
It was a conspiracy.
Her mind wandered back to earlier that day, when she had met Violet’s father. She hadn’t caught his first name. She knew that Lane would know, but expressing any kind of interest would probably seem suspicious. Then again, maybe not. Seeing as Violet was her employee. And Finn was Lane’s fiancé.
It might, in fact, be germane to the conversation. It could be. It was always possible.
“What are Finn’s brothers’ names again?” she asked, realizing as the words tumbled out of her mouth that it had been a bit of a rough transition.
“Cain, Liam and Alex. Why?” Lane frowned. She tented her fingers, and that diamond ring sparkled all the brighter.
Finn and Lane had been together for only a little over a month. But they had been best friends for more than a decade, and when the two of them had tumbled headfirst into a physical relationship, true love had followed quickly. Though, actually, Alison believed that they’d probably always loved each other, they’d just been hesitant to get involved in romantic relationships for some very compelling reasons.
Alison was glad the two of them had worked it out. She really was.
And she wasn’t jealous. Not of the love.
