Sweetest Temptations

by J.C. Valentine

  “I have no idea what brought that on, but I’m contributing it to my amazingly heartfelt proposal. So, what do you say? Be my lady?”

  “You know I will.”

  Hope clapped furiously as Kennedy grabbed ahold of my face and smashed his lips to mine. “This calls for dessert. Desserts all around!”

  Cheeks flushed from his exuberant kiss, I tucked a few strands of hair behind my ears as Kennedy reclaimed his seat. “I thought you were on a diet,” I reminded Hope, in case she forgot. With all the hard work we’d put in together and individually, I didn’t want to see her fall off the wagon.

  “I’m ordering a salad,” she said, “but this calls for a celebration, and what’s life worth if you can’t celebrate it with your friends?”

  Truer words had never been spoken. With a nod, I scoped out the dessert menu and pegged the chocolate lava cake as my next victim.

  ***

  “Your friend is nice.” Kennedy and I reclined on his sofa, staring out the large picture window overlooking the marina. After dinner, he asked me over to his place to stay the night. The apartment could easily house two of mine, and it was richly furnished, looking as if it belonged to a wealthy bachelor rather than a hunky fireman.

  “Yeah, she’s pretty great.” After he’d asked me to go steady—officially—we’d gone on to have a wonderful dinner. Hope was perkier than I’d ever seen her, and I contributed it to Kennedy’s presence. He drove me crazy in the best way, and it would be unreasonable to think that such a fine specimen could walk around the city streets and not have a similar effect on all estrogen producing females. It warmed my heart to know that my best friend and boyfriend had hit it off. I could imagine nothing worse than having two people I care about hate each other.

  “Hey,” I said, reminded of something Hope had said back at the restaurant. “You never said if you had a brother or not.”

  “I don’t. I’m an only child.”

  “Oh.” My shoulders fell as I worked to organize my thoughts. “What about Jack? Is he single?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe?”

  “What about the other guys you work with? Are any of them single?”

  Kennedy turned to me with a knowing look. “Are you trying to play matchmaker, Abigail Satcher?”

  “Not matchmaker, per se.” One of Kennedy’s eyebrows crooked up, and I felt my eyes grow wide and heard my voice rise in pitch. “What’s wrong with bringing two beautiful, single people together?”

  He cleared his throat. “I can’t tell you what to do with your spare time, sweet, but don’t expect me to help you. If the guys are looking for a woman, I’m sure they can find one without my help.”

  “But, don’t you want to see them happy?”

  “Who says they’re not?”

  I spluttered, searching for a comeback, but no words came forth. “Well, fine. I’ll ask them myself next time I see them.”

  “You do that,” Kennedy said, patting me on the top of my head.

  I was gathering the perfect rebuttal, when my phone chimed inside my purse. Looking over my shoulder, I groaned. “I knew I should have turned that thing off.” I was considering ignoring the call and letting it go to voice mail, when Kennedy’s phone began ringing.

  With a smile, he said, “Go get rid of whoever is calling you, and I’ll get rid of whoever is calling me. Then we’ll shut the ringers off and I’ll show you the benefits of having multiple showerheads.”

  Biting my lip, I jumped from the couch and hurried over to my purse while Kennedy reached to answer his phone. Fishing around for mine, I pulled it out and checked the caller ID. Not recognizing the number, and seeing that it was too late for it to be Dexter calling, my finger hovered over the button as I considered whether or not I should answer.

  Something in my gut told me I should.

  As I lifted the phone and pressed it to my ear, an inexplicable sense of unease washed over me. “Hello?”

  The voice that came down the line was rough with age and spoke with authority. “Good evening ma’am. This is Lieutenant Alan Marks with the Toledo Police Department. Is this Ms. Satcher?”

  “Yes, this is she.”

  “And you’re the owner of Sweetest Temptations located on Fifth and Broadway?”

  Worry crimped my stomach into tight knots and I turned to look at Kennedy for support. “Yes. What’s this about?”

  “I know it’s late, but there was a small problem this evening. Is there any way you can come down to your place of business so we can speak in person?”

  I met Kennedy’s hardened gaze and saw the phone gripped tightly in his hand. His grim expression told me that whoever he’d been on the phone with hadn’t called to deliver good news, and in the back of my head, I worried that it had something to do with my own call.

  “Yes, yes. I’ll come right away.”

  14

  I was right to be worried. As Kennedy turned down Broadway, I had a terrible sense of déjà vu. Fire crews and police cars covered the street, as did a thick cloud of smoke blanketing the air. A lump as thick as a golf ball formed in my throat as Kennedy pulled over and parked the SUV.

  “I feel like we’ve done this before,” Kennedy muttered as he turned off the engine. Reaching for my hand, I was grateful for the contact. It was the only thing grounding me at the moment.

  It took several moments before I gathered enough courage to step out onto the sidewalk. In an instant, Kennedy was beside me, clasping my hand as we walked forward. The closer we got to my bakery, the harder my heart beat, creating a pounding in my head that made me dizzy. I couldn’t walk fast enough, and yet the only thing I wanted to do was turn around and run back to the SUV.

  A few feet away from the storefront, the source of the smoke became apparent. A gasp tore out of me and my knees threatened to buckle as I watched a handful of firemen standing on the sidewalk pumping gallons of water from an enormous hose through the front door.

  “Who called tonight?” I asked Kennedy, my voice hoarse with emotion.

  “Jack. He said there was a fire.”

  Tears sprang to my eyes, and it took everything inside of me to keep them from falling. “Was it one of the ovens?”

  “They won’t know for sure until the fire is out and they can go inside to investigate.”

  I nodded, not sure what more there was to say. I wouldn’t have any answers until later. “I need to find Lieutenant Marks.”

  Taking the lead, Kennedy wove us through the chaos. Locating a uniformed officer, he pointed us in the direction of the lieutenant.

  “Are you Ms. Satcher?” Lieutenant Marks asked me, his pale eyes finding mine as he shook Kennedy’s hand. I gave him a sharp nod and he reached for my hand, shaking it too. “Thank you for coming down so quickly. I’m sure this has all been a shock to you, so I’m going to cut straight to the point. The reason I called you down here is because one of your workers, a Mister Dexter Miles,” he said, consulting a palm-sized notebook, “was found inside when the fire crew arrived.”

  A horrified cry escaped me and Kennedy drew me against his chest, wrapping his arms around me. “Is he okay?” he asked.

  “Aside from mild smoke inhalation, he has a nasty bump on his head. I have an officer with him now who will take his statement. The reason I called you down, Ms. Satcher, was to ask if you know of anyone who would have a reason to harm you or your business. A former colleague perhaps?”

  “What? No, of course not. Aside from Dexter, I run my business alone.”

  “What about former employees? Someone who might be upset they were let go.”

  “She just opened the doors a couple weeks ago,” Kennedy informed him.

  “He’s right. Dexter’s the only employee I have.”

  “What about him? Would Mr. Miles have any reason to be upset with you?”

  “No, absolutely not. We’re friends,” I told him, chucking the outrageous question right out the window. It wasn’t as if Dexter would have knocked himself over his own head
.

  When the hoses shut down, we stood back and watched as several of the crew ventured inside. They didn’t come back out for a long time, and when they finally did, I felt like leaping out of my skin.

  “I see Jack over there,” Kennedy said, pointing to one of the trucks. “I’ll be right back.”

  I let him go, because if anyone could get answers, it would be Ken. Left alone with Lieutenant Marks, I asked the burning question. “Do you think this was arson?”

  Marks’ expression gave nothing way, but I knew, in the pit of my stomach, that I was right. “It’s too early to tell,” he hedged, “but if you want my personal opinion, it looks that way.”

  “And what are you basing that on?”

  “Twenty-eight years in the field, ma’am.”

  Hugging myself, I looked away. My mind spun with everything I’d have to do come morning. Call the insurance company. Visit the hospital to be sure Dex was okay. Probably pay the police station a visit and try to get some solid answers. Two weeks in, and my dreams were going up in smoke right before my eyes.

  When Kennedy rejoined me, without a word, he looped his arm around my waist and led me back to the SUV. He said nothing as we returned to his apartment. His lips remained sealed as he stripped me of my clothes and laid me in his bed, and he remained quiet as he climbed in behind me and wrapped his naked body around mine.

  There was nothing sexual about the way he held me. Instead, I felt the tension radiating off him, as if he had received troubling news and needed to be close to me. Needing to be close to him, too, I laced my fingers with his and tucked our joined hands beneath my chin.

  Silence in the aftermath of chaos is something a person has to experience firsthand to understand the full, tremendous weight of it. I’d never experienced anything like it before tonight. It’s what I would imagine feeling if someone I loved were to die. It creeps in, settling in every cell, every pore, until all a person can feel is the oppressive weight of it crushing down on them.

  I guessed it was what depression must feel like, and all I wanted to do was curl up into a ball, close my eyes, and pretend none of it had ever happened. And that’s exactly what I did.

  ***

  Dex was released from the hospital early the next morning. When he’d called to tell me he’d made it home safely, I felt like a total wretch for leaving him hanging. I hadn’t intended to sleep the morning away, but after the night I’d had, it was exactly what I needed.

  Naturally, I’d launched into a million questions, hardly taking a breath as I got them all out. Dexter answered each one with the patience of a saint. From what he could remember, he’d locked up at closing time, just like I’d instructed. After cleaning up and packaging all the leftover goods, he went over the checklist I’d left him. Everything was in its place. But on his way back to the front to retrieve the keys to lock up, he heard a noise. The next thing he knew, he was waking up on a stretcher, bouncing around like a rag doll as the ambulance rushed him away.

  He literally didn’t know what hit him.

  The rest of the morning was spent in Kennedy’s bed. I reported the fire to my insurance agent while he made us a late breakfast and did some light cleaning. By the time I ventured out of bed, it was going on noon.

  “Heading out?” I’d found Ken in his walk-in closet—one so large that it instantly made me jealous. He smiled warmly as he stepped into a pair of dark jeans.

  “I’m on call today.”

  Counting the days, I cursed under my breath, realizing that our time together had ended. “You have to go to the station.”

  “Two days on, like clockwork.” He must have sensed my profound disappointment. The next thing I knew, a shirtless Kennedy was standing in front of me. Running his fingers through my hair, he tilted my head back so he could look me in the eyes. “I’d stay if I could.”

  “I know.”

  “Spending the last three days with you has been amazing. If I had the choice to go to work or shut out the world and stay in bed with you all day, I wouldn’t even have to think about it.”

  Why did this feel like a goodbye? The needy part of me, buried way down deep, began to claw its way to the surface at the idea of being without Kennedy for any length of time. “Me either,” I said, knowing that it couldn’t be healthy to feel this strongly over a man I hardly knew.

  “I can drive you home. Or you can stay here until I get back.” I heard the hope in his voice, saw the touch of a smile curving his full lips, and felt some of my tension ease away.

  “I should get back. I need a change of clothes and a shower.”

  “I have a shower here, and there’s the clothing optional rule I forgot to tell you about.”

  Kennedy’s offer was tempting, but I just couldn’t do it. Aside from having none of my belongings with me, I had a job, a cat, and a life to return to. Taking shelter in Kennedy’s home, in his life, wasn’t an option. “I can’t,” I said regretfully. “But call me when you’re off and we can get together again.”

  My answer came off flippant, as if the last few days were nothing but a fond memory, but if Kennedy could see the knots forming inside of me right now, he’d know that couldn’t be further from the truth.

  His frown tore at me, and I had to force myself to stand my ground. “All right. Go get dressed and meet me in the kitchen. After we eat, I’ll drop you off at home.”

  The shrewd look in his eyes let me know that Kennedy didn’t trust the steady, confident image I projected, but he released me without pushing the issue. Relieved, I dashed off to the bedroom to find my clothes and steal a few moments alone to get my emotions in check.

  15

  The damage wasn’t as bad as I had initially thought it would be. Standing in Sweetest Temptations’ kitchen doorway, I scanned the charred remains with a critical eye. Everything, from the appliances to the flooring, would have to be replaced.

  Kennedy and I hadn’t seen or spoken to each other since he dropped me off at my apartment nearly twenty-four hours ago. So, I was more than happy to find out that he was one of the people heading the investigation. Seeing him in my workspace, even burned-out and water-logged as it was, was such a pleasure. As he moved around, checking things off on his clipboard, I wanted to walk over and throw myself into his arms. I wanted to tell him I missed him and ask him to take me home again, just so we could steal a few moments alone together.

  It was official. Kennedy Harper had gotten under my skin.

  Finishing his notes, Kennedy approached. “Let’s go outside and talk.”

  I led the way, stopping as soon as I stepped out into the bright morning sunlight. It was hard to imagine that just yesterday, there had been customers going through the door, buying my pastries. Now, it was a ghost town. People walked by and stared, then continued on to their destination. It was hard not to adopt a defeatist attitude, but I reminded myself once again that I was made of stronger stuff than that. I would get through this and rise up stronger than before.

  “So, what did you find?”

  “Well, the police report says that the rear service door was open, and when we checked it out, we found damage surrounding the locks. Whoever attacked Dexter came in through the alley. The fire damage is isolated to the kitchen. We found the remains of an oven mitt on one of the burners. No evidence of accelerant. So,” he said with a deep inhale, “the question comes down to whether or not the ovens were used and someone simply forgot to shut it off, causing a fire, or…” He raised his eyebrows, saying what we were both thinking without words.

  “Or someone wanted to make it appear that way.”

  “Exactly. Obviously the presence of an assailant rules out an accident. Going off that, I think whoever it was wanted to send a message, but they didn’t plan on Dexter being here. And I’m not entirely convinced that they really meant for anyone to get hurt.”

  “How can you say that?” I protested. “They hit him over the head. Knocked him out cold. That seems pretty malicious to me.”

/>   “Not if they’re the one who called 9-1-1 afterward.”

  My breath caught as I considered his words. “Do the police know who called?”

  “No, they did it from a payphone down the block, apparently wanting to remain anonymous.”

  “How convenient.” Was it too much to ask for the criminal at large to supply a full name and home address? I wanted this asshole caught and behind bars. “I just don’t understand why this person has it out for me. What could I have done to piss them off so badly that they’d want to burn my business down?”

  “That’s the million dollar question, isn’t it? Abby,” Kennedy said, his tone softening, “I know you said before that you didn’t think that woman, Mrs. Findlay, was capable of doing you any harm, but what if she is?”

  “You think she could be behind this?” I scoffed at the idea. “She’s a middle-aged woman who harbors an unhealthy addiction to cookies. I hardly think someone who makes a habit of visiting every day and giving me her money would be an arsonist.”

  “Stranger things have happened, sweet. Consider it for a minute. What kind of person would visit a business on a daily basis—a business they admitted they loved and had a personal stake in? Do you think that person would be happy to see it pass hands to a stranger, or would they be angry that they couldn’t keep it in the family?”

  Dread washed over me as I considered this new angle. Then I recalled how I’d come to own it. “When I was buying the space, there was another buyer interested in it. We ended up in a bidding war. I won.” Obviously. “What if the other bidder was Mrs. Findlay?”

  “It certainly warrants looking into.”

  I couldn’t agree more. Mulling over his words, I tried to picture the gray-haired woman with the sweet smile and easy demeanor clocking Dexter over the head and setting fire to the place, but I just couldn’t align the images in my mind. Still, it was the only logical explanation I had at the moment, and it had enough merit that I couldn’t just write it off. The whole situation was enough to give me hives.