by Elise Faber
Her hands, raised and ready for another push, dropped to her sides. Her jaw fell open. Of all the excuses she could have imagined him to come up with, that was right up there with the last thing she would have expected him to say.
He hesitated then took a step closer, moving behind the counter again, and his voice dropping. “I got mixed up in a bad deal with some bad people. I realized it, but I was in deep.” Another step. “Baby, I thought I could handle it, could get myself, my business out without any consequences . . . but then they involved you.”
Molly froze.
“You,” he whispered, taking another step toward her, until they were almost touching. “I couldn’t let them involve you.”
“H-how—” She cleared her throat. “How did they—?”
An expression crossed his face, one that she now realized she’d seen a lot during those final months they been together. Warring. He was warring with himself. But then he pulled out his cell, tapped on the screen a few times then held it out to her.
She’d just reached to take it when the bell above the door dinged.
They both whirled, saw that a group of women were bustling in. They were regulars, had been coming in since not long after she’d opened. Seeing Jackson behind the counter, they froze and Abby, a brunette with a baby on her hip, asked, “Are you okay, Molly?”
She forced herself to smile. “I’m good. You guys go ahead and take your normal table. Jeanine will come out to get your drinks.” Then she took Jackson’s hand and tugged him through the swinging door, finding her employee washing her hands.
“I’m just finishing . . .” Jeanine trailed off, no doubt stunned by the Tall, Dark, and Handsome suddenly appearing in the kitchen.
Another forced smile. “This is Jackson. We’ll be in my office. Can you cover Abby and company? Michelle will be in for the lunch rush in just a few minutes.”
Mutely, Jeanine nodded. But didn’t move.
“They’re at their usual table,” Molly prompted.
Jeanine blinked, eyes flying from over Molly’s head—and probably from Jackson’s face—down to Molly’s. “Got it,” Jeanine said, and with another long, lingering look above Molly’s head, disappeared through the door leading to the front of house.
“You do table service now?” Jackson asked.
She tugged his hand again, leading him toward her office. “Just for a few regulars.”
Silence.
Her eyes slanted up to his, but she couldn’t read the emotion there. “What?”
“You have regulars now.”
Yeah, she did.
“Fuck, honey, you did it.”
Her lungs seized. Just straight up froze in her chest, stopped moving, stopped functioning . . . because he was proud. She could hear it so damned clearly in his tone.
A shake of her head.
It didn’t matter if he were proud of her. He’d left—
But maybe he hadn’t wanted to go—?
Didn’t matter.
But maybe it did. Hell . . . she didn’t know anything except that she had to finish this discussion, that spending five minutes with Jackson might give her clarity and let her finally move on with her life. She was tired of just living for the bakery. She wanted more. But when Jackson had left, she’d built a wall around herself, an impenetrable barrier between her inner self and the superficial. She could charm an unhappy patron in a flash, had created a happy and relaxed work environment for her employees, but she hadn’t opened herself up to the world. It was all fluff while keeping her vulnerable center safe.
She hadn’t realized that she’d reached her office, that she’d stopped outside the door until Jackson’s front came very close to her back, hand lifting to turn the handle and push open the door.
Heat on her spine.
Spice in her nose.
Longing between her thighs.
Blinking, she forced her feet to move, to enter her office, to cross around her desk and put some space between them, to give her a few seconds to clamp down on the effect his body had on hers.
She was a businesswoman. She had spine. She wasn’t a weakling when it came to her desires.
But how she wanted to be.
Tamping down the urge and lifting her chin, she settled into her office chair, waving an imperious hand at the wooden one in front of her desk.
Jackson’s lips twitched.
Then he ignored her wave, ignored the chair, and rounded her desk, propping his hip on it. “Molly,” he murmured.
And she realized she’d made a critical error. Now, he was between her and the exit. Now he was close, and she wanted. Now . . . he held out his cell again.
She saw what was on the screen and the longing disappeared.
She saw the image and the bottom fell out of the world she thought she knew.
She saw the image, and so many pieces fell into place.
Six
Jackson
He realized about two heartbeats after Molly saw what was on the screen that he’d bungled this.
Words would have been better than the image that had been the final straw.
The photograph had convinced him to leave her.
It was of Molly, taken in her kitchen four years before. The construction on the bakery had just been completed, and everything was new and shiny. But that wasn’t the part that had made him pull the plug on their relationship. No, the reason he’d finally capitulated to the threats he’d been receiving with ever-increasing frequency was because of the red dot centered on her forehead, and the angle of the photograph.
They’d been in her shop.
They’d had a gun trained on her.
And his Molly had been wearing her headphones, her gaze on the dough on the table in front of her as she carefully deposited perfect slices of apples. She’d had a smile on her face, completely oblivious to the fact that a bullet could have torn through her skull.
A smile on her face when a gun had been pointed at her head.
He’d received that image the morning of the wedding.
And that was the moment he’d stopped trying to handle things on his own. That was the moment he called in the best, most expensive security he could afford for Molly. That was the moment he’d contacted the authorities.
And that was the moment he’d known he had to cut Molly loose.
In a way that was public.
In a way that made it absolutely clear he no longer had feelings for her.
In a way that made it certain she’d keep her distance, that she wouldn’t bring herself back into the crosshairs of the. Fucking. Russian. Mafia.
Who knew that finding a long-awaited investor for his software company would be his undoing?
Fuck. He’d been so thrilled to finally have been able to roll out his new product.
He just didn’t realize that doing so would put the woman he loved at risk from a corrupt foreign power who had no compunction about killing anyone in order to get their way.
“Wh-what is this?”
“It’s why I left, Mol.”
Pale green eyes on his. “I-I don’t understand.”
“I fucked up, sweetheart,” he said. “I accepted some money from people I shouldn’t have then dismissed the threats until they made it clear that I couldn’t dismiss them.” With that photo.
She dropped the cell to her desk, pushed up from her chair, and paced away from him. Five steps from him she stopped, spun around. “When?”
“What?”
“When did you find this out?”
His brows drew down. “They sent the picture the morning of the wedding.”
Her eyes slid closed then opened slowly, understanding in their peridot depths. “That’s why you didn’t show.”
“I couldn’t.”
“This wasn’t the first threat.”
Her words weren’t a question, but rather a statement, and he knew he owed her nothing less than the absolute truth. “No.”
“Ah.” Molly tilted her hea
d back and was so still that she could have been a statue. But then she released a long, shaking breath. “And is there a reason that you didn’t tell me that any of this was going on?”
The question was deceptively calm.
“I—”
It was probably just as well that she only let him get that one syllable out. Because he didn’t have a good reason, other than the fact that he’d thought he was doing the right thing by protecting her.
“Your life was threatened. My life was threatened,” she said, pushing past him and pacing again. “And you thought what? That I couldn’t handle knowing? That I was too weak to know the truth?” She turned, closed the distance between them, and jabbed a finger into his chest. “I was going to be your wife. We were supposed to be partners, and the fact that our lives were at risk didn’t register even a mention on your list of things you should talk to me about?”
She had a valid point. One he hadn’t quite grasped until that exact moment.
“Baby—”
“Molly,” she corrected.
“Molly,” he said. “You’re right.” He reached for her hand, but she stepped back, not allowing the contact. “Of course, you’re right. I wasn’t thinking clearly about any of it. Everything got so big and out of control so quickly, and . . . I didn’t know what to do.”
“No.”
He blinked. “No?”
She shook her head. “No, Jackson. You didn’t keep this from me because you were scared or were trying to protect me. Or not only for those reasons,” she added when he opened his mouth to reply. “You didn’t think I could handle it.”
He froze, started to tell her that, no, he hadn’t thought that. Except . . .
This Molly, the one standing in front of him, the one who was so capably running a business, who was taking this news without hysteria and tears, without fury, was a very different Molly from the one he’d been engaged to. That Molly had been a little fragile, already under stress from the wedding and the new business. That Molly had loved him with a depth he’d never doubted . . . and if he was admitting it, he’d liked that devotion.
It had fed his ego to have someone so utterly committed to him. He’d liked that she’d almost been more involved in his life than her own, that she knew what clients he was meeting with every day, that she sent deliveries to his office tailored to what they preferred. He liked that she’d made dinner every night, that she had picked up his dry cleaning, that he’d never once had to make a run for food or stop at the grocery store on the way home from work.
Fuck. He was an even bigger asshole than he’d thought.
She sighed, dropped into her chair, leaning her head back and closing her eyes. “Anything else?”
“What?” His gut was churning from what he’d just realized, guilt swelling within him, a wave that had begun when he’d received the papers, one that had continued to gain height as he’d debated coming to the bakery, then had grown bigger as he’d seen what she’d built. One that was pounding into him, trapping him against the rocks that lined the shore as it beat against him again and again and again. He’d hurt her without realizing it, hadn’t appreciated her, had taken and taken and would have continued to take if he hadn’t broken things off.
He would have sucked her dry until she was nothing more than a shell of herself.
And that made him fucking despicable.
“Is there anything else you kept from me?” she asked, eyes still closed.
Throat tight, he said, “No.” It was the truth. There was nothing except for the fact that the photograph had shown him how much of a close call she’d dodged when he’d called off the wedding.
Molly sighed again, eyes opening, those pretty green eyes locking with his. “I hated you for what you did. For a long time, I absolutely hated you.” She pushed up from her chair. “But honestly? You did me a favor, Jackson. I wasn’t . . . fully formed four years ago. I was living off you, making my whole life yours. I was weak.” One step and she was close enough that her scent surrounded him.
Sweet. Fuck, she always smelled so damned sweet.
But also . . . in that moment, he’d never felt more sure that she was too fucking good for him.
Another step, her moving past him toward the door again.
He’d spent the day getting his fill. He’d leveled with her. He’d made it clear it wasn’t her fault.
Should he have done that four years ago? Fucking, of course, he should have.
Could he build a time machine and go back, fix what he’d done? No.
But could he make it better for her now, take a worry off her shoulders, remove himself from her life, one he had no right interfering in? Yes.
Jackson heard the click just as he opened his mouth to announce that he was going to sign the papers and remove himself once and for all. He frowned and spun toward the sound.
“You hurt me.”
Then, suddenly, Molly was there, within arm’s reach, looking so fucking beautiful that he couldn’t imagine how he could have ever left her.
But he’d been a different man then.
“I know I did,” he said. “And I’m sorry. I was wrong . . . about so many things.”
Her expression hardened. She took another step toward him. “Yes.”
“If I could change it, if I could go back and—”
She rose on tiptoe, eyes coming level with his, hurt swimming in their depths. “You can’t go back.” A beat. “We can’t go back, Jackson.”
“I—”
Molly kissed him.
Seven
Molly
She was probably an idiot.
Hell, she was definitely an idiot.
But he’d shown her that photograph, she’d seen the dot on her forehead, and terror had gripped her for long enough that her lungs had frozen and she’d felt her mind swim from a lack of oxygen.
It was a violation, and just because it was a violation from four years ago didn’t mean she couldn’t understand.
Jackson hadn’t been thinking.
He hadn’t broken it off because of her.
And . . . she’d felt no little amount of relief.
Not her. Not her. Not—
He’d gone still when her lips had touched his, rigid like a metal statue, his hands at his sides, their bodies not touching except for their mouths. But now he unfroze and exploded into a flurry of motion that sent all thoughts of idiocy and relief and not her from her mind.
Because this was Jackson, and this was her . . . and this had never been their problem.
His hands came up, one clamping onto her hip, the other sliding up her spine to weave into the messy ponytail at the base of her neck that was containing her riotous brown curls. A second later that elastic disappeared, and his fingers were combing through her hair, the pads resting against her scalp.
God, she’d missed that, missed him cradling her against him, angling her head just slightly so their lips were perfectly aligned. Missed how just the touch of his mouth against hers somehow righted everything in the universe.
Then his tongue brushed against the seam of her lips.
She didn’t think, didn’t hesitate, just parted and let him in. Their tongues tangled and stroked. He tugged her more firmly against his body and then they kissed and kissed and kissed. Eventually, though, he started to slow the flurried movements of his tongue, began to loosen the grip on her hip, ease his hand from her hair.
No.
She didn’t want him to stop, to slow, to pull back.
She leaned in, throwing her arms around his neck, plastering herself against his chest.
He tore his lips away. “Mol—”
“Kiss me, Jackson. Make me forget.”
A long moment of hesitation, his deep chocolate eyes locked onto hers, but then she tilted her pelvis, brushed against the hard length of his erection, and he groaned, banded his arms more tightly around her then dropped his head.
Lips on lips.
Hard against soft.
<
br /> Duel moans. Hers because this was as right as she’d felt in the last four years. His because . . . well, she hoped he felt an inkling of the same.
But Molly didn’t stop to process or think. She weaved her hands into his hair, climbed up his body, wrapped her legs around his waist, and kissed him. She nipped at his bottom lip, tilted his head, swept her tongue deep to taste the spiced heat of his mouth.
The flavor of the cinnamon gum he preferred.
The bitter tang of the coffee he must have drank that morning.
The faintest hint of mint from his toothpaste.
Ambrosia.
Jackson.
Right.
He straightened from the desk, lifting her into his arms and spun, shooting an arm out, sending her keyboard clattering to the floor, dumping the cup of pencils, the small wooden cylinders hitting the tile with a series of rapid tap tap taps. The next second she was on her back, splayed out like she was a plate of chocolate cookies placed in the center of a group of very hungry, PMS-ing women.
Hot eyes, reddened lips. An erection outlined by the thin material of his slacks.
She wanted him, wanted him to make her feel like she used to, wanted to forget everything that had happened.
For one moment, she just wanted to feel good.
“Mol—”
“Fuck me, Jackson,” she said, heart pounding, breaths coming in short bursts. Her need was on a razor’s point, almost painful. This close to him, so long since she’d felt anything as remotely strong as the pull they had when they were together. “I need you to just fuck me.”
His fingers tightened on her hips, jaw tightening. “That’s not—”
“Help me,” she moaned. “Help me forget.” She wrapped her legs around his waist, drawing him close.
He groaned, thrust against her then stopped, head hanging, breath in rapid gusts. “Baby, we—”
“Please.” She reached for him. “Please, Jackson.”
Only the briefest hesitation before he bent, lips pausing a hairsbreadth from hers. “Okay, baby.” He brushed her mouth. “I got you.”
He reached for the button of her jeans, flicked it open, and slid his hand inside.
