Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Lou
“Just tell me how much money you want to drop the act, or go ahead with whatever your little plan is and face every legal resource at my disposal.”
I tensed, channeling all my indignation into the stubborn lid of the jam jar that refused to open.
I didn’t know who I was angrier with: Wade for saying the things he had… or myself because the undercurrent of the accusation was true: I was a fraud. Lying for my own benefit. Not for money but for mercy. For my dream. And no matter what Frankie would argue, the ends didn’t justify the means.
And the things Wade said… if I were really Blaze’s girlfriend, I probably should’ve slapped him. I’d thought about it. I pictured myself walking up to him. I heard the crack of my hand on his cheek, saw the look of surprise on his face, and felt the triumphant surge of retribution in my tingling palm. Then I blinked and realized the person I’d been imagining wasn’t me. Not when I was being dishonest with him.
Was I?
I didn’t know why Blaze was upset last night. Truth. I did try to ask him when I brought up dinner, and he wouldn’t tell me. Truth. I wasn’t after any of his money. Truth.
All I’d done was tell him the truth and look at how he reacted.
I let out a deep sigh, giving my arm a moment’s break before I attempted to open the lid one final time.
I should’ve been braver. That was what kept me awake in bed—tossing and turning over the lie I’d told—when exhaustion dictated an instantaneous sleep. I should’ve braved the storm and admitted to the entire misunderstanding rather than layering tiny truths on top of the lie. My grandmother, Gigi, had a saying for that: like putting lipstick on a pig.
I buckled down on the jar once more.
I could still fix it—still make it right. I squeezed the lid tighter, my teeth locking with the effort. I’d go to the hospital, talk to Joanna, and tell her everything. Apologize for everything. And hope Blaze woke up.
The lid started to give.
And then I’d pray that Wade Stevens didn’t decide to sue me anyway.
The lid flew off the jar like one of those popper toys, spinning dramatically in the air, sending a spray of blueberry jam onto the floor and tablecloth, and then proceeding to land with the perfect position and speed to send it rolling along the uneven dining room floor, careening toward the entry to the hallway like it was trying to make a break for it.
“Crap,” I muttered, setting the open jar down and grabbing a napkin.
This was the kind of thing that happened after a hard night and only three hours of sleep. The kind of thing that happened when your fake boyfriend’s brother was sleeping upstairs.
Sinking to my knees, I began to wipe up the dark globs of Mom’s famous blueberry spread.
“What a mess…” And I wasn’t just talking about the jam.
“Is it?”
I stilled at the rumble of his voice, the texture of it still too fresh in my mind for my skin not to lift in an armor of goose bumps. Maybe it was just my imagination. I turned, air fleeing my lungs in a quick stream at the sight of him.
There was no imagining the man who filled the doorway into the dining room. Not the way his shoulders spanned the space and stretched the t-shirt he had on to the limit of its seams, the fabric pulling over the breadth of his chest.
Was Wade wearing his brother’s clothes? My gaze narrowed, scanning over him to confirm. I saw the small hole in the shirt right near the waist, almost impossible to notice except that the dry cleaner had tagged it in front of me when he stopped to pick up Blaze’s weekly laundry. Now, it confirmed my thought. And the same with the jeans. Muscled thighs filled out the worn denim that, along with the shirt, I’d returned to Mr. Stevens’s—Blaze’s room two days ago after they’d been cleaned.
Of course, he was wearing Blaze’s clothes. What else did he have to wear? His coffee-stained suit?
I jerked, suddenly realizing just how far off course my thoughts had derailed… and how long I’d been staring.
What a mess.
“Just a little,” I said, wiping up the last drop and preparing for another standoff as I rose.
How had I not heard him come down the steps? Was I that oblivious? No, this was just what happened when you lived a lie. I was too busy worrying about what to do next than to focus on what was happening now.
“Here you go,” he said and extended his hand, the rogue cap perched between his fingers.
“Thank you.” I took the lid, sacrificing my fingers to blueberry stains since that was what it took to keep my hand away from his. “Have you heard…”
“No.” Wade shook his head.
I fought the rush of disappointment. If I could just know Blaze was okay, I wouldn’t be so worried about telling them the truth .
“Okay. Well, I won’t have breakfast set up for another fifteen minutes, if you could come back then.”
Setting the lid on the table, I stuck my sticky fingers, one by one, in my mouth to clean them, all the while hoping Wade would move from the doorway so I could flee to the kitchen.
He didn’t move. He didn’t even respond. Hazarding a glance in his direction, I found him staring at me. Specifically, the tip of my finger poised between my lips as I sucked the last of the berry sweetness off.
Not staring—glaring. He glared at my hand as though it had pushed his brother down the staircase last night.
My finger popped from between my lips, the noise punctuating the tension. I quickly dropped my hand, drying it with a fresh napkin, and stammered, “I just have a few more things to put out for breakfast. Can I get you a coffee or a latte while you wait?”
“I’m not here for breakfast, Miss Kinkade,” he said, his tone taking a marked rasp.
“Oh.” My cheeks burned. I wasn’t ready for this conversation. I hadn’t even had my coffee yet. “Well, you should be. The pastry of the day is a rosquilla, which is a Spanish donut. They’re similar to American donuts but a little smaller. A little more delicate?—”
“Miss Kinkade?—”
The more intent he was on interrupting me, the more desperate I became to talk my way out of the room.
“They remind me more of a churro with taste and the slight crisp?—”
“Please.”
I went still except for where I continued to wipe my fingers with the napkin. They were clean, but I couldn’t stop the repetitive movement.
“I came to apologize for the things I said last night.”
I sucked in a breath, the napkin falling from my fingers onto the floor. What he said was so unexpected that I felt my head spin for a moment. My eyes fluttered, and the world settled with him in front of me, picking up the small piece of garbage like a peace offering.
“I’m sorry for what I said about you and my brother… for what I implied,” Wade continued, the t-shirt charting with its stretched fibers just how deep his breaths were. “It was inappropriate and uncalled for and disrespectful, and I hope you can forgive me.”
I was frozen. My feet. My hands. My tongue. This was the moment , a small voice inside my head whispered. This was my chance to set the record straight. To apologize as well. To assure him I didn’t want any money from him, and that I’d acted in panic. Was that the right thing to do? Would he forgive me?
Did I need him to forgive me? Or did I need him to just not sue me?
“However, I understand if you can’t,” he added while I still fumbled for the right response, the napkin crushed in his grip like a casualty of his contrition.
My heart tumbled in my chest. The moment was slipping. There was nothing for me to forgive, not until he knew the truth.
“Mr. Stevens…” I faced the table and tried to take a steadying breath. Maybe I could get the words past the fear gripping my throat if I wasn’t looking at him—if I wasn’t staring straight at my could-be executioner. And maybe if I had a distraction to temper my racing heart…
I grabbed the first thing I saw: an unopened jar of strawberry jam.
“Here, let me,” he offered, taking the preserves and popping the lid off with ease.
Whatever I’d been about to say—to confess—died the way kindling does in the presence of a flame as his fingers brushed mine.
“No mess,” he murmured and handed it back to me.
And just like that, I lost my nerve and found myself sequestered back in the realm of worst-case scenarios.
I was happy… and what if the truth would destroy that ?
My throat bobbed, fighting the swell of emotions. “Thank you.”
I set the jar on the small tray next to the toaster oven with the rest of the spreads. Without prompting, Wade began opening the remaining jars, carefully resting the lids on top until they were ready to be used. My mouth went dry, watching the flex of his forearms, the muscles defined by the veins that ran along them. Man, that suit really hadn’t been doing very much for him— Elouise.
Moving to the end of the table, I picked up the three big boxes of pastries and brought them over to the large platter I had centered on the table.
“Are these the donuts?”
“Rosquillas.”
“Rosquillas,” he repeated, taking the top box and noting the Stonebar Bakery emblem on top.
“They’re made at a local bakery by this lovely Ukrainian woman, Ella, and delivered fresh every morning.” And they were a luxury treat I was happy to pay for.
He set the box on the table and opened the lid, his head tilting to the side. “Interesting.”
“Have one,” I encouraged. “They’re delicious.”
His gaze hooked on mine for a second before he carefully pulled out one of the rings, examined it again, and then took a bite, chewing slowly.
After seconds that stretched forever, I had to ask, “So, what’s the verdict?” I winced at my choice of words and added, “Good, right?”
His eyes snapped to mine, and I looked away, focusing my attention on unloading the pastries from the box and arranging them on the platter.
He made a low, rumbly sound of enjoyment. “Very good.” More than very good judging by the way he devoured it and then stared at the platter lined with a dozen more.
“You can have another one.” I opened the second box and held it out to him, watching him consider the temptation—and then consider me.
Heat dripped like a leaking faucet low in my stomach, something molten and aching and arguably catastrophic building inside me. I told myself it was the late night, the stress, the panic that made my stomach flutter and my heart stampede around him… I was wrong.
He took another pastry. “You get these every day?”
“Not these specifically. Ella makes all kinds of international pastries, and they’re all delicious. I’ll get some repeats every month, just because some are my favorites, but gosh, she probably has enough recipes to go several months without repeating a single one.”
“So, you enjoyed these before opening the inn?”
“Yeah,” I blushed and went to unpacking the remaining boxes. At least if we were talking about this, we weren’t talking about his brother. “I used to work at the local coffee shop in town for years—a decade. The owners would get some of her pastries there but only on the weekends.”
“And you wanted them every day?”
I glanced at him. Had I imagined it or was there something different in his voice when he asked about what I wanted?
He looked away first, convincing me that I’d imagined it.
“Pastries are my guilty pleasure.” I stiffened. Guilty. Pleasure. My streak of regrettable word choice continued. I picked up a rosquilla and quickly added, “But I think the chouquettes are my favorite.”
“Chouquettes?” He picked up the empty boxes and began folding them up smaller and smaller to be discarded.
“They’re French puff pastries sprinkled with sugar pearls. Your brother called them a bedazzled donut hole.” The memory came unbidden, along with my small smile. Too fast for me to do anything to stop it.
“Miss Kinkade…”
I didn’t know what Wade was going to say, and I didn’t want to find out. So, I blurted out the question lingering in my mind in the few hours we’d been apart.
“What you said, is that really… what happens?”
His brows rose. “That Blaze gets threatened? Extorted?”
I nodded, taking a bite of the pastry.
“Yes,” Wade said gruffly. “Well, they try, but that’s what he has me for, I guess.”
I swallowed, the tightness in my chest excruciating. “I’m sorry.”
I wasn’t extorting him, I reminded myself. I wasn’t trying to harm him at all. I was just so afraid of losing everything I’d worked so hard for. And even with Wade’s apology, it still felt safer to tell Joanna first. Maybe if I had her sympathy…
“Don’t apologize.” There was an edge to his order, and it made me shiver as I took another bite of the pastry. “It’s the price of fame… and of being Blaze.”
“Well, he’s lucky to have you looking out for him.”
“Did he sound like he felt lucky to have me as a brother?”
Guilt stabbed my chest. Regardless of what he’d accused me of, I never should’ve brought up Blaze’s comment. It wasn’t my business—their relationship wasn’t my business. But that didn’t stop me from noticing that the pain on Wade’s face when he heard what his brother had said was the same look of pain Blaze had when he said it.
“I’m sorry.”
“Please stop apologizing for things that aren’t your fault,” he begged with a low rasp. “You weren’t the one who said it. You were just the messenger.”
It still didn’t make me feel any better about it.
“To be fair, when he said it, he sounded like all of my siblings have at one point or another in our lives when we’ve wanted to strangle each other.” I popped the last bite of my rosquilla in my mouth and then grabbed a bagel. I needed a little more substance for breakfast, especially after last night.
“How many siblings do you have? ”
“Two older brothers and a sister.” I sliced my bagel and pushed it into the toaster, realizing then that I’d left out I was a twin. The notion struck me like I’d betrayed Frankie. We were always a package deal. We’d come into the world as a package deal. Why hadn’t I wanted him to know the other half of me?
Because Frankie was the part of the package that always stole the show.
“But my siblings would all do far less legal things if someone tried to extort me.”
He made a low sound so close to a laugh that I took it as evidence that laughter from him was, in fact, possible. “I guess I would, too, if I wasn’t a lawyer.”
I watched the timer tick down on the toaster when footsteps above us drew my attention. My head tipped up. “Oh. If you’ll excuse me. I have to grab a few more things before everyone?—”
“What can I do to help?”
“Oh, you don’t have to do anything, please,” I said on instinct and opened the toaster. My bagel wasn’t done, but that didn’t mean the metal wasn’t scorching when my fingers bumped it in a rush to take out my food.
I cried out and would’ve dropped it on the floor if Wade hadn’t been quicker. He caught the bagel and quickly set it on the table as I doused my burned fingertips one by one into my mouth.
Good job, Lou. Good job. How I wished I had Frankie’s hot wax-calloused fingers right now.
Wade stalked to the beverage dispensers on the far table. One for ice water, another for hot water, and then two containers for coffee and decaf. In a blink, he’d returned with a cup of cold water and a deep growl as he pulled my fingers from my mouth and doused them in the water.
The relief I felt was nominal compared to the fresh burn of his grip around my wrist, gentle but firm. His hand looked so big where it held me. Those veins I’d marked on his arms were closer now. Distractingly close. He was distractingly close.
My head tipped up slowly. The broadness of him that stretched his brother’s clothes seemed to stretch the seams between molecules of oxygen in the air, making them weaker. Making them less. Making it harder to breathe.
And when I did drag in a deep inhale, it was of a leathered, amber musk with a hint of pine. There was no growing up with my candle-making twin without being tested on all the scents she used.
“Are you alright?” Wade demanded, his voice lower… rougher than before.
“Yes,” I murmured, unable to curb the breathlessness from my voice. As the pain cooled, it only made it more obvious how other parts of me had started to burn. “Thank you.”
“Let me help you.”
My eyelids fluttered. The air crackled with unstable attraction. Imbalanced. Forbidden. A kind of sensual, static electricity that made me want to ground my mouth to his.
Was this… My gaze lingered on his firm lips. Frankie had been the first of us to have a first kiss— of course. She’d talked it up—the heat, the sparks—a gross embellishment as it turned out when I’d finally kissed Dave Jenkins junior year. Nothing like Frankie said it would be. But now…
Now, Wade and I weren’t even kissing, and I felt the sparks. The charge traveling along the skin of my lips. The jagged exchange of warm breaths. The hunger like my own little black hole, pulling all other thoughts… worries… fears… into it and obliterating them, leaving nothing but the want to kiss him.
“Please…”
Danger, my mind warned.
“I’m really fine.” I swallowed again and tried to pull my hand back. “You’re a guest. You don’t have to help me.”
Wade tightened his hold and let out a low growl. “I’m not a guest, Miss Kinkade. I’m your boyfriend’s brother.”
My jaw went slack, my eyes glued on his mouth. I wanted to push the words right back through his lips and lock them away with my own. I wanted to kiss him in spite of everything—in spite of every reason I shouldn’t, and for some even greater inexplicable reason, his lips slid apart like he wanted to kiss me, too.
What was happening to me? How could he make me feel this way without hardly touching me? Who was this man, and what was he doing to me?
My boyfriend’s brother.
My fake boyfriend’s brother.
My fake, comatose boyfriend’s brother who was already suspicious of me.
I sucked in a sharp breath, my body jerking like a bucket of ice water had been dumped from my brain.
“Yes,” I said huskily, my throat working to swallow. “You are.”
I lifted my fingers from the water when something caught Wade’s attention— someone I realized.
“Lou?”
I’d know that voice anywhere because it was my own. My sister was here.