She nodded once, not trusting her voice.
“Thank you,” he mouthed, turning and leaving her standing alone in her bedroom at four-thirty in the morning.
Jess looped her earring through the hole in her ear and took one last look at herself in the mirror above her dresser. She knew better than to leave her makeup to chance. Now, Jess did her own makeup before heading to the station. Thankfully, she was a pro at concealer, foundation, and eyeliner, so no one would ever know that she’d spent the last hour crying.
Jess opened her bedroom door and stopped in her tracks, the scent of coffee wafting toward her from the front of her house. Strange, she hadn’t remembered programming her coffee maker the night before. Careful not to frown too deeply lest she ruin her makeup, she made her way into the kitchen where a fresh pot of joe was waiting for her, a plate of baked goods sitting next to it. Taped to the front of the coffee maker was a note, its contents scrawled in a heavy, angular slash that was a man’s handwriting: Sweets for the sweetest girl I know. Thank you for last night. For everything.
Jess pulled the note from her coffee maker and stared at it for a few long seconds, her eyes intermittently darting to the blueberry muffin, apple fritter, and apricot danish on the plate next to it. Had Sean brought the sweets with him yesterday, expecting to spend a leisurely morning in her kitchen drinking coffee and eating pastry? Jess dropped her hand to her side and closed her eyes with a long sigh.
He was killing her. She said she’d give him time, and she’d meant it. But him leaving her little love notes as he departed her house like his ass was on fire wasn’t fair to her. It sent mixed signals and made her feel even more confused than she already was.
With a heavy heart, Jess reached for the plate of pastries and stepped on the pedal of her trash can. Upending the plate, she watched as the tasty confections slid and tumbled their way into the garbage. When she stepped away, the lid shut with a clang, reverberating in the small, quiet space.
Even as he’d broken her heart, he’d offered her an olive branch, and Jess couldn’t help but feel like she’d just tossed her chances with Sean into the garbage as well. Pastries! It was like he didn’t know her at all.
Maybe that’s because he doesn’t, her subconscious inwardly sighed and Jess winced.
Jess checked her rearview mirror to make sure the spot was clear and merged into the other lane. The drive from her house to the station had given her time to think about everything that had happened earlier that morning, and while she was still upset at Sean’s disappearing act, she had to admit that it was a good thing they were taking a step back. The pastries sitting in her garbage bin were a stark reminder that she had baggage too.
Baggage she still hadn’t come clean about.
If it turned out that Sean worked through whatever it was that he needed to work through and decided he wanted to give them another shot, Jess knew she’d need to sit down and have a very real, very in-depth conversation with him. She wouldn’t go so far as to say she had an eating disorder, but she knew her relationship with food wasn’t healthy. That was something she needed to talk to someone other than Sean about. Someone not named Marisol, either.
As Jess pulled into a space at the station, her phone dinged from the center console where it was charging. Putting her beloved Honda in park, she picked it up to see who would be contacting her this early. Her phone typically didn’t start harassing her until at least nine o’clock when the rest of the world came alive for the day.
Her lips pursed in confusion, Jess re-read the note on her screen.
(707) 123-4567: Hey Jess, this is Angelica. Angelica Travis. I don’t know if you remember me, but I wanted to chat with you about something.
Jess chuckled. Angelica Travis, with her oversized personality and easygoing charm, wasn’t someone you easily forgot. But what in the world could the retired-actress-turned-innkeeper have to discuss with her? Aside from Sean, they didn’t have anything in common—at least not that Jess could discern. Angelica was tall and blonde and so comfortable in her own skin that it made Jess wince to think just how unconfident she was. For a brief moment, she wished she could possess even an ounce of the other woman’s seeming fearlessness. Then she might have been stronger in her showdown with Sean.
Curious, she typed back a quick response: Hey there! Of course, I remember you. We met just yesterday, and you’re not exactly forgettable. *wink* What’s up?
The little bubbles on her phone bounced, indicating that Angelica was responding. And when she did, Jess could hardly believe her eyes. Meet her agent? That was crazy talk. What could this Jai person want to discuss with a small-town beauty queen? She paused as her mind balked at that description. That wasn’t all she was anymore. As Jess stared out her window at the TV station’s logo, she allowed a flutter of excitement to unfurl in her belly—a stark contrast to the earlier flipping going on in her gut as Sean had told her they couldn’t be together.
Speaking with a Hollywood agent might be bananas, and it might all be for naught, but suddenly, Jess couldn’t wait to hear what the man might say. Something had to go her way, didn’t it?
Chapter 15
You could have handled that better. Sean ignored the little voice in his head. He’d had to get out of there. He’d left her the pastries he’d brought with him the night before. In the heat of the night—God, what a night—he’d forgotten them, but he’d remembered at the last minute before he’d practically ran through the door on his way out. Leaving her baked goods wasn’t much in the way of an apology, but it was all he’d had.
He worked the first few hours of his shift on autopilot, trying not to think about how good last night had been or how bad this morning had gone. Max and Noah were right—he wasn’t ready to drag Jess down with him. It was selfish to want to be with her just because she made him feel good. Wasn’t it?
Isn’t that what love is for? He silenced the little voice again by firmly chopping apples and mixing batter for fritters. As he was portioning out the dough, the back door opened, and he looked up in surprise to find his mother reaching out for one of the spare aprons hanging on the wall.
“You’re not scheduled this morning,” he said.
She shrugged and put on the apron. He watched for a moment as she moved over to the racks where they stored supplies and began pulling ingredients out with practiced movements. Apparently, she didn’t want to talk yet. Waiting was a two-person game. He identified the ingredients she was pulling down as the base for cinnamon rolls, the next item on his list, and reached over his head to pull down the appropriate bowl for her without comment. He handed it over and moved on to frying the fritters.
The quiet ‘shuf’ of flour falling into a bowl behind him lulled him, and he found himself easily falling into rhythm with his mom, edging sideways when she reached for something, handing her an ingredient as he finished with it, and performing the elegant dance of two people baking in one kitchen. It reminded him of when he was small, watching his parents in this very same place. They’d moved together so cleanly it had been hard to tell where one person ended and the other began. They’d baked together, assembling pastries with light touches while occasionally touching each other with similar gentle hands. He’d been tucked into a corner of the kitchen with a toy, or, sometimes, when he was a little older, he stood on a stool next to the counter to help with the mixing. His father had always let him punch down the yeast doughs.
But now his father was gone. The magic his parents had made in this kitchen was forever out of reach, and instead of the two of them here, in love, baking together, it was just him. How could the man who’d let Cal Grissom die fill those shoes?
He turned sharply to get his next ingredient and bumped into his mother’s arm as she reached past him with a tray of shaped croissants headed for the ovens. The tray fell to the ground with a clatter, the croissants tumbling across the tiled floor and sticking to the grout, unrolling messily as they went.
“Shit. I’m sorry.” He
knelt to clean them up.
“It’s all right,” she said as she picked up the tray. “Accidents happen. I’ll make some more.”
“I’m sorry,” he said again, not sure whether he was apologizing for bumping her, wasting the dough, or not being there all along to learn this dance.
He stuck close to his side of the kitchen while she remade the croissants. After she put them in the oven, she paused and watched him finish piping meringue onto lemon tartlets.
“You made some cookies and sold them,” she said finally.
He finished the circle of little star-shaped dots around the edge of the last tartlet before he answered. “I did.”
“Where did you get the recipe?”
“From the back of a spice bottle, if you can believe it.” He turned to face her and saw her wince.
“Not using the family recipes is bad enough, Sean, but really? The back of a bottle? You might as well have slapped a Betty Crocker label on it.”
“I’m pretty sure Betty doesn’t make Mexican wedding cookies, Mom.”
“Neither do we.”
“The customers would beg to differ.” He didn’t know why he was arguing like this. The sensible thing to do would be to back down, apologize, and promise not to do it again.
“The customers? What would you know about the customers, Sean?” The hurt in her eyes made him bite back the angry response that came immediately to his lips.
“What do you mean?” he asked instead.
“You weren’t here,” she whispered. “All those years. How would you know what the customers want? And why should we trust you to find out?”
Sean’s whole body went cold, then hot. “Is that what this is really about?”
She shrugged. He’d never seen his mother look uncertain about anything in his life. Watching her stare at him as though he were some unpredictable stranger who might walk away from her at any minute made him feel like his heart was cracking. He raised a hand to rub his chest, trying to ease the pain that wasn’t really there. “Are you asking me what my plans are for the future?”
“Do you have some?” she parried. “If you want to stay, Sean, it would make me beyond happy. If you have ideas about the bakery, I’m happy to talk them over if it means you’re thinking about your future here. Even if you don’t—if you just want to work morning shift for the next twenty years and live in the apartment—I’m happy to have you here. But you have to be happy to be here, too. And I’m not sure you are. You never were before.”
“People can change,” he muttered.
“Have you?”
He didn’t have an answer. “My shift is over,” he said. “I see Paolo coming in. I’ll see you later.” He ran out of the bakery almost as fast as he’d run out of Jess’s house that morning.
Oh, God, Jess. He didn’t stop to think before he picked up his phone and called her.
“Sean?” She sounded suspicious and angry when she answered. He didn’t care. The Jess Effect washed over him, and he took the first deep breath he’d managed since his mother had walked into the bakery.
“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I was wrong.”
“I know you were.” She sounded as though she were talking to a child. “What made you figure it out?”
“I need you,” he said simply. “Are you busy this weekend?”
Somehow, by mutual silent agreement, they spent the entire weekend without talking about any of the issues that threatened to come between them. Sean picked her up on Friday evening, and they saw a movie, arguing amiably only about which romantic comedy to see, not whether to see one at all. They spent the night at her house, and for every time he made her scream his name, she managed to make his heart nearly stop as he breathed her in.
On Saturday, she made them both eggs for breakfast while he made a few phone calls.
“Got it,” he said with satisfaction after he hung up. “Wow. These look amazing.” How did she make even a plate of eggs look like they’d been cooked with extra attention and care? The Jess Effect, again.
“Got what?” She dug into her food, which she’d dressed with a spoonful of fresh pico de gallo.
“Kayaks.” He reached out and stole a bite of her eggs, making sure to get a hefty portion of the tomatoes.
“Hey!”
“Mmm. Can I have some of that?”
She rolled her eyes. “It’s in the fridge.”
He rose and found the container in her fridge, right at the front. “You make this? I’d put it on everything if I had it sitting around.”
“Even dessert?”
He laughed. “Maybe.”
“I usually make it myself, but this week I stole some from my abuela because I was so busy.”
He almost asked busy with what, but then he remembered that they weren’t talking about anything except having fun. If he asked Jess about her week, he’d start talking about his, and he wasn’t prepared to start thinking about the future beyond a couple of hours.
“I got us a couple of kayaks to take out later.” He spooned the salsa onto his eggs and put the container away again.
She looked dubious. “Kayaks? Really?”
“You don’t kayak?”
She waved her hand in a circle around her face and then downward toward her body. “Does this look like it kayaks?”
“You’ll love it.”
Four hours later, Jess whooped as her kayak slid through an opening between two rocks on the river. “You were right,” she called over her shoulder as he followed her. “I do love this.”
“Told you!” He navigated past the same obstacle and then caught up with her with a few wild paddle strokes. “My arms are getting tired. Want to stop?”
“No,” she said with a grin. “But we can if you need to.”
He pointed to a shallow area lined by gravel that was backed by waving grasses. “There are picnic tables up there.”
“How do you know?” She angled her kayak toward the edge of the river, aiming for the gravel.
“Used to come here a lot in high school.” He’d also come here after his dad’s funeral and sat by the edge of the water and wept, but she didn’t need to know that.
They grounded the kayaks, and he managed to get out of his without too much splashing. Jess had a leg on the ground when he reached her, but when he lifted her over the rest of the shallow water and swung her up onto the grass, she grinned at him. “Thanks.”
He reached into his kayak’s storage locker at the front tip of the boat and pulled out the wrapped package he’d tossed in when they’d started. “Lunch?”
She laughed. “You raided my fridge. I’m going to have to go shopping later.”
He leaned forward to kiss her. “Guilty. Want to cook dinner together?”
She hummed low in her throat as he deepened the kiss, and their lunch went forgotten for several minutes.
After they ate, they wandered hand in hand around the little clearing, “Is that a path?” Jess pointed between the trees that lined the cove.
Sean squinted. “I think so.”
She tugged him along behind her as she went to explore, and he followed, grinning at her enjoyment. Being outdoors with this woman was just as delightful as being indoors. They made their way down the path into the trees, and when they were out of sight of the river, Jess turned and pushed him against the nearest large trunk.
He grunted as his back hit the rough bark, but soon forgot everything but what her hands and lips were doing. Her mouth was on his chest, and then moving lower. Her fingers slipped into his jeans and slid along his length as he hardened. She gripped him and stroked in a gentle rhythm. He groaned and grabbed her waist, swinging her around to reverse their positions. He buried his face in her neck, licking every inch of her skin he could reach, and slid his hand into her shirt to shape her breasts. She wrapped her legs around him and rocked against his erection, and they both drew in a hard breath. Then he pressed her further against the tree and before he knew it his shirt was off, and h
er pants were halfway down. As her hand slid around him again and his body thrust helplessly against her he had a realization that made him want to slam his head against the tree.
“Fuck, Jess,” he gasped. “I don’t have a condom with me.” What an idiot he was.
She gave him one last squeeze. “We should probably get home, then. Fast.”
The tree was nothing compared to her bed.
Sunday was a repeat of Saturday, except instead of him taking her kayaking, she took him hiking. And this time, he remembered to bring a condom along. They found themselves tucked into a crevice on a hidden trail, rocking against each other, his hands pressed against the boulders on either side of her head and her fingers scraping down his back as she gasped his name over and over again in rising tones. He slid one hand over her mouth to make sure nobody would hear them, and she bit his finger lightly and then stiffened against him, tightening as she came. He thrust up into her again and let her body take him to paradise.
Eventually, they grabbed an early dinner at a farm stand on the way back to town. He left her at her door with a kiss, savoring the last of the Jess Effect and wishing he could bottle it to get him through his shift the next morning.
“See you tomorrow for coffee after work?” she asked.
“It’s a date.” He didn’t know how long they could sustain this relationship where they never actually talked about anything, but he drove away from her house feeling the most contented he’d ever felt in River Hill. That was worth something.
Chapter 16
“So that’s the gist of it.” Angelica’s agent, Jai Carter, leaned back in his seat and linked his fingers over his flat abdomen, a satisfied grin splitting his lips. “What do you think?”
“I think it’s a little much to take in,” Jess answered honestly. “Doing segments on the local news is one thing, but my own show?”
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