Hehumphedand turned to clomp back down the stairs, leaving her to yet again trot after him. She’d been the one prodding him to do the bakery thing all along, and now suddenly he’d grabbed the reins. She… didn’t hate it. Take-charge looked good on him.
“Look,” she said when she rejoined him in the bakery kitchen downstairs, “I’m a nosy bitch, okay?”
“I noticed.” Over the past few minutes, the clear blue of his eyes had clouded. At first she thought he wasn’t going to answer her question despite his invitation that she ask it. Then he leaned against a free section of counter and crossed his arms over his chest, eyes pinned to the floor. She ignored the flex of his muscly forearms to focus on the words emerging from his throat in a low rumble.
“My grandfather died last year.”
“Oh, Erik.” Her first instinct was to soothe him, to stroke a hand down the tense line of his arm, but his body language screamedhands off, so she settled for a simple “I’m so sorry.”
“He left me farmland. Valuable farmland.”
His jaw worked back and forth, but he said nothing more, leaving her to connect the dots on what he was saying and what hewasn’tsaying. “And you didn’t want to sell it until now?”
He nodded shortly, and again, she made an intuitive leap. “I don’t have much experience with good parental figures, but have you not wanted to lose that link to him?”
He dragged his eyes up to hers and nodded once.
“But he’d be proud of you for pursuing your dreams, right?”
More bunching of that incredible jaw. “I disappointed him by walking away from farming. I disappointed him by…” He shifted restlessly, more ill at ease than she’d ever seen him. “I don’t know what he’d think.”
Well,nowshe wanted to wrap her arms around his waist and squeeze this man who was radiating loneliness, but she remembered the sparks from the shoulder squeeze and didn’t dare risk more contact. She settled for a small, encouraging smile. “I’mproud of you. Does that count for anything?”
“Yes, actually.” He raised his brows, looking so surprised that she had to laugh.
“So who wants to buy your land?”
“Guy who owns the neighboring acres. He’s been asking me about it for a year.”
She blinked and looked around the shambles of a kitchen once more as she absorbed what this all meant for their bakery-opening plans. It accelerated everything beyond where she’d been thinking of positioning him. A physical space meant different marketing, different cash flow, different priorities. Her mental gymnastics must’ve shown on her face because Erik sighed and scrubbed his hands down his face.
“You think I’m being hasty.”
Yes. She opened her mouth, then shut it. Apparently today was Opposite Day because he was the one to fill the silence with words.
“I’m really not. Been thinking about it for months. Years, actually. Equipment. Possible locations.” He pushed himself away from the counter and walked to the oven, tracing the nearest edge with the tip of his finger. “This place has everything I dreamed of,” he said, passion thrumming in his voice.
She willed herself to see what he was seeing. Erik, presiding over his own kitchen. Bashfully greeting customers. Moving that big, strong body up and down the stairs that bisected his personal space and his professional one. Reclining on a couch under the upstairs windows. Dropping to sleep in a bed above his workspace. Her baker had spent his free time imagining this kitchen, this life, and ifshecould see it after only a few minutes, my God, how much more tangible was that dream to him?
Warmth sparked in her chest at the idea that she was helping make this a reality for him. But it went beyond the professional satisfaction she’d expected to find by building his business into a success. No, this was something far more intimate, and it scared the hell out of her. So she cocked a sassy hip in his direction and pursed her lips. “Did that dream of yours include a van for abducting children to fatten up in your gingerbread house?”
To her utter delight, he threw back his head and laughed. “Come on. Let’s go negotiate.”
Thirteen
“Erik?”
Josie’s voice floating up from the back entrance had him straightening so fast he cracked his head against the wall behind him. “Up here,” he called, rubbing the back of his skull and tracking her progress by the progressively louder creaks on the stairs. Another thing to add to the repair list.
Her bright hair appeared first, tied up with a bandanna, and he braced himself for her unique invasion of color and noise as the rest of her followed.
“I’m here, chief!” she chirped. “You ready to paint?”
Chief. He kind of liked that. Then he caught sight of her clothes and bit back a groan. She was in her favorite work shirt again, and he jerked his eyes to the ceiling, narrowly avoiding another smack to the head. More cranial trauma would serve him right for straining to catch a better glimpse of the black bra that was clearly visible under the threadbare T-shirt she seemed to favor during their cleanup days.
That fucking shirt would be the death of him. He’d seen it way too many times for comfort in the three weeks since he’d summoned the strength to hand Pops’s land over to the Mathison family and Philip the Impatient had pulled some rich-guy miracle and expedited the sale of the building and van at a price that still left Erik breathless. Breathless at the amount of money he’d forked over but also breathless at what a bargain he’d gotten. The man had been too impatient to get back to his Colorado dispensary fiefdom to dicker over the price of a brick building full of junk in Illinois, which left Erik the owner of a well-stocked, if cluttered, bakery. He might actually be the luckiest man in the state.
Next to him, Josie looked around the increasingly organized living space. “You’re getting things done up here!”
