Chapter 35
Chapter Thirty-Five
Audrey
Audrey was just flipping the sign on the door to closed, feeling exhausted to the bone, when a man suddenly appeared on the other side of the glass. She squeaked, jumping back—instead of locking the door, which would have been the smart thing to do. But he’d startled her.
And when she got a good look at him as he came into her bakery, she really wished she’d managed to lock the door.
“Cash.” She blinked in surprise, shaking her head, like he might disappear if she did so… because surely she had to be imagining him.
“In the flesh.” He grinned at her, the way he always did, as if she should be flattered that he was gracing her with his presence.
Or maybe she was projecting, because she used to like the way he smiled at her, but now… that’s what it looked like. And maybe that’s what it had always felt like, and she just hadn’t been able to acknowledge it until now.
He looked exactly how she remembered—wavy blond hair, hazel eyes full of confidence, wearing a navy-blue coat that was fashionable but expensive enough to be functional, too.
The Burberry scarf he wore was only partially wrapped around his neck, hanging on like an afterthought—a concession to the weather rather than protection against it.
He dripped with upper-class breeding and arrogance, a reminder of everything she’d run from.
And not just because the last time she’d seen him, he’d been in her mother’s coat closet, balls deep in Becky Gray.
“We’re closed,” Ashley said from behind the counter, sounding suspicious.
The fact that Audrey hadn’t greeted him with enthusiasm must have gotten her guard up, even though Audrey had never mentioned him before.
She didn’t exactly like bringing up her ex or how foolish she’d been to have stayed with him for as long as she did.
He wasn’t the entire reason she’d fled Philly, but she wasn’t sure she would have gotten up the courage to leave if she hadn’t discovered his infidelity. It had been her parents’ reaction to their breakup, as much as anything, that had finally pushed her out the door to follow her dreams.
“Oh, that’s okay, I’m not here to buy anything.” Cash grimaced, stretching upward and patting his stomach. “I’ve gotta protect the integrity of the abs.”
Ashley snorted, clearly unimpressed. Which wasn’t surprising considering that her husband had a nice set, and he was almost twice Cash’s age… plus the whole security firm that he owned could have filled a sexy calendar.
Frowning, Cash settled back into position. With his golden-boy good looks, he wasn’t used to people being unimpressed—if not by his looks, then by his name. But Ashley didn’t know who he was. And she might not be impressed even if she did.
“Cash, what are you doing here?” Audrey asked, shaking her head. She still couldn’t quite believe that he was here at all.
He cleared his throat. Rolled his shoulders back, lifting his chin and sticking his hand in his pocket.
“Audrey Bowers,” he said, suddenly very formal. He dropped to one knee as she stared at him, too frozen in shock to react.
“What the fuck?” Ashley’s voice was a shrill counterpoint to Cash’s as he ignored her and kept going.
“I can’t live without you anymore.” He pulled the box out of his pocket.
Audrey’s heart hammered against her chest. Her palms were sweating, her brain screaming at her to do something, say something, to stop him from saying another word, yet she couldn’t move.
So much adrenaline was pumping through her, she was about to explode, but her jaw and every one of her muscles felt locked in place.
Cash flipped the little velvet box open, revealing a gorgeous sparkling diamond ring. Princess cut. Big. At least two carats, if not three. Her brain catalogued all the things she’d been trained to look for, like a computer’s background operating system while the screen remained frozen.
“I don’t want to go another day apart from you. Will you marry me?”
Audrey kept staring at him.
He cleared his throat again, lifting the ring toward her, as if maybe she had somehow missed seeing the massive stone or something.
“Uh, Audrey? I just asked you to marry me. You’re supposed to say yes.” He was looking at her so expectantly, so confidently, she almost said it. Because that was what she was supposed to do. That’s what he expected her to do.
It felt like her chest was going to explode. She couldn’t breathe. She was sweating. The whole world felt like it was closing in on her.
She couldn’t say yes.
Don’t cause a scene, Audrey.
Her mother’s sharp tones echoed in her head.
But she couldn’t say yes.
She just couldn’t say no either.
Then the world exploded around her as glass shattered, the alarm blared, and a shrill scream cut through the air.
Mason
It took him less than thirty seconds to make it down the block, yet that was thirty seconds too long, the entirety of both Black Fox Security teams hot on his heels.
He knew they were there, but he couldn’t think about anything except getting to Audrey.
Barreling through the door, he came up short, taking in the scene in front of him. Cold air blew in through the front window, which had a massive hole in it, explaining the alarm. Glass shards decorated the tables, chairs, and floor beside the window.
Several feet away, a blond man was holding Audrey in his arms—no, wait, she was trying to push herself out of his arms. Mason strode forward, grabbing the asshole’s hand and twisting, making him howl and fall to his knees. He let go of Audrey, which was the point.
“Who is this?” he asked, but his question was lost in the cacophony as the two teams poured in behind him, exclaiming over the mess.
Out of the corner of his eye, Mason saw Zeus stride over to between two of the tables and look down at something on the floor before straightening up and raising one arm to draw attention.
Thankfully, the alarm stopped going off—both on his phone and inside the bakery—then Ashley came rushing out from the back, followed by a wide-eyed Alexis.
Her eyes widened even more when she saw the group in the main room, and she hung back at the doorframe, while Ashley rushed straight to Lincoln and threw herself in his arms.
“Quiet!” Grant roared, in the way that only he could, his voice cutting through all the noise.
“What the fuck is going on?” David demanded to know as soon as everyone shut up. “Who the fuck is this, what the hell happened to the window, and why the fuck does Mason have the alarm hooked up to his phone?”
“I think this brick is why the alarm went off,” Zeus said, the hand that had been raised now pointing down at the ground. “If I had to take a wild guess.”
“Someone threw it through the window, right after the Ken Doll proposed to Audrey,” Ashley said, stepping back from Lincoln’s embrace, though still clinging to him. She was as pale as a sheet.
“He what?” David and Mason snapped out in unison, and the Ken Doll in question cried out again as Mason’s grip on his wrist tightened.
“Let me go, or I’m going to sue you!” he cried out. “Someone call the police, this is assault!”
“So is throwing a brick through someone’s window,” Mason snapped out.
“That couldn’t have been Cash,” Audrey replied, finally saying something.
She was standing and hugging herself, only a few feet away from him.
Mason immediately let go of the Ken Doll and stepped forward to hug her, only to crash into David, who was coming forward to do the same thing, going by the way his arms were outstretched.
“Shit.”
“Fuck.”
They managed to get themselves untangled, and Mason stepped back so David could put his arm around his sister.
Audrey’s eyes were huge, and she looked paler than ever, which made Mason’s chest tighten, but when it came down to it, brotherly relationship trumped whatever was between them.
He didn’t know if she wanted everyone to know that they were…
not together, but doing whatever it was they were doing.
“This is Cash?” Claudia asked, nudging the blond with her foot.
He cradled his arm as he got to his feet, staring around in confusion.
Maybe wondering why no one was calling the cops.
Mason didn’t bother to tell him that the alarm system would bring them here soon enough. “The douchebag who cheated on you?”
“He what?” Once again, Mason and David spoke in unison, both of them stepping toward the Ken Doll at the same time. Audrey grabbed hold of David, keeping him from moving forward, while Jensen smoothly stepped in front of Mason to block him.
“If you hit him, he’ll definitely press charges,” Jensen murmured.
That might be worth it now that he knew the douchebag had cheated on Audrey.
Who the hell would cheat on a woman like Audrey?
A dumbass who deserved to be punched in the face, that’s who.
But Audrey had grabbed her brother to stop him from doing the same thing, which meant she didn’t want the sad sack punched in the face.
Mason would have to settle for hoping the guy’s arm hurt like hell right now. He wished he’d twisted even harder.
“I made a mistake, Audrey,” Dumbass said earnestly. Mason hoped like hell that Audrey wasn’t buying his wide-eyed bullshit. “Losing you is what made me realize how much I love you. Look, I even got you a Cartier ring. You love Cartier.”
“I don’t want Cartier, Chase. I want to be able to trust my boyfriend not to cheat on me!” Audrey stared at him in pure disbelief.
Claudia broke into a coughing fit that sounded an awful lot like her saying “fuckwad” over and over again.
Dumbass’ face heated bright red, but he didn’t look at her. He was mostly focused on Audrey, with his gaze occasionally darting to Mason and David.
“He’s your friend, right?” Cash said, tipping his head toward Mason. “He was defending you. It’s just a misunderstanding. So if you marry me, I won’t press charges.”
“The fuck?” Jensen asked, turning around, before remembering what he was doing and managing to block Mason from lunging at Dumbass again.
“Are you trying to blackmail her into marrying you, dude?” Grant asked incredulously. His team was hanging back and watching the drama rather than inserting themselves into it, which was probably the smart move.
Darcie let out a low whistle. “Wow, that’s pretty desperate.”
An ugly expression flashed across Dumbass’ face before he managed to bury it under a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.
“I am desperate,” he said, his voice dripping with poisoned honey as he gazed with intent at Audrey. “Desperate for you, Audrey. Desperate for you to be my wife. Can you send your friends away so we can talk about this privately? I didn’t mean for my proposal to turn public like this.”
“I… no.” Audrey shook her head, digging her fingers into David’s arm. She was so pale, her face looked utterly bloodless.
Cash sighed.
“You really want to talk about this with all of them around?” He gestured broadly at the audience, of which Mason was a part of. It felt like his jaw was going to crack, he was clenching his teeth so hard, and he didn’t know what he would do if Audrey did try to go off alone with Dumbass.
The wave of possessiveness that rolled over him was impossible to ignore.
Audrey was his.
His submissive.
His lover.
And if she said yes to this douchebag’s proposal, all hell was going to break loose.
The fact that the asshole was pressuring her when she clearly didn’t want to marry him was making him suspicious as hell. Especially considering they were all starting to shiver thanks to the cold blasts of air coming through the shattered window.
“No, I mean no to your proposal,” she said, scrunching her shoulders in. Immediately, David stepped closer, putting his arm around her and glaring at Dumbass, who was too dumbfounded to have any sense of self-preservation.
“But… you can’t say no.”
“She just did. Is he hard of hearing?” Ashley asked, putting her hands on her hips and glaring at him. “She said no. Now, beat it. We need to clean this mess up, and I get the feeling you aren’t the kind of guy who gets his hands dirty.”
“I…” Cash looked around, but everyone was glaring at him. His gaze finally landed on Mason, and he scowled, straightening up. He lifted his chin and sniffed as he cradled the arm Mason grabbed. “I will be pressing charges.”
“Good luck with that, considering all these witnesses who saw absolutely nothing,” Claudia said casually, leaning her hip against the table she was standing beside.
When she smiled at Cash, it was more like a predator baring its teeth at prey in warning—she hadn’t decided to take a bite yet, but she could be convinced.
“This isn’t over,” Cash said, shaking his head. He looked back at Audrey. “Talk to your parents. You’ll see. You’ll be picking out your wedding dress before you know it.”
He stomped out of the bakery, wrapped up in enough arrogance to carry him through Harris’ team as they gave him just enough room to go by. If he could have slammed the door behind him, he probably would have.
As soon as he was gone, everyone started talking at once. David’s grim gaze met Mason’s.
“Let’s talk,” David said, glaring at him. “I have a lot of questions.”