Sweet Trouble

by Susan Mallery

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Present Day…

  JESSE TRIED TO SHAKE OFF Matt’s obvious anger and hurt. The fact that Gabe had grown up with other people in his life had nothing to do with Matt being his father. Once Matt calmed down he would realize that having a great guy like Bill around had only been good for the boy.

  While she could make a case for that, the guilt was harder to explain away, so she did her best to ignore it for the moment.

  Paula came out of the kitchen. “I thought I heard you,” she said, then stopped when she saw Bill. “Oh. Hello.”

  “Paula, this is Bill. He rescued me when I showed up in Spokane five years ago. He gave me a job, found me a place to live and was my friend as I tried to figure out how to be a mother to Gabe. Bill, this is Gabe’s grandmother, Paula.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Bill said, a twinkle in his eye. “Are you sure you’re that boy’s grandmother? I could see his aunt.”

  Jesse stared at her friend. Was he flirting? It sounded like flirting, but it was behavior she’d never seen before.

  Paula laughed. “Don’t expect me to fall for that line, Bill. I’m past sixty.”

  “You don’t look it.” Bill turned to Gabe. “And look at you. You’ve grown. I barely recognized you.”

  Gabe giggled in delight. Bill picked him up and swung him in the air. Gabe squealed.

  When Bill set Gabe down, he launched into an explanation of everything he’d done since arriving in Seattle.

  “I met my daddy and he took me to see fish,” Gabe said, gazing at Bill happily. “And Grandma and me made cookies a bunch of times. We go to the park every morning and there are puppies sometimes.”

  Bill crouched down so he was eye-level with the boy and listened attentively.

  “I’m doin’ math,” Gabe continued. “Grandma’s teaching me and she says I’m good at math, just like my daddy.” He beamed with pride.

  “I knew you were special,” Bill told him and held him close. “I’ve missed you, Gabe.”

  Gabe hugged him back, squeezing hard. “I missed you, too.”

  Gabe took Bill off to see his room. Paula and Jesse went into the kitchen.

  “I wondered how you made it by yourself in Spokane,” Paula said as she started a pot of coffee. “Now I know. You had friends.”

  “Bill was great,” Jesse admitted. “Father, boss and someone to talk to all in one. I was so lucky to find him.” She eyed Paula, who was a pretty woman with a giving heart. “You know, he’s a widower. Has been for a while now.”

  Paula flushed slightly. “I don’t see why that would be of interest to me. He’s obviously crazy about you.”

  If Jesse had been drinking, she would have choked. “He’s about forty years older than me.”

  “So?”

  “I do love Bill, but like family.” How could she have ever gotten interested in someone else when she’d been unable to get over Matt? “Besides, when we met, he made it clear I wasn’t his type, so even if I’d had any ideas, nothing would have happened.”

  “It doesn’t really matter,” Paula murmured as she got out mugs and set them on the counter.

  But Jesse wasn’t so sure. Maybe it mattered a little.

  An hour later she and Bill sat outside on the porch.

  “I’ve been worried about you,” Bill said. “Missing you, too. Both of you. That little boy grows on a man.”

  “I know. We’ve been thinking of you, as well.”

  “But you’re doing okay?”

  She smiled at him. “What you really want to know is if you were right to kick me out when you did. That’s all you care about, but you’re too polite to ask.”

  “You’ll tell me,” he said confidently.

  She laughed. “Yes, I will and you were right.”

  “You were only living half a life, Jess. Hanging out with me and my friends. Not that we didn’t appreciate your pretty face or the joy that boy brought to us, but you were hiding.”

  “I know.” She rested her forearms on her thighs. “It’s been good to be back, but hard. My sister hasn’t accepted that I’ve changed. I think she believes me about Drew, but she’s still angry.”

  She didn’t have to explain about her past. Bill knew all her secrets.

  “You’ve had five years to watch yourself change and grow and plenty of time to know you were coming back. Nicole got all this sprung on her. She has to adjust.”

  “I know that in my head. It’s getting the rest of me to believe it that’s taking some time. Besides, I think she secretly wants to be mad at me.”

  “She had a certain place in your family. Everyone has a role. You’ve changed yours. She’s going to fight that.”

  Jesse had never considered that. Were family dynamics the real problem?

  “If I’m different, then the balance of power, the rules, everything changes?” she asked, more to herself than him.

  Bill, being Bill, didn’t answer.

  She was going to have to think about that some more.

  “So Gabe’s met his father,” her friend said. “How did that go?”

  “Not well. Matt’s coming into his own with Gabe now, but the first couple of meetings were difficult. He didn’t know how to relate to a four-year-old. Not that he’s had a lot of experience.” She hesitated. “We were fighting when you drove up.”

  “I noticed.”

  “He blames me for not knowing Gabe.” She stared at the steps. “He says that telling him I was pregnant before I left wasn’t enough. That I knew he wouldn’t believe me. That I should have told him later, after Gabe was born. I should have given him a chance to be a father.”

  She didn’t like talking about it. She felt awful inside, like she was a bad person. Like she’d been deliberately evil.

  “It wasn’t like that,” she whispered. “I wanted him to care enough to believe me. I wanted him to come after me.”

  “Did you know he didn’t believe you about the baby?”

  She nodded. “What he said was so horrible.” Once a slut, always a slut. Those words were burned into her brain.

  “How would you feel if he’d kept Gabe from you?” Bill asked quietly.

  Jesse felt pain rip through her body and had her answer. “Oh, God.” To not have held him when he was born. To not have watched him grow. His first smile, his first step, the love in his eyes. The absolute trust. Thousands of perfect memories that would be with her always.

  “He’ll never forgive me,” she whispered. “Why would he?”

  Bill put his arm around her. “He’s angry now, but he’ll get over it.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “A man doesn’t have that much emotion in himself without still caring.”

  “I don’t know what he thinks about me,” she admitted, letting herself lean on him again. Something she was going to have to stop doing. “Sometimes I think he really likes being with me and other times-” she sighed “-he’s so different.”

  “You were gone a long time.”

  “I know. The Matt I knew loved me. At least I thought he did. That’s what’s confusing. I believed him when he said how important I was, how he would never leave. But the first time something went wrong, he turned his back on me.”

  “It was a big thing to go wrong.”

  She nodded. “I probably played into his worst fears. That it was just a game to me. That I didn’t care about him at all.”

  “He reacted,” Bill said. “If you’d stayed around, talked again, maybe things would have been different.”

  Would they? Jesse wasn’t sure. “I couldn’t have stayed. I would only ever have been Nicole’s screwup little sister. The useless girl who fell in love with a great guy. I needed to walk away to find out who I was.”

  She smiled. “That sounds so ‘other dimension.’ I should probably start chanting.”

  Bill chuckled.

  “There’s so much going on,” she said. “The bakery burned down.”

  She told him about that and how th
ey’d started up the business in a rented kitchen. “Nicole is hating the success. I know she is.”

  “You’re only responsible for yourself, Jess. And that’s the only person you can control. Other people will either get it or they won’t but you can’t define yourself by their opinions.”

  “You’re just so rational. Have I mentioned that’s annoying?”

  “Once or twice.”

  She turned toward him. “I wouldn’t have made it without you.”

  “You would have done just fine.”

  She knew that wasn’t true, but why worry about it? She’d met Bill and she’d thrived. She glanced at the house.

  “Paula is nice,” she said. “An unexpected supporter. And pretty.”

  Bill looked at her. “What’s your point, missy?”

  “That you’ve been living alone long enough. Maybe it’s time to consider the possibilities.”

  She’d teased Bill about other women before and he’d always politely dismissed her. This time he followed her gaze to the house and nodded slowly.

  “Maybe it is.”

  HEATH TOSSED A FOLDER onto Matt’s desk. “You’ll want to look them over, make sure we’re doing everything you want,” he said.

  Matt waved him into a seat, then opened the folder and flipped through the papers. Despite the legal language, the intent was clear. He was suing Jesse for full custody of his son.

  “I’ll study them tonight,” he said.

  Heath frowned. “You sure about this, Matt? I understand wanting Jesse punished, but taking the kid? That’s a big responsibility.”

  Matt knew his lawyer meant well. If their circumstances were reversed, Heath would do all he could to avoid having a child in his life. When Matt had first started down this road, he’d only been out for revenge. Now he wanted more.

  The good side of him wanted to make sure he had a relationship with his son. He wanted to get to know him, watch him grow, be there for him. But the dark side of him, the side that still raged against all he had lost, wanted Jesse to feel what he felt. He wanted her to know the bone-crushing sense of having lost something that could never be recovered.

  “I can handle Gabe,” he said.

  “Okay. If she’s not going to just hand him over, you’re looking at a long court battle.”

  “She’ll fight.”

  She would take him on and do everything she could to keep Gabe, but in the end he would win. He had the resources and he wanted revenge.

  “I’ll get these back to you by the end of the week,” he said, touching the folder.

  “That works. When do you want me to have her served?”

  The first step in the battle. “I’ll let you know.”

  ORDERS CAME IN AT an insane rate. Good Morning America had decided to go ahead with the story, despite the fire, changing the focus from how a small local business grows and changes with the times to how a small business can survive disaster. They’d turned it into a series, of which Keyes Bakery was just a small part, but those few minutes of airtime had tripled their already impressive Internet orders.

  Jesse walked through the controlled chaos of the rented kitchen. At least here she could bury herself in work and forget the insanity that was her personal life. She’d come back to Seattle with a plan. While things hadn’t worked out the way she’d thought they would, they’d still worked out for the better. She was getting the opportunity to show that her ideas were well-considered and successful. The fire, caused by a short in an aging electrical system, had given her an unexpected chance to shine.

  She walked into the front of the restaurant, where all the shipping took place and where she and Nicole each had a desk with a computer. In the corner, two college girls answered the ever-ringing phone as people called in yet more orders. They had more business than they could handle. It was the best feeling in the world.

  She crossed to Nicole’s desk and pulled up a chair. “I talked to Ralph yesterday.”

  Nicole looked confused. “Who’s Ralph?”

  “The guy who owns the sandwich shop across the street.”

  Nicole’s face immediately scrunched up. “Jesse, honestly, you’re looking for ways to complicate our lives. We’re a little busy now, but things will calm down. We’re fine.”

  Jesse felt the familiar frustration building inside of her. “We’re not fine. We’re late on more than fifty percent of our Internet orders because we can’t keep up with volume. We’re drowning in potential success and if we’re not careful, we’re going to go under. Ralph bakes his own bread. He has specialty ovens that would be perfect for the brownies. We could bake eight triple batches at a time. He’s willing to rent the space to us from eleven at night until eight in the morning. That’s plenty of time to get out all the brownies we’ll need, freeing up the ovens here for the cakes.”

  Jesse handed over the information she’d printed out that morning. “The rent is incredibly reasonable. He’s excited to have the extra cash. We pay for the increase in electricity and that’s it. Our only start-up costs will be extra pans for the brownies and a few more bodies.”

  Nicole shook her head. “I just don’t know,” she began.

  Because she didn’t want to know, Jesse thought, frustrated and annoyed.

  She stood and grabbed her sister by the arm. “Okay, that’s it. Come with me.”

  Nicole jerked free. “What are you doing?”

  “You and me. Outside. We’re going to have this out. I’m tired of almost fighting with you every single day. Let’s get this settled.”

  For a second she thought Nicole was going to refuse, but then her sister followed her out into the parking lot where they faced each other in the light morning rain.

  They stared at each other, arms folded, both glaring. Jesse figured she was the one who had called the meeting so she got to go first. She thought about all the rational things she and Bill had discussed, then spoke from her gut.

  “You’re seriously pissed off because I’m making this work,” she said. “You’re angry that I came back and you resent that I know what I’m doing. You can’t stand not being the good sister anymore. You want me to go back to being the screwup, because that’s the world you know and it’s a lot more comfortable than facing me as an equal.”

  Nicole stiffened. “You want to be honest? Fine. I’ll be honest. Who the hell are you to waltz back into my life and try to take over? Where have you been for the past decade while I was struggling to hold it all together? I took care of you your entire life, Jesse. I was the one who was always there for you, who handled things and grew up too fast so you still got to be a kid. But does that matter? Of course not. It has to be about you. So you’re back. Let’s hold a parade. Jesse got her life together and is willing to work with me now. I’m all quivery inside. Yes, you got it together, but you know what? I never lost it. I never had to go off and find myself. I was too busy being here, running the business on my own.”

  They were hard words to hear, probably because they were the truth, Jesse thought sadly. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly.

  “Sorry?” Nicole’s voice was shrill. “Sorry isn’t good enough. Who the hell are you to show up and make it better? I’ve busted my ass here for years and you’re the one who will reap all the rewards. Do you think I like that? Do you think I’m proud of how I’m acting? I don’t know how to fix it. I don’t trust the new you. I keep waiting for the mistake, because I believe it’s coming and I wonder how big it’s going to be this time.”

  “You don’t trust me?” Jesse asked, stunned.

  “Why should I? You’ve been home five minutes. You won’t even acknowledge what you did last time. No one else knows the reason we’re doing so well on the Internet is that you have practice.”

  She was bringing that up now? “You do realize it’s been five years,” Jesse said.

  “You stole the family recipe for chocolate cakes, baked them yourself and sold them on the Internet.”

  Jesse couldn’t argue with that.
She had. “You fired me from the bakery.”

  “I thought you’d slept with Drew.”

  “Yeah, and I hadn’t. You fired me for something I didn’t do. I had to earn a living.”

  “You could have gotten a job.”

  “The bakery was all I knew. Besides, I’m half owner, remember? So I owned that recipe, too. How could I steal what was already mine?”

  They stared at each other, the tension practically pulsing between them.

  Nicole looked away first. “At least admit you showed bad judgment.”

  “I did,” Jesse said easily, knowing it was true. “You’d hurt me and I wanted to hurt you back. So I sold the cakes. I knew that would make you crazy.”

  Nicole nodded. “Thanks for saying that. For what it’s worth, you did make me crazy.” She looked at the ground, then back at Jesse. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you about Drew. There are a lot of reasons I didn’t. Your past, how you were always being so difficult. But mostly I wanted you to be the bad guy because then I didn’t have to look at myself. Like you said before, if you slept with him, I wasn’t the reason the marriage failed.”

  Jesse absorbed the words, letting them fill her with peace. Finally, she thought. That had been a long time coming.

  “You weren’t the reason your marriage failed,” she said, able to be generous now. “He was. Drew was a jerk.”

  Nicole gave a half laugh, half sob. “Yeah, and I picked him. I know I shouldn’t have married him. I knew it was a mistake when I said yes. I guess I was afraid no one else would ask.”

  Jesse moved to her sister and held her. “That’s crazy. You’re beautiful and smart and funny. Guys love that. Look at the guy you’re married to now. Hawk is a total hottie.”

  “I know. Sometimes I look at him and wonder how I got so lucky.”

  Jesse stepped back. “As long as he thinks the same thing about you.”

  “He does. Who would have thought.”

  They looked at each other. Jesse knew the harmony was tentative at best, but there was more to be said.

  “We need to rent the space across the street. It’s cheap, it’s close and it’s short-term, so the risk is minimal. If we don’t keep up with orders, we’ll lose everything.”