If we needed proof that we needed to hire an employee, this was it.
“Where’s Chloe?”
I glanced up to see Tanja at the front of the line, leaning on the side of the truck. She snapped her gum, blowing a bubble, awaiting my answer.
“Did you cut the line?” I growled as I took a credit card from the man standing in front of me.
Tanja shrugged, not denying it. And certainly not sorry. “I had a date that ended early and I wanted a donut.”
“Great. Back of the line.” I bent down, grabbing two ice cream sandwiches, handing them to the man.
“We had an order of the mac and cheese, too,” he said.
Dammit. I forgot. I scrubbed my hand down my face and inhaled sharply. “Of course. Give me a second.”
I rushed for the fryer and popped a few of the balls in. The sound of the door to the food truck had my heart leaping. Chloe. Thank God she’s back. But when I glanced up, it was Tanja standing in the doorway.
She wore the same romper as she did earlier today, except it looked like she had taken off the tank top underneath. The plunging neckline offered an unencumbered view of her ample cleavage.
“What are you doing?” I sighed. In several strides, I grabbed one of the disposable bowls off the shelf and accidentally took down an entire stack with it.
My nerves were fried. My mind was elsewhere—worrying and stressed over where the hell Chloe was at this moment.
“You look like you need some help,” she said. I paused, glancing up and taking a breath to examine her. The offer seemed sincere. Which was a whole new side of Tanja I’d never seen before. Then, my gaze swept down the length of her body—all 5’11” of her. “In that?” Christ. I’d need to keep her away from the fryer—hot oil could spatter and burn her.
A smile tugged at her lips. With a hand on her hip, she cocked it, arching her upper back. “Like what you see?”
Not even a little. But there was the Tanja I knew. Her brow arched and I had to actively force my face to remain steady and not completely roll my eyes or gag in her direction. “I’d like it better if you slid one of those aprons around your neck.” I jerked my chin in the direction of the hooks on the walls with aprons and hats.
Her nose scrunched. “Uh, no thanks.”
“It’s not exactly optional.”
“You know, I’m helping you. A little gratitude might be nice.” She yanked an apron off the hook and somehow, with lots of rolling and folding, managed to tie it around her waist and make it shorter than her actual outfit.
“You’re right,” I acquiesced. The fact that I didn’t like the woman wasn’t an excuse to be rude to her. And she was jumping in to help at a time when I desperately needed it.
“So… where’s Chloe?”
My teeth gnashed. “She’s out.”
“Ah,” Chloe said. “She’s with Dan, isn’t she?”
My spine went stiff and I slid a glance at Tanja over my shoulder. “How’d you know that?”
She shrugged and took the credit card from the girls ordering at the window. “I heard he and Raina had a fight today in his office and she dumped his ass.”
“She dumped him?”
Tanja nodded as she pushed the card chip into the reader. “That’s what I heard.”
I swallowed, my throat dry and thick. “But Chloe wouldn’t get back together with him. I mean, he cheated on her.”
“Donuts?”
I snapped out of my thoughts, glancing at Tanja. “Huh?”
“Where do you keep the donuts… for the order?” She jerked her head toward the girls who’d just paid.
“Oh… they’re in that case.” I pointed to the Tupperware in the cabinet above her head. The mac and cheese balls finished cooking and I wrapped them up, handing them to the man waiting patiently to the side as Tanja used the tongs to put two donuts in a paper bag.
Then she swiveled, hand on hip, and looked me dead in the eyes. “They were engaged to be married, Liam. You don’t just snap your fingers and stop loving someone you were about to share your life with.” She paused, then added, “Why do you think she hasn’t canceled any of her wedding plans?”
That stopped me in my tracks and my stomach lurched. “She what?” My question was barely a whisper, and pinpricks of light invaded my vision.
Tanja nodded. “She could have gotten a fifty percent refund, but she chose to keep the venue and the caterers. Seems to me like she’s been hoping he’d come back.”
With an exhale, I tried to focus on what I knew to be true about Chloe. My person. She loved me. I knew it… I knew it in my bones. She was trust-worthy. And honest. Above all-else, Chloe would never lie to me.
But would she omit some truths?
I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to push that voice from my head.
“Oh, you don’t look so good,” Tanja said, her face twisting into a grimace. “Go sit… I’ll take care of the next order.” Her high heels clomped across the floor as she leaned over the counter, smacking her gum. “What can I get for you, sugar?” she asked.
Fifteen minutes later, I pulled my shit together and we had managed to get the line down to a normal length, catching up on orders. I was able to breathe just a little easier.
One problem down. Only my fragile heart left to fix.
But fragile wasn’t broken. I just needed to see Chloe. Talk to her. I had no doubt that this could all be cleared up in one conversation. It was a misunderstanding, that’s it, I thought as I bagged up a half-dozen donuts. I handed them down to the customers while Tanja rang them up on the iPad.
“And two coffees,” the customer added.
Who in the hell drinks coffee this late at night? I couldn’t believe that Chloe was right when she insisted we start selling coffee too. Because coffee and desserts go together, she sang.
“Got it,” I said. I grabbed two paper cups from the top shelf and reached for the coffee pot.
At the same time, Tanja also said, “I’ll get it.”
We both reached for the pot, knocking into each other. Her hand slipped, knocking the pot off the counter and mine skimmed against the hot plate.
She was already precariously balanced, perched on her heels as she was, and with our collision Tanja went down with a twist of her ankle as the coffee pot shattered at our feet.
I caught her waist, gripping her tightly and pulling her against my body to stop her from falling into the shards below us. Steam billowed up from the floor amidst the spilled brew and broken glass. Fucking hell.
“Are you okay?” I tried to help her stand upright and she winced, glancing down at her ankle.
There was a cut just above the gold strap of her heels and blood was trickling down her foot.
“Shit,” I muttered and her eyes went wide with fear.
“Is it bad?”
I didn’t know yet, but based on how terrified she looked, I wasn’t about to say that.
Still bracing with one arm, I shoved my hand in the tip jar, pulling out three bucks and handed it to the girls at the window. “Sorry, no coffee tonight. Here’s a refund, and if you come back another night, I’ll give you a free cup of coffee.”
They grimaced as they looked at Tanja and nodded. “Yeah, of course. No worries, dude. Take care of her.”
I yanked the Back in Five Minutes sign from behind the counter and hung it over the edge of the truck before gently lifting Tanja in my arms and carrying her away from the open window to the back of the truck where we had the chairs set up.
I set her down on the table, where she pulled her leg up to try to examine the cut. “Oh my, God, do you think I’ll need stitches?”
I raced to the sink, wetting some paper towels, and grabbed the first aid kit. “I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “Let me see it?”
As I crossed back to her, she stretched out her leg for me to see and I caught her calf in my hand, gently turning the cut toward the light.
Carefully, I wiped the blood away with the wet towel.
I didn’t see any glass inside the cut and it was pretty shallow. The bleeding had already stopped with a little bit of pressure. “It looks okay, I think.” I finished cleaning her cut and put a large bandage on it.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“You’re welcome.” I blew out a breath and raked my hands through my hair. Fuck this fucking day. “You may want to have a doctor look at it tomorrow to be sure.”
“Mmm,” her voice purred in a way that made the hairs on my neck stand up. “Maybe you could come over to my place tonight after your shift and take another look?”
“Tanja, no—”
Before I could register what was happening, her other leg, the good leg, hooked around my hips and with a quick clamp of her calf muscles she pulled me flush against her. Her spread legs with no panties beneath the romper offered a view of almost everything, and I jerked my gaze up to her face, pressing my palms against her shoulders to keep her at arm’s length.
A hell of a lot of good that did. She clasped her hands around mine and tugged them down to her breasts, rolling my hands over her nipples.
“Oh, come on,” Tanja cried. “I know your relationship with Chloe is fake. With me, it could be real.”
My hands were still pressed against her breasts. It doesn’t feel real, I wanted to say in regard to her overinflated breasts. “My feelings for Chloe are real. I love her.”
“She doesn’t want you. Trust me, I know Chloe. And if she wanted you, she wouldn’t have waited two months to act on it.”
Fuck. That landed like a sock to the gut. She was right. Of course she was right. No one in their right mind would wait that long if they truly had feelings. I was an idiot.
“That may be, but I still can’t do this with you,” I whispered.
She licked her lips and removed her hands from where they held mine hostage against her breasts. “You sure about that?”
“Tanja?” A small voice echoed.
I jerked my gaze to where Chloe stood in the doorway and panic surged up my spine. “Chloe,” I whispered. “This isn’t what it looks like.”
With a single blink, a thick tear glided down her cheek. “It looks like my two best friends are hooking up.”
35
Chloe
I stood there stunned as Tanja’s legs released their viper grip on Liam’s waist. They scrambled off of each other like two teenagers caught in the limo on prom night.
Tanja seemed surprisingly unaffected by me walking in as she snapped her legs together and fixed her lipstick.
Only Liam seemed to notice the tear that fell down my cheek. I quickly brushed it away. He’s not mine to be possessive of. Hadn’t I made that perfectly clear? That we couldn’t be together? Just what did I expect to happen? Well, I didn’t expect him to jump on Tanja … she didn’t even seem like his type. If anything, he seemed constantly annoyed by her.
“We were not hooking up,” Liam said, taking a step closer to me.
“We weren’t?”
“No. We weren’t.” He glared at Tanja in response. “This is just a big misunderstanding. See, the coffee pot broke and she cut her ankle…”
I glanced down at my feet where my sneakers were standing in a pool of lukewarm coffee and glass. “It’s fine,” I snapped, hating the edge in my voice. “But there’s a line of customers waiting.” I gestured out the window where a literal line of people seemed to be staring at us like this was a show with their dessert.
Tanja and Liam were out of their sight line, but I sure wasn’t.
“Thanks for the help, Tanja. I can take it from here if you two want to … go somewhere. Together.” Those words burned like poison at the back of my throat.
“Oh, come on, Chloe. You have to know that I would never… not with Tanja. Not with anyone.”
“How could I know that? You’re single, she’s single.”
The customers next in line shared a quick glance at each other. Shit. To our customers, Liam wasn’t single and neither was I. We were together. A couple.
I cleared my throat and yanked the Back in Five Minutes sign down. Gritting my teeth against the fake smile as the next customer approached, I asked, “What can I get you?” I ignored the flaming jealousy that itched down my back.
“Uh, I’m going to go,” Tanja whispered as the click of her heels faded behind me. “I’ll call you in the morning, Chloe.”
I waved over my shoulder, not trusting myself yet to turn and look at her.
“Chloe, can we talk?” Liam was so close I could feel the hot breath of his whisper on the side of my face.
“I think we should just work.”
“Well, I want to talk. You were able to leave for an hour to go talk to your ex-fiancé, but you can’t spare five minutes for me?”
I whipped around to face him and, although the smile was still plastered on my face, my eyes were heated flames of anger. Anger that I had no right to feel—which only pissed me off more. “We kind of have an audience right now,” I whispered. “And this is our business. I’m not going to throw away a line of paying customers because your libido got the best of you. Trust me, when it comes to Tanja, you’re not the first and you won’t be the last.”
“The business? You’re concerned about the business?” Liam snorted and pinned his fists to his hips. “That’s funny. Because I’m concerned about you. About us.”
“There is no us,” I whispered. But even as I said it, my eyes filled with moisture.
His chest hitched with the breath he took. Yanking a tray of donuts from the storage bin, he passed them down to the customer in front of us.
“Could you set those on that table over there?” he asked, pointing to the picnic table in the park a few feet away. They seemed startled, but took the box and set it down on the picnic table as he asked.
“What are you doing?” I asked, but he completely ignored me, cupping his hands around his mouth and yelling, “Free donuts as an apology for the hold-up! It’s going to be another few minutes. I hope you’ll wait around, but if not, be sure to come visit us another night.”
I hooked my hand around his elbow and yanked him away from the window. “What are you doing?”
“I need to know,” he said. “I need to know if you really felt nothing when you walked in and found Tanja all over me.”
Tanja all over him? He’d literally had his hands on her breasts.
What I felt was far from nothing. My heart—my stupid, fragile heart felt like it had cracked in two at the sight. “It looked like a pretty even participation if you ask me.”
He shook his head. “How can you say that? Isn’t it obvious how head over heels in love with you I am? I don’t even like Tanja. She’s selfish and a terrible friend.”
“Don’t talk about her like that. You don’t even know her.”
His palms flew to his forehead and he rubbed across his face. “That’s what you’re choosing to focus on when I say I love you? I tell you that the woman who’s supposed to be your best friend tried to kiss me, when she knows how close we are, and you’re seriously going to stand there and defend her?”
My brain was muddy. Like I was swimming beneath the surface of a murky lake, trying to open my eyes underwater. “There’s nothing to defend. You’re both free to fuck whomever you want.”
His gaze hardened into steel, and for the first time ever, I saw pure, undiluted anger in his eyes. Directed at me. “That’s bullshit. I know you know that’s bullshit. I wouldn’t want to talk to Tanja for more than a minute any given day, let alone fuck her.”
“Luckily there’s no talking in that.” I bit my cheek, trying to muster up anger that mirrored his. I fell short, though. Instead, all I felt was the pinch of loneliness. “And whatever happens—or doesn’t happen—between you and any woman is none of my business. Because we’re not involved.”
“But we are involved! Even if the public ‘relationship’ we have is bullshit and a publicity stunt, we were involved the moment you kissed me in your foyer mont
hs ago.” Even though what he said was totally true, his tone and the way he put finger quotes around the word relationship hurt like a punch to the gut. “Pretending we’re not involved doesn’t do jack shit to negate the truth in that. And I’m fucking sick of pretending with you. I’m sick of pretending to be your boyfriend when cameras are on or people are watching, only to pretend I’m not madly in love with you behind the scenes when it’s just the two of us.”
“Can’t you see there’s too much on the line! You’re my best friend, and we’re in business together, and I would ruin you. I would ruin us! Everything we have, everything we’ve built, I would find a way to fuck it up. I don’t think I could survive that… I need you.” My voice cracked, but I couldn’t cry in front of him. The moment I did, it would all be over. He took a step closer, reaching out for me, and I quickly countered the movement, stepping back so fast that my spine slammed into the wall behind me. I couldn’t let him come any closer. Because he’d want to hold me… and I’d let him. It would feel so damn good to be loved by Liam. Which only meant it would destroy me to be dumped by Liam.
“You could never ruin me, Chloe.” A moment of understanding swept his face. “But I guess that’s the big difference between us,” he said. “I love you. I want to work with you. I want to be with you.” He took a step back, his broad chest thick and clenched along with his fists at his sides. “If this ends, I’ll be broken-hearted and I’ll miss you. But I don’t need you. There’s a big difference.” He bent, retrieving his messenger bag from the rack beside the door before crossing to stand in front of me once more. “I love you, but I can’t keep doing this. It’s killing me. I need to know if you really love me… or if you just love having a crutch.”
His hands fell gently to my shoulders and I swayed into his body, succumbing to his embrace. He pressed a final, soft kiss to my forehead before turning and walking out.
36
Chloe
Sugarlips (Beefcakes Book 2) Page 25