“Uh.”Buy time, asshole. “How’ve things been, Dearborn?”
“Good,” she said with a polite smile. “I live in LA still. I’m doing some home renovations at the moment, so it was a good time to visit Harlot’s Bay.”
Generic question, generic answer. Should’ve known.
Fine. He’d do better. “Couple years ago, heard a customer’s audiobook out in the parking lot. Sounded like you.”
Her brows rose. “You recognized my voice? Almost two decades after I left?”
“Evidently. If it was you.” It was definitely her. He’d bet his goddamn bakery on it.
“I narrate audiobooks for a living, so...” She shook her head. “Wow. You’ve listened to my work. I’d never have guessed that.”
Countless fucking hours of it. Not that she needed to know.
Her head tipped. “Which book was it, out of curiosity?”
“Guppy-dude with weird-ass dick-fins.”
Desire, Unfiltered. Athena’s favorite Sadie Brazen story, for some godforsaken reason.
She nodded. “Ah. One of my Molly Cressley books.”
Wait. Did that mean—
“I have a couple of pseudonyms. Different ones for different genres.” She turned to lean her ass against the worktable, settling herself more comfortably. “Molly Cressley for erotic romance, Molly Biddenwell for literary fiction.”
Molly Biddenwell? Never heard of her.
Well, there went another month’s profits. Audiobooks onCD—he didn’t trust purely digital files when it came to something so important—weren’t cheap, and he now had more to buy.
But more importantly—“Thought Molly Cressley might be your married name.”
“No.” Her shoulders had visibly stiffened. “I was married. But I didn’t take his name. Cressley’s just my nom de narrator.”
No verb tense had ever made him so damn happy before. “Wasmarried?”
“Rob and I got divorced two years ago,” she said flatly.
She didn’t elaborate. He didn’t ask. Not the right time.
“I’m sorry,” he told her, and part of him meant it. The other part was dancing a fucking jig. “Know how painful that can be. Emily, my youngest sister, got divorced last year. Still not back to herself. Bastard broke her trust.”
Karl wanted to break something too. Like the asshole’s nose. Probably good Emily’s ex lived in Baltimore.
“It’s fine.” Molly exhaled slowly, and her knuckles jutted as she gripped the edge of the stainless-steel table. “You’re right, though. It’s hard to trust anyone anymore. Even...”
Her soft mouth clamped into a tight line. He waited for her to continue, with the patience of a damn saint, but she didn’t say more.
Good enough. He knew she was unmarried. Now to work with the opening she’d given him. “Weren’t all that trusting twenty years ago either, Dearborn.”
She winced. Renewed guilt creased her forehead, even as she skewered him with an unimpressed glare. “I already apologized for that, Dean, and you admitted that you should have—”
Abruptly, she paused and sniffed. Her forehead crinkled even more as she scanned the work space. “Something’s burning.”
“Motherfucker.”
Grabbing a dry, folded dishcloth, he swung the oven door open and set the pies on a nearby sheet tray, one by one. Some of the crumb topping on the Dutch caramel apple had gone too far, the color turning from a deep gold to scorched sienna. In his preoccupation with her, he hadn’t even noticed the telltale smell.
