by K. M. Scott
Alex’s face twists into an expression of sadness. “I know. I know you hate working there now too.”
“But now I have an even better reason to hate it. First, fucking Katelyn…no, I mean Kylie…fuck, I don’t know which one it was but whichever twin it was that decided she needed to put on that fucking show the night Hailey came nearly made me lose her. Then that fucking food lady decided to trap me and fucking tape us together. What kind of manipulative fucking bitch does that? And for what? We didn’t do anything, but she told Hailey we did. Now she says all her senses tell her the truth about me.”
His sadness gives way to confusion, which is written all over his face even before he starts talking again. “Wait. What? What happened with Hailey?”
I hang my head, too drunk and too sad to look at him when I explain. “She broke up with me. Brooke, the food lady who said she wanted to help her, came to the club and when we went into the office to talk about her helping Hailey, she made a move on me. I don’t know how, but she recorded the whole thing and then played it for Hailey. And I really don’t know how she made it sound like she and I were together. But she did, and Hailey’s gone.”
“Did you talk to her? Tell her it didn’t happen?”
“Of course, I did. She doesn’t believe me. Why would she? She saw what happened with the twins, and now she’s heard what supposedly happened with that Brooke bitch. I even went over to her hotel to convince her to tell Hailey the truth, but she left already.”
“Why would this Brooke woman do that to her? I thought she wanted to help Hailey because she loved her stuff.”
“Isn’t that the question of the day? I’ve sat here for hours trying to figure out why food bitch would do that to someone she just met. Nothing makes sense, but then again, I’ve been blasted for most of that time, so that could be why I can’t work out what the fuck made her do that.”
“Maybe she’s jealous,” Alex says, nodding like he approves of that explanation. “She probably doesn’t have the talent Hailey has in her little finger in her entire body.”
Leaning back, I let my head rest against the couch cushion. I’m tired of trying to figure out what food lady’s motive was.
“It doesn’t matter why she did it. All that matters is Hailey’s gone.”
Alex jumps up from the chair and begins moving around the room. That’s how he acts when he’s excited about something. What he could be excited about in all of this, I have no clue.
“Okay, here’s what you have to do. Find out where you can locate this Brooke woman and talk to her. She clearly isn’t any friend of Hailey’s, and I doubt she has any interest in helping her after what she did to you. Just make her tell the truth and this will all be cleared up. You and Hailey will be back together.”
Fuck, he makes it all sound so simple. Or maybe that’s just because my drunken mind only understood about half of what he just said.
“It doesn’t matter, Alex. It’s over. Hailey was right in the beginning. She’s not a red Jag girl, and I’m not a guy who deserves someone like her. Karma got me, man. Every woman I’ve ever been with said this would happen, and lo and behold, it has.”
He starts to say something, but I’m too drunk and too tired to listen to anymore. I just want to fall asleep thinking about Hailey and how she’d look at me like she loved me.
Like I could be someone she could love.
Chapter Nineteen
Hailey
In my best effort to keep busy and not let myself think of Cade, I hide out in the kitchen with chocolate and attempt to create something new. The problem is I can’t stop thinking of him, and after about an hour, I’ve eaten more of the chocolate than doing anything else with it.
The air around me smells like pancakes and sausage, the most popular item on the menu every Sunday morning. While the restaurant struggles during the week, Sunday mornings are always a busy time, thankfully. If it wasn’t for the breakfast rush each weekend, my parents might have to close the place down.
I peek out the windows in the kitchen doors and see the crowds have thinned a bit since the last time I looked. Good. That will give my mom and dad a break, to say nothing of the servers and cooks.
As I’m staring out into the dining room, I see a man walk through the front door who catches my attention. Tall with dark hair and a hint of gray at the temples, he’s attractive, but I think my mind must be playing games on me because he looks like an older version of the person I’m trying so very hard not to think about this morning.
Or ever again.
Curious, I step out to take a better look. Who is this man? Is it just a coincidence that he looks like the spitting image of Cade?
“Hailey, someone to see you!” Hannah calls back to me.
I walk toward where she stands with him, cautious that I might be going crazy. Too much Cade on my brain.
“Yes?” I say with a smile I hope doesn’t show how odd I feel at this moment.
Hannah walks away, leaving me standing in front of this older lookalike of the man I so desperately want to not have on my mind anymore. Is this the universe playing some kind of cruel trick on me? Isn’t it bad enough I trusted Cade and he made me look like a fool? Do I really need to see his face in every guy that shows up here?
“Hailey? It’s nice to meet you,” the man says as he extends his hand to shake mine. “I’m Stefan March, Cade’s father.”
A nervous giggle escapes from my throat. “I guess what they say is true. You can’t plant peas and get corn. You look just like him.”
Stefan gives me a big smile and leans in toward me. “I think I get to say he looks just like me since I came first.”
“I guess. Yes, that would be right.”
“Do you have a few minutes? I’d like to speak to you,” he says in a kind voice that sounds so much like his son’s it’s unnerving.
But I can’t talk to him or anyone else about Cade today. It’s too soon. My emotions are too raw, too close to the surface, and there’s no way I’ll get through a conversation with him about his son and not cry.
“I’m not sure that would be a good idea right now.”
“Well, then will you let me show you something? No talking. Just showing. I promise it won’t take much of your time.”
Still unsure if I should even do this, I point toward an open booth on the far side of the restaurant. “Okay. We can sit over there.”
Good to his word, he doesn’t try to make conversation at all as we walk to the booth. When we sit, he remains silent but sets a laptop on the table.
Spinning it around, he lifts the top and presses a button to light up the screen. “All I ask is that you watch.”
I look over the laptop and give him a smile, noticing how similar his deep brown eyes are to his son’s. Deep brown eyes that I’ve looked into so many times and found the calm I needed.
“Okay.”
When I look back at the screen, I see a black and white picture. It’s a recording of some sort, but I don’t know from where or of what.
As if he’s reading my mind, Stefan says, “This is the security camera footage of my office from Friday night. The sound will come up in a few seconds.”
For a moment, I panic. I don’t want to watch this. I can’t see Cade with someone else. Why would his father come here to show me that? Is it that he doesn’t want the two of us together? Because if that’s the case, he didn’t have to bother coming all the way over here to show me the video proof his son cheated on me. I already heard the audio.
But then I see on the screen Cade and Brooke standing there in the middle of his office talking, and it’s not like she said it happened at all. He’s talking about how he hopes she’ll help me. He doesn’t look like he’s interested in her. Everything he’s saying is for my benefit.
Then I see her climb on top of him and kiss him, just like he claimed she did. It’s only for a second or two, though, and then I hear him say the words any girlfriend would want to hear in this situation.
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br /> “Brooke, whoa. I’m with Hailey. She’s my girlfriend. I just wanted to get you to help her. You need to get off me. Now.”
I stare at the screen as she makes some excuse about why she hit on him, but I’m not listening anymore. All I can see is Cade doing exactly what he told me he did.
Stefan closes the laptop and lets out a heavy sigh after Brooke leaves the office. “Nobody is harder on Cade than I am, but he’s a good man. He wouldn’t do anything to hurt someone he truly loved, and he loves you. That’s obvious. I just thought you should see this since I’ve been told you heard some version of it that isn’t true.”
“What did he tell you?”
He shakes his head and smiles. “My son wouldn’t tell me anything. We aren’t like that. That’s my fault, but that’s the way it is. His cousin Alex told me after he found him drunk last night when he didn’t come into work.”
“She told me they were together. She played me a recording with his voice on it saying those words he said on the security tape, but not all of them. She twisted everything to make it seem like they were together.”
Stefan nods. “Doctored. Probably just a splice job. It isn’t hard to do. If she has someone around her who knows anything about production, it could have been a very convincing version of what happened.”
Someone like the production guy she has who helps with her podcast. I’ve been such a fool! I barely knew her, but I believed her lies over what the man I love was trying to tell me.
I cover my face with my hands, not wanting Cade’s father to see me fall apart. “God, I said such horrible things to him. He must be so hurt. I was so angry, though.”
“Something tells me it’s not too late.”
Wiping my eyes, I can’t help but feel like it might be. “I wanted so much for Brooke to help me get the word out about my desserts to help my parents keep this place open that I couldn’t see anything but that. I feel so foolish, and I’ve hurt Cade because I wanted to believe her.”
“For what it’s worth, you did hear his voice on the tape. I don’t think anyone could blame you for believing what she told you.”
I look down at the table to avoid meeting Stefan’s gaze as the real truth becomes clear. “I believed it because it was something I always feared. I always worried I wasn’t the type of person he should be with. I’m not really a red Jag kind of girl, as you can tell.”
“Well, my son doesn’t let his mother or me meet most of the women he dates, but we hear things since he and Alex are so close. Cade’s never felt for any of them what he feels for you. That I do know. He even told me about you the other night. He said you went to school for psychology but something made you change your career path to begin baking here for your parents’ customers. And from what I hear from my brothers and Alex, they’d love to have your desserts to serve their customers at CK.”
He stops and lets out a heavy sigh. “Cade is a lot like me when I was his age. I think that’s why we lock horns so often. That and I want him to take over the club so I can walk away knowing it’s in the best hands possible and he hates the place. In that way, we’re very different. I loved living the life of a single guy until I met his mother. Then, it was like someone suddenly turned on a light and I saw I didn’t want to live like that because I wanted her in my life more. I think that’s what Cade’s found out with you. I’d hate to see him lose that because of someone’s malicious attempt to break you two up.”
Maybe it isn’t too late.
“I need to talk to him. Right now. I’m sorry, Stefan, but I have to go.”
I shimmy across the seat to leave, but he stops me. “Wait. I’m tired of being the only one who hasn’t tasted one of your creations. Do you have any today?”
“Hang on. I’ll be right back.”
When I return to the table, I set an apple tart in front of him. “All I could do today was mope over a bowl of chocolate. This was from what I took that awful woman, but I promise it’s still good.”
“I’m sure it is,” he says with a smile so similar to his son’s. “Thank you for listening, Hailey. It was very nice to meet you. I think I’m going to enjoy this.”
“Thank you very much for coming here to help me see the truth, Stefan. I hope this isn’t the last time we meet.”
With a shake of his head, he says, “I don’t think it will be.”
After racing through traffic, I get to Cade’s condo in record time after treating stop lights as optional on at least two occasions and the stop sign near his building as more of a glide sign. I run past the people walking in and get into the elevator to take me to the fifteenth floor. A few people getting on two floors up means I have to wait an extra thirty seconds to get to him, and by the time I reach his floor, I’m more nervous than I was the first time I came here.
I knock on his door, but I get no answer. I was in such a hurry to get to him that I forgot to check to see if his car was in the parking lot. He might not even be here.
Disappointed, I knock one more time and wait as each second that goes by I lose hope that I’m going to get to talk to him. I give the door knob a jiggle in a last ditch attempt to get inside, and I’m thrilled when it actually opens.
Rushing in, I look around but don’t see him. I hurry into his bedroom, but the bed looks like it hasn’t even been slept in. Did he go out and stay somewhere else last night?
The very idea of him licking his wounds over our breakup with someone else makes me feel sick. Disheartened, I walk out to the living room and there on the couch all curled up is Cade sleeping.
I crouch down beside him and press a kiss to his lips. Slowly, he wakes and looks at me like he isn’t sure what he’s seeing.
“Hailey? What are you doing here?”
“I came to tell you I was wrong. I’m sorry, Cade. I’m sorry I believed her. I’m sorry I said all those awful things to you.”
Wide awake after hearing that, he sits up in front of me. “It doesn’t matter. You were right. Who I am is the problem,” he says sadly.
“No! It wasn’t you. I know that now.”
Cade sighs and shakes his head. “It’s karma. Every single woman I’ve ever been with said this would happen. Now it has. It’s cosmic payback for how I was with them, for who I was before I met you.”
I grab his shoulders and shake him, desperate to make him understand. “Stop this! I know what happened with Brooke. Or better yet, I know what didn’t happen. I’m sorry I didn’t believe you when you told me nothing happened between you two.”
“You don’t believe her anymore?” he asks, sounding so hopeful that I just want to take him into my arms and hold him forever.
Looking into his eyes, I see hope there too. “No. I saw the whole thing on the security tape from your father’s office that night. I know you didn’t do anything wrong. I heard what you said to her. You were trying to help me, like you always are.”
“How did you see the security tape?”
“Your father. He came to see me at the restaurant this morning to show me. I’m so sorry, Cade. I should have believed you, but that recording sounded so real. It was just my insecurities blinding me to the truth. I should have known it never happened the way she said it did.”
Cade sighs, his shoulders sagging in relief. “My father came to see you?”
“Yes. He played the tape from when you and Brooke were talking in his office, and I saw it all. It happened just like you said it did.”
“How about that? Just when I think he and I might never get along, he goes and does something like this.”
“I thought when I first saw him that he was some kind of memory sent to haunt me,” I say, giggling. “You two look so much alike. If that’s what your future is, I’m all in. You have good genes.”
“Good old Stefan March. Just when you think you know the guy, he surprises you.”
I lean forward and press a kiss to Cade’s lips as he smiles. “So you forgive me?”
“Of course. I love you, Hailey.”
Hearing that, I climb onto the couch to sit next to him, nuzzling my face in his neck. He feels just like he always has next to me.
Right. Perfect. Just where I want to be.
“You know, I drank like a bottle of whiskey last night. I’m sure I smell like the floor of a bar right now.”
I take a deep breath in and definitely smell alcohol. “It’s okay. I probably smell like chocolate after eating half a bowl of it today. If you’re fine with that, I’m fine with you just as you are.”
Cade hugs me tightly to him and kisses the top of my head. “I have a better idea. Let’s jump in the shower. We can think of it as a fresh start.”
“Good idea. We’ll wash everything from the past couple days away and start over,” I say as I stand up from the couch.
He gets up and wraps his arm around me. “And we’ll have great shower sex because what is making up without that?”
No wonder I love this man.
Chapter Twenty
Hailey
Three Months Later
My stomach feels queasy like it always does when I’m moving but can’t see where I’m going. I know Cade loves surprises, but I just wish he didn’t require me to wear a blindfold for them.
“I think I might be sick. I’m just not good with not seeing the road when I’m in a car. I can’t even sit in the backseat because I get carsick on trips.”
He takes my hand and gives it a gentle squeeze. “Just one block more. If you’re really not feeling good, take off the blindfold but keep your eyes closed, okay?”
“That doesn’t really solve the problem, but thanks.”
I feel the car slow down, and then a few seconds later, we come to a stop. Thank God. I really don’t want to throw up all over whatever the surprise is.
“Okay, just let me come around and open your door. No peeking.”