She meets my eye, smiling the first real, genuine smile I’ve seen from her, and God is it beautiful. “Yes,” she says softly. Her eyes are distant and I can practically see her mind racing. I don’t have any idea what she’s thinking, but I do know I’m getting dangerously close to doing something I can’t take back. If I get involved with her to save my shop, I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive myself. But if I don’t do something to save it, I don’t know how I get myself out of bed in the morning. Fucked if I do, fucked if I don’t.
I get up to grab another beer from the fridge. I have to get up, because if I don’t, I’m afraid I’ll try to kiss her, or something more. Can’t go down that path. Not right now, probably not ever. Besides, Roman was a little traitor and talked Tara into dropping him off at my place till tonight.
I sit back down and set a beer beside her, cracking open my own and taking a deep drink.
“They are going to pay me half of what my bakery’s worth unless I can come up with almost twelve grand,” says Sandra.
I whistle through my teeth. “So you’re fucked too?” I’m surprised the money seems to be an issue for her, but I don’t press the issue. If she doesn’t want to talk about it, that’s her choice.
She laughs humorlessly. “Yeah. I guess I am. Wait. What do you mean, “too”?”
“I’m sure they’ll come after my garage sooner or later,” I say carefully, not wanting to have to talk any more about it. I raise my can to hers before she can respond. “To being fucked together.”
She pauses, clearing her throat and looking down. Her reaction makes me realize my choice of words may have been a little more suggestive than I intended. Her cheeks are scarlet. I smirk, reaching farther to tap my can against hers, even though she hasn’t moved.
“There’s no one I’d rather get fucked with,” I add, watching her for a reaction.
She eyes me in the most fucking adorably bashful way and bites her full bottom lip, grinning. “Reid Riggins, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were trying to suggest something here.”
“You’d be right.”
At some point our faces came closer together and all I need to do is lean forward just a little to kiss her. The moment feels right, and her eyes flutter closed as she leans closer too. I don’t even know if I’m about to kiss her for the garage or if it’s just because I want to.
“Daddy,” comes Roman’s voice from the patio door.
Sandra pulls back quickly, clearing her throat and pressing the back of her hand to her lips, large eyes searching mine. There’s surprise there. Arousal.
“There’s a customer,” says Roman.
“Right, well. I’d best be going,” I say.
“Of course,” she says, standing and brushing the wrinkles from her clothes. “Me too. I still need to finish those gutters. You know, once I climb on top of that big thing you gave me.”
I smirk. “Now who’s the flirt?”
6
Sandra
I spend the rest of my day on the ladder Reid let me borrow--mounting his tool. I laugh softly to myself. Just a few days of living next door to Reid Riggins and he already has my mind nearly as dirty as his. I yank handful after handful of pine needles from the gutters, my mind anywhere but the job. I should be completely preoccupied with the threat of losing my bakery, but that possibility is so catastrophic I can’t even begin to run through what I will do. I don’t know if I have the mental energy to start all over. It took so much to do it the first time around. And how could I drive myself forward when I might just lose it again?
Then there’s Mark and Tara. My first impulse was to call Tara and kick her out of my place, but that would just be a spiteful, useless move. I just can’t believe she’s dating the guy who is pulling the strings behind getting my shop taken away from me. No matter how much I tell myself it’s unreasonable to blame her, I know I’m going to end up confronting her about it. I have to. I can’t just let this settle in my chest and fester.
Above all of that is the crazy, improbable, and absolutely unbelievable fact that I think I might be falling for Reid Riggins. He’s everything I always thought I wanted to avoid in a man. There’s more to him, though. He guards it well, but I’ve started to see glimpses of it. I saw something in the way he looked out over the hills on his back patio, a thoughtfulness and kindness. It made me realize Reid is a rare creature. He’s a man who has found what he wants in life and will fight to keep it.
Most people spend their whole lives trying to find the courage to go after what they want and doubting whether it’s the right path. They second guess themselves, waste time, pass opportunities, and don’t take risks. They end up unhappy because they were too afraid to go after what they really want for fear of failing. Not Reid. He’s already living his dream, and now it’s going to be taken away from him, just like mine. It all feels so tragic, and I burn with a desire to do something about it, even if I have no idea what that something is.
I climb down from the ladder and go inside to cool off. If I think I’m starting to have feelings for Reid, I must be getting heatstroke.
I make a quick call to the bakery to see if everything is going okay without me. The girls assure me they are doing fine and that business is going as usual. Still, I need to make time to get down there and put in the order before Tuesday or we’ll be spending all week apologizing for being out of half our products. Mrs. Parsons would probably burn the bakery down before the city had a chance to demolish it if I had to tell her we couldn’t make her cinnamon rolls in the morning.
For all I know, Reid is finished with my car already, but I can’t quite bring myself to go back over there right now. I just keep replaying the moment when I was leaning in and actually thinking about kissing him. It’s amazing what a little buzz and a lot of stress will do. Now that I have some distance, it all seems like an insane dream, like none of it really happened.
I put him from my mind as much as I can and decide to take a quick walk over to the place I’m renting Tara and Mark. My place. I’m only going over there to check on the property and make sure they are taking care of it, of course. I’m going to keep this strictly professional. I will not say a single word about how Tara is being the world’s shittiest best friend for dating the guy who wants to tear down my bakery. Not a word.
I knock on the door and wait. When Tara opens it, her eyes light up and she moves forward to hug me. “Hey girl!”
“Hey,” I say, grimacing over her shoulder.
Tara is ninety to ninety five percent sweet and loving. She was the first and last person to see me at the hospital when I had the embarrassing line dancing incident last summer and sprained my ankle. She was there with sweets and movies every time I had a rough breakup. She has talked me through some of my darkest moments and been there to share my happiest.
She’s a friend, in every sense of the word. And sometimes friends are back stabbing, heartless--
I force myself to calm down. She probably doesn’t even know. The least I can do is talk to her and feel it out before I start holding a grudge. I owe her that much.
She’s drop dead gorgeous too. Blonde hair, startling green eyes, full lips and a pert little beauty queen nose. She does yoga five times a week and still finds time to go to the gym in between. All of that is absolutely true, but over the years I’ve come to realize there’s just something else about her. Somewhere beneath all that sweetness and kindness is a small, almost imperceptible ball of nasty.
Like one time when we were in junior high, the special education kids used to join us for home economics class. One of the special ed girls, Heather, was carrying a bowl of pancake batter across the room and tripped. Half a bowl full of batter spilled all over Tara, who smiled politely and helped clean everything up. I thought nothing of it until two weeks later. We were passing an art display by the special ed kids, and we both saw Heather hanging up her piece and talking to the teacher about showing her parents when they came for parent teacher night later t
hat week.
I still don’t know if it was her, but I saw something in Tara’s eyes as we passed that gave me a sick feeling. Sure enough, the next day the artwork was torn to pieces and left on the floor. Heather cried for hours and had to be taken home. Tara never mentioned it, but I still suspect it was her. The sweet teacher’s pet with a nasty side. That’s Tara.
My past with her is littered with small memories like that. Moments where her perfect veil nearly slips. Her cheating on Reid was really the first time I ever saw it out in the open. People aren’t perfect. They make mistakes. They do shitty things to others for no reason. And whether she has a nasty streak or not, she’s my friend.
“It’s still your place,” says Tara. “Come on in, make yourself at home. Roman’s at his friend’s house playing right now.”
My plans to stay civil had started to erode on my long walk over here from my new place, but as usual, Tara’s sweetness is making me forgive her already.
“It’s Sunday, right? Where’s Roman?”
“He’s over at a friend’s house.”
“Oh, Is Mark around?” I ask, sweeping my eyes around, taking in the way she has arranged furniture and set the place up.
“He’s out of town, actually. He’s doing something with the mayor.” There’s a slight hint of pride in her voice.
“Wow, so he’s pretty connected?” I ask, helping myself to a seat on the couch.
“Yeah. I’ve met so many people since he and I started seeing each other. I never thought an architectural planner would have so many connections, but he really does. It’s wild. The politicians he works with treat him like a superstar.”
“Huh,” I say a little distractedly. “Must be nice.” They probably treat him so well because his projects could bring tons of money to their districts and cities. I’m sure they are all bending over backwards to offer him the right to uproot businesses and people if that’s what it takes to get his development company looking their way.
“Uh, you okay?” asks Tara.
I let my head fall back against the couch, staring at the ceiling as I try to resist saying something. Just let it rest, Sandra. Don’t make a big deal out of this. “I’m fine,” I say.
She moves to sit beside me, leaning forward. “You’re not fine. Is this about the bakery?”
I straighten, feeling my heartbeat quicken. “You knew?”
She looks down at her hands, clasping them in her lap. “Mark told me. I tried to talk him out of it.”
I breathe out, frowning in disbelief. A cold, sharp pain seeps into my chest. “And you let me find out with a letter on the door of the bakery? You didn’t think to call me?”
Tara reaches to hug me, but I push back off the couch, standing. “Don’t touch me,” I say, voice shaking with anger. It’s all rising up now. The feelings of betrayal I felt. Not just from this, but from the way she brought Mark into her life and let him become her priority, blowing me off to spend time with him. It’s far from the first time, too.
“Sandra,” she says, pleading. “Mark said he was going to offer a fair price for your bakery. I thought it’d be okay.”
“Wow,” I say, backing away and grabbing my bag by the door. “You really don’t know me at all, do you?”
“Sandra… Don’t say that. Come on, I’ve got ice cream in the freezer. Let’s put on a movie and--”
“No,” I say. “Save the ice cream for your slimebag of a boyfriend.” I step outside, hand still on the doorknob when a thought occurs to me. It’s a dark, black thought I’ve never let reach the surface of my mind before, but now in the heat of my anger it rises up, too strong to push down or control. Too strong to stop. “Reid deserved better than you,” I say over my shoulder.
I slam the door and squeeze my eyes shut, breathing heavy. God. Everything is falling apart. Everything I’ve spent so long building and worked so hard for. It’s all falling away and I can’t see how I’m going to stop it.
I stop by the bakery on my way home because I don’t know what else to do. The girls are happy to see me. I spend close to thirty minutes listening to Julia go on about how she handled an unhappy customer and try my best to sound like the properly proud boss I should be. I help the girls roll out dough for croissants and spread the butter on them. I top some cakes. It’s all work that normally brings me more joy than I can describe and yet it feels empty and meaningless today. It feels like I’m just going through the motions.
I never started this business for the money. My only goal was to create something worthwhile. I wanted a business that people enjoyed coming to and I wanted to be doing something I enjoy. I found all that here. Knowing the end is inevitable strips all the satisfaction from that. So what if I do a good job? So what if I make the recipe just that much better by experimenting? It’s all going away.
I decide to leave early. I apologize to Lauren and Jennifer, but other than a few sarcastic remarks from Lauren, they seem to understand. It’s only on my walk home that a shameful thought starts to coalesce in my mind.
I could hook up with Reid to get back at Tara for letting this happen. Even though she cheated on him and complained all the time, I know for a fact she’s still not over him. She told me as much. Tara thought she deserved to have the most gorgeous guy in town. It was part of the fantasy she built up around herself, and she ended up making it a reality. But when the most gorgeous guy in town didn’t fulfill all her desire to be rich, she went and slept around, hoping to scare him into submission. Instead he got a lawyer and divorced her ass.
The thought makes me grin. Reid doesn’t play around.
I shake my head in disbelief at how low my thoughts have turned. Did I really just consider hooking up with a guy to get back at my best friend? Even if Reid was interested in me, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I thought that’s why I was doing it. As much as I’ve tried to tell myself he’s not the one for me, I still keep coming back to the idea of him. The memory of his touch and how it felt. The scent of him, manly, strong, and sexual. More than that, I recall the look in his eye when he gazed out over the hills. I saw for the first time the depth of Reid Riggins. He’s more than just a beautiful face and body, he’s thoughtful, even if he goes out of his way to hide that from the world.
7
Reid
“Daddy, please?” asks Roman. I just picked him up from his mom’s and he’s been trying to convince me to take him to the Fourth of July festival tomorrow.
I look down into his little face and feel my resolve thaw. He’s the only one who ever seems to get me to change my mind, and damn is the little guy good at it. I don’t want to let him off too easy though, so I make a show of resisting. I want my little man to grow up strong and decisive. I want him to learn he has to fight for what he wants, that the only way to get anything worth having is through work.
“Can’t do it, bud. Remember that F-150 Jerry Hill brought in?”
Roman’s little face scrunches as he thinks. “Broken axle?”
I beam, pulling him in and giving him a rough hug. “Damn, son. You may be the only four-year-old in the world who knows as much about cars as you do.”
“I’m almost five,” he says testily.
I smirk. “Yeah. Don’t go growing up too fast on me, Roman. Don’t go changing,” I add a little more solemnly, my thoughts drifting to Mark. As odd as it is, raising Roman feels like raising my second child. I spent so much of my youth mentoring and taking care of my brother that none of this has really felt new for me. Unfortunately, that also means I constantly struggle with the thought that Roman is going to turn on me some day too. Maybe I’m a shit father and he’s just too young to know it yet.
“So can we go?” he asks.
“You remember how hard it is to fix a broken axle?”
“You don’t pay Tyler and Garry for nothin’,” says Roman, repeating a line he’s heard me say a dozen times.
“Yeah,” I say, looking out the window and tracing the hills beyond with my eyes. I gr
in back at him. “Good point. We can go.”
I arrive at the town square with Roman about an hour after the festival starts. It’s a town tradition. Jason Tills and Cameron Stillwalter were local kids about my age who always used to put on impromptu country concerts at the town square for free. A few years later they made it big, and now their faces are all over television and magazines. Tickets to see their shows cost hundreds, but once a year they come back on the Fourth of July and give us a personal concert for free. They even pay to have it catered and bring their stage crews to set the place up.
Pretty much everyone in town is here, and everyone is a few drinks in by the time I arrive. I scan the crowd, eyes searching for Sandra’s dark curls. I only stop to wonder why I’m looking for her a few moments later. I’m looking for her because I can’t stop thinking about her. It has crossed my mind a few times that I might just suddenly be opening up to her now because the need to save my shop is looming. Getting hitched would solve all my problems, assuming a baby came shortly after, but if that’s the only reason I want to be with her, I can’t. Maybe before I started to get to know her, but now, I can’t do that to her. I won’t do that to her.
Only problem is I still don’t know for sure what has me so up the wall about her.
One thing I do know is the contract on my shop. If I get full ownership, there’s no way my brother can touch it. The shop is on private land, unlike Sandra’s bakery. The only way it’s coming down is if I’m not married with another kid when I turn thirty-five. My grandfather’s will passes the shop on to my brother if that happens.
I rake a hand through my hair, nearly bumping into a young teenage girl as I lead Roman down the path. She doesn’t notice though as she smiles up at me. “Hey, Mr. Riggins. And hey there, Mr. Roman,” she says, kneeling to ruffle Roman’s hair.
Single Dad Next Door: A Fake Marriage Romance Page 4