I returned the smile, holding her gaze, and she blushed and dipped her head. I cleared my throat and got to work setting myself up to observe her. I was truly grateful for her allowing me to do this, and I had no intentions of making a nuisance of myself.
For the most part.
I was extremely attracted to Piper, and I wasn’t going to sit and look pretty in the corner. I wasn’t going to lie and say I didn’t have an ulterior motive for being here aside from my book, but I wanted her to actually like me.
I really wasn’t a bad person, despite my reputation.
I also wasn’t a playboy like the media made me out to be. I had no more one-night stands than the average person, but since my last book had been opted for a movie, I’d become stupidly interesting to the media.
They hadn’t yet found me in Montana, and I hoped it would stay that way.
Until my book published, of course. I’d have to fucking move before that, given that I was giving Piper credit.
Not that I cared.
She was doing me a huge favor. A paid favor, but a favor all the same.
I plugged my laptop into the outlet on the leg of the table and booted it up. Piper was already uncovering a huge mixing bowl of something and pulling it out onto the table, and I peered over the top of the screen to watch her.
She molded it like it was nothing more than kid dough, working it with her nimble hands until it was the size she wanted, then she cut it into equal sized pieces.
Bread rolls.
Genius.
Piper side-eyed me. “Bread rolls. Bread dough needs to rise, and I realized early on that it saved a ton of time if I baked the dough in the afternoon and left it to slowly rise overnight. People love our loaves of bread, and we offer four different types every day. White and brown are standard, and I call sell at least six of each a day, so batch matching the dough streamlines the process and means I can easily put it in the oven on a morning.”
“That much, really?”
She nodded. “Not so many rolls, but it’s the same principal. Being ahead helps. After everything for the morning is in, I can make more dough for things like bread that I know we can sell out of. Usually, by the time it sells out, I’ve got more loaves in the oven and people happily come back later.”
“That makes a lot of sense. Very smart.”
“Thank you.” She put a tray of rolls in an oven. “It’s not such a big deal for cake or pastry mixtures since they can go right in, but I like to get some done at the end of the day so I’m not under pressure on a morning. It just makes things more streamlined.”
I typed that out in a document on my laptop, albeit a very abbreviated version. “It’s a lot of work.”
“Sure is. Anything that makes it easier is a plus, to be honest. I don’t make all this—Felicity does some, too. You spoke to her yesterday.”
“Sure did. Pink and purple braids?”
“That’s her. Her mom owns the café in town and wanted to buy this place when it was available.”
“Isn’t that awkward?”
“Not really.” She put several bread pans in the oven and moved to clean the surface. “It was a closed auction, and I won. The worst part was asking Johanna if she minded me poaching her daughter.”
“Did she?”
“Not that she said,” she continued, and I could tell she was working purely on instinct as she pulled a stack of muffin trays toward us. “Here, put these cases in these.”
“Yes, boss.” I took the cases from her. “Anything else?”
“One case at a time. Just pay attention.” She winked. “No, Felicity’s dream has always been to bake. She did the few baked goods at the café, so Johanna wanted to buy the bakery for her to eventually run. I know she didn’t enjoy losing her daughter to what is technically a competitor for her, but she also wants Felicity to do well and achieve her dreams, so it worked out well for us all.”
I slid a finished tray over to her. “It was good of you to hire her.”
She shrugged. “I needed someone who could bake. She can bake. It’s just that simple.”
I had no response to that, so I got on with the job she’d assigned me. She occasionally gave me a nugget of advice that I quickly tapped into my laptop midway through dropping the cases into the trays.
The kitchen was rich with the various smells of baking. The bread was a particularly fucking delicious one, and when Piper combined that with her pastries and muffins, there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to stop my stomach rumbling.