by Kira Archer
He glanced up at her, his eyes crinkled with a slight frown. “That’s a good thing, right?”
“Of course!”
He kept staring at her and she could feel the then-why-are-you-almost-crying question burning between them.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m happy about it. Of course. I do not want a baby right now. But it’s been an incredibly intense couple of weeks and you were supposed to be here and I know I should have waited for you but—”
He drew her into his arms, not saying a word, just wrapping himself around her and holding her close. She took several deep breaths, letting the fresh scent of him permeate her senses. If she wasn’t pregnant, she was probably PMSing, which seriously didn’t help the emotional roller coaster she was already on.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured, kissing the top of her head. “I should have been here. I’m sorry you had to take it alone.”
She leaned back into him with a sigh. “I wasn’t alone. Gina was here.”
He straightened so fast Jenny would have stumbled back a step if he hadn’t been holding her. “Gina was here? She knows about”—he waved a hand back and forth between them—“us? All this?”
“Yes.”
“Oh God. I’m a dead man.”
Jenny couldn’t help the smile that peeked out. “She’s not going to tell Rick. Yet.”
“Sure she will. They tell each other everything.”
“She said she wouldn’t tell him and I believe her. Her I trust.”
Jared frowned. “And me you don’t, is that it?”
Jenny pushed away from him with a sigh. “I don’t want to fight anymore, Jared. It’s over and done with. I’m not pregnant. You won’t be stuck with me for the rest of your life. Let’s just get this cake done so I can go home. I’m tired.”
“What do you mean it’s over and done with?”
She simply looked at him for a moment and then shook her head. “I don’t know what I mean.”
“Yes, you do.” His voice was low, gruff with emotion. But she didn’t have the strength to discuss their future, or lack thereof, right at that moment.
“Later, Jared. Please. I don’t want to talk about this right now.”
“Fine. But you and I need to straighten a few things out. We are going to talk about it.”
She knew they would. And she also knew it wasn’t going to be fun. They were out of the what-if limbo land and back into reality. Time to move on with their lives. Before someone got hurt.
Chapter Eighteen
Jared woke up at the ass-crack of dawn and glared at the ceiling. He should be on top of the world. He’d landed the bakery a massive opportunity. They were about to deliver a cake that would land them even more. And Jen wasn’t pregnant. Life could continue on as it had been.
Only…he wasn’t sure he wanted life to continue as it had been.
Oh, he wasn’t ready for a baby, for sure. The fact that he wasn’t joining his friends at Daddy Day Care was a tremendous relief. The fact that he’d been starting to see himself as one of them, a father, Jen having his baby, and hadn’t been freaking out over it, made him freak out even more. So it was good that there was no baby.
The one perk of the situation was that he and Jen had been a team. And he’d really liked the way that had felt.
He hauled himself out of bed. It was cake time. Despite the mess between him and Jen, he was excited to deliver it. It was remarkable, more impressive than the picture Anna and her sister had shown him. Jen was incredibly talented. He couldn’t wait to see the bride’s face when she saw the cake.
He got ready quickly. He wanted to be at the bakery early since he’d screwed up so bad the day before. Even still, Jen beat him by a good thirty minutes, going by the amount of work she’d already done. The cake had been assembled and now needed to be loaded into the delivery van. Hopefully they could get the thing delivered in one piece. It wouldn’t make quite the impact they were going for if they delivered a pile of honeyed goo.
Jen barely glanced up when he walked in.
“Good morning,” he said.
“Hi.” She barely looked up from the cake.
He stared at her. “You’re still mad at me?”
She glanced at him. “No. I just don’t really have anything to say.”
He came over to her and touched her arm, running his hand down along its length. “You sure about that?”
She pulled away from him. “Yes. Everything is back to normal now. I’m not pregnant. Life can go back to how it was. We never meant for that night to turn into anything. And now it hasn’t. No harm, no foul.”
“Jen, we’ve been through more than just that one night together now. I didn’t stay with you because of the baby.”
She blew out an exasperated breath. “Of course you did. We barely even know each other. Neither one of us is great at relationships. Had there been a baby, we’d have been forced into one. But there isn’t, so we aren’t.”
“Are you even one hundred percent sure about that? You took that test kind of early. Maybe…”
“I started my period this morning. I’m not pregnant.”
Another rush of disappointment washed through him along with overall relief. And a new fear. She was going to use this to put distance between them.
“I’m sorry, Jen.”
She shrugged. “For what? We had a scare that thankfully turned out to be nothing. Now we can get our lives back on track and pretend like nothing happened. Speaking of which,” she said before he could respond to that, “we need to get a move on. Where are our helpers?”
“Jen.”
“They were supposed to be here at eight. I don’t want to be late delivering.”
“Jen,” he said, trying to get her to at least look at him.
“I swear if this thing is late after everything I’ve gone through to make it, I’m seriously going to—”
“Jennifer!”
She stopped and finally looked fully at him. “What, Jared?”
“You and I are going to talk this out. Now.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
“Yes, there is. Yesterday, I woke up with you in my bed and as far as I could tell, you were very happy to be there. We’d just spent the night making love. Not having sex, not fucking. Making love. I don’t know about you, but that’s not something that happens for me every day. I’m not sure if that has ever happened. Not like it was with you. You and I…we weren’t some random hookup.”
He held up a hand to keep her from arguing that point. “No, not even the first time. It was fast, sure. We didn’t know each other. But I’ve had my share of random hookups and with you…it was different. And afterward…” He shook his head. “We had something. I don’t know what it was, what it would have turned into, but it was there, and it was real. And I think you know it and it scares the hell out of you.”
Her eyes glistened with unshed tears. He wanted to pull her into his arms, make everything better. But how could he when she was running scared?
“Why are you doing this, Jared? What difference does it make? I’m leaving in a couple weeks, anyway. None of this even matters anymore.”
“Yes, it does. It matters because we have something, Jen. Something I never knew I wanted until you tried taking it away. It’s like you take a test that says negative and suddenly everything else got shut down, too. You don’t want anything to do with me. Yeah, you’re angry about yesterday, and I don’t blame you. But none of that is a reason to totally disregard everything we feel for each other, everything that has happened between us. I’ve never connected to someone the way I have with you. And I know you’ve felt it, too.”
She folded her arms and looked at the ground. “Maybe I have. But what difference does it make? I’m leaving. For another two years. At least. My life is there. Yours is here. For now, at least.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You don’t have any real ties to anything, Jared. Your wh
ole life is about doing what’s easy and commitment-free. You pick up a few jobs here and there, you live at your friend’s house so you don’t even have a lease tying you down. Everything about the way you live screams commitment-phobe. Which I get. Believe me. I was right there with you a couple weeks ago. But now…things have changed. And you know, I think they’d already started changing for me. I’m building a life for myself in Paris. One I’m excited about and that I’ve worked hard for. Before, if things had turned out differently, yeah, I probably would have stayed here. But I wouldn’t have been happy. I don’t want to give up my career or what I’ve been working toward. So where does that leave us?”
He shoved his hands in his pockets to keep himself from trying to shake some sense into her. “If you’re going to bail the first time something doesn’t go your way, then yeah, I guess that leaves us nowhere.”
“I’m not bailing, Jared. I’m going home.”
“This is your home.”
“Not right now, it’s not. In a couple years, when I’m done with my training, yeah, I might move back here. But I might not. I love it there. I’m happy there. The friends I’ve made, the contacts I’m making, they are all over there. There’s a very good possibility I’ll stay there. Dragging this out would just make it that much harder in the long run.”
“And I guess it never occurred to you that we could still try to make it work. Your family is here. It’s not like you’ll never come home. And it’s not like I have a boss I have to beg vacation days from. There are some perks to what I do. I haven’t made those choices solely to get out of committing to something, you know.”
She had the grace to look at least a little sheepish at that remark. “We could visit each other,” he said. “Skype every night. Something.”
She looked at him, eyes wide with skepticism. “You’d seriously be happy with a girlfriend four thousand miles away? Mr. Party Animal who has a different date every night?”
He shook his head. “I’m not that person anymore, Jen.”
“You were that person two weeks ago, Jared. People don’t change that fast.”
“Yeah. Sometimes they do. When something earth-shattering happens to rearrange their lives, people change. They adapt. Haven’t you changed? Are you the same person you were two weeks ago? Because I know I’m not. I thought I might be a father. I thought I might have a connection, for the rest of my life, to an amazing woman I couldn’t wait to get to know better. So yeah, my priorities in life got a little shaken up.”
“But I’m not pregnant. So your priorities can stay the way they were.”
“It doesn’t work like that.” He tried to pull her into his arms but she took a step back.
“Maybe I’m not the type of person who can do long distance. Maybe I can’t change that fast.”
“I don’t think that’s true, and neither do you.”
“Maybe I’m just not interested,” she said quietly.
He knew she didn’t mean it, but the words still hit him like a half a dozen serrated knives in his chest.
“I don’t believe that. All of this, everything between us…our last night together.” He cupped her face, his thumbs caressing her skin. “That wasn’t because of the baby.”
“What baby?” Rick said, striding into the shop with Gina on his heels.
Jared dropped his hands. He wanted to wrap his arm around Jenny’s waist and stake his claim, but he was pretty sure if he tried, she’d pummel him. And then her brother would take a turn. Better to maintain a safe distance. Keep his arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. No touchy.
He seriously needed a drink.
Rick was looking between the two of them with a growing scowl. “What baby?”
Gina was much quicker to pick up on the situation and thankfully stepped in to save both their necks.
“Ours, and she’s heavy. Here.” She hefted the car seat at her husband and he automatically reached out to take it from her, his face going soft at the sight of his daughter.
Gina looked back and forth between Jenny and Jared, but when neither said anything, she launched into cake-related issues. It was time to deliver.
“Jen…” Jared started. But before he could get any further, more help arrived in the form of Rick’s partner, Joe, along with Nat and Eric, who had returned from their trip the night before. There was much exclaiming and excitement over the baklava cake, and Jen was swept up in filling Nat and Eric in on everything.
Gina glanced at Jared again with a concerned frown. He just shook his head. He didn’t know what to tell her. Jen seemed determined that they both move on with their lives. Maybe that was for the best. It’s like now that she wasn’t pregnant, she didn’t need him anymore. Didn’t want him. And she was using the whole thing with Paris as an excuse. Maybe what he’d been feeling really had been one-sided. He would have sworn otherwise. But he was no expert on the subject.
The fact that she considered his career as not good enough didn’t speak well for their chances, either. He loved his job. He loved the flexibility it gave him. The freedom to choose his hours and the clients and projects he wanted to work on and with was a blessing most people didn’t have. Why should he give that up? To go work for some corporation that would tell him what to do and who to do it with and how much to charge? No thank you.
Before he could dwell on that too much, he was caught up in the flurry of activity of moving the cake. The men and Jenny and Nat got on all four sides of the cake and shifted it onto the rolling table they had rented to get it to the van. Gina, who insisted that she felt perfectly fine, was still relegated to an advisory role by her overprotective husband. Jared totally agreed with the big guy on that one, but he wasn’t going to say that where Gina could hear him.
Once they got it in the van, Gina and Jenny drove ahead to the venue with little Lindsey, Eric and Nat got in their car, and Rick and Jared drove the van. Joe was thanked with free coffee and a dozen cannoli and sent back home for a relaxing day off.
Jared sighed. He could use a relaxing day off. But without Jen by his side, all that would do was give him way too much time on his hands to mope. He saw a lot of dark, depressing days in his future.
Just fucking peachy.
Chapter Nineteen
Everything at the venue went off without a hitch. The bride loved it, everyone oohed and aahed, and the guests were all suitably impressed. Jenny was happy to sit back and let the bakery as a whole take credit for the incredible feat of deliciousness she’d pulled off. She wished it were a normal delivery where they dropped off the cake and left. But with most of those attending in the food business in some capacity, and the upcoming TV special, the bakers who’d created the centerpiece for the night were in high demand.
Jared and Eric must have handed out two dozen business cards apiece by the time Jared made his way over to where Jen was holed up in a corner, observing the festivities. She watched him warily, but he didn’t seem inclined to start up their fight again. She let out a little sigh of relief. She didn’t want to fight with him. She wanted to head off the inevitable and walk away before it was impossible to do so. Before her heart was crushed beyond repair. Jared Crew wasn’t the type of guy a woman got over easily. She’d have to do her best to ignore the fact that it was probably too late already.
She didn’t have any other choice, really. They both sucked at relationships. Even people who were good at them had a hard time making long-distance relationships work. What chance did she and Jared have? Even if that weren’t the case, she wasn’t sure what she wanted out of life anymore. That whole stable, responsible thing she’d been avoiding her whole life didn’t seem so bad anymore. Stable and responsible didn’t come crashing down around your ears. It didn’t give you scares and uproot your life. She might finally be ready for a little of that. But that certainly didn’t mean Jared was. And she had no right to expect it of him. So. That was that.
“Want to dance?” he asked.
She raised an eyebrow and fough
t the urge to throw herself in his arms. “Isn’t that how this whole mess started?”
“Maybe one of us doesn’t see it as a mess.”
“Really? What do you see it as then?”
“Fate?” he said with a sexy little smirk.
Her lips twitched at that. “You seriously take the cake, Crew.”
“And you make it. So see? We are perfect for each other.”
That one made her laugh. “You are the most aggravatingly conceited man I know.”
“Maybe. But I noticed you didn’t argue the whole fate thing.”
“Maybe I didn’t think it worth a response.”
“Oh, it’s worth it. I promise.”
She looked at him, her eyes softening. She wanted to relent with every fiber of her being. Give them a shot, see what happened. But she wasn’t sure the risk was worth the price she’d pay when it didn’t work out.
Before she could say anything, Jared’s name rang out.
“Jared! There you are!” Anna rushed up to them and threaded her arm through his. “You did the most sensational job! They are about to cut the cake. You’ve got to be up front and center for this.”
“Actually,” he said, pulling away from her, “Jen here is the one who did all the work.”
Anna turned a fake smile to Jenny. “Well, of course, she must come, too.”
Jared held out a hand to her, but Jenny shook her head. “That’s okay, you go ahead,” she said to Jared. “I need to get going.”
He frowned and stepped close enough that he could whisper quietly, “What’s going on?”
“Nothing.” That she was willing to get into right then, anyway. “I’m just tired. You go on. You’re the marketing guy. This is your area. Go do what you do best.”
Anna had grabbed the microphone from the bandleader and was extolling the cake’s virtues as everyone gathered to watch the bride and groom cut it.
“Go on,” Jenny nudged as his name was announced.
The guests clapped and Jared reluctantly turned to take a little bow before moving off to assist the bride and groom, if necessary.