Miracle Pie (6 page)

“Perfect,” Taz said.

Gabe shrugged. No one was perfect. Taz would
know that in a few years. But who wanted perfect? That would bore
him.

“It’s good,” he said.

“You’re not bad, either.” Taz grinned at
him.

“I like being behind the camera. Now, shut
up and watch.”

Rosa went back to the table, and Katie
started again, flubbing her intro, the first syllable out of her
mouth the dreaded
uh
. Gabe heard himself telling her to make
her voice looser, and she spoke in a breathy voice, saying she
didn’t tell her lovers how to make a pie.

His body tightened.

Jesus, she was good.

She started again without the
uh
. Not
great, not bad. Not a ball of fire like Rachel Ray, but it didn’t
matter, he couldn’t take his eyes off her.

It wasn’t a surprise. Just looking at the
picture his uncle sent him had made his heart beat faster. But he’d
promised himself he wouldn’t mix business with pleasure again as he
did with Cherise. A bad idea, making those kind of promises. He was
like a kid spotting a ball in the grouchy neighbor’s yard. Knowing
he wasn’t supposed to play with it, but unable to stop himself.

That kid had been him.

As a kid, the more untouchable it was, the
more he wanted to touch.

He’d thought he’d gotten over it.

Shutting off his thoughts, he paid attention
to the video. Katie relaxed a bit more the next take. Then again.
And again. And again. In her quiet way, she commanded his
attention. Not just his, either. Taz slid to the edge of his seat,
his head inches from Gabe’s so he could see the screen better.

And then the cooking scene ended, and
anticipation built inside Gabe.

This was what he’d been waiting for. He
heard his own voice asking “...why pies?”

His breath sucked in.

“Pies are love,” she said...and the look on
her face, as if she were transcendent, made his heart thunder.

He gripped the wood chair arms and watched
her, transfixed. Not able to take his gaze from the screen.

When it was over, he sat back, dazed. He
slowly turned to look at Taz. Wondering if the younger, cooler
friend looked as stunned as he did.

“You might have a winner,” Taz said,
grinning. Not dazed but seeing the screen magic.

“Not me. Them.” Gabe jerked his head at the
laptop, as if tiny people lived inside it instead of tiny pixels.
Rosa had hired him to make the video. That was all. She’d planned
from the beginning to shop it around herself. Not a good idea, but
he saw her point. Who cared more about her success?

“Rosa might sell this after all,” he said.
“The two of them...they’re special.”

“Could be. But I bet they aren’t the only
hot chick duo with no credentials shopping their show around.” Taz
stood. “That last bit with Katie, that was different. That was
hot.”

Gabe didn’t answer. Staring at the frozen
image of Katie on the laptop monitor, relief on her face that the
filming was over.

In his mind, an idea bubbled up.

He pushed up from the chair then lowered
back into it. Katie had said she’d be busy. If she got up so early
in the morning, she might be in bed now. This could wait until late
tomorrow morning.

Much better to see her when she was wide
awake with her brain fully functioning before talking her into
changing her life.

Chapter Nine

“I want you to see something.” The intensity
in Gabe’s eyes made Katie’s breath hitch. “Something that could
change your life.”

Katie blinked at him. This was the second
morning she had an angel in her kitchen, though she suspected he
had the devil in him. An angel wouldn’t make her skin warm from the
inside out and her fingertips tingle.

“It’s very odd.” She eyed the laptop he was
holding.

His smile bloomed. So did a wave of heat and
confusion inside her, but she kept her attention on his face.

“What’s odd?” he asked.

“It’s odd that every time the doorbell rings
lately, it’s someone who wants to change my life. I’m only doing
this cooking show thing to help Rosa. I like my life as it is.” Her
hands curled as she looked up at him. She half expected him to use
his charm on her.

Instead he went still, as if he were
processing what she said. As if he really listened to her.

“Who said I wanted to change your life?”

She shook her head, unable to answer, but
her skin prickled. This man was about to jerk her out of her
comfortable life. She didn’t know why, but she was as sure of it as
she was sure Happy loved her from the tip of her moist nose to the
end of her waving tail.

“I don’t want you to do anything you don’t
want to,” he said, finally breaking the silence.

A laugh and a cry struggled inside her. He
was good at this. As if he knew her mind and emotions the way she
knew pies.

And she...right now she felt like uncooked
pie dough. “Okay, I’ll listen to you.”

He nodded, as if this was serious stuff.
“I’ll listen to you, too.”

If this were the Victorian age, she thought,
she might swoon. But she was no Victorian lady wearing
swoon-inducing stays, though he was certainly swoon-worthy. “Would
you like anything to drink?” She stepped back and hit the counter
with her butt. “Coffee or tea? Pie?”

“Pie,” he said, no hesitation.
“Pumpkin?”

She laughed and heard the breathlessness in
it again. She really needed to stop that. If she kept this up, she
might as well lie on the kitchen table and say, “
Take me
now.
”

“You finished the pie already?”

“Not alone. Taz helped me. To keep him from
eating my half, I had to threaten to break his fingers.”

She stepped away from the counter, grateful
to find her legs were steady. He loved her pie. Of course, everyone
did, but his appreciation seemed to mean more. “Today’s pie is
banana cream.”

His face lit up. “My favorite.”

She crossed to the fridge, not surprised.
Just as she hadn’t been surprised to see him when she opened the
back door. This morning when she’d been making pies for her
deliveries, she’d had a sudden urge to make a banana cream pie.
She’d known then that it was for Gabe. She’d known he was going to
come to her house and eat a piece.

“Tea or coffee?” she asked. She couldn’t
tell him any of that. He’d think she was crazy.

Gabe opted for coffee. A moment later they
sat at the table, digging into their pies at the same time. He ate
his first bite slowly, eyes half closed, as if it were a sensory
experience.

She melted. Wanting to lean forward and kiss
his face, his neck...wanting to sit on his lap and feed him bites
of pie between kisses. She’d never seen anything sexier than the
way he looked eating her pie, as if it were the food of Gods.

“You made this from scratch, didn’t you?” he
asked.

She nodded. “Always. I like the real
thing.”

He stilled, his expression intense for a
second, his eyes brilliant. “When you do your own show, that’s what
you should call it, ‘The Real Thing.’”

“Isn’t that taken?” As soon as she said it,
she realized she should have denied any intention of doing her own
show.

“I’ll check to see if we can use it.”

“We? There is no
we
. And I don’t plan
on having my own show. For one thing, I promised to be on Rosa’s
show.”

“First she has to sell it.”

“If anyone can do it, she can.”

He took another bite of her pie. She watched
the bliss cross his face again, and she took another forkful of
hers. She closed her eyes, tasting the blend of vanilla, banana,
cream and sugar. Like a bite of heaven inside her mouth. Nothing
mattered except for the perfect flavors. Nothing.

Then she opened her eyes and saw that
everything mattered.

“How about ‘Pie Me to the Moon’?” she
asked.

He laughed. “Why not ‘Katie’s Pies’?”

She grimaced. He’d poked a sore spot.
“Someone has that name. I had to call my pie business ‘Katie’s
Miracle Pies.’”

“I like that.” His smile was back, his gaze
saying he liked a lot of things about her.

She turned back to her pie. Now she was
getting fanciful, imagining things in his gaze, though her life was
fanciful every day. How many people had pies that talked to them?
Whispering to her, telling her to make them?

He finished his pie first, but she finished
shortly after. Happy looked up at her expectantly. Happy had a long
memory back to when she first came as a puppy. Katie was young,
too, and not as strict then. But now she had to think about Happy’s
health. As much as she hated to deny Happy, she did.

Most of the time. A little crust couldn’t
hurt.

She got up and scraped crumbs into Happy’s
food bowl in the corner. Happy barely waited for Katie to step away
before she lunged forward and started licking.

When Katie turned to pick up Gabe’s clean
plate, he was watching her with an indulgent smile. The kind that
most people used watching children do something cute.

Not the reaction she wanted from him.

“She’s nineteen.” Katie heard the defensive
note in her voice. “And she loves my pies.”

“That’s ancient for a dog. Maybe your pies
are magic.”

Katie felt her eyes widen, but she walked
forward because it was silly to think that...and she couldn’t admit
to him how often she believed it was true.

“Do you need a warm up?” She gestured to his
mug.

“I’m good.” He set his laptop on the table
and opened it. “We need to do this.”

“Actually, we don’t need to do
anything.”

He attached a USB cord to the computer and
the other end to the outlet two feet from the table before raising
his head. “People are going to love you.”

“People already love me.” Her dad, she
thought. And Happy. Though Happy wasn’t exactly people, she
mattered. So did her dad’s dog, Tuck. Katie was Number Two in
Tuck’s doggy heart that was technically veins and arteries and
muscle, but in reality was 100% love.

The barn cats had affection for her because
she often changed their water and fed them, and she petted all the
cats that came up to her.

Her mother sent her a birthday card every
year and signed it Love, Raelyn.

Rosa loved Katie as a friend. Perhaps a few
other women had
friend love
for her, though her best friend
wasn’t answering her calls anymore, and she didn’t know why.

Three men had professed love to her, but
none recently. It had been awhile since she’d had a desire to date.
She knew every single guy in town and quite a few in the
neighboring communities. Lately she’d begun to wonder whether she
was asexual.

Until now.

“More people will love you,” Gabe said.
“People you don’t even know.” The laptop on the table lit up.

“Until another show comes along,” she shot
back.

His eyebrow arched. “You’re tougher than you
look.”

“And proud of it.”

He laughed softly. “You should be proud of
this. Just a minute, I’ll bring it up.”

As she waited, she gazed at his profile and
his lingering half smile. He was a smiler, with dimples in his
cheeks and tiny crinkles that fanned out from the corners of his
eyes. She liked that. Liked too many things about him.

He was her pie, she thought. Why him, she
didn’t know. From the first time she saw him, it was like puzzle
pieces clicking together.

But the problem with puzzle pieces was they
had to fit in with all the other pieces to make the whole picture.
And she didn’t see how that was going to happen.

“Here.” He angled the laptop so she could
see the screen then scooted his chair next to hers, close enough
for her to smell him. She breathed his scent in. Like nutmeg...only
nothing like nutmeg.

A shiver went through her, and she leaned
toward the laptop and saw her image on the screen, wearing a green
apron and staring back at her. Her eyes were wide and her smile
looked like a frightened grimace. Then she started to recite the
script she’d clearly memorized, her voice and body language stiff,
as if she were in fifth grade again, reading a poem in front of
class.

Gabe bent over the keyboard. Mumbling that
he didn’t want to show the cooking part, he fast-forwarded to the
end of the show. The video moved again at regular speed. She stood
behind the counter but he was the one talking on the video, asking,
“Tell us, why pies? Why not cakes or cookies or cupcakes?”

He must have edited Rosa’s objections out,
because she was wrinkling her nose then leaning over the counter
and saying, “Pies are love.”

His on-screen voice laughed softly. “Tell me
how pies can be love.”

Sitting next to her tormentor as she watched
the screen, Katie groaned and laughed and covered her eyes and then
uncovered them. Finally, the video ended, freezing with her bemused
face looking back at her.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” She couldn’t think, as if
banana cream pie filling was clogging up her brain cells.

He twisted in the chair, so close she could
see three shades of blue in his eyes. See that his eyelashes were
golden brown, darker than his hair. Close enough that she could
lean forward and kiss him.

She drew in her breath.

“I thought it was great,” he said. “So did
Taz. Viewers will love it.”

“You mean...” She sat back in her chair and
shook her head. Shaking the thought of kissing him right out of her
mind.

“I can’t promise it will go viral, but I can
promise a lot of views. Not with just this one—we’d have to do a
series of similar videos to build your viewers. We can do it.
You’re passionate about pies. People love passion. They can get
recipes anywhere, but what you have is unique. They’ll love you.
They’ll want to watch you. They’ll tell their friends about
you.”