My Dad’s Best Friend (Scandalous Billionaires #3)

Chapter 1

Chapter one

Dulcie

My life is pie, and my family is pie. Pie is our legacy. For three generations, Marietta, Ohio, has known the Piedales for our bakery. Our fortunes were first founded on pie, our present is pie, and our legacy is meant to be successfully crossbreeding a new mix of pie.

The entirety of my being, knowledge, and history centers around pie.

At the heart of me, it’s who I am. I wouldn’t even be overly surprised if I were put in for an MRI and the doctors discovered that instead of a normal heart, I was brewing up the perfect apple pie with just the right amount of cinnamon and the perfect ratio of blackberries.

It’s my grandpa’s secret recipe, and combined with the most delicious crust known to man, and the perfect crosshatch pattern on the top, it’s my favorite.

They’d probably also find that I have pie on the brain so often that there’s one up there in my head too.

Currently, that one is moldering.

My dad stares at me with tears on his creased cheeks, the salty liquid spilling down a channel of deeply carved wrinkles.

He just dropped the bomb that for us, the pie is in fact not the limit.

Of course it’s the sky, but in this family, we have a habit of talking in the worst pie puns.

As a kid, I loved the weird humor. As an adult? I’ve always found it berry nice.

It’s not berry nice at all that the person I love and trust most in the whole world just sat me down in the back of the bakery, with the mouthwatering, almost overwhelmingly sweet scents of pies baking in the ovens all around us, and told me that if we don’t find a way to get our Pie Masters title back, we’re finished.

I do all the financials for the bakery, and I knew we were in a trend of steady decline, but I had no idea Dad borrowed money, remortgaged the house, and owes personal back taxes. He never let me file those for him, but apparently, he wasn’t filing them for himself either.

Unless something happens, our life as we know it, and as my family has known it since the time of my great-grandfather, is over.

The fact is, people have lost faith in us. Ain’t that a slice of humble pie?

Dad swipes at his cheeks, pulling himself back together after giving me that devastating news. He’s the kind of person who refuses to stay down once he’s been kicked. “I have a plan. This year is our year, I know it. We’ll take that blue ribbon back.”

He’s talking about the Pi and Pie Science and Food Fair. It sounds ridiculous, but around here, it’s a big deal. It’s kind of like that program where they give out stars to restaurants, which is how people choose and decide where they’re going to eat and buy from.

“I don’t want to put anyone out of business, but if we could just draw some of the attention back to our pies, that would mean more orders, and more orders always mean more cash flow, and more cash means we might not have to close.”

“We’re not closing. I can’t let that happen.” I brush away more than a few of my own tears, sniffling loudly and trying to dig down and find my dad’s same enthusiasm.

Unfortunately, I’m quite a logical person.

My mom always made it clear to me that she didn’t want me to take over the family business.

She’s always supported my dad, loved him, and worked tirelessly at the bakery, often for long and gruelling hours.

This is our life, and she’s lived it, throwing her whole self behind it.

I don’t know why she wouldn’t let me do the same.

When I begged my dad to send me to culinary school, he refused.

My parents were the ones paying for school, and it turned my crank right the heck over that they basically forced me to go into business, but after I got there and found out that my love of math and science wouldn’t be totally wasted, I stopped giving them a hard time, and we struck a sort of bargain.

I’d do the four years of school and get my degree, but when I was finished, I wanted to come home and work at the bakery again.

Obviously, all my breaks and summers were spent there.

I resumed the same duties I had as a teenager working with my dad, but in addition to that, I started getting paid to do all the bakery’s financials.

That’s how I found out that my parents were not in a position to hire anyone to replace me.

My going to college meant longer hours for my mom working beside my dad, and my dad doubling down on the already crazy amount of time, effort, and love he gave to the place.

Even if he could have hired someone, though, I don’t think he would have.

Twenty-five years ago, my dad took on a sort of protégé.

He was a promising young up-and-comer who was just fifteen but had already graduated from high school, and the things he could do with food were remarkable.

Both his parents were famous chefs. He was born in New York, but raised half in France and the other half in Italy.

Both cultures knew how to romanticize food and make history with it.

He was a master, a bigshot, a trust fund rich kid who had everything in the world.

And then…

Isn’t there always an and then?

There was some kind of scandal, and his parents looked for a place to bury him for a while so the world could forget.

It turned out sleepy, unassuming Marietta was just the right place.

I’m not even sure how they found our family bakery and knew my dad just happened to be looking for the right kind of person to come along and create magic.

Then again, our pies had a national following back in the day, so maybe it wasn’t that hard to find the place at all.

Maybe my dad should have had an inkling of the tragedy and fallout that was coming, but the truth was, Luca truly was magic.

If a mermaid or a unicorn or even a baby dragon landed on my family’s doorstep, they couldn’t have been more smitten.

It was kitchen love at first sight. Luca could work miracles with just a flick of his finger.

My dad fell in love. My mom fell in love. The whole freaking city, my grandparents, and the very building itself seemed to be in love.

The bakery was a family tradition, and my parents had no children at the time.

They’d tried for a while and had pretty much given up hope.

Luca was the future. He was the peach in my dad’s fantasy pie world.

Over time, Luca became more than just my dad’s protégé — he was family.

The brother my dad never had, the best friend he trusted with everything.

Until he left.

The long and the short of it is that when Luca’s banishment was up, he was recalled by his parents. He chose them, though I suppose family is family, and blood is thicker than promises to friends. He left, taking my dad’s secrets, his passion, and his heart with him.

After that, not all of the light went out of the place, but it significantly diminished.

My dad never won another blue ribbon for his pies.

It was a shocking fall from grace as our family held the title for fifty-eight years consecutively.

My great-great-grandfather never meant to open a bakery.

It was a sort of happy accident. After winning that first blue ribbon, the demand for his pies was such that he basically had to open up a shop to keep up, and the rest is history.

Now, we might be history.

Dad clasps his hands in front of him, a sheen of moisture glistening in his dark eyes. “You have to go to New York.”

“Um, what?” I just about tumbled right out of the chair he insisted I sit down in before we had this conversation. “What’s that right now? To get financing? I do know a few people who might be able to help.”

“Not for financing.” Dad lurches forward a few steps and gets down on his knees in front of me.

He clutches my hands in desperation. My heart is two seconds away from tearing out of my chest. I have never seen my strong, proud, capable father this way.

Certainly not down on his knees, studying me plaintively like I’m his last hope.

“You have to go to New York and break the curse. It’s the only way. ”

“Dad, no,” I groan, shooting to my feet and tugging him up so he does the same. I fumble with my apron strings, which are tied tightly around my middle and my neck. Right now, I need oxygen. “Not the curse again. That isn’t real.” I pitch the apron onto the stainless steel prep counter to my right.

“It’s real,” Dad insists vehemently.

I would say, at best, that it’s metaphorical.

After Luca left, my dad lost his passion. His grief poured into his pies instead of hope and love. It was as simple as that, and people could taste the difference.

“It’s not real, Dad.” I still can’t catch my breath.

I tear open the first few buttons on my white chef’s coat.

“We can do this.” I force a confident expression, faking it until I make it.

“We can get our title back. I’ll make sure it happens.

We’ll work twice as hard and come up with something ingenious.

The thing about our family is that we’ve always been willing to take chances and experiment… ”

That’s what my dad stopped doing. In addition to not being able to pour his heart and soul into his craft, he stopped taking risks. He fell back on the same old, same old while the world moved on ahead without him.

“We’ll get it back,’ I repeat, clutching his hands. Hands that have baked literally thousands of pies. Pies that have healed and brought hope and comfort. Honest pies, beautiful pies. Pies that used to change the world. “And then we’ll get that blue ribbon back, and everything will be fine.”

“Yes. It’ll be fine.” He says it with such determination that for a second, my heart leaps with hope. But it tumbles straight down to my feet with his next words. “It’ll all be okay because you’ll go to New York. You’ll go to him, and you’ll bring him back.”

Excuse me, what?