by Violet Duke
Inside the bag?
A pack of bubblegum cigarettes.
And condoms.
He burst out laughing. Seeing that she’d gone out of her way to provide a variety of condom sizes, from extralarge all the way down to extraslim fit, had him nearly busting a gut. God, he loved her sass. Grinning, he pocketed them all—even the pint-size pecker protector—for safekeeping. Not because he intended to find out how quickly the minicondom, which was apparently half the standard size, according to the picture on the box, could cut off his blood flow and make him pass out. But because that was a thrown gauntlet if ever he’d seen one.
Far be it from him to ignore a dare like that. Whether the feisty woman realized it or not, she’d just started a very interesting game between them. Oh, the possibilities.
At that point even he had to concede that so far this Jake and Emma 2.0 experiment was off to a promising start.
Which grinded to a halt not three hours later, when his repair work led him to a wall with a cluster of framed family photos.
Just that quickly they were back to this plan being all kinds of wrong.
Of the many things Jake had prepared himself to face today, seeing a photo of Peyton—and acting as if he didn’t recognize him—definitely hadn’t been one of them. He supposed it helped that this was the first photo he’d ever seen of Peyton. Since the family hadn’t approved the release of any pictures to the media following the fire, all Jake had had to remember his young neighbor by over the years were fond memories of a fun, rambunctious boy who was quick to tell anyone who asked that he loved baseball, hot dogs, ice-cream sundaes, and riding his bike. But not as much as he loved his stepsisters. Especially his big sis, Emma.
That little guy used to think the sun rose and set with her . . . a mutual adoration, from what Jake remembered of Emma’s doting ways when it came to her stepbrother.
Silence blanketed the bakery as he felt Emma walk up and stand beside him. Together they stared at the photo he was holding: a laughing Peyton holding a trout in each hand.
“Cute kid,” he finally managed to comment in the most casual voice he could muster.
“That was the first time we took him fishing,” she explained softly. “My stepmom’s first husband had never been the outdoorsy type, so she and Peyton had never even gone camping before we took them. Ironically, he took to fishing way better than Megan or I did. Used to practice fishing in his kiddie pool and everything.”
Ah, that explained why Peyton had once asked Jake to help him cut a bunch of sponges into fish shapes and then squeeze weighted ball bearings into the sponge holes.
Hell, Jake really hated having to shove down good memories like this of Peyton. It was a rare occurrence to have any not linked to the fire. But with Emma holding her breath as if expecting an ice-cold plunge with his next words, he knew he had to stay the course. “You heading out?” he segued smoothly, nodding at her purse and jacket. “I can wrap things up now if you need, or just lock up when I leave. Either way works. I’m almost done for the day.”
A long, relieved breath whooshed past Emma’s lips. “No rush—take your time. If you could just lock up the front, that’ll be great. I’ll go out the back.”
“Will do. I’ll be in at the same time tomorrow.”
Polite and professional. A perfect exchange between Jake and Emma 2.0.
And dammit did it suck.
Emma gave him a friendly wave and headed to the back. Halfway there, she stopped and, without turning around, murmured quietly, “Thank you, Jake.”
The emotions vibrating below the surface of that single sentence was neither polite nor professional. But they were well hidden. He sighed. “Have a good night, Emma.”
Jake kept working for another hour, needing the extra time with his power tools to gather his thoughts, work shit out emotionally. Though hammering and sawing away at things didn’t perform miracles, it did give him a chance to get to know the grown-up version of Emma a little better, via her bakery.
There were traces of her all over the place—from the bright, bold palette of colors to the array of warm, comfy mismatched furniture. The entire space was Emma in a complex nutshell.
Jake never would’ve thought the papier-mâché piñatas, in seemingly every color made by Crayola, hanging as art pieces over the wide window benches in the front would look fun and trendy as opposed to gaudy or childish. Likewise on the modern wicker poolside patio sofas along the walls of the seating areas—first time he’d ever seen them used inside a business, but, oddly enough, they looked really good. Especially with the distressed wooden crates serving as cocktail tables and the wrought-iron standing bar tables dispersed throughout, which he’d never seen outside a bar or pub before. Even the unlikely pairing of shockingly cheerful bohemian-patterned pillows next to the country whitewashed shelves lined with mason jars of plastic utensils for the customers, and the surprisingly homey baskets of rustic balls of yarn everywhere worked well together. In a unique, unexpected way.
Not unlike its owner.
Taking it all in was therapeutic. So much so that by the time sunset rolled around, he was almost okay with the situation again. As he locked up his tools in his truck bed and stretched out the welcome ache in all his muscles from a hard day’s work, about a dozen folks greeted him on the sidewalk as if he’d stepped into a family TV show from the 1950s.
Soon he felt something thawing inside his chest—which led to him deciding to walk around town instead of hopping in his truck and driving off right away. The traffic home would be a congested beast this time of day anyway.
That was his excuse, and he was sticking to it.
It was not because this cozy little town somehow felt more like home than his own apartment did. Nope. And his walking into the lively little joint called Sally’s Diner clear on the other end of town had nothing to do with the bologna sandwich, canned soup, and nuked ear of frozen corn on the cob that was originally going to be his sad dinner for the night. Nuh-uh.
This was all about the traffic.
“Hey, you must be the carpenter working on Emma’s bakery,” a smiling, silver-haired waitress greeted him as she plopped down a glass of water and a hot mug of what looked like double-black coffee, or something darn close.
When he clutched the mug like a wild animal getting ready to devour his prey, she chuckled. “Took a shot in the dark. You looked like you could use a mug of our trucker special,” she explained with a wink.
Clearly she was some sort of psychic soothsayer or powerful wizard sent to undo the damage Emma’s decaf had done on his body’s caffeine balance. He drank the black-as-night coffee gratefully, downing half the mug on one swig, practically feeling his woodsman beard get denser as a result. “Damn that’s good coffee. I’m not even kidding—you can just set the whole coffeepot on my table and put that order pad away.”
Barb, according to her bedazzled name tag, tipped her head back and laughed. “As much as my boss Sally will love hearing the compliment on her special ‘burly-man brew,’ she’ll come out here personally and start piling food on this table if you don’t order something to eat.”
He grinned, knowing right then and there that he and this town were going to get along just fine. With Barb refusing to budge until he ordered some food, Jake looked around at what everyone else was eating to make his choice. Seeing everything from pot roast to enchiladas to lasagna, however, soon had him almost whimpering in starved indecision.
Barb quickly took pity on him and pointed up at three plates displayed on the wall. “No worries—Sally also has a mess-hall-style ‘flat rate for the plate’ ordering, where you can get however many different things you can fit on one of those three plates.”
He looked up and found the prices unbelievably affordable, considering the three sizes ranged from a standard dinner plate to what looked like a twenty-pound-turkey platter.
“The biggest size is usually for folks here on a date. Inspired by Sally’s all-time favorite cartoon movie,
Lady and the Tramp. One massive platter, two forks. Romance guaranteed.”
Man, this town was so wonderfully weird. Chuckling, he selected the first dinner-plate size, and asked Barb to pile it high with all her favorites, certain he wouldn’t be disappointed.
Sure enough, the food was delicious.
Surprisingly, the company it came with was also.
All through his meal, diners kept stopping by to introduce themselves, catapulting right past small talk to third-date-type crazy-town stories, usually starring someone within earshot, who would, of course, retaliate with an even zanier story that would have him in stitches.
He’d never met a more colorful, mismatched blend of folks.
Their ability to coexist in utterly paradoxical symbiosis reminded him of Emma’s bakery decor. Which explained why he liked ’em so much. And probably why they appeared to like him, too. If the number of people who brought their food over to his table to eat and chitchat away was any indication, no one here was even distantly aware that “cantankerous, growly bear” was the default setting for his personality. On the contrary, he suspected the townsfolk were operating on inaccurate intel painting him as more teddy than grizzly as far as bears went.
Case in point, five minutes into his meal, a trio of sweet old biddies descended on him to make sure he kept space open on his dance card for them at the spring square dance during next month’s bonfire block party. Yeah . . . he’d had about as much luck politely declining that invite as he had the berry-picking field trip little Cassie’s preschool class needed chaperones for later in the summer. Don’t even get him started on the fall hayride festival that got snuck in there in the blur somehow. And their annual holiday production of A Charlie Brown Christmas? Hell, he’d apparently been nominated—and was already rumored as the favored nominee—to go out and “lumberjack” the iconic little tree from the story. Town vote pending, of course.
For a man who’d gotten used to living a solitary lifestyle without much in the way of future plans, Jake was surprisingly disappointed over the sad reality that he wouldn’t actually be around to attend any of these functions. Remember, this is just temporary—you and Emma are going to go back to your “real lives” after these few weeks are up.
Just as he was clubbing himself over the head with that hard-to-swallow fact, however, two tiny hands perched up on the edge of his table, followed by the long-lashed doe eyes and button nose they belonged to.
“Well, hello again, Miss Cassie. What can I do for you?”
“I need your finger,” she replied with all the boldness of a four-year-old who knew what she wanted in life.
“Yes, ma’am.” He held up his index finger, curious where this was going.
She proceeded to remove the ribbon from her hair so she could tie it on his finger. “This is so you remember. The field trip is in June. You’re going to come with the Bumble Bee class. Not the Blue Bird class. And don’t forget your lunch box and thermos. I’ll save a seat for you on the bus so we can sit together and see if we want to trade snacks.”
Sweet lord, the child was going to kill him with all this cuteness.
“Promise you won’t forget?” She hit him with her big, unblinking eyes.
And he was done for. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world, munchkin.”
“Yaaay!” She smacked a kiss on his cheek and then hopped on back to her parents, who were waving at him and mouthing thank-yous.
Okay, so maybe he’d be going to one of the town events he’d gotten invited to.
After the pitch-perfect symphonic chorus of awws around him faded, they finally let him get back to the near-religious experience he’d been having eating himself into a blissful coma.
Seriously, between Emma’s Reuben and tonight’s meal, this was the best he’d eaten in years. With his parents not wanting to be his parents after he’d entered juvie, he hadn’t really learned to cook. And because he’d been living paycheck to paycheck ever since, mealtime usually consisted of whatever edible thing he could buy on a budget to keep from starving.
Which was why he was all but licking his plate clean when Barb returned to his table with dessert.
“What’s this?”
“Kansas Dirt Cake. It’s good—trust me,” she answered with an encouraging smile.
Well, of course he knew what Kansas Dirt Cake was; the Oreo-based dessert was a favorite staple around these parts. “Sorry, what I meant was I didn’t order this.” But damn did it look tasty. He did some quick calculations to see if he could afford to splurge this week.
“Oh, no worries. This is on the house. Sally’s way of making sure you come back to the diner again. Dig in. I’ll be back with more coffee.”
He got a little misty-eyed looking at the decadent masterpiece. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had given him a cake just because . . .
Actually, yes, he could. Mentally ducking to avoid the resulting sucker punch of his teen memories, he swiftly shifted his mind away from the depressing topic before it could ruin the first forkful of his first homemade dessert since he was sixteen.
Thank goodness he did because lord have mercy. An embarrassingly loud groan escaped him when the perfect combination of cream, cookies, and crust hit his taste buds.
Barb gave him a knowing grin. “Good, isn’t it?”
“Good? This is the best dirt cake I’ve ever had. My compliments to Sally.”
“Actually, you can redirect those compliments to Emma. Sally gets all her desserts from Emma’s bakery. That’s what makes this cake so yummy. It has Emma’s homemade chocolate cookies—none of that store-bought stuff—along with her special s’mores pudding.”
“S’mores pudding?” Really, he was just making small talk so he could slow down and savor the dessert. Left to his own devices, he’d be digesting the entire thing by now.
“Yep. She makes the best puddings. Fancy designer flavors, too. Stuff like baklava, and a couple with beer and whiskey. All her cakes have ’em.”
One of the dairy farm owners he’d met earlier came over to join the conversation—Janice? He couldn’t remember. He’d met like fifty people in the past hour. “Her cakes are half the reason I come here as much as I do. I’m not kidding, I almost cried when I heard her bakery was going to be shut down for a few weeks.”
Barb smiled. “Emma is such a sweetheart. As soon as she found out her bakery was going to be closed for business for a bit, she called up Sally to set an early-morning schedule to bake the daily diner desserts over here so we’d still have cakes and pies until she reopened.”
Yep, that was the Emma he remembered. To this day the kindest person he’d ever met.
“Don’t you go breaking her heart now,” threatened Barb with a finger wag.
Before he could stop that bit of town gossip from starting—a surefire way to become the victim of an attempted ass kicking by Emma—Barb lit up. “There’s your girl now.”
Even with that advance warning, Jake still wasn’t ready for the impact of seeing “his girl” enter the front door of the diner. For chrissakes, you’d think he hadn’t just seen the woman a few hours ago by the way he couldn’t take his eyes off her.
Barb arched an observant eyebrow. “Well, well. I think maybe I’m warning the wrong person. Don’t you go letting her break your heart now.”
Guess her soothsayer powers weren’t always quite so accurate.
“Lost my heart a long time ago,” he admitted quietly, for Barb’s ears only. “So you don’t need to worry about me.” Nothing to break here.
“Oh, I’m not worried. I think you’ll be just fine.” She patted him gently on the shoulder in a sage seer way. “That said, word to the wise so you’re not caught unaware. Most of us only call things in our life lost when it’s something we hope to find again one day.”
Jake had no way to respond to that. Not that Barb was waiting around for him to try. She was already charming the socks off the folks on the next table over, leaving him alone with his now torna
do-like thoughts just as Emma and the woman she’d entered the diner with made their way over to his table.
His well-rooted manners on autopilot, he stood to greet both women . . . only to find himself voiceless when he realized who exactly he was looking at.
Megan Stevens.
Every one of the news articles he’d read about Emma’s sister’s injuries assailed him then like bullets to his brain. A fourth of her body. All but one of the papers reported how the fire had burned a fourth of her body. The odd one out described it a bit differently, using a quote from a neighbor who’d witnessed from afar what Jake had seen up close. To give journalistic credit where it was due, the lone article’s use of the word torched instead of burned was a far more accurate description of what little Megan Stevens had endured that night. Of that Jake had no doubt.
Now, seeing the healed but ever-present evidence of what those scorching flames had done to her skin all along her jaw, neck, chest, and the length of her arm almost unmanned him.
He stood glued to the spot, unable to face her—the innocent victim who, like Emma, believed he had caused the fire responsible for all those heartbreaking wounds.
Chapter Nine
“Hi, Jake. I’ve heard so much about you.”
Jake stood there numbly, wondering if Megan’s foreign-sounding words, like her bafflingly genuine smile, were simply getting lost in translation as a result of his grief-fogged senses. Had to be. Because there was just no way in the world Megan Stevens was actually standing there smiling at him and offering a kind greeting.
Jake shifted his gaze over to Emma, expecting her candid honesty to burst through his foggy bubble. But what he found instead was a look of reassurance, bordering on comfort, as she said encouragingly, “Megan saw you outside the bakery yesterday and has been wanting to meet you ever since so she could talk to you about the library job.”