One
Molly
She checked the bread that was proofing in the oven, not opening the door and risking a disruption of those teeny bubbles that were still forming, but peering through the glass rectangle on the oven door and making sure those pale globes of bread were rising as they should.
Her homemade rolls were a top-seller, usually gone before ten in the morning.
That was because they were delicious, if she said so herself.
And she did say so, she supposed, snorting at her pun.
But puns were all she had at zero-dark-thirty in the morning. Zero-dark-thirty, otherwise known as four A.M. It was a stupid hour to be up and about, but she owned a bakery and that meant she had to get up early. Molly’s—yes, she was egotistical enough to own a place named after herself, though in fairness, she hadn’t come up with the name—served breakfast and lunch, with a limited staff and menu for dinner.
That limited menu meant she didn’t have to work at dinnertime.
A good thing, too. Otherwise, she might as well live at the restaurant.
And while she loved Molly’s, she also loved having a life.
Not that you’ve had much of that lately.
True.
But owning a restaurant in a big city was difficult, and even more difficult was to keep owning it. Molly had investors to reimburse, loans to pay off, wages to cover, and supplies to purchase.
So, that meant filling in if her evening cook had a date or got sick or worked only five days a week. Okay, so if she were being truthful, that meant she all but lived at the bakery an average of four days out of said week.
But that was better than seven, so there was that.
Seeing that the rolls were doing well, Molly turned back to the counter to finish up the rest of her prep. She had to toast some walnuts, get the mise en place ready for her soups—which were basically fancy words to say she was chopping up the onions and carrots, celery and potatoes and peppers, measuring stocks and creams, roasting cobs of corn.
Her rolls dinged, and she grabbed them out, switching them to the preheated oven, doing a little dance of adding another baking sheet in to proof, pulling out a tray of croissants that were done from a different oven and replacing them with peach turnovers. She packed up the mise en place and stored them in the fridge, then prepped several bowls of muffin batter—today would be lemon poppy seed, peaches and cream, blueberry, and double chocolate.
Once the turnovers were done, she divided the muffin batter into various tins then began rocking through baking them off while stocking the glass case next to the counter. It was a familiar routine. Her doors opened at five, but that was mostly for her few straggler early birds, and that wasn’t typically more than five or six people, so she mostly let the first bell tinkling above the door let her know when she needed to pull her ass out of the kitchen. Which meant that she had to have the first batch of everything baked off before that. After her first employees clocked in at six-thirty, she could stay in the kitchen like she preferred.
Baking was her favorite.
The people weren’t bad either. She loved getting to know them, to see them change, their lives grow full and happy, their kids get older. She loved feeding people, even if they weren’t regulars.
There was absolutely nothing better than seeing someone’s happy smile when they bit into something tasty.
Speaking of, the bell above the door tinkled as her first customer of the day strode into the bakery.
“I’ll be with you in a second,” she called, continuing to fill the case with lemon muffins.
“I did always love to see you like this.”
Molly jumped, eyes shooting up.
It had been so long since she’d heard that voice.
I love taking bites out of you.
It had rumbled back then, too, rasping along her skin, skating down her spine, and making her shiver.
The first man she’d baked for.
The man who’d given her the money to open this place.
The one who’d named it.
And the one who’d left her at the altar. In the white dress. With the venue booked. With the caterer and the DJ set up. With the guests packing the pews on both sides of the isle.
Jackson Davis.
Jackson Fucking Davis.
“Jackson,” she murmured and slid the back of the case closed.
“I’m back, honey.”
She’d regret her actions later, but in that moment, with the memories of the full church and the people and their pitying expressions and this man. Not. Fucking. Showing. Up.
Molly snapped.
She threw the baking sheet at his head.
Two
Jackson
In fairness, he used to react faster.
His Molly seemed sweet and kind and levelheaded to the rest of the world, but with him, she always had a slice of fire.
He’d ducked a cookie sheet or twenty in their years together, but he’d been too long out of practice, too long away to remember how quickly she could launch that rectangle of steel, how it could unfailingly fly in perfect rotation toward his head.
Then it was there, inches away.
Jackson ducked at the last second, so the sheet glanced off his shoulder instead of his face.
Ouch. That was going to leave a bruise.
“Oh, my God,” Molly said, hands coming up to cover the horrified expression she wore.
That was new.
The horrified reaction.
She never used to feel any remorse for losing her temper, for launching a sheet in his direction or cursing him out. For one, he always moved well before the sheet came close. For two, he always deserved her reaction.
He’d curated her reaction—poked and prodded and needled until she snapped.
Because there was something about seeing Molly pissed, watching the flush crawl over her cheeks, seeing her pale green eyes fill with sparks. She was beautiful normally, but she was absolutely stunning when she was pissed.
Not to mention her being pissed was usually trailed by angry sex.
And angry sex with Molly was the best.
Although . . . he didn’t think angry sex was going to be on the plate with her today. Her hands dropped away from her face, those sparks faded away, and her pretty green eyes went damp.
“What the fuck, Jackson Davis?” she said. “What. The. Fuck?”
Then she spun on one heel and disappeared through the swinging door.
He stood there for a moment, staring after her, his heart hurting from the sight of her tears, regret a jagged and icy knife in his gut. He should have leveled with her from the second he’d found out, shouldn’t have . . . done a lot of things.
Jackson sighed, shoved a hand through his hair.
He’d fucked up good.
Never let it be said that he didn’t give it his all.
The bell above the door dinged and after a few seconds, he heard Molly’s voice trail out of the back. “I’ll be right out!”
Warm. As sweet as her cinnamon rolls and twice as calorie-laden. Or at least, that was how it had always felt to him. She just had to speak, and he was filled to the brim.
And he’d ruined that.
Fucking hell.
It was just after six in the morning. The case next to the register was full of various breakfast treats—croissants and muffins, fruit-filled Danishes, even a row of immaculately decorated flower cookies, the brightly-colored frosting punctuated with carefully placed sparkling sprinkles.