Her Fill-In Fiancé

by Stacy Connelly

  Sophia groaned as Debbie lifted a lid off the raised platter of sweets, the deep breath she took of the sweet confection already testing the limits of her elastic waistband. She’d seen an ob/gyn Theresa recommended a few weeks ago, who had explained the weight gain Sophia was to expect, but she didn’t think the doctor could have anticipated how irresistible Debbie’s doughnuts were.

  Drawing on willpower she didn’t know she possessed, Sophia said, “How about some doughnut holes instead?” She wasn’t above bribing customers to linger over some sweets while they considered making a purchase at The Hope Chest.

  As Debbie picked out an assortment of glazed, chocolate and powdered doughnut holes, Sophia added, “I also wanted to stop by to talk to you about getting a cake for my parents’ anniversary party this weekend. I’m sorry about the late notice, but we’re trying to keep it a surprise.”

  Debbie folded the edges of the box together into a handle and set it on the counter before grabbing an album from behind the register. “I have some pictures if you want to take a look.”

  Sophia already had the perfect cake in mind, and Debbie didn’t disappoint. As Sophia flipped through the pages, an elaborate three-tier cake adorned with deep red roses, green leaves and elegant pearls caught her eye and she knew she’d found the one. “This one. It’s exactly what I want for my parents’ anniversary party.”

  Debbie swung the book back around to face her. “I don’t think I need to tell you that’s a wedding cake.”

  “That’s why it’s perfect,” Sophia said, anticipation starting to override her worries about the party. “My parents had a homemade wedding cake—a simple sheet cake—and I know my mother always felt she’d missed out a little by not having a ‘real’ wedding cake.”

  “What a great idea!” Debbie pulled out an order form and starting filling out the information. “Do you know what cake flavor and filling you want, or is a taste test in order?”

  Her blue eyes sparkled from her slightly plump face. Even in high school, Debbie had been perfectly happy with her full-sized figure.

  “Running a bakery is in my genes,” she had often quipped. “That’s why I wear a size fourteen.”

  “As much as I would love to try every kind,” Sophia mused, “lemon with buttercream icing is my parents’ favorite.”

  “Mmm, one of my favorites, too. But then again, aren’t they all?” Debbie sighed. “I suppose I might be more inclined to think about my weight if I had a boyfriend like yours watching my figure.”

  Sophia forced a smile. This was what she wanted, right? For her pretend relationship with Jake to defuse local gossip? It might have worked, too, only her feelings for Jake were all too real…

  “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised how quickly gossip spreads.”

  Debbie waved a dismissive hand. “What are you worried about? If I had a boyfriend who looked like that, I’d hand out fliers.”

  Her words startled a laugh out of Sophia, but she sobered as she added, “I think I’d rather lie low. I’ve already given people enough to talk about.”

  The blonde tore off the top copy of the two-part form. “You know small towns. There’ll always be talk. Doesn’t mean everyone believes it. In fact, most people know better, especially when it comes to anything Marlene Leary has to say. Hey, a bunch of us are getting together tomorrow night at Sullivan’s Bar for Billy Cummings’s birthday. You should come.”

  Billy had gone to school with Sophia’s brothers and was still a good friend, but Sophia hesitated. “I don’t know about a party…”

  “Just think about it,” Debbie encouraged. “You have friends here, Sophia. You always did.”

  The unexpected support tightened Sophia’s throat with unshed tears. She’d been so sure everyone held her solely responsible. Maybe she’d been as quick to assume the worst about the town as she’d had been to believe they assumed the worst of her.

  The bell above the door rang, and Sophia quickly ducked her head, embarrassed to think of anyone finding her crying over Debbie’s pastries on her first day back at The Hope Chest.

  Sophia had barely registered the other woman’s bright greeting when Jake’s murmur reached her. “You okay?”

  He stepped between Sophia and the glass case, shielding her from Debbie’s view with the width of his chest. A dark frown drew his eyebrows together, and he shot a suspicious glance over his shoulder. The fierce, protective warrior was back, ready to defend her against every threat except for the one he posed to her heart.

  “I’m fine. Really,” she insisted when his golden eyes searched hers, concern written in his gaze. It would be so easy to believe he cared…

  It’s all pretend, she insisted despite a very real shiver of awareness chasing goose bumps down her spine from the spot where Jake rested his hand against the nape of her neck and back up again.

  Reality was Jake pulling away from her at the creek, unable—or unwilling—to accept that she was carrying another man’s child. No one had to tell Sophia how big of a burden that was. Todd hadn’t even been willing to step up and accept responsibility, and he was the father of her baby.

  Did she really expect that Jake could somehow look past that? That he would want her enough that he would want her child as well?

  Yes, her bruised heart whispered. It was exactly what she had foolishly hoped for, that he would want her enough that nothing, nothing, else would matter.

  Like the way she wanted him.

  Sophia knew only a little about Jake’s life in L.A., yet when he kissed her, she could think of nothing beyond the moment when his lips touched hers, nothing beyond the eternity when he broke away for a quick breath to the split second when he came back to her.

  Even her own past faded away until she no longer remembered the lessons Todd had taught her. Lessons in protecting her heart and not hoping for the impossible.

  She should be glad Jake had stopped when he had, Sophia decided firmly. She wouldn’t forget again. The next time he kissed her—

  “Sophia.” Desire darkened Jake’s eyes, tensing the muscles in his body, and making her aware that in thinking about his kiss, her focus had arrowed in on his mouth, mere inches from her own.

  Longing threatened to turn her bones to warm caramel. In another minute, she’d melt into a puddle at Jake’s feet. And there was something she was supposed to remember…what had she been thinking about? Oh, yeah, the next time Jake kissed her.…

  If she leaned forward just an inch, the next time Jake kissed her could be right here, right now.

  “Ahem.” The polite clearing of a throat wasn’t enough to prepare Sophia for Debbie’s next comment, “Keep generating that kind of heat, and you two are gonna burn my buns.”

  Embarrassed, she jerked her gaze away from Jake’s and tried to look somewhere, anywhere other than at the two people with her in the bakery. She did a quick double-take when, sure enough, a dozen or so buns were cooling on a wire rack behind the counter.

  Caught between the need to hide and an absurd desire to laugh, Sophia made a quick introduction, “Jake, this is Debbie Mattson. We went to school together, and I stopped by to—”

  “Look at wedding cakes,” the blonde interjected with a guileless smile.

  Sophia had to give Jake credit; he didn’t so much as blink. “Did Sophia tell you strawberry filling is my favorite?”

  But then again, Jake wasn’t the one having trouble remembering all this wasn’t real. He was the one who already had the reason for their breakup in mind. He wasn’t a family man.

  “What are you doing here, Jake?” Sophia asked, her voice a bit sharper than she’d intended.

  “When I saw the sign in the shop, I figured you couldn’t go far in twenty minutes. I spotted you through the window. I’m going to stick around this afternoon for the delivery Hope scheduled.”

  “I told you I can handle it,” Sophia protested, continuing her argument from that morning.

  Jake raised his hands in an innocent gesture. “Hey, I’ll
be there for heavy lifting only.”

  “Don’t argue when a man offers to do one of the things he’s good for,” Debbie advised, the suggestive lift to her eyebrows acknowledging the other things men were good for.

  Sophia was saved from coming up with an answer by the rumble of a diesel engine. “Speaking of delivery trucks,” Jake said as he glanced out the window. “Do you think—”

  “Oh, great. It’s the one Hope’s been waiting for, I’m sure of it.”

  He caught Sophia’s arm when she would have raced out of the store and took the keys from her hand. “Finish up here. I’ll go help the guy get started.”

  As the two women watched from the window as Jake crossed the street in an easy jog, Debbie sighed. “Forget fliers. I’d rent a billboard.”

  As Sophia made her way back to the shop a few minutes later, she didn’t notice the small crowd gathered on the sidewalk until she’d nearly stepped into the middle of the group. She tried to skirt around the edges and slip by unnoticed, but judging by the way all conversation stopped, she’d failed miserably.

  A familiar voice, raised loud enough to carry, stopped her in her tracks. “I don’t know what that woman was thinking. It will serve Hope Daniels right if Sophia Pirelli robs the store blind.”

  As befitted her position as one of the wealthiest women in town, Marlene Leary looked perfectly put together in an ice-blue pantsuit with matching shoes while everyone else wore jeans and boots, her blond hair expensively and expertly styled thanks to frequent trips to one of the top salons in San Francisco. But Sophia was shocked by how Marlene had aged in the past five years, as if all the life had been slowly drained from her and replaced with a corrosive bitterness.

  Certainly Marlene’s words ate like acid in Sophia’s stomach, but the slow burn turned into cold shock when she saw the sheriff’s car parked in front of Hope’s shop.

  Chapter Nine

  Seeing the sheriff’s car, Sophia broke into a run. Her thoughts raced as fast as her steps against the sidewalk. What could have happened? She’d barely been gone fifteen minutes, and she’d locked the door before she left—hadn’t she?

  She remembered putting the sign in the window, the hands on the plastic clock turned to twelve-twenty, and then she’d locked the door. She was sure of it! She’d even double checked by testing the handle before walking down to Bonnie’s…where she’d given the keys to Jake.

  She’d just reached the front of the shop when the door opened and Jake and Sheriff Cummings stepped out, talking like old friends. Settling his hat onto his salt-and pepper hair, he advised Jake, “You need a furniture dolly to move that stuff or you’re gonna be needing a wheelchair.” The sheriff tipped his hat in greeting as he caught sight of her. “Sophia.”

  Despite his smile, Sophia could only think about the last time she’d seen him—down at the station where he’d questioned her about the break-in and damage done at Hope’s shop.

  “You aren’t doing yourself any kind of favor by protecting your friends,” he’d told her.

  “They aren’t my friends!” she shot back. “None of them are my friends!”

  “I hear you were over at Bonnie’s. I don’t suppose you noticed if she has any Boston creams this morning, did you?” He rolled his eyes toward Jake. “I know what you’re thinking, but there is nothing cliché about these doughnuts.” Sophia barely managed a response before the sheriff started over to the bakery, passing by the still-gathered crowd as he went.

  “Are you okay?” she asked Jake, even though she could see for herself he looked relaxed despite his run-in with the suddenly amiable sheriff.

  “I was about to ask you the same thing.” Sliding his hand to the small of her back, he led her into the store and onto a leopard-print settee away from the front window.

  “What happened? Why was the sheriff here?”

  “I met the delivery truck out front and had the driver pull around back. One of the other shopkeepers saw a strange guy and a moving van outside a store that had been closed and assumed I was up to no good.”

  Jake leaned back against the settee, as calm now as he’d been while talking to the sheriff, and Sophia could only stare at him. “Someone called the cops on you! Why aren’t you more upset about this?”

  “It’s not the first time.”

  “What?”

  “Think about my job. Part of being an investigator is to follow a suspect around. If I’m parked too long on a street filled with watchful neighbors, sometimes the cops get called. Same thing happened here.”

  “Watchful neighbors,” she echoed. “I wish I could believe that’s all it was.”

  “But you don’t.”

  “I think they called the sheriff because of me. Because of what happened before I left.”

  “Are you ready to tell me what really happened? Because I know you’d no more rob and ransack this place than you’d burn down the church where your parents got married.”

  “You sound so sure, but you didn’t know me then.”

  “I know you now. I know you love this place,” he said simply. “I saw it this morning when you opened up the shop. It was obvious every time you so much as touch one of the pieces.”

  “I do love this shop,” Sophia admitted. “I have ever since I was a little kid. Coming here felt like exploring a treasure trove of riches. I didn’t care about buying things. I had so much fun simply looking.”

  “No wonder Hope offered you a job.”

  Sophia cringed. “By that time, I wasn’t the best bet to win employee of the month. My brothers all were born knowing what they wanted to do. My mother has pictures of them as little kids—Nick with his dog, Scout, Drew building skyscrapers out of Legos, and Sam always surrounded by cars and trucks. While I—I tried everything.”

  And failed at everything…

  “For a while, I tagged along after my brothers, but nothing they did interested me. I even tried all the things I thought I was supposed to like—singing lessons, dance classes, band practice. Nothing stuck. My parents were frustrated, and I can’t blame them. They kept accusing me of quitting too easily, and finally I just…stopped trying at all. I dropped out of all extracurricular activities, my grades started to slide, and I had nothing but time on my hands.

  “And once Amy Leary and I started hanging out more and more, it didn’t take long for us to discover one thing we were really good at was getting into trouble—and getting away with it.”

  The worst part had been how little they cared when someone else took the blame—the stock boy who’d been fired for supplying beer from the Learys’ store for one of their parties; the too-eager-to-please freshman who’d gotten caught trying to steal a test because they’d asked him to; the football players who’d been suspended for painting the opposing school’s end zone with the name of their own team—an idea they had come up with.

  “The Learys are one of the wealthiest families in town, and both Amy’s parents have a great deal of influence. No matter what she did, Amy was untouchable, and since Amy and I were always together, that get-out-of-jail-free card extended to me, too.”

  Until the tables turned, and Sophia was the one to take the fall.

  “I still don’t know why Hope offered me the job. Maybe as a favor to my parents or maybe because that’s the way she is—always trying to give a helping hand when it’s needed.”

  And Sophia had certainly needed it as the pranks and partying started spiraling out of control. The job had pulled her away from a dangerous edge. But even as Sophia took that step back, Amy had inched even closer to crossing that line.

  They’d drifted apart as Sophia started spending more and more hours at the store. And when she tried making time for her friend, she sensed a change in Amy, a bitterness and anger, that worried Sophia.

  Amy had always been reckless and wild, traits that had appealed to Sophia as she struggled to find her own place in her family. But this darker side of Amy, and her refusal to talk about what was going on, drove a wedge th
rough their friendship.

  One Sophia had taken a foolish chance to try to repair.

  “One day, Hope received a shipment of vintage dresses. Gorgeous, nineteen-twenty-era flapper styles. I fell in love with them all and bought one for senior prom. I thought maybe Amy would like to see them. At first, she said she wouldn’t be caught dead in moldy old hand-me-downs and we got in a big fight. I thought our friendship was over after that, but the night before the dance, Amy called to apologize. She said she wanted to see the dresses after all. I told her we’d go try them on first thing in the morning.”

  But Amy had said that would be too late. She and her mother had planned to drive into Sacramento early the next morning to find a dress. Amy needed to see the vintage gowns that night.

  “I really don’t think this is a good idea,” Sophia whispered as she unlocked the back door to The Hope Chest.

  “Why not? You open up the store all the time,” Amy pointed out, her face ghostly in the glow from the overhead security light.

  “When I’m scheduled to start the morning shift, not after hours when no one’s supposed to be here.”

  “One quick look.”

  Sophia thought of the dress sure to fit Amy—a white sheath with silver fringe and a row of clear blue crystals beneath the bodice. From the moment she saw the dress, Sophia knew it would be perfect with Amy’s blond hair, fair skin and blue eyes.

  “What will it hurt?” Amy pressed, and in that moment, in the poor light, her eyes looked just like those crystals—pale, cold and hard.

  “We kept the lights off, hoping no one would notice we were inside, and when I heard the first crash, I actually thought Amy and I had interrupted an intruder. I had no idea Amy purposely tricked me into opening the store so she could let them in.”

  Images flickered through her mind like the waving flashlights slicing through the darkness—a hooded shadow at the register, another at a display case, and Amy, spraying the gorgeous array of dresses with angry splashes of red.