Chapter 7
GINNY
I finally admit that I’ve been anticipating Everett’s arrival.
For about a month.
I shouldn’t. I told him all about why. And I’ve repeated all of those reasons to myself over and over again.
For about a month.
But I was still eager to see him and my stupid heart and stomach both flipped when he walked through the door of my mother’s bakery.
“He’s only done a dozen?” I ask Mia. “It’s been two hours.”
Mia laughs and holds up the cupcake and one of the cookies. “Yeah, but have you ever seen a more beautiful Christmas tree ornament cookie?”
Honestly? No. He has only done eight cookies—four ornaments and four snowflakes—and four cupcakes.
In two hours. But they are absolutely perfect.
Prettier than anything my mom or Peyton has ever decorated.
I mean, sure, they do custom cakes and all kinds of other things.
But given forty-eight hours straight, I’m sure Everett could decorate an elaborate four-tier wedding cake that would take our breath away.
“This is ridiculous,” I say to Mia.
She just giggles.
“Up front he would’ve at least been getting to know people.”
“I’m not kidding when I say I think he had a great time,” Mia says with a quiet laugh. “He was so locked in.” She holds up two of the ornament cookies. “And he asked if he could do a different design of his own and look at this thing.”
It’s very pretty. And every single line, squiggle, and swirl is perfect.
“It is completely inefficient and not cost-effective to have it take him that long.”
“I’ll get faster with practice.”
I whirl around to see Everett coming out of the kitchen, drying his hands on a towel.
He looks adorable.
He looked adorable when he first walked into the bakery, a little tired, and a little disheveled, which was a nice change after the perfectly put-together man I spent time with at Thanksgiving.
This Everett reminds me more of the man I woke up next to after Halloween.
He’d been polished and perfect in the bar, but after our night together, his hair had been mussed, he had stubble on his jaw, and lying in nothing but a pair of boxers amongst rumpled sheets, he looked nicely, sexily tousled.
Now he’s wearing khakis and tennis shoes with a long-sleeved Henley and has that same next-morning scruff on his face, and looks like he’s run his hand through his hair multiple times.
And he looks very…content.
Yep, that was how he’d looked that morning after, too.
That was probably part of the heart-stomach-flipping thing.
He and Graham were later than expected. They’d had a couple of intense days in New Mexico, where they’d been meeting with some farmers about converting their farms into green-energy-powered indoor farms. Apparently, one farm is especially interested and could be the key to convincing the others.
I’m dying to know how Everett feels about how everything went.
I’m not officially an employee for a few more days, but I want to know it all.
He doesn’t look like he wants to talk about farms right now, though.
At the moment, along with that general tiredness, he has a soft smile on his face that makes me want to smile back. And hug him. Not even naked hugging. Well, the naked-hugging urge is always right there, just below the surface, but I just want to squeeze him too.
He’s enjoyed his time in my mother’s bakery with these people who are family to me.
So he only did a dozen cookies and cupcakes. He was still helpful. And more than that, I’m glad he’s here. That he’s with people who all welcome him, appreciate him, and make him feel comfortable and accepted.
“Well, I guess that means that we’re going to have to go to the Come Again tonight,” I say with a fake sigh. “You’ll have to meet people there.”
Mia laughs as she steps around us. “Yeah, because there was no chance you were going to end up there tonight anyway.”
Everett moves closer to me. We’re not alone. We’re just outside the swinging door to the kitchen, and the entire bakery can see us. But no one else can hear us, and it feels like there’s a little bubble around us for a moment.
“The Come Again is—” I start.
“I missed you.”
He doesn’t just interrupt me. He actually makes me suck in a quick breath.
He quirks an eyebrow. “You’re surprised?”
“Of course not,” I say. “I’m a fucking delight.”
But the truth is, I am surprised. At least that he would just blurt it out like that. We haven’t seen each other in a month. We haven’t texted or called. We are not dating. We don’t even know each other that well. And I have flat-out told him that we can’t actually get involved.
“You really are,” he says, sincerely, even though I was teasing.
I swallow hard. “How many cookies did you sneak back there? Is this a sugar rush or something?”
He lifts a hand and brushes his index finger over my cheek. He holds up a little streak of white icing. “When it takes you an hour to frost six cookies, you can’t risk eating one of them. Not to mention more than one. Definitely not a sugar rush.”
It’s December twenty-third, and when I said goodbye to him on November twenty-fifth, I really thought that this would be enough time to prepare to see him again and just be his friend.
I was wrong.
“There’s one more shift of kids coming in for Christmas camp,” I say. “Then we can head up to the house. Mom will have dinner and everything, and then we can go out to the bar. There really are a few people I think you should meet.”
“Whatever you say,” he tells me.
I decide not to try to flirt with him or not flirt with him any further. I just lead him out from behind the front counter.
“So, your brother mentioned Christmas camp, but he never explained it.”
I grin at him as kids start streaming through the front door to the bakery.
“It’s this great thing they started here a few years ago.
The kids get out of school a few days before Christmas, and the city decided to come up with something to keep them busy, get them in the Christmas spirit, but also help them feel like they have something to contribute to their family’s Christmas,” I explain, pointing kids to different tables around the bakery.
“On December twenty-first, twenty-second, and twenty-third, they go from business to business doing different activities. Here, obviously, they’re going to decorate cookies. Then they get to take them home and share them with their family.
“Over at the hardware store, they build little wooden boxes with hinge tops. They can give that to someone at home as a gift.
“Then they go over to Hope’s shop. She sells soaps, lotions, essential oils, and things like that. They get to mix a hand lotion in whatever scent they want and again, make that a gift for someone.
“At City Hall, they decorate Christmas cards for their families. And many of the other businesses have little stops along the way. The library gives away Christmas books. The grocery store has a cocoa station. The beauty salon has coloring pages. They can have a bowl of soup at Dottie’s.
Other stores give them a chance to decorate the store’s front window or write Santa letters.
All kinds of little holiday-ish things. It’s a fun way for the kids to stay busy, and the town to support them. ” I pause. “It’s really incredible.”
Everett just shakes his head. “I’ve never lived anywhere that did something like that. I grew up in L.A. in a gated estate. And since then, I’ve always lived in big cities. I suppose it’s possible neighborhoods do things like this, but I never saw it. This town is great.”
I nod. “Now that I’m back, I realize that I missed it more than I thought. I think I talked myself into not missing it while I was away.”
“And it’s pretty awesome how your whole family comes together to help out here at the bakery.”
I lift a shoulder. “Of course. That’s just what we do here.”
He looks around. “So you want me to teach some of these kids how to decorate cookies?”
I laugh. “We do not have time for that. How about I handle decorating, and you make sure we don’t run out of supplies?”
He grins. “Whatever you say.”
That is a very addictive phrase, and he says it so easily. But I can’t get too used to anything—and certainly not addicted to anything—with this guy.
I’ll just have to keep repeating that to myself during this visit.