Down Home Cowboy

“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.”