by Erin Wright
Jaxson opened the front door to the bakery, letting the smells and warmth wash over him like always. Damn, he loved this place.
It was 7:30 in the morning on a Saturday, which guaranteed that Sugar would be nowhere around. Exactly as Jaxson planned.
Holli, a red-haired teen, looked up from stocking a display case of muffins. “Oh hey, Jaxson!” she called out. “Sugar isn’t here.” She looked slightly confused by him being there, looking for Sugar. Holli knew that Jaxson knew that Sugar wouldn’t be there on the weekends, so…what was he doing?
Jaxson grinned to himself. Holli was as transparent as Saran Wrap.
“I was hoping to chat with Gage for a minute.”
“Oh. He’s in the back,” she said, jerking her head towards the swinging doors, and going back to the muffin display.
Jaxson headed around the counter and through the doors, into the industrial kitchen, gleaming stainless counters everywhere. Gage looked up from a recipe, his muttering cutting off mid-sentence as he spotted Jaxson. “Hey!” he said, surprised. “Sugar has today off.”
“I know. I…came to talk to you.”
Gage’s eyebrows shot up, but then he shrugged. “As long as you don’t mind me baking as we talk, come on back. I’m trying out a new recipe, and thus far, it’s kicking my ass.”
Jaxson walked over and leaned against the counter as Gage went back to measuring out cupfuls of sugar. “So what did you want to chat about?” he asked, leveling off yet another cup and dumping it into a giant mixing bowl.
“Sugar.” Gage didn’t say anything, just continued to measure ingredients out, so Jaxson plunged on. “More specifically, her ex. What’s the deal with Dick Schmidt?”
Gage cocked an eyebrow as he began meting out tablespoons of spices, humming a little under his breath as he went. “Dick is a dick, figuratively and literally,” he finally said. “First, you should know that only Sugar calls him Dick. He hates that name with a passion, which is exactly why she calls him that. It’s her way of defying him and standing up to him, after all he’s put her through. I just thought I should let you know, in case anyone else in town calls him Richard, and you’re confused.
“Well anyway, he still lives here in town. He used to stop by the bakery until Sugar filed for a restraining order. He used to go to her house, too, until she got Hamlet. He’s obsessed with having her back, even though he tells her regularly that she was the worst wife in the history of wives.” Gage snorted in disbelief. “He even had Sugar mostly believing that one, until she’d finally been away from him for a while. It took a bit for the cobwebs to clear, you know? He messed with her head big time.”
“Was there anything special about how they ended up together? Why they started dating, or got married, or something?” Jaxson asked, coming to the heart of the matter. That was what got Sugar freaked out a month ago, and Jaxson figured that something pretty awful must’ve happened at the beginning of their relationship.
Which just didn’t make sense. Why marry someone after something awful had happened?
He was missing parts of the puzzle but dammit all, he was trying to put it together without the box; without even knowing if he had all of the pieces, and with the additional handicap of Sugar intentionally hiding everything she could from him.
That got Gage’s attention. “She hasn’t told you about that?” he asked Jaxson carefully, staring at him, one eyebrow raised.
Jaxson shook his head. “I was joking last month about how she had awful taste to even marry Dick, and she freaked out on me. She acts like everything is fine now, but…it’s not. She’s hiding something big from me, but I don’t know what.”
Gage went back to the recipe. “Jaxson, I like you. But if Sugar isn’t going to tell you that story, then I’m not either. It’s her story to tell, not mine. Everyone in town knows parts of the story, but only a couple of us know all of it, and if she ain’t sharing, then that’s her choice.”
Jaxson nodded grudgingly. Gage was right to say that, no matter how much it drove Jaxson crazy. He wanted to know what on earth was going through Sugar’s mind. But on the other hand, the fact that Gage kept Sugar’s confidences made Jaxson like him even more.
“Yeah. You’re right. I shouldn’t be asking you. I’m just getting desperate.” He let out a laughing groan. Gage shot him a grin.
“Sugar makes granite seem malleable. She’s a real people pleaser, which has gotten her into a spot or two in her life that haven’t been good ones, but once she decides something…it’s almost impossible to get her to move. The good news is, that extends to her loyalty and friendship, too. Once she decides that she likes you, she’ll defend you to her dying day. You’ll never find someone more loyal than Sugar.”
“Someone once told me that if you want to know what a person’s like, just look at their dog,” Jaxson mused aloud. “Hamlet is loyal and sweet and friendly as the day is long. My boys climb all over him like he’s a freakin’ jungle gym, and he just sits through it all, gentle as can be. The first time Aiden took Hamlet for a walk, there they were, Hamlet taller than him even on all four legs, but he realizes that Aiden doesn’t walk as fast as Sugar usually does, so he slows down so he’s not dragging Aiden down the street behind him. I even trust him with Frankie, who’s only four. He’s a hell of a dog.”
“And Sugar is a hell of a woman,” Gage finished for him, and they smiled at each other.
“I’m sorry I got all hot and bothered about you and Sugar dating,” Jaxson said. He didn’t apologize often, but he’d made an ass out of himself that day, and it was a big enough screw-up that he deserved to eat a little crow for it. “I didn’t realize what Sawyer was like back then. Ahhh…the bliss of ignorance.”
Gage laughed a little at that. “It’s no biggie. A lot of people thought it. Hell, they probably still think it. Being a single guy in a small town isn’t an easy thing. Every date you go on, you get scrutinized for. By the end of the date, if the rumor mill is to be believed, you’re either banging her or marrying her. Sometimes, if the rumor mill is really on a tear, both at the same time.”
Jaxson let out a belly laugh and Gage shot him another self-deprecating grin. “We ought to go down to O’Malley’s Bar sometime after work. Are you free tonight?”
“Not tonight. At least, I hope not. But I’d love to take you up on that offer later. Hey, what’s Sugar’s favorite kind of bread to eat with soup, do you know?”
“My sourdough bread, especially with the potato bacon soup from Betty’s. She eats those two together a lot during her lunch breaks.”
“Much ‘ppreciated,” he said, nodding goodbye as he headed back up front to find a loaf or two of the bread. He heard the mixer come to life behind him as Gage got back to work.
It was time to pry some answers out of a certain Sugar Stonemyer, by hook or by crook.
Chapter 36
Sugar
Sugar was at the bakery, serving up coffee and listening to Mr. Behrend and Mr. Maddow argue again over what the weather was going to be like this spring, when suddenly, she was at her apartment and hearing someone knock on her front door. She’d changed somewhere along the line into a gorgeous ball gown with a slit so high up her thigh, it actually made her look like she had long legs. She grinned with pleasure at the beauty of the dress, when she heard a knock again. Oh. Right. She’d gotten sidetracked. She hurried over to the front door to find Jaxson standing there.
He whistled. “Looking good!” he said, looking her up and down with a lascivious grin. She showed off, putting her leg out for him to admire, when she noticed she had beautiful sparkly high heels on. She didn’t normally wear high heels because she was too much of a klutz to risk them, but tonight, she seemed to be able to walk just fine in them.
“Aren’t they pretty?” she asked him enthusiastically.
And then, he was knocking on the front door again. That was weird. He was already inside of the house. Why was Jaxson knocking on the door again? She was staring at him, confused as co
uld be although he didn’t seem to notice anything weird, but before her brain could figure it out, she felt a hand on her arm. “Wake up, sleeping beauty,” a man whispered.
Her eyes fluttered open and she stared up at…flowers? There was a huge bouquet of roses right in front of her face. Before her mind could make sense of that either, Jaxson’s face appeared as he moved the flowers to the side. “Happy almost-two-month anniversary,” he whispered, grinning down at her.
She craned her neck up to look down at her body, sad to see that she definitely wasn’t wearing a stunning ball gown and high heels, but rather her super comfy, super old nightshirt that said, “It was me. I let the dogs out,” across the front of it, with a picture of a Great Dane below. Of course.
At Sugar’s movement, Hamlet lifted his head and thumped his tail on the bed, obviously also just waking up for the day. “You make a good guard dog,” she told him sarcastically when he put his head down to go right back to sleep. She looked up at Jaxson. “It’s our almost two-month anniversary? And how did you get in here?”
“I knocked several times, but you didn’t answer. You also didn’t lock the front door last night. Again.”
He’d been trying to get her to start locking her front door, worried for her safety but so far, the lesson just didn’t seem to be taking all that well, unless a 40% success rate was what one would call “well.”
“I didn’t?” She sat up and took the roses from Jaxson, burying her face in their gorgeous buds, drawing in their heavenly scent. “I thought I did, honest…”
She’d been tired the night before, so she wasn’t exactly going to swear on a Bible to that idea.
“What time is it?” she asked drowsily, wanting to change topics before Jaxson could launch into the many reasons why a home security system would be a good idea for her to install. She’d been trying to convince him that Hamlet was sufficient, although with his showing this morning, she wasn’t sure how believable that argument was going to be in the future, if it ever was.
“One in the afternoon. I thought that since it was after noon, you’d surely be out of bed by now, but…” He tickled her feet that were dangling off the side of the bed and she fell backwards, laughing with delight. “I was obviously wrong.”
“One is a little late, even for me,” she admitted. “It’s just so lovely to be able to sleep in on the weekends.” She moved the bouquet out of the way and looked up at him. “I was having the best dream, about wearing this ball gown that made me look like a million bucks, and you were coming over here to take me out on a date.”
“Well, you always look like a million bucks to me, although I wouldn’t mind seeing this dress in real life.” He shot her a wink. “But I’ll take you up on the date offer. Do you have time to do something today to celebrate our almost-two-month anniversary?”
She nibbled on her bottom lip. She probably should do laundry and get caught up on the dishes stacked up in the sink, but really, what was the fun in that?
She sat up cross-legged on the bed, Hamlet inching his way over so he could put his head on her lap. Empty laps were not to be tolerated. “Two questions: Why almost, and two, what did you have in mind?” she asked, stroking Hamlet’s soft golden ears as she tried to get her mind to wake up.
“Well, our official two-month anniversary will be next weekend, but I’ll have the boys then, so I figured we’d celebrate this weekend instead. And second, Luke Nash – you know him?”
Sugar nodded. “He graduated two years before me from Sawyer High School.”
“Well, he’s a volunteer with the department and he offered to let us ride his snowmobiles up in the mountains. I guess the snowpack is great right now – not iced over, but plenty there to ride through so we’re not hitting dirt as we go. Since it’s March, apparently there’s no guarantee that the snowpack will continue to stay ideal like this, so this is a now-or-maybe-not-until-next-winter sort of deal.”
“Oh fun!” Sugar said, delighted. “Let me go put on my trip-to-Antarctica outfit and then I’ll be ready to go.” She bounded out of bed, leaving a disgruntled Hamlet behind who’d started to really get into his pettings, and found a vase to put the roses in. She then shooed Jaxson out of her bedroom so she could get dressed.
“I could help,” he said with a leering grin, and she laughed.
“We’ve only got a few hours of daylight left, and if you tried to ‘help’ me, I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t end up going.”
With an exaggerated sigh, Jaxson left her alone to get dressed, taking Hamlet outside for his morning constitution while she struggled into her layers.
Finally done, she waddled into the living room, her arms hardly touching her side. Jaxson let out a snort of laughter behind the cover of an upraised hand, but when she glared at him, he just smiled back innocently. “Hamlet!” he mock-scolded her dog. “I don’t know what you’re doing over there to make such noises like that.” Hamlet looked up, his tail thumping at the sound of his name, and Sugar just laughed.
“Blaming it all on the innocent dog,” Sugar said, petting his head. “My poor baby.”
“Awfully big baby,” Jaxson said dryly.
Sugar chose to ignore that comment. “We’ll be back soon, boy. Or, do you think we should take him?” she asked Jaxson, looking up at him.
Jaxson hesitated. “I think he’d have fun, except he’d probably get too cold. He doesn’t have much meat on his legs; not much to keep the heat in. I wouldn’t want him to be miserable.”
“That’s true.” She sighed, feeling guilty. She really should move somewhere warm, where Hamlet didn’t have to worry about dealing with snow drifts up to his chest, or a thermometer that regularly dipped below zero.
They headed out to Jaxson’s SUV and then over to Luke’s place. Sugar heaved herself out of the passenger seat to chat with Bonnie, Luke’s gorgeous wife, while Luke and Jaxson hitched up the snowmobile trailer to Jaxon’s Explorer.
“You grew up in Boise, right?” Sugar asked, trying to remember back to what she’d heard about Luke and Bonnie’s love story. At the bakery, she heard every gossipy story in town, but since her memory was shitastic, that only did her so much good.
“Yeah. Graduated from Boise State University with my degree in accounting.”
“You own the accounting firm in town across from Betty’s Diner, right, with Jennifer Miller?”
Bonnie nodded. “Jennifer and I were roommates at BSU for a couple of years. She’s actually how I met Luke.”
“Ohhh…that makes sense. I always wondered how two Boise chicks ended up in Sawyer to do farmers’ bookkeeping for them.”
“Well, Jennifer’s story is pretty good, but my story is even better because it includes a blizzard, a bit of mistletoe, and an old cast-iron tub.”
Sugar snorted with laughter. “Okay, that sounds like a fun story,” she said with a grin. “You should stop by the bakery sometime – not during the morning rush hour – and tell me all about it.”
“Deal.”
Luke came over, his dark hair showing beneath the brim of his Stetson. Sugar put her hand out to shake his. “Thanks so much for lending them to us, Luke. I haven’t been snowmobiling in ages.” She realized how similar and yet how different Luke was from Jaxson. They both had dark brown hair and dark brown eyes, and both were about the same height – maybe six foot or so. But while Luke was a nice-looking guy and all, he wasn’t Jaxson. His eyelashes weren’t as thick, and his nose didn’t have that adorable bump in the bridge of it from being on the losing end of a tackle during a football game.
As if he could sense she was thinking about him, Jaxson wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her against his side. She was surprised he could find her waist in her get-up, to be honest.
“Ready?” he asked her, smiling down at her. She felt the butterflies in her stomach take up twerking again, and wondered if she would ever not feel this way around him.
“Yup,” she said, pulling away to give Bonnie a hug.
“He seems like a good one,” Bonnie whispered to her. “Luke’s only had good things to say about him so far. I hope he’s making you happy.”
Sugar pulled back, blushing. “He is,” she said softly.
“I am what?” Jaxson asked.
Sugar blushed harder. She hadn’t realized he’d be able to hear her – she’d thought he was busy chatting with Luke again. “You’re an eavesdropper, that’s what. Now, are you going to take a girl out snowmobiling, or are you all talk?”
Waving goodbye to Luke and Bonnie, they set off into the mountains, following the hand-drawn map Luke sent with them. It was a rare bright winter’s day, the sunshine bouncing off the snow and almost blinding Sugar as they wound their way up a plowed dirt road. Someone was taking the time to plow it clear after every snowstorm, which meant some local snowmobiler was quite dedicated to the sport. Sugar wondered idly if she knew the person. She probably did. She knew everyone, it seemed.
Jaxson pulled off into a large clearing, packed down from months of people towing snowmobiles in and out. A couple of paths wandered off from the clearing through the pine trees.
Sugar felt a surge of adrenaline as Jaxson helped her unload her snowmobile and then showed her the braking, acceleration, and steering. She took a couple of cautious turns around the parking lot as Jaxson got his warmed up and going.
“Ready?” he asked. At her eager nod, he gunned his engine and they took off. As she followed him down the right-hand trail and through the trees, she noticed something strapped to the back of his machine. With the snow flying and the quick movement of the machines, she wasn’t quite sure what it was, and as the trail continued, she forgot about it anyway. It was too beautiful, too fun, too thrilling to be on a powerful machine like this, to think about anything else.
After endless hours, it seemed, Jaxson slowed down and Sugar obediently slowed behind him, an exhilarated grin plastered to her face. She just couldn’t get enough. She pulled her borrowed helmet off her head. “That was so much damn fun!” she exclaimed.