Chapter 12
Twelve
“Welcome back, man.” Jonah pulled Brax into a back-thumping hug.
“Good to be back. Everything go okay while we were gone?”
Holt scratched behind his ear. “More or less.”
Brax sobered, his gaze bouncing between the two of them. “What happened?”
Cayla waded into the fray. “It’ll keep for a bit. Let’s get the dogs outside and get the food going.” With her special brand of mom-wrangling, she managed to herd her six-year-old, their mutt, Banana Bread, and Mia and Brax’s pit bull, Leno, out the back door.
Mia closed her eyes. “Just tell me whether I have more stuff to repair.”
Jonah swung an arm around her shoulders and squeezed. “Nope. The bakery is fine.”
“Okay, then somebody get me some alcohol. I have a feeling I’m gonna need some for this discussion.”
“Way ahead of you, girl. I made margaritas.” Rachel dragged her into Cayla and Holt’s kitchen.
“C’mon.” Holt jerked his head toward the back door. “I’ve got the grill fired up and the kebabs ready to go on.”
They collectively migrated out to the back patio. Jonah lit the tiki torches lining the perimeter to ward off mosquitos. Maddie’s shrieks of laugher echoed off the fence as she raced around with the dogs. He couldn’t tell who was chasing who, but they seemed to be having a hell of a good time. As the women spilled out of the house, Holt began laying skewers of meat and vegetables across the grill.
Brax snagged beers from the cooler. Passing one to each of them, he twisted off the top and sipped. “On a scale of mildly problematic to completely FUBAR, what are we looking at here?”
“I’d say we’re sitting at a SNAFU,” Holt decided.
Jonah scowled. “A concussion isn’t normal.”
“Who got a concussion?” Brax demanded.
“I did.” Rachel crossed the patio to slip an arm around Jonah’s waist. “Stop growling. I’m fine.”
Brax went brows-up. “I thought you said everything at the bakery was okay?”
“It is. I apparently interrupted the latest attempt at a break-in.”
“Oh my God! Are you okay?” Mia took two steps forward, as if she needed to check Rachel over herself.
“I’m really okay. Jonah took good care of me. No lingering effects from the concussion.”
“Why the—” Brax shot a glance out at Maddie in the yard and lowered his voice. “—H-E double hockey sticks—didn’t you let me know?”
Holt opened his own beer. “Dude, you were on a very delayed honeymoon. We weren’t going to do anything to interrupt that. The business was fine, and we’ve been handling everything else.”
Mia took a hefty swallow of her margarita. “Okay, maybe you could start at the beginning?”
Jonah took a breath. “Okay, the short version is that we’re a whole lot more sure that Holt’s theory from back in the spring that none of this had anything to do with Mia is almost certainly correct. And I’m pretty sure that it was because of something my father was involved in that’s spilled over onto all of us, because I’m the one who inherited all of his property and the bar.”
Brax slid an arm around his wife. “How do we know this?”
Jonah laid the whole thing out for them.
At the end, Brax pinched his nose. “So, where are we now?”
Holt interrupted. “Five minutes on food.”
“Well, my dad apparently had a secret bank account in Johnson City. I’m not actually sure if it was legitimately secret or if his record keeping was just that bad, but it’s got over two hundred grand sitting in it.”
“Two hundred grand?” Brax whistled. “If your dad was sitting on that kind of cash, why was the bar in such lousy shape?”
“There’s a question. One of many. I’ve done some digging, got copies of all his bank statements for the year before his death. Rachel and I spent last night going through them and trying to reverse engineer the books for the business to see if we can determine what was actually going on.” And yet again, they hadn’t talked about what came next with them.
Rachel picked up the thread. “Most of it is exactly as you’d expect. Vendors related to running a bar. Regular bills. Some medical expenses. That kind of thing. The weird part is that all the deposits in this account came from Percipience Unlimited.”
“What’s that?” Cayla asked.
Jonah crossed his arms. “We don’t know. I used my GoogleFu to try to dig something up online, but I didn’t find jack, which seemed odd. There’s no reason I can find that my dad should’ve been receiving regular payments—no pay stubs or invoices or anything in his stuff.”
“Were the deposits always the same amount?” Holt asked.
“They varied,” Rachel said. “And they didn’t keep to any particular schedule either, so far as we could tell.”
Holt pulled the kebabs off the grill and onto a waiting tray. “So, let’s call Cash and see what he can dig up.”
“Who’s Cash?” Rachel wanted to know.
“Good friend of mine. Former Army intelligence. He’s into cybersecurity now, and he’s one hell of a hacker.” Tenting some foil over the kebabs, he pulled out his phone and dialed, putting the call on speaker.
It rang three times before someone picked up. “Yeah?”
“Hello to you, too.”
“Hey man. Hang on a second.” There were clear sounds of a hand being placed over the receiver, followed by a low murmur, then evidence of Cash changing locations. “Okay, sorry about that.”
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah, I’m just in the middle of something. What can I do for you?”
“We need you to dig up whatever you can find on Percipience Unlimited. Jonah’s dad was getting payments from them, and we’re trying to figure out who they are and what they’re about. Jonah wasn’t able to find anything about them online.”
“You thinking shell company?” Cash asked.
Jonah stepped closer to the phone. “Maybe. Seems like a convenient way to hide things. We’d appreciate it if you could work your magic.”
“Sure, I can do that. It might be a couple of days. I’ve got some other things going I can’t walk away from at the moment.”
“Of course. Appreciate it, man,” Holt told him. “And hey, you need to find time to come out for a visit. I want you to meet Cayla and Maddie.”
“Love to. I’ll be in touch.”
As Holt ended the call, Jonah felt a vague sense of relief. Like maybe they were actually starting to set things in motion. “Guess now we wait.”
“Now, we eat,” Cayla announced.
Hands were washed, the outdoor table was set. Soon they were seated and passing the bowls of fresh-cut watermelon and the tomato corn salad to go with the kebabs. Conversation turned to Brax and Mia’s trip across Europe, and Jonah relaxed a little further. All his people were home and safe, exactly as he wanted them.
“So, now that Mia’s home, I demand a girls’ night. Rachel, you are required to be in attendance,” Cayla declared.
Jonah stiffened. Would she even be here for a girls’ night?
“Of course, I’d be happy to.”
She would?
As if sensing his question, Rachel looked up at him. “I wasn’t planning to go back to Syracuse immediately. I’m here for at least another week. If that’s okay with you.”
“Yeah, of course. Stay as long as you like.” Stay forever.
Except that wasn’t an option. And he had to find a way to get okay with that.
Rachel set down her bag of groceries on one of the makeshift plywood and sawhorse counters in what would eventually be the kitchen of Mia’s new house. She’d gutted the original monstrosity, taking it down to the studs.
“Okay, I know we were all technically here for your reception, but I didn’t actually get to see the house. Will you give a quick tour?”
Mia brightened. “Love to.”
Cayla lifted a bottle. “But let’s open the wine first.” She pulled the cork and poured them each half a Solo cup of pinot noir.
Rachel lifted the cup to sip. “I’m having flashbacks to college. Although this is a much better vintage than anything I had back then.”
“It is a mark of adulthood that we’ve graduated from crappy wine coolers.” Cayla lifted her cup for a toast.
Leaving the provisions for their girls’ night in the makeshift kitchen, they followed Mia through the house.
“The bedrooms are done. They were pretty straightforward. Mostly new paint and crown molding. We replaced the fixtures in all the bathrooms and put in new tile. And I found this fantastic old clawfoot tub that I had refinished for the master.”
They ooed and ahed over the tub, and even more over the view out the picture window above it. Rachel trailed the two women, soaking in the house. It was a good space. Like the bakery, she hadn’t seen the starting point, but she’d heard stories. As they moved through from room to room, Mia explained what she’d started with and all the changes she’d made.
Returning down to the first floor, they entered the living room.
“This is my current pride and joy.” Mia paused in front of a massive river rock fireplace that stretched from the floor to the top of the vaulted ceiling. “I found this gorgeous slab of live edge cherry for the mantle. It was a tricky as hell installation, but the end result is exactly what I wanted.” She ran a hand over the mantle in much the same way Rachel had seen her touch Brax. With love.
“And these. These make the space.” Mia crossed over to unlatch several doors. With a few strategic shoves and pulls, she opened the newly installed accordion doors to the expanse of deck outside where their reception had been held.
“It made for a hell of a party.” Rachel strode out to the deck, wandering over to the corner where she’d kissed Jonah what felt like months ago.
Cayla wandered out to join her. “Do you think y’all will be in by Christmas?”
“We’re basically down to the kitchen, so unless something goes horribly wrong or we have supplies on back order, then yeah.” Mia knocked on the nearest piece of wood, the deck railing.
“There’s so much room here.” Rachel turned to take in the sprawl of the house that seemed to have grown out of the mountain. “What are you two going to do with all the space?”
“Well, that’s a thing.” Mia took a hefty swig of wine. “Brax and I are working on getting approved as foster parents. We want to adopt.”
“Honey! That’s amazing!” Cayla set her cup aside and pulled Mia into a fast, hard hug. “You two will make wonderful parents.”
Rachel’s heart gave a squeeze. Brax had come so far since she’d known him. But nothing had done more for him than reconnecting with his wife. Getting the chance to see him pursue the dream of family he hadn’t even been willing to admit he wanted was just the icing on the cake.
“I’d say that deserves a toast.” She lifted her cup. “To the family you make.”
The three of them clinked cups and drank.
“So, Rachel, how long have you been in love with Jonah?”
The sip of pinot noir she’d taken promptly slid down the wrong pipe. She bent double, coughing.
Mia shot a bland stare at Cayla. “Way to be subtle. Aren’t you the one who says the point is to, like, lead up to stuff?”
“Girl, we already did that. We talked about your house, and I waited a whole twenty minutes. I want the tea. What is going on with you two?”
For the past three weeks, she’d been almost exclusively hanging out with men. Either Jonah himself or Holt, as they’d traded off guard duty, so she wasn’t left on her own. She loved the guys. She really did. But the prospect of discussing the situation with other women, especially women she wanted to get closer to, was incredibly appealing. If she came here, these would be her friends. Maybe they’d have some insight.
“That’s… complicated. We need more wine and snacks for this discussion.”
They retreated inside and began divvying up the appetizers they’d brought onto plates. Rachel took more time than necessary to pile pieces from their makeshift charcuterie board onto a paper plate. Meats, cheeses, olives, and crackers were built into tidy little stacks.
Cayla topped off their wine. “Okay, girl. Spill.”
“We’ve been nothing but friends since we met two years ago. Good friends. But neither of us was in a place where more would have been an option. We weren’t looking for anything. Then I kind of kissed him at Mia’s wedding.”
The bride’s dark eyes peeled wide. “Holy shit. Really?”
Rachel winced. “There was a lot of champagne involved.”
“Wait, when was this?” Cayla asked.
“Like… seconds before Sam went into labor.”
“So you laid one on him and then he up and went to the hospital with his sister?”
“That about sums it up, yes. Since he was there for something like thirty-six hours, I had time to sober up and realize I’d made a terrible mistake. Which was why I went to the bakery so ridiculously early on my own, and how I managed to surprise our resident bad guy. Jonah’s the one who found me.”
Mia’s face twisted in sympathy. “I bet he was losing his mind.”
Don’t you dare die on me. Don’t you fucking dare. I can’t lose you.
Had it been Jonah she’d heard? Or her own mind taking her back to the trauma of being in the hospital with John?
“I was unconscious, so I missed most of it. But it wasn’t good.”
“He basically would barely let her even walk on her own after,” Cayla confirmed.
“He blamed himself. Probably still does, to some extent.”
Mia popped a slice of salami in her mouth. “So how did you get from him being your live-in nurse and bodyguard to, you know, playing doctor?”
She’d literally been around the two of them once since she’d gotten back from her honeymoon.
“Is it that obvious?”
Mia smirked. “I mean… we were assuming. But thanks for that confirmation.”
Rachel’s cheeks heated. “I basically proposed a friends-with-benefits situation for while I was down here, and he agreed.”
Cayla’s brows drew together. “Y’all look like a lot more than friends-with-benefits.”
“I think we both got more than we bargained for.”
Nodding sagely, Cayla reached for more cheese. “Been there, done that. But it worked out beautifully for me.”
“You and Holt are perfect together. Jonah and I are… I don’t know exactly what we are. We keep sort of avoiding talking about it. I think we’re both terrified of what the answer is going to be. We went into this with certain expectations in mind, and we’ve gone so far beyond those expectations. He’s very… methodical about things. He likes to know the answer to everything, so I’m trying to come up with all those answers before we actually discuss it. I’m looking at the possibility of moving here.”
Mia whooped. “I mean, I’m new at this whole girlfriend thing, but I’m absolutely down to have another one.”
Cayla beamed. “Awesome! Would you work with the guys at the bakery?”
“I can’t ask that of them. Bad Boy Bakers is theirs. I can and will certainly help with that, but I’m not going to horn on that or expect them to take me on as some kind of fourth partner if I do come down. I’ve actually got a job interview tomorrow. Well, more of an audition, all this week, as the potential in-house baker for The Misfit Inn.”
“Oh, that’s a fantastic idea! I planned all of their weddings. They’re great people.”
“I like the notion of working for the inn with a lot of other women. I like the different format. I wouldn’t need to make the same thing every day, and I think it would be a fun new creative challenge for me.”
“What did Jonah say?” Mia asked.
Rachel winced. “I still haven’t told him yet.”
“Why not?”
“See also the whole part about him wanting all the answers. If they offer me the job, then I have a real means of supporting myself if I come down here. I don’t want him to think I’m trying to push him into something. We’re both in over our heads, and I don’t think either of us was prepared for that. I certainly wasn’t prepared for this. I didn’t think I had it in me to feel this way again after John died. And the fact that I can is both wonderful and horrible, because what if he doesn’t feel the same way?”
Cayla scoffed. “I’ve been watching y’all for months. Every time you came down here, and then over the past few weeks. There’s no way he doesn’t feel the same way. I’m pretty sure Holt and Brax have been taking bets on when he was gonna make a move.”
“I can confirm they have indeed placed bets on that.” Mia’s expression turned speculative. “Not sure who wins if you were the one who initiated.”
“Well, even if he does feel more for me, that doesn’t mean he wants to do anything about it.”
“Girl, you have to talk to him. You have to clarify everything,” Cayla insisted.
“I know. I know decisions have to be made. I just want to get through the interview first and be able to tell him that there’s an option if he wants it.”
“He’s going to want it.” Cayla refilled their wine. “Now, what are you going to bake for the interview?”