A Recipe for Reunion

“I needed some fresh air.” She tried to keep her tone cool without being rude. He didn’t need to know about her argument with Mom. But either Wyatt didn’t get her message or was too gentlemanly to leave her alone. He pulled his sweater over his head and—good Lord, he was all muscles beneath his shirt—draped it across her shoulders. It smelled like leather and lemons.

“Thanks.” It seemed rude to refuse it.

Wyatt leaned against the railing. “Look, I want to apologize.”

“For what?”

“I think I came on too strong. To your parents.”

Steph blinked. “I don’t understand.”

He rubbed his chin and chuckled ruefully. “This...this is going to sound crazy.” He sucked in a breath as if steeling himself. “I’ve spent my whole life helping my folks on their ranch to the exclusion of everything else, which is how I found myself at age forty-two single and childless. I don’t mean to sound like a sad and lonely cowboy...but I haven’t gone on a lot of dates.” He peeked over at her. “This is the part where you start to get suspicious.”

A handsome, rich cowboy like Wyatt didn’t date? “Suspicious, no. Surprised, yes.”

“There’ve been women. Just not women I was really all that into, or who were more into my family’s money than they were into me.” He scratched the side of his nose. “When I met your parents at the country club and got to know them, they seemed like really great people. They mentioned you a lot. They didn’t know I was single at the time...but after a bit, I told them I wanted to meet you.”

A prickly feeling climbed up her arms, as if the sweater were creeping over her skin. She furtively shrugged it off her shoulders so it clung loosely to her elbows. “Um. Okay.”

“Look, I don’t want to sound weird. We’ve just met, but...I like you.”

“That’s...” Clumsy words weighed down her tongue. Too many confusing thoughts assailed her, first and foremost being that this was not something she wanted to hear right now. But instead of saying so, she said, “Thank you. I like you, too.”

Smile lines carved pleasant valleys into his sun-weathered face. “I’d like for us to get to know each other better.”

“Oh. Well...” Her pointed words of warning to back off wouldn’t come as easily with Wyatt as they had with her mother. She knew she should tell him she wasn’t interested, but the guy was too damned nice. The worst part was that despite his other attractive qualities, nice was the only word that kept coming to mind.

“I know I’m moving too fast.” He took a step back, hands raised. “But I’ll admit I like what I see and hear. And frankly, I’m not the kind of man who has the time or patience to play games.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “Might as well go for broke.” He blew out a breath and looked her full in the face. “My parents are getting older. I’m looking for someone to settle down with, and I mean to start my family as soon as possible.”

Steph choked on a breath she tried to inhale and swallow at the same time. She supposed she should appreciate how up-front he was being, but alarm bells sounded a warning in the back of her mind. Maybe at some other point in her life, she would have loved hearing those words, but not now and not from Wyatt.

She coughed and cleared her throat. “Look, Wyatt...you seem like a great guy. Really.” The corners of her mouth strained as she tried to lift her lips. “But I’ve told my mother the same thing I’m going to tell you. I’m still trying to find myself. And I don’t think I can do that if I’m with another person right now.”

“I’m not hearing an absolute no.”

She gave him a tight smile. “I need time to figure things out for me.”

He tilted his chin down, thinking. “All right. I’ll give you time.” He pushed off the railing and touched his forelock as if he were wearing a broad-brimmed cowboy hat. “If you wouldn’t mind some advice...?”

Warily, she said, “Go on.”

“They say do what you love, the rest will follow. But if that were true, I’d be sleeping and eating Wagyu beefsteaks at all hours of the day.” He chuckled. “If you want to be a success, you gotta do what you have to do before you get to do what you love. Pay your dues, as it were. It isn’t always pretty or fun, but it’ll make what you love all that much sweeter in the end.”

He was talking about her job. It was almost a relief to hear after their intense relationship talk. He wasn’t even being condo...condescending. And his advice made sense.

A little salt to bring out the sweetness—that was something Georgette had taught her early on when it came to baking. “Thanks. That’s helpful, actually.”

“I’m glad. I’ll let you think about that,” he said, then flashed a grin. “But I suspect you’ll see more of me soon.”

He went back indoors, leaving her alone on the deck once more. Steph’s chills deepened. She started to pull the sweater around her, but then stopped herself. She took it off and headed back into the party.

The rancher was right. She had to make things happen for herself. She wasn’t going to get what she wanted by wishing for it. Everything came at a price, and she had to be willing to pay it. It looked as though she was going to have to eat crow if she was ever going to own Georgette’s.

CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_20aaf2bd-01e1-5dbc-a231-8909bd977324)

“MRS. LAWLER CALLED and said the chocolate chip cookies she ordered on Friday weren’t the ones we usually sell.” Georgette’s tone over the phone had all the pointedness of an awl gouging into Aaron’s good intentions.

He broke out in a sweat, pressing himself into the office chair as if he could disappear in the crumb-filled seams of the vinyl upholstery. He’d tried to keep this conversation from happening since Stephanie had left two days ago, but his time and luck had run out. “I know. I used a different recipe.”

“Why on earth would you do that?” Gran asked sharply.

“We were out of cookies. I had to whip up something I could make—”

“But those aren’t Georgette’s cookies. People don’t come to the bakery to get something they can make from an online recipe.”

“I know, I know.” He hadn’t thought his cookies had turned out that bad, even if they were a little hard and lacked the smooth, melt-in-your-mouth texture his grandmother’s were famous for.

He hadn’t had time to make another batch, though. All day Friday and well into the evening he’d thrown together recipes from the internet to fill the standing orders while Kira took care of the customers out front. By Saturday, all the premade pastries and batters had been used up and he found himself saying, “Sorry, we’re sold out” more often than “Thank you. Come again.”

Worse yet, he hadn’t been able to get the recipe binder from the safe—Gran had changed the code, and he couldn’t ask her for it without telling her why. Now they were almost completely out of stock, and he was scrambling to prep inventory for Monday. Flour dusted his running shoes and batter was caked on his jeans. He ached head to toe, and the lack of sleep after only two days was taking its toll.

“I don’t understand why you didn’t ask Stephanie to make more cookies.” Georgette waited for his explanation, and Aaron finally relented with a sigh.

“Stephanie quit on Friday.”

“Yes. I know.”

He sank deeper into the chair. He hadn’t really expected to keep such a huge secret in small-town Everville, but he’d hoped... “So you heard.”

“Betty told me when she came for tea yesterday. She said Stephanie stormed out in quite a mood. I thought I’d wait to hear the truth from you.” Every word lashed him with razor-sharp reproof. “How long were you planning to keep it from me?”

“I didn’t think you needed to know. I can handle it. You should be resting and recovering.”

“Don’t give me that,” she snapped. “That is my business, Aaron. I’m grateful that you want to take care of things. I put a lot of faith in you, waiting as long as I have to see how you’d solve this problem. But I told you from the start, didn’t I? You need Stephanie. You were supposed to work together.”

“Things didn’t work out.”

His grandmother’s stony silence on the other end of the line told him that was not a satisfactory explanation.

“And what, exactly, are you going to do for inventory?” she asked.

“Well, since renos are happening anyhow, we could close up for a week or two. It’ll give me time to interview for a replacement baker.”

“A replacement?” She said it as if he’d proposed they grind bones for flour. “Absolutely not!”

“Gran, be reasonable.”

“You don’t understand. I trained Stephanie. I trusted her with my secrets. I’m not going to hand over my recipes willy-nilly to some stranger. We’ve no guarantee they won’t take everything they’ve learned and start their own bakeshop in town.”