He was a professional at facing challenges.
His plane rocketed forward, the adrenaline in his blood stream making him feel sharply, wholly alive.
•••
In her rented kitchen space, Penelope stirred glazed peaches and swayed to the melody of “Sweet Child O’ Mine.”
She served five types of pie year-round. Peach, pecan, apple, mixed berry, and chocolate (Theo’s Pie). Plus, she always offered one or two seasonal pies, such as cherry or pumpkin, depending on which ingredients were fresh. Each pie was available as a whole pie or by the slice and each slice could be ordered plain or à la mode.
She kept her drink offerings simple. Water, hot coffee, and hot tea in the cold months. Water, milk, iced coffee, and iced tea in the hot months.
Today’s seasonal pies, strawberry and key lime, had just come out of the commercial ovens opposite her humongous central workspace. The three peach pies she was assembling now were the last of today’s efforts.
She’d steeled herself against Eli yesterday, leaving the instant she’d finished her fried chicken dinner. She wished she’d been as successful at steeling herself against thoughts of him. Instead, she’d been replaying and replaying memories of the things he’d said to her last night. Each time she did, emotional glitter spun in her chest, glittering.
His words had been powerful enough but theway that he’d said them!He’d spoken in that unvarnished way he had, looking directly at her. His hair had been rumpled and she’d been repeatedly distracted by the play of tendons in his masculine forearms.
The hurt she harbored toward him was behaving like a chunk of arctic ice. Pieces of it kept cracking off and toppling into the ocean. Problem was, she understood that the strength of her own desires could wreck her objectivity and persuade her to fall into a relationship with Eli even if doing so was seriously ill-advised.
She slid the peach pies into the oven, cleaned her workspace, then decided to treat herself to pie. She did a great deal of tasting but didn’t usually indulge in a full slice at 10:02 a.m. This morning, though, it felt imperative. Pie would lift her spirits.
She plated a wedge of key lime and took slow bites. Critically, she assessed its balance and flavor. The creamy tartness of the lime provided an ideal complement to the crisp, buttery richness of the graham cracker crust.
This pie was exactly as she wanted it to be.
She only wished that relationships were as simple as pie.
•••
It was Taco Tuesday at Pablo’s, a casual roadside joint north of town. The place smelled like fried tortillas and sounded like mariachi music.
Eli and his friend Sam Turner had just given their server their order. They handed her their menus, but instead of leaving, the young woman shot Eli a long and hopeful look before giving the same to Sam. “Your accent’s great,” she told Sam. “Where are you from?”
“Australia.”
Her eyes widened with awe. “Wow.”
Eli relaxed back in his seat, watching with amusement as she asked Sam follow-up questions.
He’d met Sam at the gym shortly after moving to Misty River. He, Sam, Theo, and several others played basketball together at least once a week. Eli had hung out with Sam enough to know that women almost always flirted with him and people of every age and gender asked him about his accent. It was unusual to run across an Australian accent in the North Georgia mountains.
What Eli could predict with ninety-five percent certainty: their server’s interest in Sam would get her nowhere.
Eli sensed a knot of grief at Sam’s core and suspected that a woman might be to blame but didn’t know for sure. Sam was disciplined, hard-working, and solemn. He lived alone on a historic farm outside town and utilized much of what he grew at his farm-to-table restaurant.
Their server moved off.
“I could use your help with something,” Eli said.
“Yeah?” Sam dipped a chip in the salsa bowl.
“You know how I feel about Penelope Quinn, right?”
Sam surveyed him with pale green eyes. “I knew how you felt about her before you left. You still feel the same way?”
“I feel even more strongly now.” Two days had passed since his dinner with Penelope. Eli had told Theo he was free to babysit in the evenings during the work week, but so far, Theo hadn’t taken him up on his offer. Penelope or Aubrey’s friends or members of Theo’s church had been covering shifts with Madeline whenever the baby wasn’t with her parents. “When I saw her a couple of days ago, she listed the things about me that concern her.”
“Huh.” Sam dipped another chip.
