The Devine Doughnut Shop(40)

“I guess three months is the limit for a long-distance relationship,” he said as he drove into Devine. “But she got the surprise.”

Erica had thought she’d get a chunk of Butler Enterprises as well as half the house they had bought together. But things had been set up so that Travis wouldn’t actually own anything until after his father passed on or handed the reins over to him.

“Served her right,” he said. A picture of Erica on the day they decided to get married at a chapel in Las Vegas flashed into his mind. On the way to the place, she had stepped in a puddle of water, so she had taken her sandals off and gotten married in her bare feet.

“That was the Erica I loved,” he said. “That was the love of my life, not the one who hired a team of lawyers to get a big divorce settlement.” He remembered those first days and their little apartment, where they had been happy—but then Erica had started climbing the corporate ladder, and before long, her job in the equities business meant more than spending time with him. They had already drifted apart when she took the job in London.

The Devine Doughnut Shop’s gravel parking lot right off Highway 173 was crowded, but he snagged a place not far from the door. Through the windows, he could see that all four tables were full. Hopefully, there was—at least—one of each kind of doughnut still left in the display cases.

He opened the door to find two other people in line ahead of him, which gave him plenty of time to study Grace for a few minutes. When the customers asked about the stories going around town that someone was going to buy the Double D, she replied that the rumors were just gossip. She had no intentions of giving up the family business, she told them with such conviction that Travis almost called off the great doughnut run going on in San Antonio.

Maybe an offer that will make your head swim might change your mind, Travis thought.

When he finally stepped up to the counter, Grace looked at him with a smile. “Good morning. You’ve missed Claud, Ira, and Frankie. They’ve been gone for about an hour.”

“I want two doughnuts of every kind in the case,” he said and then blurted out, “and I’d like to ask you to go to dinner with me Friday evening.” If she said yes, he could figure out if the feeling he had was true attraction or just admiration for a determined woman.

“I can do the doughnuts, but right now there’s too much on my plate for dating,” she said as she filled one box and started on a second one. “I appreciate the invitation, though.”

“How about lunch in my office just to talk?” he pressed.

“Why, and talk about what?” She set the boxes on the counter and rang up the sale.

He handed her several bills. Another spark passed between them when she laid the change in the palm of his hand—just like the one that he’d felt when he saw her the last time.

“Even if you won’t sell me this shop, I’m still thinking of putting in a mass-production pastry shop, and I’d like to pick your brain,” he answered.

The whole place had gone so quiet that the whir of the ceiling fans sounded as loud as helicopter blades.

“I could do that, Mr. Butler, but I don’t know what I can help you with,” she told him.

He raised an eyebrow. “I’ll pick you up at one o’clock, then, on Friday, and we’ll discuss it then, if that’s all right?”

“This is not a date,” she assured him. “I’ll drive myself to your office, if you’ll just give me the address. My family, as you know, was almost betrayed. We came back stronger. But right now, I need to be here for them.”

Travis fished a card from his pocket and laid it on the counter. He was disappointed, but he appreciated Grace for standing up for her family. “I understand, and I’ll be expecting you. Do you like pizza?”

“I love it, and I’ll bring a dozen doughnuts for dessert,” she answered and then looked past him at the next customer.

He ate a glazed doughnut and one maple-iced on the way back to the office, then licked his fingers and wiped the sticky steering wheel with a wet wipe he pulled out of a container in the back seat. By the time he made it to the sixth floor with the boxes of doughnuts, the kids from the first floor were all reading through the forms that Calvin had printed up.

Kids? he thought and smiled. Every one of them had a master’s degree, and more than half of them had a doctorate. Some of them had IQs that were off the charts, and they were all grounded in the ability to find new and innovative ways to do business.

Calvin tapped a fork on a coffee cup to get everyone’s attention. “Okay, Travis has an idea . . .” He went on to tell them about the bakery, then: “We’re going to cut each of the doughnuts that he’s brought back from the bakery into fourths. What we want you to do is taste one of the ones that he brought and then one of the same kind from a bakery or even two here in town, and then give us your opinion on which one you think is best. There’s no passing or failing the taste test. Judge them on the forms you’ve got.”

“I like this kind of test,” one girl said.

“So do I,” Calvin said with a big smile, and then moved over to stand beside Travis while Delores laid each of the Devine Doughnut Shop’s pastries on a disposable plate and cut them into four pieces. “Don’t tell Maggie about this test. She’s got me on a low-carb diet. It’s not my fault that I’ve gotten fat in the last fifteen years. She’s a great cook, but when I went for my checkup last week, the doctor said I needed to lose thirty pounds to bring my A1c and my cholesterol down. Maggie will flip out if she finds out I’ve eaten half a dozen doughnuts.”