3. Mia
Mia
“Juno, the croissants are burning.”
“They’re not burning, they’re tanning.”
“They’re burning.” I grab the oven mitt from the counter, pull the tray out, and drop it on the rack with more force than necessary.
Five-seventeen in the morning and I’ve already got a custom three-tier due by noon, a broken mixer held together by a strip of electrical tape and a prayer I don’t actually believe in, and a stack of envelopes on the back counter that I’ve been turning face-down for a week because I already know what they say.
Juno slides behind me with a tray of pain au chocolat and loads the vitrine.
Even though it’s not her bakery and she doesn’t work here, she’s done it enough times to make it look easy.
She owns the tattoo studio next door. She’s here because I texted her at four-thirty, asking for help.
She showed up at five with coffee and no complaints, which is just another reason why she’s my best friend.
“Mr. Austin called again,” she says.
“I know.”
“That’s three times this week.”
“Juno.”
“I’m just saying.” She slots the last pain au chocolat into the display case and straightens up. “At some point face-down envelopes are still envelopes.”
I know that too. I know all of it. I know the rent is five months overdue and the landlord’s patience ran out somewhere around month three.
I also know that the mixer needs a part I can’t afford and the custom order sitting half-finished on my workbench is the difference between making or not making this month work.
I know all of it, I just can’t look at it all at once or I’ll sit down on the kitchen floor and not get back up.
So I pipe buttercream, don’t look at the envelopes, and let Juno help me open the bakery because some mornings I need someone by my side.
It’s hard doing it all alone. Three years of five AM starts and late nights over invoices doesn’t leave much room for anything else.
The last relationship I had ended when he got tired of coming second to a mixing bowl.
But right now, I don’t have the luxury to dwell on that.
The front bell goes at five twenty-three.
I don’t look up. “We don’t open until six.”
“I’m aware,” says a voice that has no business being in my bakery not only this early in the morning, but at all.
I look up and narrow my eyes.
Reed Hawthorne is standing in my bakery, hands in his pockets, ice-gray eyes moving across the space like he’s already decided it’s beneath him. There’s a woman half a step behind him, tablet already open, professionally blank face, clearly here to manage whatever this is.
The piping bag goes slack in my hand.
“Get the fuck out of my bakery,” I say. As a hello.
Juno, to her credit, doesn’t even blink. She just takes a small step sideways so she has a clear line of sight to both of them.
The corner of his mouth twitches. Not a smile. More like my telling him to fuck off landed exactly where he expected it to and he finds that mildly interesting.
The lady steps forward. “Hi Miss Calder, my name is Celeste, Mr. Hawthorne’s head of PR. I’d suggest taking a breath before this conversation starts. He’ll make it worth your while.”
“His worth and my while have already met,” I say. “Last night. On the front steps of the Deleon. I wasn’t impressed.”
“Miss Calder.” Celeste’s voice is calm. It’s clear she’s used to managing worse situations than me before breakfast. “Just hear him out.”
I set the piping bag down on the workbench and cross my arms. Flour on my hands, flour on my apron, flour probably on my face. I am the least intimidating person in this room but it’s my room, so I hold my ground anyway.
“Fine,” I say to Reed. “Speak.”
He glances at Juno.
“Out front,” he says. “Privately.”
“Juno stays or you go.” I don’t move. “Those are the options.”
He looks at me for a moment. Then he pulls out the chair at my worktable, sits down like I invited him, and sets a manila folder on the surface like he owns the place and is doing me a favor by visiting it.
“Have you seen the clip?” he asks.
“What clip?”
“From last night. Someone filmed the escort. It’s at nearly two hundred thousand views by now and every comment is about how I threw an innocent baker out of her own delivery.
” He opens the folder. “My board has been looking for a reason to push me out before a major acquisition closes. That clip just handed them one. I need a counter-narrative, and I need it fast.” He sets a page on the table between us.
“You’re warm, you’re credible, you’re nothing like my world, and the public already likes you.
For the next six weeks, I need you to play my fiancée through the Walsh shareholder meeting.
In exchange, I cover your overdue rent in full and pay the next twelve months in advance. ”
I stare at him. “Excuse me?”
He looks at me like I’m the one being unreasonable. “I need you to pretend to be my fiancée. Six weeks. I pay your rent.”
“I heard you the first time,” I snap. “I was being polite.”
The kitchen is very quiet.
I hear Juno behind him. I don’t look at her but I know exactly what her face is doing right now. I cut my eyes to her for half a second.
She mouths: absolutely the fuck not.
I look back at Reed.
“Take your money,” I say, “and your ego, and find somewhere uncomfortable to put both of them. I’m not going to be humiliated by the same man twice in twelve hours.”
He doesn’t flinch. “You don’t have the option of refusing.”
“I absolutely have the option of refusing. I’m doing it right now. Watch.” I give him the finger for good measure.
“Your landlord filed the eviction paperwork Monday morning.” He says it the way someone reads a weather forecast. Inevitable, impersonal, already happening.
“You have thirty days before it becomes an enforcement order. The bakery and the studio go together because they share the lease.” He closes the folder.
“So you can tell me where to put my ego, or you can keep both businesses.”
The kitchen stays quiet.
I stare at him. He looks back at me, and there’s nothing in his face that reads as cruel. That’s the worst part. He’s not enjoying this. He’s just telling me what’s true.
Celeste sets her tablet on the counter and turns it toward me.
The contract is already open on the screen, clean and detailed, more pages than I expected.
“It’s fair,” she says. “I wrote it. It has a defined timeline, clear exit, and compensation on delivery. You’d want a lawyer to look at it but nothing in there is designed to catch you.
” She pauses. “Also, for what it’s worth, you’re the first person I’ve ever seen tell him to fuck off before six in the morning.
You might actually be perfect for each other. ”
I don’t look at the tablet. I look at Juno instead.
She’s shaking her head. Her jaw set, the face she makes when she already knows I’m about to do something she disagrees with and she’s lodging her objection in advance.
“Juno,” I say.
“Don’t.”
“He’s right.” The words sit in my mouth like something sour. “I don’t have a choice. I need this.”
“You always have a choice.”
“Not one that lets me keep the bakery.” I hold her eyes for a second longer, long enough for her to see that I know exactly what I’m doing and I hate it, and then I look back at Reed. “Print it.”
He reaches into the folder and sets the contract on the workbench in front of me. Paper copy, already printed, two pens clipped to the front. Of course he did. He walked in here already knowing how this ended.
He stands up and moves around the table to stand beside me while I read it, close enough that I’m aware of exactly how tall he is, how still he is, the faint smell of whatever his dry cleaner does to a suit jacket.
He’s not touching me. He’s just there, taking up space, and when I shift my weight to turn a page my thigh brushes against his cock.
He goes very still. And so do I.
“Back up,” I say, not looking up from the contract. “You’re in my space.”
He takes one step back. Exactly one.
I read every page. It takes eight minutes. He doesn’t rush me.
When I get to the signature line, I pick up the pen and sign my name. I try not to think about the flour I’m leaving on the corner of the page where my wrist rested. Reed’s sleeve is going to have a white streak on it when he signs his part.
He picks up the contract before the ink is fully dry.
“You’ll move into the penthouse tonight,” he says.
My brows shoot up. He’s already straightening the pages, sliding them back into the folder, and moving onto the next thing.
“I’m sorry?”
“Proximity is part of the arrangement. It needs to read as real.” He clips the folder shut. “I’ll have someone here by seven to help with the move.”
I open my mouth, close it, and look at Juno.
She’s not shaking her head anymore. She’s staring at Reed with the face she makes when someone proves her right and she takes zero pleasure in it.
“Tonight?” I ask.
“Tonight,” he confirms, picks up the folder, and moves toward the door. Celeste falls in behind him. The bell above the door chimes again when it closes behind them.
Juno and I stand in the kitchen and say nothing for a full ten seconds.
“What the actual fuck,” Juno says finally.
“Holy shit,” I agree
She picks up her coffee, takes a long slow sip, and sets it back down. “I want it on record that I said absolutely the fuck not.”
“Noted.”
She looks at me. I stare at the flour on my hands, the envelopes I’ve been turning face-down all week, the broken mixer with its strip of electrical tape. All of it still there. All of it still mine. Just slightly less catastrophic than it was ten minutes ago.
I pick up the piping bag.
“We still open at six,” I mutter, and get back to work.