The Baker's Bodyguard

by Lori Ryan

  “Hmm.” Zach nodded. He wondered how far this person would go and what the real payoff was. Why was it so important to make the others in the class look bad?

  “There’s one girl who’s always a little too interested in what other people are trying in their recipes. She asks too many questions, and you can see her watching people over their shoulders. It’s weird,” Jesse said with a little shudder.

  “I thought you all followed the same recipes?” Zach asked.

  “Most of the time, we do. But sometimes we’re supposed to tweak things. Find a way to make them our own. It’s like Sharon doesn’t have an original bone in her body, and she needs to see what everyone else is doing. Either that or she’s really insecure and wants to watch everyone else. I don’t know. Anyway, I thought it might be her, but her mixer was one of the ones that went nutty today, so maybe not.”

  “It’s like you guys have this weird world in there that no one knows about. I never would have guessed it’d be so competitive,” Zach said.

  Jesse shook her head. “Me neither. I didn’t have a clue until all this started, but apparently it’s also competitive among the schools. The top schools vie for the best students, and all the best students are fighting for top spots in the best schools. That leads to the fight for jobs when we all get out. I think it might stop now though. Things went too far today. I bet whoever’s doing this got a little freaked by the director’s reaction.”

  “What are you baking for me today?” Zach asked with a grin, switching topics.

  “Nothing.” Jesse smiled.

  “What? Why not?” Zach asked, his face falling. He’d come to rely on the handmade goodies Jesse made every day.

  “No baking. Cooking today.”

  “I don’t get it. What’s the difference?”

  “Baking is desserts and things. Well, that’s not true. Technically, it means you cook something by putting it in an oven. For our purposes, what I mean is that today I won’t be making desserts. I want to work on some of the lunch items tonight. The bakery will have a small selection of sandwiches and soups. It’ll be a pretty limited menu, so I need to make sure things are unique and really good. I thought we’d try some paninis tonight. A Brie and Black Forest ham with spicy mustard and caramelized onions. And smoked turkey with Gouda cheese and a walnut olive spread.”

  Zach’s mouth was watering, and his stomach started demanding attention as Jesse spoke. He pulled her up by the hand and headed for the door, with Jesse laughing behind him.

  “It’s not funny, lady. You can’t talk like that and then expect me to wait while you relax and drink your coffee. That’s pure evil, woman.”

  Zach didn’t slow down until he got Jesse back to the penthouse where she followed through with a “dinner” made of the bakery’s future lunch samplings. Perfection as usual.

  Chapter Nine

  Zach laid his head back on the couch and rested his eyes. He needed to stay awake until he heard Jesse go to bed. He had a feeling tonight wouldn’t be easy for her. And he didn’t believe Jesse when she told him she wasn’t upset by what happened that evening.

  Zach’s mind flashed back to the scene as they made their way home from Jesse’s therapy session that evening. It was a perfectly normal incident for New York City streets. Four drunken men stumbled out of an alley and ran smack into Jesse. There wasn’t any threat. Zach had stepped right in to intercede when the men circled her, laughing and stumbling around.

  It was Jesse’s reaction to the incident that worried him. She’d panicked. Although he knew that was totally normal, she didn’t know that. Zach also knew she was probably beating herself up about it. Either way, he wanted to be sure he was here if she needed him tonight.

  Zach heard the shower shut off in Jesse’s room. For once, there was no flash of the image of her stepping naked and wet from the shower. Or wrapped in nothing but a towel. There was no room in his feelings toward Jesse tonight for desire or anything sexual, just worry about her state of mind.

  And that itself had Zach concerned. Because, what he was feeling toward Jesse was something he didn’t want to examine. It was a powerful need to protect her, to comfort her, to prop her up and help her fight this until she was strong enough to fight it on her own. And, it bordered perilously close to a four-letter word beginning with ‘L’ that he didn’t want to think about.

  Minutes later, Zach heard the telltale whimpers coming from Jess’s room, and he came wide awake. She could bury her head in her pillow all she wanted, but he could still hear her crying.

  Zach knocked on the door. “Jesse?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Jesse? I’m coming in, Jess... So, if you’re naked, pull those covers up.”

  Zach cracked the door and saw Jesse huddled under her covers, hair still wet from the shower, tears streaming down her face.

  Zach knelt down next to Jesse at the side of her bed.

  “Hey, Jesse girl. You falling apart on me?”

  Jesse looked at him with those big doe eyes that cut right to his heart. Of course, right now they were red-rimmed and swollen, but they still tugged at him.

  “I froze, Zach. I thought I was doing so well, and then the tiniest thing happened and I froze,” she whispered.

  “It’s okay, Jesse. First, it wasn’t a tiny thing. They were big guys and you were surrounded for a second there. It’s okay to be frightened by that. Second, you’re gonna have good days and bad. Things’ll go up and down for a bit until finally, you won’t have the bad days. Just the good ones. That’s just the way this works.” Zach brushed her hair back from her face. She didn’t look like she was buying his spiel tonight.

  “Wait here.” Zach stood and went to Jesse’s bathroom and grabbed her hair brush. He returned to the bed and sat down, then pulled Jesse up to lean against him. He started at the ends of her hair, brushing out the tangles that had formed when she’d climbed into bed with her hair wet and uncombed. Zach felt Jesse relax into him as he brushed. He spoke in calm, soothing tones, willing her to relax into sleep. If he could get her to sleep, things would look brighter in the morning.

  “Is this a service you provide for all your clients?” Jesse asked, a smattering of her typical smart-ass humor shining through.

  Hell no.

  “Not normally, no.” Zach let his smile come through in his voice since she was faced away from him.

  Jesse took a deep, shuddering breath. “I can’t believe I froze up over something as minor as that.”

  “It’s not about what you did in that moment, Jesse. That’ll get better over time, I promise. What matters right now is what you do tomorrow. If you lay in bed and eat cookies all day, then you’ve lost. But, if you get up again tomorrow and go to school and don’t let this stop you, then you’ve won. That's what you need to worry about now. Just worry about getting up again tomorrow.”

  Zach continued to brush her hair, smoothing it down over her shoulders, letting the motion soothe her. He stayed that way long after Jesse fell asleep. Just holding her. Breathing in her scent. Dropping secret kisses to her temple as she slept. And knowing all the while that he was in far deeper than he should be. He knew he should turn this assignment over to one of his other people and run like hell, but he also knew it was far too late for that. He was just plain screwed.

  Chapter Ten

  Zach and Jesse both danced around the sexual tension that couldn’t be denied by either one of them. There was no way to pretend it didn’t exist, so they both did their best to ignore it. Zach got Jesse signed up for a few self-defense lessons with a female trainer in the area. He didn’t say why, but they both knew it was to avoid getting too close again.

  Three weeks later, they’d relaxed back into an easy truce of sorts. Jesse let her schoolwork distract her. When her counselor suggested they could decrease their sessions to once a week, Jesse said she’d rather not. Not that she thought she needed two sessions a week. She just didn’t want to have to fill another evening with Zach. The eveni
ngs when they were home alone together were the hardest to handle.

  Sometimes they went to a club or coffee shop in the evenings, but of course, since she needed Zach to go with her to those places, it didn’t really help get her away from Zach. It just made it a little easier to be around one another in public instead of the close confines of their penthouse suite. A suite that suddenly seemed to be two hundred square feet, instead of the eight hundred generous square feet that it was.

  The sad thing was, Jess liked being with Zach a lot. They got along. If you didn’t count the crazy sexual tension, it was easy being with him. They liked the same things, laughed at the same jokes, listened to the same music. If they didn’t have this weird babysitter/crazy-person-that-needs-help-living-in-the-real-world relationship going on, she would really want to date him. Sometimes Jesse wondered how long it would take her to no longer need him by her side. Then, how long after that it would be appropriate for them to date. Six months? A year? Never?

  If he were her therapist, the answer would be never. But, he wasn’t her therapist. He helped her in her ‘treatment’ or whatever this was, but he made sure she had an outside therapist to talk to. So, didn’t that mean that someday it would be acceptable for them to date?

  God, I hope so.

  Tonight, she and Zach were home, but thankfully, he’d holed up in his room while she worked in the kitchen. She was working on an assignment for school and, so far, it wasn’t going well. She’d burned her first batch of the supposedly easy pastries, and now needed more ingredients to try again. Most likely, if you paid attention to what you were doing instead of thinking about the sex-God hiding out in the room next to you, the pastries really were easy to make.

  “Zach,” Jess called out to Zach in the next room. “I need to run down to the store.”

  Zach came out of his room.

  “What’s up?” he asked, as if completely unaware of the fact that he sent her heart rate skittering into overdrive. He had on low-slung jeans and a T-shirt that stretched snugly across a chest meant to be touched as well as looked at.

  Just not by your hands, Jess. Hands off the babysitter.

  “I burned the filling for my mille-feuilles, and I don’t have enough eggs to try again. Can we run out to the store?” Jesse asked.

  “Your mooool foooles? What?” Zach deadpanned.

  Jesse threw a dish towel at him, but she did crack a smile. It was hard not to with Zach.

  “Shut up. This is serious. These things take over an hour of prep before they go into the oven, and it’s already late.”

  “I’m sorry, Jess. I can’t. I have a conference call with some of my employees in five minutes. We’ve been trying to get everyone on the call, and this was the only time we could get everyone together. It should only take about an hour or an hour and a half. We can go after. Or you could call the concierge and ask them to go?” Zach suggested.

  Jesse hesitated. She hadn’t been out alone yet, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to try it, but she needed those eggs. And, as far as she was concerned, she wasn’t calling the concierge. The hotel manager had told her she could call if she needed supplies, but she wasn’t used to that kind of treatment and wasn’t comfortable with it.

  Jesse cast a glance out the window as she thought. Even though it was seven thirty, it was still light out and would be for another hour. The store was just two blocks. She could do that. She knew she could. Jess squared her shoulders and gave Zach a smile.

  “No problem. I’ll run out by myself. It’s close by.”

  “Are you sure, Jesse? We can call the concierge if you’re not ready,” Zach said, watching her closely.

  “Nope. I got this. I can do it.” Before she lost her resolve, Jesse slipped her feet into her sneakers and grabbed some cash from her purse. Shoving her cell into her back pocket, she cast one more look over her shoulder at Zach, who nodded encouragingly before she walked out the door.

  ***

  Zach waited for the ding of the elevator to indicate its doors had shut, and then grabbed his keys and took off down the stairs. He took the stairs two at a time, knowing he needed to beat Jesse down if he wanted to follow her without her spotting him.

  It had been a calculated risk, telling her he couldn’t go with her. He’d been afraid she’d call him out on having a conference call so late in the evening. He knew she wouldn’t use the concierge to pick up her eggs, so he hoped she truly was ready to go out alone. But, he’d be there with her just in case she had an anxiety attack or needed him.

  Zach stopped when he reached the lobby level, and cracked the door to the stairwell so he could see the elevator doors. Seconds later, the doors opened and Jesse stepped out. He saw her pause after stepping off the elevator. No one else would notice the two deep calming breaths she took before she began walking through the lobby, towards the large glass doors that would lead outside.

  Zach smiled to himself as he followed at a distance. So far, so good. She didn’t seem to be having any trouble. Zach always felt proud of his clients when they reached this stage, but with Jess, the feeling was a lot stronger than he wanted it to be. His feelings toward her had well overstepped the bounds of professionalism.

  Last week, they’d gone to a nightclub to let Jesse practice being alone in that setting. When her friends had left her alone in a nightclub a couple of months earlier in Connecticut, she’d quickly spiraled into panic. Because of that, Zach had arranged both a “help me” signal with Jess and also an “I’m okay” signal, so he could be sure she wasn’t frozen in fear.

  It had taken all the strength he had not to jump in when some douchebag in a shiny polyester shirt got more than a little aggressive in trying to pick Jesse up. But she'd been giving him her “I’m okay” signal and Zach respected her too much to jump in just to alleviate his own jealousy.

  Jesse stopped in front of the convenience store and Zach ducked into a doorway. He saw her take those two calming breaths again and then open the door. He’d have to wait outside or she’d spot him.

  Minutes ticked off and Zach began to get antsy.

  Fuck. Maybe it was too soon. I shouldn’t have pushed her.

  Zach scrubbed his hand through his hair, and wondered if he’d sent her out when she wasn’t ready. He hoped he hadn’t just done more harm than good. Just when he was about to give away his position and head in to see if she needed help, he heard Jess’s contagious laugh spill out over the sidewalk. He peeked out and saw her laughing and talking with a woman he recognized from one of Jess’s classes. His heart melted in relief. He turned his back to her so she wouldn’t spot him as she said goodbye to her friend and started back to the hotel.

  Zach waited as Jesse passed by him. She was four people deep away from him on the New York City streets, so she didn’t notice him as she walked past. He trailed her home and watched as she entered the elevator. Now came the hard part.

  Zach took the stairs double time and was glad he’d been working out so much while he’d been living with Jesse. The workouts had served to burn off some of his frustration but right now, they also helped him beat Jesse to the top. He slipped his key in the suite door and made it to his room, just as he heard her come into the kitchen.

  Zach smiled as he heard her humming while she baked. He’d have to bury himself in his room and pretend to be on a conference call for the next hour, but it was worth it to see her beat her fears.

  Zach sat on the edge of his bed for another forty minutes, then figured that was good enough for his fake conference call. He stepped out into the suite to find Jesse finishing up the pastries she’d needed the eggs for.

  “Hey, Jess. How’d the trip to the store go?” Zach leaned against the counter and kept his face neutral.

  Jesse sent a knowing smirk his way and he knew he was sunk.

  Shit. I let myself get distracted by her for one damn minute...

  “You ought to know it went just fine, since you were following me.” Jesse’s smirk widened to a full grin and Za
ch couldn’t help but laugh back.

  “When did you see me?”

  “Not until we were back at the hotel. I saw your reflection in the revolving door while you were waiting for me to go in ahead of you. So really, since I didn’t know you were there ‘til I got back, we can count it as my first successful outing by myself,” Jesse said.

  Zach let down his guard for a minute and pulled her into a hug. “I’m really proud of you, Jess. You’re gonna do just fine now. We’ll get you a few more outings on your own, and pretty soon, you’ll be back to your old self.”

  And you won’t need me anymore.

  Chapter Eleven

  Gradually, Jesse began to take more short trips out on her own. Without Zach following. They planned it carefully. Zach might only take her part of the way to school and then let her make the rest of the trip herself. Or, he’d meet her at the coffee shop after class, instead of waiting right outside the door. She gradually reclaimed her independence, even going to her therapy appointments on her own a few times.

  As Zach watched Jesse’s creamy, tanned arms flexing as she stirred an enormous whisk over the stove, he knew their time together was coming to an end. Jesse lifted the whisk out of the saucepan and let strands of melting chocolate run back into the pan, then turned to add a pinch of something from a jar before lifting the whisk to stir again.

  Chocolate sauce. God, what I could do to Jesse with a pot of chocolate sauce.

  Zach could picture the sauce as he drizzled it over her soft, full curves. He’d let little droplets fall to her stomach, surround her nipples in the rich, sweet dessert before licking it off one drop at a time. She wouldn’t need any between her legs. Zach suspected she would have her own sweet flavor. One he wouldn’t want to cover with anything else.

  Shit. This has to stop.

  Zach cleared his throat. “So…um. How’s school been? Any more crazy high jinks and shenanigans?”