“Why would I? Life’s too short to suffer a shortage of baked goods,” I said with a sniff.
He laughed and drank his sad black coffee. This was good. This long-standing joke about my sweet tooth and his utter lack of sweetness would get us back on the footing I understood.
“How can you drink that stuff black?” I asked. “According to Vanessa, the coffee here is quality stuff, but it all tastes gross to me until I add cream and sugar. I prefer my coffee sweet.”
“I’m plenty sweet on my own.”
Someone must have turned up the thermostat because I broke out in a sweat at those words.
“Who’s this? Does Beau know you’re cheating on him?”
Camille Smith threw me a dirty look before she thrust her ample chest in Jake’s direction. She and Beau had a thing before I moved back, and she’s hated me since he and I got together. She could have him.
“Hello, handsome. You must be new in town. You don’t need this loser. I can show you all the best sights.”
Camille bit her lip on the last word as she ran her eyes up and down his fit body. Her fingers played with the top button of her low-cut shirt as if we were at a nightclub instead of a small-town bakery.
“Camille, leave before you embarrass yourself further,” Jake said in a cold voice I’d never heard. “I wasn’t interested a decade ago, and I’m less interested now.”
The color leached from her face.
“Jacob Brown?”
“Good, you remember. We’re done now.”
Camille fled, and I gaped at him.
“How do youknow Camille? Did you two date or something after I left?”
Don’t make a face if he and Camille had a thing.
He recoiled in horror.
“God, no.” He ran a hand through his hair. “No, she and Katelyn were frenemies. After Katelyn lied about being pregnant, and I broke up with her over it, Camille tried to ‘comfort me.’ When I rejected her, she spread the lie that Katelyn was pregnant. My dad found out, which led to our big fight the night he put me in the hospital.”
“That’s horrible.” I was aghast. “I’m so sorry.”
“It sucked, but things are good now.”
“We’re both back in Sierra Rose Ridge, together again. Plus, I get to rub it in your face that I was right about Katelyn all along.”
That wasn’t what I wanted to say, but too much time had passed, and his eyes had that haunted look again.
He groaned. “How long have you waited to say ‘I told you so’?”
I hadn’t thought that, but I cackled like a wicked queen for his amusement. The heaviness in my heart lifted when his eyes crinkled at the corners the way they did when something pleased him.
“I don’t know,” I teased. “How long has it been since I told you not to date the bitch who terrorized me all through tenth grade? What were you thinking?”
His laughter rang out, and the ovaries of every woman in the place spontaneously burst into song and dance.
“You’re a menace,” he said fondly.
“Hey, you picked me. You have no one to blame but yourself.”
Chapter 9
JAKE
