sass and class, and had quickly stolen the hearts of three of Bliss’s most eligible bachelors—Jill’s best childhood friend Evan, and his buddies Parker and Noah.
The three couples were now easily the six most influential and beloved people in town. And the pie shop was booming.
As she got out of her rental car, Jill couldn’t help but smile. She’d borrowed Zeke’s idea about telling everyone the news at once and had asked her mom and dad to meet her here where she could make the big announcement to them and to Evan and Cori at the same time.
Sure, her group was a lot smaller than Zeke’s, but that was good. The pie shop was a lot smaller than Ellie’s bar.
The bell above the door tinkled merrily as she stepped inside.
The pie shop also smelled like sugar, cinnamon, chocolate, and coffee rather than cayenne and beer. And the people gathered were all talking quietly at the various tables dotted throughout the bakery rather than lounging at one big family table and yelling things like, “No fucking way!”
It was such a stark contrast to walking into Ellie’s that Jill paused for just a moment on the other side of the threshold.
But as soon as Evan noticed her, he came straight toward her with a huge smile.
“Jill!”
Her name caused everyone in the room to turn and several to rise from their seats.
Evan hugged her first, then passed Jill to her mother.
“I’m so happy to see you! This is all so mysterious, though,” Holly Morris declared.
“I’m so happy to be here. I’ve missed you,” Jill told her, avoiding the subject of the mystery. For now.
She was passed person to person, hugged and exclaimed over appropriately, until she ended up in front of the bakery case facing Cori Carmichael Stone.
“Welcome home! You didn’t give me much time, but we were still able to put together a party.”
It was the first time Jill had a second to look around the bakery closely. Cori was well known for her party planning and being able to turn even the most mundane events into something fun and special.
Jill now noticed the black-and-white theme that included everything from the plates, to the paper cups they were using, to the mini cakes she had set out across the top of the bakery case.
The pie shop still did mostly pie. Their specialties were cherry, apple, and sometimes peach. Just the way that their father had done it. But they had expanded to cakes, cookies, and even macarons.
The cakes were black and white but they were shaped strangely. Until Jill peered closer.
They were shaped like penguin parts.
“What is this?”
“Watch,” Cori said with a grin. “Ruby, come here, baby.”
Jill turned to see a little girl with bright blond curls come running.
If Cori hadn’t called her Ruby, Jill wouldn’t have known which of the three-year-old blondes this was. Each Carmichael triplet had given birth to a daughter, all within two weeks of one another. They were cousins, but the little girls could have easily passed for triplets themselves.
Ruby was Cori and Evan’s daughter.
“Show Jill what we do with the cakes,” Cori told her daughter.
“Make pengens,” Ruby said. She took two mini cakes that looked like flippers and slid them next to a cake shaped like a penguin body.
“Oh my gosh,” Jill laughed. “You made penguin puzzle cakes.”
“I was trying to be creative. Honestly, I was making penguins and a flipper fell off. While I was using frosting to glue it back on, it occurred to me that we could just have all the pieces and parts be separate and people could put them together themselves.”
“Because heaven forbid we just have a square cake with a picture of a penguin on it,” Evan said dryly. But he was smiling as he slipped his arm around his wife’s waist.
“Oh, you love when I get creative,” Cori told him, giving him a not-at-all-subtle look.
“That I do.”
Ruby’s cousins, Cara and Michaela, joined Ruby at the table near the window and started putting their penguin cakes together as well.
Ava and Parker and Brynn and Noah joined their daughters while Cori and Evan stayed with Jill.
“So what’s this big news? I was shocked that you wanted to bring everybody in here,” Cori said.
“Sometimes there are things that happen that you need to make a big deal out of,” Jill said, thinking fondly of the Landrys.
She was getting used to that way of thinking. There was never a dull day in Autre.
A few months ago if someone had told her she’d be