Okay, he needed to not do that anymore. It wasn’t a deep southern drawl or a Texas drawl. It was more of a hot-alpha-male drawl. And she was really into that. Apparently.

She shrugged. “People like to be on my good side.” Which reminded her of a very obvious way Parker was unique.

“And why would I worry about that?” he asked.

Exactly.

“I’m a lot easier to get along with when I’m well fed,” she said.

That was true. She didn’t have a close, lust-filled relationship with food. She didn’t even really like sweets. Which made her owning—and baking in—a pie shop ironic. She liked chocolate but preferred it in liquid form. Like hot cocoa. Or a martini. But most of the time she just didn’t give a lot of thought to food.

“What’s your favorite food?” he asked, surprising her.

“Oh, well, probably…” but she trailed off. Huh. She wasn’t sure.

“You don’t know?”

“I like…a lot of things.”

He didn’t look like he believed her. And she wasn’t sure she believed her. She liked avocados. And chocolate martinis. And…the rest was kind of just there. She ate it. She had things she didn’t like. Beets for one. Things with pumpkin spice for another. And octopus. No thank you.

She decided to level with him. “A lot of my eating happens during business meetings, or social outings that are about networking and making nice with business contacts. So I’m usually a lot more focused on the conversation than I am on the food. I can eat almost anything.”

She ate. She had learned the hard way that her mental and physical energy suffered if she skipped meals. But other than beets and octopus—which she doubted she’d run into in Bliss anyway—she could handle most other things.

Parker scowled. “You can eat almost anything,” he repeated.

He sounded very judgey about that.

“Shouldn’t a guy who cooks for a living love people who will eat anything?” she asked, truly curious about why he seemed annoyed.

“People who will eat anything don’t really care about what they’re eating,” he said. “They don’t—” He broke off.

“They don’t what?”

“They don’t actually enjoy it. None of it is special. It doesn’t matter to them.”

Ava thought about that. He was right. None of the food really ever mattered to her. Except maybe this chicken avocado salad. “You want your food to matter to people?” she asked.

He frowned, and she was sure he wasn’t going to answer her. But he shocked her by saying, “Have you ever seen the look on a person’s face when a plate of their favorite thing in the world is set down in front of them? Have you ever seen someone try something for the first time and fall in love with it? Have you ever seen someone start off upset or angry or tired and then, after they eat, start smiling and take a deep breath and relax?”

Ava knew her eyebrows were nearly in her hairline. But she felt herself nodding. “I’ve seen ice cream do that to Cori.”

And he cracked a smile. Sparkles of fire danced along her limbs in response.

“Exactly. Food can actually mean something to people. And food is what I do. It’s the only thing I really know how to do. So yeah, I want my food to matter.”

Wow. That was…personal. And she was shocked. She couldn’t deny it.

“So the burgers matter to the people around here?”

And the shuttered look was back in his eyes, and his mouth set in a straight line. “I wouldn’t go that far,” he said.

“But—”

A high-pitched beeping hit the air, and Ava lost her train of thought. She looked around, but Parker reached for the watch on his wrist and pushed a button. The beeping stopped.

“An alarm?”

“We should head back from the fruit picking now,” he said wryly.

He’d set an alarm on his watch so he’d leave on time to get back to the diner. Forget all the cooking and low, rough drawling and the hot gaze on her mouth—being on time for stuff was sexy.

Then what he’d said sunk in. “So we missed it again?” she asked. Dammit.

“We can go tomorrow,” he said.

Of course they could. There was nothing saying today had to be the day. The way Hank had said “fruit picking” the other morning made Ava think that perhaps the town thought they were going to be doing something else entirely. Which was fine. The town thinking she and Parker were having nooners played right into one of her goals here.

If he was going to be in her space on a regular basis and act like God’s gift to pie lovers—which he would—then she was going to get something extra out of it. Like closer to completing her dating stipulation.

“I guess so,” she said. She glanced at her salad plate. She couldn’t quite regret hanging out in his kitchen today though. And she wouldn’t pass up lunch from Parker again tomorrow. Maybe people would just start believing the nooners were happening on his kitchen island.

Of course, the health department might frown on that.

Parker let out a long sigh and she looked up. “Come here,” he said, starting for his back door.

“Hang on a second.” She hurried to the front of the diner and slipped her heels back on to walk outside. The back parking lot was different from walking around in the diner barefoot. Parker’s diner was immaculate, honestly. She would eat that chicken salad off the floor of his kitchen probably. Hell, she might eat that chicken salad out of a dumpster.

She joined him a few seconds later and he pushed the screened door open and let her pass in front of him. She started to turn toward his truck that had been parked in the closest spot to the building the first couple of days after Ava and her sisters had taken over the pie shop. Now he parked a spot over, leaving the closest one for Elvira, the 1937 370-D Cadillac their father had left to them. She supposed that was chivalrous. She hadn’t really thought about it before that moment, but yeah, that was nice of him.

She took a step in the direction of Parker’s big red truck—stupidly pleased that the truck would go with her heels today—but he caught her wrist, stopping her.

The freaking pricks of sensation went tripping up her arm and she had to resist the urge to pull away from him. It wasn’t unpleasant exactly, but it was unnerving.

“In here.” He tugged her in the direction of the pie shop’s back door.

“Uh…” She followed him, struck by how comfortable he was walking in and out of the shop. It made her wonder how much time he’d spent there with her father. She assumed a lot.

Had Rudy ever slipped next door to borrow sugar? Had Parker given Rudy baking tips? She’d never, not once in her life, seen her father make so much as a bag of microwave popcorn. The idea that he’d baked pies still amazed her. Had Parker come over during his “downtime” from the diner for pie and coffee with the rest of the guys who’d hung out here on a regular basis? She’d gotten to know Hank and Ben and Walter and Roger over the last three months. Brynn handled the “waitressing” duties, as she was supposed to, and Cori joked and teased with them. But Ava found herself drifting to the front of the shop more often when they were there, or even blatantly standing near the swinging door that separated the front of the shop from the kitchen. The men loved to talk about…well, anything really. But they told stories about the town, about Evan, Parker, and Noah—the guys who had seemingly been appointed to oversee the girls’ transition to life in Bliss—and everything in between. And they talked about Rudy.

The Rudy Carmichael everyone in this town had known was a very different man from the one who had seen his triplet daughters only every other weekend and who had clearly been more comfortable as Ava’s boss than as her father.

The thoughts and memories of her father made it feel like someone was playing ping-pong with her heart in her chest. She went back and forth between emotions. She felt like she could never settle on just one thing—one feeling, one memory, one idea of him. And she felt a little dizzy and bruised if she dwelled on it all for too long. She’d known him as the man she’d most wanted to win over. And she had. Eventually. She knew she had. He’d never said it, but she knew it because he’d finally felt like he could leave the company, leave New York, and find some peace and happiness. He’d found it in a tiny Midwestern town, of all places. And he’d started making pies. But she believed he’d been happy here and that mattered to her. As did the fact that she’d finally proven she could run the company for him while he kicked back in Kansas.

And then he’d made her come here.

“There’s something you should see,” Parker said solemnly, dropping her wrist as he stopped in front of the storage room door.

Ava wasn’t sure that was a great lead-in for a guy to use on a woman he didn’t know very well. “Oh?”

He reached for the knob, but before he turned it he asked, “You haven’t spent much time in here, have you?”

“The storage room? No,” Ava said. She wasn’t nervous right now. Just curious. And she thought that was an important realization. Considering how jumpy Parker made her feel, it was good to realize and admit that it wasn’t about nerves or trust. It was purely physical awareness. She didn’t like it, but it wasn’t something she was concerned about.

He looked over at her, his hand still on the door. “Have you ever looked inside this room?”

She narrowed her eyes. “I glanced inside. Once.”

“Where do you keep your pie filling and ingredients?” he asked.

She waved toward the cupboard behind her. “There is so much storage space in this kitchen it’s ridiculous. Everything’s in cupboards.”

Apparently, the pie shop had been a dime store and soda fountain years ago. Evan said Rudy had chosen to remodel this building because it was next to Parker’s diner—and Parker’s refusal to add dessert to his menu was the reason Rudy needed a pie shop in the first place—and because he’d liked the front windows. But he’d had to put a lot of other work into it, like putting up a wall to separate the front from the kitchen, plus adding to the kitchen area. But he’d simply put in appliances, countertops, and cupboards that he’d salvaged from around town. Nothing matched in here, and none of it was restaurant quality. The stove had come from a woman who had remodeled and gotten new appliances. Rudy had bought the fridge from a guy who was cleaning out his late mother’s house. He’d gotten the countertop from a contractor who did remodels and had extra. He’d taken the cabinets and cupboards out of a house they were tearing down. And there were a lot of cupboards. Especially considering Rudy had owned and used exactly one set of mixing bowls, three wooden spoons, a couple of spatulas, a set of measuring cups and spoons, and a hand mixer. And pie pans, of course. Definitely not enough to fill the plethora of cupboards and drawers he’d put in.

The whole thing still baffled Ava after spending time in his Madison Avenue office building in Manhattan. Everything there had been high-end, sleekly professional, and incredibly sophisticated.

Here the fridge was yellow and the stove was white. And both had clearly seen better days.

Parker shook his head. “Okay, so you haven’t seen this.” He pulled the storeroom door open and flipped on the light, stepping inside. He glanced back at her. “Come on.”

“Get into the storage closet with a guy I barely know when no one is around to hear me scream? I don’t think so.” It was weird that she didn’t feel like the barely know part was completely accurate. She’d met him three months ago, and they didn’t spend long periods of quality time together, but she still felt like she knew him. Kind of.

And then Parker did the most awareness-skittering-all-over-her-body thing he could have done. He laughed. A real, full laugh.

She stared at him. And decided she not only would get into that storage room with him, she might not want to come back out for a very long time.

“What’s so funny?” she asked, propping one hand on her hip.

“I didn’t peg you for an exhibitionist,” he said, still grinning.

“Excuse me?”

“You want people to hear you scream.” His voice dropped lower. “And, darlin’, there’s only one reason for you to be screaming when I’m around.”

Parker Blake was flirting with her? He had just called her “darlin’”? And her mind would not stop replaying the words only one reason for you to be screaming when I’m around. But she was a single, heterosexual woman with a decent sex drive. It didn’t mean anything special that she was responding to that. Probably. She tipped her head. “You mean screaming in frustration, right?”

He just grinned and pointed at the metal shelving unit that occupied the east side of the room. It was filled with glass jars. “Do you know what that is?”

She finally gave up and stepped in next to him. The room—really more of a closet— wasn’t very big. And Parker took up a lot of space. She made herself focus on the jars. The labels were handwritten and said, Apple, Cherry, and Peach.

She frowned, then looked up at Parker. “It looks like pie filling.”

“Bingo.”

“This is pie filling?”

“Rudy’s pie filling,” Parker told her.

Her head whipped around and she stared at the jars. “He made his own pie filling?” Well, of course he had. Obviously you needed pie filling if you were making pie. But he made it and canned it and stored it?

“How do you think people make pies around here when it’s not apple or cherry or peach season?” Parker asked.

“Oh.” She considered that. Then admitted, “I never thought about it.”

“He picked his own. Then canned it.”

“Huh.” So she didn’t need to go pick any fruit. Not that she’d been dying to do that anyway, but it had seemed like a way to spend time with Parker that was both business and social. As far as everyone else knew. “I think canning pie filling is going to be a little beyond me,” she said thoughtfully. Hell, she hadn’t even mastered the pie-from-scratch-thing yet.

He picked a jar from the shelves then moved toward the door, forcing Ava to either move with him, or stand still and end up plastered against him. Which she considered for a few seconds longer than she should have needed to. She scooted for the door and moved out into the kitchen as he clicked off the light.

“I think canning is going to be a little beyond you too,” he said, handing her the jar. “You’ll notice the labels all have the fruit as well as a number on them. Each number is a different recipe. You know that he never found the perfect one.”

Apparently, according to Evan, Rudy had been trying to recreate a pie that tasted like his grandmother’s had when he’d been growing up. He’d never quite gotten there, though he’d tried hundreds of combinations of ingredients. For a second, sadness gripped her chest and she had to pull in a deep breath. She hated doing things she wasn’t good at, and she knew Rudy had been the same way. Not being able to recreate that recipe had to have driven him a little crazy.

Not having a recipe here was driving her a little crazy. Literally. And metaphorically. She’d followed her father’s recipe for business since the first day she’d set foot in his office on Take Your Daughter to Work Day. And it had worked. It had turned out beautifully.

Here in Bliss, he’d never found a specific recipe to follow. And yet, he’d been happier here than ever. But he didn’t have anything exact to pass on to her, nothing for her to replicate. Literally. And yes, again, metaphorically.

“What do you want me to do with those jars?” she asked, looking down at the label that was clearly written in her father’s handwriting. That also made her chest tighten. She missed him. They hadn’t had a perfect relationship, but she’d always felt like she’d known him better than most.

And then she’d met Parker and Evan and Noah. And realized that maybe she’d known Rudolph Carmichael, CEO, but she hadn’t really known Rudy. The man. The friend. These guys had. And she was jealous of that.

“Your homework,” Parker said.

She glanced up. “What do you mean?”

“Take five jars, taste them, and compare and contrast. I’ll expect you to be able to discuss the similarities and differences tomorrow.”

She stared at him. “Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“You want me to make five pies and then just…taste them?”

Parker gave a small eye roll. “Just the filling. Use a spoon. I don’t think your diet plan will suffer too much.”

She frowned. “I wasn’t worried about my diet plan.”

“Then what?”

“I just—” She glanced down at the jar again. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

There was a short stretch of silence before he said, “Put your phone away, turn off your computer, sit down and breathe. Then open the jars and taste them. Focus on the ways they’re the same and the ways they’re different. Tune in. Give it your full attention for ten fucking minutes.”

She frowned at him and his harsh tone. “Hey.”

“Do you deny that you’re always doing ten things at once? That you’re always working while you eat? That sometimes, two hours after a meal, you have to really think about what you ate to remember it?”

He seemed personally offended by all of that.

But she had to shake her head. “I don’t deny any of that.” Because he was completely right.

“So, your homework,” he repeated the word, almost as if he was relishing it—and the idea of ordering her to do it, “is to shut everything else off and focus on what you’re putting in your mouth for a few minutes.”

Ava had never realized what a dirty mind she had, but what you’re putting in your mouth definitely tripped off some not-very-ladylike thoughts. She swallowed and nodded. “Fine.”

“Fine.” He gave a satisfied nod.

“Are we going fruit picking though?” she asked quickly.

She didn’t want to, exactly, but she had a notion that Parker wasn’t going to let her get away with just using her dad’s pie filling. He was going to want to use his own recipes for one thing. So she needed to know what her dad’s filling tasted like before she could know how Parker’s was different. And then she had to put Parker’s in her mouth too. She hid a naughty smile, shocked by herself and not about to explain why she was grinning to him.

“Ava, I have to tell you something,” Parker said, again solemnly.

“What?”

“I can’t take you fruit picking.”

She frowned. “Why not?”

“There’s no fruit in season right now.”

She shook her head. “But it’s spring. Things grow in the spring, right?” This was the heart of farm country in America. This is where they grew things. That was pretty much all they did here.

“Things are planted in the spring,” he agreed. “But these things take time.”

He was being completely patronizing. But she had to admit that her assumptions may have been naïve. She’d taken biology in high school. Hell, she could have looked all of this up.

Then her eyes widened. “This is why Hank and the guys were all winking at each other when they talked about us going fruit picking.”

Parker nodded and slipped his hands into his front pockets. There was a hint of a smile on his lips. “Pretty much.”

Well, that certainly worked for the story about her and Parker being more than boss and employee. Ava hid how pleased she was with that. “Huh. Well, I guess I’m going to have some explaining to do.”

Parker pulled in a breath, then let it out, seemingly considering something. “Tell you what. We’ll pick fruit. When it’s in season. Okay?”

“When are apples in season?”

“Fall.”

Oh. Her six months of dating would be up in early September.

“But strawberries will be ripe…in June.”

That would work. But… “Strawberry pie isn’t on our menu.”

“It should be.”

She thought about that. Cori had been coming up with some specialty pies, but hers were more unique. Things like s’mores pie, and bacon and Nutella pie, and a root beer float pie. Strawberry would be different but not crazy. And it was something they could make sure everyone knew Parker had contributed. The pie shop was going to be his and Cori’s together. He needed a chance to put his mark on it too. “Okay.”

He gave her a quick nod. “Okay, so it’s a…plan.”

Had he almost said date?

“Great,” she agreed.

“Then I’ll see you tomorrow for the first lesson.”

“Okay.” It definitely felt like her employee was making a lot of decisions all of a sudden. She frowned, but couldn’t quite work up the motivation to put him in his place. Maybe because making decisions and telling her what to do when it came to pie was his place.

He headed for the door and she suddenly felt like she didn’t want him to leave. They’d had a nice time together. Strangely. “I thought you said you were giving the pie shop your time every other day?” she said.

“I did say that,” he agreed, his hand on the screen door.

“Already making an exception?” she asked, her tone teasing.

“Well, tomorrow isn’t about the pie shop,” he said.

“Oh.” She frowned. “What’s it about then?”

He lifted a shoulder. “You.” Then he was gone.

The screen door slapped shut behind him, and Ava found herself staring at it for several long seconds.

She wasn’t used to being surprised. She wasn’t used to a man making her want to take her clothes off simply by grinning and laughing. And she definitely wasn’t used to being in the aftermath of a meeting or a negotiation and still feeling off-balance and like she didn’t know what the hell was going on.

But that was all exactly how Parker Blake made her feel.

She looked down at the jar in her hand.

And she was going to be taste-testing pie filling tonight. And writing up an essay about it.

Because if Parker thought he was going to challenge her to something like this and not end up with a typed essay in a plastic report cover in his hands, he didn’t know anything about her.

---

Let’s talk about loopholes.”

Evan looked up at Parker with an expression that was part amused and part curious. “I love loopholes,” he said, setting his coffee cup down.

Evan was a lawyer, so loopholes—closing and opening them—were part of the job. But it was also personal for him. Cori was only his girlfriend right now because of a loophole in Rudy’s will.

And Parker was beginning to think that had been Rudy’s intent all along. To make them all really look at what they wanted and then work for it.

“Is it really okay for someone else to be in the kitchen helping Ava? The will doesn’t say she can’t have any help at all. Just not from her sisters. Right?”

“Right.”

“You’re sure? Because I do not want to be a CFO in New York City.”

“I’m definitely, completely, absolutely sure,” Evan said.

He wanted the pie shop products to improve, and it was a smart move for the business that would be his down the road. Even if Cori called dibs on the kitchen overall, he didn’t think she’d be opposed to using his recipes. She’d come up with some fantastic specialty pies—s’mores and PB & J for instance—but Ava was still the one faking her way through the classics they were currently serving to customers, like cherry and apple.

“Why? You going to make Ava your sous chef?” Evan asked with a grin.

The idea of being in charge with Ava was way too appealing. Especially now that he’d fed her. Technically, yesterday hadn’t been the first time. She’d eaten his food before. But he’d never watched her do it.

It seemed ridiculous that chicken salad could be seductive, but that was his chicken salad. His creation and something he made for himself. He didn’t make that for anyone else.

And then there had been the way she’d closed her eyes. And the moaning.

Food—making it and eating it—could be a very sensual thing, of course. It could be an intimate thing to feed someone. Food was a basic human need. Right up there with breathing and sex. It was a way to nurture, to comfort, to reward. And yesterday with Ava, it had felt like a bonding experience. The people he typically fed were people he’d known for years, people he cared about, people who appreciated him. Ava wasn’t any of those things. And yet feeding her seemed more exciting somehow. He had no idea if she was an adventurous eater, but living in New York City, if she wasn’t adventurous, or at least eating a huge variety of foods from around the world, that would be a tragedy. He also felt challenged by her. She wasn’t overly impressed with him to start with. Or with anything, it seemed. But she’d been impressed with his chicken salad. That was something. He liked the idea that a small-town boy from Kansas might be able to surprise her with nothing but a few herbs, a whisk, and his hands.

And that sounded dirtier than he would have expected.

But it had definitely seemed seductive and intimate when she put things into her mouth that he’d had in his hands. The pleasure she’d gotten from it absolutely had been.

Parker shifted and cleared his throat. “If we’re baking, she’d be my pastry chef,” he told Evan. “But yeah, kind of.”

He didn’t cook for the women he dated. He always used the excuse that he cooked all day long and liked when someone else was in charge of the meal. Which wasn’t untrue. So they went out to eat. But the full truth was, cooking was personal for him. And the idea that he might make something and they wouldn’t like it, or would want to add ketchup, made his eye twitch. And he’d definitely never fed a woman in his kitchen at the diner before. He was never spontaneous about food. Or turned on by avocados.

But he didn’t shy away from nice restaurants and candlelight. So why was chicken salad and avocados feeling sexier than any other dinner he’d had with a woman?

Because this kitchen means more.

He knew the answer even before the words formed in his mind. His kitchen at the diner was more his than any other place in town. Even his house. Because he’d shared it with his father first. Because this was where he was most him. Because here he was fully in charge and did things his way. Because this was where he felt talented and successful and fulfilled.

Which was probably why it had felt like Ava was intruding even more in his personal space when she was sneaking into his kitchen than if she’d showed up at his house and stolen his television. Which was probably why it made him more irritable too. Plus, she’d been stealing his butter. He’d considered buying a cow recently with the number of trips he’d been making to the store to restock.

“There’s nothing to prevent that,” Evan told him.

Parker blinked at him. There was nothing to prevent Ava from stealing his butter? Or there was nothing to prevent her from getting under his skin and driving him nuts? Yeah, he’d been afraid of that.

“You can definitely help her in the kitchen,” Evan said, watching him carefully.

Right. The helping her in the kitchen, thing. Her kitchen. Which would absolutely not feel as intimate. He’d hung out with Rudy over there from time to time but he’d never worked over there. And it definitely wasn’t his. Yet. Nor was it really Ava’s. Her heart wasn’t over there. So it was just a kitchen. And they were just going to be making pie.

Parker didn’t have a bell over the door to the diner like the pie shop now did. But he didn’t need it to know that someone had just walked in. And he didn’t need to turn around to know that it was Ava. It was as if the energy in the room shifted. Or heightened. Or something.

He glanced over to find her heading straight for him. She was in one of her skirts and another pair of heels. These shoes were black, but her skirt was red. Of course. Ava wore a lot of red. As in, she had something red on every day. Whether it was her blouse or her skirt or her shoes or her accessories, she always had red somewhere. She often wore black. But she also wore navy blue and gray. All of which, apparently, went with red. He sighed, even as his body tightened. He should not know that. He should also not like those skirts and shoes. Since when did women’s clothing really have such an effect on him? Okay, clothing that wasn’t jeans, anyway. He loved a woman in blue jeans. He especially had loved Ava in blue jeans. With her fucking red high heels.

She stopped in front of the counter next to Evan.

“It’s only twelve twenty,” Parker told her with a frown that had a lot more to do with the sudden tightness behind his fly than it did with her being there early.

“I know.” She handed him a booklet. It was bound in a plastic report cover. The spine of which was red. Of course. It also had colored tabs.

“What’s this?”

“The results of the pie filling taste-test,” she told him. She pointed. “The red tabs are my references and the blue are the photos.”

“Photos?”

But she’d slipped behind the counter and was tying on an apron. An apron that she’d brought with her. That was white with tiny red cherries all over it. And a ruffle around the edge.

Ava Carmichael didn’t seem like the ruffle type. And yet, she looked absolutely fucking perfect in that apron.