physical contact. But something had changed between them and she couldn’t deny it.
“Thanks,” she said in a practically normal-sounding voice. “You have my cell number if there’s a problem, right?”
“Right.”
She could feel him watching her as she yanked open the door. Rex bounded toward her and she almost forgot about Brice. She knelt down to give his head a good rubbing. “It was very nice meeting you, boy. I’ll bring some muffins tomorrow. Is that all right by you?”
Rex lapped her cheek and panted in perfect agreement.
She had one foot over the threshold when Brice’s voice called her back. “See you tomorrow, Ava. And thanks for sharing a cup of coffee with me.”
Coffee. That made her screech to a total halt. Her mind sat there, idling. Wasn’t that what he’d wanted to do in the beginning? He’d wanted to get to know her over a cup of coffee.
And he had.
She wanted to leap to the quick conclusion that she’d been tricked. But it wasn’t that simple. She’d been the one to bring the coffee in the first place. It was her coffee, her kitchen, her renovation project. It was her heart she had to hold on to as she took the other step through the door and closed Brice Donovan from her sight.
Chapter Five
Ava burst through the employee’s entrance door in the back of the Corner Christian Bookstore. The big problem? Her oldest sister was heating a cup of tea in the break room’s microwave and she had that look. The one where she frowned, shook her head slowly from side to side as if this was exactly what she expected.
“Oops, I’m late.” Ava slid the bakery box onto the small battered Formica table. “My bad. But I brought chocolate.”
“That doesn’t begin to make up for it.” The corner of Katherine’s mouth twitched, as if she were holding back a smile. “What am I going to do with you?”
“Nothing. I’m your little sister and you love me.”
“Not at much as Aubrey,” she teased. “Aubrey showed up twenty-three minutes early for her shift.”
“True.” Aubrey appeared from the other doorway that led to the floor. “I smell doughnuts. The doughnuts that were missing from our kitchen this morning. I came back from the stables and had nothing to eat. You didn’t have to take every last one with you.”
“Hey, the real question is why would you walk by a kitchen full of boxed doughnuts and not take any in the first place?” With a wink, Ava shoved open the small employee’s closet and dumped her bag on the floor.
“What could have possessed me, I wonder?” Aubrey flipped open the box and stole a chocolate huckleberry custard. “The construction dudes were—”
“Cool. Loved the doughnuts. Started beating down walls with their sledgehammer thingies right away.” Ava grabbed a cup from the upper cabinet and filled it from the sink tap.
Don’t think of Brice, she ordered herself. Too late. There he was in her mind’s eye. Standing in her kitchen, looking like a good man, radiating character. Normally, she’d be so interested, but if she let herself like him, that would be just another huge mistake in a long, endless string of disasters.
Don’t start wishing now, she told herself, letting her big sister Katherine take the mug from her hands and slip it into the microwave to heat.
“You look down,” Katherine commented as she added honey to her steaming teacup, her engagement ring sparkling. “That can’t be good. This is your first day of renovation. You should be excited. What’s going on?”
“Uh-oh.” Aubrey had a twin moment.
Great. Somehow she had telebeamed her thoughts to her twin; they seemed to share brain cells. Ava felt the humiliation creeping through her all over again. “Don’t say it. Let’s just not go into it.”
Ava could sense Katherine’s question hovering in the air unspoken between them, wanting to know what was wrong and how she could help. Dear Katherine meant well, wanting to take care of everyone and fixing what she could, but what do you do when you know there’s no solution to a problem?
You refocus yourself, that’s what, and concentrate on preventing disasters. There was Brice Donovan again, flashing across her brain pan. Definitely disaster material.
Hayden, Katherine’s soon-to-be stepdaughter, poked her head around the door. “Hey, like, Spence is totally freaking out. There’s no one out there to ring up and stuff.”
“So? Our brother is always freaking out.”
“I’ll go,” Aubrey said. “I’m supposed to be watching the front anyway. I’ll take this with me, though.” With a grin she slipped past the teenager with her chocolate-covered doughnut in hand.
“Like that’s going to make Spence happy.” The kid shrugged her gangly shoulders. “Maple bars, too? Cool, Ava.”
“I knew they were your favorite, not that I like you or anything.” Ava hid her smile, knowing she wasn’t so successful.
Hayden grinned, snatched a doughnut. “Thanks!” she called over her shoulder as she disappeared back into the stacks.
Talk about weird. “Are you ready to be a stepmom?” Ava already knew the answer, but it was called a diversionary tactic. She so did not want to talk about her shop, her dreams, and how it had all gotten tangled up with Mr. Wishable. “You’ll be marrying Jack in two more months.”
“I know. Time is melting way and it feels as if I’m never going to have everything ready for the wedding.” Katherine waited for the microwave to ding. She opened the door, dropped a tea bag into the steaming water and left it on the counter to steep. “But I’m more than ready to be a stepmom. Hayden is a part of Jack. How could I not love her? Speaking of which, how are the designs for my cake coming along?”
Okay, another topic to avoid. “I’m working on it. Honest.”
“I have all the faith in the world in you, sweetie.”
Wasn’t that the problem? “I’ve got some great sketches, but I’ve got a few more ideas I want to work out before we sit back down.”
“Do you know what we should do?” Katherine pushed the plastic bear-shaped bottle of honey along the counter. “We’ll all go out to a nice dinner, my treat. To celebrate.”
“Celebrate what?”
Katherine shook her head, as if she couldn’t believe it. “The first day of construction on your shop? This has been your dream forever, right?”
“I can’t tonight. I have a consultation. Maybe later, though? Besides, you’re just in a good mood because you’ve found Mr. Dream Come True. Not everyone is as lucky.” She didn’t mean to sound wistful, really. She was deeply
