He could pull strings like no one else.
Her insurance had been unbelievably responsive. While her first calls had been nothing but red tape and frustration, one call to his insurance guy and she’d been on the line with the head of the reimbursement department, making plans to have her house inspected and repaired.
He’d also given her a place to stay and a car to borrow, no questions asked. They’d slipped into comfortably tentative domestication almost too easily.
He was working from home for the day, ensconced in his office, behind a big wooden desk. She was enjoying the afternoon sunlight pouring in through the windows as she worked on making pans and pans of cinnamon buns. They’d become one of her best sellers at The Bean, and she’d doubled the amount she usually made and they still sold out. It was unreal. Today she was making them for a bake sale at Freehope High School, benefiting the girls’ softball team.
She had more than a dozen pans ready for rolls, the bottoms spread with a mix of brown sugar, cinnamon, and caramel. She had big logs of dough, the cinnamon already rolled in, laid out on the counter, ready for cutting and baking.
She grabbed the bottle of shimmer sugar—the big granules that sparkled in the light, and poured some in a bowl.
Just as she was licking some sugar off her thumb, the front door clicked open and heavy footfalls entered the condo. Her head snapped up, her eyes widening as Dylan’s business partners trooped in.
It was almost comical—Lincoln leading the way, stopping in his tracks when he saw her standing in the kitchen, Brady and then someone else bumping into his back.
“What’s up?” Brady asked Lincoln, not seeing Alex yet.
Lincoln’s eyes snapped to her exposed belly and back up to her face.
She hadn’t been expecting company and certainly wasn’t dressed for it. She had on nothing more than a cropped exercise top and her yoga pants, her growing baby bump blatantly preceding her.
“Move,” a low growl came from the person she couldn’t see in the entryway. “I can’t even close the damn door.”
With a shove, Lincoln fell in a few steps, Brady and the other man that could only be Dylan’s other partner, Grant Harrison, right behind him, all of them coming to a complete standstill at the sight of her.
She wasn’t much better, standing stock-still, thumb still in her mouth. Feeling silly and caught off-guard, she dropped her hands to her sides and pulled her lips into what she hoped passed as a smile, then let it go, knowing it wasn’t working.
“No way that’s Dylan’s,” Grant said, jerking his head in her direction as he glared at her mid-section.
“No way,” Brady agreed, his usual smile nowhere in sight.
“Are you sure?” she said, widening her eyes in false bewilderment.
Grant’s arms crossed over his chest. “What the hell are you trying to pull here?”
“Pull?” she asked, straightening her spine.
Hadn’t he told them about what she was doing, about the baby?
Brady looked at Lincoln out of the corner of his eye. “Call the lawyers. Let’s make sure she can’t get to any of our assets.”
“Guys—” Lincoln began.
“Are you for real?” she snapped, stomping her foot, indignation flaring in her gut.
“I’m not having everything I’ve built knocked down by some woman Dylan picked up at the coffee shop because he likes to play white knight.” Grant jabbed his finger toward her and Alex nearly went through the roof, her temper off the charts. When she opened her mouth to speak, or lose her shit, he interrupted her, which almost made the top of her head blow off. “You don’t get to say anything else.”
“I haven’t said anything at all,” she said on a sneer and stomped to the living room, yelling in the direction of the office. “Dylan, your friends are here. They’re just hanging out in the kitchen, accusing me of being a gold-digging harlot who’s trying to saddle you with a baby that’s not yours. When you have a minute, maybe you could come out before I murder every last one of these uptight, insulting, mouth-breathing apes.”
“Mouth-breathing?” Lincoln asked on a laugh.
He was the least offensive of the three, his lips actually turned up at the corners.
“They’re what?” Dylan’s office door flew open as he stalked out, his face thunderous.
“She’s pregnant?” Grant growled. “You didn’t think shacking up with a chick who’s pregnant was worth mentioning?”
Alex’s eyes narrowed and her fists balled at her sides. Chick? Shacking up? Why did he make her sound like a second-class citizen?
“We’ve got a business to protect,” Brady added. “This could be a huge liability.”
“Now I’m not just a gold digger but I’m a liability?” Alex fumed, sending a heated glare at Dylan.
The buzzer on the oven went off.
“You get that,” Dylan said as he reached her, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “I’ll straighten this out. Maybe we can try some of those cinnamon rolls once these morons apologize.”
She barely spared his partners a glance as she stalked to the oven. “Then I’ll make sure to add some extra arsenic.”
“Ouch,” she heard Lincoln murmur as Dylan led them to his office.
Alex threw a shirt on the minute they were out of sight, covering herself in case they had another confrontation. Then she went about her baking, checking her watch to make sure she was running on time. With one last batch of cinnamon rolls in the oven, she’d have enough time to let them cool, bag them all up, and take them to Freehope so Jenna could take them to school in the morning.
“A liability,” she mouthed, copying Grant’s hard-nosed, clipped tone. “Liability, my ass.”
She wondered why Dylan hadn’t mentioned to them that she was pregnant, or the surrounding circumstances.
Maybe he was embarrassed about it, not wanting people to jump to the conclusions that the baby was his. Maybe he had her ensconced in her house, hiding her from his friends and family, so they wouldn’t see her. Their previous conversation about him dating her as a novelty, the pregnant girl from the sticks, came rushing back.
The more she thought about it, the more sense it made. He’d spent plenty of time with her family at Sunday lunches and around town. He’d even spent a night at her brother’s bar, keeping her company while she worked.
She’d never met anyone in his family, not even a hint of a word about the prospect being on the horizon.
She’d only met his friends because she’d shown up at his office unannounced.
Yeah, things were becoming a lot clearer and she propped her fists on the counter, hanging her head.
“So stupid, Alex,” she muttered to herself.
Dylan and his partners spent more than an hour in his office, which was fine with her. She made a phone call, an S.O.S to her sister, which was promptly answered. She bagged her baked goods and her stuff, needing a helluva lot more space from her overactive imagination and libido. She needed to get away from Dylan, unsure of his motives or his plans and far, far away from his maniacally uptight partners.
She had her own shit to deal with. Dylan’s embarrassment or hesitancy was all his own.
Her phone pinged with a text, her sister saying she was right outside. Alex shouldered her bag and hefted it out the door where Beth waited for her at the car.
“You okay?”
She answered her sister’s question with a shrug and a scowl. “I can’t tell if I’m mad at myself or him or his friends or you or the baby.”
Beth’s brows rose. “What the hell did I do?”
“Nothing,” Alex admitted, tossing her bag in the trunk of the car and closing the lid. “Just like the baby did nothing and Dylan did nothing and I did nothing. His friends are questionable but this whole thing is just all wrong. The timing…it’s just wrong.”
Beth followed her as she stomped into the kitchen and then whistled. “Holy shit,” she murmured.
“I know. Talk about look
s being wasted on the young. He doesn’t even know how to cook.” She hefted a big basket of individually wrapped cinnamon rolls.
“How many did you make?” Beth marveled, taking the load from Alex’s arms.
“A lot.”
She heard the office door open and nearly cried. She’d been hoping to make a clean getaway, maybe text him later and let him know she needed a little space. He came around the corner first, a smile already on his lips.
Damn.
She felt herself cave a little, but when she caught sight of the glare on Beth’s face she remembered how pissed she was. Even if it wasn’t at him, it still made her remember that she needed some space.
Dylan’s eyebrows pulled down when he saw Beth there, a basket full of pastries in her arms, staring daggers at his partners.
“Hey,” he greeted Beth warily. “What are you doing here?”
“Came to bring Lexi home.” She took in the men, her utterly cool anger chilling the room. “Which one of you made my sister feel like shit for carrying a baby for me?”
That was one way to ride the back of the elephant in the room, Alex thought.
For men that were so close, they all had different reactions to her blatant question. Dylan made a grab for Alex’s hand, which she should have refused but didn’t. Brady looked stone-faced, maybe shocked that she’d ask out loud like that. Lincoln looked away, covering his smiling mouth with his hand. Grant looked ready to spit nails.
“That was me,” he admitted, his words biting. “I didn’t realize it wasn’t her baby. I don’t know why it would be on me to make that assumption.”
Beth let out a humorous snort. “You didn’t have any problems with the assumption that she was horning her way in on your assets.” She scathingly looked him up and down. “Not that they’re that impressive.” With a haughty sniff, she turned on her heel and walked out. “I’ll be in the car when you’re ready.”
“I told you I’d give you a ride,” Dylan said quietly.
She pulled her hand from his and took a step back. “Yeah. I know. You’ve been great.” She glanced at his friends, remembering that he hadn’t bothered to fill them in on the baby she was carrying. Remembering that he’d made her feel like a dirty secret. She took another step back.
“Lex?”
“We’ll go,” Lincoln offered. “Give you guys some space.”
“No,” Alex interrupted. “No need. I’ve got to get back to Freehope if I’m going to make it back to donate this stuff to the bake sale.” It was a lie, but they didn’t know that. Besides, maybe Grant and his high horse would see that she was philanthropic instead of gold-digging. “I’ll just see myself out.”
She didn’t make it one step onto the walkway before Dylan caught up to her.
“What is going on?” he asked, bewildered.
“I’m going to go back home.” She shrugged, not able to meet his eyes. “I really appreciate you letting me crash here for a while.”
“I wasn’t letting you crash here. I was inviting you into my life.”
Ouch. Okay.
“I appreciate you letting me crash here,” she countered. “Inviting me into your life would mean that your friends would know that I was carrying my sister’s baby. They would know that because you told them. They wouldn’t find out when they walked in on me in your house and assume I was out to baby-trap you.”
“I was trying to keep your business private,” he argued.
“Bullshit.” Her words were short and hard. “Again, I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, but I need to take a step back. I’ve got a lot going on with the baby and now my house in ruins. I don’t have time for drama or to be your dirty little secret. I’m worth a helluva lot more than that.”
“You think I don’t know that?” He made a grab for her shoulders but she stepped farther back and closer to Beth’s car. “So that’s it? One bump in the road and you’re out?”
She nodded. “For now, that’s how it has to be.” She put a hand on her stomach. “I’ve got a lot more than just me to take into consideration.”
He watched her, assessing her, his hands propped on his hips. “I’ve never had an issue with that and you know it. You’re enough for me, Lexi. You, just you. Not the baby, not being my dirty secret—which is so ridiculous I don’t even want to say the words out loud, not anything other than who you are. You need some time or some space to think? Take it.” He said it with a firm nod. “Take what you need, but know that I’m coming back for you.”
“You ready?” Beth yelled from the open window of her car.
Alex felt rooted to her spot, wondering if she was making a huge mistake.
“Go, Lex,” Dylan nodded. “I’ll be there when you need me.”
Alex walked up the steps to Andy’s old apartment in a daze, as had been her perpetual state since she’d walked out of Dylan’s condo, in a whirlwind of what seemed like righteous indignation. After a few weeks alone, without him to talk to or laugh with, she was seriously second-guessing her flounce out of Dylan’s life.
She’d met his friends. She could have explained her situation to them from the moment she met them, but she hadn’t. So, was the blame really all on Dylan?
Her house was still a total no-go—boarded up and cordoned off; she had an appointment with the insurance adjuster to begin the process of reconstructing what she could and repairing what needed to be fixed. The process was absolutely daunting, and without Dylan to guide her through, she felt a bit like a fish swimming upstream. He’d just known what steps came next, who to call. She’d taken that for granted, thanked him for his help but taken it without real appreciation. Now that she was trying to navigate those waters herself, she felt ungrateful.
Not that he’d ever asked for her gratitude.
Hell, he hadn’t ever asked her for anything more than baked goods.
She opened the door to the apartment and dropped her things on the floor before flopping on the couch.
Everyone had been looking forward to this day for months. Even she had been thrilled when she woke up that morning, unable to contain her curiosity of whether the baby she carried was a boy or girl. Beth and Logan had perched on the edge of their hard plastic doctor’s office seats, hands clutching one another’s in anticipation. Their eyes had welled up with joy as they looked at each other, hugging and laughing, making plans when the baby’s gender was announced.
They’d all left the office, Beth calling Andy and Spencer, telling them the great news.
Alex had brushed off having lunch with them, lying about having work that needed to be done.
But deep down, she knew it was because she felt an odd shift inside of her at the news and she didn’t have anyone to tell. Like somehow, it wasn’t her excitement to revel in.
And all she really wanted to do was call Dylan James, billionaire extraordinaire, as Jenna called him, and all-around sweetheart.
But she’d run him off, possibly by overreacting to something he didn’t even say.
She groaned when her phone rang, and dug into her sweatshirt to fish it out.
“Yeah?” she answered, knowing it was Andy.
“Alexa Walker?”
It was a masculine voice she didn’t recognize. She held the phone out and noted the area code. Boston, or somewhere in the vicinity.
“This is,” she replied hesitantly.
“It’s Peter. Peter Fitch.” Alex startled so much she nearly slid off the couch. “We met about a month ago,” he was explaining.
“I know who you are,” she said, righting herself so she was sitting on the couch, holding her phone with two hands. Peter Fitch was one of the most decorated chefs in the northeast. She’d taken more than one of his seminars, owned every one of his cookbooks.
She’d thought meeting him at his restaurant with Dylan had been the highlight of her very sad and pathetic life.
Now, not only was she on the phone with him, but he’d called her.
“Good. Good. I wanted to touch
base with you because I’ve been following you these last few weeks. Your stuff is great, and I don’t just mean those berry eclairs you made last week, though those were divine. I bought every one I could get my hands on. Your marketing is brilliant, your social media engaging and smart. I wanted to make you a proposition.”
“Me?” Alex asked, her voice soft in embarrassing wonder.
He gave her a confident laugh. “You are the Bad Girl of Sweets? The one I met at Wave last month?”
“Yes,” she admitted.
“Then you’re exactly who I’m looking for. I was wondering if I could get a meeting with you. Not just you, but your marketing people, as well. I’ve got some real interest in a partnership of some sort with you. You’ve really impressed me, and it might be opportunistic on my part, but I think we could both benefit from what I have in mind.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“I’d like to explain more about that in person, just so we can lay all our cards on the table. I like to look people in the eye and get real—no bullshit, if you don’t mind me saying so.”
“I don’t, but I can’t say I understand either. You’re Peter Fitch. I’m just…me.”
“Your hashtag has more than triple the mentions than mine does. Your posts are shared more, your pictures get better reception and your recipes are classic takes people love. You’re young and fresh, have a ton of good ideas and momentum behind you. Let’s have lunch tomorrow. Come into the restaurant with your people and we’ll talk about it.”
“If you want my people with me, then lunch won’t work,” Alex told him, grinning at the idea that a world-famous chef was about to ask a high school student for help with marketing. Jenna would be beside herself with excitement. “We can do later in the day or a weekend.”
Delivering History (The Freehope Series Book 4) Page 15