“Oh, he’s going to come home with us for Thanksgiving,” Graham says. “So just a few weeks.”
“Great. I can’t wait to meet him.”
CHAPTER 3
GINNY
“Didyou grab the caramel apple cake?”
I have just set four pie boxes on my mother’s backseat. I straighten and look at her. “I have caramel applepie.”
She nods. “Good, we need the pie. But we need the caramel apple cake, too.”
We are finally headed home after a busy morning in the bakery where I don’t think I said words other than ‘another’, ‘more’, and dessert types and dollar amounts. I think I told my mother ‘good morning’ when we first met in the kitchen at the house, but that seems like days rather than hours ago. I think we provided at least two pies for every house in town for Thanksgiving. I’d jokingly asked my mother yesterday if people in Sapphire Falls had just given up baking for themselves, and she shrugged and said simply, “Business is good.”
I prop my hands on my hips. “We have pumpkin, pecan, chocolate silk—” I roll my eyes because who eats chocolate silk when you’ve got pumpkin and pecan? My brother Graham, that’s the answer. “And caramel applepie. Why do we need cake ofanykind?”
My mom is already headed back to the bakery with her keys in hand. “Everett doesn’t like pie.”
I sigh heavily and roll my eyes.
These men.
Not only does Graham prefer chocolate silk—mind you, he would eat any of the other pies but likes chocolate the best, so of course, Mom made him one—but now the friend he’s bringing home for the king of all pie holidays doesn’t like pie at all, so she made him an entirecakeinstead?
I lean against the side of the car to wait for her.
It’s definitely chilly, but it is not as cold as Thanksgiving could be in Nebraska and I’m enjoying it. I love the fact that summer lingered well into September and fall is taking its sweet time exiting my great home state.
Mom is back within minutes, carrying a cake box.
“You spoil them all, you know that, right?” I ask her.
She only grins. Of course, she knows that. She’s been doing it all of our lives.
“You’re going to love this cake,” she says. “It’s a spice cake with apple chunks in it and then drizzled with caramel sauce.”
Okay, I do have a weakness for caramel. But good Lord. I love pumpkin, pecan, apple, and yes, chocolate silk pie. I’m going to be fine.
I finally get her and all of our desserts in the car, and we head for home.
Thankfully, my brothers and their significant others are already there getting dinner going. I expect to walk into a house that smells like roasted turkey, stuffing, freshly baked dinner rolls, and a dozen other sides. I’m starving and intend to eat until I can’t move.
Harlow and Kaelyn are there supervising, but both Jefferson and Carver are very capable in the kitchen. My dad is also perfectly able to follow directions and produce edible food, but the chances of him putting something in the oven and then going into his office and starting work on something and completelyforgetting about the oven, that there are other people in the house, or even what day it is are about ninety percent so we don’t let him cook alone.
Hopefully, Graham, Margot, and Everett will be here soon. They were busy with work and not able to come in until this morning. Their plane was supposed to land in Omaha about an hour ago.
“So Everett is a picky eater,” I say conversationally. I am curious about this friend of my brother’s, but less because he’s Graham’s friend and more because he will be my new boss.
Well, one of them. My brother will be my other boss, I guess.
That has the potential to be weird.
He’s my little brother, though, and I know he respects me and trusts me. I don’t think I’ll have any trouble getting ideas past him or with having him hover or get in my way.
But I’m really curious what Everett is like.
Everett and Graham are business partners, and if Everett is the people-person, as I suspect, he is probably a little more controlling. Graham needs that.
