The Copper Valley Bro Code Series: Volume 1, page 77
“She likes baking cookies best,” Mama tells me. “Sugar cookies. The joy is in the decorating.”
Amy nods to the kitchen. “If you’ll let me, I’ll prove it.”
“Um…I need to check your references quick.”
She hides another smile behind her coffee mug. “By all means.”
I duck into the kitchen and text Grady. Amy Tanaka?
His response is almost immediate. I hate her. Mostly because I spent four years wanting to BE her. She’s the only person in the world who can out-bake me.
Such ego. Only one person in the world who can out-bake him.
My phone buzzes again with a new message.
It’s not egotistical if it’s true.
It won’t be true for long.
Not if Bailey keeps up her pace.
But we have a few years before Bailey’s ready to fully take over. So I lean out of the kitchen and gesture Amy back.
Her son stays with Mama while Bailey shoots me a what the hell is this? look.
Amy stops in the kitchen doorway, her gaze sweeping over the complete and utter disaster of dirty dishes, spilled flour, splashed grease, oven door half-open, Roger grunting under the leaky sink, and she smiles. “This kitchen is loved.”
“Not necessarily by me,” I mutter.
She laughs. “So that’s the story. Show me to your vanilla, and I’ll prep you some scones that’ll change your world.”
Bailey darts into the kitchen. “What are you doing?” she asks me.
“Interview.”
Bailey looks Amy up and down.
Amy does the same to Bailey.
“Where are you from?” Bailey asks.
“Bailey,” I hiss.
“Virginia Beach. My grandparents are from Japan. Where are you from?”
“I’m from Sarcasm and my family tree is full of branches from all over the world that fell off, and good riddance. I don’t care where your grandparents are from. I just wanted to make sure you weren’t from Shipwreck. Is that your kid sitting with my mama?”
“She’s going back to school next week,” I tell Amy quickly.
I need a baker.
I need a baker who gets along with Bailey, but first, I need a baker.
“That’s my son,” Amy tells her. “Baxter.”
“Does he bake?”
“Not yet. Do you?”
Bailey looks at me. “I don’t know. Do I bake, Annika?”
“She’s the queen baker around here,” I tell Amy. “And way more agreeable than she comes off at first.”
“Food Network?” Amy asks, ignoring me.
“YouTube and Pinterest first,” Bailey replies.
“Internet generation.” She rolls her eyes.
“This is our bakery,” Bailey says.
“I can teach you how to make chocolate croissants that will make your enemies weep, and if I wanted to actually have the trouble of owning my own bakery, I’d be taking over the Madison Towers Hotel in Copper Valley right now. Marry the first time for money. Divorce settlements are way better so you can enjoy the hell out of it when you finally find love. Or so I assume. I don’t have actual proof that real love exists.”
Bailey’s lips part, and she shoots me another look.
This one clearly says she can’t decide if she’s impressed, intimidated, or scared.
“Also, I’m sorry you can’t do this with your mom,” Amy adds quietly. “I know that sucks.”
Bailey blinks. Her eyes go shiny, she blinks again, and she turns and leaves the kitchen.
“I lost my mom to a car accident three weeks before graduation.” Amy’s voice is even softer now. “Failed my final exams. Instructors said a good baker could work through pain. Would’ve failed my practicum, except Grady bailed my ass out. He deserved that number one spot. And here he is, bailing me out again when my life turns to shit.”
I’m still not usually a hugger.
But I wrap my arms around her anyway.
I don’t need the scones to know.
We just got ourselves a baker.
41
Grady
I’m on my couch, Sue passed out with his snout in my lap, watching the Fireballs play their first home game in a week and a half and nodding off over an empty bowl of Lucky Charms topped with chocolate milk when I hear the sound of tires crunching over the gravel behind my house.
I don’t think anything of it, because the athlete’s foot spray commercial between innings is blending into the dream I’m drifting into about Sue trying out to be the new Fireballs mascot, which entails him shooting flaming boogers out his nose.
I snort-laugh in my sleep and wake myself, but something’s not right.
There’s a weird tapping coming from the back door.
Sue grunts.
I figure it’s just the flowers, realize they don’t actually have fingers and mouths, and can’t tap dance across the sidewalk, much less tap on the back door, and I bolt upright just as the back door clicks open.
“’Lo?” I call.
“You found me a baker,” Annika whispers behind me, and I’m suddenly fully awake.
I leap up.
Sue falls off the couch and gives us both an earful until he sees Annika slipping in from the kitchen, and then he charges.
She laughs and scratches him all over the head while he tries to leap on her. “Aww, who’s a good boy? You’re a good boy, aren’t you?”
“You’re here,” I say, stating the obvious like a dumbass.
“You sent me a baker,” she repeats.
“I know one or two. Sometimes they’re looking for changes.”
The bags are heavy under her eyes, but everything else about her is sparkling. She straightens, and her loose hair falls to land at nipple level. Her shoulders are relaxed, her spine straight, her joy shining.
Instead of her normal leggings, she’s in short jean shorts topped with a peach tank top that hugs her breasts and shows off her slender but strong arms.
And she’s in sandals.
With pink-tipped toes.
Pink.
Annika.
But it’s the giant smile curving her lush lips that sends me over the edge.
I did that.
I made her happy.
She gives Sue a final pat before closing the distance between us to wrap her arms around my neck. Our bodies line up, thigh to thigh, my suddenly aching cock against her soft belly, her round breasts pressed to my ribs.
“Hi,” she whispers while Sue prances around us.
“You’re so fucking gorgeous.”
“You are deliciously sexy when you’re tired.”
“I’m not tired.”
“Thank you for saving my bacon.”
I slide my hands around her waist to sink my fingers into her ass. “I like your bacon.”
Sue bleats in glee and prances in a circle around the living room.
Annika’s lips cover mine, and I just keep falling.
She snuck into enemy territory to come kiss me. To share her happiness.
To bury her fingers in my hair and stroke her tongue into my mouth and press her pelvis into my pirate mast.
I’m gonna marry this woman.
Swear I am.
And that’s before she pulls out of the kiss to lick her way down my jaw, her fingers trailing down my body to push my shorts down over my hips, freeing my erection.
“Annika—”
“Sshh.”
She drops to her knees, licks me from balls to tip, and my eyes cross.
“Maaa!” Sue cries.
“Bedroom,” Annika orders, and fuck me.
The goat dashes around the corner like he doesn’t want to watch.
“You—” I start, but she licks me again, and I forget how to use words.
“Somebody’s been a very good boy,” she whispers just before taking me into her mouth.
It’s bliss.
It’s bliss frosted on a cupcake of euphoria. A strangled moan catches in my throat. She hums on my cock, the vibrations making my hips jerk, and goosebumps break out over my entire body.
Her mouth is hot and wet, and she’s sucking me deeper, until I hit the back of her throat, and fuck, it’s heaven.
No barriers.
Her tongue rubs the underside of my dick. I fist my hands in her thick hair while she works me over, bobbing up and down, and it takes every ounce of control to not pump into her mouth.
My balls are tight. My cock is hard as steel.
Her fingers skim my ass and trail down my hamstrings, she hums again, and I grip her hair tighter in warning. “Annika—I’m gonna—”
Instead of letting me go, she sucks harder, and white-hot lightning streaks through me as I come down her throat.
She licks and sucks until I’ve spent everything I have in me, and doesn’t let go until my legs are wobbling. Her smile and sparkling eyes as she carefully tucks me back into my shorts are everything.
Everything.
“Sit,” she whispers.
My knees give out, and I tumble back onto the couch.
“Maaa?” Sue asks from the bedroom.
Annika swings a leg over my lap and settles on me, peppering soft kisses on my jaw while my tongue tries to remember how to form words.
My arms though—they’re doing good with remembering how to hold her.
“Thank you,” she whispers again.
“Thank you,” I manage.
“I can’t stay long. Bailey’s at volleyball try-outs and I have to pick her up in thirty minutes. But I wanted to see you.”
Her pussy is pressing into my crotch, and I’m getting hard again. “You’re welcome anytime.”
“I miss you.”
My grip around her tightens. “Right here, Annika.”
She doesn’t answer.
She doesn’t have to.
I know what she means.
She has to leave. I have to stay. And neither of us know when she’ll get her next break so we can sneak off together.
“Maaa?” Sue asks.
Annika laughs into my neck as the goat hops up onto the couch and tries to squeeze between us.
“Back, you crazy animal,” I tell him.
He licks my ear and sticks a hoof way too close to the goods.
“Sit,” Annika orders.
And the fucking goat sits.
“Are you kidding me?” I ask him.
He licks his nose, then snorts on me.
Annika laughs, right there in my arms, and yeah, I’d let my goat snort on me every day if that’s what it took to hear that music.
I’d find her a new baker every day too.
Anything to make her happy.
Anything.
She’s everything that’s been missing from my life the last ten years.
All of her. Her drive. Her dedication.
Her family.
Her chaos.
She’s my happiness.
And I’m going to do my damnedest to be her happiness too.
42
Annika
I’ve never been at a television studio before, and after today, I don’t know that I’ll ever want to be in one again.
They have a kitchen set up with two work stations, so Grady and I are physically separated on the set.
And then there are the three bajillion cameras aimed at us from all angles, the makeup they insisted on slathering on our faces—Mama’s too—and the small obligatory crowd sitting in like we’re on a talk show, but not a big one.
I’m sweating harder than I did during basic training ten years ago, and I haven’t even screwed anything up yet.
“How are you feeling about your chances of beating the Crow’s Nest team today?” Star Knightly asks me while Amy and Bailey fly around our workstation prepping me for making killer brownie donuts.
“Chance isn’t something I dabbled with in the Army,” I tell Star. “Preparation and war planning, though…” I shrug, even though I feel like a total ass saying exactly what Grady and I talked about saying when discussing all the smack-talk. “Let’s just say we’ve got this.”
She smiles.
I’m pretty sure she eats conflict for breakfast.
But I might not be blowing smoke about having this contest in the bag. Or at least I won’t embarrass myself. We’ve done seven dry runs, and I’ve actually turned out three batches of edible baked goods now.
I can make killer brownie donuts that we’ll decorate with unicorn horns and the special white chocolate Duh-Nuts logo that we made with a mold Amy talked us into last week.
She’s an angel.
An angel who can cook and who’s taken so much pressure off of Bailey—and me—and who’s getting along fabulously with Mama, who’s starting to experiment with some new measuring tools that her mobility specialist found for her so she can do more than knead dough and roll cookie balls.
She’s seated at the end of the counter where I’ll be working, eyes shielded from the bright lights by her special sunglasses, proudly wearing a Duh-Nuts T-shirt in lavender, her face turning this way and that, and I imagine she’s trying to catch snippets of conversations and sniff the brownie donut ingredients.
Roger, Liliana, and Birch are in our section of the stands to cheer us on.
Grady and Georgia are prepping their own station across the kitchen while his family lurks nearby.
Grady’s grandparents, in full pirate regalia. His parents. Tillie Jean. Cooper.
Sue.
He brought Sue.
I give myself a minute to imagine that halfway through the contest, Grady drops his bowls and spoons and rolling pin and announces to the world that he’s bowing out, not because he can’t win, but because he loves me and that’s worth more than any bakery.
And I’d drop my killer brownie donuts and rush past the judges’ tables—where there are some seriously intimidating judges—to throw myself at him, kiss him passionately, and tell him that I quit the contest too, because he’s worth more than chocolate.
I don’t know where we’d live, because Mama can’t live by herself, and Bailey still thinks Grady is the devil, and he’s probably right that everyone would lose interest in coming into our bakeries for gossip because he made me cheesecake isn’t nearly as juicy as he stole our galaxy donuts and made them rainbow donuts.
But I wouldn’t have to sneak over to his house under cover of night like I have every night for the last week.
We could go on dates.
Take Mama to Cannon Bowl in Shipwreck, because their bumpers are new and she had so much fun bowling last weekend at the game center just outside Snyderville, except for the part where the bumpers broke and she got too many gutter balls.
Grady could come over and cook us dinner while Bailey plays fetch with Sue.
I could bake cookie bricks and offer to feed them to Pop’s parrot if he doesn’t clean up his language, though I suspect Sue would actually enjoy them.
The softball rivalry next summer could be fun instead of mean.
We could unite the two towns.
We could be not a fucking secret.
Bakeries be damned.
“Annika?”
I blink at Star.
She just asked me a question. I think.
Shit.
“Yes?”
She looks over at Grady’s crew, then back at me. “You two were best friends,” she says.
I’m supposed to say Yeah, we WERE, but I don’t want to talk smack about Grady.
I want to tell her that he gives the best neck rubs in Virginia.
That he insists on 2% chocolate milk instead of whole, because he has to run two fewer miles a week to keep in shape if he cuts out the whole milk.
That sometimes he falls asleep with his goat on his couch, and if I could put that picture I snapped of them three nights ago as the background on my phone, I’d basically have a permanent smile on my face.
But instead, I say something Amy has coached me on. “Yes, we’re making killer brownie donuts. It’s an original Duh-Nuts recipe, served with fresh whipped cream and a salted caramel truffle, because there’s no such thing as too much of a good thing. You really went all-out with the judges, and I’m having a complete brain fart about who they all are, because cameras make me nervous.”
Dammit.
That’ll undoubtedly make the cut for the show news, but it’s better than me calling Grady names.
I don’t want to call him names.
He’s talked me off six ledges this past week, and given me three times that many orgasms.
At least.
Star and I both look at the judges’ table, where there are two men roughly the size of mountains poking at each other over the head of a third man who would be impressively sized if he weren’t between the twins.
Although the middle guy’s chin cleft keeps sparkling when the light hits him right, which is weird.
And the twins are weirdly familiar. I think I’ve seen them on commercials for deodorant or jock itch cream or Sharpies.
Sharpies?
Why am I thinking of Sharpies?
Anyway.
At the other table, there are two women—I think one’s a billionaire, but not Honey Wellington, who was disqualified from judging since she moved to Sarcasm, which is taking sides, obviously, just like Cooper judging would’ve been—and there’s another guy who’s also familiar, but I can’t place why.
“You don’t recognize the Berger twins?” Star asks me.
I look back at the two identical mountains and shake my head.
“Professional hockey players,” she tells me. “They’re doing a charity golf fundraiser here in Copper Valley tomorrow, so we talked them into stopping here this morning before the festivities kick off. Zeus and Ares, with Chase Jett between them. He owns an organic grocery store chain. No pressure or anything, of course.”
I croak out an answer, because impressing a billionaire grocery store owner could mean capital investment for expanding operations and setting Bailey up to run a Duh-Nuts empire with her creations mass-produced and distributed around the nation, and oh my god, I need a paper bag.
Star points to the other table. “Then we have Daisy Carter-Kincaid. You’ve surely heard of her.”
Only because Liliana squealed my ear off in Duh-Nuts yesterday. Daisy Carter-Kincaid!! She’s one of Honey’s sort-of friends. She’s so fucking awesome. Wouldn’t YOU love to have a private jet that takes you to Europe for flings with Frenchmen and Spaniards all the time? I swear, I want to be her when I grow up. Plus—oh my god, her fashion sense. It’s so DAISY. And she gives negative fucks. That’s better than no fucks, you know?
