Burn For You

47

My voice shaking with fury, I said, “If you ever come near her again, I’ll break into your house when you’re not home and replace all your shampoo with hair remover.”

Trace blinked. His sculpted eyebrows pulled together.

I pointed my finger in his face. “You’re a liar. And a cheater. And I don’t care how much you screech about finding God, a leopard doesn’t change his spots. I know all your tricks, Trace Adams. I know all your tells. And I know that you getting into the restaurant business has nothing to do with new investors and everything to do with trying to outdo me and prove that I made a mistake when I kicked your sorry behind to the curb.”

Trace shrugged. “Well, you did.”

I made a sound of astonishment. “You’re unbelievable.”

He reached up to tuck a stray lock of hair behind my ear, but I swatted his hand away. He said, “I know I made my mistakes, too, but I want to put all that behind us.” His voice grew stroking. “C’mon, bumble bee. I know you still have feelings for me, or you never would’ve kissed that asshole in the car the other night. That’s not your style.”

Blood pounded in my face, in my ears, through every vein in my body.

I shouted, “That asshole is my fiancé!”

I wished I had a camera. His look of shock was worth preserving for posterity.

“The f**k you say?” He stepped closer, eyes narrowed, but I stood my ground.

“You heard me. We’re engaged. We’re getting married.”

His nostrils flared in outrage. He stared down at me in jaw-clenched fury until finally he said, “Huh. Never thought I’d see the day that Miss High and Mighty turned into a gold-digging whore.”

That hurt. It hurt like getting all my skin peeled off and taking a saltwater bath, but I didn’t want him to see it. So I smiled, even though the effort felt like it would split my face in two. “There he is. There’s the Trace I know. Welcome back, player. Now get lost!”

I turned on my heel to leave, but Trace caught me by the arm and jerked me against his chest. He put his nose up to mine and hissed, “How much he payin’ you, Bianca? How much does it cost to get you to suck a d**k?”

I yanked my arm from his grip and backed away, so angry I could scream. “If you come near me or my mama again, I’ll call the police. And then I’ll call my future husband. And believe me, Trace, you’ll want the police to get to you first.”

I strode away and didn’t look back, not even when I heard him call me the c-word and spit on the sidewalk.

TWENTY

BIANCA

The next afternoon, Jackson kept to his usual MO and arrived unannounced at the restaurant.

It was five o’clock, an hour before the first reservations, five hours after the meat delivery was supposed to have arrived. The staff was eating their preservice meal together at the long table in the glassed-in private dining room. Meanwhile I was pacing, my new favorite form of exercise. When the door opened and I saw the long shadow fall across the dining room floor, I knew who it was without even turning around.

Pepper’s excited squeal only confirmed it.

I turned and found Jackson standing inside the door, staring at me. He was wearing faded jeans and his battered motorcycle jacket, with a white cotton shirt molded to his body so his abdomen muscles were on display like an ad for stacked bricks.

He was not altogether unfortunate looking.

I said, “Oh. Hello.”

His brows quirked. He glanced at the gathering in the private dining room, fifteen people staring at us in open curiosity from behind a sparkling sheet of glass. “Is this a bad time?”

Is there a good time to sign away five years of your life?

I said, “It’s fine. They’re contained for now.” I made my employees sound like a nasty viral outbreak, which wasn’t too far from the truth. “Let’s go into my office.”

I led him through the restaurant, past the private dining room with its gaping menagerie, and through the kitchen. My office was down a hallway in the back. It was a cramped, messy space where I regularly collapsed into exhausted comas at the end of the night or cried over the mountain of unpaid bills strewn on my desk while I examined my life choices.

I opened the door, he closed it behind him. He looked around with a critical eye. “Looks like a bomb went off.” Then his gaze fell on the bouquet of red roses on the edge of my desk, and he went stone-still. His tone was acidic. “From an admirer?”

I snorted. “If you can call Satan’s spawn an admirer.”

In two long, jerking strides, he was in front of the bouquet. He snatched the little white enclosure card off the plastic stick. He read it aloud while his free hand curled to a fist. “I’m sorry, bumble bee. I didn’t mean what I said yesterday. Please call me, we need to talk. Trace.”

Jackson pronounced Trace’s name as a hiss. When he cut his gaze to me, all the air left the room.

He growled, “What happened?”

I dropped into my ratty captain’s chair and sighed. “We had a little run-in at my mother’s house.”

“A run-in?” he repeated slowly. His eyes had turned an unnerving serial killer shade of black.

“Long story short, I stopped by Mama’s on my way to the restaurant, and he was there. I told him we were getting married, and he called me the c-word.”