Down Home Cowboy Read online

  It also gave her a high turnover rate at the shop, but that was okay with her. It meant a lot of work, a lot of training, but when everything went smoothly it also meant that she could put the employees who had been there the longest on training, which gave them yet another set of skills to add to their resume.

  Right now she was short on staff, and even shorter on people who had the skill level she required with the baked goods to do any training. So while she could farm out Violet’s register training, the cakes, pies and other pastries had to be done by her.

  “I’ll do better next time,” Violet said, sounding determined. Which encouraged Alison, because Violet hadn’t sounded anything like determined when she had first come in looking for work. Violet was a sullen teenager of the first order. And even though she most definitely made an attempt to put on a good show for Alison, she was clearly in a full internal battle with her feelings on authority figures.

  Having been a horrific teenager herself, Alison felt some level of sympathy for her. But also very little patience. But Violet seemed to react well to her brand of no-nonsense response to attitude. Alison wasn’t going to let a chip on the shoulder make her angry, she wasn’t going to get into a fight with a child, after all. But she didn’t cater to it either.

  “You will do better next time,” Alison said, “because I can eat one mistake cake, but if I have to continue eating mistake cakes my jeans aren’t going to fit and then I’m going to have to buy new jeans, and that’s going to have to come out of your paycheck.”

  She patted Violet on the shoulder, then walked through the double doors that led from the kitchen to behind the counter. The shop was in its late-afternoon lull. A little too close to dinner for most people to be stopping in for pieces of pie. During the summer, they often got people stopping in after dinner, whereas during the school year she got a mini rush just after elementary school let out and parents brought their kids for after-school snacks.

  She decided to take the opportunity to check the freshness of her baked goods. She opened the glass-backed display case, grabbed a piece of wax paper and pressed gently on the first row of muffins, then moved on to a loaf of cinnamon chip bread.

  A rush of air blew into the shop and Alison looked up just in time to see a tall, muscular man walk in through the blue door. A pang of recognition hit her in the chest before she even got a good look at him. She didn’t need a good look at him. Because just like the first time she’d seen him, in Ace’s bar, the feeling he created inside of her wasn’t logical, wasn’t cerebral. It was physical. It lived in her, and it superseded control.

  For somebody who prized control it was an affront on multiple levels.

  He lifted his head and confirmed what her jittering nerves already knew. That beneath that dark cowboy hat was the face of the man who had most definitely been looking at her at the bar the night before.

  He hadn’t left town. He hadn’t been a hallucinogenic expression of a fevered imagination. And he had found her.

  The twist of attraction turned into something else, just for a moment. A strange kind of panic that she hadn’t confronted for a long time. That somehow this man had found out who she was, had tracked her down.

  No. That’s not it. Even if he did, that doesn’t make him crazy. It doesn’t.

  And more than likely he was just here for a piece of pie. She took a deep breath, steeling herself to look directly at him. Which was... Wow. He was hotter than she remembered. And that was saying something. She had first spotted him in the dim light of the bar, with a healthy amount of space between them.

  Now, well, now the daylight was bright, and he was very close. And he was magnificent. The way that black T-shirt hugged all those muscles bordered on obscene, his dark green eyes like the deep of the forest beckoning her to draw close. Except, unlike the forest, his eyes didn’t promise solitude and inner peace. No, it was something much more carnal. Or maybe that was just her aforementioned overheated imagination.

  His jaw was covered by a neatly trimmed dark beard, and she would normally have said she wasn’t a huge fan, but something about the beard on him was like flaunting an excess of testosterone. And she was in a very testosterone-starved state. So it was like stumbling onto water in a desert.

  Of course, all that hyperbole was simply that. His eyes weren’t actually promising her anything; in fact, his expression was blank. And she realized that while he might look sexier to her today than he had that night, she might look unrecognizable to him.

  Last night she had been wearing an outfit that at least hinted at the fact that she had a female figure. And she’d had makeup on, plus she’d gone to the effort to straighten her mass of auburn hair. Today, it was its glorious frizzy self, piled on top of her head, half captured in a rubber band, half pinned down with a pen. And as for makeup... Well, on days when she had to be at the bakery early that was just not a happening thing.

  Her apron disguised her figure, and beneath it, the button-up striped shirt that she had tucked into her jeans wasn’t exactly vixen wear.

  “Can I... Can I help you?” She tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear and found herself tilting her head to the side, her body apparently calling on all of the flirtation skills it hadn’t used since she was eighteen years old.

  Very immature, underdeveloped skills.

  Suddenly, her lips felt dry, so she had to lick them. And when she did, heat flared in those forest green eyes that made her think maybe he did recognize her. Or, if he didn’t, maybe his body did. Just like hers recognized his. Oh, Lord.

  “Yes,” he said, his voice much more... Taciturn than she had imagined it might be. She hadn’t realized until that moment that she had built something of a narrative around him. Brooding, certainly, because he had most definitely been brooding a little bit in the bar, but she had imagined he might flirt with a lazy drawl. Of course, it was difficult to tell with one word, but his voice had been clipped. Definitely clipped.

  “I have a lot of different pie. I mean, a lot of different kinds. So, if you need suggestions. Or a list. I can help.”

  “I’m not here for pie. I’m here to pick up my daughter.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  WELL, THIS WAS an interesting situation. By which he meant an insane crock of fuckery.

  It was the woman from the bar. Right there in the bakery where his daughter worked. Looking even more like someone he wanted to lick all over than she had at Ace’s last night.

  Her hair was piled on top of her head, and he wanted to let it down. She was wearing an apron, which was sexy for some strange reason he didn’t even want to parse. And she had flour on her nose. He wanted to kick everybody in the bakery out. Wanted to lock the doors and back her up against one of the rough brick walls and take her right there, hard and fast.

  And that was thoroughly incongruous with his usual mind-set. And with the fact that even if he did usher everybody out of the dining area, and lock the door, his daughter would probably still be in the back somewhere. Which was something he really needed to remember.

  “Your daughter?” The woman blinked, biting her lower lip, which he felt all the way down in his own body.

  “Violet. Violet Donnelly.”

  A realization seemed to hit her on an indrawn breath. The reason he’d looked familiar when she’d seen him in the bar. He was a Donnelly. “Right. Of course.” She shook her head. “Of course. She is off about now. I’ll go get her.”

  “Is your boss back there?” He didn’t know why he had stopped her, mostly because he wanted to delay her leaving just a second. For what, he didn’t know. Torturing himself? Maybe he was into that now. He wouldn’t know. It had been so long since he had explored exactly what he was into, he had forgotten.

  “My boss?”

  “Yes. The owner of the bakery? Alison something? I haven’t had a chance to meet her ye
t, and I thought maybe I would.”

  “I’m Alison something,” she said, her tone dry, her expression strangely resigned. “Alison Davis, actually.”

  Heat and irritation coiled in his stomach, creating a molten ball that he thought might explode. “You own the bakery.”

  She didn’t look a day over twenty-five to him, much less old enough to own what appeared to be a successfully established business.

  “Yes,” she said, “I do. Is that surprising?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  Again, he wasn’t sure why he was submitting to the banter. He should just tell her to go get Violet. Of course, she was responsible for his daughter’s paycheck and, more than that, the only activity she had in town. Which was the only thing keeping Violet from going completely feral.

  “Because. You look too young to own a bakery. Not exactly what I pictured. Except for the flour on your nose.”

  She wrinkled said facial feature, reaching up and brushing at it with her fingertips. “It’s powdered sugar,” she responded.

  It took everything in him to keep from commenting on the fact that that sounded even more appealing. Because it would be even sweeter if he tasted her skin.

  Holy hell. He was in the middle of some kind of severe sexual psychosis. He had been married for years. Which meant that the time of seeing random women on the street as sexual possibilities was long past. His default was not to see women as potential partners.

  It still was, he supposed. This...aberration was something to do with her. And she was his daughter’s boss. Which was about the most inappropriate thing he could think of.

  “Well,” he said, “that’s important to know.”

  “In the interest of being strictly correct, yes.”

  “I’m nothing if not pedantic when it comes to the details of baked goods.”

  “Maybe I should have hired you then.”

  That at least penetrated his thick skull and made him think about something other than sex. “Why? Is Violet having a hard time?”

  “Not any more than usual,” Alison said. She seemed much more comfortable with the topic of Violet introduced. “I just meant because she clearly doesn’t have any experience baking. So, all things considered, she’s doing really well. Just a couple of sunken cakes. But nothing I can’t eat.”

  “Is there anything I can help her...work on at home?” He didn’t know why he was asking. He knew next to nothing about baking. As far as he was concerned cake came from the store.

  “I can think of a few things, if you wouldn’t mind.”

  “I actually have no idea how to help her. It just seemed like the thing to say.”

  Alison laughed, and the sound was unexpectedly erotic. It fired through his veins, made him want to earn some more laughter. Possibly because he was mainly accustomed to having women glare at him, yell at him. It had been a long time since he’d made one laugh. Since one had looked even remotely delighted with him in any way.

  “Sorry,” he said, finding himself smiling. “I’m really not that helpful. But I can taste-test.”

  “Well,” she said, “Violet does have a cake in the back. You’re welcome to come back and...have a taste.”

  “Sure.” Cake was not what he wanted a taste of. He wanted to taste that little hollow at the base of her throat. Wanted to see if her skin was as soft as he thought it might be. Wanted to see if she tasted like sugar, or if she tasted like flowers. He wasn’t really particular as long as the flavor of woman was layered beneath.

  “Come on back,” she said, scurrying to the other side of the counter and opening a small, swinging gate, gesturing toward the double doors that he presumed led to the kitchen.

  He saw no reason not to comply. So he did. It was tidy behind the counter, plates stacked out of view of the patrons, and napkins and dish towels neatly folded and stacked beside them. She ushered him into the kitchen, and he saw that it was no less organized. There were large mixers, a double oven lining a back wall and Saran-wrapped trays stacked in large holders, full of various baked goods.

  And in the back of the room was his daughter, laboriously piping icing onto what looked like several dozen cookies.

  “She’s practicing,” Alison said. “She learned a really basic technique the other day, so she gets to try it out on an order that we got for a client’s office party.”

  Violet’s expression was full of concentration, and he was momentarily distracted from the strangeness between himself and Alison by it. By the intensity with which she was focused on her task. By the fact that, for a moment, his daughter look like a stranger to him. Not like a child, and not like the angry teenager he was used to seeing.

  She looked content, even though she was deep in concentration and actually applying effort to it rather than just rolling her eyes and tossing out a careless whatever.

  It struck him then that he didn’t know this version of his daughter at all.

  “Wow,” he said, not sure what else to say.

  Violet obviously recognized his voice, because she stopped and looked up. Her expression went flat for a moment, and then came a smile that he could tell was forced. “Oh, hi, Dad. I didn’t realize you were going to come by.”

  “Lane was busy. So I figured I would come and get you.”

  Violet frowned. “Is it time already?”

  “Yeah, but if you want to finish, that’s fine. I can wait.”

  “Yeah,” Violet said, “I’m going to finish.” She turned her focus back to the cookies. And Cain turned his focus back to Alison.

  “Nice place you have.”

  There were other women—it was all women—bustling around the kitchen, barely acknowledging him as they took cakes out of the oven and moved mixing bowls around, and colored bowls of frosting.

  “Thank you. We’re working toward doing more than just selling things here at the bakery. We make desserts for special events. And supply cakes for parties, weddings. And we’re working on packaging some of our baked goods and getting them in stores. And in various showrooms. So what you see up front is only a small sampling of what happens here.”

  He gestured back toward the dining area, because he wanted a chance to speak to her without Violet in earshot. She caught his meaning, and led the way back out of the kitchen. He showed himself back into the main room, grateful to get the counter between them. “You seem really busy. I really appreciate you taking the time to train Violet. It doesn’t seem like you would have a lot to spare.”

  “I don’t. But, even though there were a few people back there, I’m actually short-staffed right now. And anyway, I’m kind of in the business of training women for the workforce.”

  “Really?”

  She nodded definitively. “Yeah,” she said, “that’s what I do. I mean, in addition to baking kick-ass pies.”

  “I’ll take two,” he said.

  “Two?”

  “Pies. Kick-ass pies.”

  “Which kind?”

  He lifted a shoulder. “The kind that kicks the most ass?”

  “That seems subjective.”

  He really was out of practice with the flirting thing. Of course, he didn’t want to flirt with her. No, what he wanted to do was throw her down on the nearest flat surface and deal with all of the pent-up sexual energy that was roaring through his body. And he shouldn’t want to do any of that.

  “Well, in your opinion.”

  “Okay,” she said, making her way over to the pastry case and frowning. The concentration she was putting into selecting the right pie was a little too fascinating for him. He liked the way her eyebrows pleated together, that little crease it made in her forehead. The way her full lips pulled down at the corners.

  She had been wearing makeup last night. A bright tint over the natural s
kin tone on her mouth. But he liked it better now. A soft wash of pale pink. He wanted to taste it. Wanted to bite it.

  “I’m ready to go.”

  He looked up, in the middle of thinking about how he wanted to bite Alison’s lip, to see his daughter coming out of the kitchen. Well, that was a great underscore to the first specific sexual fantasy he’d had in about a million years.

  “Okay,” he said, “I’m just getting pie.”

  “That’s all I’ve eaten for three days,” Violet said.

  “If you’re whining about pie now, then you really can’t be helped.”

  Violet treated him to a shrug that he had a feeling looked like the gesture he’d just made. “Maybe I don’t want to be.”

  “Fine. Eat a salad and be sad. I’m going to eat pie.”

  Alison walked over to the register and punched in the code. “Employee discount,” she said.

  Violet frowned. “You don’t have to do that. Especially since I ruined that last cake.”

  “I’m the one paying for this,” Cain said, “maybe consider that before you reject my discount.”

  “I already told you, Violet,” Alison said, “the cake isn’t a big deal. It’s part of learning.”

  Surprisingly, Violet smiled. An expression that looked both genuine and not sullen. “Thanks,” his daughter said, modulating her tone into something much softer than he’d heard in at least a year.

  “Lemon meringue and blackberry,” Alison said, looking at him.

  “Lemon meringue is my favorite.”

  Her cheeks turned pink, and he had to admit he enjoyed that. Enjoyed the idea that she wasn’t any more immune to him than he was to her. Even if it was futile, it was a nice feeling. “Good. That’s... Good.”

  “Nice to meet you,” he said. “Ready?” He directed that question at Violet.

  Violet already had her phone out and was texting someone. She looked up just for a moment, just long enough to give him a dry look. “I said I was.”