The Bakery Sisters (67 page)

This was who she really was. All the other guys who hadn't mattered. All the times she'd used her body to hurt Nicole or to feel as if she belonged. She'd been little more than a whore and it was too late to change.

But the second Drew touched her breast, she came to her senses. She pushed his hands away.

“Stop,” she told him. “You have to stop.”

“What?” Drew said. “You've been practically begging for this for months.”

She was just about to give him a firm shove when her bedroom door flew open.

Drew jumped up at once, leaving Jesse bare to the waist, staring into the horrified face of her sister.

“It wasn't me,” Drew yelled. “It was her. She's been coming on to me for weeks, touching me, kissing me, begging me to take her. I couldn't stand it any more. I'm sorry, honey. I'm so sorry.”

Jesse lay there exposed, trembling, ashamed. She pulled up the sheet to cover herself. “It wasn't like that,” she whispered. “I never did that.”

But it was too late. Her sister was gone and everything had changed forever.

 

J
ESSE STOOD ON THE
doorstep of Matt's town house for a long time. She stared at the door, remembering how she'd first come here with him when he'd been looking for a place of his own. They'd been so happy then. So in love.

Not anymore. Not since he'd found out about that night with Drew.

Jesse didn't want to think about what had happened. How Nicole had thrown her out. She'd been so afraid, so ashamed, but Nicole hadn't wanted to listen to the truth and Drew had been plenty convincing.

That had been bad enough, but then Paula had gone looking for her again and had found Nicole instead. Her sister had been pleased to explain exactly why Jesse wasn't living there anymore, and Paula hadn't wasted any time in telling Matt.

Jesse had tried to get to him first, but he wasn't taking her calls. She'd waited for him at his work, but he'd managed to avoid her.

Her whole body hurt. She couldn't stop crying. How was it possible for one person to lose everything so fast? And yet she had.

She rang the bell and waited. She was here because she had something important to tell him. Something he would have to believe. Her stomach writhed from nerves and fear. She fought back tears. He
had
to listen to her. Somehow she would make him understand.

The door opened and Matt stood in front of her. She stared at him, feasting on seeing him for the first time in days.

He looked good. Tall and thin, but filling out from their regular visits to the gym. She'd been the one to introduce him to the idea of working out to build muscle and then he'd taken her to bed and rewarded her for her good ideas. He was very good at rewarding her, and telling her he loved her. He got this light in his eyes and what she called his special smile. Only he wasn't smiling now.

“I have nothing to say to you,” he told her and started to close the door.

She threw herself against it and managed to squeeze inside. “We have to talk.”

“You may have to talk but I don't have to listen.”

God, he sounded so cold, she thought grimly. As if he hated her. Was that possible? Had hate replaced love this quickly?

She couldn't think about it because, if she did, she would fall apart. He was everything to her. She loved him. She who had vowed to never risk her heart had fallen for a geeky computer nerd with beautiful eyes and a smile that made her soul float.

“Matt, please,” she whispered. “Please. Just hear me out. I love you.”

His gaze narrowed. “Do you think your words mean anything to me? Do you think
you
do? I learn fast, Jesse. I always have. I trusted you. I gave you every part of me. I loved you. Hell, I wanted to marry you. I bought a ring. Which makes me an idiot, but it's not a mistake I'm going to make again.”

She felt the tears on her cheeks and the slicing pain in her heart. “I love you, Matt.”

“Bullshit. I was some fun project. Did you get a kick out of screwing the socially inept genius? Did you laugh about me with your friends?”

“It wasn't like that and you know it.”

“I don't know shit about you. This was a game. You won, I lost, now get the hell away from me.”

“No. I won't go until you listen. Until you understand.”

“Understand what? That while you were sleeping with me, pretending to care about me, you were screwing Drew? Who else, Jess? How many other guys? I'm not asking for a total number. I doubt you can count that high. But, say, in the past two months. Less than a hundred? Less than twenty? Just give me a ballpark idea.”

She cried harder, hating his words and the distance she saw in his eyes. “Stop. I'm not like that anymore.”

“That's not what I heard.”

“I didn't sleep with Drew,” she screamed. “We used to talk. I could talk to him about stuff the way I could never talk to Nicole. That was it. Then that night he started kissing me and I freaked. I didn't know what to do.”

“I'm not interested,” Matt told her. “There's nothing you can say to make me care. Once a slut, always a slut. Everyone was right about you.”

He was using her past against her, she thought in disbelief. She'd trusted him with her secrets, her shameful moments and now he was judging her.

“Matt, stop,” she said, her voice breaking on a sob. “Don't do this. Don't take us to a place where we can't get back.”

“Why not? You think you matter to me anymore? Just get out. I never want to see you again.”

It hurt too much, she thought, using all her strength to keep from sinking to the floor. She had to tell him. He had the right to know the truth, no matter what.

“I'm pregnant,” she whispered.

“So what?”

She stared at him. What? He couldn't have understood her. “I told you. I didn't sleep with Drew. I'm having your baby.”

“No, you're not.” He spoke casually, as if he would never consider the possibility that the child might be his.

She grabbed his arm. “Matt, listen to me. This is
your
baby. Even if you hate me, you have to care about your child. I'm not lying. I can prove it. As soon as the baby's born, we'll take a DNA test.”

He looked at her for a long time, then pulled free of her grip and walked to the door. “You don't get it, do you? I don't care, Jess. You're nothing to me but a regret. I don't believe that baby is mine and even if it is, I don't want a child with you. I don't want anything with you. Ever. I want you to go away. I never want to see you again. No matter what.”

What scared her the most was how calmly he spoke. How easily he mouthed the words that ripped her soul apart.

She looked down, half expecting to see her body torn open and bleeding, but all the pain was on the inside.

“Matt, please,” she begged.

He pulled open the door and stared outside. “Just go.”

Walking took all her strength. Jesse barely made it down the stairs to her car. She crawled into the front seat and cried until she couldn't breathe anymore. Until the emptiness threatened to swallow her. Until there was nothing left.

If he'd loved her, he would have believed her, she thought sadly, facing the truth for the first time. He hadn't loved her. They had just been words. All her dreams had meant nothing. All his promises had been meaningless. He'd sworn her past didn't matter, that no matter what, he would be there for her. And he'd lied, leaving her with an emptiness that would haunt her for the rest of her life.

Present Day…

J
ESSE TRIED TO SHAKE OFF
Matt's obvious anger and hurt. The fact that Gabe had grown up with other people in his life had nothing to do with Matt being his father. Once Matt calmed down he would realize that having a great guy like Bill around had only been good for the boy.

While she could make a case for that, the guilt was harder to explain away, so she did her best to ignore it for the moment.

Paula came out of the kitchen. “I thought I heard you,” she said, then stopped when she saw Bill. “Oh. Hello.”

“Paula, this is Bill. He rescued me when I showed up in Spokane five years ago. He gave me a job, found me a place to live and was my friend as I tried to figure out how to be a mother to Gabe. Bill, this is Gabe's grandmother, Paula.”

“Nice to meet you,” Bill said, a twinkle in his eye. “Are you sure you're that boy's grandmother? I could see his aunt.”

Jesse stared at her friend. Was he flirting? It sounded like flirting, but it was behavior she'd never seen before.

Paula laughed. “Don't expect me to fall for that line, Bill. I'm past sixty.”

“You don't look it.” Bill turned to Gabe. “And look at you. You've grown. I barely recognized you.”

Gabe giggled in delight. Bill picked him up and swung him in the air. Gabe squealed.

When Bill set Gabe down, he launched into an explanation of everything he'd done since arriving in Seattle.

“I met my daddy and he took me to see fish,” Gabe said, gazing at Bill happily. “And Grandma and me made cookies a bunch of times. We go to the park every morning and there are puppies sometimes.”

Bill crouched down so he was eye-level with the boy and listened attentively.

“I'm doin' math,” Gabe continued. “Grandma's teaching me and she says I'm good at math, just like my daddy.” He beamed with pride.

“I knew you were special,” Bill told him and held him close. “I've missed you, Gabe.”

Gabe hugged him back, squeezing hard. “I missed you, too.”

Gabe took Bill off to see his room. Paula and Jesse went into the kitchen.

“I wondered how you made it by yourself in Spokane,” Paula said as she started a pot of coffee. “Now I know. You had friends.”

“Bill was great,” Jesse admitted. “Father, boss and someone to talk to all in one. I was so lucky to find him.” She eyed Paula, who was a pretty woman with a giving heart. “You know, he's a widower. Has been for a while now.”

Paula flushed slightly. “I don't see why that would be of interest to me. He's obviously crazy about you.”

If Jesse had been drinking, she would have choked. “He's about forty years older than me.”

“So?”

“I do love Bill, but like family.” How could she have ever gotten interested in someone else when she'd been unable to get over Matt? “Besides, when we met, he made it clear I wasn't his type, so even if I'd had any ideas, nothing would have happened.”

“It doesn't really matter,” Paula murmured as she got out mugs and set them on the counter.

But Jesse wasn't so sure. Maybe it mattered a little.

An hour later she and Bill sat outside on the porch.

“I've been worried about you,” Bill said. “Missing you, too. Both of you. That little boy grows on a man.”

“I know. We've been thinking of you, as well.”

“But you're doing okay?”

She smiled at him. “What you really want to know is if you were right to kick me out when you did. That's all you care about, but you're too polite to ask.”

“You'll tell me,” he said confidently.

She laughed. “Yes, I will and you were right.”

“You were only living half a life, Jess. Hanging out with me and my friends. Not that we didn't appreciate your pretty face or the joy that boy brought to us, but you were hiding.”

“I know.” She rested her forearms on her thighs. “It's been good to be back, but hard. My sister hasn't accepted that I've changed. I think she believes me about Drew, but she's still angry.”

She didn't have to explain about her past. Bill knew all her secrets.

“You've had five years to watch yourself change and grow and plenty of time to know you were coming back. Nicole got all this sprung on her. She has to adjust.”

“I know that in my head. It's getting the rest of me to believe it that's taking some time. Besides, I think she secretly wants to be mad at me.”

“She had a certain place in your family. Everyone has a role. You've changed yours. She's going to fight that.”

Jesse had never considered that. Were family dynamics the real problem?

“If I'm different, then the balance of power, the rules, everything changes?” she asked, more to herself than him.

Bill, being Bill, didn't answer.

She was going to have to think about that some more.

“So Gabe's met his father,” her friend said. “How did that go?”

“Not well. Matt's coming into his own with Gabe now, but the first couple of meetings were difficult. He didn't know how to relate to a four-year-old. Not that he's had a lot of experience.” She hesitated. “We were fighting when you drove up.”

“I noticed.”

“He blames me for not knowing Gabe.” She stared at the steps. “He says that telling him I was pregnant before I left wasn't enough. That I knew he wouldn't believe me. That I should have told him later, after Gabe was born. I should have given him a chance to be a father.”

She didn't like talking about it. She felt awful inside, like she was a bad person. Like she'd been deliberately evil.

“It wasn't like that,” she whispered. “I wanted him to care enough to believe me. I wanted him to come after me.”

“Did you know he didn't believe you about the baby?”

She nodded. “What he said was so horrible.” Once a slut, always a slut. Those words were burned into her brain.

“How would you feel if he'd kept Gabe from you?” Bill asked quietly.

Jesse felt pain rip through her body and had her answer. “Oh, God.” To not have held him when he was born. To not have watched him grow. His first smile, his first step, the love in his eyes. The absolute trust. Thousands of perfect memories that would be with her always.

“He'll never forgive me,” she whispered. “Why would he?”

Bill put his arm around her. “He's angry now, but he'll get over it.”

“You don't know that.”

“A man doesn't have that much emotion in himself without still caring.”

“I don't know what he thinks about me,” she admitted, letting herself lean on him again. Something she was going to have to stop doing. “Sometimes I think he really likes being with me and other times—” she sighed “—he's so different.”

“You were gone a long time.”

“I know. The Matt I knew loved me. At least I thought he did. That's what's confusing. I believed him when he said how important I was, how he would never leave. But the first time something went wrong, he turned his back on me.”

“It was a big thing to go wrong.”

She nodded. “I probably played into his worst fears. That it was just a game to me. That I didn't care about him at all.”

“He reacted,” Bill said. “If you'd stayed around, talked again, maybe things would have been different.”

Would they? Jesse wasn't sure. “I couldn't have stayed. I would only ever have been Nicole's screwup little sister. The useless girl who fell in love with a great guy. I needed to walk away to find out who I was.”

She smiled. “That sounds so ‘other dimension.' I should probably start chanting.”

Bill chuckled.

“There's so much going on,” she said. “The bakery burned down.”

She told him about that and how they'd started up the business in a rented kitchen. “Nicole is hating the success. I know she is.”

“You're only responsible for yourself, Jess. And that's the only person you can control. Other people will either get it or they won't but you can't define yourself by their opinions.”

“You're just so rational. Have I mentioned that's annoying?”

“Once or twice.”

She turned toward him. “I wouldn't have made it without you.”

“You would have done just fine.”

She knew that wasn't true, but why worry about it? She'd met Bill and she'd thrived. She glanced at the house.

“Paula is nice,” she said. “An unexpected supporter. And pretty.”

Bill looked at her. “What's your point, missy?”

“That you've been living alone long enough. Maybe it's time to consider the possibilities.”

She'd teased Bill about other women before and he'd always politely dismissed her. This time he followed her gaze to the house and nodded slowly.

“Maybe it is.”

 

H
EATH TOSSED A FOLDER
onto Matt's desk. “You'll want to look them over, make sure we're doing everything you want,” he said.

Matt waved him into a seat, then opened the folder and flipped through the papers. Despite the legal language, the intent was clear. He was suing Jesse for full custody of his son.

“I'll study them tonight,” he said.

Heath frowned. “You sure about this, Matt? I understand wanting Jesse punished, but taking the kid? That's a big responsibility.”

Matt knew his lawyer meant well. If their circumstances were reversed, Heath would do all he could to avoid having a child in his life. When Matt had first started down this road, he'd only been out for revenge. Now he wanted more.

The good side of him wanted to make sure he had a relationship with his son. He wanted to get to know him, watch him grow, be there for him. But the dark side of him, the side that still raged against all he had lost, wanted Jesse to feel what he felt. He wanted her to know the bone-crushing sense of having lost something that could never be recovered.

“I can handle Gabe,” he said.

“Okay. If she's not going to just hand him over, you're looking at a long court battle.”

“She'll fight.”

She would take him on and do everything she could to keep Gabe, but in the end he would win. He had the resources and he wanted revenge.

“I'll get these back to you by the end of the week,” he said, touching the folder.

“That works. When do you want me to have her served?”

The first step in the battle. “I'll let you know.”

 

O
RDERS CAME IN AT
an insane rate.
Good Morning America
had decided to go ahead with the story, despite the fire, changing the focus from how a small local business grows and changes with the times to how a small business can survive disaster. They'd turned it into a series, of which Keyes Bakery was just a small part, but those few minutes of airtime had tripled their already impressive Internet orders.

Jesse walked through the controlled chaos of the rented kitchen. At least here she could bury herself in work and forget the insanity that was her personal life. She'd come back to Seattle with a plan. While things hadn't worked out the way she'd thought they would, they'd still worked out for the better. She was getting the opportunity to show that her ideas were well-considered and successful. The fire, caused by a short in an aging electrical system, had given her an unexpected chance to shine.

She walked into the front of the restaurant, where all the shipping took place and where she and Nicole each had a desk with a computer. In the corner, two college girls answered the ever-ringing phone as people called in yet more orders. They had more business than they could handle. It was the best feeling in the world.

She crossed to Nicole's desk and pulled up a chair. “I talked to Ralph yesterday.”

Nicole looked confused. “Who's Ralph?”

“The guy who owns the sandwich shop across the street.”

Nicole's face immediately scrunched up. “Jesse, honestly, you're looking for ways to complicate our lives. We're a little busy now, but things will calm down. We're fine.”

Jesse felt the familiar frustration building inside of her. “We're not fine. We're late on more than fifty percent of our Internet orders because we can't keep up with volume. We're drowning in potential success and if we're not careful, we're going to go under. Ralph bakes his own bread. He has specialty ovens that would be perfect for the brownies. We could bake eight triple batches at a time. He's willing to rent the space to us from eleven at night until eight in the morning. That's plenty of time to get out all the brownies we'll need, freeing up the ovens here for the cakes.”