The lunch rush was over, the bakery quiet as people took advantage of the glorious weather to hang out at the beach. Thalia worked the front of the shop. Jane was in the kitchen, putting the finishing touches on a duplicate of Kate and Luke’s wedding cake for the display case.
Lauren flushed and finished reloading the tray of pastries for the front. “Why?”Red-rimmed eyes? Puffy face?
Jane tilted her head. “Maybe the way you’re binge-eating chocolate chip cookies?”
Busted. Lauren smiled weakly. “It was that or self-medicate with ice cream out of the carton.”
And she thought of Jack, smiling at her with that dark glint in his eyes.Guess you don’t worry about stereotypes, either.
“I’m sorry.” Jane rolled softened gum paste between her hands before pressing it into a shell mold. “I wondered when he didn’t come in the past two days.”
“We’re sort of... taking a break,” Lauren confessed. “We’re not fighting, though.”
You couldn’t fight with somebody who didn’t call.
“So it’s not...” Jane broke off, focused on teasing the shell out of its mold with an X-Acto knife.
“What?”
Jane bit her lip. “It’s gossip. It’s nothing.”
“Which only motivates me to badger you until you crack.”
“Well...” Jane brushed the back of the shell with water. “Jack’s wife was in Slice of Heaven last night.”
The pizza place. “So?” There were lots of reasons Renee might have stuck around the island, Lauren told herself. Like... Like...
“She said she was picking up dinner for Jack.” Jane focused on her delicate task as if she was afraid of making a mistake. Or wanted to avoid witnessing Lauren’s pain. “And George Evans says somebody saw her leaving Jack’s boat last night.”
That jabbed, right at the heart.
Lauren ignored the pain, took a breath. Because she trusted Jack. She did. She believed in him, in the kind of man he was, even if at the moment he didn’t have much faith in her. “Hisex-wife,” she muttered.
Jane slid her a cautious look. “Okay.”
“Anyway, she’s not the problem.”
Jack was. The dummy.
“Exes are always a problem,” Jane said.
Something in her tone pricked through Lauren’s bubble of misery. “Jane? What’s wrong?”
Jane pressed the paste shell gently to the fondant-covered model without answering.
“Is it Travis? Have you heard from him?”
Jane stepped back to assess the cake decorations, her face pale and stiff as a china doll’s. “He didn’t go to Florida.”
“Oh, Jane. Is there anything I can do?”
“Like what?”
Good question. “You should talk to Jack.”
“What can he do? It’s not like Travis threatened me. At least...”
“Has he tried to contact Aidan?”
