Sweetened With a Kiss (13 page)

Hell, he’d scared himself.

He took a deep breath. He really wished he’d run this morning instead of cycling. Of course he was pretty sure that he could have run around the world a dozen times and her threat to marry Jared Marshall would still have sent him into caveman combat mode.

Marrying the hippie. Over his dead body. Or better yet, over Jared Marshall’s dead body.

“We need to set a date,” he said, turning the key in the ignition. He pulled up the calendar on his phone and tossed it onto her lap. “Pick a Saturday in April.”

He didn’t have to glance at her. He actually felt her stiffen up, and her sharp intake of breath cut him in places he didn’t want to think about.

“But you said...Stefan,” she cried, and his brain switched on as he braked for the red light he’d almost blown through. Yeah. Definitely going for a long run as soon as possible.

“I lied,” he said, sounding harsher than he meant to.

This was not the way things were supposed to be. She was supposed to be happy. She was supposed to have missed him. Damn it. Jen was supposed to love him. She’d loved him her whole life. Until that exact moment Stefan hadn’t actually comprehended how much he’d always counted on that. Taken it for granted, even, using the excuse that she was still a kid not to do anything about it. Now that she was old enough, she looked horrified by the idea of even being with him. Never mind that she went up like a roman candle when he touched her—the rest of the time she was guarded, prickly and—fuck him, because this was the worse fucking part, the part that ripped his guts out and danced all over them—she looked sad. Sad! Unhappy. Even frightened. It was killing him.

“Pick one,” he finally snapped, unable to keep the frustration out of his voice. “Now. Or I’ll choose Halloween and you can wear black, that way it’ll look and feel like the funeral you act like it is.”

She looked up at him, her expression stunned. He cursed, wishing he could just rewind to the airport and start completely over with her. Now he was emotionally mauling her.

Then something completely unexpected happened. Something that reminded him of why he wanted that ring on her finger sooner rather than later. She smiled at him. Her beautiful mouth spreading into a wicked grin that was so out of place on her but so very much Jen. His Jen. The Jen he’d let fly away from him six months ago.

“Can we make the bridesmaids and groomsmen dress like zombies?”

Relief washed over him like spring rain. Finally, something felt normal, as a familiar impish light that he hadn’t seen in such a long time flashed in those gorgeous brown eyes. He missed this girl. This beautiful, sweet girl who looked like a storybook princess who should be picking wild flowers and singing to little woodland creatures. But underneath that candy coated exterior, she loved zombie movies, the more gruesome the better.

“Yes,” he agreed, “Lizzie will hate that.”

Horns went off. The light had turned green. His cell phone rang and he watched the little bit of color that had returned to her face drain right out again. She practically threw the cell phone at him and turned towards the window, but not before he saw the light go out of her eyes.

Jen absolutely refused to cry. Her teeth bit down hard on the inside of her lower lip as he answered his phone. Closing her eyes, she rested her head against the cold windshield and tried to picture a black wedding dress. Because black would really be appropriate for their wedding. What had she really expected, after all?

His voice was so warm as he spoke on the phone. Jen wanted to open the door and jump out before he had a chance to slow down. Hitting the pavement and feeling her skin rip off could not possibly hurt as much as sitting next to him, listening to him talk to Madlyn Robicheaux. They had some weekend plans that they needed to reschedule. Familiar bile crawled up the back of Jen’s throat. She swallowed it down but she could do nothing about the jagged pieces of her heart that started to break into even smaller pieces. She wondered how long before it just turned to dust. Sometimes she wished it would just go ahead. She was so tired, it hurt.

A Halloween wedding would be perfect. She closed her eyes and imagined a black wedding dress again with layers and layers of black tulle swirling around her, smothering her. It wasn’t even really black. It was dark gray. It wasn’t even made out of real tulle. It was just billowing smoke. And it was choking her, trailing into her nose lightly, tickling at first before it started streaming down to steal the air from her lungs.

Then Stefan was yelling at her. Calling her name. Shaking her. But she just couldn’t breathe. “Jen, wake up, we’re here.” And she realized he had not been yelling at all.

She sat up, dusting off the familiar nightmare that never failed to call on her when she was the most stressed. She could still taste the smoke and feel it trailing into her nose and crawling down her throat to burn her lungs. The smell and taste left her ice cold and terrified no matter how many times she had the dream. And she had been having it since she could remember. But this was the first time the smoke had come to her as a wedding dress. Appropriate, really. As much as Stefan hurt her these days, it was still nothing compared to the games her own mind liked to play with her.

Her car door opened. The cold, ruthless businessman was back and impatiently waiting for her to get out of the car. His face was hard and his expression impenetrable. This man would never agree to a zombie wedding party. She swallowed down the hysteria threatening to choke her and slid out of the SUV.

Rogan met him in the driveway. “Elliot sent me a steak,” Rogan informed them, and Stefan handed him the to-go bags as they followed Jen inside.

Jen started to go through the kitchen but Rogan snagged her around the waist and pulled her down onto a bar stool. “No, you don’t,” he teased. “Sit down and tell me how much you love this kitchen. You do love your kitchen, don’t you?”

“You know I do,” she admitted, smiling at Rogan the way she should have smiled at him when he first showed her her new kitchen.

Relieved and irritated at the same time, Stefan watched them banter back and forth and found himself relaxing. Jen was smiling and there was color back in her cheeks. Rogan actually got her to eat.

“I special-ordered those ovens, you know. They are huge.”

Jen’s smile doubled in wattage, amping up Stefan’s frustration with it. “They’re amazing. The marble on the island is perfect and I love that you raised up the dishwasher like that.”

Stefan listened as she said all the things to Rogan that he’d wanted to hear her say. He told himself he wasn’t jealous. How could he be jealous of his best friend? His married best friend who definitely considered Jen his little sister. He’d thought Rogan was crazy and going to extremes when he’d designed the kitchen. Now Jen went on and on about how cool it was the pantry light came on when the door opened. And she loved the big copper sink because she could actually get a gumbo pot in it. And she couldn’t decide if the pot filler or the pasta rest was the bigger bomb. Rogan had gone all out and she loved every single detail.

Stefan took a bite of fish and it tasted like ash. He dropped his fork and walked out of the kitchen, leaving them behind laughing and talking. He had a hot date with a punching bag and he didn’t want to be late.

The side door slammed and a minute later the carriage house door closed. “You gonna tell me what happened or do I get to guess?”

Jen shook her head. “I may have screwed up big time.”

“I doubt that.”

“Elliot mentioned the bakery space before I had a chance to say anything to Stefan.”

“Ah,” Rogan said, cutting more steak off and putting it on her plate. “How’d that go?”

Jen dropped her fork, her throat refusing to let anything else pass as a lump formed. “He said no before I had a chance to really explain things. He refused to read my business plan and well, I kinda lost it.”

“And...”

She looked away, looked anywhere else actually. “I told him Jared and I were getting married.”

Rogan’s fork hit the marble counter. “You didn’t really tell him that, Jen. Tell me you didn’t really say that.”

She sipped the water, trying not to choke on it. “I couldn’t help it. He’s been unbearable since he picked me up at the airport.”

“As long as you didn’t tell him you slept with Jared, because if he believes that, you need to call the hippie and tell him to keep his ass in Paris for at least another six months.” Rogan’s green eyes widened in disbelief when she didn’t immediately deny it. “No, Jen. Please tell me you didn’t tell him that. I’m not sure any of this is fixable if you did.”

“No, I let him think it for a second but I... He just dismissed the whole idea without giving it a second thought. And earlier when he saw my dress, he was so rude. You have no idea how much that hurt.”

Rogan laughed then. “Didn’t like your little black dress, did he?”

“No,” Jen snapped, “He basically said I looked cheap.”

“I do not believe that.”

“He thought it,” she insisted.

“I’m pretty sure that’s not what he was thinking.” Rogan laughed again. “How much do you need for the bakery?”

She told him, trying to choke back tears.

“I can loan you the money until you get access to your trust fund. I’ve already looked at the space with Elliot. It’s not going to be that much work to get it ready, and the location is good.”

“I can’t let you do that,” she said.

“I’m not giving you the money. It’ll be a loan with paperwork, interest, just like the bank, but I’ll hold the paper for you. Oh, and free brownies for life.”

She smiled. It was so sweet of him to offer, but she couldn’t let him do that. “Thanks.”

“You aren’t really going to marry the hippie, are you?”

She sat up and pushed away from him. “Maybe. We’ve talked about going to Vegas and getting married so I can get access to my trust. Then we’d go to the Dominican Republic and get a divorce and a tan.”

“You have got to be kidding me.”

“We were joking about it, and you know that’s not what I want.”

Rogan hugged her again. “I do not understand you and Stefan. You want to marry him and he wants to marry you. Why is there a problem?”

“He’s not in love with me,” Jen whispered the words out loud. “You know he’s not.”

“You need to talk to him, kiddo. Really talk.” Rogan’s phone rang and he pulled it out of his pocket. “Speaking of talking, it’s Angie. Gotta take it,” he said, shaking his phone.

Jen nodded, finishing her water as Rogan stepped over to the keeping room to talk to his wife. Jen decided to give him some privacy and because she was a complete idiot, she followed Stefan out to the carriage house. Just to poke the bear some more.

Of course when she opened the door, she nearly choked on air. He was shirtless, hanging upside down in another doorway doing abdominal crunches. More evidence that life wasn’t fair. Her throat went dry, and the rest of her got hot and wet really fast. She leaned against the doorjamb, enjoyed the show of rippling muscles in his legs and abs as she tried not to burst into flames. After an eternity, he paused, dropped down, and opened his eyes.

“Can I help you?” he asked, upside down, the nasty edge back in his voice.