Page 52 of Cakewalk
Jade stood on the opposite side of the counter and leaned on her elbows, a small smile on her face. “My newborn niece helped sort out Courtney’s priorities.”
“Oh, she had the baby?”
“Yeah, about a week after the town hall meeting. She let me visit her and little Avery in the hospital the day after she was born. So yeah, I’m an aunt now.”
“Congrats.”
“Thanks.” Jade then shrugged. “The worst I’ve gotten from Courtney since is this permanently raised eyebrow. She never really got to give me a full what-for for ‘sleeping with the enemy,’ and now it’s a bit too late to harp on it.”
“Such a shame. Do you think she’d be secretly happy to have a second opportunity?”
Jade smirked and squinted at me. “No, I don’t. Especially with you going on about how you’re going to buy this town next. She just might close the cake shop out of protest.”
Jade turned back to stir the sausage in the pan, and I winced as I asked, “Did I happen to say anything else while I was drunk?”
“You mean like some deep, dark confession?”
“I did, didn’t I?”
Jade sighed and took the pot and pan off the burners. “You said something that I won’t take seriously unless you say it again with a full presence of mind. And we’ll leave it at that.”
I lowered my head into my hands. Of course I said something. And I had to spoil it by saying it while I was drunk. I could just say it now—tell her that I loved her, and how no other woman had entrenched herself into my psyche the way Jade did—but we hadn’t talked in over a month, and she had more pressing matters to deal with. For one, it sounded like she didn’t have a place to stay.
“I’d really like to be your client again,” I said, bringing my head back up. “The next town hall is Friday, and it’s going to be rough if I’m running the show by myself.”
“Yeah, no kidding. Sounds like your strategy is to jog up on stage and announce, ‘I’m buying this town, bitches!’”
I nodded. “See? You can’t let me do this by myself.”
“All right. I’m working for you again. But I’m not going back up on stage. I think I’ve been permanently traumatized by that.”
“Understandable. Just send me the invoice and I’ll pay in advance. Do you have somewhere to stay until then?”
“I’ll crash at my parents’ house, I guess.”
“You can live here. No funny business. Just roommates. And game-planning. We’ll hunker down and make this next town hall meeting one for the history books.”
Jade laughed. “I don’t think they’re writing any history books about Calhoon.”
I looked at Jade with a determined glint in my eyes. “They will once we’re done.”
She raised her hands up in defeat. “All right. But really, no funny business. I need to know you’re here to stay.”
“After Friday, you will.”
Jade held eye contact with me for a few more moments, as if evaluating my sincerity, then she relented and grabbed the pot, emptying it into a strainer she had set up in the sink. “I hope you like sweet Italian sausages with pasta, because I’m not much of a chef beyond that.”
“You’re more than enough for me.”
She rolled her eyes playfully then plated our dinner, but all I wanted to do was rip her clothes off and make her mine. How I kept ending up in this situation where she was in close quarters with me, yet I couldn’t have her, I didn’t know. But I knew one thing: she was worth waiting for.
Chapter 20
Jade
Griffinand I had fallen back into our old groove, minus any sort of touching. It was a special kind of torture being in the same apartment with him, closely working together, all the while acting like I didn’t want to wrap myself around him.
I had tempered down his original plan to announce that he was having this town one way or another, either now or after its bankruptcy, which was apparently only a year away at the rate things were going.
