JAKE

by Juliette Jones

  Her eyes hold mine. She’s waiting for me and her expression is intrigued but slightly hassled. They’re busy tonight and I’m holding her up. She has other things to do besides stand there and wait for me to follow her.

  But I take my time. I can’t help it: I want to watch her a little more. Check out the soft, silky colors of her. The deep shade of her violet-blue eyes that are dark-rimmed and cat-like. The sprinkling of freckles across her perfect little nose. The pinkness of her soft lips and her pale, clear skin. She’s slim but curvy in all the right places.

  Damn. All the right places. The combination of her outrageous beauty and her innocent charm are almost more than I can take.

  Maybe I’ve just gone too long without and am suddenly suffering the hellish consequences of my self-imposed celibacy. My cock – fuck – goes instantly steel-hard. My chest feels tight and my heart’s pumping fast. She’s wearing a tight black top and black pants and a wide black belt to carry waitress stuff in. On anyone else the outfit would look nondescript but on this girl it looks sexy as hell. Part of the reason she’s sexy as hell is because you can tell – absolutely no doubt about it – she has no idea she’s sexy. She’s not trying to look sexy, not at all. She just is. More cute and sexy and beautiful and sweet than anyone I’ve ever seen. And it’s that differential that floors me, for no particular reason.

  I’m completely star-struck. Riveted by her luminous perfection and her golden glow.

  I decide right then and there to change my plans.

  One more date.

  Just one.

  One incomparably sweet, glorious, violet-eyed, strawberry-blond, spectacularly dazzling date.

  Or maybe two.

  No. Two won’t be enough.

  Ten.

  Ten thousand.

  Ten fucking million, all strung together so there’s no separation between them.

  Starting right now.

  Damn.

  I notice him as soon as he steps inside the door. Of course I do: he’s too gorgeous not to notice. He makes every other person in the room look pale and dull by comparison. He’s tall and muscular but lean, dark-eyed and goldlit, like a renegade gypsy someone dressed up in business clothes and tried to disguise as one of their own.

  But it’s too busy tonight to give him my full concentration.

  “We’re out of shrimp,” says Beatrice as she glides past with a full tray of plates.

  “The asshole at table seven says his steak is too rare,” says Maddie, precariously balancing four glasses of white wine.

  “Someone’s at the bar and he wants to order five apple pies to go,” says Jon the busboy.

  It’s one of those insane nights. Two of my waitstaff called in sick and I’m covering four tables as well as hostessing and serving drinks. I’d been baking since five a.m., cooking and organizing orders all day, and working the floor since the dinner service started at six. And I haven’t been sleeping so well for reasons I don’t even want to think about.

  But it’s all par for the course. Mostly I love it.

  We’ve only been open for two months and already my business is booming and the orders for apple pies are pouring in. I never meant for the pies to become such a big part of the business but once people taste them they just keep on coming back for more. It’s nothing new. I baked my first pie when I was five years old, back home in Georgia. It wasn’t long before people started asking for them, placing orders. When I was seven, I charged a dollar a pie. In high school, I charged ten. I cooked for pocket money, then put myself through cooking school. Then, four months ago, I moved to New York with what was left of my savings, plus a small loan from Grandma Mae – which, if business continues to be as good as it’s been, I’ll be able to pay back sooner than I’d planned.

  I’d scouted around and found the perfect location for the restaurant, upmarket enough but two blocks off the main tourist shopping trails so rent is still pretty reasonable. I redecorated it to look exactly like I’d dreamed it would. And all that hard work finally paid off. Two months ago I’d hung out my sign – Sugar’s – and never looked back.

  Each day is just a little busier than the last. I need to hire more staff. Every one of us is being run off our feet tonight, not that I can complain.

  The scene is noisy and the bar is populated with that perfect New York mix of hipsters, tourists and suits. So different to Georgia. It’s just before eight p.m. so the crowd is happily buzzed and relaxed after a hard day of working or shopping. I tuck a stray curl behind my ear as I walk up to the new arrivals who’d called ahead to reserve the best table – and offered a three hundred dollar tip for the privilege. Fine by me. There are plenty of filthy rich types in this neighborhood so I’m used to the Wall Street attitude that assumes waving Benjamins around entitles them to act like jerks. It’s cool. I can handle jerks as long as they fill the seats, pay for the food and keep unpeeling the hundred-dollar-bills from those fat wads they carry in their pockets like they never heard of credit cards. The menu here at Sugar’s is good, I make sure of that. It’s also expensive. But New Yorkers know you get what you pay for. And so far our reviews have been nothing but glowing.

  Despite the noise, the crowd, the demands both from the customers and the kitchen, I can’t help but come to a quiet halt for a few seconds after I lead the group of four to their table and wait for them to take their seats.

  Their party consists of two men and two women. The two men look like brothers: brothers that just stepped off a pirate-themed Ralph Lauren shoot. Yes, they’re that ruggedly glamorous but it’s the younger one who holds my attention. He’s ridiculously good-looking but his looks aren’t the only thing I notice. His brooding charisma colors everything about him: his off-black hair that curls in loose flicks over his collar, his expensive business clothes that he wears with a well-worn black leather jacket, the day’s stubble darkening his square jaw, the pronounced shadows under his dark eyes.

  He shrugs off the jacket and his taut, sculpted muscles strain under the starched cotton of his shirt as he moves with lithe, athletic ease. The intricate design of a tribal-inspired tattoo disappears under the rolled-up sleeve of his shirt.

  Wow.

  There’s an animal physicality to him and a flawless male beauty that’s blowing my mind a little, if you really want to know. I have an urge to just stand there and appreciate him for a while, like he’s a work of art or something.

  I don’t, of course. He’s obviously one of those playboys who thinks he’s God’s gift to womankind. Arrogance is practically radiating off him in waves. He’s staring right at me, watching me with his jungle-cat eyes like he knows how beautiful he is. Like he’s challenging me to look away.

  I don’t.

  His dark attention burns into me and I feel the heat of him everywhere. In my racing heartbeat and in the low pit of my stomach. And lower. There. I feel so warm and so … oh, Jesus. No. Get a grip, girl.

  He’s a smug, over-confident customer with money to burn. Nothing I haven’t seen before and nothing I can’t handle.

  Strangely, though, under his toughguy looks, there’s something else: a deep-rooted vulnerability that would be easy to miss. Under all that masculine bravado, there’s a spark of something much harder to read. I wonder what it would feel like to hold his hand. To touch a strand of his hair to see if it’s as thick as it looks. To talk to him in a quiet moment and find out what caused those bruise-like shadows under his eyes. To feed him some of my homemade Georgia pie and gently coax from him a confession about what kind of past could possibly spark that haunted look that fringes somewhere behind the dark light of his eyes.

  Of course I’ll never find out. He’s a paying customer on what appears to be a double date.

  My gaze rests briefly on his hand. The only ring he’s wearing is a gold band on his right pinky. There’s a chunky silver cuff around his left wrist with illuminated red lights on it.

  It looks like one of those home-detention cuffs you see on crime t.v. dramas.<
br />
  Jesus. He’s a convict, probably newly released from jail or something. Definitely one to steer very well clear of.

  Even if he is drop-dead beautiful in a damaged, danger-edged kind of way.

  Even if he is staring at me with an expression that makes my stomach do a funny little flip. I’m only human, after all. A thoroughly female human who’s witnessing in its purest form that wild, rare phenomenon: sexy, roughed-up alpha male perfection.

  No effing way, Sugar, my common sense insists. Serve him politely then get your ass back to work. He’s got trouble written all over him.

  So I take a deep breath and begin my little intro. I pride myself on handling any unforeseen situation that crops up in my restaurant and I can handle this one. “Hi, and welcome to Sugar’s,” I say. “Your waitress will be with you in just a minute with your menus and our specials list for this evening. Can I get ya’ll started with a drink from the bar?”

  The two women are seated further back in the booth, preoccupied, talking. Working in restaurants and bars for the past six years, and now owning one, I’ve become sort of adept at reading people and how they interact. I guess at a glance that the older brother and the blond girl are together. Something about their body language, even though they aren’t touching, communicates an intimate bond. And she’s wearing a ring. Not just any ring, but a gigantic Mount Everest of an engagement ring.

  The second woman seems to be there as a friend of the blond. Maybe the older brother and his blond fiancée are trying to set the younger brother up with the other girl.

  But Hottie doesn’t seem all that interested in her. At all.

  I could be wrong, of course. I don’t think I am, though. Partly because Hottie is still staring at me. And he’s not just looking at me like he’s thinking about what type of beer he wants to order. He’s staring at me with a sort of subdued, layered fascination that’s making me blush even more.

  “What’s your name?” he says.

  The husky, gravelled sound of his voice hits me somewhere just below my navel. The older brother turns to watch him, like something about his question, or the way he’d asked it, is slightly out of character.

  “Sugar,” I tell him.

  “Sugar?” he drawls, raising one perfect eyebrow, like he doesn’t quite believe me.

  “Yes.”

  This causes the corner of his mouth to curl. It’s nowhere near a smile, but the hint of amusement softens the hard edges of him and introduces a barely-playful glint. Damn, the man is ridiculously hot.

  “And this restaurant is called Sugar’s,” he says, that rasp to his deep voice unnerving me with its allure. There’s something borderline irresistible about the sound of it. Low, layered base notes that make you imagine what it would sound like in the dark. “Don’t you think that’s just a little bit of a coincidence?”

  “It’s my restaurant.” I make sure I smile and sound cheerful, partly so I don’t come across as out-of-breath or practically smitten, which is how I almost feel. Almost.

  “You’re a chef?”

  “And a baker, a hostess and sometimes a bartender. I sort of do it all.”

  “A baker,” he repeats. For a second I think I might have mistaken his interest for sarcasm, but when I glance at his brother’s face, I can see that he’s also noticed Hottie’s sincerity. I’m usually pretty good at figuring people out, but this guy’s got some serious layers going on.

  “Best apple pie in the city, according to the Times,” comments the brother.

  I appreciate that. My pie is, after all, my pride and joy. I framed the Times review and hung it in a special place at the entrance of the restaurant. It was the kind of review I’d dreamed about.

  “No shit,” says Hottie. “Do you make the apple pie?”

  “Sure do.”

  “What kind of name is Sugar? Is that your real name?” Like he’s perfectly entitled to ask me the most personal questions imaginable. Never offend your customers, however, is Rule Number One so I try to keep my tone chatty and fun.

  “Nope. My real name is Aphrodite Calliope Diana Penelope Malone. My mother went through a Greek mythology phase, which my father wasn’t all that pleased about, since he was Irish. But most people have been calling me Sugar since I was about five. Ever since I baked my first apple pie, actually. I got all covered in sugar, from head to toe.”

  Hottie’s gaze starts wandering my body, like he’s re-living the whole head to toe thing in real-world time. He has this mesmerized look on his face, which, despite all my reservations about his character, almost makes me smile.

  But then he says something that makes me go cold.

  “What happened to your eye?”

  I feel that sick, lingering anger – and fear, even though I swore I wouldn’t be afraid of the asshole who did this – at the memory. I’d tried to cover it up with make-up but the bruise must still be visible.

  “Oh, that?” I say, as breezily as I can muster, touching my cheek. “I walked into a door, can you believe it?”

  The brothers glance at each other briefly before looking back up at me. I feel wildly uncomfortable being scrutinized by them like some kind of victim. I’ve barely had time to think much about what happened. I was actually hoping the whole situation would just go away by itself. That it was a one-off. That I had dreamed it.

  But I knew I hadn’t dreamed it. And besides making do by sleeping in the tiny closet that I use as an office, I have nowhere else to go. I would rather die than flee back to Georgia just because some millionaire bully thinks he’s an aging Casanova. I’m made of stronger stuff than that. I’ll figure something out.

  I do my best to regain my composure.

  I can’t help but notice that Hottie is still staring at me but the look on his face has changed. There’s no longer any traces of smugness or amusement. He looks angry. Furious, in fact. His fist clenches, which makes the muscles of his arm bulge. Holy hell.

  But it’s none of his business. I don’t know him and he doesn’t know me or my problems. The only thing he needs to know about me is how kick-ass my pie is.

  And then he says, “I’ll have a slice of your apple pie. Served warm with vanilla ice cream on the side.” The way he looks at me when he says it is so sexy and suggestive it almost sounds like he’s ordering me as a side dish.

  I can feel myself blush but I’ve already made my mind up about him, and there’s no way I’m going to give him the satisfaction of embarrassing me. “I always serve it warm with vanilla ice cream on the side,” I tell him. “Homemade vanilla ice cream.”

  His face, when I mention this, loses all traces of that self-assured tough-guy sneer. For a brief few seconds, he looks kind and sincere and so heartbreakingly beautiful I almost reach out to touch a thick lock of his hair.

  Reclaiming my sanity just in time, I smile. My professional, hostess smile. And when Maddie comes over to take their order, I leave them to it and I get on with my job.

  But somewhere, behind my thoughts, I secretly hope. It’s a hope I don’t bother trying to quantify. Because I can’t quite decide whether I hope I never see him again or whether I hope I do.

  “Send me all of it,” I tell Finn.

  Finn Grayson is the one and only person at my company I trust completely. I met him at Harvard, where I did my MBA. Before you go assuming that I’m a genius or some studious academic type, I’ll fill you in on the real story: my brother gave some huge-ass endowment to the school to buy my admission. At that point in my life I wasn’t exactly Harvard material so it took a little coercion and a huge wad of cash for them to even consider me. They put a new wing on the library, that’s the kind of money we’re talking. But once I got there I decided to make the most of it. Ended up graduating at the top of my class. Finn graduated right behind me. So when Alexander offered me a job running Wolfe Investments four years ago, I talked him into hiring Finn. Finn’s so loyal he threatened to quit if they didn’t keep me on after the whole insider trading fiasco. I told him to stay p
ut so he could be my eyes and ears inside.

  I need him in place if I’m going to figure out who screwed me over.

  “I’ve got all the security camera footage on file,” Finn says, “which I’ll email you tonight, once I get home and off the radar. I’m still waiting on the spyware password so we can start looking through all the emails, logins, surfing activity and so on. Your brother’s the only one who knows it.”

  “Good. I’ll get in touch with Alexander as soon as I can. He’s out of town.”

  “You up for a beer later, man? I haven’t seen you since you’ve been in lock-down.”

  “I can’t tonight. But I’ll give you call soon. Yeah, we’re overdue.”

  “And I’ll keep you posted if I hear anything.”

  “I owe you one, Finn.”

  “Jake, I owe you about ten. It’s the least I can do.”

  “I appreciate it.”

  I end the call, think about calling Alexander but decide not to. It can wait. He went AWOL for a couple days after Lila left him on what was supposed to be their wedding day, when his ex showed up at the alter announcing she was pregnant. Which was a lie but they didn’t find that out until I made her get a court-ordered pregnancy test. Long story short: he totally lost his shit and disappeared at sea down in Florida. I was about to break out of my zone to go and find him but he turned up just in time. And now they’re married and holed up in Key West running – just a wild guess here – a carnal marathon.

  I’m not sure I want to interrupt all that. I feel like those two just need some time to themselves.

  Home detention’s not all bad. I’ve had an idea for a business that’s been rolling around in my head for a while that I’m starting to look into. I spend a few hours each day following some of my underling brokers online and advising them by phone. I walk the streets. I work out for three or four hours a day. I sleep. Occasionally I eat.

  It could be worse. It could be a lot fucking worse. I could be in prison. And I’ve spent enough time in juvie to know that prison is definitely someplace I don’t ever want to be.