“Doesn’t matter,” Dane said, walking into the kitchen. Everything about him was controlled, from the precision of his short black hair to his clipped vocabulary.
Noah laughed a little. “Right.”
Dane frowned on his way to the fridge. “What?”
“What do you mean ‘what’?” Noah asked. “You saw her.”
“And?” Dane removed a beer and twisted off the top.
“And she’s hot,” Noah said.
Knew it.
“So?”
Noah rolled his eyes, and Dane scowled at the cookie dough in the mixing bowl.
“You’re making cookies?” he asked.
“I thought Avery might want some comfort food.”
I was going to put the cookies in the oven, then start on homemade mac and cheese. Cooking wasn’t my forte — baking was my jam, thanks to Evelyn, who’d taught me everything she knew — but I did an okay job with the basics.
Noah lifted his eyebrows. “You think cookies will make up for the fact that she found a dead body in the gazebo?”
“On her first day?” Dane added. “Her firsthour?”
I looked at the bowl of cookie dough and second-guessed my instincts.
Nope, my instincts were correct. Avery needed cookies.
And mac and cheese.
“Yep,” I said, pulling two baking sheets down from the cupboard.
“How is this going to work?” Noah asked.
I started dropping balls of dough onto one of the cookie sheets. “How’s what going to work?”
“Avery,” Noah said. “Living here. With us.”
He reached into the bowl of cookie dough and I smacked his hand away. “No. And get off the counter.”
He loved sitting on the counter, but I’d never dared to order him off it when Evelyn had been alive. The house had been her domain, and she’d been fine with Noah’s casual quirks, his weird way of talking to plants and the way he claimed to know which parts of the lawn needed a “break” from foot traffic even when it all looked the same.
Evelyn had been fine with everything: with Dane’s attitude and the way he hardly ever used more than two words to ask or answer a question and with all my quirks too.
The house felt empty without her. We were still trying to adjust to the new normal: no Evelyn with her deep laughter and easy conversation, no Evelyn to keep us polite with nothing more than a stern glance.
Even in her eighties Evelyn Whitaker had been sharp-witted and funny, and the house was a real drag without her. Dane, Noah, and I had been orbiting each other like silent satellites, Dane managing the finances for the house and the bakery, calling repair people when required while Noah maintained the lawn and gardens and I kept the bakery running and the house clean.
I was beginning to realize things were going to change. It felt like an us and them moment, or more accurately, anusandhermoment.
There was us — Dane, Noah, and I — on one side of the equation, and Avery Hart, the hot new arrival — our boss, technically — on the other.
“So?” Noah asked, breaking into my thoughts.
I slid the first two trays of cookies into the oven. “So what?”