“I’ll go in there,” Cora said. “Are you going to change, Bossy?”
Cash had never heard Cora call BostonBossybefore, but it was said with such tenderness that it actually fit.
“You go ahead,” Boston said, and his fiancé went down the hall and left the two of them alone.
“I promise I’d tell you if it wasn’t okay,” Cash said.
“When did she get here?” Boston asked.
“Yesterday,” Cash said. “I didn’t know she was coming that early, and we immediately went to Coral Canyon for groceries, and then I made her dinner.” He glanced over to the hall and then poured the dough onto the counter. “It’s fine.”
He started shaping the doughnuts, deciding on the spot to do half of them as round Bismarck-type doughnuts and the other half as Long Johns. Daddy loved Long Johns, and Faith had taught him that they fried up a little bit better than the round doughnuts. He’d found that to be true too, and he turned to put a big pot on the stove, which he then filled with a mix of half canola oil and half sunflower oil. They were both neutral and wouldn’t give the doughnuts any flavor, and he could heat them to a high temperature and do a quick fry, which would make the dough less greasy. He clipped a candy thermometer to the edge of the pot and flipped on the flame, setting it at medium-high.
Cora returned to the kitchen first. “I left the bag in the bedroom,” she said to Boston.
“Thanks, Kitten.” He slung his arm around her and pressed a kiss to her cheek. “He says it’s fine.”
Cora looked at Boston, and while he didn’t know her all that well, he had spent quite a bit of time with her and Boston in the past several months. A silent understanding moved between them, and she looked up at Boston. “Then I’m sure it’s fine. Let’s not badger him to death about it.”
“Yes, let’s not badger him to death about it,” Cash repeated, and he gave Boston a silent glare.
“If you think I’m bad, wait until Bryce gets here,” Boston said with a laugh. “He’ll be the one you have to worry about. And he’s the one who puts everything on the family text too.” He gave Cash a cocked-eyebrow look that spoke volumes.
“It’s fine,” Cash said for the umpteenth time, though his entire being quaked at the thought of every aunt and every uncle and every cousin over the age of fifteen knowing about him and Lark. Heck,hedidn’t even know what they were yet, though he had a pretty good idea of what he wanted them to be.
“Tell us what you need us to do,” Cora said.
“Just go relax,” Cash said. “Lunch isn’t for another hour and a half. You can put on a movie or some music. If you brought your swimsuits, you can sit in the hot tub. Lark’s gonna help me with the potatoes after I get the doughnuts fried. When they’re cool, we’ll fill them and frost them.”
“Oh, you’re filling and frosting?” Lark asked as she returned. “You guys got so much more information out of him than I could get.” She grinned, and Cash’s whole world lit up with her in it.
“I’ve been keeping it a secret what I’ve been making,” he said. “I wanted her to do a taste test for Wade and Jet.”
“Those are your brothers, right?” Cora asked.
“Yep.” Lark smiled at her and then moved into the kitchen. “You want me to peel all twenty pounds?”
“Yeah, but you don’t need to do it right now,” he said. “I’ll be working on the doughnuts for probably the next half-hour.”
Lark hefted the twenty-pound bag of russet potatoes onto the counter and into the sink. “Okay, well then I’ll just leave it.”
Cash stood there and watched as she looked from him to Boston to Cora and back.
“All right,” he said, a faint beat of panic moving through him for a reason he couldn’t name. “I’ve got two options here. Maybe I’ll let you guys vote.”
“Lay ’em on us, Cash,” Boston said.
“I’m going to be doing a raspberry-filled doughnut in two shapes,” Cash said. “And the choices come in the toppings. We can do some chocolate, kind of like a variation on the Black Forest cake. I can do a simple white chocolate glaze, or I can do a whipped cream cheese frosting.”
“I love raspberries and chocolate,” Cora said. “Have you had those candy sticks they sell at Christmas? The chocolate-covered raspberry jelly ones?”
Boston made a face. “Are you serious? You like those?”
“They’regood,” Cora said emphatically. “You like the chocolate oranges.”
“Yeah, the ones you can break apart. Not the jelly sticks. Those are nasty.”
She grinned at him. “Well, I like the raspberry jelly ones, so now you know what to put in my stocking.”
