“Didn’t you go with Paul Johnson? He was a real catch.” He smirked at her. His cousin Paul had been homecoming king one year with Colleen as queen, and Sammy had never quite forgiven him for it.
“We made quite the pair. He thought he was all that and a bag of chips. Turns out he was just a big, dumb potato.” Robin smiled, the laughter clear in her eyes.
In the kitchen, something began beeping. Sammy sobered. “He sure liked to play the field, and I’m not talking about football. I should’ve warned you about him.”
Robin motioned to the back. He followed her into the kitchen. “Don’t worry about it. I figured it out myself. Besides, we weren’t that kind of friends in high school.”
“That’s not how I remember it. I remember loads of long talks on the bus to away games.” Long talks where he’d tried to distract himself from watching Colleen sitting with Tucker.
“True, but those were mostly superficial.” Robin lugged the mixing bowl back to the workstation. “Who liked who, details about the team we’d play that night, did you run sprints that day in gym. That kind of stuff.”
“I always thought of you as”—he bit his tongue on the wordsasister—no girl wanted to hear that—“as a good friend. I’m sorry I fell out of touch.”
She laid her hand on his bicep. “Hey, don’t worry about it. I fell out of touch too. Following my grand plan for my life, remember?”
The heat of her hand burned through his shirt sleeve. “LA, right? Then Paris? Good for you, following your dreams.”
“Something like that.” She sighed.
He could have kicked himself. Of course her dream didn’t include coming back here to take over a rinky-dink bakery. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have brought up a sore subject.”
She removed her hand and his arm felt its loss. “It’s not that. I just keep thinking about the youth center. Having a place like that would have meant a lot to me when I was growing up.” She dumped the dough out onto the workbench and began cutting it into huge pieces with some sort of cutting tool. “Would you grab me that stack of square bowls and their lids?” He handed her the supplies, and she filled each one with a section of dough. “Grandma said the church needs new carpeting, too, but can’t replace it yet. And The Garden group home needs a new van. Too bad no one in Deep Haven just has a pile of money lying around.” She turned to the sink and washed dough residue off her hands.
An image of an unopened red envelope hanging on his mother’s fridge flashed into his mind. He knew of at least one person in Deep Haven who had a pile of money lying around.
Maybe God was telling him something.
If only he could bring himself to cash it. Except, he was not in the business of lumber truck driving anymore.
three
Why had she ever thought this job would be easy? In between customers, another rosemary loaf for Pastor Dan and a few baguettes for Ellie Brewster, and sliding a batch of bread into the oven, Robin prayed the pipes would be an easy fix. She couldn’t keep dodging around the plumber. And was this considered an emergency? Should she let her grandma know? No. She could handle it.
Robin pushed a stray curl out of her eyes. The smell of freshly baked bread permeated the air, but even that homey scent didn’t make her feel any better.
Not with Mack Hill, the plumber, making all kinds of grunts under her cupboards.
She checked her watch. Mack had arrived an hour ago, three hours later than he had promised. Thankfully, business had been quiet, so she’d been able to bounce back and forth between the kitchen and the retail space.
With one last disapproving grunt, Mack slid out from under the sink. “It seems the whole town is having water issues,” he said. “Winter in Deep Haven, eh?”
She agreed with him, but really, it had been ten years since she’d spent a winter here. She’d forgotten some of the basics, like leaving a tiny stream of water running so pipes didn’t freeze. “What’s the damage?” she asked Mack.
“All of your pipes will need to be replaced,” Mack said from his squat in the Fox Bakery’s kitchen. “I can patch it up for now, but it won’t last long.” Mack stood up, groaned, stretched his back, and then wiped his hands on a towel hanging from his belt. “I’m getting too old to be crawling around on the floor.” The gray-haired plumber must have been pushing seventy.
“How long will that take?” She leaned a hip against the counter. She’d been using the small sink for the past few days. She really needed the regular one working again.
“The patch job? An hour or two. If you want me to replace these pipes, that will take a couple of days. I’d suggest converting some of these pipes from copper to PVC or even PEX. You’re also gonna have to find someone to come in and fix this cabinet before mold sets in. Frankly, I’m surprised your grandparents got away with having a wooden cabinet in here for so long.”
Suddenly Robin was seeing dollar signs. “How much is all this going to cost me?”
“I won’t charge you for today, but your sink drainpipes will cost a couple hundred, your P trap will be a couple hundred, and the labor is added on top of that.” Mack began repacking his tools. “If you want it done soon, I’ll have to charge a rush fee. Tomorrow is Saturday, but I can maybe squeeze you in. I’m swamped with work. We need another plumber in town, or at least someone younger than me. I don’t work as quick as I used to.”
She wasn’t sure. “I don’t have time for my whole bakery to be torn apart. Maybe we should just do the patch job.”
He speared her with a look. “Okay, but I don’t recommend cutting corners. It really won’t take too long—a day or two, tops.”
The shrill tone of the bakery phone ringing cut between them. She answered on the second ring. “Fox Bakery, how can I help you?”
