by K. M. Scott
I hear the driver’s side door open and feel a blast of hot air enter the car before it disappears when the door slams shut. Then when he opens my door, heat from the outside on this late July day rushes into where I sit. I feel his hand take hold of mine, and I turn to get out of the car.
“Watch your head,” he cautions as I slowly stand up and step onto the curb.
“Ready? You can take off the blindfold now,” Cade happily announces.
I push it up over the top of my head and see a store’s windows in front of me. There’s no name on them and no sign above on the building, though.
Turning to look at him, I see Cade beaming a smile. I love that he’s so happy, but what’s going on here?
“Do you know what this is?” he excitedly asks, clearly not understanding how in the dark I still am, even after taking the blindfold off.
“No. What is it?”
He brings my hand to his lips to kiss it. “This is your new bakery shop. You can still make anything you want for your parents’ restaurant, and you’ll be able to make all those desserts for CK too. Cassian and Kane told me their customers have been raving about them since you started making them last month, so this will help you do that and anything else you want to do.”
I shake my head in disbelief. “You bought me a bakery?”
“Wait until you see it, Hailey. I asked Alex to tell me exactly what you might need for any kind of cake or pie or cookie or pastry or whatever you want to make. Whatever you can create, you have the kitchen to do it. He had one of his friends who’s a pastry chef at one of the finest restaurants in New Orleans make a list, a dream list of everything he would love to have in his ideal kitchen, and that along with Alex’s ideas is what you have in there. If you can think it, you can make it now.”
Happiness fills me, and I start to cry. “You did this for me? How? This must have cost a fortune.”
“That trust fund of mine needed to do something other than buy me more stuff I don’t need. Seems even though I’ve been pretty much a loafer this past year, the bank thinks I’m a good risk. Don’t worry about how much it cost. Just make whatever your heart desires here and it will all be worth it.”
Tears stream down my face as I try to understand someone giving me such a gift. “I don’t know what to say.”
Cade kisses me and smiles. “Say you love me and you’re going to make those incredible desserts and whatever else makes you happy, Hailey.”
“I love you, Cade, and when I get over the shock of the man I love buying me a bakery shop, I’m sure I’m going to think up a thousand things I want to try. I’ve never had anyone do anything this wonderful for me before.”
“Well, I had to do something for our three month anniversary, especially after how great things went with that Jessie woman once she and all her blogger friends found out what Brooke tried to do to you.”
“She really was so kind, wasn’t she? I still don’t understand how anyone found out since you swear you didn’t tell anyone.”
A sly smile turns up the corners of Cade’s mouth. “You do know! Tell me. If it wasn’t you, then who?”
“Alex. He’s got lots of friends in the food biz, and all it took was telling the right person and the story had legs from there. My best friend is not only a committed hedonist but also someone who likes seeing people get their just desserts.”
So it was someone in Cade’s family all along. I had a feeling it was, but I couldn’t be sure.
“I’d say Brooke Dunning got her just desserts. Jessie says she’s practically a pariah in the food blogger world now. Nobody wants to do her podcast these days.”
“Good. That’s what being a jealous bitch gets her. But enough about food lady.”
“You’re right. No more talk about her.”
“Now that you’re making desserts for CK in addition to your parents’ restaurant and their business is doing so well because of everything you make, I figured you needed the right kind of kitchen. Plus, when I tell you about the second surprise I have for you today, you’re going to understand that this is the least I can do. Trust me on that.”
I wipe the tears of joy from my eyes and laugh at how silly he can be. “So what’s the second surprise?” I ask, curious how what he has next for me would make me think he needed to buy me an actual top of the line bakery.
“No blindfold needed for that one, although you might tell me later you wish you had to wear one.”
“What is it? Nothing can be that bad.”
He shakes his head and sighs. “Today, you get to meet the entire March and Jackson family, and by entire, I mean everyone from my cousins to my grandmother and everyone in between.”
“And that’s a bad thing? I’ve already met your parents and Alex and Kane, and I guess I technically met Wilder that night out at the island house. How bad could it be?”
He rolls his eyes. “Brace yourself for stories from my childhood and a million questions about us.”
I wrap my arms around him and hold him to me. He sounds like he’s dreading this get-together today far more than I ever would.
“Well, I for one, can’t wait to hear all about you as a little boy. Your mother told me a few things that were adorable. As for the questions, what is there to say about us? You bought me a bakery. I’m madly in love with you. That’s the whole story, right?”
“Trust me. My family is going to want to know if we’re getting married, where we plan to live, how many kids we plan to have, what their names will be, and a dozen other questions, and that’s five minutes after we walk in the door.”
This is the first time he’s ever mentioned us getting married and doing all those other things. Cade and I have been happier than I thought two people could be after that mess with Brooke Dunning, but neither one of us has ever brought up the word marriage.
Until now.
“Well, what do you want me to say if they ask me those questions?”
He presses a kiss to the top of my head as I look at the front of the bakery he bought me just to make me happy. “Tell them you don’t know. It drives the group of them crazy. That’s my standard answer for anything, and they hate it.”
Looking up at him, I search his face for the answer to the question that’s now on my mind. “Okay, but do we know?”
He doesn’t answer immediately, and I wonder if he regrets mentioning marriage, even in the way he did. I wait for him to say something, but I feel like I ruined everything by pushing this issue.
“Do you love me?” he asks in a serious tone that makes me nervous.
“Yes.”
“And do you believe I love you more than anything in this world?”
“Yes.”
A smile lights up his face, making his dark eyes sparkle as he looks down at me like I’m the most important thing in his life. “Then we know. When it’s time for them to know, we’ll tell them.”
He’s right. We do know, and what I know more than anything else is I love this man and he loves me.
Everything else is icing on the cake.
Cade takes my hand and brings it up to his mouth in a kiss. “Who knows? Maybe Cash won some big pot in a poker game everyone will want to talk about or Liam finally decided to take that job he’s been thinking about for weeks and no one will be interested in paying attention to us today.”
I roll my eyes at how cute he can be. “Like the infamous Cade March finally bringing a girlfriend to one of the March family parties isn’t going to be the major topic of discussion? I doubt it, but I’m ready.”
“Well, let me show you your brand new kitchen before we tackle all of that,” he says as he tugs me toward the building’s front door.
My brand new kitchen. My brand new bakery.
“Okay, but before I get all tongue-tied and awestruck, I want to tell you something.”
“What’s that?” he asks, holding up the keys to my new business.
“I love you, and not because you bought me an entire building with a supe
r new kitchen so I can make anything I want. I love you because you’re you, Cade.”
He smiles, and it’s like he lights up from the inside at hearing me say that. “I love you too. Now let’s go check out that kitchen of yours. I’ve been dying to show you this for days, so don’t make me wait anymore.”
Impatient, he hurriedly opens the door and rushes into the building. “Alex made me promise I’d show you something first, but now that I’m here, I can’t remember what it is,” he says with a laugh.
I watch him make a beeline for the back of the building and can’t help but smile at how happy giving me this gift makes him. Not that I’m surprised. I don’t know what other guys with trust funds are like, but Cade doesn’t have a selfish or stingy bone in his body.
He turns around and looks at me with excitement flashing in his eyes. “You coming?”
“I’m right behind you!” I yell back as I make my way toward my new kitchen.
How did I ever think for a second I wouldn’t fall madly in love with this man?
Chapter Twenty-One
Cade
I feel the pressure fill my chest as I drive up to my grandmother’s house. All the cars tell me everyone in my family is here already.
This will be fine. I’m my grandmother’s favorite grandchild. Or at least one of them. I think she might favor Alex a little more since they share a name and I think Alexandria March was a hedonist in her day.
No, this will be okay. It’s just me bringing a girlfriend to meet my family. All eight hundred and sixty-two of them. At the same time.
“Cade, are you okay? You haven’t put the car in park, and you’re squeezing my hand so hard I think the circulation is getting cut off to my fingertips.”
I turn to look at Hailey and realize I totally zoned out from panic for a few seconds there. Opening my hand, I force a smile.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to crush your fingers. Are you okay?”
She smiles sweetly, shaking her head. “I’m fine, honey. My hands have gone one-on-one with a mixer and barely won more times than I want to count. I was just worried because you seemed to go blank for a little bit. Are you really that worried about me meeting your grandmother and everyone else?”
Hurt simmers beneath that question, so I quickly move to help her understand why this family get-together is freaking me out. After I put the Jag into park and turn off the engine, I turn to face her and hope I can find the right words.
“It’s not you, Hailey. My family can be a lot sometimes, and I’m related to all of these people. I’ve seen them converge like a pack of hyenas on other girlfriends a few of my cousins have brought to family parties.”
Hailey smiles, and I know she thinks I’m exaggerating. I wish I was.
“Hyenas? Cade, they’re probably just like your mother and father, and the first time I met them was great. Remember, you were nervous that night too? You were sure your father would make you sound like the world’s biggest manwhore and your mother would tell me terribly embarrassing stories about when you were a little boy. Neither of those things happened, and we had a great time. Then Ava and I had a great time together when the three of us went to lunch. This is going to be just like that, I bet.”
That dinner with my parents did go pretty well, after all. My father didn’t feel the need to play my greatest hits and bring up the name of every woman I’ve ever dated, and my mother kept her story time to a minimum, sharing only about when I was five and thought people were like dinosaurs and laid eggs instead of giving birth.
But that wasn’t my extended family.
“Well, that night didn’t include my uncles and aunts, notorious for their questions and gossip more than anyone in the family, except my grandmother. Once Olivia and Abbi get a hold of you, God only knows what kind of information the two of them will wriggle out of you about us. One minute you’ll be smiling and explaining how nice you think my grandmother’s house is, and the next you’ll be inexplicably talking about my favorite place to have sex and how often we sleep together. My aunts are like the CIA, Hailey. And don’t even get me started on my uncles.”
None of what I’m saying seems to be scaring her, unfortunately. With a giggle, she takes my hand and brings it to her lips in a kiss. “I’ve never met men who were that gossipy, Cade. I’m sure they’re just like your father, and Stefan has been wonderful every time we’ve spent time together.”
I shake my head, wishing I could explain how wrong she is about that. “My uncles are nothing like my father. I love them, but no. They look like they’re cool, and Kane has a badass vibe to him that makes it seem like he’s quiet and all that, but once their wives are around, forget it. Cassian will be the one to ask when we’re going to get married, if his wife or Abbi hasn’t first. You’d think it would be my grandmother, but it’ll be him. He’s got this whole family thing about him, and the thought of adding more people to the tribe practically makes him giddy.”
“Well, we already decided my answer is that I don’t know, right? I doubt he’s going to ask for more than that.”
The image of Cassian stepping back all gentlemanly and his wife and Abbi coming in for the second attempt flashes through my mind. I’ll probably be talking to Alex about something, and they’ll swoop in like vultures with their questions.
Maybe this was a bad idea. We can do this some other time. Maybe in a year or so. Or never. Never works too.
As I reach down to start the car, Hailey leans over and kisses my lips, stopping me. “It will be okay, Cade. I’m sure they’re all great people. I love you, and Alex is one of my favorite people in the world after only a couple months now that he and I work together on the desserts for your uncles’ restaurant. It’s going to be okay. Have some faith.”
I close my eyes and let out a heavy sigh. “I just worry that you’re meeting people who’ve known me for my entire life.”
“Look at me, Cade.”
After I take in another deep breath and let it out, I do as she wants and open my eyes to see her looking at me like I’m the best thing she’s ever seen. “They know all the good, the bad, and the ugly, and even if they don’t mean to, I’m worried they’re going to make you think you made a mistake.”
“A mistake? How?”
“By staying with me after all that happened at the beginning when we first started dating.”
She cradles my face and looks into my eyes with that gentle stare that never fails to make me think I’m the luckiest man in the world. “Baby, it was no mistake believing in you. I told you. I don’t hold your past against you. Do you know why?”
I shake my head as I realize I don’t know the answer to that. I guess I just always assumed it was because she’s a good person.
“Because I don’t want people to hold my past against me. What if you found out a little over a year ago I was a mess and that made you think you shouldn’t take a chance on being with me?”
“It wouldn’t.”
“Well, for some people it might. People change, Cade. Being around you has brought out a lot of things in me that were hidden for a long time when I was with Malcolm and then after what happened with him. I like that change in me. I think you’re a different person too, and even if your family brings up that you’ve been with a lot of women before me, which I doubt they will, that’s okay. Your past is your past. What we have now is our present.”
She never fails to make me happy. “And we have our future.”
“Exactly. And our future. So don’t worry about what they ask when you’re not there or that they tell stories about when you were little. All of it just makes me love you even more, okay?”
“All right, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
As I move to get out of the car, she says, “You worry a lot for a guy who’s so carefree. How bad could these stories be?”
I glance back at her as half a dozen tales of my escapades throughout my life march through my memory. “Remember me mentioning about that woman who’s goi
ng to at some point walk up to me and slap me across the face?”
“Yes.”
“Well, there’s at least one other person, probably an old man by now, who would still call the cops on me without even saying hello first. In my defense, though, it wasn’t just me. Alex, Cash, and Liam were usually right alongside me causing the trouble.”
When I turn away, I hear a tiny giggle escape from her. “I bet you four were just the cutest little hellions this town had ever seen.”
“That’s not exactly the way we’ve been described.”
My grandmother stands in the front doorway to her house in white pants and a pale blue top, thankfully alone and not flanked by every member of my family peeking their heads out from behind her. Her ear to ear smile reminds me of how she looked when I first learned how to ride a bike without training wheels.
“Cade! I’m so happy you’re here! Come give me a hug and introduce me to this beautiful young woman.”
Hailey squeezes my hand for a moment and then loosens her hold. Turning to look over at her, I quietly say, “This is the easy part. My grandmother is going to be the easiest part of this day. Trust me.”
We climb the steps to the porch and I open my arms to give my grandmother a hug. “Hi, Grandma. You look great. Did you take up long distance running? Whatever you’re doing, don’t stop.”
She leans back from our embrace and gives me that look of hers that says she knows I’m simply flattering her. “You’re just like your father, even if you don’t want to think you are. He always knew just how to charm people too when he was your age.”
“I’ll take that comparison, Grandma.”
Looking around me, she smiles. “And who is this beautiful girl in the yellow dress looking like the personification of summer?”
As if she doesn’t know all the vital statistics like the back of her hand already.
I reach out and take Hailey’s hand to pull her to my side. “Grandma, this is Hailey, my girlfriend. And Hailey, this is my grandmother, the one and only, Alexandria March.”
For a moment, she stares at us, and I wonder if I underestimated how she’d react to my not being single anymore. Terror races through me at the idea that right here at the front door we’re going to have to deal with the first of many comments about how no one ever thought I’d settle down.
