Second-Chance Sweet Shop

by Rochelle Alers

  Dwight closed his eyes as he whispered a silent prayer for patience. He did not want to believe the man to whom he’d entrusted his daughter’s safety had threatened to hit her. “Put your mother on the phone.”

  “She went out.”

  “Then put Omar on the phone.”

  “He’s out, too. I’m alone in the condo.”

  “Stay there, get your passport and pack your bags, Kiera. And if your mother says anything, then tell her I’m coming to get you.”

  “What about Omar?”

  “Don’t worry about him, Kiera. I’ll take care of him when I get there. Keep your phone on and charged in case I have to call you.”

  “Okay, Daddy. When do you think you’ll get here?”

  “Hopefully sometime tomorrow. I have to call the airline and see if I can reserve a flight.”

  Dwight hung up and scrolled through his phone for the number to an airline with departures to Punta Cana. It took him more than forty-five minutes to reserve a seat to the Caribbean island. He was scheduled to board a red-eye in Charleston for Miami, then take a connecting flight to Punta Cana.

  He tapped the number to the bakeshop, hoping Sasha was in a better mood than she’d been a couple of days ago. He’d told her to call him, and she hadn’t. While he’d been prepared to wait indefinitely, now he owed it to her to let her know he was going out of the country, and he hoped this would be the last time he would have to drop everything to rescue his daughter.

  “Sasha’s Sweet Shoppe.”

  Dwight hesitated. He still wasn’t used to hearing a masculine voice answer the phone. Sasha’s young assistant, Christian Weber, looked more like a male model with sun-streaked shoulder-length twists, a deeply tanned tawny-brown face and a tall, slender body. He’d noticed him staring at his daughter and he’d left it to Sasha to warn him that Kiera was much too young to date a twenty-two-year-old man, and that her father was overly protective of his only child.

  “May I please speak to Miss Sasha.”

  “Miss Sasha is on the other line with a client. Would you like to leave a message?”

  “Yes. Please tell her to call Dr. Adams.”

  “I’ll give her the message, Dr. Adams. How’s Kiera?”

  “Kiera’s well,” Dwight lied. She wasn’t well, and she wouldn’t be until he brought her back to Wickham Falls.

  “That’s good. I know you don’t want me to date your daughter but—”

  “Look, son,” Dwight said, cutting him off. “You and I will have to talk about Kiera when I see you. But right now, I need to speak to Miss Sasha.”

  “Right. I’ll let her know as soon as she hangs up.”

  Dwight hung up, shaking his head. Right now, he had enough problems with Omar to even think of how to convince the pastry chef that his daughter was unobtainable and unavailable to him.

  His focus was on Omar, who allegedly had threatened to hit Kiera. When Adrienne had informed him that she was remarrying, Dwight had been concerned about the man who was to become his daughter’s stepfather. However, when he met Omar, the man reassured him that he would love and protect Kiera as if she were his own. Kiera had grown up calling Omar Dad, yet something had to have happened between them for her to refer to him by his given name. Something he knew annoyed the man.

  His phone rang and Dwight answered it before the second ring. “Hello.”

  “This is Miss Sasha from Sasha’s Sweet Shoppe returning Dr. Adams’s call. Is he available?”

  He smiled. The teasing woman with whom he’d fallen in love was back. “This is he. How are you, Miss Sasha?”

  “I’m well, thank you. And you?”

  Dwight sobered as he focused on why he’d called Sasha. “I have to fly down to the Caribbean to bring Kiera back home.”

  “She is sick?”

  “No. It’s more like we’re having a family crisis.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. When are you leaving?”

  “I’m driving up to Charleston in a couple of hours. I plan to check into a hotel to get some sleep before taking a red-eye to Miami for a connecting flight to Punta Cana. I’ll book a return flight once I get there.”

  “Do whatever you have to do to make certain Kiera’s okay. Tell her I love and miss her when you see her.”

  Dwight went completely still. It was the first time Sasha had verbalized her affection for his daughter. “I will.”

  “I love you, Dwight.”

  He smiled. “I know that. I love you, too.”

  “Be safe.”

  “Thank you. I’ll see you when we get back.”

  * * *

  Dwight sat in the condo’s living room staring at the man he’d expected to love and protect his daughter as her stepfather. By the time the jet had touched down at the Punta Cana airport, Dwight had become even more resolute that this would be the last time he would have to drop everything to extract Kiera from a hostile family confrontation.

  He leaned forward, impaling the shorter, slightly built man with a long, penetrating direct stare. “When you married Adrienne, you promised me you would care for and protect Kiera as if she was your daughter. Now I hear you want to slap her across the mouth.”

  Omar ran a hand over his shaved light brown pate at the same time he forced what could pass for a smile. Omar Johnson had earned a reputation as a brilliant litigator, and when he graduated at the top of his law school class, prestigious law firms were lining up with lucrative offers to entice him to join them. As the CFO of a Fortune 500 company, Adrienne and Omar had become a super couple. They had a condo in a luxury Manhattan high-rise and the condo in the Caribbean with breathtaking views of the sea.

  “I really wouldn’t have hit her, Dwight.”

  “I’d hope you wouldn’t because then I would have to get involved. And I can promise you, man-to-man, that it would be more than a slap that I’d inflict on you.”

  Omar’s light brown eyes grew wider. “Are you threatening me, Dwight?”

  “No. I don’t have to do that because I’m taking my daughter home with me, and this will be the last time she will go anywhere with you.”

  “Have you forgotten I’m Adrienne’s husband? There will be times when we’ll have to be together.”

  “No, I haven’t forgotten. What I want you to remember is Kiera’s old enough to decide if she doesn’t want to see you or her mother. And because I’m legally responsible for my daughter, I have the final say on what she can and cannot go or do.”

  “Kiera is not only your child, Dwight. She does have a mother.”

  Dwight’s hands curled into fists. Only his military training kept him from leaping across the room and choking the pompous little man. “And you’ve been married to Adrienne long enough to have fathered a few kids of your own, so you can be a real dad and slap them in the mouth.” He realized he’d hit a sore spot when Omar recoiled from the gibe.

  “Daddy, I’m ready to leave.”

  He stood up when Kiera walked into the living room pulling two wheeled bags. “Do you have your passport?”

  Kiera patted the cross-body bag slung across her chest. “It’s in here.”

  Dwight picked up his carry-on, walked over to the door, opened it and let Kiera precede him out into the hallway. He didn’t get to see Adrienne, who’d remained in her bedroom during his brief visit. When she’d returned his call, she claimed she did not have a problem with Dwight coming to get their daughter. There was something in her voice indicating relief that Kiera would be leaving.

  He punched a button for the elevator. Dwight had hired a driver to take them to the airport for a flight back to the States. They had a three-hour layover in Miami before flying on to Charleston, West Virginia, where he would pick up the Jeep from airport parking.

  “I think Mom and Omar are getting a divorce.”

  “That happens with ma
rried couples.” Dwight had no intention of getting involved in his ex-wife’s marriage.

  “It doesn’t bother you, Daddy?”

  He gave Kiera a direct stare. “No. Your mother and her husband are adults who must work through their own issues. It’s only when you’re drawn into it that I get involved.”

  Kiera’s eyelids fluttered. “They fight all the time, and I was sick of it. I really don’t want to be with them ever again.”

  “You don’t have to worry about that right now. Maybe once they work through their problems, you may change your mind.” Dwight didn’t want Kiera not to have a relationship with her mother, but it was incumbent on Adrienne to stabilize her marriage or lose her daughter.

  The elevator arrived and they stepped into the car. The doors closed and it descended quickly to the lobby. Tropical heat enveloped them as the automatic doors opened. Dwight’s driver alighted from the air-cooled sedan parked near the entrance to the building and took their bags.

  Dwight sat in the rear of the car with Kiera and stared out the side window. Under another set of circumstances, he would’ve enjoyed an extended stay in the beautiful tropical island. He was still smarting from Omar believing he had some legal claim on Kiera because he was married to her mother.

  Stretching out his legs, he folded his arms over his chest and closed his eyes. He was leaving Punta Cana to return to Wickham Falls and Sasha. He’d thought a lot about her during his stay, and the depth of his feelings for Sasha shocked him. Dwight realized they had reached a point where their relationship had to be resolved with permanence.

  * * *

  Sasha walked out of the kitchen when she heard the doorbell. Charlotte had gone out and she was alone in the house. She opened the door and felt her legs buckle slightly when she stared at the man she’d believed she would never see again.

  “What are you doing here?”

  He smiled and laugh lines fanned out around the large hazel eyes with lashes women paid a lot of money to affect. “What? No ‘hello, Grant’?”

  Sasha’s eyes narrowed. “You didn’t answer my question. What are you doing here?”

  Grant Richards ran his fingers through thick wavy brown hair. “May I come in?”

  She glanced around him to see if he’d come with someone, but there was a lone pickup parked in front of the house. “No.” Sasha opened the door wider and stepped out on the porch.

  Grant stared at her bare feet. “You still don’t like to wear shoes.”

  Leaning against the door frame, she crossed her arms under her breasts. “I know you didn’t come here to talk about my feet. Say what you have to say, Grant. I am busy.”

  “How’s the bakeshop?”

  Sasha was quickly losing her patience with the man who’d made her life a living hell. She lowered her arms. “Goodbye, Grant.”

  He caught her upper arm. “Don’t go, Sasha. I came to tell you that this will be my last tour.”

  She stared at the tanned hand on her arm until he released her. “What you do with your life is your business.”

  Grant’s shoulders slumped under the untucked white shirt he’d paired with well-worn jeans and his signature black snakeskin boots. “This will be my last tour because I’ve been diagnosed with the onset of ALS. Earlier this year I woke up and found it hard to even walk to make it to the bathroom. At first I thought it was muscle cramps, so I applied ice and then heat, and when they went away, I forgot about it. Then a couple of months later I experienced weakness in my right hand and again I ignored it. The day after I signed up for the upcoming tour, I tripped and fell and ended up in the hospital for a battery of tests. That’s when I was told I had ALS.”

  Sasha couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “You have ALS and you’re still going on the tour?”

  “Yes. Instead of singing, playing guitar, while dancing around the stage, I’m going to sit on a stool and just sing. I’ll explain to everyone when the show opens that I had an accident and hurt my legs and back, so they’re going to get to see a very different Grant Richards.”

  “I don’t understand, Grant. Why aren’t you taking care of yourself? What if you fall and seriously injure yourself?”

  He angled his head. “That’s a chance I’ll have to take. I want to go out while I’m still on top.” He sobered quickly, shocking Sasha when his eyes filled with tears. “I really came here to apologize, and I’m ashamed of what I did to you.”

  She averted her head because it pained her to see him cry. “I’m over it, Grant. I’ve moved on with my life.”

  “But I can’t move on with mine until you forgive me.”

  Her gaze swung back to him. “You want me to give you absolution?” Sasha’s heart turned over when tears streamed down his face. She never would’ve believed the narcissistic man who never gave a whit for anything or anyone but himself was asking for forgiveness.

  She knew it took a lot of strength and courage for Grant to come to her when he knew his days were numbered by a disease that would eventually confine him to a wheelchair before it claimed his life.

  Taking a step, she wrapped her arms around his waist and rested her forehead on his shoulder. “I forgive you, Grant,” she said.

  Grant cupped her chin in his hand, lowered his head and brushed a kiss across her parted lips. “Thank you, baby.”

  Sasha reached up and blotted his tears with her fingertips. “You take care of yourself.”

  He nodded. “Now I don’t have a choice. No more chasing women and all-night parties.”

  “Do you have someone who will take care of you?”

  “My mother. She’s the only one who knows besides you and my manager. After this tour, the world will know the whole story. I’d like you to keep this between us until my manager makes the announcement.”

  “Okay, Grant,” she promised.

  He gave her a weak smile. “You take care of yourself. And make sure the next man you take up with will appreciate everything you have to offer him. It wasn’t until you left me that I realized you were one badass woman, and you were the better half of the Cowboy and the Redhead.”

  Turning on his heel, Grant walked off the porch and got into the pickup. Sasha didn’t wait to see him drive off. She also didn’t see the man sitting across the street in the Jeep watching the interaction with her ex-husband.

  Chapter Twelve

  Dwight didn’t want to believe what he’d just witnessed. He’d come to Sasha’s house to talk about wanting to marry her; however, it appeared as if she was still involved with her ex-husband as evidenced by the kiss they’d shared. He wondered if she’d made up the story about his controlling her life when they were married to elicit sympathy as the victim or maybe to shift the blame from herself to him because she’d been the villainess.

  He started the Jeep and headed back to the main road, wondering why he’d always chosen the wrong woman to give his heart to. When he slipped an engagement and then a wedding ring on Adrienne’s hand, Dwight had believed it would be forever. However, forever ended when she decided to marry the man with whom she’d had an affair while she and Dwight were engaged.

  It had become an instant rerun with Sasha. She’d married and divorced Grant Richards, labeling him a monster and saying she never wanted to see him again, yet she couldn’t resist locking lips with him on the porch of her home, where anyone walking or driving by could see them.

  Perhaps, Dwight mused, he was destined to remain single. Not being committed to a woman and living his life by his leave was satisfying and uncomplicated. His only responsibility was Kiera and planning for her future.

  He drove aimlessly until he found himself pulling into a parking space at the Wolf Den. It was Military Monday and there was always a steady stream of active and former military coming and going. He walked into the sports bar, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dimmer light, and took a seat at the ba
r. The lunchtime crowd was gone and there were quite a few empty tables and booths.

  Aiden Gibson came from the back carrying a keg of beer. He set the keg on the floor and extended his hand. “Welcome back, stranger. How long has it been?”

  Dwight shook Aiden’s hand. “It’s been a while.”

  “A while? The last time I remember you coming in was with a redhead who bakes the most incredible cakes that we sell out of them whenever they’re listed on the chalkboard with the day’s special.” Aiden paused to hook up the keg. “What are you drinking?”

  “I’ll take anything you have on tap.”

  Aiden picked up a mug, tilted it and filled it with a golden foaming liquid, and then set it on a coaster. “Why do you look so down in the dumps?”

  Picking up the mug, Dwight took a long swallow. “Do I?”

  “Hell, yeah, you do,” Aiden countered. “I’m willing to bet that it has something to do with a woman. Sasha?” he asked when Dwight did not deny or confirm his assumption.

  “Women,” Dwight said under his breath. “Can’t live with them and can’t live without them.”

  Resting his elbows on the bar, Aiden leaned forward. “You seem to have done quite well as a bachelor.”

  Dwight’s dark eyes met Aiden’s blue-green ones. “True, but things change when you meet someone you really care about.”

  “I know what you mean, buddy. I thought I’d never fall in love again until I met Taryn. Even though she is an amazing woman and mother, it’s not all sunshine and butterflies. Every once in a while we have our ups and downs, but it only makes our marriage stronger.”

  Dwight took another sip of the cold brew. “You’re preaching to the choir, Aiden.”

  “If you know, then why the long face, Dwight?”

  “It gets a little sticky when there’s a third person in the relationship.” There was no way he was going to tell Aiden that he saw Sasha kissing her ex-husband.