Striding purposefully along Main Street, I push past the few townspeople I encounter without even a hint of a hello. I’m back in front of my cottage within minutes, though it isn’t my front gate I push open. I pound on Ben’s door, not stopping until he flings it open, exasperation on his face.
He tries to school his features, but I catch the hint of fear when he sees me.
“Would you like to tell me what the hell you’re thinking?” I demand, pushing past him into his living room.
Ben closes the door with a sigh, leaning up against it,leaving a couple of feet of space in between us. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I yank Noah’s letter out of my back pocket. “Like fuck you don’t. It’s not bad enough that I could possibly lose the one job that I don’t totally suck at, you also have to set me up with the man willing to destroy my one and only friend?”
That last bit affects him, even though he tries to hide it. “I can’t have this conversation with you, Cam.”
I hate when he calls me by my actual name. “Why not? Because you don’t want to admit you were never really my friend in the first place? That you’re only hanging out with me because if I fail at my tasks, it means you’re stuck here too?”
He doesn’t seem surprised by my reveal, and I wonder if he knows that I overheard his and Mimi’s conversation. “That’s not true. I am your friend, and I genuinely want to help you.” He takes a cautious step forward. “Yes, my task, my way out of here is to help you complete yours, but that doesn’t mean I’m not your true friend.”
I take my own step closer to him. “Then why are you setting me up with a douchebag like Noah Crenshaw?”
His brown eyes meet mine and it doesn’t take a full minute of silence for me to understand the message they’re trying to impart. Noah Crenshaw might be a douchebag, but he and I have a lot in common. On paper, it makes perfect sense why the two of us would be matched together.
“I’m not going to let him close the bakery, you know.”
Ben shoves his hands in the front pockets of his jeans. “Good. I hope you find a way to save it. Life without Emma’s cinnamon rolls would be a sad one.”
“And it’s going to be very difficult to fall in love with the man who is my opposition.”
“We’ll see.”
“You think I’m just like him, don’t you?” I ask the question softly, half-hoping he won’t hear me.
His response is just as quiet. “I think there’s no one else quite like you, sweetheart.”
I suck in a breath, hoping the hit of oxygen will steady my racing heart. I brush past him on the way to the door, our fingers skimming in the merest of contact and yet it sends a shiver up my spine. I pause at the door. “Do you really want me to fall in love with him, Ben?”
It takes him a minute to consider. “I just want you to be happy.”
“Sure you do.” I force myself to open the door and march down his front steps before I do something stupid like throw myself in his arms and kiss him. Because that would be a really dumb thing to do. And it’s not something I even really want to do, of course; the emotions of the situation are just messing with my head.
Besides, the last thing Ben would want is to kiss someone like me. In his eyes, I’m an unfeeling corporate monster with no friends and no one to love me. Who could ever, when I seem to be entirely unlovable.
The thought of Ben finding me unlovable hurts more than I’d like to admit.
And so I curl up on the couch, determined to find a way to move forward. I need to save the bakery. I need to find my place in this community. And apparently, I need to fall in love with Noah Crenshaw.
If that’s what it’s going to take to get me home, then that’s what I’m going to have to do.
15
“I need to see your lease,” I say to Emma the moment I walk into the bakery the next morning. My determination to save the bakery and fall in love only intensified the more and more I thought on it last night. My desire to go home and put this whole experience behind me only intensified the more and more I thought about Ben last night. And so today, I’m putting my plan into action.
I spend the morning hours poring over every piece of paperwork Emma is able to dig up. Normally my associates and interns are tasked with highlighting and flagging and underlining, but today I do it all for myself, searching for the one clause that could possibly save this bakery from extinction.
Of course, the easiest way to save the bakery would be for Emma to buy the building herself, but one look at the business’s finances and I know that’s not happening.
My hours of searching bring me little hope. The lease—which Emma informed me she signed without consulting a lawyer of her own—seems to be entirely weighted in the owner’s favor. We had a nice, calm discussion aboutsigning things without understanding them and without legal representation and I’m fairly certain she’ll never make that mistake again.
It does leave me scrambling, but I didn’t make partner at thirty-four by staying down after a couple of solid punches. This fight is nowhere near knockout level just yet and by the end of the first fruitless day, I’m only more determined to find a way to win.
When I arrive back at my cottage after work, I don’t even spare a glance in Ben’s direction, even though I can feel his presence, sitting on the porch. He wants me to put all my focus and attention on completing my tasks and getting us both home, then that’s what I’ll do. No more fake friendship required.
