by Kay Marie
He scrunched his face. “Technically, that’s not entirely true.”
“Huh?” All the fight whizzed out of her. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t think I’m the best person to explain it to you.” He lifted his hands, holding her cell phone out like a peace offering. “We have a friend in common—someone you trust. And I think she should explain it to you.”
Addy shook her head, taken aback. “No we don’t.”
“We do.” He nodded confidently.
“I think I would know if I had mutual friends with a criminal.”
He stared her up and down, brows arching dubiously. “Would you, though?”
“What exactly is that supposed to mean?” Addy crossed her arms.
“I’m not saying you seem gullible, per se…” He paused, pursing his lips to consider the options. Addy narrowed her eyes accusingly, putting a hand on her hip and tapping one foot while she waited. “You’re honest. Optimistic.”
Okay, that’s not terrible.
“Maybe a little bit naïve.” She frowned. He continued, a sympathetic expression passing over his face. “When you talk to someone online, you believe they’re the same way you are. You believe they’re telling the truth.”
Addy frowned. “Online? But the only people I talk to online are McKenzie and—”
“Jo?” Thad supplied.
“No.” Addy shook her head. “That’s not—”
“Jolene Carter. Age twenty-five. Wants to own her own bakery. Probably complained a lot about the family business and recently invented this dessert she’s obsessed with called the coopie? Yeah, she’s my partner.”
“Nooo,” Addy repeated, word slipping out in a voice she didn’t recognize, deep and dripping with disbelief.
Thad closed the distance between them and put his finger beneath her chin, gently returning it to its proper place. “Yes. And I need your help initiating contact with her in a way no one will be able to trace.”
Addy blinked a few times, staring at him, not quite registering his meaning.
He slid her phone from the back pocket of his jeans and extended it toward her, moving slow to give her time to process. “I need you to reach out through the group chat you guys always have going on and tell her you’re in the middle of a code brown situation.”
That got Addy’s attention.
She shook her head as her entire body twitched back with repulsion. “What? No!”
Southern ladies did not have code brown situations. And if they did, they certainly did not talk to their friends about it—especially in writing, where the proof could live on forever.
“I know, I know,” he murmured, trying to cut through her disgust. “We came up with it when we were thirteen and thought it was the most hilarious thing in the world. Let’s just say, the joke didn’t age well. But we never got around to changing it.”
Addy stared at her phone in his hand and took a step back. “I can’t— I mean, this is just crazy. Jo’s not… She wouldn’t… She’s a baker, not a criminal.”
“Contrary to popular belief, those two things aren’t mutually exclusive,” Thad commented, stepping forward again, staring at her under hooded brows with the twinkle of a challenge in his eye. He shook the phone, goading her to reach out and take it. “Aren’t you the least bit curious? What’s the worst that could happen?”
Addy swallowed, fingers twitching, but held back. “If the police find out I helped you—”
“You’re acting under duress,” Thad cut in with a shrug. “Not liable for your actions.”
Addy dropped her gaze to the phone.
Then lifted it back to his challenging gaze.
To the phone.
Then his eyes.
Phone.
Eyes.
Phone.
Eyes.
“Do you really want to spend the rest of your life wondering if I told the truth about Jo?” he whispered, cajoling, coercive—annoyingly effective. “Now that I told you, there will always be a little doubt in the back of your mind, every time you talk to her, every time you think about her, every time you send her a recipe—”
“Fine!” Addy snatched the cell phone from his palm, ignoring the electric bolt that shot up her arm as soon as her fingers grazed his skin. She was not attracted to him. No way. Her body was just reacting to a heightened sense of adrenaline, of, of… “God, has anyone ever told you how annoying you are?”
“I prefer the term persistent,” Thad said smoothly, adding a little wink.
Addy growled—not at all ladylike, though he seemed to have that effect on her—and spun, presenting him with her back.
Not a good idea.
Thad put an arm around her shoulder and stepped close—too close. The entire length of his lithe frame molded to her side, warm and hard, made entirely of lean muscle. He bent forward and his soft breath tickled her ear, making her realize how tall he was, maybe a full foot higher than her. Addy’s chest tightened as a flush rose to her cheeks. She couldn’t recall the last time she’d let a man press against her in any sort of capacity, especially one as innocent as this, even if the thoughts filling her mind were anything but.
He’s a criminal, she reminded herself.
He’s the bad guy in the story, not the hero.
Unfortunately, her body was determined to ignore logic. Addy tried to step back, but Thad held her in place.
“You really think I’m going to let that screen out of my sight?”
Oh, the phone. He’s trying to see the phone. Duh. Why else would he be pressed so close? Addy unlocked the screen, determined to maintain her focus. The sooner she got this over with, the sooner he would let her go, right? Which was a good thing. A great thing! So why was her stomach tying itself into knots…?
She opened the chat with her friends, a new idea coming to mind. Let’s see how you like it. Addy smirked, feeling more like a deviant than she ever had in her life. But he deserved a little taste of his own medicine after everything he’d put her through.
@Sprinkle-Ella: HELP!!!
Thad immediately tensed, fingers digging into her biceps as his entire body stiffened. The effect left Addy squeezed tighter against him. Heat flared beneath her skin at the added nearness, not completely unwelcome.
Okay…that might have backfired.
“What the—”
“Relax,” she cooed, a wicked smile dancing across her lips as a burst of energy trickled down her arms and legs, making her feel alive in a way she hadn’t in a long time. “Don’t you trust me?”
Thad snorted, but loosened his hold a little.
@Sprinkle-Ella: Baking emergency!
@Sprinkle-Ella: This chocolate-obsessed bride is driving me crazy. She wants some sort of soufflé-style cake, with a gooey exploding center, covered in a rich, melty ganache…on her wedding day!! Does she not understand she’ll be wearing white??
@Sprinkle-Ella: It’s a total code brown situation!
“Nicely played,” Thad murmured, approval evident in his tone.
A thrill coursed through her at the praise, almost electrifying. “Thanks.”
They both stared at the phone.
Waiting.
Waiting.
@TheBakingBandit: Code brown?
@Sprinkle-Ella: Code brown.
Addy sucked in a sharp breath, chest burning with disbelief. Does she get it? Does she understand? Is this really happening? And then she blinked, reading Jo’s screenname again…and again…and again, eyes growing wider each time. “Oh my God, she’s the baking bandit!”
“Yeah, I know,” Thad stated, confused. “I told you, Jo is my partner.”
“No, no.” Addy shook the phone, pointing at the screen. “She’s literally the baking bandit. She bakes, and she bandits, and it’s been staring me in the face this entire time!”
“Ohh,” Thad muttered. “Yeah, Jo has this thing about lying to people she cares about. She hates it, really tears her up inside. That was probably her way of subtly
hinting at the truth.”
The way he said it gave no doubt that Thad didn’t share the same qualms. But Addy was too wrapped up in her revelation to care. “I can’t believe I never noticed, never even thought…”
“Don’t beat yourself up,” he tried to comfort. “It’s a good thing that you trust people, that you lead the sort of life where you don’t need to always question people’s motives. I wish I— I mean, I can’t even tell you— I—”
Addy glanced up, surprised by the hesitation in his tone. Thad looked down, meeting her gaze. Their lips were barely an inch apart, their noses even closer. The air was static. The world was quiet. A storm whirled in his eyes. Those dark and brooding irises were full of more secrets than any one man should hold. The sight swept her away, leaving her lost in his gaze and in his arms.
“Don’t lose your faith in people,” he murmured. “Not because of this, because of what I dragged you into. It’s too precious a gift to throw away.”
Thad held her eyes a moment longer, then turned his face toward the floor, taking all his secrets with him.
What happened to you? she wanted to ask, staring at the cut edge of his jaw, noticing the tense muscles in his neck and the flat line across his lips, somehow missing his smile. For the first time, she couldn’t help but wonder how in the world his life had turned out this way.
The phone in her hand buzzed.
Addy jumped.
@TheGourmetGoddess: Do either of you actually know what code brown means?
@TheGourmetGoddess: I really don’t think you do…
Addy played dumb.
@Sprinkle-Ella: Chocolate emergency…?
@TheGourmetGoddess: You’re too pure for this world.
@TheBakingBandit: Email me your recipe for the melty ganache and I’ll see if I can think of a way to make it less messy!
@TheGourmetGoddess: You? Help make something cleaner? Am I in an alternate universe?
@TheBakingBandit: I’m a whole new Jo! ;)
@TheBakingBandit: Send me the recipe…
Addy paused. Recipe? What recipe? Maybe Jo isn’t involved… Maybe this was an elaborate ruse to make me trust him… Maybe—
“She’s telling you to send her a phone number,” Thad supplied, noticing Addy’s hesitation.
“Huh?” Addy glanced up, confused.
His focus remained laser sharp on the screen, determinedly so. “We’ll hide it in the recipe. Just tell her you’ll send it.”
@Sprinkle-Ella: Will do!
Thad released her and knelt by the desk to read the number off the landline in the motel room, giving Addy space to breathe for a moment. As he rattled it off, she composed probably the most disgusting chocolate ganache recipe she’d ever seen in her life—six cups of heavy cream, seven cups of bittersweet chocolates, eight tablespoons of white chocolate chips, five-minute prep time, three-minute simmer, and so on and so on until she had the entire number coded in. Anyone who’d ever spent any time in the kitchen would see through it in a heartbeat, though Addy had the sneaking suspicion that the men chasing them the night before would be clueless. In a way, it was sort of genius.
“Give it a few minutes,” he murmured and took the phone from her hands the second the email was sent. “She’ll need to find an untraceable line to call from. A pay phone or something.”
Addy stared, still holding out doubt that this was all an elaborate dream and any moment she’d wake up. Her mind was blank as he glibly popped the backing off the phone and removed the battery. Before she could protest, he cut in, “I’ll give it back, don’t worry. Better than the alternative—me washing the whole phone down the toilet. As soon as you put the battery back in, all the important information will still be there. But if it’s dead, it can’t be traced.”
She swallowed.
Who thinks of these things?
Career criminals.
That’s who.
And a few minutes later, when the phone in their motel room rang, slicing through the silence, Addy had her answer. Jo was part of this. Now, for better or worse, she was too.
- 9 -
Thad
“Jo?” He snatched the phone. “Jo, is that you?”
“Thad! You have no idea how good it is to hear your voice—I could just kill you for making me wait so long.”
The soft chiding in her tone made all the tension ooze from his body. For a moment, he felt as though he were home, wherever that might be. “I know, Jo Jo.” The nickname slipped out along with a sigh. “I know. I—”
“Where are you? Where have you been?” she interrupted, in typical Jo fashion. “Why are you with Addy? Are you safe? Are you all right?”
“I’m okay, and I’ll explain everything, but first I— I—” Thad slid his gaze toward Addison, who watched on with a mix of curiosity and concern. Her gaze was sharp as she took in his every word.
There were very few people Thad opened up to, very few people he allowed close enough to see his vulnerabilities, and he didn’t relish this girl being one of them. But he had no choice. He had to know. Hope burned like a dying flame in his chest, sputtering, one breath from going out. His mind flashed back to that hospital bed five years before, to the doctor’s monotone voice saying his father was brain dead, there was nothing they could do, did he know if he was a donor, there were a few organs that could be salvaged. The man had droned on and on, but all Thad had seen were the limp muscles in his father’s left hand as he squeezed tighter and tighter, praying for the slightest bit of pressure to clasp back. He’d spent hours sitting beside the hospital bed, waiting for a sign of life, fighting the inevitable. Somehow, he was there again, silently praying for a miracle.
His arm trembled. His muscles were rigid around the receiver. “Is it true?”
Jo paused. Thad heard soft breathing through the phone, the slight slap as she licked her lips. He’d watched the stories on the news. He’d seen footage of the smoke cloud billowing into the air. He’d read report after report pronouncing Robert Carter dead. But he didn’t believe it, not really, not until right now with the despair so obvious in Jo’s quiet, stilted tone as she murmured, “Yes. It’s true.”
Thad’s knees gave out and he collapsed onto the bed. The squeak of the mattress was like a scream in the permeating silence. Pain tightened his chest, sliced through him, an invisible knife stuck deep in his heart. Thad sucked in a long, slow breath, trying to ease the burn, but it was no use. He was cut open and raw, bleeding out. Thad dropped the phone onto the comforter and cradled his head in his hands, running his fingers through his hair, trying to compose himself. A ringing blared in his ears, growing louder and louder, twisting and shifting into the machine by his father’s bed as his heartbeat puttered out.
Dammit!
Dammit! Dammit! Dammit!
A warm hand landed on his shoulder, a tentative touch.
Thad flinched and looked up, finding Addison above him, brow furrowed. The confusion in her gaze was overshadowed by sympathy, bright and pulsing, reminding him too much of crystal Caribbean waters lit by the glowing sun, reminding him too much of a home that had ceased to exist all because of him. Thad didn’t deserve her compassion.
He tore his gaze away and stood, stepping out of her embrace as he lifted the phone back to his ear, voice rough. Keep going. Keep going. Keep moving forward. Don’t look back. “How?”
“They hot-wired the exterior of the house. Somehow the cameras didn’t pick up on the motion—I’ve been trying to understand why, trying to figure out how they got around all the security I set up. But I guess it doesn’t matter now. I was on the dock, tying off the boat. Daddy was ahead of me. He reached for the door, twisted the knob, and—”
Jo broke off.
Thad didn’t need to hear the rest. And boom. He knew the story. He’d seen the photos of the charred remains of their beach house on the six o’clock news, watched the aerial footage of smoke billowing over the private island he, Jo, and Robert had once called home. Blown to smithereens. A
better metaphor for his life than any he could’ve come up with on his own.
“I almost died too,” Jo continued. “The blast knocked me off the dock and I hit my head on the way down. I would’ve drowned if Nate hadn’t found me in time.”
Nate. A sneer came unbidden to Thad’s face. The Fed. The hero. Yet, running through the bitterness, cutting its jagged edge, was a rush of gratitude. Because Thad didn’t know what he would’ve done if Jo were gone too. He wasn’t sure he could’ve survived such a loss.
“He told me what you did.”
Thad barked out a laugh. “What I did? I didn’t do anything, Jo. Not a goddamn thing.”
“That’s not true,” she countered, always giving him the benefit of the doubt, always seeing more in him than he did. “If you hadn’t called Nate when you did, if you’d waited even ten minutes longer, he might’ve missed his plane. He might not have made it in time. You saved my life, Thad.”
“It shouldn’t have needed saving in the first place.” There it was. The ugly truth lurking beneath their conversation. The one Thad had danced around for years, but couldn’t ignore any longer. He didn’t know what to say or how to even begin. “Jo, I— God, I’m sorry, Jo. I’m so sorry. This was never—”
“It’s not your fault, Thad.” Her voice was gentle, caring, not at all accusatory. It was a kinder reaction than he deserved. “It’s not anyone’s fault. It just happened.”
“But—”
“I know.”
“I—”
“I know,” Jo cut him off again. She had an annoying way of interrupting his apologies. “I made a deal with the Feds, Thad. An immunity deal.” Good, he thought, despite the slight shame in her tone. He’d betrayed her long before she’d betrayed him. Jo had never been part of his ties to the mob, and his life in hiding would be a little bit lighter knowing she’d gone free. “Nate gave me access to all of his files, everything the FBI had on us and everything they’d surmised. And before Daddy died, he filled in the blanks. I know…everything.”
