Chute Yeah (The Valentine Boys 3)

“She hasn’t even had any pancakes yet,” Ace said, noticing my empty hands. “So, this was all Codie. And she’s allowed to eat what she wants seeing as she lives here, fucker.”

Darby rolled his eyes and pulled three perfectly formed pancakes onto an empty plate.

“Just sayin’,” he said. “Food is important to me. It’s my only solid relationship.”

My lips twitched.

“Want some pancakes, Candy?” Desi asked.

I opened my mouth to decline when Banks answered for me. “Yes, she does.”

I snapped my mouth shut.

Because he was right.

I did want some.

Desi was a phenomenal cook, and if she wanted to offer up some of her pancakes, I would be a fool to tell her no.

Banks let me go and went to the plates, selecting two before handing me one.

“Take as many as you want,” he ordered.

I took two.

He added one more, then took four for himself.

I bit my lip as he guided me through the kitchen, stopping to add butter to both my stack and his, before guiding me to the table.

He held out the chair for me and I sat, feeling something deep inside of me start to flutter with anticipation.

“You’re looking mighty excited there, Sunshine,” Darby said, observing me from across the table.

“If these pancakes are half as good as the rest of her food,” I said. “Then they’re going to be life-changing.”

Desi snorted from the other side of the room.

“Sadly, these are from the box. I didn’t have time this morning to get creative,” Desi called from across the room.

I doubted they’d be bad.

“And why is that?” Callum teased her.

Desi’s face flushed. “Because someone doesn’t understand the concept of time management.”

Callum looked unrepentant, and honestly, kind of proud of himself.

I snickered.

“There was this one time last week that she allowed the bottom of one of her scones to get this side of crispy,” I said to the room at large. “She refused to sell them to the customers because they were wrong. I waited until she was delivering our deposit to the bank and sold them anyway. Nobody noticed. But I can honestly inform you that she is very picky about how her food comes out.”

Desi gasped. “I was wondering where that batch went!”

I shrugged. “I didn’t see any reason to throw them away, to be honest.”

Desi wrinkled her nose.

It was cute.

Moving until I was comfortable, and not too close to Banks, I dug in.

There was no out of the box taste to the pancakes. In fact, I hadn’t ever had anything that tasted so good, and I was a regular at Desi’s pastry counter.

“Who’s opening today?” Desi asked.

I looked over at Darby.

“She who shall not be named.”

Darby choked on a pancake and glared at me.

“Good,” Desi said. “Are you going in at all?”

I nodded once. “Yes. I’m going after I visit a couple more job sites after this one. I’ll be closing.”

Desi looked torn.

“What?” I asked around a mouthful of pancakes.

“I think that you should consider doing the half days like we talked about over dinner,” she said. “I know that you were kind of on the edge about it, but the more I think about it, the better I think it’ll work out for when, further down the road, we decide to have families and stuff.

I nodded once.

That, I could see.

For her, anyway.

When she had babies, she wouldn’t want to be getting up at oh-dark-thirty to bake. She’d want to be spending that time with her kids.

“I keep telling her to drop the pastries altogether,” Callum said as he licked his fingers free of stray syrup. “And you know you were talking about just selling the coffee. And if you dropped down to only that, you could drop the licensing that you need to serve food and drinks.”

Now that sounded like heaven, and my plan all along.

But when Desi had come to me with the idea of the coffee shop, I’d been so excited to finally have my way out, that I hadn’t considered the consequences of the rest of what she suggested.

“That’s what I want to do,” I admitted. “That’s really what I want to do.”

“Then it’s settled,” Callum said. “Drop the pastries and the coffee. Sell the display cases. Sell only coffee beans and ground coffee. She works out of the back on her special-order items. Win-win for everybody.”

“Then you can allow that girl,” Darby said, “to open or close or find someone else to open or close since you won’t need someone cooking and supervising. And you can help your father out more when he needs it.”

I turned to look at Darby.

“When did you get so smart?” I wondered.

“I also have another suggestion, though I’m thinking about not expressing them since Banks is so close to me,” he continued.

Now that intrigued me.

“What?” I pushed.

Banks growled. “Don’t.”

“You know it would solve some other things, too.”

“What’s going on?” I pushed.