Read Delightful: Big Sky Pie #3 for Free Online Page B

She wished she could avoid it. She’d already played the fool twice on camera in the past two days.
    She spent the next two hours ignoring everything beyond the office door, engrossed in bookkeeping and follow-up calls to potential bookings.
    “Molly!” The high-pitched alarm in BiBi’s voice brought Andrea to her feet. She hustled into the kitchen, visions of the day Molly had collapsed in this room racing through her head. But Molly stood near the ovens, looking as startled and clueless as Andrea felt.
    “Molly!” BiBi’s voice came again from the hallway. They met her coming out of the cold room, her Crocs awash in dark liquid. She was juggling a dripping cloth as she raced toward the sink. “Something’s wrong with the storage freezer. It’s gushing like a chocolate fountain.”

Chapter Four
    W hat are you talking about?” Andrea demanded, but the words freezer and gushing in the same sentence could only mean one thing. Bad news. Alarm did another turn through her system, slamming home a variety of possible calamities that losing the freezer could mean for upcoming events.
    “The big freezer in the cold room is sitting in a puddle of goo,” BiBi said, wrenching on the faucet as she plopped the saturated purple cloth into the deep work sink. She leaned toward the rag and sniffed, wrinkling her nose in disgust. “Smells like rancid fruit juice.”
    “Oh, no.” Molly scooted past BiBi, hurrying down the hall. Andrea dogged her steps, a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.
    Molly muttered, “I knew I should have bought a new freezer, but that darned Charlie Mercer swore this one was refurbished and would outlast the newer models.”
    “Maybe it’s not as bad as BiBi thinks,” Andrea said, trying to calm her boss, not liking the high scarlet of her cheeks. Logically, she realized Molly probably wasn’t having heart issues, just that she was heartsick about the possible loss of produce, but despite all the reassurances that the spritely redhead was doing great, Andrea couldn’t stop worrying about her. She supposed it came from how close Molly had come to dying, a reminder Andrea hadn’t needed of how suddenly life could end.
    She shook off the thought and realized that, with every step, Molly was bawling herself out. “Why did I listen to Charlie? Jimmy used to say that man could sell bullshit to a cow, and still this old cow fell for a freezer-full of his steaming lies.”
    “I’ll deal with Charlie Mercer,” Andrea assured her. Part of her job description included handling salespeople and warranties. “Plus, you have insurance that covers the large appliances and loss of perishable inventory.”
    “Insurance can’t replace fresh-frozen fruit from this past summer. I was counting on that to get us through the winter.”
    Andrea shut her mouth. Not being a chef, she looked at the fruit as a necessary tool of their trade, a commodity that could be replaced if something like this occurred, like the spilled milk this morning. To Molly, however, fruit was the paint for her artistic talent, the thing that took her pies from ordinary to extraordinary. The quality of the fruit was all-important, not to mention the hours of hard work that would be lost. She didn’t want solutions. She wanted it not to be true.
    Molly charged into the cold room first, banging the door against the wall. The space was large, filled with rows of racks with adjustable shelves that held apples, canned goods, and other supplies needed for making pies. A second Sub-Zero took up one wall, and the freezer hugged the opposite wall.
    The windowless room was mostly kept in the dark, but the overhead lights were brilliant. Andrea blinked several times as she followed Molly, barely registering the cool temperature. Her attention was riveted on the massive white appliance that stood like a mound of dirty snow in one corner, a tall, upended ice fort that seemed to be melting into a pool of inky liquid.
    “Holy crap,” Molly said