2. Brie
“I can’t believe you’re leaving me,” my sister Delia whined, throwing herself backward onto my bed.
I made a squeak of protest when she disrupted the carefully folded stacks of clothes I’d set out to pack.
“Excuse you,” Chloe protested. “You’re not the only one she’s leaving.”
I rolled my eyes. “At least you three will still have each other,” I said, gesturing to Chloe, Delia, and our other sister, Ella.
“Yeah, but it won’t be the same,” Ella murmured.
“It hasn’t been the same since Amara left,” I shrugged. “C’mon, you guys. Let’s not get all sappy here. It’s not like I’m moving to Europe like Mar did. I’m just going to Chicago.”
“Might as well be the other side of the world,” Delia pouted.
I picked up a sock ball and tossed it at her head. “God, you’re dramatic.”
Delia yelped, then lifted a rolled-up tee and whipped it at me.
“You’re mean,” she pouted. “You need to get laid. Get rid of some of that aggression. When was the last time you had sex, anyway? Wait…have you ever even done it?”
“Of course I have.”
“Yeah, Lia,” Ella piped up. “Don’t forget about Brad on prom night.”
While I wanted to be embarrassed, I couldn’t help but grin as my sisters devolved into laughter.
In the most cliché moment of all time, I’d given my virginity to my senior prom date in the back seat of the limo. We’d thrown an after party at the Villa, and I’d used the parent-free opportunity to take care of that little problem. I hadn’t wanted to move to New York with it hanging over my head. It hadn’t been romantic or particularly comfortable, and it had lasted all of five minutes—both because he’d also been a virgin and because my parents had decided to stop by and check up on us.
Someone had told my dad where we were, and he’d unceremoniously wrenched open the limo door, brandishing a baseball bat and threatening Brad within an inch of his life until he ran away crying.
To this day, I still had no clue where he’d even gotten that bat.
Also, I was pretty sure I was the reason he’d enacted the no-messing-around-with-employees rule he happily bandied about when hiring some new guy. Brad had worked at the winery in various roles for years growing up.
I settled my hands on my hips and stared Delia down, but I softened immediately at the sadness lining her face.
Having sisters so close in age—barely four and a half years separated Chloe, the oldest, and me, the youngest—was both a blessing and a curse. Growing up, we’d been at each other’s throats and joined at the hips in equal measure. But now that the drama of high school and our formative years was mostly behind us, they were my best friends, and I didn’t really have too many girl friends outside of them. Sure, I’d made a few in college, but even in the few months since graduation, when we’d all flung ourselves to the four corners of the world to start our new lives, we’d lost touch. And I had tried , sending semi-regular texts in those early weeks just to check in and see how everyone was settling. But with different time zones and schedules, it became easier to just…let it go.
Maybe Chicago would be different.
Then again, I wasn’t going there to play. I was going there to work , to cut my teeth at a patisserie under the tutelage of one of the most talented and world-renowned pastry chefs of our generation.
Bryce Newsome was a badass and kind of my idol. I still couldn’t believe that out of the thousands of people who applied and the fifty she personally interviewed, she selected me to serve as her apprentice for the next year.
I was really looking forward to the opportunities the next twelve months would bring and to better honing my craft so I could return to Apple Blossom Bay and realize my dream of opening my own bakery.
Was the apprenticeship necessary to accomplish that goal? No. But when the application went live, I filled one out on a lark, including a video submission and recipe for my dad’s favorite baklava. I’d taken it from my grandmother’s old recipe book and tweaked it to make it my own, and it wound up being one of my favorite creations to date.
Bryce was equally as impressed as my dad, both by the recipe and my personality in front of the camera. Remembering my one-on-one interview with her still felt like floating through a dream—her kindness, how enthusiastic she’d been about my submission and my career potential. I still hadn’t figured out what exactly had set me apart from all the other applicants, but I wasn’t complaining. Chances like these didn’t come around every day, and I wasn’t taking a single second of it for granted.
“It really is a shame you’re leaving, though,” Chloe said, pulling me from my reverie. “I’ve been looking forward to you baking us those fucking delicious spiced apple cupcakes with those apples.”
She pointed out the window to the grounds surrounding Mom and Dad’s new house, which they’d finally completed construction on and moved into only a month ago. It was strange, finishing my culinary arts programs in New York and moving back to this house instead of the Villa or the one at the edge of Traverse City where we’d grown up. But the weirdness quickly dissipated when I settled in this new room and remembered home was wherever my family was.
At the edge of the property was a small apple orchard, filled with trees that had been planted there ages ago—well before any of us existed—and stood the test of time against the sometimes-harsh Michigan winters. The Granny Smiths were the same variety of apple that could be found closer to the winery as well as all over Apple Blossom Bay. In fact, the Bay was named because of the way those trees flowered in the springtime, their pretty soft pink and white blooms bursting from the trees and scenting the air with their incredible natural perfume. And when the petals started to fall? It was like nature’s confetti littering the streets.
The variety was also ironic, given that my paternal grandmother’s maiden name was Smith—so we referred to her as Granny Smith.
She loved to cook, and though I was barely a year old when she passed, I loved that our mutual obsession with baked goods was something that connected us, even beyond death.
“You know what?” I said, an idea striking with Chloe’s comment.
“Hmm?” Ella asked from where she stood at my floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, absently running her fingers over the spines.
“All of this can wait. What do you say we spend the afternoon with a little baking demonstration? I’ll teach you how to make those fucking delicious spiced apple cupcakes .”
Ella’s head whipped in my direction so fast, I heard her neck crack. Chloe’s mouth dropped open, and Delia gave me a wicked grin.
“Bee,” Ella said quietly. “You just swore.”
After a beat, I burst out laughing, and my sisters and I tangled our arms together to head down to the kitchen.
While I orchestrated the construction of the cupcakes, my sisters and I chatted about everything and nothing, alternating between reminiscing on our childhoods and making plans for the future.
There wasn’t anywhere else I wanted to be in that moment, and my heart squeezed painfully at the thought of leaving in two days.
I knew I’d be back before long, but it didn’t make it any easier to stomach the time we’d be apart.
After my sisters and I spent the previous evening first making cupcakes and then having a movie marathon, studiously ignoring the fact that I was gearing up to leave, we spent the morning packing. For all our cheerfulness the night before, it was a somber affair, where we only spoke when one of them asked if I was bringing something or where I wanted them to put another.
The squeezing discomfort in my chest, the band around my heart, only grew tighter as the day wore on. I had no idea how Amara made the decision to put an ocean between us.
At last, it was time to start loading the car because I’d be leaving the next day.
Naturally, when it involved heavy lifting, my sisters couldn’t get away from Mom and Dad’s house fast enough.
“If you stay and help, I’ll treat you to lunch at the winery!” I shouted after them.
Ella and Chloe only laughed, but Delia turned and shot me a wink as they hopped into her ragtop Jeep. “Fat chance, baby Brie. You know we eat there for free.”
“Those girls are awful,” Mom said as she followed me out of the house.
“Truly. Who in the hell raised them?” my dad quipped.
I couldn’t help but giggle, understanding my sisters not wanting to be here. Saying goodbye was tough.
“Are you sure you have to go now?” Mom asked as she loaded a basket of linens into the backseat of my car. “Why can’t you stay until after the Fourth? ”
“Because I want to get down there and get settled before my apprenticeship starts,” I gently reminded her, like I had every day for the past several weeks.
“But it won’t be the same without you,” she pouted, looking so much like Delia from the day before that I nearly laughed.
If anyone ever wondered where we got our dramatics, I’d just point them in Lena Delatou’s direction.
“That’s what everyone keeps saying,” I told her. “But I doubt you’ll even notice I’m gone.”
“Oh, we’ll notice, all right,” my dad said as he walked out of the house carrying two of my suitcases. “No offense, honey”—he looked at Mom—“but you can’t cook for shit.”
My mom pressed a hand to her chest, mouth dropping open in what I knew was mock outrage. “That’s a bit like the pot calling the kettle black, don’t you think, honey ?”
Dad chuckled as he hefted the luggage into the car then turned and pressed a kiss to Mom’s brow. “You know I love you. I didn’t marry you for your skills in the kitchen.”
“Then why did you?” she asked.
My dad’s eyes darted in my direction, and he leaned in, whispering something in her ear that had my mom giggling like a schoolgirl.
“Gross,” I said, though I couldn’t help but grin. Their love was my favorite, the benchmark against which I measured my own relationships.
Then again, I’d never actually had a serious boyfriend. I’d had situationships in high school that fizzled out before they ever really started, and I’d had a few flings during culinary school, but no one had ever really caught my eye in a way that made me want to push for more.
I was starting to wonder what was wrong with me, and my only saving grace from a deep shame spiral was the fact that each of my sisters were also single.
And the reminder that I was only twenty-one. I wasn’t exactly an old crone.
“I don’t know why you’re so worried about cooking,” I said as we trudged back inside for another load of my stuff. “You spend all of your time at the winery anyway, and there’s a perfectly good restaurant right there.”
In fact, it was more than perfectly good. Arguably, it was one of the top restaurants in the entire state of Michigan. Our head chef had overseen kitchens in places like Rome and Paris, New York, Los Angeles, Miami. The fact that my dad had been able to coax him into working for our small-town winery was nothing short of a miracle.
“Speaking of which,” my mom said to my dad conversationally. “Did the Wendts get settled?”
“Yes!” Dad said, his lips tipping up into a wide grin. “They arrived last week, and I spent a few hours at the new house helping them unpack.”
“Why didn’t you call me?” Mom asked. “I would’ve driven down to help.”
My dad waved her off. “It’s alright, honey. There will be plenty of time for you to help them out.”
“Wait wait wait,” I said, holding up a hand. “Who are the Wendts?”
“New chef and his family.”
“ New chef ?” I asked, stalling in the middle of the foyer. “What the hell happened to Roscoe?”
My dad huffed an irritated sigh through his nose, the muscles in his jaw twitching as his teeth ground together. “He wanted out, so we let him go.”
I gaped. Roscoe had been working for our family for years , since my sisters and I were toddlers running rampant through the vineyards. He used to feed us grilled peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and hand-squeezed lemonade for lunch, and he brought us his homemade chicken noodle soup when we weren’t feeling well. Essentially, he’d been another father to us.
“What happened?” I asked softly.
Mom settled a hand on my arm. “He wanted to spend what was left of his career back in Europe.”
There was more to it than that, but it said enough. We weren’t where he wanted to spend his twilight years, and that was fine. Clearly, Dad didn’t think so, but I knew he’d get over it. He and Mom hadn’t wasted any time replacing him, after all.
I was included in the family business to an extent. Each of us girls owned shares of the company. Chloe was supposed to take over when Dad retired, and Amara had recently finished her MBA and stayed in Europe to expand the winery’s international distribution. We’d all gone over to London to celebrate her graduation a couple months ago, and I couldn’t be prouder of her. She and Chloe were built for their roles. On the flip side, my passions lay elsewhere. I preferred to be involved more in name only.
“So tell me more about this new chef,” I said as we resumed packing my car.
“Oh, he’s wonderful,” Mom gushed as she loaded a box labeled fantasy books . “We met him a few years ago when we ate at his restaurant in New York City, and he’s just such an amazing man, especially given everything he has been through.”
“His food is quite honestly the best I’ve ever had,” my dad confirmed before he ruffled my hair. “Next to yours, of course.”
“Don’t lie to me, old man,” I said, wagging my finger at him. “Just because I can cook doesn’t mean I’m the best. I’ll stick to pastries.”
“Fine, fine,” Dad said. “You’re…passable.” I chuckled—he wasn’t wrong. “Chef Wendt is…exceptional.”
My curiosity was sufficiently piqued for a number of reasons. First, while my mother routinely fawned over any and every one—that was the kind of woman she was; she never met a stranger—my father was far more reserved with his praise. Not to mention, he had personally hired Roscoe back in the day and had not only been good friends with the man but also a big fan of his food.
To hear him speak so highly of this new guy was equal parts disconcerting and intriguing.
And that said nothing of the fact that this Chef Wendt had come from the city I spent the last four years in. I wondered if we’d ever crossed paths…then shook off the idea. There was no possible way.
“Well, what do you say?” I asked a few hours later, planting my hands on my hips and surveying the hatch of my SUV, which was packed floor to ceiling with boxes and suitcases. “Want to go grab lunch at the winery?”
“Yes!” Mom said, excitedly clapping her hands. “Today happens to be Ezra’s first day, so it’ll give you guys the chance to meet before you take off.”
Ezra Wendt , I thought. The name tickled something in my brain, but I couldn’t latch onto what.
“Great!” I said, genuinely looking forward to meeting him.
We piled into Dad’s Suburban and headed down the peninsula. Mom and I chatted idly about them coming down to see me next winter when things at the winery slowed down for the season, and we discussed my plans to come home for Christmas. Soon, we pulled up to Chateau Delatou, and I found myself eager to get inside. I loved eating at the winery restaurant when Roscoe was running the show, and I couldn’t wait to see how the new guy measured up.
We were shown to a table in the center of the dining room, and the hostess tried to give us menus before my dad waved her off.
“Tell Ezra three of the Delatous are here, and that we’ll eat whatever he feels like making us,” he said. The girl simply nodded and scurried off.
While we waited, my mom chatted animatedly about how well her flower garden was doing, the gossip she’d picked up at the diner the other day, and their plans for the Fourth of July—all of which she discussed like I’d be present.
My stomach growled, and I rocked side-to-side in my chair simply for something to do, my eyes scanning the room. Nearly all the tables were full, wine flowing, food disappearing quickly from plates as our guests enjoyed their afternoon. Ezra had really been thrown into the fire for his first day, and I admired the man’s bravery for agreeing to start a new job in a new kitchen in the middle of our busiest season.
I swept my gaze over the heads of customers, and it snagged on a tall, dark-haired man coming down the short hall from the kitchen, three plates balanced in his hands.
Inexplicably drawn to him, I couldn’t tear my eyes away. I started my perusal at his feet, which were encased in a scuffed pair of white Chuck Taylors. Then, I dragged my gaze up—and up and up—over long, lean legs, a trim torso covered by a white button up shirt rolled to the elbows, exposing strong forearms dusted with dark hair. Higher still, my eyes roamed to the strong column of the man’s throat, over his chiseled jaw shaded by stubble, and a long, straight nose. At last, I connected with his brown eyes, the same color as the burnt sugar crust atop a crème brulée.
The second our gazes collided, something shifted in me. It reminded me of that moment in romantic comedy movies when the lead and love interest meet for the first time, and everything around them fades away. The whole world narrowed to that point of contact. I didn’t know how or why, but my body knew.
This man belonged to me, and I belonged to him.
His strides were confident as he crossed the dining room toward us, and though he shot smiles and words of greeting to every guest he passed, his eyes never wavered from mine.
Damn, was it hot in here, or was it just him?
“Ezra, my boy!”
I jerked like I’d been shocked, tearing my eyes from his and dropping them to the table, taking deep, steady breaths, attempting to calm my suddenly racing heart.
Holy shit. This was Ezra?
Almost instantly, I recognized him, but not because I’d never officially met the man. I’d never forget that chiseled face or the dark, unruly hair. I’d spent three hours ogling him from afar while he guest-lectured in one of my culinary arts classes, teaching us how to prepare a roast chicken, which was, according to him, a “staple in the repertoire of any chef worth their salt.”
I silently thanked the universe for bringing him back into my life.
Did I have a little crush? Absolutely. Maybe I’d finally get my chance to act on it.
Even though we hadn’t spoken a word and he’d barely spared a glance in my direction over the course of his instruction that day, something shimmered in the air between us. I doubt he felt it too, but now that he’d returned to my orbit, that thing was back, settling in my chest and pulling me in his direction.
It was the strangest sensation, giving crazy-boy-obsessed energy, but…I desperately wanted to see where it would go, if he would reciprocate.
Once Ezra set the plates on the table—loaded with sandwiches, bread lightly toasted and layered with meat, cheese, and vegetables—my dad stood and hauled him into one of those one-armed bro hugs, and I blinked in surprise.
Who was this man to make my father act twenty years younger than he was?
Mom rose and gave Ezra a kiss on the cheek before pulling away and smiling at him. “It’s good to see you. How was the trip?”
“Great,” he said. “Hansen loved Niagara Falls and the Detroit Zoo, and I’m just happy to be out of the city.”
Mom and Dad nodded knowingly, and I wondered what his story was. I’d loved living in New York, being surrounded by all the amazing restaurants and bakeries, but nothing beat Apple Blossom Bay. For someone like Ezra, though, who had presumably grown up in the city, this change of pace and lifestyle had to have been…jarring.
Ezra’s eyes landed on me again, and, as if remembering I sat there, my dad smacked himself on the forehead.
“I’m sorry, sweets,” he said to me. Then, to Ezra: “This is our youngest, Brie.”
Inhaling a deep, fortifying breath, I rose from my chair and extended my arm for a handshake. The moment Ezra’s palm settled against mine and those eyes held my stare, my entire body electrified, like his hand was a live wire.
“So you’re the infamous Baker Brie,” he said, smiling. “It’s nice to finally put a face to the name.”
I groaned. “Please don’t call me that.”
“Why not?” Ezra asked, his smile taking on a hint of mischief. “I think it’s cute.”
Internally, I scoffed. Cute . Exactly how every woman wanted to be described by the hottest man she’d ever laid eyes on.
I shrugged. “I’m not a little girl anymore.”
“No,” he said, eyes sweeping me from head to toe in a way that made me want to squirm, lowering his voice so only I could hear, “you’re not.”
I dipped my head to hide my blush. “Right. So it’s just Brie.”
From behind me, my mother said, “I knew you two would hit it off.”
“As friends ,” my dad growled.
Yeah, as friends , I thought wryly. Because heat wasn’t settling low in my core from exchanging only a few words with this man, from the way his gaze scorched my skin.
Dad’s rule about not fraternizing with company employees hadn’t mattered much when we were younger. We’d been too worried about high school boys, parties, the latest fashion, and teenage drama to be worried about Dad’s stuffy old colleagues.
But now…well, if he kept hiring men who looked like Ezra, my sisters and I were in trouble.
Ezra’s gaze never strayed from my face as he grinned widely, and my eyes flicked to his mouth. His canines were slightly elongated, giving him a wolfish air, and I couldn’t stop myself from envisioning him eating me alive.
I’d willingly let him consume me. Hell, I’d thank him for it.
“Well, Just Brie ,” Ezra said, “I’ve been dying to meet you. I hear you’re a whiz in the kitchen, and I was wondering if you’d like to bake for me sometime.”
They were such innocent words, but the sensual way they caressed my body held such promise.
I practically choked on my own tongue in my haste to answer. “Yes.”
I didn’t even have to think about it, and somehow, Ezra’s smile only widened.
“That easy, huh?”
Attempting to cover the eagerness that had nothing to do with baking and everything to do with wanting to be near him, I said, “I love being in the kitchen,” punctuating my words with a one-shoulder shrug.
“We have that in common, then.”
“Somehow, I don’t think that’s our only similarity.”
Wait, what? Where had that come from? I wasn’t the brazen, take-life-by-the-balls sister. That title belonged to Delia, the wild middle child, and, on occasion, Amara, the second oldest. But never me.
“How about sometime next week?” Ezra asked.
“Oh, I’d love to, but—”
“But she’s moving,” Dad finished for me, dropping a heavy hand onto my shoulder, reminding Ezra exactly who I was in a silent threat to stay away.
“Moving where?” Ezra asked.
“Chicago,” I said quickly before my dad could cut in again. “I’m doing an apprenticeship with a pastry chef there for the next year.”
“Congratulations!” Ezra said, and it sounded like he meant it. “Well, next time you’re home, we’ll figure something out.”
I grinned, unable to stop myself as I said, “It’s a date.”