by Stacey Keith
“No. Yes. Oh, I don’t know.” Maggie looked around desperately for something to do. Maybe something that required punching. Yeah, punching would be good. Or chopping with a really sharp knife.
The bell above the door tinkled, which made her jump. She looked up, tensing to see who it might be, but it was only Mrs. Costello, who always came in to buy half a dozen chocolate éclairs for her Saturday afternoon bridge club.
Maggie said to April, “Can you wait on Mrs. Costello? I want to get the bread started.”
While April went out front, Maggie went on a mini-rampage for ingredients. She threw flour, yeast, sugar and a pinch of salt into a mixing bowl. Then she put the kettle on to heat water.
Her stomach was in knots. She put her hand there to loosen the knots, but it wasn’t helping. How would she make sense of anything she did today? From letting Todd set foot inside her bakery, to taking a walk with him, to not raking her fingernails down his face?
To saying yes to a date with the most dangerous man alive.
She poured olive oil into the bowl and then recapped the bottle with a savage twist. Todd had used the element of surprise to fool her. He hadn’t given her a chance to remember how much she hated him before he started blackmailing her with his adorable kids.
But that wasn’t even the worst of it. Maggie squirted soap into her palm and then plunged her hands into too-hot water at the sink. No, the worst of it was how turned on she’d been when she saw Jake standing outside the Regal, all handsome with his shirt sleeves rolled up and his collar open and his Paul Newman eyes. She’d actually felt a little dizzy. Gone was any rational thought. Desire for him went skyrocketing through her veins, scorching her from the inside out. Leading to yes when what she should have been shouting was no, no, no.
All the pies she’d baked this morning, all the times she caught herself thinking about him and promised to stop…it all meant nothing. Did she have no self-control anymore? This was undignified. Wanting Jake so badly only proved how much she hadn’t learned her lesson the first time. Who offered to buy a woman a dress and then take her on a date? This wasn’t Pretty Woman. Did he think she was for sale?
Then she’d set eyes on Carmen de What’s-Her-Name. Didn’t Jake know any unattractive women? Carmen looked as though she could take Jake on—tough, no-nonsense. Maybe he needed someone hard like that, someone who wouldn’t break. Maggie had surrounded herself with soft, sweet things like pastries and sisters and dogs. What if she and Jake just weren’t right for each other?
“Okay, so what on earth’s going on?” April said after Mrs. Costello left, carrying a pink bakery box. April dragged over a three-legged stool and perched on it, her social worker’s “listening face” at the ready.
Maggie stalled for time by pouring warm water from the kettle into her bread mix. Maybe she could talk about Jake without actually admitting that she’d agreed to go out with him.
“First tell me what Mom said after I left.” Maggie knew it had to have been ugly. Nobody hated Todd like Priscilla hated Todd. It was hard to remember that she’d been excited once about finally having a son in the family. She hadn’t liked Todd necessarily, but she’d liked that.
April’s face went bright pink. “She said Todd would never be a decent, respectable man until something bad happened to his…”
“Tires?”
“Pecker.” April whispered the word as though Maggie might not have been old enough to know what one was.
Maggie lifted the bread ball out of the bowl, sprinkled flour on it and started kneading. It was unnerving to realize how like flesh it was, how your hands naturally responded to something that felt warm and alive.
“Remember Jake from the wedding?” she asked, hoping if she told her, April wouldn’t make a big deal about it or read something into it that wasn’t there.
“Of course I do.”
Maggie bit her bottom lip. Everything inside her felt oddly electrified, which made it hard to get a handle on what she was saying. “I just ran into him outside.”
April looked surprised as she was. “What’s Jake doing in Cuervo?”
“Looking at property.” Maggie drifted more flour over the bread and then pressed down, feeling the warm dough ooze between her fingers. “He had that guy with him—Richard. You remember? And some woman.”
April crossed her legs. She braced both hands over one knee. “And there you were with your ex-husband and his two kids from your ex-best friend. You’re having a day, aren’t you?”
Maggie tried hard to find the humor in it, but mostly she felt confused. Every time she got around the guy, her inner navigational system went haywire. And she needed that system to guide her. If experience had taught her nothing, it was that being married to a cheater made you question your own judgment. It left you wondering if you could ever tell a good man from a bad one. She could remind herself a thousand times that her attraction to Jake Sutton didn’t mean anything, that he was an arrogant, over-privileged, womanizing bastard, but then he would do something, say something, and just make her head spin.
“Wait,” April said. “He’s looking at property? What’s there to buy around here?”
“The Regal. He might be interested in doing a restoration.” Maggie plopped the dough back in a bowl. She moistened a clean dish towel, draped it over the top and set the bread to rise in a warm corner near the stove. Too bad life wasn’t as clean and well-ordered as her bakery, she thought. Too bad problems couldn’t really be solved with chocolate.
April grinned like she knew something.
“What are you smiling about?” Maggie asked her, annoyed.
“Jake, of course. He asked you out, didn’t he?”
“What?” Maggie scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous.” Because he did ask you out…if you could call it that. And you said yes.
“Oh, c’mon, Maggie, admit it,” April said. “He’s not here for the Regal. He’s here for you.”
CHAPTER NINE
Despite feeling restless and imprisoned by all the hours he spent inside the glass and steel tower, when Jake gazed out his office window overlooking downtown Dallas, he still got a kick out of being here.
It had been a long painful climb to the top, but this was his reality now—investor meetings, shareholder meetings, video conference calls, lawyers. Plenty of lawyers. If you weren’t creating wealth, you were protecting it. He preferred the days when he was on the way up, not just treading water. It may have been why restoring old buildings like the Regal was his favorite way to blow off steam.
Well, his second favorite.
And now he was thinking about Maggie again. Who’d had an infant on her shoulder and a baby-drunk smile on her face. The kind of women he usually dated didn’t give two fucks about babies. Not one of them would dream of ruining her figure for nine months or risk having spit-up all over her thousand-dollar blouse. He wondered if it was right to pursue a woman who wanted kids so badly, but then dismissed the thought. He was Mr. Right Now, not Mr. Ten Years From Now. Maggie knew that.
The intercom buzzed on his desk. Emma Belcher, his personal assistant, informed him that Carmen had arrived.
“Send her in,” he said.
Carmen entered his office with her usual cool elegance, four-inch heels clicking across the Macassar ebony wood floor. The office was her design, a testament to the creative synergy he had with her. To the right was a full gym, complete with lap pool. To the left, a private conference room that led to a landscaped terrace and his helipad.
“You got the Regal sketches for me, right?” Jake asked, more excited maybe than he should have been. “Because I’m ready to see them.”
“I have a few preliminary sketches,” Carmen said. She tucked her skirt under her and slid into a chair that was positioned across from him. “But I’m also here to talk you out of this ridiculous project.”
Jake expected it. He�
��d known Carmen since she’d been a junior architect. Now she owned her own firm and was one of the brightest lights in the business. But she didn’t understand his strange hobbies.
He lifted the lid off a Lalique cigarette box on his desk, a gift from the King of Morocco. “I forget. Are you smoking these days?”
Carmen held up her hand. “Not smoking.”
Jake took a cigarette for himself, lit it, and sat back in his big leather chair. “Okay, let’s hear it.”
“How far along are you at this point? With the Regal.”
“Richard sent over a letter of intent this morning. Chuck is eager to sell. I don’t foresee any problems.”
Carmen smoothed an imaginary wrinkle out of her skirt. She looked good today. Pink suited her. He thought about telling her that, but Carmen would only accuse him of trying to butter her up.
“Are you going to order a survey?” she asked. “Or an inspection? Do you even know what the taxes are?”
“Yes. No. And yes.” Jake tapped his cigarette against the cheap plastic ashtray he preferred because it had a crenellated rim. “I don’t need an inspection, Carmen. I already know the place is a nightmare.”
She relaxed. He could tell because her shoulders deflated. “Oh, good,” she said. “You know what you’re walking into then.”
“Did you doubt it?” Jake considered what she’d just said. Should he be offended? “I’m not an amateur, you know. We’ve collaborated on these kinds of projects before.”
“Yes, but Jake, think about it—restoring the Regal could end up costing you upward of thirty million dollars. And you have no guarantee of ever being able to make up the money, not in a town with so few people in it. Even as a multi-purpose performance space—”
“Does everything I do have to be about turning a profit?” With growing irritation, Jake frowned at her across the desk. “Historic renovation of public buildings is a community revitalizer. Fact. I’m creating jobs. Fact. I’m enhancing property values. Fact. I’m also saving a beautiful old building from ruin.”
Carmen stood with an abruptness that surprised him. She walked over to a sideboard and poured herself a glass of water. Jake watched her down the glass as though she were getting ready for Kick the Jake, Round Two. To hell with that.
“Look, Carmen,” he said, stubbing out his cigarette. “Like it or not, I’m moving forward with the project. We’re making a play for the techpark lot, too. I’ll be shuttling back and forth for a while between Cuervo and Dallas, at least in the beginning. You’re either on board or you’re not.”
She turned to face him, her pale skin strangely mottled, her mouth pressed into a firm line. “It seems like an awful lot of trouble to go to just to get lai—”
Carmen’s eyes widened in apparent shock at what she’d almost blurted.
“To get laid?” Jake said coldly. “You must be joking.”
So that was it then. It was nothing but Carmen’s usual judginess about his lifestyle. He’d seen it before. He didn’t know much about Carmen’s private business, but he knew she had a cat, devoted hours to the gym, supposedly dated. She rarely drank, which he approved of. She made smart investments. She read detective novels.
And she had a big fucking mouth. At least now she did. Which he didn’t exactly appreciate. He could feel the veins in his forehead throb.
Carmen must have seen how irritated he was because she almost fell over herself trying to get to him.
“I was out of line,” she said. “I’m sorry. Sometimes I think… Well, it doesn’t matter what I think. I was wrong to imply that you don’t know what you’re doing.”
Jake repressed the urge for another cigarette. “If you don’t want to be a part of the project, Carmen, just tell me.”
“I do. You know I do.” She straightened up, looking more like the Carmen he knew and less like the one he didn’t.
The desk phone buzzed, which Emma wouldn’t think of doing unless it was important. Jake suppressed a flare of annoyance and answered. “Yes, Emma, what is it?”
“There’s a man in the front lobby who says he’s your brother and wants to see you. Do you have a brother?”
Jake stood too fast. He had to lean his hands on his desk to steady himself. No, it wasn’t possible. Dillon was in Austin teaching yoga to a bunch of randy housewives. The last time they’d spoken, Dillon had called him a “smug bastard with a superiority complex.” In fact, Jake hadn’t spoken to any member of his family for the better part of eight goddamn years.
So what was Dillon doing here?
“You’re busy,” Carmen said. “Let me get out of your hair.”
Jake sank into his chair again, wondering what this gut-punch of a feeling was called. He didn’t recognize it at first. Was it fear? No, of course not. That was bullshit. He was long past feeling anything but mild contempt for his family.
Carmen pulled an oversized envelope out of her attaché and laid it on the desk “These are the preliminary sketches for your theater,” she said, gathering her things. “I’m still working on the ones for the techpark. When I’m done, I’ll courier them over.”
Jake heard the sharp staccato of Carmen’s heels as she left the room and realized he hadn’t given Emma an answer yet. He passed one hand over his mouth, considering. If Dillon had come all the way here, it must have been because something awful had happened, something that would force Jake to sort through a hornet’s nest of feelings he didn’t have time to deal with right now.
Why did these things happen all at once? He’d gotten up this morning feeling great. Then it had been a shit storm from that moment on—Carmen’s sad lack of faith and now this. A stock market crash would have been easier to deal with.
“Send him in,” Jake told Emma over the intercom.
He stood and raked one hand through his hair. It’s your brother, he told himself. Stop treating this like a visit from the IRS. He was the wronged party here, not Dillon. Dillon was the asshole who’d rejected Jake’s offer to pay for university and then left to go study on some ashram.
At the far end of the room, the big double doors opened. There stood his brother, along with every single memory Jake had worked so hard to get away from.
* * * *
Dillon hadn’t changed much in the eight years since Jake had seen him. He was leaner. His blond hair was a little longer. When they were growing up together, people always said he and Dillon were more like twins than brothers.
But life had left its mark on both of them. There was an asceticism to Dillon’s face that Jake didn’t recognize. As Dillon walked through the office, his gaze roaming over the industrial pipes overhead and the exposed brick, Jake realized that he was limping slightly. That one thing brought it all rushing back, the whole awful mess of their childhood, all the shit that Jake had tried to protect his little brother from.
Dillon still moved gracefully though, like a cat. He parked himself in front of Jake’s desk and held his gaze. Dillon’s eyes were clear and blue. He wore jeans and a gray hoodie that had the yin-yang symbol on it. Jake appreciated the irony of that.
“You’re hurt,” he said, nodding toward Dillon’s limp.
“Bike accident. It’s getting better.”
So Dillon had been in a bike accident, maybe even a serious one. Nobody had bothered to let Jake know. Well, that was typical, wasn’t it? Just another day with the Suttons.
Jake wiped his damp palms on his pants, ready to invite Dillon to sit down. But that didn’t feel right. Desks were for business. Dillon was family, and as uncomfortable as it was to see him, Jake was aware of a tiny spark of gladness. “Let’s go outside,” he suggested. “This high up, you don’t hear the traffic.”
Dillon followed him up to the terrace, which had a rock garden, a pergola covered in scarlet bougainvillea, and a marble fountain. Jake figured this was as Zen a space as he could offer his long-ha
ired, Birkenstock-wearing, vegan brother. He meant it as a kind of peace offering.
“Are you thirsty? Can I get you something to drink?” he asked.
Dillon didn’t say anything for the long minute he gave himself to peruse his surroundings. “Nice place.”
Jake dropped onto a chaise longue, crossed his legs and tucked his hands behind his head. Dillon took the one beside him. Instead of stretching out, he sat cross-legged as though he were meditating, which annoyed Jake.
Yeah, yeah, you’re spiritual and I’m an asshole. I get it.
“So what have you been up to?” Jake asked. “Still doing haiku?”
“It’s called Reiki,” Dillon said. “Haiku is a Japanese poem. And yes, I’m still teaching.”
“Austin, right? Or have you moved?”
“I’ve got three studios in Austin now and one in Bastrop.”
Studios, as in more than one. “Sounds like you’re doing pretty well for yourself,” Jake said, curious. Dillon had always been critical of Jake’s success. Now it seemed as though Dillon were experiencing some of his own.
“I’m here because of Mom,” Dillon finally said.
“I kinda figured that.”
“She’s really sick. Aunt Pearl called and I went down to Palestine to see them.”
Jake leaned forward and propped his elbows on his knees. At the beginning of May, the Dallas sunshine was already intense, but it felt good after the climate control of the building.
Too bad he couldn’t control the climate inside his own skin. First he ran hot, and then he ran cold. The only cure for that was to remind himself whom he and Dillon were dealing with here.
“Did Mom get drunk and set another house on fire?” Jake said. “Did she get picked up for another DUI?”
Dillon gave him a long look, but not an unkind one. After all, there was nothing Dillon could say to defend her. They’d been through hell on the fast pass together, and Jake had always run interference between Dill and their drunk, belligerent mother.
