Sweet Surrender (Backstage Pass #2)

CHAPTER ONE

Hendrix

“T en. Eleven.” I count the twenty-five pound bags of flour for the second time and come up short. “Barney?” I call over my shoulder to the open door where my wholesaler is busy unloading my order in the back alley.

“One sec.” His voice is muffled and labored.

I move through my kitchen area, past the long kitchen island lined with stacks of empty cookie sheets and past three industrial mixers. Just as I clear the doorway to the back alley of my shop, he lifts his head. He’s short but burly with tufts of salt and pepper hair peeking out from beneath his company cap.

“Sorry. What was that?” he asks.

“My order is short unless you have eight more sacks of flour and ten more of sugar in the back of that van that I’m not seeing.”

His grimace should be enough of a warning—one I should expect if the past month is any indication—but I hold tight to my optimism. Fleetingly . “You probably need to take that up with the accounting department.”

Optimism ? Gone.

Accounting department ? His wife, Annie.

“Meaning?” I ask, but I already know.

“You’re behind on the balance due.” He shifts uncomfortably and his Adam’s apple bobs. “As it is, Annie had my ass for delivering this much, but it’s you . We both know you’re good for it, but we have bills to pay too.”

I attempt a sweet smile but my stomach sinks. “I know. I am good for it. I’m slowly figuring everything out.”

Fuck you, Paul .

It’s a refrain I’ve said too many times over the past few weeks. One that makes me feel good even though it also feels like a Band-Aid placed on a bullet hole at the same time. “Tell Annie I’ll be catching up on it.” How ? I have no fucking clue. “This... all of this caught me way off guard.”

Barney falters and then continues to pull off his work gloves. He sets them on the handle of the pallet jack before looking over to me. There’s compassion in the depths of his eyes. “I’m sorry this happened to you. Truly, I am.” He hangs his head.

“Thank you. It . . . is what it is.”

“Yeah, but... I saw him here. With her . I could have assumed a lot of things, but you’d be amazed at the shit I see so I never said anything. I just figured she was a friend or you guys had an open”—he waves his hands back and forth as he searches for a word and his cheeks color—“thingamajigger. I didn’t know and it isn’t my place to interfere. Annie’s taught me that over the years.”

Leave it to Paul to make my supplier feel guilty over his cheating ass.

“It’s not your fault. At all .” I reach out and squeeze his bicep. “There were signs I should have seen but didn’t until it was too late.”

Too late, as in opening my front door, walking into my bedroom and seeing Paul’s bare ass as he screwed his side piece in our bed, signs.

The sight will forever be burned in my retinas, and the pitching of my stomach still hasn’t subsided.

“It’s not your fault either,” he says, shifting his feet in discomfort. “Paul’s a dick. He was before and is even more so now. My Annie always asked what a nice girl like you was doing with a guy like him. Maybe this is a good thing. It might not feel like it now, but it could be.”

I smile and nod simply to ease him out of a conversation I’m sure he wanted no part in. “I’ll make it a good thing,” I say with way more optimism than I feel.

“Good.” He nods. “That’s what I like to hear. Now, I’ll work on Annie to see if I can’t accidentally extend some more credit for you. I know you have that big event coming up.”

I bite back the sob and release the pent-up hurt and frustration as a sigh instead. It’s nowhere near as cathartic though. “I’d be appreciative of whatever you can do. Once I get paid the balance on the event, it’ll go straight to you.”

And it’s true. It will. But then that means I’ll be late on my rent and utilities, which puts me in yet another tailspin.

Who am I kidding? I’ve been living in that endless eddy for the past three weeks.

Barney closes up his truck and heads out while I go back into the bakery. Cookie Cutter . It’s my labor of love. My dream come true. And while it was one hundred percent my baby—the concept, the implementation, the hard work—Paul had contributed half the start-up capital.

But he took his cheating dick and his helpful money with him when I kicked him out. Now, I’m left with a struggling business that’s short on capital, personal bills I can’t pay, and a broken, angry heart.

“Fuck you, Paul.”

It doesn’t feel as good as it once did. The words. The gusto behind them. The anger they barely alleviate. At first saying them was my way to get out the overwhelming emotions—the hurt, the disbelief, the heartache. And it worked.

But the hurt has been replaced by anger. The anger colored in big, bold strokes with despair.

I look around my cookie bakery. Everywhere is bright pastels and happiness. In the signs and awning outside, in the decor inside, and in the obnoxiously happy sentiments and designs on the cookies in the case.

This was all mine—but unofficially half his.

I trusted him. I believed him. Who wouldn’t after two years together? And now with the shit he packed up and took with him—his clothes, his electronics, his self-help books that clearly worked for shit—one would say taking his money back was warranted and it was. What wasn’t, however, was the money he took from our joint account. Stole . The one we started and pooled our savings to qualify for the loan.

And now I’m left in dire straits.

Like the kind of straits that have me wondering how I’m going to deliver one thousand cookies in two weeks’ time. I need money for the supplies, and yet I can’t make the money unless I provide the cookies. Even more, I can’t pay for workers to help me make the cookies because all the money goes to the supplies so it’s probably going to be me, myself, and I baking and decorating until my fingers want to fall off. Oh, and I need a bakery to actually make those cookies in, but paying rent when credit is already maxed out is enough to sap anyone’s creativity.

Yeah.

Fuck you, Paul.