by Erin Wright
Gage started laughing. Sugar’s head snapped up and she stared at him. Gage let out a howl of laughter. “You…she…” Gage was wheezing.
Sugar stared harder. Gage laughed more.
“I’m not in love with you!” he finally got out.
“You…you’re not?”
“No. My sister…” Gage wiped his eyes with the backs of his hands. “Oh Emma. Always the matchmaker. Back when we were in high school together, she was constantly trying to hook me up with someone. I knew that when we moved here, you’d become friends with her, but I didn’t know that she’d decided that we oughta date.”
The Dyer family had moved back to Long Valley when Gage’s father had retired from the Marine Corps, but Gage had happened to graduate from high school the day before the big retirement, and he’d gone off to culinary school, rather than moving back to Long Valley with the rest of the family. This had put Sugar into the awkward position of being close to Emma, the younger son Chris, and even the parents, but Gage…
Well, he’d been a virtual stranger until Emma had pushed Sugar into applying for a position at the bakery. She had insisted that Gage needed her help after moving back to Long Valley himself to take over their grandparents’ bakery. It wasn’t long after Sugar had started there that Emma had started telling her that Gage was in love.
With her.
Which Sugar had believed.
Because…she was full of herself and thought that men would throw themselves at her?
No, that wasn’t it. Sugar was many things, but cocky about men was not one of them. Emma had just been so believable, so earnest.
Sugar was mortified. She’d made an ass out of herself, she really and truly had. No thanks to Emma. Why, she was gonna wring her neck the next time she—
“I’m sure Emma thought she was telling you the truth,” Gage said softly. “She’s tried to set me up on more dates than I can count. She seems to think that I’m going to end up a bachelor for life. I remind her that I’m 29, but you’d think I was saying 59 instead.”
“I’m so–sorry,” Sugar stammered, staring at the floor. “I really thought…”
“That I’ve been waiting two and a half years to make my move?” She could hear the laughter in Gage’s voice. “I may be a patient man, but that seems pretty damn long, even for me.”
Sugar looked up from studying the tiles of the floor to glare at him. “You don’t have to laugh at me, you know,” she informed him.
“I’m not laughing,” he protested. At her incensed glare, he added, “Okay, fine, I’m laughing, but not at you. Just this whole situation. Sugar, I’m glad that you don’t like me, because if you were spending your days wondering when I was going to ask you out, I’d feel real bad. So let’s be happy that this finally came out in the open.”
She pressed her lips together. “Fine.” She nodded her head abruptly. As her embarrassment subsided, though, she started to feel relief pour through her instead. Gage didn’t like her! The worry she’d had niggling at the back of her mind for months at how she was going to let him down gently when he finally got up the guts to ask her out…it all whooshed out of her, sucked away into the world, leaving behind peace and relief.
“We were talking about why you think you can’t date,” Gage said quietly.
And in flowed the worry and stress again. Sugar’s back stiffened. “You know what happened with Dick. You know why I’m working here. I can’t date someone else, for God’s sake. One major catastrophe per lifetime. It’s a rule. I read it somewhere.”
She picked up her spray bottle and washcloth and began wiping down counters and the cash register and then started in on the display cases that seemed to show every smudge and fingerprint ever impressed upon them.
“I think you oughta rethink that rule,” Gage said softly. “I can’t tell you what to do, but as your friend, I want to say that I think you’re making a mistake. It doesn’t have to be Jaxson, of course – with the way things are going, he’s not gonna be around for long anyway – but someone. You can’t close yourself off from the world forever.”
Sugar refused to look up from the display case she was wiping down and eventually, his footsteps faded away, towards the back again. She let out a huge sigh, slumping against the display case, smudging it and ruining all of her hard work. She couldn’t bring herself to care, though.
She stared off into the distance, worrying her lower lip. Was Gage right?
No. He wasn’t. He didn’t know. He didn’t know everything. He knew most of it, but not all.
Someone like her didn’t deserve love or second chances.
She knew the truth, even if she’d never tell another soul.
Chapter 8
Jaxson
Jaxson pulled up in front of his ex-wife’s house.
A house that was suspiciously dark.
He stared at it for a moment. This was not a good sign.
He heaved himself out of his SUV and through the snow to her front door. He knocked on the door once. Twice. He raised his fist to pound a third time, but with a sigh, he instead pulled his phone out of his back pocket. He could continue to pound on Kendra’s front door, or he could give up and call her.
“Hello?” she answered on the fourth ring. It was noisy wherever she was at, and Jaxson could hardly hear her over the shouts of laughter and loud music.
He did an about-face and marched back to his SUV. Wherever the hell she was, it was not her house. He might as well get back into the car and warm up while having this conversation.
“Where are you?” he demanded, sliding into the driver’s seat and slamming the door behind him. He probably shut it a little too hard, but he was too pissed to care at the moment.
“At Jumping Off.”
“With the boys?”
“Of course with the boys,” she snapped. “Do you think I’d come to this godforsaken place for fun?”
Jumping Off was a roller-skating rink, arcade, bouncy slide, pool of balls “funhouse” that served over-priced and over-cooked food at astronomical prices.
In other words, a place that every child would absolutely love, and every parent would absolutely hate.
“It’s my weekend to have them, Kendra. Why are you at Jumping Off?” He tried to keep the anger out of his voice, but failed miserably. If his ex-wife was trying to intentionally piss him off, she was doing a damn good job of it.
“It’s their friend Isaac’s 9th birthday party. What was I supposed to do – tell Isaac that he was born on the wrong damn weekend?”
“No, but you could’ve told me. I drove 90 minutes, in the dark, to pick them up. You—”
“I put it into the calendar,” she snapped. “Maybe you ought to learn how to read one of those!”
Jaxson ground his back teeth together as he started the engine. If he told her once, he’d told her a hundred times to tell him when she added shit to the shared custody calendar. She always somehow “forgot.”
“I’m coming over there,” he told her. “I can hang out and watch them play and then take them back to Sawyer for the weekend.”
“Don’t you dare. Ivan is here. You two would end up in a fistfight in ten minutes flat.”
Jaxson ground his teeth together harder. She was right. He and Ivan…didn’t get along. It might have something to do with the fact that he was drunk about 75% of the time. Or how he snapped his fingers whenever he wanted Jaxson’s attention, like Jaxson was his puppy dog. Or maybe it was when he’d found Ivan and Kendra in bed together, signaling the end of his marriage to her.
No, he most definitely could not sit next to Ivan for hours on end without someone having a bloody nose by the end of it.
And it wouldn’t be Jaxson.
“Fine. Tell the boys I love them.”
He hung up before she could say anything else, and stared into the darkened residential street ahead of him.
He might as well go grocery shopping while he was there. Every time he went into the Shop ’N Go in Saw
yer, he had a minor heart attack at the prices. He was going to drop dead at age 52 from grocery prices if that kept up.
A good run through Winco and Costco would be good. He could stock up on the essentials, then head back to Sawyer.
Alone.
* * *
Jaxson heaved the last of the groceries out of the backseat of his SUV. It was his eighth trip into the house, loaded down each time like a pack horse, which meant he’d had way too much fun grocery shopping.
It was possible that the sight of reasonably priced groceries may have made him go a bit overboard. Just maybe.
Turning to head to his apartment, he heard the jingle of a collar and looked up the street to see Sugar walking toward him with what looked like a small horse beside her. He did a double take. What the hell? He squinted.
Nope, Sugar wasn’t taking a shetland pony out for an evening walk; just a Great Dane. Jaxson was willing to bet next week’s paycheck that the dog weighed more than she did. Setting the grocery bags on the ground, he waved in greeting. It was surprisingly nice to see her; it felt like ages since he’d seen her last, even though it’d just been that morning.
It’d been a hell of a day, between inspecting fire hydrants and being stood up by Kendra and buying enough groceries to feed a small country…
“What are you up to?” he called out.
She smiled, her teeth reflecting the scant streetlight. “Taking Hamlet for a walk,” she called back. Hamlet wagged his massive tail and began pulling her towards him, no doubt seeing Jaxson as another source of affection and attention that he could enjoy.
“Hamlet?” He blurted out the question. “You mean as in Shakespeare’s Hamlet?”
They were now close enough that the Great Dane could begin nosing his way through the grocery bags. Hmmm…Maybe Jaxson wasn’t a source of affection and attention, but rather, raw meat. Hamlet had gone straight for the bag with the t-bone steaks in it.
Sugar didn’t ignore his behavior, nor did she yell at him. Instead, she simply tugged nearly imperceptibly on the thick leash and the giant dog responded obediently by immediately sitting down.
Jaxson was impressed.
“Yeah, Shakespeare’s Hamlet,” Sugar said, once her massive dog had heeled. “It comes from—”
“Hold on, don’t tell me,” Jaxson interrupted. Their breaths were coming out as puffs of fog in the brisk winter air. As he paused, the mist dissipated, allowing Jaxson to see those beautiful brown eyes sparkling in the dim light. “Is Hamlet the one where he says, ‘There is something rotten in the state of Denmark’?”
“Good guess!” Sugar said. “Wowsers. A man who knows Shakespeare and how to fight fires.” Even as she was saying the words, though, her body convulsed in a full-blown shiver, shaking from head to toe. She looked about a half-step away from having her teeth chatter loudly.
Before he could second-guess himself, Jaxson asked, “Wanna come up for a cup of coffee and warm up?”
Why had he said that? He shouldn’t have said that. She was a girl, and last Jaxson checked, girls had cooties. Or at least cheated on you with the next-door neighbor and then made it out to be your fault.
Which was pretty much the same thing as having cooties.
But still, inexplicably, he held his breath.
She bit her lower lip, her eyes flicking towards the ground before she looked back up into his eyes.
“I would love to,” she said, the regret obvious in her voice, “but Hamlet has been cooped up all day. I can’t force him to go sit in your apartment after spending the day sitting in mine. Hey, actually, why don’t you walk with us?” Her voice was eager with excitement at the idea.
“Well, I have to get the last of these groceries into the apartment,” he said, suddenly realizing how complicated it was to be spontaneous. “Do you walk Hamlet every night?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I have to walk him every day after work. In the wintertime, I end up having to bundle up in a snowsuit worthy of a snowshoeing trip in Antarctica so I don’t freeze to death, but hey, it does get me out and about.”
“Welllll,” Jaxson said, thinking quick, “if you can wait for just a moment, I’ll run these upstairs,” nodding towards the bags laying in the snow and ice, “and then I can join you two.”
With a shy nod, she softly said, “Okay.”
Bounding up the stairs two at a time, Jaxson realized that he was feeling happier than he had all evening. He snatched the thickest coat he owned from the hook, swapping it for his lighter jacket he’d worn to Boise, and then on a whim, grabbed his Elmer Fudd hat. He looked ridiculous in it, but being warm was what really mattered. Plus, he figured it’d be a good test to see if Sugar was willing to be seen in public with him with it on. If she told him to march back inside and change hats, well, he might just march back inside and not come back.
He clattered back down the stairs. When Sugar caught sight of him, she immediately began laughing.
“Hey, Mr. Fudd,” she called out through her giggles, “wanna go on a walk with me?” She bent over, gasping for air as she laughed, and of course, Hamlet took that to mean that it was kissing time, since she’d conveniently put her face within range. He began slobbering all over her face as she continued to laugh.
Jaxson struck his best bodybuilder pose when he reached the bottom of the stairs. This only made Sugar laugh harder as Hamlet laid on even more kisses.
Yeah, Sugar was pretty okay. Maybe she didn’t have quite as many cooties as other girls.
Maybe.
Chapter 9
Sugar
Sugar straightened up from her laughing bout, wiped her face clean with the sleeve of her jacket – damn, Hamlet was good at giving kisses – and shot Jaxson a smile. “Ready?”
She tried to hide the twerking butterflies in her stomach. She wasn’t sure why Jaxson made her so nervous, but she’d be damned if she was going to let those nerves show.
He fell into step beside her while Hamlet proceeded to sniff every bush and dormant tree along the way, stopping to mark about every third object they passed. He was such a boy sometimes.
Sugar cast about for something to say.
“So…grocery shopping in Boise, huh?” she asked knowing full well that it was the lamest topic of conversation ever, but it was all she could come up with at the moment.
Jaxson smiled, but his shoulders seemed to tense up at the same time. She wondered what was going on in his head. She didn’t have to wait long for an answer.
“I went to Boise to pick up my boys for the weekend,” he started explaining. “My ex-wife made other plans with the kids and didn’t bother to tell me. So I went shopping instead.”
They had made it to the park and Sugar fished a ball out of her coat pocket. Throwing the ball into the darkness, Hamlet took off like a shot. Sugar figured Hamlet could see every ball within a mile radius. She used the time to think of what to say to Jaxson. He had kids?
He wouldn’t want anything to do with her, then. People tended to shun baby killers. Especially people with children of their own.
She forced herself to smile.
“How old are your boys?” she asked, trying desperately to cover her inner turmoil.
“They’re six and four,” Jaxson replied promptly. “They’re actually the reason I am here.”
Hamlet returned the ball, now covered in slobber. Sugar bravely picked up the wet mess and threw it into the darkness once more.
“Wait a minute…” she said, surprised. “You moved to Sawyer for your kids?”
“Strange, I know,” he said with a small chuckle. “My ex dragged me through the courts, telling the judge the whole time that I shouldn’t have any rights at all because I’m a firefighter. I got called away quite a few times over the years. Boise is just too big and too busy, you know? She told the judge that if I had custody and I was called away on a fire, I wouldn’t have anyone to watch the boys.” He let out a bitter chuckle that was as icy as the air. “She was right, but that doesn�
�t mean I have to like it. The judge told me I had to find a more stable job. I figured a small town like Sawyer would have a lot less call-outs, and I don’t have to sleep at the station when I’m on duty. The judge said that after six months of stability, he’ll revisit the issue. Until then, I get the boys every other weekend.”
“Except when your ex stands you up?”
“Yeah, except then,” he replied dryly.
Hamlet returned with his ball, dropping the sodden mess at her feet. He flopped down, finally admitting that he was worn out.
Pulling the ziplock bag out of her pocket that she carried for just this reason, she slipped the frozen chunk of slobber and ice into the protective bag before placing it back in her pocket.
“You must love your sons a lot,” she commented softly while clipping the leash to Hamlet’s collar.
“Yeah, I do,” Jaxson said, equally as softly. “I’ll do anything for them. Including moving to the ass-end of the earth to impress a damn judge.”
They walked for a while in silence. As they got closer to Jaxson’s place, she felt her steps shorten. She wanted to stretch this time out as much as possible before Jaxson found out the truth about her and didn’t want to be around her anymore.
Despite her sluggish pace, they reach the front steps of his apartment building all too quickly.
“Thanks for walking with me,” she told him quietly. Dammit all, it was a hell of a lot more fun to go with Jaxson than it was to go by herself.
That was not something she was willing to spend too much time dwelling on.
He looked down at her in the semi-darkness, the sun having set long ago. The street lamp on the corner cast deep shadows across his face, making him look mysterious.
A stranger.
Which he was, really. In all the ways that mattered, he was.
He reached up and stroked his fingers across her cheek, and then ran his thumb across her lower lip. She wanted to nibble on his thumb. She wanted to flick her tongue out and touch it.
