“And probably everything else, including those shorts you were wearing last night.” I groaned, and her laughter rang out through the bakery. “I can’t believe you kissed him.”
I held up my finger. “Brady kissed me. I would never kiss an employee.”
“But you kissed him back, right?”
I nodded and swallowed around the fear in my throat. “With tongue,” I added, “but by not thinking, I put our whole business in jeopardy.”
She held up her finger, pausing and licking her lips. “At the risk of sounding dumb, how did it put our business in jeopardy?”
“Duh, Amber! If he claims sexual harassment, we’re done! We can’t come back from that.”
“Whoa, back up the bread wagon, Haylee. Brady kissed you, not the other way around. He also did it in a place where there were no witnesses. A sexual harassment claim would be he said-she said. He’d never win in court with that.”
“He will in the court of public opinion. Who are they going to believe? The sexy guy or the thick chick? They’re going to believe the sexy guy because why wouldn’t a thick chick throw herself at a guy like him?”
Amber made the head explosion motion and shook her head. “You have serious self-confidence issues. I’m siding with Brady on that. Regardless, Brady isn’t going to cry sexual harassment any more than you are. You’re both adults, and you were both willing participants, right?”
“Seemed like it,” I agreed. “He was moaning louder than I was. I broke off the kiss, and he dove back in for another until you interrupted.”
“Dammit. I’ve always had bad timing!” she exclaimed, hitting herself in the forehead with her palm.
I chuckled and took another bite of the sandwich.
“That leads me to the next question,” she said, and I motioned for her to ask it while I chewed. “Do you want to do it again?”
I moaned and closed my eyes. “So much, Amber. I’m trying not to think about the fact that I’ll never do it again.”
“Why the hell not?” she asked, her brow up in surprise.
I tossed my hand up and let it fall to the table, rattling the dishes. “Have you been listening?”
Her head nodded, but her smile was sneaky. “I heard you say he kissed you, you kissed him back, you both moaned, he liked it enough for a second kiss, and he loves your ass. All of those things seem like excellent reasons to do it again.”
“Even though it could put our business in danger?”
Amber leaned back and crossed her arms over her chest. “It won’t. Brady’s not like that. He’s also had the hots for you since he started working here. I’m not at all worried about it.”
I stood up, my shoulders slumping. “I’m glad someone’s not. Thanks for the food. You got the cleanup and lockup? I’m going upstairs to shower and try to forget about this day.”
She stood and hugged me, how much she cared about me evident in her touch. “I’ve got this. Go rest up. Tomorrow is going to be just as busy. And stop worrying about this, please. I’d rather you spent some time thinking about the implications of kissing Brady in your personal life rather than your professional life.”
I released her and headed for the back of the bakery. “That’s the thing, Amber. The implications of Brady in my personal life are even scarier than the implications in my professional life. He could upset the bread cart here for a few months, but he could dismantle my personal life forever without even trying.”
I took the steps to my apartment one at a time and hated how spot on those words sounded to my ears.
“HAYLEE, IS THAT YOU?” Amber called out, and I frowned.
“No, it’s Brady,” I called back, walking into the front of the bakery. “I was looking for Haylee. I thought she’d be here.”
Amber leaned on the counter and crossed her arms. “She left about twenty minutes ago. She was going home to shower and rest. Did you need something?”’
I couldn’t tell her that I’d come looking for Haylee to apologize for kissing her. Correction. Apologize for kissing her at work. I was struggling with the knowledge that if I did find my cupcake, I’d probably just kiss her again. I couldn’t resist her now that I’d had a taste. Ever since I’d had her ass in my hands and my tongue in her mouth, I’d been walking around with half a hard-on. It was thoroughly uncomfortable. I needed more of Haylee Davis, and I wasn’t going to pretend that I didn’t.
“No, it can wait. I’ll just talk to her about it tomorrow.”
She shrugged and tipped her head to the side. “You could, or you could walk up the stairs and talk to her now. I know she wouldn’t mind.”
“It’s not important enough to bother her with.”
It was, but I would never tell my other boss that. Not when I’d made out with her best friend and business partner in the cooler when I was supposed to be working.
“I wish I could believe the words coming out of your mouth, but the look in your eye is a dead giveaway, Brady. If you think she didn’t tell me about the kiss, then you don’t know two women who are as close as sisters. We share everything. She’s scared, and I’m not going to pretend that doesn’t piss me off.”
I held up my hands in front of me and took a step backward into the bakery. “I didn’t do anything to scare Haylee. Don’t be pissed at me.”
Amber took a step forward and lowered a brow, her gaze raking me with an uncomfortable honesty I didn’t like. “You didn’t do it intentionally, but kissing her in the cooler produced the same result. Don’t get me wrong. It was way past time the two of you stopped pussyfooting around each other and made out. The problem was where you chose to do it.”
My hands fell to my side, and I nodded in agreement. “You’re right, that’s what I wanted to talk to her about.” My hand went to my hair and lodged there while I searched for the right words to say. “She’s scared because I kissed her in the cooler?”
“She’s scared because you kissed her here, and that’s a huge risk if you claim sexual harassment.”
I couldn’t stop the laughter that bubbled up from my chest. “Me? I’m going to claim sexual harassment.”
Amber shrugged. “He said, she said. You won’t win, but you can still do damage to this business.”
“The business I’m a huge part of maintaining? The same business that has offered me new opportunities at every turn over the last seven years? That business?”
“I told her it was ridiculous, but you know Hay-Hay,” she said on a shrug.
My head nodded before I thought about it. “I do. I also know it’s a defense mechanism.”
“Which she earned the right to have,” Amber pointed out. “I’m sure you of all people understand that.”
“While Haylee and I both grew up in the foster system, the difference is I had foster parents who loved me. Adoption wasn’t a thing they did back then like it is now, and they were already old by the time I went to live with them, but they loved me like a son. They both passed shortly before I turned eighteen, but I knew they loved me. Haylee didn’t have that.”
“She lived with a lot of foster families around the area for the first ten years of her life. After that, she was placed with old Mrs. McNally. The social workers were always looking for a kid desperate enough for a stable place to live that they were willing to be Cinderella and take care of Mrs. McNally.”
“At ten,” I said in disbelief.
“Hay-Hay did the work, and Mrs. McNally supplemented her social security. Not exactly win-win, but Haylee did have a place to live. My parents were her relief foster home, which meant she stayed with us one weekend a month. You know how that worked. It was supposed to be to give Mrs. McNally a break, but it was always to give Haylee one. We loved her, but it wasn’t until my oldest sibling graduated when Hay-Hay was fifteen that we could take her in completely. It was a good thing because Mrs. McNally keeled over a month after Haylee moved out. She probably would have had to leave Lake Pendle if she couldn’t live with us.”
“I’m gl
ad she has you and your family. Haylee’s got grit, and while I know she comes by it naturally, someone still fostered the belief that she could be whatever she wanted to be. I have no doubt that was you.”
“She has made something of herself despite the knocks against her,” Amber agreed. “I don’t want to see that ruined for her.”
“That’s why I came to apologize,” I explained.
“You’re going to apologize for kissing her?”
“Nope. I’m going to apologize for kissing her here, and then I’m going to kiss her again to prove to her I want to kiss her no matter where we are. Hopefully, I don’t get slapped.”
“Do we have a problem regarding the business, Brady?” Amber asked with one brow in the air.
I paused and thought out my answer. There was a right one and a wrong one, depending on what side of the bakery you were standing on. “The only problem we have regarding the business is how long it takes me to convince the other owner of it that I’m the guy she can trust to have her back—both in the bakery and her bed.”
“That won’t be easy. Hay-Hay doesn’t let her guard down often.”
The laughter that bubbled up inside me escaped at her words. “Do you think? I’ve been working here for a few weeks shy of seven years, and actively trying to get her to date me for six of those. The only reason I kissed her today was that the opportunity presented itself. If it hadn’t, I’d still be wondering if she was ever going to notice me standing here day after day.” My hand fell from my hair to my side with fatigue.
“Staring at her with so much devotion that’s so obvious to the rest of us, you mean?” Amber finished, but I shook my head.
“Not devotion, no. Yes, devotion,” I said on a sigh. “But not just devotion. Reverence, trust, belief in her and what she does for all of us. I don’t know.”
Amber pushed herself off the counter and walked toward me. “I think you do know. You know plenty. The person who doesn’t know is upstairs. Even after you stuck your tongue down her throat with more passion than she’s ever experienced, she still doesn’t believe the hot guy wants to be with the thick chick.”
The matching sigh we both let out was equally frustrated and sad. “Did Haylee say that? In that many words?”
“In those exact words. I’ve known Hay-Hay forever, and she hasn’t changed since the day she moved into my family’s home. She has always been the thick chick, and in my opinion, she’s drop-dead gorgeous. If you think anything different, don’t walk up those stairs. She’s never going to look any different than she does today.”
I strode to the back door and grasped the handle. “You’re wrong, Amber. One day she will look different. One day, she’ll look happy. One day, she’ll look stunning in a white gown instead of white bakery pants. One day, she’ll be glowing with the look of new life growing in her belly.”
I swung out the door on the laughter of a woman I had hopefully just won over. I was going to need her in my corner.
One down. One to go.
Twelve
I sucked in a breath and stretched my neck out before I climbed the stairs to Haylee’s apartment. I glanced down at the two boxes of food in my hands and prayed that she was still up. I planned to be here sooner but got caught up in the busyness of The Modern Goat. I had a couple of beers while I waited for the burgers, and suddenly, I regretted the mellow feeling they offered me. I had to be careful and consider this as important as anything I’d ever done in my life. No. This was the most important thing I’d ever done in my life.
At the top of the stairs, I knocked on the door and waited, bouncing slightly on my toes while I did so. I doubted Haylee was in bed already if she was as worked up about the kiss as I was, and I was still pretty damn worked up about it. Mostly because I wanted to do it again, all night and all over her.
“Coming,” I heard her call out, and I groaned because the first thought I had was that I wanted to make her.
I noticed the door handle start to turn, but then it hesitated, likely because she was looking through the peephole to see it was me standing there.
“It’s me, Haylee. I brought dinner.”
“I was just going to bed, Brady,” she said through the too-thin wooden door. I didn’t like that anyone could break this door down in a matter of seconds. At least we lived in a town where the likelihood of that was slim.
“Please, Haylee?” I asked. “I just want to talk.”
There was a beat of silence, and then the door swung open. “We don’t have anything to talk about.”
I walked through the open door and locked it behind me, setting the boxes of food down on the coffee table. “We do, but first, we eat.”
She eyed the boxes from The Modern Goat. “Maybe I already ate.”
“If you have, you can feel free to keep it until tomorrow, but something tells me you haven’t because you’re too worked up.”
“Now you’re a mind reader, too? Good to know.”
I popped the boxes open and sat across from her, biting into a burger. “Nope.”
She sighed with what could only be construed as frustration. Her eyes darted to the box of food. “Burgers and cheese curds. Looks like heaven.”
I held up my burger. “It is. I know you gave Amber yours yesterday. Thought you might want a mulligan.”
She shrugged before she disappeared into the kitchen, her tiny sleep shorts sending a zing of awareness straight to my groin. When she came back, she had a bottle of wine and two glasses. She poured us each a glass and then sat before she finally picked up her burger and took a bite. Her eyes rolled back in her head as she chewed. “I love their food. It’s always so fresh.”
“Including these thick, crusty rolls they use for buns. Wonder where they get them from?”
Her laughter filled my head, and my heart soared. That was precisely what I wanted. I wanted her to relax and enjoy a meal with me the way we used to. The way we did before the painful awareness of our mutual attraction stole that away. It had been years, but tonight was different. It felt to me like the kiss in the cooler took the edge off that electric charge zinging between us. Sure, it also supercharged it, but with that first kiss out of the way, we weren’t left to wonder if kissing each other was what we wanted. It was. Now we just had to figure out where to go from here.
For now, we’d eat burgers and cheese curds and sip the wine she had disappeared into the kitchen to get before she started on her meal. That helped, too. She was extending an olive branch to me in her home. It wasn’t about being a good hostess, though. It was about her knowing it would help us both with the conversation to come.
I leaned back on the couch and drank the wine while she finished her food. It was glorious to sit here and just observe her somewhere other than the bakery. Every inch of her ivory skin was glowing, and if I had to guess, also softer than a down pillow. I knew her ass was. When I had it in my hands earlier today, I was breathless. I had found heaven after six long years of searching, and I wanted to stay in that cooler forever. The memory alone made my dick harden without conscious thought. I wish she understood how incredible she was in all aspects of her life.
She didn’t.
She didn’t see that she could bake circles around me without even trying. She didn’t see that she was more than Darla ever could be simply because she was kind. She didn’t see that her beauty knocked the breath from me every time I saw her. One day she would. One day I would open her eyes and teach her to love the real Haylee Davis.
She leaned forward to grasp her wine glass, and her tiny sleep shorts pulled up another inch, leaving little to my imagination. I moaned and then cleared my throat, so I didn’t choke on the wine. “I don’t suppose I could convince you to cover yourself with a blanket?” I asked, my voice needy and thick with desire.
Her brow went up, and she tugged on her sleep shorts before she checked to make sure her tank top hadn’t dipped too low in the front. It didn’t matter. I could see the outline of her nipples through the fabric
, and I wanted nothing more than to suck them between my lips and tease them until she came under me.
“What? Suddenly you can’t stand to look at the hips and ass you said you didn’t have a problem with just a day ago?”
She wanted the question to sound flippant and uncaring, but it didn’t work. I heard the hurt that filled those words. I set my wine glass down and stood slowly, my khaki shorts unable to hide the truth when I was standing. “Does this look like I can’t stand to look at them? No, just the opposite is true. I love looking at them, but if you don’t cover up, I won’t be able to form a coherent sentence in another two minutes.”
She tugged a blanket off the back of the couch and covered her legs with it. Her nipples still begged for my touch, but I’d accept only suffering half as much pain right now. “Thanks for dinner. It was nice not to have to hear about how I should eat a salad when I really wanted a damn burger.”
I sat again and tried to adjust my pants, so every movement didn’t cause shooting spasms of desire through me. “You’ll never hear that from my lips, Haylee. You’re an adult, and you make your own decisions. Sure, in this case, I made the decision, but I didn’t think you’d mind.”
Her smile was genuine when she lowered her wine glass. “I didn’t mind at all. I appreciate dinner. Sorry about being rude earlier. You took me by surprise.”
I shook my head and leaned forward over my knees. “You weren’t rude. You were cautious, and I get that. I showed up unannounced. I should have called or texted, but I was afraid you’d say no.”
“Probably would have,” she agreed, chuckling. “I’m glad you didn’t call ahead. I would have missed out on that amazing hunk of meat and...you.”
“Another amazing hunk of meat?” I asked, laughter in my voice.
“Some would say.”
“What do you say, cupcake?”
“I say you should stop calling me cupcake, but you won’t.”
“You’re excellent at diversion, do you know that?”
Her shoulder went up in a shrug while she tipped her wine glass up again. “I wanted to talk to you about something, Brady.”
Cupcake (The Fluffy Cupcake Book 1) Page 9