[For Daisy]

[piemakerprince]

For the first time in what felt like a very long time (though time had become somewhat relative to the pie maker, who'd spent twenty years miserable and a year happier than he'd ever been), Ned was in something of a good mood. That largely had to do with not having to trudge through the snow anymore and not having a bear rug staring back up at him

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[gonewiththereap]

It's one of those things that makes Daisy stop in her light little tracks. It's nothing she's supposed to ever see and a dozen of those...of those is just not what she wants to see when she's wandered into the kitchen for a quick little spot of tea before she heads back to do something in the prettiest way possible.

"Where did those come from?" she demands, pointing to the books and all the fluff is gone from her voice, replaced with the hard edge of bluntness.

[piemakerprince]

For a startled second, Ned forgets that he's done nothing wrong in this scenario; memories of midnight kitchen parties cut short by disapproving stares and so many close calls with dead bodies came to mind and he froze.

He relaxed only slightly when he recognized Daisy, though the tone in her voice doesn't exactly promise good things for Ned. "They were just there," he explained, and held his hands up. "I just turned around."

That, of course, didn't explain why he'd been flipping through the pages so casually. Emerson Cod's private investigative techniques (also known as snooping) may have rubbed off onto the pie maker over time.

[gonewiththereap]

Daisy wishes she could clutch all the books possessively to her chest, but there's just one too many (well, seven too many to be more accurate) and she shoots Ned a displeased and accusing look, flipping to one of them and then another, names she recognizes until she comes to the last few.

"Your hands were in them," she accuses, eyes narrowed. "You had your dirty little pie fingers in there, those were in them."

[piemakerprince]

"My fingers aren't dirty," Ned replied as he crossed his arms, half offended someone would ever suggest otherwise. Being a pie maker bred an almost obsessive need to keep his hands clean. "It's not my fault they showed up in the middle of my counter."