Chapter 9 Avery
AVERY
I spent the first few hours of the morning at the bakery with Beck. Showing me around the place didn’t take long — behind the customer-facing main room there was a kitchen, a storeroom for supplies, and a small office — but it was going to take me a while to get my arms around the business itself.
There were the baked goods, which Beck and Malcolm, the assistant who helped out at the bakery, made from scratch, a seasonal array of mouthwatering cookies, pastries, and cakes on rotation.
But it was more than just the baking. There were purchase orders for flour and multiple kinds of sugar, plus vanilla imported from Madagascar and chocolate imported from France and duck eggs bought exclusively from a duck farm on the lake (Beck swore the duck eggs — not the fancy imported ingredients — were the Golden Crumb’s secret weapon).
There was marketing and inventory, plus accounting, which included payables and payroll for both Beck and Malcolm.
It was a lot to think about, especially when I put it all together with the house I’d inherited, and by ten a.m. I was in need of a place to clear my head.
I found Beck in the back, pulling a tray of lemon cookies from the oven. The air was fragrant with citrus and lavender, which was another of Beck’s secret ingredients.
I wasn’t sure I’d ever lusted after a guy in an apron before, but hunger roared to life in my body at the sight of him wearing oven mitts and a pink-striped apron over his jeans and T-shirt, the stalk of wheat I’d seen tattooed on his right forearm peeking out from under his sleeve.
What the fudge was wrong with me?
“Hey, Beck?”
His face lit up a little when he saw me. Or maybe that was wishful thinking. “Yeah?”
Have you ever had sex on that flour-covered workbench? How about on the marble counter where you roll out the pastry dough?
“Is Evelyn buried around here?”
He set the tray on the worktable and pulled off the oven mitts. “She’s buried at the cemetery by the lake. She had it all arranged before she died.”
I wasn’t surprised. I didn’t remember much about Aunt Evelyn, but the woman I was getting to know through the people in Blackwell Hollow seemed wise and practical, thoughtful and forward-thinking.
“I think I’ll take some flowers,” I said.
He furrowed his brow, and for a second, I saw him as he must have looked as a little boy with floppy hair and dimples. “Do you want company? I have a cake in the oven, but I could close up and go with you after it comes out.”
“That’s okay.” A steady stream of customers had been in and out of the store all morning, and I knew from Beck that Malcolm had the day off. “I’m happy to do a little exploring on my own.”
He nodded like he understood. “If you head straight down Main the way we came and keep going past Foxglove, you’ll run right into the lake. There’s a walking path on the left. The cemetery is about half a mile down.”
“Thanks,” I said. “And thanks for showing me around the shop this morning.”
He smiled. “It’s yours now, which I guess makes you… my boss?”
There was something rakish in his smile, and heat rushed between my thighs.
I obviously needed help.
“Let’s not get crazy,” I said. “I can barely boil an egg, let alone make a batch of those lemon-lavender cookies.”
He held up a finger. “Speaking of…”
He pushed through the door leading to the front of the shop and returned a minute later with one of the shop’s small ivory bakery boxes, The Golden Crumb spelled out in rose gold on the top.
I realized what he was doing when he picked up a spatula and headed for the tray of freshly baked cookies. “Oh, you don’t have to— ”
“We only make these in the spring,” he said, sliding four cookies into the ivory box. “And they were Evelyn’s favorite. They’ll make your visit nicer.”
He closed the box and handed it to me.
“Thanks,” I said. “For everything.”
“You’re welcome, Avery.” I liked the way my name sounded in his mouth. “I’m glad you’re here.”
I hesitated. “Me too.”
I hadn’t been too sure about the whole thing when I’d left the city, and finding Harold Pembroke’s body in the gazebo should not have changed my mind.
But somehow, standing in the kitchen with Beck, a box of warm cookies in my hands, I couldn’t help feeling like some kind of weird magic had brought me to Blackwell Hollow.
And like maybe, there was a reason I was here after all.