Chapter 13
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
Joey greased the dough ball she’d just put back in the bowl and then lifted the plastic wrap to go over it. She made sure it was still loose so that the dough could push against it as it rose, and she turned back to Aunt Faith.
“All right, that one’s rising,” she said. “What do we need to do next?”
They’d been making doughnuts for the past couple of hours, and Joey loved baking with her aunt.
She had just had a baby about six weeks ago, and little Harmony had fallen back asleep almost an hour ago.
Uncle Blaze had gotten up with the other kids—Grace, Celeste, and Tyrone—and he’d taken them out to walk around the lake until breakfast was ready.
“Let’s do the sausage next,” she said, and she opened the fridge and pulled out two enormous packages of sausage links.
“I can man the grill if you want to put two pans on that left side,” she indicated the stove top with the biggest burners, and Joey reached for the pans hanging from the rack above the island.
Her aunt and uncle lived in a luxurious mountain home in the lakeside community, with a gate, and Joey could only hope to live somewhere half as nice as this place one day.
She loved babysitting for her aunts and uncles, but her two jobs rarely allowed her to do it, and most of those jobs went to Rosie, Liesl, and Corinne anyway.
“I wanted to ask you something,” Joey said, taking her thoughts away from where she lived and who she was meeting after she finished having breakfast with the Blaze-Young-branch of her family.
“Sure,” Faith said good-naturedly.
“I remember a long time ago, you did holiday orders for doughnuts. Remember that—when you still owned your trucks?”
“Of course,” Faith said. “I did it because one of my trucks kept breaking down, and I needed to stay in business.”
Joey nodded. “Grams and I like to make Thanksgiving pies,” she said. “And I was thinking that I could take holiday orders the way you did…using social media.”
Faith glanced over to her, her kind smile growing by the moment. “That’s a great idea, Joey.”
“Do you have any advice for me?” Joey asked.
Faith thought about it for a moment, and she ran a knife down the end of one of the sausage packages. “Have a set menu,” she said. “So say…offer five pies and nothing more. That way, you won’t be making one lemon chiffon, and fifteen pumpkin, and then a pecan, and an apple, and this and that.”
“That’s a good idea,” Joey said. “Grams is really good at pecan, and I love pumpkin and apple.”
“Then just do those three,” she said. “Pumpkin, pecan—very classic for Thanksgiving.”
Joey nodded and swallowed. “I just want to earn a little extra money to maybe get my own apartment.”
“I thought you liked living with Cecily and Jerry.”
“I do,” Joey said quickly. “I do. Of course, I do.” She exhaled as she started layering sausage into her pans too. “It’s just, I’m getting older, and it feels like the adult thing to do.”
“I still have my house,” Faith said. “It’s really small, kind of like one and a half bedrooms.” She grinned at Joey. “Blaze and I rent it.”
“I didn’t know that,” Joey said.
Faith nodded. “We have someone there now, but I don’t know what their plans are. If they move out, I’d be more than happy for you to move in there.”
“I could pay rent,” Joey said, though she currently wasn’t paying any.
She did put a few hundred dollars into her savings account as if she did every month, because she knew she would need a first month’s rent, last month’s rent, and a security deposit, and it could cost thousands to get into a new place.
She thought of Adam and how he’d put in an offer—all cash—on a house in Dog Valley that cost over eight hundred thousand dollars.
The sellers had accepted his offer, of course, and he was actually trying to move by next weekend.
She hadn’t seen him since Thursday morning, when they’d gotten up to almost a foot of fresh snow.
She’d made breakfast for her family and him, and they’d waited a couple of hours until the snowplows had been out to clear the roads before they’d left.
Joey had not worked at Cake Bites that day, but it didn’t matter. When snow came to town, everyone shut down to stay safe.
“It might be helpful if you had a website too,” Faith said. “I can help you get a really simple one set up. I’m sure you have pictures of you at culinary school and making pies.” She raised her eyebrows as a question.
Joey nodded as she had been bringing holiday pies to their family gatherings for a couple of years. “Yes,” she said. “I have all of those things. Would it take very long and cost very much?”
“Not at all,” Faith said. “We can get hosting for ten dollars a month, and I can help you build it. In fact, I would love to build it for you.” She grinned over to Joey.
“I love my kids, but I’ve been feeling more and more like I need something more to keep my mind sharp.
The girls are in school, so it’s just Tyrone and me and the baby. ”
“And Blaze doesn’t even have a job,” Joey said, which caused them both to giggle.
“He’s very helpful with the kids,” Faith said. “I could easily put a website together for you in a couple of hours.”
“What do you think I should call it?” Joey asked.
“That’s a good question,” Faith said. “We can do a little bit of research and see what other websites are out there. Though, if you’re just offering for Coral Canyon and Dog Valley, it won’t matter much.”
Joey nodded, her mind now buzzing with possibilities. She and Faith fried sausage, and when that finished, she tonged the cooked links onto paper towels to drain. Then Faith pulled her glazed doughnut dough closer to her and started to roll it out.
“They should be back soon, and these don’t take long to fry.”
Joey looked at her batter, and she had done a denser batter for bars. “This isn’t quite ready yet,” she said.
“Those always take longer.” Faith peered at the dough too. “Yeah, that needs another half-hour at least.”
Joey agreed, and she glanced at the clock on the stove.
She would need to leave in another hour to meet Adam for brunch.
He’d forgotten that he’d signed up for guitar lessons on Saturday mornings, and since it was only his second one, he hadn’t wanted to cancel.
Joey had agreed to simply push their brunch date back to a more appropriate brunch time, and they were meeting at eleven now, instead of nine.
The back door slid open, and in walked Celeste and Grace. Blaze waited while Tyrone toddled up and entered the house too, nearly toppling as he lifted his foot to go over the lip of the door.
“Careful there, bud,” Uncle Blaze said, and Joey smiled at her cousins.
“Momma’s making the doughnuts right now,” Celeste said.
“Can we have the pink frosting with sprinkles?” Grace asked. They both slid onto a bar stool and watched Faith and Joey roll out the dough and cut it into rounds.
“Up, up,” Tyrone whined, and Uncle Blaze swept him up into his arms.
He babbled something else to which Faith said, “We’re doing pink frosting and chocolate.” She smiled at her son. “You can have the chocolate one, buddy.” He flapped his arms, causing Uncle Blaze to lean away.
“I might not be able to stay long enough to do the bars,” she told Aunt Faith.
“Oh, it’s fine,” Faith said. “The girls and I will finish them up. They want to take them around to their cousins and grandparents.” She smiled at her girls. “And they should have to do some of the work if they’re going to get all that gratitude.”
“What do you have going on?” Uncle Blaze asked, and Joey’s heartbeat froze in her veins. She had not introduced Adam to her momma as her boyfriend, and either her momma wasn’t very observant, or Joey and Adam had hidden the way they’d been kissing and holding hands well enough to not be detected.
She glanced over to Aunt Faith, who lifted another ring’s doughnut out of the dough and set it on a tray to rise.
“I—” Joey said. “Well, truth be told, I have a date.”
“A date?” Uncle Blaze’s eyebrows went up.
“I haven’t told anybody about him yet,” she said, giving her grouchiest uncle a smile. “Not my momma or my daddy—so I’m certainly not going to tell you.”
Rosie would have cocked her skinny hip and demanded to know who Joey was going out with. Harry and Belle had already asked, but Uncle Blaze simply held up one hand and said, “All right, I’m not going to make you tell me if you don’t want to.”
She didn’t want to, but Aunt Faith bumped her with her hip.
“Looks like you like him,” Faith said.
“Does it?” Joey asked. “What makes you say that?”
“You’re wearing a special smile,” Faith teased.
She thought about the kissing her and Adam had done earlier that week, and her face heated.
“Oh, she likes him all right,” Blaze said, his smile growing. “Is this your first date?”
Her uncles were known for asking a lot of nosy and difficult questions, but Uncle Blaze wasn’t usually one of them. Of course, he couldn’t know that this question was actually difficult when it shouldn’t have been.
“I’m not actually sure,” she said, and he chuckled.
“That’s kind of weird, don’t you think? Wouldn’t you know if you’d been out with him before?”
“Well, I guess what you could call our first date was…kind of not really a date. So, yeah, I don’t know.” She also didn’t want to have kissed Adam before they’d even gone out, which made Uncle Blaze’s question far more complicated than he even knew.
Thankfully, Blaze and Faith didn’t ask a bunch more questions, which was why they were one of the safer couples for Joey to tell about her date. Blaze didn’t like his business being splashed all through the family and around town, which meant he would never do that to her.