“Molly—”
“Leave me the fuck alone, Jackson.” She shoved him back a step. “Just leave. You’re really fucking good at that.” Another shove, pushing him clear of the counter. “I don’t need you in my life.” One more and he was out from behind it, back on the customer side. “I don’t need you here. I don’t want—”
“They were going to kill you.”
Her hands, raised and ready for another push, dropped to her sides. Her jaw fell open. Of all the excuses she could have imagined him to come up with, that was right up there with the last thing she would have expected him to say.
He hesitated then took a step closer, moving behind the counter again, and his voice dropping. “I got mixed up in a bad deal with some bad people. I realized it, but I was in deep.” Another step. “Baby, I thought I could handle it, could get myself, my business out without any consequences . . . but then they involved you.”
Molly froze.
“You,” he whispered, taking another step toward her, until they were almost touching. “I couldn’t let them involve you.”
“H-how—” She cleared her throat. “How did they—?”
An expression crossed his face, one that she now realized she’d seen a lot during those final months they been together. Warring. He was warring with himself. But then he pulled out his cell, tapped on the screen a few times then held it out to her.
She’d just reached to take it when the bell above the door dinged.
They both whirled, saw that a group of women were bustling in. They were regulars, had been coming in since not long after she’d opened. Seeing Jackson behind the counter, they froze and Abby, a brunette with a baby on her hip, asked, “Are you okay, Molly?”
She forced herself to smile. “I’m good. You guys go ahead and take your normal table. Jeanine will come out to get your drinks.” Then she took Jackson’s hand and tugged him through the swinging door, finding her employee washing her hands.
“I’m just finishing . . .” Jeanine trailed off, no doubt stunned by the Tall, Dark, and Handsome suddenly appearing in the kitchen.
Another forced smile. “This is Jackson. We’ll be in my office. Can you cover Abby and company? Michelle will be in for the lunch rush in just a few minutes.”
Mutely, Jeanine nodded. But didn’t move.
“They’re at their usual table,” Molly prompted.
Jeanine blinked, eyes flying from over Molly’s head—and probably from Jackson’s face—down to Molly’s. “Got it,” Jeanine said, and with another long, lingering look above Molly’s head, disappeared through the door leading to the front of house.
“You do table service now?” Jackson asked.
She tugged his hand again, leading him toward her office. “Just for a few regulars.”
Silence.
Her eyes slanted up to his, but she couldn’t read the emotion there. “What?”
“You have regulars now.”
Yeah, she did.
“Fuck, honey, you did it.”
Her lungs seized. Just straight up froze in her chest, stopped moving, stopped functioning . . . because he was proud. She could hear it so damned clearly in his tone.
A shake of her head.
It didn’t matter if he were proud of her. He’d left—
But maybe he hadn’t wanted to go—?
Didn’t matter.
But maybe it did. Hell . . . she didn’t know anything except that she had to finish this discussion, that spending five minutes with Jackson might give her clarity and let her finally move on with her life. She was tired of just living for the bakery. She wanted more. But when Jackson had left, she’d built a wall around herself, an impenetrable barrier between her inner self and the superficial. She could charm an unhappy patron in a flash, had created a happy and relaxed work environment for her employees, but she hadn’t opened herself up to the world. It was all fluff while keeping her vulnerable center safe.
She hadn’t realized that she’d reached her office, that she’d stopped outside the door until Jackson’s front came very close to her back, hand lifting to turn the handle and push open the door.
Heat on her spine.
Spice in her nose.
Longing between her thighs.
Blinking, she forced her feet to move, to enter her office, to cross around her desk and put some space between them, to give her a few seconds to clamp down on the effect his body had on hers.
She was a businesswoman. She had spine. She wasn’t a weakling when it came to her desires.
But how she wanted to be.
Tamping down the urge and lifting her chin, she settled into her office chair, waving an imperious hand at the wooden one in front of her desk.
Jackson’s lips twitched.
Then he ignored her wave, ignored the chair, and rounded her desk, propping his hip on it. “Molly,” he murmured.
And she realized she’d made a critical error. Now, he was between her and the exit. Now he was close, and she wanted. Now . . . he held out his cell again.
She saw what was on the screen and the longing disappeared.
She saw the image and the bottom fell out of the world she thought she knew.
She saw the image, and so many pieces fell into place.
Six
Jackson
He realized about two heartbeats after Molly saw what was on the screen that he’d bungled this.
Words would have been better than the image that had been the final straw.
The photograph had convinced him to leave her.
It was of Molly, taken in her kitchen four years before. The construction on the bakery had just been completed, and everything was new and shiny. But that wasn’t the part that had made him pull the plug on their relationship. No, the reason he’d finally capitulated to the threats he’d been receiving with ever-increasing frequency was because of the red dot centered on her forehead, and the angle of the photograph.
They’d been in her shop.
They’d had a gun trained on her.
And his Molly had been wearing her headphones, her gaze on the dough on the table in front of her as she carefully deposited perfect slices of apples. She’d had a smile on her face, completely oblivious to the fact that a bullet could have torn through her skull.
A smile on her face when a gun had been pointed at her head.
He’d received that image the morning of the wedding.
And that was the moment he’d stopped trying to handle things on his own. That was the moment he called in the best, most expensive security he could afford for Molly. That was the moment he’d contacted the authorities.
And that was the moment he’d known he had to cut Molly loose.
In a way that was public.
In a way that made it absolutely clear he no longer had feelings for her.
In a way that made it certain she’d keep her distance, that she wouldn’t bring herself back into the crosshairs of the. Fucking. Russian. Mafia.
Who knew that finding a long-awaited investor for his software company would be his undoing?
Fuck. He’d been so thrilled to finally have been able to roll out his new product.
He just didn’t realize that doing so would put the woman he loved at risk from a corrupt foreign power who had no compunction about killing anyone in order to get their way.