“Hey, did you want us to—?”
“What’s this?”
Her eyes widened a fraction at his clipped tone, but her voice stayed chipper as ever. “For the van. Cool, right?”
He held up the huge magnet. “I said no.”
“It’s your logo, Erik. It belongs on your delivery van.”
He ignored the exasperation in her voice. “My face is the size of the sun. No.”
She narrowed her eyes and planted her hands on her hips.
“It’s also on the window decals.”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
“I don’t drive the shop around. It’s just…” He shook his head, frustrated at being unable to articulate the horror that flooded every cell in his body at the thought of that fucking magnet. Putting it on the van felt desperate. Felt like his mom making the round of casting agents and nightclub operators. Felt like begging people to lovehimwhen he only wanted to be known for his cake.
“Putting it on the van is flashy,” he finally said.
“Opening your own business is flashy!” she shot back.
He huffed and swung away from her to lean against the countertop behind him, discomfort crawling over his skin.
Josie was silent for a moment, and when she spoke, her voice was calm and low. “Do you trust me?” She sounded as if she were soothing an animal caught in a snare. And honestly, maybe she was.
“Obviously I do.” He wouldn’t be standing in his own kitchen right now if he didn’t. He turned back around to face her but kept his lips pressed tight.
She slid the magnet back into the box and leaned it against the back wall. When she opened her mouth again, he braced himself for more questions about trust, but instead she asked, “What was your grandfather like?”
The subject change rattled him—the man had been on his mind almost constantly for the past few weeks. Not since the days following Pops’s death had Erik felt his loss so keenly. The weight of the memories drove him to answer honestly. “Quiet. Frugal.”
“Frugal with money or with praise?”
Erik tucked his chin, never having considered it like that before. “Both.”
She nodded slowly. “And did he love you?”
Christ. This was hell. “Yes,” he muttered. “In his own way. We didn’t discuss our feelings.”
“Wow. How weird that his grandson turned out the way he did.” Josie’s flat voice held a trace of amusement, and he shifted from foot to foot as her steady gaze kept him pinned. “And is that the reason part of you thinks you don’t deserve to have all this?”
She waved a hand around his kitchen as a peal of Finn’s laughter drifted over the music from the wireless speakers set up in the front room, the happy sound incongruous with the tension in the kitchen.
“That’s ridiculous.” He crossed his arms over his chest and studied the tile between his feet. Still, the idea took hold. Pops had hated the way his daughter chased even the tiniest promise of fame from town to town, and he’d wanted Erik to instead find joy in a small, self-contained life on the farm. Was it any wonder that using his larger-than-life face to hawk his business felt like a betrayal of Pops’s wishes?
Josie sighed into the silence. “I’m no shrink, but I’ve had to drag you along at several points even though you clearly want to do this, and I don’t think it’s only because you don’t understand marketing. I’m just trying to figure out whether your ‘aw-shucks shy guy’ deal is nature or nurture.”
His head snapped up. “Look, I just don’t want my fucking face on a van.”
“Fine!” She tossed her arms in the air in exasperation. “It’s just that your handsome fucking face is a great selling point, and people are going to love seeing you drive around town with it! But whatever. Run all over Chicago in your unmarked windowless van like a creeper and never become as successful as you could be.” Her words hung in the kitchen for a beat before she dissolved into laughter. “Wow. You really know how to push my buttons.”
“What buttons?” He spread his hands wide, genuinely baffled by how they’d ended up squaring off over a kitchen island.
She jabbed a thumb at her solar plexus. “The fear-of-rejection button. The anger-when-people-don’t-appreciate-the-things-I-do-for-them button. You can hit that one even when you haven’t actually asked me to do those things for you, by the way.” She blew out a breath. “Mostly though it’s the mommy-issues button.”
