Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
Cara was buzzing by the time Zane dropped her off at the bakery.
She breezed in a little bit later than normal and ran a sweet roll out to his car before getting to work.
She left her packed bags in his truck because she would meet him up at his place later.
She felt giddy. She felt like dancing in the middle of the kitchen.
But she wasn’t going to do that, because she had customers, and she had work to do.
So there was no time for demonstrations of…
What was this? She felt like she was… No.
She wasn’t going to apply deep feelings to it.
It was like finally getting to live out a crush.
There. That felt comfortable. She hadn’t liked the term a few weeks ago.
It felt substantial. Now it felt like something buoyant.
Like something the two of them had missed. Maybe that was what it was.
Neither she nor Zane had had normal experiences of life. They hadn’t been teenagers the way that other people did. It was probably also why their age difference didn’t really feel significant.
They had experienced unusual things. The kinds of things that had made her feel out of step with her peers, the kinds of things that made him feel out of step with his.
Nobody had an equivalent life experience to Zane, at least nobody she’d met.
And while hers wasn’t the same, she had a very different experience of childhood than a lot of people.
Yes. This was a kind of buoyant high school experience, the sort that both of them had been denied, and what could be wrong with that? It was fun.
She giggled, in spite of herself, even though Annabelle looked over at her quickly.
She couldn’t help it.
It was like there was a bubble of joy rising up in the middle of her chest, and she couldn’t stop herself from… Well, giggling like an idiot.
She hummed and went out into the dining room to help clear some tables, and that was when Jackson walked in, followed separately by her sister-in-law. She was there for her morning sweet roll and coffee, which she usually did before Jackson arrived.
She could only pray that Jackson didn’t approach her while Marlowe was there. Except, of course, he did. He made a beeline right for her.
She bent down and started to wipe the table.
“I know that you told me you’d circle back about a dinner date, but I got a couple of tickets to a cabaret performance over in Bend. I was wondering if you might want to come out for dinner and a show.”
She could feel her sister-in-law watching her. She took a deep breath and looked up at Jackson. “I can’t.”
“Oh.”
“Sorry. It’s a really busy week.”
“Okay. Then maybe this weekend.”
“I’ll be busy then too.”
He lifted his brows. “Busy?”
“Yes. I…You seem really nice. But I am doing kind of a major life change thing here. Just started this business, moved across the country, my mother died, you know. And I’m not really looking for a relationship right now.”
“A dinner date isn’t a relationship,” he pointed out.
Dammit. He was right.
“I’m not really open to dating. Even casually.
And I’m sorry. It’s not you, not really.
It’s me. I’m just… I’m doing a really particular thing right now.
In my journey toward… self-love.” She wanted to punch herself in her own face.
Everything she was saying sounded stupid.
Very, very stupid. But she didn’t want to be mean to him, and she also couldn’t say that she was seeing somebody else. Not with Marlowe standing right there.
“All right,” he said, clearly completely shocked to be let down like this. She was trying to be nice, but she was definitely being definitive. Very clearly closing a door, and she wondered if that had ever happened to him in his whole life.
He was handsome, she knew he was rich. He had influence in town, and so did his whole family.
It was very likely that no woman had ever dared reject him. Even while he was being nice, she could see that he was… Insulted. Fair enough. If somebody did that to her, she would probably feel a little bit insulted, too. She had strung him along a little bit by not doing this.
But Zane…
She thought of the way he’d been yesterday. Possessive. Insistent. Of the way that it had ended with him putting her up on the counter and taking her over and over again. And then last night at her house, it had been sweeter, slower, and more like making love, and she liked all of it.
But she had promised herself to him. Not even a dinner date with another man. That didn’t feel quite so much like a crush, but it was a promise that she had made either way.
She had to keep that promise.
“I guess… I’ll probably find a different bakery,” he said.
She winced. “Fair.”
Jackson ended up leaving without buying anything, again fair, though she had to ponder the reality that he’d actually wanted her and not her sweet rolls. Was that flattering? It would be more flattering if she wanted to bang him, she supposed.
Zane wanted her sweet rolls and her —
She was distracted by movement out of the corner of her eye.
Marlowe was slowly creeping across the dining room until she was standing right beside Cara, her expression far too keen. “What was happening there?”
“I’m just not interested in him,” Cara said.
“I thought you wanted some experiences? I thought you wanted to go on a date?”
“I don’t feel anything for him,” she said.
Which was true. One hundred percent, completely true. Initially, she’d thought that maybe she could, but now she knew. She knew exactly the kind of chemistry that she could have with a man, and why would she pursue something that was any less than that? Zane and his possessiveness aside.
She felt warm and scratchy just thinking about that, especially with Marlowe standing there.
“Sometimes you don’t know if you feel chemistry with somebody until you go on a date with them.” Marlowe pointed out.
Cara gave her a sly look. “Is that how it was with you and Cody?”
It was Marlowe’s turn to turn pink. Cara knew full well that wasn’t how it had been with Cody.
Marlowe and Cody had hooked up in a guest cabin after two full conversations before Marlowe was even legally divorced from Cara’s brother, who had already blown their marriage up, but that was immaterial.
It was just to reiterate that Marlowe had not moved slowly in any capacity with Cody and hadn’t needed a single date to establish chemistry with him.
“No. But I thought you were just looking for some experiences, not necessarily… that.”
“Who doesn’t want that?”
Her mind was a montage of Zane. His hands, hard on her hips, his body hard as he thrust inside of her.
There was something dark and wonderful about the connection between them. It could also feel light and lovely, but there was an underlying intensity that felt… Unique. Perfect.
She blinked, trying to push back some tears.
Because she didn’t need to be thinking about that right now, she didn’t need to be wallowing or making this encounter with Marlowe seem weirder than it probably already did to her.
“I’m just not into Jackson. He’s… Well, haven’t you heard Walker talk about planning Addison Carey’s wedding?
The whole family sounds like a nightmare.
And he’s been nothing but polite when he’s come in, but you know it’s that thing, right?
Make sure that the person you’re with would be nice to the waiter.
He’s nice to me because he wants to go out with me.
But I’m not sure that he would be otherwise. ”
“That’s not quite how that saying goes, but I do get what you mean. If you have a gut feeling about him, you should listen to that.”
That really felt unfair, because she had no gut feeling about him, and even being very weirdly rejected, he had been nice enough.
“I just have a gut feeling that it wouldn’t be a good fit. And at this point, as busy as I am running the bakery… I don’t want to waste an evening.”
“All right,” Marlowe said. “But… it would be nice if you put yourself out there a little bit.”
She wished that she could tell her. She really did. Because she had no idea how out there Cara had been putting herself.
“I hear you,” Cara said, “and I feel like… that’s nice. But I just have to do this my own way.”
“Fair. Totally fair,” Marlowe said. “I won’t melt. But I would like a latte, and I would like a strawberry roll.”
“Yep. No worries.”
She went in the back and grabbed both, and Marlowe was up at the register paying for them when Cara returned.
“You don’t have to pay,” she said, waving a hand at Marlowe.
“Yes, I do. If I don’t pay, how will I keep sustaining this ecosystem that means so much to me?”
“You take me to dinner often enough at the Painted Ridge dining room and don’t let me pay.”
“That’s different,” Marlowe said.
“It’s not different. Just take your sustenance and go.”
“All right. You’re doing okay, though, right?” Marlowe was looking at her intently, and Cara felt like she could see the truth. Written all over her face, written down in her soul.
“I am,” she said.
She was doing okay. She was doing great. That was the thing. She was actually doing really great.
It was just complicated, and she couldn’t give her the details, and if Zane wasn’t so afraid of Cody finding out, then maybe she would tell Marlowe.
Though everything between her and Zane felt so…
Because it was intense, and lovely, and intimate, and very private, she wasn’t sure if she was in a place where she would want to talk about it yet either way.
Because she didn’t have all the right words to describe it, because she didn’t have a pretty way to talk about it, and it would just end up with her saying they were sleeping together, and it didn’t feel like it was quite that.
It was, but it felt like more than that. Anyway, it was probably a good thing that she didn’t have to articulate it right now.
“I’ll see you later,” she said, trying to look cheerful.
“Yeah. Let’s do dinner soon. You haven’t been over to the hotel in a while.”