High Heels and Haystacks: Billionaires in Blue Jeans, book two Read online

  High Heels and Haystacks

  Billionaires in Blue Jeans, book two

  Erin Nicholas

  Copyright © 2018 by Erin Nicholas

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  ISBN: 978-0-9988947-4-4

  Editor: Lindsey Faber

  Copyeditor: Nanette Sipe

  Cover artist: Lindee Robinson, Lindee Robinson Photography

  Cover designer: Angela Waters

  Cover models: Alexis Susalla, Anthony Parker

  Contents

  About High Heels and Haystacks

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Next from Bliss

  About the Author

  More from Erin Nicholas

  About High Heels and Haystacks

  A boss-employee romance...with a twist

  * * *

  Only three things stand between Ava Carmichael and her twelve billion dollar inheritance:

  * * *

  1. A year of living in Bliss, Kansas.

  2. A relationship that lasts six consecutive months.

  3. And pie.

  * * *

  Ava has run a multi-billion-dollar company, negotiated with shark investors, and hobnobbed with business royalty, but she’s about to be defeated by her inability to turn sugar, flour, and apple pie filling into something edible.

  * * *

  Conveniently, the owner of the diner next door, Parker Blake, is magic in the kitchen. And he technically works for her. So she can make him teach her to bake. And, hey, if everyone assumes they’re heating up more than the oven during their time in the kitchen…well, that’s called multitasking.

  * * *

  Parker Blake likes his women the way he likes his coffee: not in his diner. But gorgeous, strong-willed, type-A Ava clearly isn’t going to stop messing up his kitchen—or his simple, stress-free small town life—until the conditions of her daddy’s will are met. So, sure, he’ll teach his “boss” to bake.

  * * *

  But once the kitchen door closes, it’s pretty clear who’s really in charge.

  Prologue

  From the desk of Rudy Carmichael…

  * * *

  1

  Parker

  PROS:

  Not my type

  Tall

  Hot

  From Bliss

  Rudy loved him

  Can bake (probably)

  Business owner

  Pie shop

  CONS:

  Grumpy.

  * * *

  Ava looked up as Parker Blake came through the swinging door that separated the front of his diner from the kitchen. She underlined tall on her list. He was about six-four and that meant she could wear any of the heels in her wardrobe when with him without a problem. That was definitely in his favor.

  He carried a coffeepot to the only other occupied table in the diner. She watched him, noting the way his jeans fit across his ass, then forced herself to note the way he interacted with his customers instead. That was far more important to her plan. She needed Parker, but the fit of his blue jeans had nothing to do with it. Probably.

  He leaned in and picked up the plate in front of one of the men at the table.

  “Hey! Come on!” the guy called after him as Parker pivoted and headed for the kitchen.

  “You don’t put ketchup on steak. And you snuck that ketchup in here.” Parker didn’t even look back.

  “It was for my fries!” the man protested. “It must have oozed over onto the steak.”

  Parker stopped and turned. He stabbed the steak with the fork that was balanced on the plate and held the piece of meat up. “That’s a lot of oozing,” he said.

  The man sighed. “It’s just ketchup.”

  “You don’t like how I make steak, eat somewhere else,” Parker told him. Then he stomped into the kitchen with the plate.

  Ava knew her eyes shouldn’t be as wide as they were. She’d seen him take a glass of iced tea away from someone who’d added sugar to it and a plate of nachos away from someone who had dared scrape off the sour cream. But it never failed to amaze her. He not only did this stuff, but he got away with it. She didn’t know the customer’s name, but she’d seen him in here before and she knew he’d be back. They always came back. “They” being the entire town of Bliss, Kansas and a huge surrounding area.

  She looked down at her list and underlined grumpy twice.

  The problem was, it was the only con she could come up with, and she wasn’t entirely sure it was that much of a problem. She needed to date him. She didn’t need to like him.

  But she did like things about him. What you saw was what you got with Parker Blake. He didn’t like people lingering in his diner. He grumped about it all the time. He also had very specific views about food. If you ordered the jalapeno burger, you’d better, by God, eat the jalapenos. You didn’t eat a steak with ketchup on it, apparently. Potatoes, of some kind, came with everything. No, you couldn’t ask to hold them.

  It was no secret that he felt that the diner was a very straightforward setup. He was there to serve food to hungry people in exchange for money. The food he was willing to serve was clearly spelled out on the menu, as was the price for that food. If you ordered a burger and fries, that’s what you were going to get. There were no substitutions. There was no “on the side”. The menu said burger and fries, so you would get a burger and fries. Period. And after the customer had eaten, he figured they were no longer hungry, and could move on.

  Ava had to admit this was something that fascinated her about the guy. It was an odd way to do business. On one hand, it seemed logical to placate the customers and make them happy by giving them what they wanted. Especially if it was something simple like not serving them fries or letting them put ketchup on their steak. On the other, his methods saved him a lot of headaches, and it honestly kept the entire interaction simple.

  And people here put up with it. Because it was the only restaurant in town. No, she did not consider her pie shop a restaurant. It served pie. And coffee. Period. Which should also be straightforward and simple, now that she thought about it. Yet it seemed to have complicated her life more than any merger or new contract for Carmichael Enterprises ever had.

  Parker stayed in business in spite of his clear the-customer-is-not-always-right stance because his food was really good and the diner had been a mainstay in town for over a decade. And because Parker’s rules had always been in place. When you walked through the doors, you knew what you were getting.

  She was actually envious of that. She was a master negotiator, with a well-deserved reputation as being fair but tough in her business dealings. But she never went into a meeting knowing exactly what was going to happen. Everything was a negotiation, and she had to give to take. It was why she took control of everything else in her life as firmly as she could. The company was the core of her family’s security
so she did what she had to do to keep it going. But the sometimes-winning-sometimes-losing thing caused her to grab onto schedules and lists and plans whenever she could with both hands. She liked control. So, yes, she envied Parker Blake being able to say “this is how it is, take it or leave it” with his business. And succeed.

  Ava studied the other pros and cons list in her notebook. There was another guy on her page.

  Noah

  PROS:

  Not my type

  Tall (enough)

  Hot

  From Bliss

  Rudy loved him

  Business owner

  She added NOT grumpy to Noah’s list. Then she sighed. She still had only seven to

  Parker’s eight pros. And then there was Noah’s one con.

  CONS:

  Brynn.

  Ava drew a heart next to her sister’s name. Brynn and Noah were close, and Ava didn’t know for sure if their relationship was romantic or friends-only, but they had a way of making a girl feel like a third wheel when they were together. Ava didn’t get it, but there was a connection there, and it made her feel a little weird about considering dating Noah.

  Still, she had to date someone. Someone from Bliss, Kansas. For six months. There was twelve and a half billion dollars riding on it.

  Well, kind of. Her father’s company was worth twelve and a half billion, and her chance to take over the position of CEO depended on her dating someone here for six months. Along with a few other stipulations her father had put in his will. Like living here for a year and running the pie shop next door with her sisters.

  Ava colored in the little heart she’d drawn as she thought about her options.

  It was crazy. Of course. Who found out he had cancer and decided to use his will to influence his daughters’ love lives? But Rudy Carmichael had never been a conventional father. And he’d known Ava would do anything to be in charge of Carmichael Enterprises. It was all she’d ever aspired to. It was the only thing she was good at. And it was the only way for her to take care of her mom and sisters. The philanthropist who took care of everyone from abused women to the local libraries, the free spirit who made everyone smile and feel a little lighter, and the genius scientist who was working to rid the world of disease. Ava’s job enabled the three of them to make the world a better place without worry about money or security. It was her way of making the world a better place. Indirectly.

  She’d thought it was a given. She’d already been acting CEO of Carmichael Enterprises for the past five years, ever since her father had decided to move to BFE, Kansas. When she’d found out that her father had passed away, she’d mourned, then taken a deep breath, quelled the butterflies in her stomach, and headed to the meeting with the lawyer. Only to find out that she had hoops to jump through before she could officially etch her name into the glass next to the CEO’s office door.

  So many hoops.

  But the craziest part of all? She understood where her father had been coming from.

  Not at first, of course. At first, she’d been confused and pissed off and hurt. She’d worked her ass off for the company. Even her social life had to do with work nine out of ten times. Okay, ten out of ten times. She could make any event into a networking opportunity. She’d always dated men who were very much like her father. Men who understood that she did, and always would, put the company first. That she’d be late for dinner more times than not. That she would take phone calls in the middle of conversations. That she would be traveling and gone for days, sometimes even weeks, at a time. She was, first and foremost, married to the company, and she had been dating men that would understand that. And who had important business connections to bring to the relationship.

  Had it been romantic? No. Had it been sexy and exciting? No. And she was good with that. She liked predictable. She liked things spelled out ahead of time. She liked knowing what she was getting into and what was expected of her.

  “You can’t even eat an entire salad?”

  She looked up at the sound of Parker’s deep voice. And quickly covered her notebook page with her hand. “Um, I’m still working on it.”

  He lifted a brow and reached for her plate. He turned the plate over and emptied the rest of her salad into a take-out box. She’d been expecting that. Parker didn’t like people lingering. The diner was for eating. Not talking on the phone, not reading, not working on your computer. And not making pros and cons lists. You came in, you ate, you paid, and you got out. Everyone knew that was how Parker’s diner operated. And you either ate everything on your plate, or you took it home with you. The only thing that wasn’t good at the diner was the coffee. And that was on purpose. It was supposed to curtail the lingering. It didn’t work, but that was what it was supposed to do.

  “Hey, I didn’t even smuggle in any contraband condiments,” she said. “You can search me.”

  From where he was standing, he could see her entire right side, and as his gaze tracked over her from head to heels, she felt tingles all along that path.

  “I’m not worried. There’s nowhere in those little skirts you wear to hide anything.”

  Ava felt her body warm. She loved her pencil skirts and yes, they were fitted. But she knew that Parker was just trying to fluster her. And she didn’t fluster easily. In fact, Parker Blake was the first man in a very long time to get her even close to ruffled. Which should probably go on the con list, come to think of it. But there was one very important pro that should be added as well.

  Parker Blake was a great choice for a six-month Bliss boyfriend in spite of the items on the con list, because they’d already spent three months together. Kind of. That meant she’d only have to put in three more to get to her six-month dating quota. Sure, the past three months had involved going back and forth from each other’s business kitchens—when she came over to borrow butter and eggs, and he came to her kitchen to bitch about it, for instance. But they’d also had a few game nights with her sisters and his two best friends, Noah and Evan. That might be stretching the “date” definition—especially considering she’d been supposedly dating Evan…but that was a long story—but it was still socializing unlike any she’d had with the men in New York. It had to count. She was not starting over on the six-month time frame stipulated in the will if she could help it.

  Besides, there was a chemistry between her and Parker. And that made the idea of spending a few months with him on a “personal” basis, a lot more appealing.

  “So what’s with the take-out box?” she asked, resisting the urge to cross and uncross her legs under the table. The legs his gaze stayed on for an extra few seconds.

  He set the box on the table along with her bill. “It’s one o’clock,” he told her.

  Right. Closing time for the diner. Parker was open for breakfast from six a.m. to nine a.m., closed from nine to eleven, open again for lunch from eleven to one, and then closed again until four when dinner started. The dinner shift was from four to six. And heaven help you if you tried to order eggs after nine or a BLT after four. There was a specific breakfast, lunch, and dinner menu, and Parker was God when it came to deciding what people should be eating for each of those meals. But again, if you came in for lunch, you just knew that waffles were not an option.

  “It’s actually one eleven,” she told him. “And I came in close to closing time because I was hoping to talk to you about something in private.”

  Something flickered in his expression. Surprise? Curiosity? More likely irritation.

  “But I close at one.”

  He didn’t. Yes, the sign on his door said he did, but people were always in the diner until at least one thirty. For all of his grumping and strictness, the one thing he didn’t do was throw people out if they were lingering. It was weird. And fascinating. Ava found herself wondering about Parker Blake and his habits far more than she should.

  “I’m not the only one still here,” she said, looking pointedly at the still occupied other table.

  “But you�
��re finished.”

  Well, her salad was in a box now. But she’d discovered that the diner food was pretty good even left over, so she would, in fact, take it home and eat it later. “Yes, I’m finished eating,” she said.

  He looked at her for a moment, clearly waiting for her to go on.

  Ava fought a smile as she added, “I just have a few more things to go over on this…report.” Or list of why you’re the perfect man for me, she thought. For the next three months, she thought quickly. Because of the will, she added. Even if it was just to herself, she had to be careful about thinking of Parker as anything other than…Parker. The guy who could get her through the stipulations in her father’s will and into the CEO’s office in New York City. “So it’s no problem for me to wait until everyone leaves so we can talk.” She fought a smile, knowing he would hate the idea of her just hanging out.

  “So the diner closing at one doesn’t matter to you?”

  “Of course it does. It’s the perfect time to talk to you without anyone else around.”

  “There’s a reason I close at one o’clock,” he said.

  “And what is that?” she asked. She actually really wanted to know. Some of the time between meal shifts he spent in preparation for the next, of course. But he left the building between nine and about ten in the morning and then again between two and three. And, in spite of herself, she was curious about where he went and what he did. She didn’t know why she was curious. It really didn’t matter to her at all. But he was such a regimented guy, that she assumed his patterns and schedules had a purpose.