Baking for Keeps Page 9

  “The real question is?” Lacey reminded her.

  Aunt Priscilla swallowed her bite, her eyes a little glazed with sugar overload. “Hmmm? Oh, yes. The real question is what pie.”

  “Lemon meringue? Ooh Boston crème? Pumpkin? I do love pumpkin pie…” Lacey had reverted to pie dreamland again.

  “Those are all challenging pies,” Aunt Patty said cautiously.

  “I think we are better sticking to a simple pie crust dough,” Aunt Priscilla agreed.

  Zac thought about the sticky mess of cookie dough and briefly closed his eyes. Why had he allowed Lacey to talk him into this? He’d lost every evening of the last week to cookie practice and look where that had got him—second to last. And now pie. He doubted anything about pie crust dough would be simple. “Is there a pie that doesn’t involve pastry?” he asked. “Like a sweet version of a shepherd’s pie.”

  “That sounds disgusting,” Lacey chimed in as both Ms. Hathaways shook their heads.

  “It has to have pastry, Zac.”

  “Pastry and a filling. But what filling?”

  “An apple pie is a classic for a reason.”

  “Maybe too classic. Will it stand out? Some of these boys can bake. This snickerdoodle is very credible.”

  “How about a chilled pie? Banoffee?”

  “Will there be time for a chilled pie? Besides a warm pie straight from the oven attacks all the senses, visually appealing, that enticing smell…”

  “You’re right. A twist on a classic? Some kind of spice in the pastry? Cinnamon? Ground ginger?”

  “Ginger could be interesting. Teamed with what if not apple? Rhubarb?”

  “Peaches?”

  “Blackberry!”

  “Hmmm, tricky. Can be a soggy fruit. And so tart.”

  “Not if he blind-bakes the pastry and adds the precooked blackberries. He can add sugar to taste then. Maybe with a maple syrup. Maple, ginger, and blackberry. That could work.”

  “Lattice top? Or no! A ginger-crumble topping. Ideally he should make the ginger snaps during the Bake-Off but that might add an extra layer of complexity.”

  “Unless it’s a traditional crumble topping and not a cookie one?”

  Zac realized his head had been snapping between the two older women like a spectator at a tennis match. “Um,” he said. “Do I get a say?”

  Both women swiveled round to look at him, identical expressions of surprise on their faces. Zac very much suspected they had forgotten his presence. “Of course.”

  “Absolutely.”

  Not that he actually had anything to contribute. “Blackberry and ginger sounds fine.” He wasn’t entirely sure on the flavor combination but he fully accepted this wasn’t his area of expertise. “I don’t know what blind-baking is but as long as it doesn’t involve a blindfold I’m happy to learn and I’d rather not add any extra complexity to the pie after today’s less than successful session. So I’m saying a firm no to ginger snaps.”

  Aunt Patty nodded. “Probably wise, then blackberry ginger crumble pie it is.”

  “On that note I’d better get to work.” Lacey slid gracefully off the counter. “I want to look at today’s footage and make six mini segments, one for each day leading up to the next Bake-Off. I’m going to get some one-to-one interviews too, when the guys come in to the radio station, and the Monroes have agreed to speak to me this week over at the house so I should have enough to put a really decent full-length piece together as well as all the fundraising shorts.”

  “That’s very good, dear.” Aunt Priscilla beamed up at her niece. “What will you do with it?”

  “I’ll probably run a screening here in town when the house is ready to be opened but it’ll go up online next week before the final Bake-Off so anyone can see it. If they make a donation afterward, all the better. What I really need is to talk to some possible beneficiaries about why it’s important, but it’s a bit tricky getting the right permissions and I feel a bit awkward approaching kids. There’ll be a way. I just need to think it through further.”

  “I’m sure you’ll come up with a solution.”

  “That reminds me…” Lacey paused at the kitchen door. “Have either of you seen much of the Evanses lately? Harold and Celia Evans? Only Zac met Ty the other day and was a little concerned. I thought it was just teen stuff, you know; he hasn’t had the most stable of starts. I could understand a kid like him kicking off a little at small-town life. But I didn’t see Harold or Celia at the school today and that’s not like them at all. I know Celia used to be a regular at your Quilting Circle, Aunt Priscilla. Have you seen her lately?”

  “Not for a while.” Priscilla Hathaway’s face scrunched with concentration. “She stopped quilting a few years ago; she said her hands weren’t what they used to be. But now you mention it she hasn’t been to Women’s Guild meetings for a while. And I haven’t seen much of Harold. He was volunteering at the library, I know, but I don’t recall seeing him for the last few months. I’ll look into it, Lacey.”

  “Thanks, Aunt P.” Her eyes met Zac’s for one brief moment and then, with a quick smile around the room, she was gone. All at once the warm, welcoming kitchen felt empty, like the light had gone out of it. While the aunts continued to bicker amiably about the exact proportion of blackberries to syrup to ginger—a fight that looked like it was about to play out in a pie-making contest of their own—Zac slipped out of the room and headed to his own suite of rooms. But now they didn’t feel like a welcome sanctuary; they were a reminder that he was a temporary guest here and that Crooked Corner could never be his home. That should be a welcome relief, so why was his chest so heavy at the thought of packing up and moving on?

  Chapter Nine

  “Lacey, where are you off to?” Aunt Patty fixed her with a stern look and Lacey froze in place like a child with one hand in the cookie jar.

  “Work…”

  “It’s Sunday.”

  “The show must go on, Aunt P, even on a Sunday. Not my show admittedly but I was just going to pop in and…”

  “You’re popping nowhere. Pie practice day. Remember?”

  Of course Lacey remembered. That was why she was up so horrendously early and creeping out of the door. And she intended to keep creeping out of doors till the Bake-Off was well and truly over. After all, if she was too busy to compete then Zac would have to call their ridiculous bet off. Wouldn’t he?

  Which meant no going on dates she really didn’t want to go on. Which meant no watching Zac try and fix her up with another guy. There was of course the whisper of a chance that she would win the next two contests and beat him but the odds weren’t good enough to risk it.

  “I know and I really wish I could hang around but…”

  “We’re going to the ranch.”

  “The ranch?” That changed everything. “Why?”

  “Because that was where my mother, your great-grandmother, made the world’s best pies. What better place to learn about pastry?”

  Lacey swiveled around. “I haven’t seen Grandma and Grandpops since Christmas…”

  “Exactly. Get yourself ready and then come meet me in the kitchen. I had a baking spree last night and I need help loading the car.”

  It took less than an hour to get everyone up, fed, dressed, and the car loaded up with coats, snow boots, several boxes of baking, and the ingredients they needed for the day’s lesson. There was some tussle about driving. Zac seemed to think that he had a male prerogative to drive and it was true he had the fanciest car. But, as the three women all pointed out, he wasn’t used to the roads or the snow and they all were.

  They then proceeded to work out who had priority: Patty because she had grown up on the ranch, Priscilla who had lived there most of her adult life or Lacey who, as she tactfully said, was the only one of the three who didn’t need glasses to drive. She was soon shouted down and relegated into the back seat with Zac while Aunt Priscilla triumphantly claimed the driving seat.

  “Don’t get me wrong, I
love a road trip, but where are we going?” Zac could never look unkempt but he was as close to it as Lacey had seen. Faint shadows around his eyes hinted at a less than perfect night’s sleep and he hadn’t shaved. Lacey had an almost irresistible urge to reach out and run her hand along the bristles. She shoved her hand firmly under her thigh just to make sure she didn’t unconsciously act on the urge.

  “The ranch.”

  “That I know, what I don’t know is which ranch—why or where. Your aunts gave me fifteen minutes to get ready and told me not to dress like a city boy.”

  Lacey ran her eyes appreciatively over the cashmere sweater, dark jeans, and freshly polished boots. “I don’t think you have much choice,” she told him. “No one would mistake you for a cowboy even in thick fog at midnight.” She had pulled out her most well-worn, faded jeans and teamed them with a blue tee, a padded check shirt, and her thickest jacket. She wore cowboy boots but had slung her snow boots in the trunk just in case they had an opportunity to get out for a walk. Or, even better, an afternoon’s skiing.

  “Thanks. I think.” He leaned back, a grin crinkling the corner of his eyes. Lacey took a deep breath, all too aware of his proximity in the confined space of the car. His arm lay across the back of the seat as he lounged in his corner, his hand so close it wouldn’t take much to lean into his caress. His long legs were corralled in, thighs close enough to touch.

  Lacey swallowed, her mouth dry, her body tingling in every inch of her that could feasibly touch him if the car curved around the mountain bends. She gripped her seat tightly, wedging herself firmly in the corner. Looking up she saw Aunt Priscilla’s eyes in the rearview mirror watching her with a knowing look and she shifted awkwardly to stare fixedly out of the window.

  “We’re going to see my grandparents and my aunt and uncle and cousins.”

  “The Waltons?”

  “No, the Hathaways.”

  “But they all live together? Like the Waltons?”

  “More like the Ewings minus the intrigue, back stabbing, adultery, and shower dreams. My grandma, grandpop, Uncle Walter, Aunt Valerie, and Tilly who’s the only cousin at home. She’s seventeen. Ted and Will are at college—they’re twins—and Fliss, the oldest—she’s my age—is in Europe.”

  “Big family.”

  “Yep. I loved coming to Three Pines Ranch so much when I was a kid. Fliss and I get on great. I could just step straight into my family and know I was home. I had my own bedroom at the ranch and everything.”

  “So why not live there when you came to Marietta? Not that your aunts aren’t amazing hostesses of course,” he added hurriedly, half an eye on the front seat.

  Lacey shifted back round so she was facing Zac, careful to keep a good distance between them. Friends was good; she wholeheartedly approved of the idea. It was just her body hadn’t got the memo yet and kept tingling at awkward times. “I love the ranch but it’s kind of isolated. I wanted to make friends and socialize more and that’s hard to do when you’re ten miles out of town and halfway up a mountain. But the ranch, it’s something else. Surrounded by mountains, nothing around but trees and lakes and fresh air. It’s the best medicine in the world.”

  “Sounds about as different to San Francisco as a place can be.”

  Lacey tensed as she processed the offhand comment. Somehow over the last week Zac’s presence had become so normal she kept forgetting he had a home elsewhere. Not just a home but a place he was in a hurry to return to. That his stay in Marietta was for work only and the second that work was done he’d be gone. Would want to be gone. It was an unwelcome reminder she couldn’t afford to get too close, that his friendship offer was a short-term deal.

  “I can’t imagine living in a big city when there’s all this wildness to enjoy. I know I live in town but just five minutes’ walk and you can be by the lake or in a forest or start to walk up a mountain.” She pulled at her ponytail. “I guess it’s in my blood as well as in my heart. My great great-grandfather settled here at the end of the nineteenth century, hacked a living on the mountainside, and won his claim.”

  “But your parents left before you were born, didn’t they?”

  “Yes, Nat was born in Marietta—the lucky thing—but I was born in Vermont. Which is a lovely place but I still think Mom could have planned it better and come home in time. I’m the only Hathaway not to have been born in Marietta for four generations.” Not that she was bitter about it. “My great great-grandmother was a mail-order bride, came out west on the mail train to marry a man she didn’t know. She was quite a lot younger than he was. I always wondered if they were happy…” Her voice trailed off as she imagined her ancestor getting off the train in the middle of the wilderness, traveling over rough-hewn roads to Marietta and her stranger of a suitor.

  “They were,” Aunt Patty chimed in from the front. “Grandmother always said the angels must have been guiding her when she answered that advert. He was twenty years older than her but he worshipped her. She nearly died giving birth to my father, and of course a rancher needed sons, plenty of them, but he would never allow her to try for any more children. He said she was more precious than any land could ever be.”

  Lacey couldn’t help a little sigh of longing. What must it be like to be loved like that? Lacey had seen photos of course—Crooked Corner was filled with them—but she had never really thought of the mutton-chopped, severe-looking man and the demure woman as being the hero and heroine of their very own love story. “That’s wonderful. That they found each other.”

  “That’s the Hathaway way. We don’t fall in love easily but when we do it’s deep and it’s forever.” Aunt Patty sounded wistful, and Lacey remembered whispers of a tragedy before her great-aunt had moved to Paris and embarked on her career as a model. Was that why she had never married despite being linked to any number of men including several rock stars and, if you believed the gossip, an Italian prince? Lacey had never quite dared ask her aunt. Warm and caring as she was there were clear Keep Out signs around anything too personal, but she liked to believe in the Italian prince.

  “Look at your great-grandfather,” Aunt Priscilla chimed in. “He was well over thirty when he went to Europe in the war, still unmarried even though half the girls in Marietta were crazy about him. His father had passed on by then and his poor mother was left managing the ranch by herself. But he returned from Europe, safe and sound, with his Scottish war bride and they were very happy for over fifty years.”

  “They died within a few weeks of each other. It was as if they couldn’t bear to carry on without the other. It was hard to be too sad, knowing they were together forever after such a full life. Three children, two grandchildren, six great-grandchildren. That’s not a bad legacy,” Lacey explained to Zac. It was the kind of legacy she had always dreamed of, and yet it seemed further away than ever.

  “Bill brought me back to Three Pines straight after we were married,” Aunt Priscilla said. “I wasn’t sure about living with his family so far out. I was Marietta born and bred, not a ranch girl. And it wasn’t common, in the late sixties, to move in with your in-laws, all my friends had neat little houses in town. And there were so many people to adjust to sharing the house with. Patty of course, and your grandfather and grandmother were already married, Lacey. Your dad was about five and Walter only three. But the whole family made me so welcome it felt like home straight away. It will always be home in some ways but when Bill died I couldn’t face being reminded of him in every room. Luckily my aunt left me Crooked Corner and Patty had decided to return home from Paris…”

  “I was ready for a change but heading back to the ranch was a little too much of a change after Paris. Marietta suits me fine. I need something urban about me,” Aunt Patty threw in.

  “I always wished Mom and Dad had stayed on the ranch and I could have grown up surrounded by you all,” Lacey said. “I loved coming back for those few weeks every summer but my favorite time was when we could come to you for Thanksgiving or for Christmas, to be
part of such a big family for a few days, to have my own room and my own chores. There are no chores when you spend your life in hotel rooms living on room service. All I wanted was some home cooking and someone to tell me to clear the table afterward.”

  “And that’s why we’re coming to Three Pines for Zac’s pie lesson,” Aunt Patty said. “Great pies have been made in this kitchen by generations of women. There’s no better place to learn the art of pastry than at the marble slab where my grandmother and mother rolled out pie after pie.”

  Lacey winked at Zac. “It’s just the honor of the entire family on your shoulders, Zac, but no pressure. No pressure at all.”

  Aunt Priscilla was a careful but speedy driver and despite the windy roads and the ice it was less than half an hour before the car was climbing up the narrow mountain pass that led to Three Pines Ranch. The snow-covered mountains soared into the sky on every side, the white startling against the clear blue. Three Pines was nestled on a large shelf that ran over several mountains and across several thousand acres. The entrance to Hathaway land was marked by the three tall pines that gave the ranch its name. Zac took a deep breath. This was a step beyond a dinner at a friend or date’s house. A step beyond eating his dinner with the Hathaway women in the kitchen at Crooked Corner. A step beyond getting pulled into the town’s fundraising efforts.

  This was allowing himself to be enveloped by a family. Stepping right into the heart of it, a place he hadn’t been for a really long time. He’d spent so long never looking back, never allowing himself to miss what he had once had he’d never allowed himself to consider it might, just might, be a part of his future. His heart ached. Hope was dangerous. It just led to bitter disappointment all over again.

  This wasn’t his place or his family. He belonged on the road. He had no family. The last time he’d heard from his father was… No, he couldn’t remember. His half brother must be sixteen now. Did their father take him to ball games and make sure he didn’t shoulder responsibilities he was nowhere near ready for? Or had he moved on to yet another new family, discarding the old as easily as he had discarded Zac and his mom?