Then she moans again.
“I've been thinking about this the whole time I’ve been here,” I say, pulling her head back so she looks at me. “Tell me you've been thinking about my lips on yours."
Her lips move slightly, her mouth starting to form words, but she doesn’t speak.
“Tell me,” I growl.
Then the fucking phone rings.
The sound reverberates through the room, sucking out all of the air with it. And just like that, Lily’s expression changes. Something flits across her face – regret, maybe – and she shakes her head. “I … can’t,” she whispers.
“Forget the phone,” I growl. She’s wound tighter than any girl I’ve ever met. I want to rip her clothes off. I want to undo her.
“No,” she says, shaking her head. She puts her palm against my chest, half-heartedly pushing me back like she’s not quite sure what she wants to do. “No. I … can’t. You should leave now.”
“That’s not what you want,” I say, my voice softer now. "You don't want me to leave."
Her eyes flash. “Don’t tell me what I want. You should go."
I let out a heavy exhale and step back from her, taking in the way she stands there with her fingers resting on her lips, pieces of her hair falling messily around her face. “Suit yourself. You know where to find me if you change your mind.”
Her jaw set, she shakes her head. “That’s not going to happen.”
“I was talking about the job. I’ll wait for your apology for firing me.”
“You’re going to be waiting a long time,” she says as I walk toward the door.
“Whatever you say, woman,” I tell her, purposely using the word I know she hates. “I’m up the mountain, over off Burnt Pine Road. Opal has my address. For when you change your mind.”
“Not going to happen,” she calls after me.
14
Lily
My heart is still racing in the car on the way to the elementary school. I ran out of the bakery – and away from Killian Saint – like a bat out of hell.
My cheeks still warm at the thought of Killian’s fingers brushing against my skin. My heart thumps wildly in my chest at the thought of what might have happened between us in the kitchen if the phone hadn’t rung and jerked me out of whatever spell he had me under.
What the hell was I thinking, kissing him like that?
Killian Saint is a controlling, demanding brute who just set completely ridiculous, obnoxious, and insulting rules for my customers. He’s the meathead who showed up at the bakery and shoved a customer’s face against the wall outside in some kind of weird attempt at rescuing me.
That guy is not the kind of guy I need to be kissing.
Or thinking about kissing.
Or thinking about screwing.
I can feel his lips pressed against mine, even now. My lips throb, the sensation of his touch still on my skin.
I think I might have lost my mind back there. I’ve been celibate for longer than I can remember, and this is how I choose to get back in the game? By making out in the back of my store with a guy whose idea of conversation is “You. Me. Now”?
No way. Forget it. I’m not back in the game. What happened with Killian was a mistake, a lapse in judgment. It was just a kiss, nothing more. I need to put it out of my head and focus on what’s important in my life: raising Chloe and running the bakery. That’s all I need to be happy.
And that’s exactly what I do all weekend. I spend the weekend doing what I always do: hanging out with Chloe at the park and working on our garden in the backyard and doing Friday night pizza and a movie. On Saturday, Chloe comes to the bakery with me for the morning while I work the counter at the store and I'm back home by noon. On Saturday night after Chloe is asleep, I catch up on paperwork, then watch television while drinking a glass of wine and sketching cake designs.
My regular old routine has never felt so unfulfilling before.
I sit curled up in my bed, only partly paying attention to what’s on television and only partly distracted by the sketch in my lap. My mind keeps wandering to what Killian Saint is doing. The way that college girl in the store was going gaga over him the other day, I’m sure Killian has no trouble finding something - or someone to do on a Saturday night. I roll my eyes at the thought, even though I’m sitting here by myself. I’m not the least little bit put off by the thought of Killian with anyone else.
Not at all.
I blow through the front door of the bakery Monday morning, running late after dropping Chloe off at school, as usual. There’s a line in the store that starts at the door, and I have to practically push my way past people to get to the counter where Opal hustles to serve customers.
I slip on an apron and jump straight into making coffee drinks. Opal calls out orders, and we slip right into our well-oiled routine, even if it’s busy.
It’s really busy, actually. Abnormally busy.
“Where’s the hot guy who was here on Friday?” asks a college-aged girl with red hair tucked up into a baseball cap, leaning over to talk to me when I slide her latte across the counter.
I have to actively remind myself not to roll my eyes.
“I’m not sure who you’re talking about,” I say tersely, my jaw clenched. That’s what having Killian here was doing – turning my bakery into a place for college girls to come and ogle him.
“You know, the guy with the beard. Is he working today?”
“I’m afraid not."
“Oh. Well,” she says, scribbling on a piece of paper. “Would you give him my number?”
I take the paper in stunned silence as she whirls around and flounces out the door. “Would you believe that?” I ask Opal.
Opal smiles. “Honey, people have been asking about him all morning.”
“They have not,” I say in disbelief as I make a triple espresso.
“On account of the newspaper article."
Newspaper article.
“What newspaper article?” I ask, my heart sinking. Oh, God. I can only imagine.
“You didn’t see the ” Opal asks.
A customer reaches for one of the West Bend Gazette newspapers lying on a table near the counter, as if it’s totally normal that she’s listening to our conversation. “This article."
My eyes scan the headline and then the article itself, my head spinning as I attempt to take it in.
“It’s good press,” Opal notes. “It’s not an exposé or anything.”
“It really is,” the nosy customer interjects. “It’s the most interesting thing to happen at a store in West Bend in at least the past few months. Probably since Martha Talbot started carrying all of those erotic books at the bookstore. You’d get even more business if you had that man shirtless behind the counter, you know. Wouldn't hurt to start carrying some of those dirty books here, either."
I look up from the newspaper at the customer, who’s looking at me as if giving me advice on how to exploit my employee’s appearance is completely appropriate.
“What?” she asks, her voice innocent. “I’m sixty years old. I need something nice to look at, too.”
“Why stop there?” I ask. “Why don’t I hire all male staff and parade them around shirtless while you stuff dollar bills down their pants in between sips of coffee?”
“Oh, I’d come here every day if you did that,” the woman behind her pipes up.
“That was sarcasm."
“Well, there’s no need to be rude,” she sniffs. “Does this mean the gentleman with the beard isn’t coming in today?”
“No,” I say tersely. “He is not.”
Opal doesn’t waste any time. As soon as I turn the sign in the front window to “closed” in the afternoon, she starts in on me.
“You know,” she says, "it was a lot easier on me last week when Mr. Saint was here in the mornings.”
I exhale heavily. “Not you too, Opal.”
I’ve heard it all morning from customers now. Mostly female custome
rs. Where’s the guy with the beard? We heard about the rules. We wanted to see for ourselves. Why are the rules not on the board? Was the article wrong?
The article in the West Bend Gazette drummed up more business than we’ve ever had. And thanks to being in the front of the store with Opal all day, I’m behind on a cake I’m supposed to make, which means I’ll have to come back here with Chloe and have her do her homework here this afternoon while I work.
I already feel guilty bringing Chloe into work and I haven’t even done it yet.
“I’m an old woman." Opal clucks her tongue. "It's hard for me to do things sometimes."
“I can’t believe you just tried to use that to guilt me into getting Killian back here. You’re in better shape than I am.”
Opal smiles. “Can’t blame an old woman for trying. Now, are you going to tell me what happened, or is a text saying that he isn’t coming in going to be all I get?”
I sigh as I restock a napkin holder. “Nothing happened."
“Mmm-hmm,” Opal grunts as she wipes a table. “That’s why you come in here today all huffy and bent out of shape.”
“I am not huffy and bent out of shape,” I protest.
Opal arches her eyebrow and gives me a look. “If I looked up 'huffy' in the dictionary, your picture would be right underneath it."
"I'm not letting Killian Saint waltz in here and change everything about this place." I don't even try to hide the edge in my voice. "Those rules were over the line. They were beyond inappropriate. They were rude and inconsiderate and –"
"And your revenue increased because of them?" Opal asks, her voice innocent. She looks at me out of the corner of her eye from the other side of the room, where she's wiping down another table.
"That could very well have been coincidental." I shove sugar packets into a plastic container.
"There were quite a few people showing up here who had never been here before," Opal points out.
"Yeah, because they heard that we were incredibly rude here," I protest, exasperated.
"Or because it was interesting and different."
"It wasn't interesting and different. It was a gimmick."
"Seems like you shouldn't be refusing a gimmick that gets people in here."
"People in this town just love to be involved when there's anything that might be fodder for gossip. They came to rubberneck at the disaster."
"It was good publicity," Opal insists. "The Gazette was all over it. The piece they did wasn't unfavorable."
"It wasn't favorable either."
"It was publicity," Opal says. "For a few days, this place was the talk of the town."
"I don't want to be the talk of the town because I'm rude to my customers and have a hot guy working behind the counter. I want people to come here because they like the food and the coffee."
Opal turns toward me, wiping her hands on the front of her apron. "Regardless of whether you agree with his methods, his heart was in the right place."
I narrow my eyes at her. "Why are you taking up for Killian Saint?"
"I'm not taking up for him," Opal protests. "I simply think that you've been here for months now and I'm your only friend."
"You're not my only friend," I huff.
"Okay. Name another friend."
"I talk to…" I rack my brain trying to think of a person I've spent more than five minutes chatting with outside of the bakery. "I talk to…"
"Go on." Opal crosses her arms over her chest, her expression smug.
What's the name of the guy who comes in at lunchtime and has an espresso and reads the paper? "I talk to . . . Bob," I say casually, avoiding eye contact with Opal as I skirt around her and back behind the counter to clean up.
"Bob." Opal snorts. "Bob who?"
"I see him every day at lunch and we talk about books."
Opal laughs. "You mean Marston? The man who's older than I am, the one who's half deaf? He doesn't talk to you about books, honey, he nods while you talk to him because he can't hear anything you're saying."
"What?" I ask. "He always talks to me."
Opal shakes his head. "He turns his hearing aid off. Used to do it to his wife, too, God rest her soul. And on Sundays in church. That's beside the point, though. The point is that the only person you could come up with as a friend was an old man whose name you don't even know."
"Fine. I have no friends. So what? I've been busy."
"Mmm-hmm."
"I have!" I protest. "This place isn't exactly the kind of thing you just put on autopilot. I've been working. Socializing isn't my priority. Besides, I have Chloe. There's no room in my life for hanging out with the girls, even if there were any girls in this town who wanted to hang out with me."
Opal arches an eyebrow. "We both know we're not talking about hanging out with the girls."
Heat rushes to my face. It's one thing to have Killian trying to get in my pants, but another thing entirely to have Opal pushing him into my lap. "And we're not talking about my romantic life either, Opal."
"What romantic life?" she asks.
I grunt under my breath. "You think I should hire Killian Saint because I need to get laid?"
Opal purses her lips and shakes her head. "You said it, not me."
"You do think that!"
"I'm just saying, it might do you a world of good. You'd be a lot more pleasant to be around. It would relax you."
"I am pleasant to be around now!"
Opal cocks her head to the side. "Let's not kid ourselves," she says, gesturing toward the lower half of my body. "That area is probably dustier and more filled with cobwebs than my attic."
"Oh my God. A sixty-five year old woman is calling my vagina cobweb-filled?"
"I beg your pardon. I'm seventy-three and not a day younger. And yes, you should take that as a sign of just how sad your love life is, that a seventy-three year old woman has a more active sex life than you."
Opal hums to herself as she unties her apron and disappears into the kitchen.
I grumble under my breath as I wipe down the counter around the espresso machine. Opal has no idea what she's talking about. Of course, she could have a point about getting laid. Killian Saint would be the perfect man for that job, with his rough hands and his muscular –
Nope. I shake off the thought. Out of sight, out of mind.
Then I remember the last part of what Opal said, and I push open the door to the kitchen. "Wait a second," I call. "Who are you hooking up with that your sex life is so active?"
15