Sugar and Spice

by Roxy Wynn

  No one in their right mind could deny Mr. Jeffrey Jaxon was hung like a horse.

  “That picture of him and his huge cock was all over Time’s Square, Chrissy. And you know what else?”

  I stared at the space where he had been standing and kissing my hand not ten minutes earlier.

  Unable to answer her question, I said, “I feel like I’ve been huffing glue. This can’t be real.”

  “You’re dating him now!”

  Reality hit me like a brick to the face; I jumped off the stool. “Whoa. We aren’t dating. He asked me out, I said no, and then he showed up today. That’s it.”

  Before I had time to realize my mistake, she was on her feet again with her hands on her hips. “Wait. You said no? You didn’t tell me that. You said you gave him your number.”

  The cat was out of the bag now. I hated lying to anyone, but that went double for my best friend.

  “Forget what I said. Yes, I gave him my number, but I never expected him to call.”

  “What is going on, Chrissy? Did he or did he not ask you out?”

  My heart was racing.

  “He did.”

  “And did you or did you not say yes?”

  “Yes, of course I did. He is super hot, how could I say no?”

  I am an asshole.

  Appeased, she dropped onto the stool next to me, still going through pictures of him in various states of undress.

  “Chris, this is a huge deal. As soon as it gets out that you’re dating The Jeffrey Jaxon we are going to have a line out the door so long, it’ll wrap around the block.”

  My head was spinning, but I tried to think rationally for a second, “Okay, so this guy is a celebrity, so what? We don’t even necessarily know what his intentions are.”

  I snatched the phone from her hands again and continued to scroll through the pictures. While I didn’t mind looking at pictures of him nearly naked, my eyes were more drawn to the women they had photographed him with over the years. They looked like Barbies with their shiny hair, gorgeous clothes, and perfect bodies.

  How could I ever compete with that?

  I looked down at my jumpsuit and realized how filthy I was after a full day of bakery owning. There was chocolate all over my stomach from cleaning the tempering machine, and the amount of flour I had caked into my midsection from rolling out dough was almost enough for another batch of cookies.

  “I saw how he looked at you,” she said, as if reading my thoughts. “He wants you, Chrissy.”

  “He doesn’t even know me.”

  “He knows enough that he wants to bang you. And besides, if he’s flirting with you when you’re dirty from work, just imagine how ape shit he’s going to go when he sees you dressed up.”

  I rested my head in my hands. There was no way any of this was really happening.

  Chapter Ten

  Jax

  As I started my truck, two things became obvious to me. One was that I would need to share these boxes of baked goods, so I didn’t devour them myself; and two, was that I would need to steer Alex away from this building.

  I headed to Gene’s house intending to unload the pastry boxes on him and his family. After spending countless nights enjoying his wife’s cooking, I knew they would welcome a giant delivery of pastries. Not only for themselves, but for the five teenagers they raised that ate them out of house and home.

  I took a left on Fairfield, and drove around the busy streets, trying to craft the perfect response to Alex in my mind. Each building I saw had construction in progress. The neighborhood was expanding rapidly, and in five years, this neighborhood would be booming.

  Trying to steer Alex away from it would be a tough sell. In the six months we had been searching, we had already considered every other building in the area and none of them ticked off all the boxes as perfect as this one did.

  I reached into the box closest to me and popped the first treat I found into my mouth. It was small, buttery, covered in powdered sugar, and practically melted on my tongue. I have no idea what it was, but it confirmed that that bakery had to stay. In another year Chrissy would be a millionaire, she just needed more advertising. Now.

  Knowing Alex, the second I mentioned a woman was involved, she would dig her heels in just to spite me. Our relationship was complicated to say the least.

  When I pulled into Gene’s driveway, Baxter their Golden Retriever, greeted me with a tennis ball covered in a generous amount of slime.

  “Hey buddy.” I crouched down and pet his big fluffy face, scratching behind his ears before taking the ball out of his mouth and throwing it into the backyard. As I watched him run off, I wiped the thick slime from the ball onto my pants. Anything to distract him from the baked goods in my truck.

  “Hey Jax, it’s a little early for lasagna, but you’re more than welcome to come in and have a beer while we wait,” Gene said, walking down his front steps. “I thought for sure I had gotten rid of you for the day.”

  “You did, but then I bought my weight in cookies and thought I could pawn them off on you guys instead of eating them all by myself.”

  His eye grew wide when I opened my passenger door to reveal the giant bakery boxes. I tried taking the entire stack in one go.

  “Why the hell did you buy so many?” he asked. Instead of watching me struggle, he stepped in a took the top two boxes off my hands, making the rest much easier to carry. He led the way into his house, holding the door for me, so I didn’t have to struggle.

  “I guess I just got carried away with my regular guy look. Regular guys eat this much junk food, right?” We both glanced at his ample midsection and laughed.

  “Only when the wife is away,” he whispered. When he rounded the corner, Beatrice was shooting daggers at him with her eyes; he knew he was in trouble.

  Before he got a lecture, I dropped the boxes on the counter and whisked Beatrice into my arms. “Maybe I don’t want to be a sex symbol anymore. I see what you and Bea have and I won’t lie, sometimes I wonder what my life would be like if I had met her first.”

  “Jaxon, if you say the word, I will run away with you today.” Bea, like the make-up artists on set, always flirted shamelessly. In fact, everyone in the south did. It’s something I missed whenever I was away shooting on location.

  “Don’t let her fool you, Jax, Beatrice would never leave me for an actor. No matter how good he looked shirtless. Right, baby?”

  Bea ignored him and kissed me on the cheek before taking the boxes and setting them on one of the dining room tables. The area looked like it was ready to host a hungry army.

  “How long do I have until the troops arrive?” I asked.

  “The game started at four, so they should be here in another half hour or so,” she said. “We would love it if you could stay, but after what happened last time… What if we can plan something nice for just the three of us some night next week?”

  The last time I was over for lasagna night, when the Mont Clare football team showed up, it turned into a fiasco. Teenagers with cell phones out everywhere, snapping pictures and losing their minds. I thought Beatrice was going to have an aneurysm. They practically chased me back to my house.

  I smiled at Bea. “I would love that.”

  Gene put his arm around my shoulder and walked me back to my truck.

  “You okay, man?”

  “Yeah, I’m doing great. Why do you ask?”

  He wrinkled his brow. “I don’t know. You’ve been a little moody. A little… off. I just didn’t know if you were taking the show getting cancelled hard. It’s not a reflection on you or your acting.”

  “I know, Gene. The show sucks. We jumped the shark about three years ago. To be honest, I’m excited to move on.”

  When I looked to the enormous picture window, Beatrice was placing the first of her four lasagnas on the table. The Mont Clare football team didn’t know how lucky they were to have her feeding them.

  “You’ll find another gig. I hear Dale is looking to do a s
uper hero flick. I’ve worked with him before, a phenomenal director. I could tell him I have an in with you. I bet he would love your name on his project.”

  “That’s really nice of you, Gene.”

  I opened my truck door and jumped into the driver seat but didn’t start the ignition right away. “Let me ask you something, do you ever get tired of the whole dad with a house full of kids, routine? Sleeping next to the same woman every night?”

  He looked at Beatrice in the window and then back at me before saying, “You’ve tried her cooking? Hell no. I wouldn’t give this up for the world.” He patted his stomach. “Marrying Bea and adopting our kids has made me the happiest man in the world. You thinking of settling down?”

  I laughed. “Maybe. I have to find my Bea first.”

  “Just stay away from the girls you usually chase after. Look local, the women in Mont Clare are some of the most beautiful in the world.”

  After picturing Chrissy’s sweet face again, I thought Gene might be on to something.

  Chapter Eleven

  Chrissy

  So, this was an actual film set?

  I looked around with wide eyes, taking in the sheer size of the production being filmed in this old warehouse.

  The building was in the middle of nowhere, off the highway, and very easy to pass if you didn’t have exact GPS directions. When Sarah called to confirm the order, Jeff said it may be hard to find. And damn, he was right.

  After getting past the security guard with the buzz cut that took his job way too seriously, I found a parking spot for our delivery van with minimal trouble.

  Like all things Ruby’s, our delivery truck was 1950s chic. An old milk truck that we had decked out in white and chrome with our logo on the side. I always felt like a rock star behind the wheel.

  If only I got to use it more to deliver wedding cakes.

  Taking the boxes out of the back with 1950s equipment, on the other hand, was substantially less glamorous. The generic black rolling cart we got at a restaurant auction was difficult to steer. And the thick black cables taped to the floor made maneuvering impossible.

  Luckily this wasn’t a wedding cake, or I would be screwed.

  When I reached the craft services room, I thought I might have died and gone to heaven. There was every kind of food imaginable. From granola bars and yogurt, to full on Eggs Benedict. If this was a Hollywood job perk, then I needed to get over my camera phobia ASAP.

  I found an available table and began unloading the boxes of treats onto it one by one. The first box contained nothing but cookies. The second was filled with muffins and flavored butters, while the third box had bagels, cream cheese and lox. When I started to open box number four was when I saw Jeff round the corner. He was talking to a very beautiful woman, who from the looks of it, had to be a costar. She was tall with a vibrant red wig and yellow contacts.

  I felt very underdressed. Was my navy blue jumpsuit and red bandana ok?

  I watched for a moment as the redhead and Jeff had some words. He may have been yelling at her, but it was hard to be sure. After she stomped away, he turned his attention to me, and his entire demeanor changed.

  If seeing Jeffrey Jaxon with Tom Cruise on an iPhone picture was daunting, seeing him in his full vampire makeup was even more heart stopping. The man in front of me was not only beardless but covered in pale makeup and an obscenely tight pair of jeans. Swoon. He wasn’t quite shirtless, but considering the button down he wore was open to reveal his muscular chest, he might as well have been.

  When he came over to greet me, I let Sarah’s lecture on asking him out slip my mind. Asking a bearded guy stuffing his face full of croissants for a date was one thing. Asking a Hollywood hunk was a completely different matter. There was no way a guy like him would ever be caught dead with a girl like me.

  There was just no way in hell.

  Right?

  “You found it,” he said, taking my hand in his. What is it with this guy and handholding, anyway?

  “Wow, you look… different,” I said.

  Insert foot in mouth.

  He laughed, the same genuine and sweet laugh he had in Ruby’s. “Yes, I wore a beard so I could go out without suspicion. You had no idea who I was, did you?” He watched me with his eyebrows up as if my answer would settle something in his mind.

  “No, well, maybe. I guess you looked vaguely familiar, but I don’t watch T.V.” I wasn’t sure if that was the right answer, but it was the truth.

  “Yeah, well, that’s probably for the best.”

  “So I dropped the pastries on that table over there, I hope that’s okay. I saw an opening and went for it.”

  “No, that’s perfect,” he said. By now, the smell of baked goods must have been in the air because people started filing in and filling their plates.

  “I think they’re a hit with your coworkers,” I said. “Well, I guess I better head on back to the bakery. My soccer moms are waiting and we know how they can get.”

  “Have you considered vegan scones?” He asked with a grin.

  “Do I even have to justify that with an answer?”

  God, he looked cute when he was joking around, even if he was dressed alike a shitty T.V. a vampire.

  He could suck my blood anytime.

  “I was hoping you would stick around for a while and have a bite to eat. We are on lunch break and I have some time before I need to be back on set.”

  I looked around at the cornucopia of food on display and my stomach grumble. “Well, I guess I could stay for a quick bite. I’ve only eaten a cinnamon roll today. At five am.”

  “Well by all means, lets grab some lunch.”

  As we walked, he placed his hand on my low back and guided me. It was nice, and not at all creepy like it had been with Jerry. This touch was pleasant. Inviting. I didn’t get the impression he was trying to low key grab my ass. Although, I would have been totally fine with it if he did.

  While I piled my plate high with eggs, bacon, ham and hollandaise, Jeff stuck to a turkey sandwich. “You have all this food spread out here and you stick with a sandwich. You’re crazy,” I said.

  I used to only eat light foods and salads when I was around a guy I thought was hot, but when the bakery opened, it was as if I had turned over a new leaf. I began throwing caution to the wind and eating whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. Running around all day like a chicken with its head cut off justified the extra calories, so I figured, why hide who I am?

  Jeff’s eyes were wide as he stared at my plate. I plopped a big chunk of ham into my mouth and savored the salty juices when they washed over my tongue. “That’s not bad for buffet food,” I said, before picking up a piece of bacon with my fingers and biting into it. If this guy balked at my eating habits, he wasn’t worth it.

  Instead, he smiled at me and stole a piece of bacon off my plate and took a bite. His extended eye contact practically begged me to call him on it.

  “You’re ballsy,” I said. “Coming between a girl and her bacon is enough to get you shanked where I come from.”

  “I’m not scared,” he said.

  God, he’s sexy.

  Here I thought he was just being polite and offering food, but when he started eating off my plate, a jolt of electricity race up my spine. Every fiber of my being wanted to pin him down on the floor and rip his pants off.

  I was so turned on, I could feel the blood rushing to my cheeks.

  “So, is this your M.O.? Invite girls to your movie set to show off how popular you are while stealing their bacon?”

  “To be fair, most other people recognize me.”

  “Well, aren’t you important?” As if not understanding it was a joke, he recoiled like I had said something rude.

  “I’m sorry, I meant for that to come off as flirtatious, but instead I sounded like an asshole. I didn’t mean to sound rude.”

  “No, you didn’t. At all. In fact, I like how direct you are. It’s refreshing. I’m used to people kissing my ass. I
enjoy being treated like a regular person every now and again.”

  As if on cue, a heavy-set guy with a headset approached our table. “Jax, we need you to head down to makeup after lunch. We are doing the gun fight scene and we need to get you set up with squibs.”

  “No problem,” he said, before patting the guy on the arm.

  “That’s the director. He’s a likeable guy doing the best he can with this show.”

  Ignoring his words, I asked. “Jax?”

  “Yeah, that’s what everyone calls me.”

  “Should I be calling you ‘Jax’ too?”

  “No!” He exclaimed. “Please no, Jeff is great. Jeff is my proper name. Jax is my showbiz name.”

  I studied him for a minute while he took another piece of bacon off my plate. “You, sir, are an enigma wrapped in an enigma.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Jax

  Never before have I witnessed a woman devour so much food. Bacon and ham? That’s my kind of girl. Every bite she took with those big, pillowy red lips drove me insane.

  I had to stop myself from grabbing her hand and licking her fingers after she ate that first piece of bacon. Instead, I restrained myself, and stole a piece off of her plate. It was a risky move, sure, but when she peered up at me with those baby blues, accentuated by the perfect cat eye flourish, I had to physically stop myself from trying to kiss her.

  It would probably be awkward for everyone in the room if I shoved the plates to the floor, unzipped her jumpsuit, and sucked on her tits. But who cares right?

  Everything about her drove me wild. Her hair smelled faintly of vanilla and yeast from the croissants; and just like the other day, she had a tiny smudge of flour on the tip of her nose. Would it be weird if I wiped it off? I bet her skin felt like silk.

  For the next fifteen minutes, after she was done picking on me, our conversation turned back to the bakery.