Page 36 of Holly Jolly Cake Fight
Laurin jolted up to his feet, needing to do something but not having a better option than to pace. After giving her words enough time to sink in, to make sure he was going to react appropriately, he exploded. “Why would they air that? Why would they make it look like you were fooling around with him?”
“I didn’t tell anyone what really happened.”
“Dammit, Candace!”
She squeaked out a harsh sob.
He bolted back to her and pulled her into his arms roughly, needing to hold her, contain her, show her that he was here for her however he could and his anger wasn’t at her but for her.
She struggled free, pushing him hard enough he was worried she’d hurt herself if he kept his grip on her. “Don’t touch me!” she screeched.
“God, I’m sorry,” Laurin gasped, realizing how that must have looked after such a confession. “I wasn’t trying to—”
She snapped back to the puzzle. “I didn’t think you were. But I can’t . . . don’t touch me right now or I’ll break.”
He scrubbed at his face, clearing away the residual feeling of holding her, of how right it felt to keep her pieces together when she was shattering. It was hard to accept that she preferred gravity to hold her together. He’d had enough of his own cake disasters in his bakery to know that distance didn’t keep leaning cakes upright. They had to be repaired and supported.
He'd let her have that distance for now, but the more she spoke, the more she showed him who she was, the more he prepared himself to be the one to put her back together.
“I get it,” he said, even though he knew she was wrong. “But why the hell didn’t you say something?”
“Do you know how difficult it is to prove something like that? How slim the chances are that it would have worked out for me? Everyone calling me . . . what they call me, do you think they would have believed me? And what the network showed, that was all the footage, nothing leading up to it. Even if they believed me, I would have been a liability at that point. They would have settled, and I would never have been invited back. Yeah, I would have gotten money, but it wouldn’t have been enough. I’d just lost the bakery. I needed this if I was ever going to rebuild. And . . . it would have gotten out. People would know why I was no longer on the show. And you know Lucas is such a nice guy.With the short skirts I wear, I was practically begging for it,” she said bitterly.
As awful as it was, Laurin knew Candace was right about how difficult it would have been for her to prove that she’d been harassed. It was a disgusting truth about the world that Laurin loathed. It wasn’t fair that this could happen to her, and the only way she could make the money to get her life back was to hide it, but he knew she had at least one option. “Oh, but your family—”
The squeak of the front door silenced him. He was confused for a second, only to remember why they were here when it was too late. “Goddammit, not now!” he bellowed as the lens of the camera appeared around the corner.
“Just getting some dailies,” the cameraman said. “Keep going and pretend I’m not—”
“I said not now! Candace doesn’t need—!”
But it was too late. Candace had already dashed to her room.
Chapter 14
Candace shouldn’t havecome back. She should have declined when she’d gotten the invitation. She could have even gone online and filled out a form removing herself from the return roster.
There was a part of her, thefierce, independent woman who wasn’t going to be held down by any manpart of her, that thought what she should have done was report the incident and cross her fingers for that cash settlement. The part of her who was aware of the world and the likely outcome, the politicizing and the victim-shaming, did not regret her decision to stay quiet.
Not that it mattered. She’d remained silent for months, but it hadn’t taken anything but kind eyes and a warm voice, a couple cups of coffee he’d somehow known exactly how she took, to get her to blubber.
Had the cameraman caught any of that? The cabin walls weren’t particularly insulated, and the windows were old. Was he able to hear it all outside?
She wished she were the sort of person to complete tasks angrily and with great flourish, but the first sweater she attempted to rip from its hanger got caught, stretching the shoulder all to hell before the hanger snapped entirely at the neck. She stumbled back against the bed, barely saved herself from busting ass on the warped wood floor, cursed the damaged garment, and then folded it neatly.
She was done being a tool of the network, she knew that much. They weren’t going to wring any more tears from her eyes today or ever again. She took each sweater off its hanger, folded it, tucked it into her suitcase, and decided a simple form on the Food2Love website wasn’t enough. She opened the clips of her skirt hangers individually and vowed to write a strongly worded letter. She unzipped her garment bag to ease her dresses in and assessed whether that bag would be sufficient to cover her face from any more prying cameras.
She was folding her stockings the way her great-aunt had taught her to preserve them best when she stilled at the knock on her door.
“Candace?” Laurin called after sufficient time had passed for her to respond. “Can we talk?”
“I’m not going out there!” she shouted, giving up on her stockings in favor of pulling out her shoe bin to arrange them to all fit.
“I’m not asking you to. Can I open your door, though? Just so I’m not yelling—”
“So you can shove a camera in my face?”
“I ran him off. It’s just me.”
