The Secret Wedding Wish

by Cathy Gillen Thacker

  The next thing Janey knew he was cupping her face in his hands, angling his head to allow better access to hers. She barely had time to gasp, whether in indignation or excitement she couldn’t say, and then they were kissing in a way that felt incredibly right. Her excitement mounted as he sucked at her bottom lip and touched the tip of her tongue with his while he moved his hands up and down her spine. Their breathing grew louder and more unsteady, even as the core of her didn’t want to give in to him, didn’t want to surrender her heart and soul to him. Yet as he continued to kiss her deliberately, rubbing his lips across hers, stroking the insides of her mouth with his tongue again and again she found herself surging closer and wrapping her arms around him.

  Pressing her slender body against the warm, muscular length of his, she kissed him back hotly, wantonly. His hands slid around to find her breasts, cupping gently as his kiss deepened, bringing forth responses she didn’t know she had in her. Torrid feelings she wanted to feel again and again and again. Had she ever wanted this completely or desperately? Had anyone ever made her feel this womanly and sensual and free? Janey only knew she wanted him to kiss her and caress her and yes—even make love to her—if that would make all the hurt from her past, all the despair and the loneliness and the worry over her future go away.

  Thad hadn’t intended to make Janey his when he’d hauled her into his arms. All he had wanted to do was show her that she still had a lot more life and love left in her than she thought, that she’d be a fool to throw away her future—not to mention the chemistry that had sizzled between the two of them from the very first. He had meant to kiss her once. Well, maybe two or three times, and that was it. But as soon as he tasted the sweetness that was uniquely hers once again, as soon as she wrapped her arms around him and offered her mouth—her body—up to his, all his good, gentlemanly intentions went by the wayside.

  Desire was flowing through him, fueling a want and need that matched her own. His hands seemed to have a life of their own. And she didn’t mind one bit as he found her soft curves. First, through her clothes, and then underneath. Her nipples pearled as he un-fastened her bra and shoved the fabric of her sweater aside. And when feeling her silky skin wasn’t enough and he had to see her, she let him do that, too. Lifting her arms so he could tug the lightweight cardigan and matching sweater off, she let the bra fall down her arms and helped him remove his own shirt.

  Then they were kissing again, right there against the wall. Her breasts nestled against the hardness of his chest. His hands moved beneath the fabric of her skirt, exploring the silky smoothness of her inner thighs, cupping her buttocks, hauling her against him as she pressed herself up, rocking against him, leaving him with absolutely no doubt about what she wanted. What they both wanted now. And then her hands were on his fly, his jeans were sliding down. Her panties were coming off. As was her skirt.

  He was fumbling with the condom he’d carried in his wallet for what seemed like forever, and then they were one. Her soft groan echoed in the room, and she was climaxing, opening herself up, inviting him deeper still. That swiftly, he catapulted over the edge, shuddering. Their breath noisy and rough, they clung together. And still he wanted more. Much more.

  Making love to her was just the beginning to him. But already for her, the regrets were surfacing. He felt it in the way she tensed, even before he saw it in her wary amber eyes. He could tell by the way she was looking at him that she thought this was just a casual thing for him. Something that probably happened—in her erroneous estimation—all the time. When the truth was he had never been affected like this. He could tell she was chalking this up as yet another in a long line of personal mistakes on her part. But he didn’t see that giving in to the ardor between them so quickly had been a mistake. “Janey,” he said, unsure where to start or what to say that wouldn’t sound like some sort of line under the circumstances.

  “Let’s not ruin this by talking about it, Thad.”

  Not talking about it was what would ruin it.

  She bent and swooped up her clothes, even as she pulled ever so cautiously and discreetly away. “I’m sure you think this was meant to be,” she said in a voice so cool and practical it stung. “On one level, so do I.” Her manner as composed as her voice, she put on her bra and panties, then her sweater and skirt. “But the mature part of me knows this isn’t going to solve anything.” She slipped on her sandals, too.

  “Oh, I don’t know about that,” Thad drawled, trying to inject some lightheartedness back into a situation that was turning way too grave way too fast. “I think it helped clarify matters immensely,” he said, trying hard to find the irony of the situation. Janey might fill him with the urgent need to possess her, but right now all he had managed to do was fill her with doubts.

  “Right,” Janey cut him off before he could continue. “When it comes to you, I seem to lack all common sense.” She shook her head, her regret obvious. She went to find her shoulder bag and car keys. “I have to get back home.”

  Although he was loath to let her run away like this, Thad reluctantly conceded that Janey needed time to reflect, sort out her feelings and probably examine his. And on that score, as she reached the door, he caught her by the hand once again and let her know where he stood, too.

  He waited until he had her full attention then looked deep into her eyes. “If you think I’m going to lose interest in you now that we’ve both satisfied our curiosities and made love, sweetheart, you need to think again.”

  “MOM, CAN WE GET season tickets to the Storm games this year?” Chris said as the two of them arrived at the bakery the following morning. Because it was just a hop, skip, and a jump to the middle school where he attended summer school, Chris would eat breakfast and do more math homework there, while Janey put the first of the three cakes she had to bake today into the oven before he headed off on his skateboard.

  While Janey got out the milk and cereal for Chris from the store refrigerator, he plopped a pamphlet down in front of her, detailing the costs. It didn’t take Janey long to notice that a pair of first-tier tickets for all forty-two home games would cost close to five thousand dollars. The ones in the nosebleed section weren’t all that much cheaper.

  “Actually, honey, since your uncle Joe is going to be playing on the Storm this year, I think we can get some free tickets to the games through him.” At least Janey hoped that was the case. She would have to see.

  “For every home game?”

  “That, I don’t know about. But for some, I’m sure.”

  “But I wanted to see all the home games and some of the away games, too,” Chris complained.

  “A lot of them will be on television,” Janey soothed.

  Chris scowled his disappointment. “I wanted to go in person.”

  “I’m sure that will be possible for some of the games. Not the ones on school nights. Your schoolwork comes first, remember?” Janey reminded as she got up to put some coffee on.

  “What if I got a job to help pay for them?” Chris asked, hope shining in his eyes as he eagerly worked to find a solution that would please them both.

  Actually, Janey thought, you’ve already been offered a job. She just hadn’t gotten around to telling him about it because she feared it would just make things more complicated where she and Thad Lantz were concerned. Especially now that they had both foolishly thrown caution to the wind and made love.

  “You’re only twelve.”

  “So? I could mow lawns or deliver newspapers or something. Couldn’t I?”

  “We’ll talk about it later,” Janey said.

  As soon as Chris headed off to school, Janey sat back down with her coffee and her checkbook. The check she had written the night before to pay for hockey camp had seriously depleted her bank account. And though she had already paid her mortgage for the month, and could get by on what groceries she had in the pantry and refrigerator at home, she still had to pay all her utilities, and she didn’t have the cash. Which left her with few options. As
king her family for money, which she frankly refused to do. Or getting a cash advance on her credit card at a hideous interest rate she would be paying off for months to come. And that, Janey thought, wouldn’t help her overall situation, either.

  “Don’t you look like you have the weight of the world on your shoulders,” Thad said.

  Janey glanced up. She had been so deep in thought, she hadn’t heard him come in.

  She put her checkbook aside. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  He lifted a skeptical brow as he sat down on the wooden stool Chris had occupied a few minutes before. “Putting thoughts in my head again, hmm?” he teased, looking very much like he wanted to make love to her all over again. Which in turn made her desperate to throw up some barriers between them so he couldn’t get close enough to make her fall hopelessly and recklessly and impulsively in love with him.

  Why not let him know where things stood? A little devil prodded her mischievously. Maybe the news of her financial troubles would send him running the way making love to her last night obviously hadn’t. Wasn’t that what all wildly successful men feared? A gold-digging woman who was only after the cash in their wallet? Maybe if she presented herself as a tad more mercenary and calculating…. Or just a fiscal mess. “I’m broke,” she told him bluntly, and waited, with bated breath, for his reaction.

  “Your shop seems to be doing great business,” he observed after a minute. Looking, to her disappointment, neither put off nor surprised.

  Even though she was working night and day to fill orders, she still couldn’t make enough to pay herself a decent salary. Which she probably would have figured out had she not jumped into the wedding-cake-biz so recklessly. Only to, of course, regret it later.

  “I had to get a small business loan to get started. So I’ve got my payments on that, along with the rent for this shop, the utilities, and money it cost to put in the commercial ovens and bring this kitchen up to code.”

  “And the money it’s going to cost to send Chris to camp put you over the edge.”

  Janey made a pained face, embarrassed to always be living so close to the pecuniary edge. “Just about.” How was that for unattractive?

  Thad regarded her with a surprising lack of sympathy. “So let him help pay for it.”

  Janey blinked. She had expected Thad to remove himself from the situation as fast as possible, not offer advice. “Excuse me?”

  “Obviously you haven’t told your son how much you’re struggling and worrying or he wouldn’t be blithely asking you for things you can’t afford to pay for.”

  “I told him we didn’t have the money for camp.”

  “And then reversed yourself.”

  “Well—”

  “You said nothing about how tight things really are to him. Right?”

  “Right,” Janey admitted reluctantly.

  Thad shrugged, matter-of-fact as ever. “So my advice is to accept his offer to take responsibility for himself and pay his own way through hockey camp and ask him to take that summer job I offered him via you. I’ll tear up the check you gave me last night. I haven’t turned it in yet, so it hasn’t been cashed. And he can work at the practice arena two hours a day, five days a week, picking up towels in the locker room. I’ll pay him minimum wage.”

  Janey did some quick calculations. “He still won’t earn enough to pay for camp by the time school starts in the fall.”

  “So he’ll continue to work for me weekends, and holidays during the school year until he pays off his debt. I’m sure he won’t mind.”

  That was the problem, Janey thought. Chris wouldn’t. But she would because it would mean she would be running into Thad all the time, as she ferried Chris back and forth.

  “He can start today—I’ll tell the assistant coaches and physical trainers to expect him. And while he’s at it, he’ll get a good look behind the scenes and see how much work professional hockey is, which is what you wanted in the first place, isn’t it? A good dose of reality for him. Well, it doesn’t get any more real than that.”

  THAD HAD COME into Delectable Cakes with one mission in mind—to find a way to help Janey get her life in good enough shape so she would allow herself to relax and him to romance her. “And while you’re at it,” he continued, cheering her on matter-of-factly, “how about a good dose of reality for yourself? You’re never going to get ahead if you keep your business a small, one-person operation.”

  Janey sent him a predictably stormy glance before getting up to check on the cakes baking in the oven. “I can’t afford to hire help!” She began to get bowls down from the shelves.

  “You can’t afford not to, from the looks of it,” Thad retorted frankly.

  Janey brought several sticks of butter and cream cheese from the refrigerator and placed them on the counter. “Do you know how many wedding cake businesses there are in central North Carolina? Dozens! The fact I have so many orders already, after only a year here, is a real source of pride for me.”

  “As well it should be.” Thad moved nearer. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t expand your business to include a wider range of product for your customers.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Looking prettier than ever in her white chef’s coat and loose-fitting trousers, Janey glared at him.

  He let his glance rove her upswept hair before returning to her lovely amber eyes. “I think I do,” he replied, ignoring her hopelessly sexy pout. He stepped even nearer, inhaling the intoxicating fragrance of soap and confectioner’s sugar clinging to her skin. “I think that’s what’s making you so angry. You’re as afraid to take risks in business as you are in your personal life.”

  “I want you to get out of here right now,” Janey fumed, pointing at the door.

  One look at her face told Thad he was going to have to give her time to think about what he had said, and cool down before he had a chance in hell of achieving what he had initially come here to do. He needed her to muster the courage to break out of the protective cocoon she had built around herself and live a little.

  “Have Chris at the practice arena at five o’clock,” he told her gently as he prepared to take his leave.

  Janey muttered something beneath her breath that sounded like an oath directed at him. A most unladylike oath, Thad noted with amusement. Damn, but he liked her spirit.

  JANEY’S TEMPER WAS BURNING so hotly, it was all she could do not to kick something as Thad walked out of her bakery and climbed behind the wheel of his luxury SUV. What did he know about running a small business anyway? He was a coach with a seven-figure salary and tons of perks and no money worries at all.

  And no wonder. Janey picked up the brochure Chris had left behind, and opened it up once again. Look at the price of those tickets! And the team didn’t stop there. They also offered all sorts of merchandise, opportunities to pay to meet the team, and even birthday party packages for kids, complete with group ticket prices for the seats, free hot dogs and sodas for each guest, a personal visit from the mascot in the stands, and the name of the person having the birthday flashed on the Jumbotron above the ice!

  Wait a minute. Janey paused, looking over the brochure once again. Nowhere did it mention anything about a cake. How could you have a birthday without a cake?

  To make sure, she picked up the phone and called the Storm ticket office and smiled when her suspicions were confirmed. Thad might have helped her more than he knew.

  The bell above the door rang out just as Janey was putting the phone back in the cradle. It was her brother Joe and his wife Emma. “Hey, sis, need a favor,” Joe said.

  Janey smiled at the two of them. They were such a handsome couple, Joe with his light brown hair and golden eyes, and Emma with her dark brown chin-length hair and wide-set dark green eyes. “The wives of Storm players are putting together a cookbook, proceeds of which will go to charity,” Emma explained, looking every bit the elegant heiress, next to her star athlete husband. “Each member of the team is expected to
contribute his or her favorite recipe.”

  “And mine is your chicken gumbo,” Joe said, flashing a warm familial smile her way. “So would you mind coughing up the recipe for me and showing Emma how to make it?”

  “So I can honestly say it’s something I’ve made for Joe?” Emma continued hopefully.

  “No problem,” Janey promised, knowing Emma was an ace wedding planner but as much a novice in the kitchen as her youngest brother was.

  “Would tonight be too soon?” Joe asked hopefully.

  “Tonight would be fine,” Janey promised, knowing the busier she kept herself the better. She didn’t want to be thinking about Thad Lantz any more than she already was.

  “THIS IS SO AWESOME,” Chris said when Janey drove him over to the Storm practice arena later that afternoon. “You’re so great for arranging a job for me.”

  Janey only wished she could take the credit. She hadn’t seen her son looking so happy since she didn’t remember when. And it was all due to Thad and his influence on Chris. “It was Coach Lantz’s idea,” Janey revealed casually.

  “Really?” Excitement shone in Chris’s eyes.

  Janey nodded. There went her son, reading too much into a simple act of kindness again. Just the way she had wanted to read too much into Thad’s making love to her. Just because she and Thad were compatible physically didn’t mean they were suited to each other in every other way. What had happened had been reckless and passionate, and done without much thought to anything but that very moment in time. Which was just the way Thad had wanted it. And her, too, of course. She didn’t have time to even consider getting involved in a romantic liaison. She had her hands full just being a mother and a businesswoman.

  Thad was waiting for Chris when Janey walked Chris into the arena. “If you want, I can see he gets a ride home,” Thad said politely, as Janey handed off her son.

  Chris’s eyes lit up with the possibilities, as several Storm players walked out from the locker room, gym bags in hand.